Shakespeare for Students

SHAKESPEARE

for Students

SHAKESPEARE

for Students Critical Interpretations of Shakespeare’s Plays and Poetry

SECOND EDITION: VOLUME 3 Anne Marie Hacht, Editor Foreword by Cynthia Burnstein

Richard II Richard II, which was written and performed in 1595 and details Richard’s overthrow by Henry Bolingbroke, immediately earned a reputation among Elizabethan audiences as a politically subversive play. On February 6, 1601, supporters of the Earl of Essex, who would the next day mount an unsuccessful rebellion against Queen Elizabeth, paid Shakespeare’s company to put on a special performance of the play. The queen was in fact sometimes compared to Richard, owing to her lack of an heir and to what some subjects viewed as her inclination toward heavy taxation and indulgence of her favorites. Contemporary critics often viewed the play as a politically dangerous commentary on the monarchy, and not until the eighteenth century did the play began to generate literary, rather than political, interest.

1595

The year in which Shakespeare wrote the play was deduced based on the publication in early 1595 of an epic poem written by Samuel Daniel entitled The First Four Books of the Civil Wars, which Shakespeare used as a primary source. Richard II is known to have been performed as early as December 1595 for Sir Edward Hoby. Other significant sources include Edward Hall’s The Union of the Two Noble and Illustre Famelies of Lancastre and Yorke (1548) and Raphael Holinshed’s Chronicles of England, Scotland, and Ireland (1587). Shakespeare freely appropriated and strayed from his source material in various ways, including in the area of characterization;

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Gaunt, for example, is depicted by Holinshed as greedy and ruthless, whereas Shakespeare portrays him as a wise and patriotic nobleman. Additionally, scholars suggest that Shakespeare’s sympathetic attitude toward Richard may have derived from several French sources. Historically, the events of Richard II take place during the years 1398 to 1400. The most frequently discussed aspects of the play include its depiction of the nature of kingship; whether Richard is deposed by Bolingbroke or deposes himself; and the characterizations of Richard and Bolingbroke. Regarding the nature of kingship, the play contrasts the topics of the legal and divine rights to rule and of the effectiveness of the ruler. Richard is believed to be the legal, rightful ruler of England, as ordained by God; yet he is also shown to be a weak and ineffective king. Bolingbroke, on the contrary, tends to act decisively and with moral justification and he is supported by the people. The issue of Richard’s deposition provokes various questions: Does Bolingbroke truly force Richard to give up the crown, and has he been plotting to do so all along? Or does Richard timidly but willingly surrender the kingship to Bolingbroke? Regarding the characterizations of Richard and Bolingbroke, some find Richard’s obvious weakness to be deserving of pity, while others find it despicable. Critical estimation of Bolingbroke is likewise divided, as he is viewed as a traitor and usurper by some, while others maintain that his actions are justified and save England from ruin. While scholars cannot precisely determine to what extent Shakespeare had future productions in mind when writing Richard II, that play constitutes the first of four plays that are referred to as Shakespeare’s Major Tetralogy, or the Henriad. The succeeding three plays—Henry IV, Part One, Henry IV, Part Two, and Henry V—deal with the reigns of Bolingbroke, who became Henry IV, and of his son. Certain themes that are emphasized in Richard II definitely point to the succeeding plays, especially the notion that all of England will suffer bloodshed as a result of the sinful deposition of King Richard.

PLOT SUMMARY Act 1, Scene 1 Richard II opens at Windsor Castle, where King Richard is holding audience with John of Gaunt,

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who is Richard’s uncle; Henry Bolingbroke, who is Gaunt’s son and who is referred to by the king (Bolingbroke’s cousin) as the Duke of Hereford; and Thomas Mowbray, the Duke of Norfolk. Bolingbroke and Mowbray have come to settle a dispute, as Bolingbroke is accusing Mowbray of being a traitor. Mowbray, meanwhile, claims that Bolingbroke is simply dishonoring him. Bolingbroke is specifically accusing Mowbray of having embezzled royal funds rather than applying them to soldiers under his command and also of having plotted the murder of the Duke of Gloucester, who was Gaunt’s brother. In making his accusation, Bolingbroke throws down his gage, meaning that he is challenging Mowbray to a knightly competition. The speeches made by Bolingbroke, who is referred to as the appellant, or the accuser, and by Mowbray, who is the defendant, are very elaborate, as the royal audience functioned much like a settlement court among nobles such as these dukes; throughout the discussion, Richard makes inquiries of each gentleman, responds to his statement, and then turns his attention to the other. Mowbray insists that he had used the funds appropriately and that he had not murdered Gloucester. (Members of Shakespeare’s Elizabethan audience would have been aware of the common historical knowledge that Richard had in fact ordered Mowbray to dispose of Gloucester; Richard, of course, would have had no intention of revealing the truth behind the murder at that time.) At length, Mowbray throws down his gage, challenging Bolingbroke in turn. Richard and Gaunt try to persuade the men to revoke their respective challenges, but both men feel too disgraced to do so. Thus, they schedule a contest to be held in Coventry.

Act 1, Scene 2 Gaunt is meeting in his house with the Duchess of Gloucester, the widow of the deceased duke. He tells her that he can do nothing about the murder of her husband (who was also his brother) because the one responsible is the king, and questioning an act of the king’s is like questioning an act of God. While constantly mourning the loss of her husband, the duchess also laments what she perceives as Gaunt’s weakness for failing to act, especially in that Gaunt and Gloucester had both borne the veritably sacred blood of King Edward.

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Act 1, Scene 3 At Coventry, Bolingbroke and Mowbray are undergoing all the formalities that surround such a contest between two dukes. King Richard presides over the ceremonies, urging marshals to ask questions of the two gentlemen at the appropriate times; Bolingbroke and Mowbray are each given the chance to explain why they are there, with Bolingbroke asserting that he is fighting to prove through his valor that Mowbray is a traitor, while Mowbray is defending his honor. Bolingbroke kisses the hand of Richard, his cousin, and presents a solemn speech before embarking on what he terms a ‘‘weary pilgrimage;’’ Mowbray likewise offers a few words, asserting that in fighting he will be casting off ‘‘chains of bondage.’’ The men take their lances, and the trumpets mark the beginning of the contest—but Richard calls it to a halt; he cannot bear to see the blood of these noblemen, one of whom is a kinsman, be spilt. To settle the dispute, he banishes Bolingbroke for a span of ten years, Mowbray for life. Mowbray is especially heartbroken, as he feels too old to learn another language and imagines that he will live out his years in sorrowful silence. Before he leaves, Richard entreats both him and Bolingbroke to swear to neither seek out each other personally nor to plot against the nation of England or any of its citizens in any way. Bolingbroke urges Mowbray to confess his treasons before leaving, but Mowbray maintains his innocence. In noticing the grief of Gaunt, Richard commutes Bolingbroke’s sentence to six years—but Gaunt nevertheless believes that he will die while his son is away. Richard protests that Gaunt is not so old and that he has been fair in his judgment. Gaunt advises his son to look at his exile optimistically—to see it as a chance to travel and ‘‘purchase honor’’—but Bolingbroke professes to be unable to look past the fact that he would rather be at home, where his life is. Nevertheless, he departs.

Act 1, Scene 4 At the royal court, Richard is asking the Duke of Aumerle, a cousin of both Richard and Bolingbroke, what transpired in the course of Bolingbroke’s departure; Aumerle remarks that the two merely exchanged farewells and that he wishes Bolingbroke had been exiled permanently. Richard then notes that he and Sirs

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Bronze gilt tomb effigy of King Richard II of England (Hans Wild/Time and Life Pictures/Getty Images)

Bushy, Bagot, and Green observed the sympathy Bolingbroke managed to extract from the common people in the course of his departure with his ‘‘courtesy’’ and ‘‘craft of smiles.’’ Green then mentions the rebels causing trouble in Ireland, and Richard commits them to a military expedition there. Bushy then arrives to announce Gaunt’s grave illness. Richard decides to visit his uncle.

Act 2, Scene 1 At Ely House, in London, Edmund, the Duke of York (Richard and Bolingbroke’s uncle), urges the dying Gaunt not to seek an audience with the king as he dies, as he expects that Gaunt will only be frustrated by the fact that Richard will not truly listen to him. Gaunt, however, feels as though in death he will be listened to more seriously than ever he had been in life. Both men have much to say about the deterioration of England under Richard’s reign. When Richard arrives, Gaunt speaks mournfully about his impending death— he especially regrets the absence of Bolingbroke— before chastising Richard for his having laid waste not only to the nation’s land but also to their family; that is, Gaunt holds Richard accountable

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for Gloucester’s death as well as for his own. Richard grows angry and refrains from lashing out at Gaunt only because the dying man is his uncle, but Gaunt continues his tirade, telling Richard that he should be utterly ashamed of himself.

were among the king’s most prominent supporters. Green and Bushy will go to Bristow Castle to meet the Earl of Wiltshire, the nation’s treasurer, while Bagot will travel to Ireland in search of the king.

Gaunt leaves, and the Earl of Northumberland almost immediately enters to inform the king that Gaunt has died. Richard then utters a pithy eulogy before laying claim to all of Gaunt’s assets. York then loses his patience, expressing his frustration over Gloucester’s death, Bolingbroke’s banishment, Richard’s prevention of Bolingbroke’s marriage in exile to a cousin of the French king, and the wrongs done to Gaunt and to all of England. York tries to persuade Richard to leave the deceased Gaunt’s estate alone—but Richard seizes the estate regardless, and York departs indignant. Still, Richard notes that while he is off fighting the rebels in Ireland, York will be named Lord Governor of England.

Act 2, Scene 3

When the king departs, Northumberland and the Lords Willoughby and Ross voice their displeasure over all the king has done of late, especially his spending the nation’s funds and overtaxing the people so unwisely. When Northumberland relates that Bolingbroke is in fact illegally returning to England with a number of other lords, well armed, the three men agree to support him by traveling to Ravenspurgh, where Bolingbroke will be arriving.

Act 2, Scene 2 At Windsor castle, Bushy is trying to buoy the spirits of the queen, who is saddened not only by the departure of her husband but also by some deep sense of unexplained foreboding that grows in her heart. Green then arrives to inform them that Bolingbroke has indeed arrived in Ravenspurgh— confirming the queen’s suspicions that something was awry—and that among the lords supporting Bolingbroke are Northumberland and the Earl of Worcester, his brother, who resigned his post as the Lord Steward of the king’s household. York arrives and despairs over his position, as the situation seems quite unfavorable for supporters of the king; also, his brother’s widow, the Duchess of Gloucester, has died. York notes that while his sense of duty compels him to defend the kingdom, his heart lies more with Bolingbroke and his other wronged kinsmen. When York and the queen depart, Bagot, Bushy, and Green discuss their own peril, as they

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Bolingbroke and Northumberland are traveling through Gloucestershire when they happen upon Harry Percy, Northumberland’s son, who relates Worcester’s departure from the royal household and pledges his service to Bolingbroke. Percy also informs them that York, Berkeley, and Seymour and three hundred men are positioned at Berkeley. Ross and Willoughby then arrive, also pledging their service even in the absence of monetary recompense. Berkeley then arrives, demanding to know why Bolingbroke is laying the framework for civil war—and York consequently likewise arrives to question Bolingbroke, who kneels in his uncle’s presence. York castigates Bolingbroke for his traitorous deeds, including his mere return to English soil after he had sworn to remain in exile; Bolingbroke responds that he had been banished as the Duke of Hereford but was returning as the Duke of Lancaster, which title he gained upon the death of his father. Bolingbroke then asserts that he has only returned to claim the estate that is rightfully his. York extends his sympathy but notes that the nation cannot bear Bolingbroke’s rebellious acts. Northumberland then notes that Bolingbroke has sworn to seek only his due as the Duke of Lancaster, in which cause he is fully supported by Northumberland and the others. York then allows Bolingbroke and the others to proceed to Bristow Castle to ‘‘weed and pluck away’’ Bushy, Bagot, and the king’s other supporters.

Act 2, Scene 4 In Wales, a Welsh captain (who is possibly meant to be Owen Glendower) informs the Earl of Salisbury that his men, who would have supported Richard, can await his return no longer, as they believe that the king is in fact dead.

Act 3, Scene 1 At the castle at Bristol, Bolingbroke announces what Bushy and Green are being accused of— namely, responsibility for all of the wrongs Bolingbroke suffered, including his banishment and the seizure of his family’s estate—before Northumberland leads them away to their execution. Bolingbroke than asks York, who evidently

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is not only failing to resist Bolingbroke but also is assisting him, to have his greetings sent to the queen.

Act 3, Scene 2 Richard arrives on the coast of Wales with Aumerle and the Bishop of Carlisle by his side. He speaks lovingly of the English soil upon first touching ground, asking it to assist ‘‘her native king’’ by ‘‘doing annoyance’’ to the feet of the rebels. When Carlisle speaks of doing heaven’s will and Aumerle of striking out, Richard describes how the rebels have been robbing by night, but the sun—himself—has now arrived and will restore day. Salisbury then arrives and informs Richard that the day before, the twelve thousand Welshmen who would have supported him had defected to the side of Bolingbroke, as they had believed the king to be dead. Richard despairs, and Aumerle tries to persuade him to retain a kingly demeanor. Sir Stephen Scroop then arrives and mentions that he has bad news, and the king despairs further, when Scroop reveals that virtually the entire nation, including men young and old, had joined the rebellion. He further reveals that Bushy and Green have deserted him, prodding Richard to anger—until Scroop informs him that they have deserted him in having been executed. Richard then delivers a long lamentation on the greatness that he has lost. Carlisle then urges the king to suppress his fear, as it will only make fighting more difficult, and Aumerle in turn encourages Richard to seek out York and his army. Richard indeed takes heart at this thought—but Scroop destroys his hopes in relating that even York had sided with Bolingbroke, such that all of Richard’s ‘‘northern castles’’ and ‘‘southern gentlemen’’ were allied against him. Richard then determines to discharge all of his followers and seek refuge at Flint Castle.

Act 3, Scene 3 Near Flint Castle, Bolingbroke and Northumberland are discussing their thorough advantage over Richard—with York now chastising Northumberland for failing to refer to Richard as ‘‘King.’’ Percy informs them that the castle is manned against their entrance, with King Richard and his remaining supporters inside. Bolingbroke bids Percy go to Richard and tell Richard that he will retain his ‘‘allegiance’’ to the rightful king

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and prevent any bloodshed from occurring as long as his banishment is revoked and his estate is returned to him. Richard himself then appears atop the wall of the castle—provoking Bolingbroke to likewise refer to the king as the sun—and York commends Richard’s majestic appearance. Speaking to Northumberland, Richard curses them all for having committed sinful treason against the nation and declares that thousands will die in the war that they have begun; after rejoining that they do not in fact wish for war to take place, Northumberland delivers Bolingbroke’s message, assuring Richard that Bolingbroke has sworn his loyalty. Richard responds that the agreement is reasonable—then turns to ask Aumerle if he is not being too weak in accepting their demands. Aumerle responds that they would be wiser to wait until they have gained more support before taking a firmer stance. Richard then expresses how much he regrets having ever decided to banish Bolingbroke and bemoans that he may as well be deposed—that he is as good as dead and that Bolingbroke may as well be king. Northumberland returns to bid the king meet Bolingbroke in the courtyard below—and in feeling obliged to descend, Richard wails further, ‘‘like a frantic man.’’ In the courtyard, Bolingbroke kneels before the king and pledges his service, and Richard bids him stand and assures him that all that rightfully belongs to him will be returned. Richard goes so far as to suggest that Bolingbroke may be made his heir.

Act 3, Scene 4 The queen is sharing her enduring sorrow with her attendants, preventing the two women from even attempting to cheer her. Hoping to eavesdrop on common men, they hide when a gardener and his two servants arrive. After several offhand references to the political goings-on, the gardener eventually makes clear his disdain for Richard and his belief that the king will eventually be deposed. The queen emerges to chastise him and demand to know how he gained this understanding, and the gardener regretfully explains Bolingbroke’s advantageous position. The queen then departs for London.

Act 4, Scene 1 Bolingbroke, who is presiding over a large assembly of lords at Westminster Hall, calls upon Bagot to reveal all that he knows about Gloucester’s

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murder, which Bagot had helped plot. Bagot declares that Aumerle had himself offered to kill Gloucester (who was Aumerle’s uncle) and also that he had expressed his fierce opposition to Bolingbroke. In response, Aumerle calls Bagot a liar and throws down his gage, challenging him to a contest whereby the victor will retain his honor. Bolingbroke tells Bagot not to accept the challenge, but Fitzwater then challenges Aumerle, likewise claiming that he heard Aumerle admit his responsibility for Gloucester’s death. Percy and another lord then also challenge Aumerle, declaring him a liar. Surrey then challenges Fitzwater in support of Aumerle, and Fitzwater asserts that Surrey, too, is a liar. Fitzwater also mentions that the banished Mowbray, Duke of Norfolk, said that Aumerle had indeed sent two men to dispose of Gloucester. Aumerle then challenges Mowbray—while upon the revelation that Mowbray may be able to resolve the arguments, Bolingbroke declares that Aumerle’s trial will be postponed until Mowbray returns. However, the Bishop of Carlisle informs the assembly that Mowbray has died in Italy after fighting honorably as a Christian soldier. York then arrives to declare that Richard is immediately passing the kingship to Henry, who will become Henry IV—but Carlisle insists that Bolingbroke has no right to seize the crown, in essence passing judgment on Richard, while the king is absent. Carlisle also declares that by failing to recognize Richard as king as long as he lives, they are bringing a curse upon the ‘‘future ages’’ of the nation. After Northumberland has Carlisle arrested for treason, Bolingbroke decides to have Richard brought forth. Upon arriving, Richard compares his fall to that of Christ and also likens the treason of all the lords to the treason of Judas. At York’s insistence, Richard pronounces that he indeed passes the crown to Henry, though sorrowfully. Bolingbroke asks Richard if he does not give the crown willingly, and Richard equivocates—eventually he reiterates that Henry is being made king. Northumberland attempts to have Richard read aloud the list of offenses he committed during his reign, but Richard resists: he first laments that he is being shamed, then claims that he cannot read the list through his tears. He demands that a mirror be brought so that he can look upon his sinful face; at length he smashes the mirror, ever declaring his grief, then asks Bolingbroke to allow him to simply leave the assembly. Bolingbroke has him conveyed to the Tower of London, and the assembly

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disperses. The Abbot of Westminster, a supporter of Richard, then tells Carlisle and Aumerle that he will hatch a plot to bring about a ‘‘merry day.’’

Act 5, Scene 1 On a street in London, the queen comes across Richard as he is being transported to the Tower of London. Richard urges his wife to flee to a nunnery in France and forsake him, while she questions his integrity for not resisting his deposition. Yet Richard can only ask her to tell his sorrowful tale to whomever she may. Northumberland then arrives to redirect the king to Pomfret and to tell the queen that she is indeed being sent to France. After cursing Northumberland, who admits to bearing guilt, Richard shares a number of romantic sentiments with his parting wife. The queen asserts that she would rather be imprisoned with her husband—but they part.

Act 5, Scene 2 At the York home, the Duke of York is relating to his wife the occasion of Bolingbroke’s and Richard’s passing through the streets of London, where Bolingbroke was worshipped and Richard despised and ill treated. Aumerle then arrives, with his father telling his mother that his new, lesser title is Rutland; York has pledged his own honor on his son’s loyalty to King Henry. As York asks about the future proceedings at Oxford, he notices a document in his son’s breast pocket. Aumerle tries to prevent his father from seeing it, but York indeed reads it—and then declares his son a traitor and prepares to speed off to the king to reveal the plot that the document reveals. Understanding that her son’s life is at stake, the duchess tries to persuade him not to go, but York’s loyalty is to the king; thus, York sets off, and Aumerle and the duchess follow.

Act 5, Scene 3 At Windsor Castle, King Henry is asking Percy to tell him about his son; the prince has been rumored to be frequenting taverns and fraternizing with thieves. The king expresses his hope that his son might one day reform himself. Aumerle then rushes in, demands a secure, private audience with the king, and asks that he be pardoned before he utters a word. The king does so, whether his crime was intended only or already committed. York then arrives and demands entrance himself, informing Henry that Aumerle is a traitor; Henry arms himself and grants York

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entry, and York then gives him the incriminating document. Aumerle then reminds Henry of his pardon and reiterates his regret and change of heart. After reading, Bolingbroke declares that however treacherous Aumerle’s deeds, he would grant him a pardon for the sake of his honorable father, York. York then insists that his son be executed, so as not to be a stain on his honor, when the duchess arrives to plead on behalf of her son. The duchess and Aumerle kneel to beg for his pardon, and York kneels to beg that Henry show them no mercy. The duchess then speaks to Henry’s heart, demanding to hear the word ‘‘pardon’’—not once but twice—before standing. Bolingbroke then orders that the other conspirators be found and, other than his brother-in-law and the Abbot, be executed.



Act 5, Scene 4



In speaking to another man, Sir Pierce Exton determines to kill Richard on behalf of Henry, as Exton had heard the new king rhetorically ask whether he had no friends to eliminate the old king for him.

Act 5, Scene 5 Richard is lamenting the wasting away of his life with no companions but his thoughts, which he mournfully personifies, in Pomfret Castle. He then hears music, which, with its poorly kept time, only reminds him of how the remaining seconds of his life will be ticking miserably away. At length a Groom enters, declaring that he had tended to Richard’s horse when Richard was king and that he had simply wanted to see his old master. He also notes how that horse, Barbary, had proudly borne Henry through the streets of London, and Richard deplores, then forgives, the horse for doing so. A Keeper arrives to first ask the Groom to leave and then deliver a meal to Richard, who asks the Keeper to taste it first, as usual. However, the Keeper admits that he has been instructed to refuse to do so by Exton. Exton and his servants then rush in: Richard disarms and stabs one and also kills another— before being slain himself. Richard dies, and Exton now regrets the murder but nonetheless leaves to bring the body to King Henry.

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MEDIA ADAPTATIONS The British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) presented a version of King Richard the Second in 1978, directed by David Giles and starring Derek Jacobi, John Gielgud, Jon Finch, and Wendy Hiller.  Bard Productions presented Richard II in 1982, as directed by William Woodman, with the recording distributed by the Shakespeare Video Society. John Farrell directed a film version of Richard II in 2001, released by Sub Rosa Studios, with a low budget and army fatigues for costumes, earning moderate reviews.

that while the Abbot has died after all, Carlisle still lives, and Henry regards the bishop’s honor highly and spares him. Exton then arrives with the coffin bearing Richard, and Henry admits that he had wished for the old king’s death but refuses to thank, befriend, or reward Exton in any way for having committed the murder. He then announces that he intends to launch a Crusade to assuage his guilt for his role in Richard’s death.

CHARACTERS Sir John Bagot Sir John Bagot is a counselor and favorite of King Richard. Instead of being executed like Bushy and Green, he is taken to parliament to accuse Aumerle in the conspiracy against Thomas Woodstock, Duke of Gloucester.

Bishop of Carlisle Act 5, Scene 6 The king is discussing rebel activity with York when Northumberland and Fitzwater arrive separately to report that certain members of the conspiracy have been beheaded. Percy reports

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Loyal to Richard, Carlisle firmly believes in the divine right of Richard to rule. Carlisle’s speech at the parliamentary meeting in act 4 is among the most significant of the play, as he describes how the descendants of the lords supporting

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Richard’s overthrow will suffer ‘‘tumultuous wars’’; in the context of history—and of the succeeding plays in the tetralogy, which indeed treat the civil wars that followed—these words are sadly prescient. After this speech, Carlisle is arrested by Northumberland. He later conspires with the Abbot of Westminster and Aumerle to assassinate Bolingbroke. After the plot is discovered, Bolingbroke gives the bishop a relatively light sentence, citing his ‘‘high sparks of honor.’’

Henry Bolingbroke, Duke of Herford Bolingbroke, who eventually becomes King Henry IV, is Gaunt’s son and King Richard’s cousin. Richard banishes him and seizes Gaunt’s estate, which rightfully belongs to Bolingbroke. Bolingbroke then returns from exile with an army, seeking to reclaim his dukedom. After Bolingbroke takes Richard into custody, the king claims that he is willing to give up his crown to Bolingbroke, and Henry later indeed becomes king. At the end of the play, Bolingbroke promises to make a pilgrimage to the Holy Land to atone for the murder of Richard, which Sir Pierce of Exton committed on Henry’s behalf. As with Richard, Bolingbroke is alternately viewed with sympathetic and unsympathetic eyes: he is usually seen either as a traitor and usurper or as morally justified in taking the crown from an ineffective king. Some note that just as Richard falls politically but experiences a spiritual rise, Bolingbroke rises politically but undergoes a spiritual decline. Indeed, Bolingbroke can be viewed as a manipulative opportunist, a true politician with a clear sense of his goals. As such, Bolingbroke is often accused of engineering Richard’s downfall and forcing his abdication. On the other hand, all of Bolingbroke’s actions can be interpreted as directed toward the good of the commonwealth, whereas Richard’s were always directed toward his own self-interest. Bolingbroke is often seen as a man of action, as compared to Richard, who is prone to self-pitying reflection. Many acknowledge Bolingbroke to be a pragmatic, realistic man who is simply better equipped to rule than Richard. Thus, in the opinion of many commentators, Richard deposes himself and is not strong-armed into surrender by a ruthless Bolingbroke. In his essay entitled ‘‘The Silent King: Providential Intervention, Fair Sequence and

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Succession,’’ C. G. Thayer offers a very instructive analysis of Bolingbroke’s relative silence throughout the play. Thayer notes that Bolingbroke is rare among Shakespearean protagonists in that ‘‘at critical points he does not tell us what he is thinking about or what he plans to do.’’ Early in the play, Bolingbroke reveals nothing about his intentions either when he accuses Mowbray or when he parts ways with his father at the beginning of his banishment; he is similarly terse about his own motivations during the deposition scene, at the parliamentary meeting. Most glaring, perhaps, is the absence of any scene revealing what Bolingbroke plans to do upon illegally returning to England from France. Referring to the tetralogy as a whole, Thayer asserts, ‘‘A major part of the action of four plays arises from a decision, made in Brittany, by a principal character; and about the circumstances of that decision, as opposed to its outcome, we really know nothing—hence all the guesswork.’’ Indeed, the absence of any insight into Bolingbroke’s character makes a definite analysis of his character almost impossible. One result of this, Thayer notes, is that he comes across as an objective means to Richard’s well-deserved end: ‘‘It is clear enough that Richard has misbehaved prodigiously and that hot vengeance is on the way, and that point, I think, is underscored by Bolingbroke’s silence.’’

Sir John Bushy Sir John Bushy is an advisor and favorite of King Richard. When Bolingbroke returns to England, Bushy and Green fear that Richard will be usurped, and the two men flee in fear of their lives. They are captured and executed by Bolingbroke.

Duchess of Gloucester The duchess is the widow of the murdered Thomas Woodstock, Duke of Gloucester. She pleads with her brother-in-law, Gaunt, to avenge her husband’s death, but Gaunt refuses. In the course of her mourning, the duchess highlights the notion that the blood of kings is holy, such that the ‘‘vial full of Edward’s sacred blood’’ represented by Gloucester should likewise be revered. Sometime after Gaunt’s death, York is told that the duchess has died.

Duchess of York The duchess is the wife of the Duke of York and Aumerle’s mother. She tries to protect Aumerle

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when his plot against Bolingbroke is discovered; she kneels before King Henry to plead for the pardon of her son.

Earl of Berkeley

Duke of Aumerle

Sir Pierce of Exton

York’s son and cousin to both Richard and Bolingbroke, Aumerle is loyal to King Richard and is accused in act 4 of conspiring to kill the Duke of Gloucester. After Richard is deposed, Aumerle plots with the Abbot of Westminster and the Bishop of Carlisle to assassinate Bolingbroke. The plot is discovered by York. Aumerle is pardoned by King Henry but is demoted from Duke of Aumerle to Earl of Rutland.

Duke of Surrey When Aumerle is accused by Fitzwater of murdering the Duke of Gloucester, Surrey defends Aumerle.

The Earl of Salisbury is a supporter of King Richard II. Before Richard’s return from Ireland, Salisbury unsuccessfully implores the Welsh Captain not to desert his king. Northumberland later announces that Salisbury has been executed for rebelling against the new king, Bolingbroke.

Edmund, Duke of York Edmund is Richard and Bolingbroke’s uncle, the brother of Gaunt, and the father of Aumerle. Like Gaunt, York is loyal to king and country, but he is outraged by Richard’s confiscation of Gaunt’s estate. When Bolingbroke returns from exile, York, who has been appointed regent while Richard is in Ireland, tells Bolingbroke that he would have him arrested for his treason if his own forces were not outnumbered by Bolingbroke’s. York then transfers his loyalty to Bolingbroke, who is poised to become the new king. After Richard’s deposition, when York learns of the plot against King Henry, he rushes to warn Bolingbroke—and ends up begging for the punishment of his son and wife alike. York is generally viewed as weak and ineffectual in whatever capacity he serves. Interestingly, C. G. Thayer describes how York serves an additional dramatic purpose as ‘‘a kind of reflector for audience responses to both Richard and Bolingbroke.’’

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While Richard is in Ireland and York is acting as regent, York sends Berkeley to ask Bolingbroke why he has illegally returned to England.

Exton assassinates Richard in his prison cell. He believes that he is following Bolingbroke’s wishes, as he overheard King Henry asking, ‘‘Have I no friend that will rid me of this living fear?’’ Nevertheless, he is overwhelmed with guilt after the murder, and Henry condemns him for the act.

Lord Fitzwater Lord Fitzwater is a nobleman in parliament who supports Bagot’s claim that Aumerle is responsible for the Duke of Gloucester’s death. Bolingbroke, after becoming King Henry IV, rewards Fitzwater for helping to gather and execute Bolingbroke’s enemies.

Gardener

Earl of Salisbury

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Queen Isabel overhears the Gardener and his assistant discussing how England has fared under Richard’s rule. Employing the sorts of botanical terms they are familiar with, they symbolically describe England as a garden surrounded by a sea wall, tangled with weeds, and infested with caterpillars. The Gardener then reports to the queen’s dismay that the fact that Richard will inevitably lose his kingship is common knowledge.

John of Gaunt, Duke of Lancaster Gaunt is York’s brother and Richard’s uncle. Gaunt refuses to avenge the death of his brother, Thomas Woodstock, the Duke of Gloucester, because the assassination had been ordered by King Richard, and Gaunt holds God alone more sacred than the king. When Gaunt is dying, his loyalty to his country surfaces, provoking him to request an audience with Richard and then castigate the king for his misrule of the nation. Especially by virtue of his speech to York before the king arrives, in which he refers to ‘‘this blessed plot, this earth, this realm, this England,’’ Gaunt is often held up as the play’s representative of the purest patriotism.

Sir Henry Green An advisor and favorite of King Richard, Green counsels Richard to go to Ireland to suppress an uprising there. Later, Green observes that it would

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have been better if Richard had not left, since Bolingbroke has returned to England. Green and Bushy are executed by Bolingbroke.

between Bolingbroke and Mowbray, but calls it off and banishes both of them instead. Carlisle later reports that Mowbray has died in exile after fighting nobly on behalf of Christian causes.

Groom A former employee of Richard, the Groom visits Richard in prison and describes how Bolingbroke, after his coronation, rode Richard’s favorite horse.

Queen Isabel Queen Isabel is King Richard’s wife. She extensively mourns his downfall, with her attending Ladies proving unable to console her. Upon meeting Richard in the street on his way to imprisonment, she chastises him for surrendering and argues that he should retain his dignity and remain a king in spirit even if he is no longer in fact the king. In real life, the queen was only eleven when the play’s events took place; thus, in portraying her as a mature woman, Shakespeare gives greater depth to Richard’s most significant personal relationship, perhaps allowing audiences to better sympathize with him. Some commentators have suggested that Shakespeare was intentionally transferring the extraordinary affection Richard was known to have had for his first wife, Anne, who died suddenly in 1394, onto Isabel to aid the story.

Keeper The keeper of the prison in Pomfret castle where Richard is being held, he brings Richard his last meal, which has been poisoned by Exton. Richard refuses to eat it.

Ladies The Ladies attend to the queen. They attempt to cheer her up when Richard is in the midst of his downfall, but the queen does not allow them to sing.

Lord Marshal He is the administrator of the trial by combat that Richard has ordered between Bolingbroke and Mowbray. When Richard calls off the trial, the Marshal states his wish to accompany Bolingbroke and see him off as he leaves England.

Thomas Mowbray, Duke of Norfolk Bolingbroke accuses Mowbray of embezzlement and of murdering Thomas Woodstock, Duke of Gloucester. Richard orders a trial by combat

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Harry Percy Percy, the son of the Earl of Northumberland, is known as Hotspur. Like his father, he supports Bolingbroke. He has a larger role in Henry IV, Part One, the following play in the tetralogy, in which he becomes the enemy of King Henry IV and the antithesis of Henry’s son, Hal (who is mentioned at the beginning of act 5, scene 3).

Henry Percy, Earl of Northumberland Father of Harry Percy (Hotspur) and supporter of Bolingbroke. He, Ross, and Willoughby all criticize Richard after he seizes Gaunt’s estate before rushing off to assist Bolingbroke in his return from exile. Northumberland’s claim in act 2, scene 3 that Bolingbroke has sworn to be seeking only ‘‘his own’’—that is, the Lancaster estate—is significant, as Henry’s later breaking of that oath, known as the Doncaster oath, is cited by the Percys in their rebellion in Henry IV, Part One. Northumberland disrespects King Richard in several instances, referring to him only as Richard and refusing to kneel before him. In act 4, scene 1, Northumberland is the one who insists that Richard read aloud the charges against him.

King Richard II Richard is the title character and the ruler of England. He banishes Mowbray and Bolingbroke and confiscates Gaunt’s estate after the duke dies, using the capital to help finance his military expedition to Ireland. When Richard returns from Ireland, Bolingbroke has already gained the support of most of the nation’s lords and of the populace. Lacking any advantages over Henry, Richard eventually relinquishes his crown to him. The deposed King Richard is then imprisoned and later killed. Critical assessments of Richard vary widely, ranging from condemnation of the king for betraying his royal office to sympathy for a man who is a weak but rightful ruler. In general, the facts testify against Richard. While the matter of Gloucester’s death is only indirectly discussed, Gaunt declares in act 1, scene 2 that ‘‘God’s substitute . . . hath caused his death,’’ such that the audience can understand that Richard was ultimately responsible. Meanwhile,

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the king’s banishment of Bolingbroke was legal but hardly just, as Bolingbroke had committed no offense other than to make an accusation dishonoring Mowbray. Richard’s seizure of Gaunt’s estate was illegal in a very significant way, as he thus undermined the nation’s highly regarded laws of inheritance. Further, offhand reference is made throughout the play to Richard’s burdensome taxation and his excessive spending. Overall, being more concerned with the appearance and ceremonies of kingship than with his responsibilities, Richard creates chaos in his kingdom as a result of both negligence and abuse of power. Shakespeare’s portrayal of Richard, of course, is far more complex than a simple iteration of the facts surrounding his misrule. Some commentators maintain that while Richard is weak, he is not evil. Rather, in his weakness he is influenced by the evil counsel of his advisors, Bushy, Bagot, and Green. Although he is not an effective ruler, he is nevertheless the rightful ruler, as sanctioned by both the law and God. Some critics assert that after Richard loses the kingship, his actions—such as his smashing of the mirror in the course of his deposition— demonstrate that he finally realizes the gulf that exists between the title king and the authority that the title represents. At the close of the play—and the end of his life—he is at last moved to act in a decisive manner rather than simply talk about what has happened to him: when his assassins arrive, he manages to kill two of them before he himself is slain. Some have compared Richard to King Lear, arguing that in his final moments he comprehends the extent of his own responsibility for the events that have occurred. Beyond the straightforward analysis of Richard’s actions, commentators have developed psychological portraits of his character in attempts to determine the extent of his consciousness of his actions. Lewis J. Owen pointedly refers to him as ‘‘a king who believes that his right to be a king relieves him of the responsibility of acting like one.’’ That is, Richard genuinely believes that whatever he does in his capacity as king is proper simply because he is king, and a king, whose position is ordained by God, can essentially do no wrong. Owen contends that Richard’s grand naivete is precisely what allows the audience to sympathize with him; indeed, Elizabethans still subscribed to the supposed

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truth that kings and queens had authority that was nearly divine. Owen concludes, ‘‘Without the strange admixture of truth and delusion, his naivete would become ridiculous, and his weakness and inadequacy would become criminal.’’ Thus, as long as the audience believes that Richard possesses such a limited understanding of his role, they will pity him. Lois Potter, to the contrary, contends that ‘‘irony and a suggestion of duplicity are present in Richard throughout the play.’’ Potter highlights Richard’s successful thwarting of Bolingbroke’s intentions in the deposition scene. That is, Bolingbroke first wants Richard to abdicate the throne voluntarily, so that none might question the legitimacy of the reign of Henry IV; he also wants Richard to read the list of his offenses, so that even if the succession is construed as a deposition, people will be obliged to admit that Richard was ‘‘worthily deposed.’’ In fact, Richard does neither of these things. Regarding his abdication, Richard repeatedly admits, then denies that he is abdicating voluntarily. Earlier, at Flint Castle, he told Bolingbroke, ‘‘What you will have, I’ll give, and willing too, / For do we must what force will have us do.’’ At the parliamentary meeting, when asked to physically hand over the crown, the very symbol of his reign, Richard asks his cousin not to take it but to ‘‘seize’’ it. When Bolingbroke asks, ‘‘Are you contented to resign the crown?’’ seeming to leave no room for equivocation, Richard responds, ‘‘Ay, no; no, ay: for I must nothing be.’’ Thus, the nature of the deposition is left utterly unclear. Regarding the reading of his offenses, Richard manages to first claim that he cannot read through his tears, then declares that he will instead read his sins in his face; still, as Potter states, ‘‘But the mirror shows him no sins; it reveals the face of a king.’’ Thus, through his conniving manipulation of words and of the lords’ sympathy for his pitiful state, Richard manages to cede no ground to Bolingbroke— who in Henry IV, Part One is indeed repeatedly referred to as a usurper.

Lord Ross A supporter of Bolingbroke, he joins Northumberland and Willoughby in supporting Bolingbroke’s return from exile.

Sir Stephen Scroop A supporter and ally of Richard, Scroop informs King Richard that the people have turned

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against him, that Richard’s advisors Bushy and Green have been killed, and that York has joined Bolingbroke.

Welsh Captain The leader of Richard’s troops in Wales (who may be assumed to be Owen Glendower, who is referred to by name in act 3, scene 1 and who plays a significant role in Henry IV, Part One), the Captain tells Salisbury that since no word about Richard has been received, except rumors that he has died, he and his troops will not stay and fight for Richard.

Abbot of Westminster In act 4, Northumberland tells Westminster to take custody of the Bishop of Carlisle, who has just spoken out against Bolingbroke. At the end of this scene, the Abbot, the bishop, and Aumerle conspire to assassinate Bolingbroke. Harry Percy later reports that the Abbot has died.

Lord Willoughby A supporter of Bolingbroke, he conspires with Northumberland and Ross to enable Bolingbroke’s return to England.

THEMES Kingship, Christ, and Divine Right Shakespeare’s examination of kingship in Richard II focuses mainly on the conflict between the legal and divine right to rule on the one hand and the effectiveness of the ruler on the other. In Richard II, King Richard is without doubt legally the rightful king, and he is commonly recognized by other characters in the play as having the divine right to rule. Nevertheless, he does not show himself to be an effective ruler. This opposition between Richard’s right to rule and his failure to do so effectively may lead spectators and readers to favor Richard or Bolingbroke for different reasons—and perhaps to come to favor the other over the course of the play. Readers may be drawn to Bolingbroke’s power and kingly air, especially once they understand that he has been unjustly banished and disinherited. At the same time, they may feel pity or sympathy for Richard, who is demonstrably weak but seems not to be evil and who receives bad counsel from corrupt advisors.

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Additionally, Richard is the rightful king, even though he seems to have deluded himself into thinking that having the noble appearance and rights of a king pre-empt his responsibility to his people. The reader might imagine that Shakespeare had himself favored one man—and the associated notions regarding kingship—over the other, but some critics have suggested that Shakespeare did not favor either view and that he presented both Bolingbroke and Richard in an ambiguous manner so as to explore both sides of the issue. This neutrality may have resulted from real-life political considerations: Queen Elizabeth was in certain ways associated with both men and with both notions of kingship, such that denouncing either could have been unwise. Beyond Shakespeare’s explicit portrayal of the men, the relationships between the perspectives they embody and the way those relationships are presented in the play merit discussion. For example, many critics have debated the question of whether divine right literally overrode the sovereign’s legal obligations. That is, in the context of Richard II, is Richard above the law, since he and many other characters believe that he has been ordained by God to be king? As Lewis J. Owen notes, this issue was still of great relevance in Shakespeare’s era: ‘‘From medieval times, through the reign of Elizabeth, and well into the seventeenth century, there persisted the notion that kings were ordained by God, and that their subjects owed them the absolute obedience due to what amounted to a series of Christs on earth.’’ The comparison between Richard and Christ is highlighted by Shakespeare, who has most of the allusions to Christ come from the mouth of Richard himself. The king makes multiple references to Judas, the apostle who betrayed Christ: Richard first imagines that Bagot, Bushy, and Green have betrayed him, like ‘‘three Judases, each one thrice worse than Judas,’’ although Scroop shortly informs him that they were themselves executed. Then, making reference to all the lords present in the deposition scene, he declares, ‘‘The favors of these men: were they not mine? / Did they not sometime cry ‘All hail!’ to me? / So Judas did to Christ: but he in twelve / Found truth in all but one; I, in twelve thousand, none.’’ Soon after this direct comparison between himself and Christ, he accordingly compares all those who judge him with Pilate, the Roman official who

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The arrival of Bolingbroke and Richard II in London, Act V, scene ii (Ó Shakespeare Collection, Special Collections Library, University of Michigan)

considered Christ innocent but nevertheless yielded to the mob of people calling for Christ’s death, and who ordered his crucifixion. Pilate famously washed his hands after sentencing Christ in an effort to symbolically relieve himself of responsibility for Jesus’s death; however, from most perspectives Pilate is considered a weak man for simply bowing to the malicious will of the people. Thus, as Richard remarks, ‘‘Though some of you, with Pilate, wash your hands . . . water cannot wash away your sin,’’ indicating that he holds them all responsible for his sacreligious overthrow. While Shakespeare sketches deep associations between Richard and Christ, he does not allow these associations to negate the need for a king to be accountable to the law. Interestingly, Gaunt and York—who are Richard’s surviving uncles and would thus likely assign his bloodline more importance than would any other characters—acknowledge and respect Richard’s

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divine right to rule but also recognize that Richard has failed to act like a king. Indeed, the play cites several instances where Richard has not just changed or contorted but has broken the law: he is implicated in the murder of Gloucester, and he ignores inheritance laws by confiscating Gaunt’s money, land, and title rather than allowing the transfer of the estate to Gaunt’s son, Bolingbroke. In her essay entitled ‘‘The State of Law in Richard II,’’ Donna B. Hamilton notes that Richard’s disrespect for the law is the ultimate cause of his downfall: ‘‘If he thinks that abuse of law, which amounts to abuse of the relationship between king and people, will make him more powerful, he is deceived. To abuse the law is, in effect, to unavail himself of his authority.’’ Indeed, as Hamilton argues by citing reputed sources from the Elizabethan era, the commonwealth seems to have collectively believed that its king was sanctioned not by God alone but by God and the law together. However, the people had no procedure for

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compelling a king to abide by the law. While Richard is not legally punished, the results of his disobeyance of the law are that he loses the support of his people and that he implicitly gives his subjects license to break the law themselves. Bolingbroke does just that when he returns illegally from exile and eventually seizes the crown. The next question regarding the nature of kingship, then, is what happens when a man such as Bolingbroke ascends the throne with the support of the people but without legal or divine sanction. In Richard II—especially in the context of the tetralogy—all indications are that this king and his entire nation will be punished by God. Bishop Carlisle, in his lengthy speech before parliament, and Richard himself, in several instances, make pointed reference to the bloodshed and destruction that will befall England as a result of Henry’s usurping the throne. And as everyone in Shakespeare’s era knew, a series of rebellions and civil wars indeed followed upon Richard’s deposition. Owen notes that the historical relevance of the argument about kingship largely explains why the characterizations of Richard and Bolingbroke are so complex: because for both Shakespeare and his Elizabethan audience, the primary concern was not for any single human being, but for the whole realm of England. Both Richard and Bolingbroke were in a measure innocent, and in a measure guilty. Richard was a legitimate king, but his rule was ruining England. If England was to live, he must be destroyed; but, paradoxically, this necessary destruction of God’s divine instrument must then be punished.

Only by reading the ensuing plays of the tetralogy, then, can the modern reader conclude the multifaceted discussion over the nature of kingship provoked by Richard II.

Political Facades Shakespeare gives much attention to various types of political facades in Richard II, including role-playing and ceremony. In general, Richard seems to be merely playing the role of king—and that halfheartedly, demonstrating more concern for the nobility of his appearance than for the reality and responsibilities of kingship. Some critics have argued that the play suggests that kingship itself is a sham, and that a great gulf may always exist between the appearance of royal authority and the reality of political power. Others contend that the play reveals the

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TOPICS FOR FURTHER STUDY A major factor influencing the relationship between the king and the common people in medieval England was Christianity. Because the common folk were overwhelmingly Christian and believed in the divine right of kings—in which the king was granted his powers by God—a corrupt ruler such as Richard could retain his rule. Write an essay about the role of religion in politics in the United States in the twenty-first century; compare this with the role of religion in politics in medieval England.  Many critics have pointed out the absence of a soliloquy by Bolingbroke at any point in Richard II. Write a soliloquy for Bolingbroke, in verse, to be delivered as he stands on the coast of Brittany, France, before departing with his army in return from exile. Assign to Bolingbroke whatever intentions or motivations you wish; the soliloquy should be written with no one else in his immediate presence, such that he need not restrain his speech for political reasons.  Research both the political career of the United States president Richard Nixon and the reign of King Richard II, focusing on the series of events that led to their losing their offices. In an essay, compare and contrast the fates of the two men. 

King Richard makes several biblical allusions, drawing parallels between himself and Jesus Christ. Consider which political or historical figure you think most resembled, or best represented, the teachings of Christ. Write a report about this person, explaining your rationale, and present the report to your class.  Read another play by Shakespeare featuring a tragic hero. Write an essay in which you compare this tragic hero to Richard II, citing passages from the two plays to illustrate both similarities and differences. 

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way the kings direct the role-playing of others, with both Richard and Henry controlling or setting the scenes in which they appear; that is, in almost every scene in which these two men appear as king, the actions of all the other characters revolve around their comments, questions, and desires. Further, as each confronts the other throughout the play, the extent to which one directs the other changes in conjunction with the change of their political stature. Also worth examining is the effect of the somewhat comic, farcical scenes—in which Aumerle’s plot against King Henry is discovered and announced to Bolingbroke by Aumerle’s father, York—on the rest of the play’s treatment of roleplaying and ceremony. From one perspective, these scenes could be interpreted as presenting extreme versions of the roles that subjects play in the presence of their king. From another perspective, the comic interlude may provoke the audience to rethink and revalue the more serious—and dignified—ceremonial displays relating to kingship that color the rest of the play. Certain characters in the play, above all Richard and Bolingbroke, take advantage of ceremonies and theatricality to mask their true opinions and intentions. In the opening scenes, Richard’s dry, objective tone—which certainly would have been appropriate for a situation in which he was acting as mediator or judge— utterly conceals whatever sentiments he might have had at the time. Once his fortunes have been reversed, Richard makes use of theatrical antics and language as a diversionary tactic in order to avoid going through with ‘‘unkinging’’ himself and to continue to deny the reality of what is happening. Inversely, Bolingbroke takes advantage of ceremonial situations early in the play to voice his opinions and, to a certain extent, to paint a favorable political portrait of himself. When he becomes king, however, he adopts a ceremonious, stoic attitude that largely obscures his thoughts and convictions.

STYLE ‘‘Symphonic Imagery’’ The scholar Richard D. Altick presents a meticulous analysis of the play’s highly complex forms and presentations of images in his essay ‘‘Symphonic Imagery in Richard II.’’ As Altick points out, certain themes are directly associated

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with certain words and their different meanings, and Shakespeare is careful to present those words in key scenes. This strategic repetition, Altick asserts, ‘‘perceptibly deepens and enriches those meanings and at the same time charges the atmosphere with emotional significance . . . This repeated crisscrossing of familiar images makes of the whole text one vast arabesque of language’’—literally, like a symphony of words. In writing his essay, Altick made reference to John Bartlett’s Complete Concordance to Shakespeare, which provides a statistical index of the frequency of certain words and phrases in Shakespeare’s plays and poems. Among the most important of such thematic words in Richard II are earth, soil, and land, all of which are used to connote the relationship between the people of England and the geographical nation of England. John of Gaunt, who can be viewed as the face of patriotism in the play, uses these words multiple times in his speech to York when he is near death. Richard likewise often refers to the earth, particularly in possessive terms: as king, the land belongs to him as much as he belongs to the land. A related symbolic element is the untended garden, with the elaboration of that image being the most prominent feature of the scene in which the queen eavesdrops on the Gardener. Another word that appears in profound contexts throughout the play is blood, which connotes both the blood that is spilled in war and the blood that ties families together. The theme of blood also serves to associate Richard, as king, with the sun: Richard’s face often reddens (as did the historical Richard’s), and Bolingbroke refers to him once as ‘‘the blushing discontented sun,’’ among similar references. In turn, teardrops, which are also a facial feature of sorts, appear prominently in scenes where Richard and others cry or speak of crying—including the deposition scene, when Richard compares himself to a bucket of tears. Other important thematic words include tongue, as associated with verbalization and language; venom, which ties to snakes and sickness; blot, connoting an irremovable stain; and wash, which relates to the cleansing of guilt and, as Altick notes, specifically to the cleansing of ‘‘the sacred ointment of royalty— the ultimate expiation of kingly sin.’’ The juxtapositions of sweet and sour and of rise and fall are also especially important. Shakespeare’s strategy of iterating and reiterating the various words that evoke the play’s

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central and defining images is not unique to Richard II, of course. Indeed, Altick cites King Lear, Macbeth, and Othello as being masterpieces with respect to such interwoven imagery. Richard II, then, which was written eight to ten years before the three aforementioned plays, represents something of a milestone along Shakespeare’s path to those masterpieces. Altick contends that Richard II ‘‘suggests the existence of a vital relationship between two leading characteristics of Shakespeare’s poetic style: the uncontrolled indulgence of verbal wit in the earlier plays and the use of great imagethemes in the plays of his maturity.’’ Thus, in terms of imagery, at least, Richard II is one of Shakespeare’s seminal plays.

Prototype of the Tragic Hero Just as Richard II serves as a milestone on Shakespeare’s path to the mastery of thematic imagery, the character of Richard is a significant stage in Shakespeare’s development of the tragic hero. The most famous Shakespearean character of this type is perhaps Hamlet, with whom Richard has drawn many comparisons. Derek Traversi masterfully explicates the persona of Richard in view of his relationship to such similar Shakespearean characters: Pathetic and yet too self-conscious to be entirely tragic, sincere and yet engaged in acting his own sincerity, possessed of true feeling and elaborately artificial in expressing it, Richard is the distant predecessor of more than one hero of the mature tragedies, who suffer in acute self-consciousness and whose tragedy expresses itself in terms that clearly point to the presence of the weakness that has been, in part, its cause.

From this perspective of Richard, one of the most telling passages is his prison soliloquy, in which he provides a fairly piercing interpretation of his own person, particularly of his weaknesses. Russ McDonald observes, ‘‘The epiphany he experiences in the prison cell just before his assassination adds a heroic dimension to a character who may until this point have seemed a fool.’’ On the other hand, Traversi notes Richard’s relatively inadequate level of attention to his personal experience in that passage; still, the critic remarks, ‘‘Imperfect as it is, the meditation does foreshadow later developments in the presentation of the tragic hero.’’ Lewis J. Owen notes that Richard is also somewhat inferior to later tragic heroes owing to his ‘‘extended overindulgence in self-pity.’’ Thus, while Richard cannot be viewed

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as positively as some of Shakespeare’s other tragic heroes, he possesses many of the same qualities and habits, and his character may be aptly termed an ‘‘ancestor’’ of men like Hamlet and King Lear.

Anticipation of the Tetralogy The extent to which Shakespeare intended to write a tetralogy when he began Richard II is impossible to determine. As such, the extent to which he planted thematic seeds in the first play so as to allow them to blossom in the succeeding three is also a mystery. Shakespeare’s publishing history seems to suggest that he indeed intended to complete a tetralogy from the onset: between 1590 and 1593 he had written the four plays constituting his Minor Tetralogy—the three parts of Henry VI and Richard III—and the events of the Major Tetralogy end precisely where the Minor Tetralogy begins. On the other hand, when Richard II was first published, it was entitled, in full, The Tragedy of Richard II; that is, it was not referred to or packaged as a history play. Regardless of Shakespeare’s precise intentions, numerous passages seem to explicitly foreshadow later events in the tetralogy, and certain characters seem to make appearances specifically so that the audience will have met them prior to the succeeding play, Henry IV, Part One. The prophecy delivered by the Bishop of Carlisle in the course of the deposition scene, in which he predicts that ‘‘tumultuous wars’’ and ‘‘disorder, horror, fear, and mutiny’’ will befall the nation of England, directly anticipates the rebellion and strife that color the two parts of Henry IV. Meanwhile, Prince Hal, whose development receives perhaps the most consistent overall focus in the following three plays, is pointedly mentioned in Richard II even though his activities essentially bear no relation to the plot. Harry Percy, who will become known as Hotspur and is a major character in Henry IV, Part One, plays a role in Richard II that effectively establishes the background story for that next play. Thematically, Donna B. Hamilton points out that the notion that the kingship is subject to the law appears prominently in Richard II and throughout the three succeeding plays. Derek Traversi, in turn, notes that with respect to Kings Richard II and Henry IV, the tetralogy’s first two plays both feature ‘‘the counterplay of intrigue between powers haunted by past guilt in the form of a trustless present.’’ Henry’s guilt comes from his usurpation of the

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throne and murder of Richard, and throughout his kingship he fears and suspects—and suffers— rebellion. Given the presence of these and other thematic consistencies and connections between the four plays of the Major Tetralogy, the student of Shakespeare can learn much by reading Richard II in conjunction with its three sequels.

HISTORICAL CONTEXT The Portrayal of King Richard Elizabethan audiences would have had a fairly fresh understanding of the key events at the end of Richard’s reign, such that Shakespeare did not need to explicitly refer to certain aspects of situations. Thus, in examining the historical reality and noting what Shakespeare chose to highlight for his audiences, as well as what he chose to leave unmentioned, the reader can better understand the way Shakespeare meant for his audiences to perceive Richard. With respect to Gloucester’s death, during the actual historical period, as well as when Richard II was first presented on stage, the fact that Richard had ordered Gloucester’s murder was essentially common knowledge; thus, Elizabethan audiences would have understood that in the opening scene, Bolingbroke’s accusation of Mowbray is recognized by everyone present as an indirect accusation of the king himself. In that Shakespeare does not mention this, the spectator may develop the impression that Richard is more honestly diplomatic than he actually is. Similarly, the circumstances of the aborted contest between Mowbray and Bolingbroke were far more nuanced than Shakespeare’s reader can understand. Bolingbroke had actually accused Mowbray not merely of being ‘‘a false traitor, and injurious villain,’’ but specifically of having dishonored the king: Mowbray had told Bolingbroke that Richard would eventually punish them both as revenge for earlier actions that were offensive to the king; Mowbray had also related to Bolingbroke that supporters of Richard were plotting to murder them both. Under these circumstances, the result of the well-publicized contest between Bolingbroke and Mowbray would have been highly meaningful, since, as John Julius Norwich relates in Shakespeare’s Kings, ‘‘the outcome of all such contests was generally believed to be divinely ordained.’’ As such, if Mowbray were to defeat Bolingbroke, the implication would be

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that Mowbray was correct about the king’s desire to seek revenge against them; on the other hand, if Bolingbroke were to win, he would become far too popular for Richard to bear. Thus, in actuality, Richard likely cancelled the contest strictly for the sake of his own reputation, rather than to prevent bloodshed. Nevertheless, Norwich notes, ‘‘For all those present, the sense of anticlimax must have been almost unbearable; the king’s popularity, such as it was, had sustained another devastating blow.’’ Regarding these two early scenes, Lois Potter confirms that they reveal nothing negative about the king’s character: ‘‘His carefully balanced speeches to Mowbray and Bolingbroke do not, unless slanted by the production, help the audience to decide which of the challengers is right (indeed, we never know).’’ Thus, the historical analysis seems to indicate that Richard was acting more out of self-interest than Shakespeare indicates to his spectators and readers—and the reader might therefore deduce that Shakespeare did wish to portray Richard somewhat positively.

The Succession of Queen Elizabeth In general, critics have noted that Shakespeare likely wrote about the fall of Richard II with full consciousness of the applicability of the associated lessons to the Elizabethan era. In particular, Shakespeare’s presentation of issues regarding kingship in the play likely reflected his thoughts on the rule of the monarch who was then serving the nation: Queen Elizabeth. Indeed, Bolingbroke and Richard both represent aspects of kingship that can be related to Elizabeth. Bolingbroke acts like a proper ruler and has the popular support of the people—as was the case with Elizabeth—and Bolingbroke is also tied to Elizabeth in that the royal lineage that he established eventually led to her. Meanwhile, Richard held the legitimate right to rule and was often compared to Elizabeth in the later years of her reign, as she, like Richard, had no heirs and had yet named no successor. Thus, as C. G. Thayer notes, ‘‘If people are comparing Elizabeth with Richard, one had better not specify that Richard’s fall was providential.’’ In fact, the manner in which Elizabeth’s reign would end was of great concern to the nation. Speaking of the people of Elizabethan England, Lewis J. Owen relates, ‘‘The question of succession haunted them, for it was this very question which had led to the bloodshed of the civil wars between York and Lancaster just a

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COMPARE & CONTRAST 

1400s: The hereditary position of the monarch of England is one of near divinity—and the fact that King Richard proves unfit to rule the nation becomes the source of great disagreement. Some believe that since God bestowed upon him the position of king, no human being can question his method of ruling. Others recognize that the nation is suffering under his rule and that someone else must take his place if the nation is to survive. The fact that Richard has produced no heirs—Queen Isabel, his second wife, was still a preteen at the time of his deposition— heightens the concern and confusion regarding who will next rule the nation. 1600s: The status of the monarch has been somewhat reduced, as Parliament has gained in power and people recognize that the ruler of the nation must be fully capable. Still, the monarch’s position remains hereditary, and Elizabeth’s lack of children results in similar concern and confusion regarding the identity of her successor. In particular, the common people hope that bloodshed can be avoided. Today: While the hereditary monarchy still exists, political power in England, as well as in America, is gained according to the rules of democracy: that is, the people elect the rulers, and power struggles are governed by laws. These laws are not seen as infallible, however: in 2000, the United States Supreme Court determined that George W. Bush would be president of the United States, even though more of the nation’s people voted for Al Gore. Meanwhile, presidential campaigns are extraordinarily costly, time-consuming affairs, such that

little more than a century before.’’ Owing to this uncertainty and, moreover, to the connections between Bolingbroke and Elizabeth as well as

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the question of the succession of rulers is still the subject of lengthy debate. 

1400s: Richard makes decisions that greatly affect the lives of others, such as banishing Mowbray and Bolingbroke, without being held accountable for the lack of justice in his decisions—until the return of Bolingbroke. 1600s: Elizabeth is renowned for having managed relationships with other political figures with great skill and finesse; her perceived fairness largely accounts for the stability of her reign. Today: While leaders such as British prime minister Tony Blair and U.S. president George W. Bush are sometimes held accountable for their decisions by other politicians or by the people of their nations, portrayals of their decisions by public relations specialists and by the media often greatly affect public opinion.



1400s: The hereditary position of the monarch of England is one of near divinity, and some believe that since God bestowed upon Richard the position of king, no human being can question his method of ruling. 1600s: The English monarch is still recognized as the head of the Church of England, but the status of the monarch has been somewhat reduced, as Parliament has gained in power and people recognize that the ruler of the nation must be fully capable. Today: Politics have been separated from the succession of the royal family, such that questions regarding how a king or queen might be replaced have become irrelevant.

between Richard and Elizabeth, Shakespeare may have felt compelled to render both Bolingbroke and Richard in a sympathetic

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manner. Thus, much of the play’s dramatic tension may be said to stem from Shakespeare’s wise consideration of the political realities of his own era.

The Medieval World Commentators have widely noted that Richard II provides substantial insight into the cultural structure of the medieval world. In particular, much of the action of the play is presented in ceremonial situations, such as with the dispute between Bolingbroke and Mowbray and with the extended deposition scene. In fact, in almost any scene featuring a king—either Richard or Henry—the other characters present are generally deferential to the point of ceremoniousness even if the situation is entirely informal. In accord with this overarching formality, Shakespeare wrote the entire play in verse and often further stressed formality by incorporating rhyme. One result of the prominence of ceremony and the absence of prose is that interpreting characters’ sentiments becomes a more complicated task for the modern reader. (The spectator, of course, is greatly assisted in this task by the actors.) Indeed, the critic Lois Potter notes, ‘‘Much of our difficulty with the play is a difficulty of knowing what moral connotations to attach to its highly rhetorical language.’’ For example, Richard, in guiding the opening scenes, says little more than his official duties require of him and as such his personal opinion of the proceedings is utterly unclear. Bolingbroke reveals little about his emotions throughout the play. In the context of the tetralogy, this medieval world should be understood by the reader to be in decline; while Richard II does not make this point obvious, the succeeding play, Henry IV, Part One, is widely recognized as illustrating the decline of chivalric medievalism, through the death of Hotspur (Harry Percy), and the rise of Renaissance self-fashioning, through the triumph of Bolingbroke’s son, Prince Hal, who proves to be the tetralogy’s main protagonist. In Richard II, then, the reported attitude of Prince Hal toward the chivalric festivities to be held in Oxford offers a succinct and important commentary on the decline of the medieval world. As Traversi notes, Hal’s wry declaration that he would find the ‘‘commonest’’ glove with which to challenge all others serves as ‘‘a sardonic comment on the decorative but empty tournament world which the events of this play have so effectively shattered.’’

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Thus, in that the medieval world is disappearing, the play presents various manifestations of the novel Renaissance world in the process of establishing itself. With respect to politics, characters are beginning to more readily employ guile and intentionally represent themselves in specific ways. Richard and York both make reference to the manner in which Bolingbroke ingratiates himself with the English population; in Henry IV, Part One, Bolingbroke will pointedly describe his political calculations with regard to his rare public appearances, contrasting himself with Richard and his ill-advised interaction with the commonest people. Traversi refers to the era introduced through Richard II as ‘‘a harsh world of political realities, in which conscience and human feeling have small place.’’ Fear, he notes, becomes a driving factor in characters’ political decisions and actions. Overall, the reader may be left debating whether the dry, seemingly phony ceremony of the medieval world is not preferable to the individualized self-interest of the coming Renaissance world.

CRITICAL OVERVIEW As one of Shakespeare’s earlier plays—perhaps his eleventh—Richard II has received a fair degree of unfavorable criticism. Derek Traversi had less than kind words with respect to some of the dramatic construction, calling the murder of Richard ‘‘no more than a pedestrian piece of melodramatic writing.’’ A. C. Swinburne, as cited by Kenneth Muir, was particularly harsh in his analysis of Shakespeare’s characterizations: ‘‘The poet was not yet dramatist enough to feel for each of his characters an equal or proportionate regard . . . . The subordinate figures became to him but heavy and vexatious encumbrances, to be shifted on and off the stage with as much haste and as little of labor as might be possible to an impatient and uncertain hand.’’ Where Swinburne saw York, Mowbray, and Aumerle as particularly ill-defined, however, Muir perceives them as amply developed. Elsewhere, A. L. French condescendingly describes the passages and events associated with the deposition of King Richard as an ‘‘imaginative blur,’’ eventually coming to the sketchily justified conclusion that ‘‘when he wrote Richard II Shakespeare was not quite sure what he was trying to do.’’ In general, however, French seems to be allergic to any moral

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ambiguity, complaining that the play ‘‘suffers from what we might call double vision, giving us one truth in one place, and another in another, with apparently equal weight and conviction . . . . The overall impression produced by an attentive reading or witnessing of the piece is one of bafflement and irritation at the way our sympathies are tampered with.’’ Of course, especially in light of the issue of Queen Elizabeth’s succession, a dramatic presentation of Bolingbroke’s usurpation of the throne would necessarily have been ambiguous in certain respects. Indeed, in discussing the relevance of Shakespeare’s circumstances, Lewis J. Owen, in his lecture on Richard II, provides a sensible counterpoint to French’s confusion and frustration: ‘‘This dependence for final meaning upon an understanding of particular circumstances is especially true of dramatic art, which by its very nature—its dependence upon special actors and a special audience—becomes more entangled with the conventions of its own times—its manners, its language, its popular beliefs—than does any other literary form.’’ In fact, Owen goes so far as to concede that ‘‘Shakespeare’s histories cannot rank with his tragedies, whose backgrounds and issues are eternal.’’ Thus, the modern reader should perhaps have different expectations with regard to gleaning personal understanding from histories like Richard II. Many critics have praised the play’s finer points. The extremely nuanced characterization of Richard has provoked endless scholarly debate, especially as to whether or not he should be regarded sympathetically. In general, while he is often condemned from a historical point of view, critics give him high praise from a literary point of view. Walter Pater notes that Shakespeare’s English kings in general are ‘‘a very eloquent company, and Richard is the most sweettongued of them all.’’ Muir, in turn, comments on how essential Richard’s characterization is to the play as a whole: ‘‘In Richard II the tragedy is firmly based on character and, as in King Lear, the character of the hero acquires greater depth as his fortunes decline.’’ Potter echoes these sentiments in discussing the presentation of Richard II on the stage: ‘‘If Richard’s part is not a good one, the play is simply not worth seeing; and ‘good,’ in theatrical terms, means not necessarily virtuous but interesting.’’ Potter goes on to contend that Richard’s character is indeed more interesting than virtuous.

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Richard Altick regards Richard II with foremost consideration for the quality of Shakespeare’s use of thematic imagery. In comparing Richard II with later plays that make superior use of such imagery, he remarks that Richard II has ‘‘the method: the tricks of repetition, of cumulative emotional effect, of interweaving and reciprocal coloration. What is yet to come is the full mastery of the artistic possibilities of such a technique.’’ Elaborating on this point of critique, he notes, ‘‘The ultimate condensation, the compression of a universe of meaning into a single bold metaphor, remains to be achieved.’’ Still, while Altick describes the play’s dramatic qualities as lacking refinement, he extends the highest praise to its poetic qualities: ‘‘Thanks to its tightly interwoven imagery Richard II has a poetic unity that is unsurpassed in any of the great tragedies.’’ Kenneth Muir provides a more moderate assessment of the play, perhaps better representing the sum of critical reactions to the play; he simply declares, ‘‘It is closer to mature Shakespearean tragedy than any of the previous plays had been.’’

CRITICISM Maurice Charney In the following essay, Charney briefly discusses the content of the plays in the Henriad (or Lancastrian) tetralogy. The Henriad tetralogy is a series of four plays: Richard II; Henry IV, Part One; Henry IV, Part Two; and Henry V. Charney then explores the primary themes and characters in Richard II and comments on the relevancy of key scenes to events occurring in Shakespeare’s England. Richard II is the first play of the Major Tetralogy, followed by the two parts of Henry IV and Henry V. Shakespeare learned a great deal from writing the four plays of the Minor Tetralogy (the three parts of Henry VI and Richard III), which were probably completed in 1592 or 1593. King John, which was probably written just before Richard II, has many stylistic affinities with it, both plays make important use of the divine right of kings. We can date Richard II fairly confidently to 1595, and the other three plays of the Major Tetralogy follow in the next three or four years. It is curious that the events of the Major Tetralogy exactly precede those of the Minor

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IT IS NECESSARY TO INSIST SO STRONGLY ON THE DIVINE RIGHT OF KINGS IN RICHARD II IN ORDER TO APPRECIATE THE MAGNITUDE OF HENRY IV’S TRANSGRESSION.’’

Tetralogy, which begins with the death of Henry V in 1422 and covers the Wars of the Roses to its conclusion at Bosworth Field in 1485. It looks as if Shakespeare wanted first to establish the origins of the Tudor line and the way that Henry, Duke of Richmond (later Henry VII), providentially ends the Wars of the Roses and unites the houses of York and Lancaster. The Major Tetralogy is much more concentrated historically, beginning with the quarrel of Bolingbroke and Mowbray in 1398 and ending with the triumph of Henry V over France and his marriage to Katherine, daughter of the French king and queen, in 1420. The Major Tetralogy is more selfconsciously a four-part unit than the Minor Tetralogy, with many more interconnections, echoes, and anticipations. The events in Richard II are compressed into only two years, from 1398 to 1400, which helps give the play a feeling of tragedy, by concentrating so strongly on Richard’s fall and creating the sense of a quick-moving and almost fateful action. Richard’s hubris, insolence, presumption, and perhaps just foolishness make his fall inevitable, but once it is clear that he can no longer remain king, the play unleashes a tremendous flood of feeling for Richard in adversity. This is Shakespeare’s first history play to invoke so powerfully the analogy between the fallen king and Christ in extremis. This sense of sorrow for Richard evokes tragic feelings of sympathy and compassion. We forget whatever Richard has done to bring his fate upon himself and think only of his torment and his sufferings. More than any other Shakespeare history play, Richard II goes to great lengths to invoke the doctrine of the divine right of kings, which was popular in the Tudor program of homilies to be read aloud in churches. The heinous sin of Richard’s deposition and murder and the ascent of Bolingbroke to the throne as Henry IV are not

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Ben Miles as Henry Bolingbroke and Kevin Spacey as Richard II at the Old Vic Theatre, London, 2005 (Ó Donald Cooper/Photostage. Reproduced by permission)

really resolved until the Wars of the Roses end in the victory of the Earl of Richmond in 1485, who comes to the throne as Henry VII, the first Tudor. . . . It is necessary to insist so strongly on the divine right of kings in Richard II in order to appreciate the magnitude of Henry IV’s transgression. The Bishop of Carlisle’s prophetic speech right before Richard’s deposition looks forward to the bloody events of both tetralogies and is a forecast of English history in the fifteenth century: And if you crown him [Bolingbroke], let me prophesy— The blood of English shall manure the ground, And future ages groan for this foul act . . . (4.1.136–38) Bolingbroke as ‘‘subject’’ cannot ‘‘give sentence on his king’’ (121), since the king is the

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anointed of God. As God’s scourge, Bolingbroke is sure to bring an evil doom on himself and on England, which will ‘‘be called / The field of Golgotha and dead men’s skulls’’ (143–44). The argument of divine right is all that Richard can offer to defend himself, and the conflict is lost before it ever begins. When Richard returns from lreland to safeguard his kingdom against Bolingbroke, who has landed at Ravenspurgh, he speaks largely in ‘‘divine right’’ rhetoric, which his followers see as a counsel of despair: Not all the water in the rough rude sea Can wash the balm off from an anointed king, The breath of wordly men cannot depose The deputy elected by the Lord. (3.2.54–57) Richard’s sense of the forces of Nature being marshaled against the enemy of God seems ludicrous to his troops. He protests: ‘‘Mock not my senseless conjuration, lords’’ (23), but the King’s approach to impending danger is entirely wrong. Richard’s invocation to ‘‘my gentle earth’’ (3.2.12) is unmilitary in the extreme: ‘‘But let thy spiders, that suck up thy venom, / And heavy-gaited toads lie in their way’’ (14–15). To this Richard continues to add supposedly baleful images: ‘‘Yield stinging nettles to mine enemies’’ (18). It is this ‘‘conjuration’’ of senseless things that his lords are mocking, and Carlisle tells him gently: ‘‘The means that heavens yield must be embraced / And not neglected’’ (29–30). The army of Bolingbroke is unlikely to be defeated by venomous spiders, heavy-gaited toads, and stinging nettles. According to the Renaissance doctrine of the King’s two bodies, the king as a public figure has a sacred body identified with the body politic, but as a private man his body is fragile and vulnerable. Richard argues on both sides of the divine right paradox. When he considers himself as a person, he is subject to all the weaknesses of mortal man, and he is far from having the invulnerable image of a king: I live with bread like you, feel want, Taste grief, need friends—subjected thus, How can you say to me, I am a king? (3.2.175–77) In the pun on subjected—‘‘made a subject’’ and ‘‘subjected to,’’ or ‘‘liable’’—lies the heart of

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the paradox. Richard is moving to an acute awareness of his loss of identity, by giving up the kingship he surrenders the essence of his being and he declines to anonymity and nothingness. The issue of identity becomes of crucial importance in Shakespeare’s later tragedies, such as Othello, when Othello declares that his ‘‘occupation’s gone’’ (3.3.354) or Antony and Cleopatra, when Antony ‘‘cannot hold this visible shape’’ (4. 14. 14). The important theme of Richard’s identity reaches its climax in the deposition scene, when he understands that by giving up his kingship he is giving up everything, including his sense of self: I have no name, no title, No, not that name was given me at the font But ‘tis usurped. (4. 1. 254–56) He seeks total annihilation in his wishfulfillment imagery: O, that I were a mockery king of snow, Standing before the sun of Bolingbroke, To melt myself away in water drops! (259–61) This scene anticipates Hamlet in many places, especially Hamlet’s first soliloquy: O that this too too solid [as in Folio] flesh would melt, Thaw, and resolve itself into a dew . . . (Hamlet 1. 2. 129–30) Some lines later, after Richard sends for a mirror and throws it down in disgust, he exclaims: My grief lies all within, And these external manners of laments Are merely shadows to the unseen grief That swells with silence in the tortured soul. (4. 1. 294–97) These lines clearly anticipate Hamlet’s sense of isolation in the Danish court in the same context I quoted before: ‘‘But I have that within which passes show; / These but the trappings and the suits of woe’’ (Hamlet 1. 2. 85–86). Both Richard and Hamlet feel a painful contrast between outward seeming and inward reality. They are both courting the annihilation of self. Richard’s contemplating his face in the mirror is like Hamlet’s contemplating mortality in the skull of Yorick, the king’s jester. It is

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interesting that Richard parodies Doctor Faustus’s famous invocation of Helen of Troy in Marlowe’s play (1592): Was this face the face That every day under his household roof Did keep ten thousand men? Was this the face That, like the sun, did make beholders wink? (4.1.280–83) He rejects the image of his face by shattering the looking glass, thus seeking the anonymity he has been flirting with from the beginning of his griefs. At the end of the play before he is murdered at Pomfret Castle, Richard has a long soliloquy meditating on themes of time, life and death, and his own identity. He takes up again the ‘‘nothing’’ theme that echoes throughout the play, as it does in King Lear, and that here signifies the king’s awareness of his own impending death. He imagines himself as an actor, coping with a difficult reality by moving quickly between different identities: ‘‘Thus play I in one person many people, / And none contented’’ (5.5.31–32). Shifting between king and beggar, Richard is finally ‘‘unkinged by Bolingbroke, / And straight am nothing’’ (37–38). From here it is only a quick move to the final step of the reasoning: that no man ‘‘With nothing shall be pleased, till he be eased / With being nothing’’ (40–41). Despite the urgency of death, Richard cannot resist the pleasing cadence of the internal rhyme (‘‘pleased-eased’’), he also manages to kill two of his executioners. The critical question whether Richard is a poet manque´ [unsuccessful, unfulfilled] or an actor manque´ is a deceptive one because Richard is poetical and histrionic [dramatic] in playing his part as a king, especially a deposed king. Hamlet seems actually to be a friend of the traveling players, which Richard is not. Nor has Richard written at least a dozen or sixteen lines to be inserted into the Mousetrap play, nor does he declaim with bravado the Dido and Aeneas play as Hamlet does. But Richard poetizes actively throughout his play and indulges in elaborately ingenious poetic figures called ‘‘conceits.’’ Something grotesque in these excessively worked out images mingles with Richard’s grief to create a sense of hysteria, as in the following:

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Or shall we play the wantons with our woes, And make some pretty match with shedding tears, As thus, to drop them still upon one place, Till they have fretted us a pair of graves Within the earth, and, therein laid, ‘‘there lies Two kinsmen digged their graves with weeping eyes’’, Would not this ill do well? (3.3.163–69) The image is extremely literal in its visual requirements, which are uncomfortably specific. That is why, once again, the imagery misfires and the onlookers think it ridiculous: ‘‘Well, well, I see / I talk but idly, and you laugh at me’’ (169–70). In Elizabethan parlance, idly means both lazily and foolishly. Richard is mocking his own poetical style in the manner of Touchstone in As You Like It, who lays it down as gospel that ‘‘the truest poetry is the most feigning’’ (3.3.18–19). Henry Bolingbroke, the son of John of Gaunt, becomes the model for Shakespeare’s political figures: the unheroic, practical man who manages to survive, while more committed and more ideological persons all are doomed to an early death. Bolingbroke is neither poetical nor histironic, but Richard envies him his ability to win political favor easily and spontaneously. Even before his return to England, Richard fears ‘‘his courtship to the common people’’ (1.4.24). Bolingbroke is essentially a political creature with no natural eloquence like Richard, but with an uncanny sense of the right gesture: Off goes his bonnet to an oyster-wench; A brace of draymen bid God speed him well, And had the tribute of his supple knee . . . (31–33) Unlike Tamburlaine or Richard III, Bolingbroke has no grandiose visions of kingship, and he proceeds step by step without revealing, even to himself, his ultimate objective. We have to believe that when he returns to England from exile he comes only to claim his rightful inheritance from his dead father, Gaunt, and not to depose Richard and be king himself. Yet events move with incredible swiftness and inevitability, and when Bolingbroke condemns Bushy and Green, two of ‘‘The caterpillars of the commonwealth’’ (2.3.166), in act 3, scene 1, he is already acting like the king, who doesn’t need any

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specific legal warrant. Bolingbroke prepares us remarkably for Claudius in Hamlet and perhaps also for Macbeth. In the final scene of the play Bolingbroke resembles Macbeth remarkably in the equivocation he practices with himself. To Exton, who murders Richard II at Pomfret, Bolingbroke speaks only the ambiguous words of guilt: They love not poison that do poison need, Nor do I thee; though I did wish him dead, ` I hate the murderer, love him murdered. (5.6.38–40) This is essentially the Henry IV of the next two plays in the tetralogy: crafty, ineloquent, guilty, and well meaning. If Henry weren’t so troubled in spirit, we would think him a gross hypocrite for making pronouncements like the following: ‘‘Lords, I protest, my soul is full of woe, / That blood should sprinkle me to make me grow’’ (45–46). But Henry does nothing to prevent blood from sprinkling him and he does nothing to conceal his open complicity. He vows here what he vows time and again in the two later plays: to ‘‘make a voyage to the Holy Land, / To wash this blood off from my guilty hand’’ (5.6.49–50), but we are sure that he has not the slightest intention to make this voyage of contrition and expiation. This is not part of his style. He mourns over the ‘‘untimely bier’’ (52) of Richard II, even though it was he himself who had him murdered. Unlike Richard III Bolingbroke is not sardonic, but his sincerity is suspect as a public pronouncement, not a personal commitment. His avalanche of couplets in his final scene reminds us that Richard II was written right around the time of Romeo and Juliet and A Midsummer Night’s Dream, both of which it resembles in its lyric extravagance and its use of set pieces of eloquence. The dying Gaunt’s vision of England is presented as an antithesis to the corruption and decay of England under Richard’s misrule. Gaunt, expiring, speaks like a ‘‘prophet new inspired’’ (2.1.31) of ‘‘This blessed plot, this earth, this realm, this England’’ (50). It is an extraordinary patriotic effusion, but England is ‘‘now leased out . . . / Like to a tenement or pelting farm’’ (59–60). Farm is a derogatory word used three times in this play to indicate Richard’s outrageous financial exactions. To ‘‘farm’’ the realm is to sell for cash the right to collect royal taxes, such as on crown lands and on customs.

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This is combined with ‘‘blank charters’’ (1.4.48), in which favorites of the king could write in whatever sum they pleased as an exaction on the nobles, and ‘‘benevolences’’ (2.1.250), or forced loans, to create Richard’s ‘‘rash fierce blaze of riot’’ (33). Like a tragic protagonist, Richard is preparing his own fall. The Garden Scene (3, 4) has often been discussed as an internal, choral commentary on the play, but its literal, allegorical quality allies it with early Shakespeare. Later, Shakespeare will embody his meanings much more intrinsically in the dramatic action rather than in symbolic set pieces. The Gardener lectures his servants pedantically about the analogy between the garden commonwealth and the body politic. With the Queen and her Ladies as audience, the Gardener expatiates on the political implications of gardening: O, what pity is it That he had not so trimmed and dressed his land As we this garden! (3.4.55–57) This scene is easy to teach but it doesn’t represent Shakespeare at his best. At the end of the scene, however, the Gardener speaks a touching soliloquy in couplets: Here did she fall a tear; here in this place I’ll set a bank of rue, sour herb of grace; Rue even for ruth here shortly shall be seen, In the remembrance of a weeping queen. (3.4.104–7) We are reminded inevitably, as by so much else in this play, of Hamlet, particularly the mad Ophelia’s distribution of flowers: ‘‘There’s rue for you, here’s some for me. We may call it herb of grace o’ Sundays. O, you must wear your rue with a difference’’ (Hamlet 4.5.181–83). One incident that hangs over Richard II and is mentioned repeatedly in the play is the murder of Thomas of Woodstock, Duke of Gloucester and Richard’s uncle, in 1397. These events are treated in the anonymous play Woodstock (sometimes called the first part of Richard II since it deals with the period 1382 to 1397, before Shakespeare’s play opens), which was probably written before Shakespeare’s play. Richard II begins in 1398 with the quarrel between Bolingbroke and Thomas Mowbray, the Duke of Norfolk, who was clearly implicated in Gloucester’s death at Calais, probably under

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orders from Richard. The scene between Bolingbroke and Mowbray is confusing, since the men trade accusations that seem equally powerful. Bolingbroke claims that Mowbray sluiced out Gloucester’s innocent soul through streams of blood; Which blood, like sacrificing Abel’s, cries Even from the tongueless caverns of the earth To me for justice and rough chastisement . . . (1.1.103–6) We never learn for sure about Mowbray’s role in this murder, but we are never allowed to forget Richard’s complicity. In the next scene, the Duchess of Gloucester asks Gaunt to take revenge for his brother’s murder, but Gaunt refuses. This is the first we hear of the doctrine of the divine right of kings, which is so important in the play. Gaunt says directly that the King, God’s substitute, His deputy anointed in His sight, Hath caused his [Gloucester’s] death . . . (1.2.37–39) He adds that ‘‘God’s is the quarrel’’ (37), for Gaunt as a subject ‘‘may never lift / An angry arm against His minister’’ (40–41). This makes the issue of Gloucester’s murder explicit in the play. Before his death Gaunt accuses Richard directly of murdering his uncle: That blood already like the pelican Hast thou tapped out and drunkenly caroused: My brother Gloucester, plain well-meaning soul . . . (126–28) This is almost at the end of Gaunt’s long and prophetic death speech, in which he seems to curse Richard: ‘‘Live in thy shame’’ (135). The issue of Gloucester’s death comes up again in act 4, scene 1, when Bagot specifically accuses Aumerle, the son of the Duke of York (Gaunt’s brother), of having killed Gloucester on orders from Richard. Bagot is joined in his accusations by Fitzwater, Percy, and others, but what is important is that this is the beginning of the deposition scene and the accusations of murder provide a context for the judgment of Richard by Bolingbroke. Richard is not such an innocent as he makes himself out to be. In his grief he makes no effort at all to defend himself, but merely expatiates on his tragic and

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alienated condition. The fallen king appears powerfully as a suffering individual, lyric, meditative, and philosophical in adversity. Richard II is one of the most politically explosive of Shakespeare’s plays. The Deposition Scene (most of act 4, scene 1), in which Richard abdicates the throne, was never printed during Queen Elizabeth’s lifetime and first appeared in the Fourth Quarto of 1608. This is potentially seditious material for which one could be summoned before the Star Chamber. We know that the Essex conspirators got Shakespeare’s company to put on a special performance of Richard II on the eve of their totally disastrous rebellion on February 8, 1601. Presumably, they thought that the Deposition Scene would be good propaganda for the overthrow of Elizabeth, who thought of herself as Richard II: ‘‘I am Richard II. Know ye not that?’’ (E. K. Chambers, William Shakespeare, vol. 2, p. 326). Bolingbroke is clearly labeled as a dangerous usurper in this play and in both parts of Henry IV, constantly anxious about his cloudy title to the throne. His son, Prince Hal, who becomes Henry V, continues these perturbations, and the issue is settled definitively only at the end of Richard III, when the Earl of Richmond defeats Richard at Bosworth Field and becomes Henry VII. As part of the royal myth, the Tudors take the stain off the English throne. Source: Maurice Charney, ‘‘Richard II,’’ in All of Shakespeare, 1993, pp. 160–69.

Barbara J. Baines In the essay that follows, Baines analyzes what she identifies as Shakespeare’s sympathetic portrayal of Bolingbroke, stressing that the dominant theme of the play is not Bolingbroke’s ambition, but Richard’s incompetence. Baines traces Bolingbroke’s actions throughout the play, demonstrating the moral justification for his decisions and activities. Few, if any, characters in the Shakespeare canon evoke such diverse and strong emotional response as the key figures of the second tetralogy: Richard II, Bolingbroke, and Hal. They are of course fascinating psychological portraits, but their special appeal derives from the political and moral issues which they dramatize. Together they present Shakespeare’s courageous exploration of the controversial subject, kingship: the

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THUS THE DOMINANT THEME OF RICHARD II IS THE INCOMPETENCE OF RICHARD, NOT THE AMBITION OF BOLINGBROKE.’’

right to reign, the use and abuse of power, and the reciprocal responsibility of sovereign and subject. In these three kings whose fortunes and identities are inextricably linked, the playwright dramatizes the formidable conflict between political necessity and Christian morality. This conflict, which gives the plays their singular vitality, is part of what Michael Manheim has defined as the ‘weak-king dilemma’ and what Moody Prior, relying on Friedrich Meinecke, has called the dilemma of raison d’e´tat. That Bolingbroke’s behavior often demonstrates Machiavelli’s precepts of political necessity has been irrefutably demonstrated in the past and again recently. But the significance of this behavior in the minds of Bolingbroke and his creator has never been satisfactorily resolved. The complexity of the political-moral issues of the tetralogy is, therefore, most evident in this ambiguous, keystone figure who, like his heir, demonstrates the cardinal virtues requisite of a king. Bolingbroke’s triumph, through the glory of his heir, is made possible by a pragmatic acceptance of the tenuous balance between the claims of political necessity and Christian ethics. I hope to demonstrate that Shakespeare’s attitude toward Bolingbroke is much more sympathetic than critics have been willing to acknowledge and that this sympathy underscores the playwright’s very realistic attitude toward kingship. We know of course that the Tudor establishment, like Richard, expounded the theory of the divine right of kings and the incontestability or virtual infallibility of the king body politic. The Tudor concept of kingship and the subject’s obedience is so pervasive and eloquently expressed that, as G. R. Elton notes, ‘theories of kingship which stressed the rights of subjects and the dominance of law have tended to be overlooked in the dazzling light of God-granted authority’. But the fact remains that these conflicting theories did exist, and it is not likely that Shakespeare would have overlooked them. The struggle between

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Richard and Bolingbroke for the crown shows clearly that he did not. Richard II presents both the Lancastrian sympathetic interpretation of Bolingbroke’s motives and actions and the Yorkist view of Bolingbroke as hypocrite and despicable traitor. Robert Ornstein has recently pointed out that Holinshed, Shakespeare’s primary source, presents essentially a Yorkist view, one that stresses the principle of legitimacy too strongly to have been much comfort to the Tudor monarchs and thus had to be qualified or balanced by the playwright with the Lancastrian view. For many readers the fascination and pathos evoked by Richard in the last two acts tend to overshadow the Lancastrian argument. I would like to argue here that the justification of Richard’s deposition, if we consider the entire tetralogy and give adequate attention to the first three acts of Richard II, is more important to an accurate assessment of the political statement of the plays than the tragic suffering of Richard. In light of the complexity of conflicting ideas about kingship, the singular nature of Bolingbroke— the morally accountable Machiavellian prince— takes on new significance. How Bolingbroke acquires the crown is of course a crucial issue in any assessment of the character. Richard II loses the crown because he denies the principle and laws upon which his right to the crown rests. York, who, along with Gaunt, supports the theory of the divine right of kings, points out that Richard denies his own legal right when he denies Bolingbroke’s rightful inheritance. The destruction of the hereditary order in the duchy of Lancaster prefigures the destruction of the hereditary order in larger England. It is Richard, not Bolingbroke, who causes this destruction. Richard has disturbed the old order of possession by insisting that possession of the crown means possession of Gaunt’s estate. Ironically enough, he discovers that he must live by the new order of possession which he has himself created and sanctioned. The crown and the Lancastrian estate do in fact go hand-in-hand—not because Bolingbroke is a usurper but because Richard has inadvertently disinherited himself through a series of crimes. Disregard for royal blood, for the offspring of King Edward, has already become a practice before the action of the play begins, in the cruel murder of Thomas Woodstock, Duke of Gloucester. The strongest condemnation of Richard, ‘Landlord of England art thou now, not king, / Thy state of law is bondslave to the

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law’, calls to mind the worst of his sins as they are depicted in the anonymous Woodstock. Accordingly, Richard’s fate and the justice of that fate are clearly prophesied by the dying Gaunt: O, had thy grandsire, with a prophet’s eye, Seen how his son’s son should destroy his sons, From forth thy reach he would have laid thy shame, Deposing thee before thou wert possessed, Which art possessed now to depose thyself. (II.i.104–8) What Gaunt is describing here is not usurpation but self-deposition. Moreover, he considers the act already accomplished (’Landlord of England art thou now, not king’) before Bolingbroke’s return from exile. Richard’s crimes, not Bolingbroke’s, dictate Gaunt’s final address to Richard not as king but as ‘my brother Edward’s son’ (II.i.124). Bolingbroke receives the crown as a result of his morally sanctioned demand for his inheritance. The first crucial question, then, in an evaluation of Bolingbroke’s policy and ethics is whether or not he has a right to return to England to claim and defend his inheritance. Even as a loyal supporter of the establishment, York reveals that he is torn between two loyalties: one to the state, the other to his conscience: . . . Both are my kinsmen. Th’one is my sovereign, whom both my oath And duty bids defend; t’other again Is my kinsman, whom the king hath wronged, Whom conscience and kindred bids to right. (II.ii.111–15) What is significant here is that duty and oath of office (aspects of political necessity) speak for Richard, whereas conscience speaks for Bolingbroke. To York’s blustering accusations (II.iii.87– 111) Bolingbroke appeals to the obligation of kinship, but what is more important, he asserts his right by law: I am denied to sue my livery here, And yet my letters patents give me leave. My father’s goods are all distrained and sold; And these, and all, are all amiss employed. What would you have me do? I am a subject, And I challenge law. Attorneys are denied me,

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And therefore personally I lay claim To my inheritance of free descent. (II.iii.129–35) But the rigidly idealistic York insists that the end, however justifiable, will not in this case justify the means. He will not exonerate Bolingbroke’s attempt ‘to find out right with wrong’. At the same time, York can offer no viable alternative to Bolingbroke’s action; to the pragmatic question, ‘What would you have me do?’ he has no answer. This failure best explains York’s impotence and the metaphoric appropriateness of his intention to remain ‘neuter’ (1. 159). The impotence of York (who is, after all, the King’s Regent) underscores the necessity of the course taken by Bolingbroke. Although Bolingbroke’s action is morally justified, his motives and intentions remain a mystery; he never confides in the audience or in another character. There is ample evidence that Bolingbroke, from the beginning, anticipates the necessity of restricting drastically or else abolishing altogether Richard’s authority. The idea of merely reforming or limiting Richard’s power would hardly seem feasible to the realistic Bolingbroke. He knows that Richard is an absolutist and that any form of resistance or criticism would not be tolerated. The fact that Richard is responsible for the death of Gloucester is from the beginning no secret in the Lancaster household. Bolingbroke knows, therefore, that his challenge to Richard’s faithful servant Mowbray is, in fact, a challenge to Richard himself. Richard evidently recognizes the thinly disguised challenge when he accuses Bolingbroke of ‘skyaspiring and ambitious thoughts’ (I.iii.130). The only easy way out is the unjust banishment of both men. The sudden, dramatic, and unjust decision to banish both lords is, in Bolingbroke’s consciousness, sufficient example of Richard’s intolerable abuse of absolute power. Compromise and reconciliation, therefore, could hardly seem a likelihood in Bolingbroke’s mind when he returns from France. It is highly probable, then, that the silent Bolingbroke at this early point—that is, before Richard confiscates the Lancaster estate—already intends a final confrontation with Richard. The time sequence of Act II, scene i, is deliberately ambiguous. It is impossible to tell whether Bolingbroke has had time to receive the news of the confiscation of his inheritance before he sets sail from Brittany with the eight tall ships. The

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John Bowe as Mowbray, Alan Howard as Richard II, and David Suchet as Bolingbroke in Act I, scene iii, at the Royal Shakespeare Theatre, 1980 (Ó Donald Cooper/Photostage. Reproduced by permission)

confiscation of the Lancaster estate may not be the primary cause for Bolingbroke’s return, but certainly it is a primary factor in Richard’s selfdeposition. Bolingbroke’s defense of his refusal to accept banishment (II.iii.113–36) is fundamentally an accusation of Richard rather than an explanation of his own motives. Part of the ambiguity of Bolingbroke’s motives and intentions derives from the role of resistance which he has chosen. From the beginning he prepares for what he knows will be Richard’s ultimate mistake; the eight tall ships are waiting. Whether or not they actually sailed before Bolingbroke received news that Richard had confiscated the Lancastrian estate is ultimately of little importance. Bolingbroke has already been denied justice at the moment of his banishment, and he knows that Richard will continue, in some form or other, the pattern of injustice. When he returns to claim his rights, he is claiming more than his title and property. He is claiming the right which, according to one theory of kingship, every Englishman has—the right to be governed by a responsible king.

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Bolingbroke does not reveal his plans because he still is not certain how far his confrontation will have to go or should go; a great deal depends upon how Richard behaves. There is no reason to believe that Bolingbroke is being hypocritical when he assures York that he does not intend to oppose himself against the will of heaven (III.iii.18–19). He does not define at this point what he thinks the will of heaven is because he does not know; Richard’s behavior will, to a great extent, clarify the question. In the crucial confrontation scene (III.iii), Bolingbroke quickly kneels before Richard and declares, ‘My gracious lord, I come but for mine own’. But Richard recognizes (as we should by now) that what Bolingbroke’s ‘own’ is has not been defined by Bolingbroke; certainly among other things it includes the right to just government. Richard answers, ‘Your own is yours, and I am yours, and all’. The reality of the situation is ultimately shaped by the mind of Richard, not by the action of Bolingbroke. Richard’s followers have tried to direct his mind away from the madness of despair toward constructive action against Bolingbroke.

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But the prophecy of old John of Gaunt, who described Richard as one ‘which art possessed now to depose thyself’, proves to be an accurate statement of the will of heaven. Another crucial matter to be dealt with in any evaluation of Bolingbroke is his execution of those ‘caterpillars of the commonwealth’, Bushy and Greene. This action has been interpreted as Machiavellian political necessity to assure the capitulation of Richard (Ribner, pp. 181–2). One certainly cannot help recalling this execution scene when much later Bolingbroke on his deathbed alludes to the ‘by-paths and indirect crooked ways’ to the throne (2 Henry IV, IV.v.184). But if we look closely at the situation in Richard II we see that the playwright has created ample grounds to justify Bolingbroke’s behavior. By their own admission Bushy and Greene have emptied the purses of the commons (II.ii.129– 32) and earned their hatred. The straightforward nature of Bolingbroke’s statement of intention ‘to weed and pluck away’ the King’s parasites and the assumption that he will have the Regent’s authority supporting him (II.iii.162–6) imply a strong moral justification for his judgment and execution of the King’s men. York certainly voices no objection to the idea that these men deserve to be executed. His reluctance apparently again concerns Bolingbroke’s methods: ‘It may be I will go with you; but yet I’ll pause, / For I am loath to break our country’s laws’ (II.iii.168–9). York freely chooses to go with Bolingbroke because he realizes that although Bolingbroke’s methods may be questionable, the end result, the good of the commonwealth, is not.

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This question does more than simply define the emblematic correspondences; it suggests that order on a secondary or personal level (within ‘the compass of a pale’) has little meaning when there is no order on the primary or national level (within ‘the sea-walled garden’). The question implies that there is very little motivation to achieve moral order on the personal level when none exists on a national level. The gardener is able to satisfy this complaint and affirm the necessity for private order because Bolingbroke has acted to restore national order. It may well be that on his deathbed Bolingbroke still has the blood of Bushy and Greene on his hands, but their execution is clearly a part of the establishment of order and justice in the kingdom, without which the sea-walled garden would go to ruin.

More important than York’s response to Bolingbroke’s ministration of justice is that of his gardener in the emblematic garden scene (III.iv). The gardener’s man asks:

Bolingbroke’s ministration of justice continues with an effort to identify those involved in the murder of Gloucester (IV.i). This scene, which parallels the opening scene of the play in which Richard presides over the challenge brought by Bolingbroke against Mowbray, dramatizes Bolingbroke’s sincere desire for the truth but even more clearly reveals that Bolingbroke already wields the power of arbitrator and judge, the power of de facto king. Bolingbroke’s willingness to hear and weigh all evidence and his willingness to repeal Mowbray’s banishment sharply contrast with the whimsical, capricious behavior of Richard in the earlier comparable situation. The disruptive intrusion by York to announce that Richard has abdicated and declared Bolingbroke his heir suggests clearly that the right to power goes hand-in-hand with the ability to use it properly. This point is made again through Bolingbroke by the gratitude and respect shown York, the mercy shown Aumerle (V.iii.59–66), and the tolerance shown Carlisle (V.vi.24–29).

Why should we, in the compass of a pale, Keep law and form and due proportion, Showing, as in a model, our firm estate, When our sea-walled garden, the whole land, Is full of weeds, her fairest flowers choked up, Her fruit trees all unpruned, her hedges ruined, Her knots disordered, and her wholesome herbs Swarming with caterpillars? (40–7)

Thus the dominant theme of Richard II is the incompetence of Richard, not the ambition of Bolingbroke. We sympathize with Richard, the man, in Acts IV and V, but earlier in the play we see Richard, the King, in the cold light of his incompetence and crimes. The comparison which Richard draws between himself and ‘glistering Phaeton’ (III.iii.178–79) is intended as a criticism of ‘unruly jades’—those who challenge the king’s authority. The comparison, however, turns ironically on Richard, since in the myth it is Phaeton’s presumption and incompetence

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which threaten the cosmic order. Richard discovers that he is but a mortal—that he is neither sun-god nor Christ. In the mirror episode (IV.i) the myths which Richard has created fade in the harsh light of truth. He sees in the mirror not the image of the king body politic but the image of a simple man. The image in the mirror is a much more accurate reflection of Richard’s sins than any confession which Northumberland could draw up. The recognition of his mortal face forces an acknowledgment that Richard has unfortunately never made during his reign. The history he reads in the glass is one of folly: ‘Was this the face that faced so many follies / And was at last outfaced by Bolingbroke?’ (IV.i.285–86). In this moment of truth Richard does not use the word ‘usurped’ or ‘deposed’ but instead uses the word, ‘outfaced’, which is an accurate description of Bolingbroke’s behavior and an important indicator of the author’s attitudes toward both characters. Richard’s incompetence is stressed also by Shakespeare’s deviation from his main source. In Holinshed’s account of Richard’s fall, Northumberland captures Richard by tricking him into an ambush. Richard is then firmly persuaded by advisors to agree to a peaceful abdication. In Shakespeare’s play Richard rejects the course of resistance offered by Aumerle and Carlisle and retires to Flint Castle, where he quickly and without advice acknowledges Bolingbroke as king. Shakespeare’s Richard clearly has an alternative to abdication. The alternative would require that he acknowledge the injustice of some of his decisions. But Richard, obsessed with the idea of his divine right and virtual infallibility, cannot bend to such a compromise. Since Richard will not change, his abdication is essential to the well-being of the nation. Its strategic location between Richard’s surrender at Flint Castle and Bolingbroke’s acceptance of the crown at Westminster makes the emblematic garden scene again crucial. The gardener may be sympathetic with the fallen king, but his main point and the point of the scene is that the garden must be tended. Bolingbroke understands this fundamental principle of kingship; Richard does not—at least not in time to save his crown. Bolingbroke’s competence as it contrasts with Richard’s incompetence does not go unnoticed by the conservative York. As he observes the unfolding of events, York moves from suspicion and censure, to ambivalence, finally to complete acceptance of Bolingbroke as rightful sovereign.

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He can with good conscience shift his allegiance from Richard to Bolingbroke because Richard ‘with willing soul’ has adopted Bolingbroke as his heir (IV.i.108). York is willing to accept Bolingbroke as king for still another and perhaps more important reason. He realizes that fortune favors Bolingbroke; he has the support of the lords and the parliament and has found no positive resistance in Richard. Circumstances therefore indicate to York that Bolingbroke truly has not opposed the will of heaven. Since in Act V, scene ii, York is alone in his own home with his wife, he has no reason for saying something which he does not truly believe. He describes the joyous reception of Bolingbroke and the public contempt for Richard. Moved to compassion by Richard’s suffering, he nevertheless concludes That, had not God for some strong purpose steeled The hearts of men, they must perforce have melted, And barbarism itself have pitied him. But heaven hath a hand in these events, To whose high will we bound our calm contents. To Bolingbroke are we sworn subjects now, Whose state and honour I for aye allow. (V.ii.34–40) York’s loyalty to Bolingbroke—a loyalty which York considers divinely sanctioned—is put to the supreme test by Aumerle’s involvement in the conspiracy to murder Bolingbroke. York’s providential view of Richard’s fall and Bolingbroke’s rise is reinforced years later by Bolingbroke’s interpretation of the events and his motives for accepting the crown: Though then, God knows, I had no such intent But that necessity so bowed the state That I and greatness were compell’d to kiss . . . (2 Henry IV, III.i.72–74) Compelling necessity was his motive, not ambition. When Henry IV contemplates Northumberland’s treachery, he remembers that Richard accurately predicted the situation. Warwick explains that Richard foresaw Northumberland’s treachery, not because he had any supernatural perception or influence, but because he comprehended an easily discernible pattern in Northumberland’s nature. The disorder which Bolingbroke faces as king is a result of a constant principle in human nature. Necessity cries out in

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the case of Northumberland’s treachery, as it did in the case of Richard’s incompetence, and Bolingbroke prepares himself once more to meet that political necessity (2 Henry IV, III.i.92–94). The point of Northumberland’s rebellion is not that rebellion begets rebellion, but that a king proves his competence and thus his right to rule by his capacity to deal with rebellion. But with all of his competence, Bolingbroke is still a human being, subject to weakness and sin, even in his role as king. In a moment of weakness he voices his wish for Richard’s death. Exton, who makes the wish a reality, reminds Bolingbroke, ‘From your own mouth, my lord, did I this deed’ (Richard II, V.vi.37). Bolingbroke does not deny this assertion, nor does he try to justify Richard’s murder on the grounds of political necessity. As a morally responsible individual, Bolingbroke acknowledges his guilt and promises expiation: ‘I’ll make a voyage to the Holy Land, / To wash this blood off from my guilty hand’ (V.vi.49–50). Unlike Machiavelli’s model prince, Bolingbroke acknowledges the importance of reconciling political necessity with Christian morality. That he hopes to achieve expiation and at the same time ‘busy giddy minds with foreign quarrels’ does not imply religious hypocrisy, but a pragmatism consistent with the nature of this character. What is important is his refusal to dismiss the moral issue altogether and his awareness that all of his actions will be judged by the failure or success of his reign and by his capacity to perpetuate his reign through his heir. . . . Source: Barbara J. Baines, ‘‘Kingship of the Silent King: A Study of Shakespeare’s Bolingbroke,’’ in English Studies, Vol. 61, No. 1, February, 1980, pp. 24–31.

Wolfgang Clemen Clemen offers an analysis of the imagery in Richard II, contending that in this play Shakespeare turns slightly away from the rigid formalism of Richard III and other previous plays. At the same time, notes Clemen, Shakespeare achieves a ‘‘unity of tone and feeling’’ that is lacking in earlier plays.

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Baker, Herschel, ‘‘Richard II,’’ in The Riverside Shakespeare, edited by G. Blakemore Evans, Houghton Mifflin Company, 1974, pp. 800–04. Black, James, ‘‘The Interlude of the Beggar and the King in Richard II,’’ in Pageantry in the Shakespearean Theater, edited by David M. Bergeron, University of Georgia Press, 1985, pp. 104–13. Clare, Janet, ‘‘The Censorship of the Deposition Scene in Richard II,’’ in Review of English Studies, Vol. 41, No. 161, February 1990, pp. 89–94. Cohen, Derek, ‘‘The Containment of Monarchy: Richard II,’’ in Shakespeare’s Culture of Violence, St. Martin’s Press, 1993, pp. 10–29. French, A. L., ‘‘Who Deposed Richard the Second?,’’ in Essays in Criticism, Vol. 17, No. 4, October 1967, pp. 411–33. Friedman, Donald M., ‘‘John of Gaunt and the Rhetoric of Frustration,’’ in English Literary History, Vol. 43, No. 3, Fall 1976, 279–99. Frye, Northrop, ‘‘The Bolingbroke Plays (Richard II, Henry IV),’’ in Northrop Frye on Shakespeare, edited by Robert Sandler, Yale University Press, 1986, pp. 51–81. Gurr, Andrew, ‘‘Introduction,’’ in King Richard II, by William Shakespeare, Cambridge University Press, 1984, pp. 1–52. Hamilton, Donna B., ‘‘The State of Law in Richard II,’’ in Shakespeare Quarterly, Vol. 34, No. 1, Spring 1983, pp. 5–17. Hunter, Edwin R., ‘‘Shakspere’s Intentions Regarding King Richard II,’’ in Shakspere and Common Sense, The Christopher Publishing House, 1954, pp. 31–48. Jensen, Pamela K., ‘‘Beggars and Kings: Cowardice and Courage in Shakespeare’s Richard II,’’ in Interpretations , Vol. 18, No. 1, Fall 1990, pp. 111–43. Kehler, Dorothea, ‘‘King of Tears: Mortality in Richard II,’’ in Rocky Mountain Review of Language and Literature, Vol. 39, No. 1, 1985, pp. 7–18. MacIsaac, Warren J., ‘‘The Three Cousins in Richard II,’’ in Shakespeare Quarterly, Vol. 22, No. 2, Spring 1971, pp. 137–46. Maus, Katharine Eisaman, ‘‘Richard II,’’ in The Norton Shakespeare, edited by Stephen Greenblatt, W. W. Norton & Company, 1997, pp. 943–51. Source: Wolfgang Clemen, ‘‘Richard II,’’ in The Development of Shakespeare’s Imagery, Methuan and Co., 1977, pp. 53–62.

Moore, Jeanie Grant, ‘‘Queen of Sorrow, King of Grief: Reflections and Perspectives in Richard II,’’ in In Another Country: Feminist Perspectives on Renaissance Drama, edited by Dorothea Kehler and Susan Baker, Scarecrow Press, 1991, pp. 19–35.

SOURCES Altick, Richard, ‘‘Symphonic Imagery in Richard II,’’ in The Tragedy of King Richard the Second, by William Shakespeare, New American Library, 1963, pp. 199–234.

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McDonald, Russ, The Bedford Companion to Shakespeare, 2nd ed., Bedford/St. Martin’s, 2001.

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Muir, Kenneth, ‘‘Introduction,’’ in The Tragedy of King Richard the Second, by William Shakespeare, New American Library, 1963, pp. xxiii–xxxvii. Norwich, John Julius, Shakespeare’s Kings, Scribner, 1999.

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Owen, Lewis J., ‘‘Richard II,’’ in Lectures on Four of Shakespeare’s History Plays, Carnegie Institute of Technology, 1953, pp. 3–18. Palmer, John, ‘‘Richard of Bordeaux,’’ in Political Characters of Shakespeare, Macmillan and Company, 1945, pp. 118–79. Pater, Walter, ‘‘Shakespeare’s English Kings,’’ in The Tragedy of King Richard the Second, by William Shakespeare, New American Library, 1963, pp. 191–98. Potter, Lois, ‘‘The Antic Disposition of Richard II,’’ in Shakespeare Survey, Vol. 27, 1974, pp. 33–41. Pye, Christopher, ‘‘The Betrayal of the Gaze: Richard II,’’ in The Regal Phantasm: Shakespeare and the Politics of Spectacle, Routledge, 1990, pp. 82–105. Rackin, Phyllis, ‘‘The Role of the Audience in Shakespeare’s Richard II,’’ in Shakespeare Quarterly, Vol. 36, No. 3, Autumn 1985, pp. 262–81. Reese, M. M., ‘‘Richard II,’’ in The Cease of Majesty: A Study of Shakespeare’s History Plays, Edward Arnold Publishers, 1961, pp. 225–60. Shakespeare, William, The Tragedy of King Richard the Second, edited by Kenneth Muir, New American Library, 1963. Suzman, Arthur, ‘‘Imagery and Symbolism in Richard II,’’ in Shakespeare Quarterly, Vol. 7, No. 3, Summer 1956, pp. 357–70. Thayer, C. G., ‘‘The Silent King: Providential Intervention, Fair Sequence and Succession,’’ in Shakespearean Politics: Government and Misgovernment in the Great Histories, Ohio University Press, 1983, pp. 62–70. Traversi, Derek, Excerpt from ‘‘Shakespeare from Richard II to Henry V,’’ in The Tragedy of King Richard

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the Second, by William Shakespeare, New American Library, 1963, pp. 235–48.

FURTHER READING Beavan, Bryan, King Richard II, Rubicon, 1996. Beavan presents an objective and enlightening study of the life of the historical Richard II. Saul, Nigel, ed., The Oxford Illustrated History of Medieval England, Oxford University Press, 1997. This comprehensive and accessible treatment of the thousand or so years that constituted medieval times in England addresses the life of Richard II in the context of the evolution of all of English society. Strachey, Lytton, Elizabeth and Essex: A Tragic History, Harvest Books, 2002. The Earl of Essex, once a favorite of Queen Elizabeth and rumored to be a potential mate, eventually attempted to overthrow her, with his conspirators sponsoring a performance of Richard II beforehand as rebellious propaganda. Strachey presents an insightful and compelling portrait of the relationship between Elizabeth and Essex, and where it led. Tomlinson, Richard, Divine Right: The Inglorious Survival of British Royalty, Little Brown Company, 1995. This work brings the discussion regarding the divine right of kings into the modern era, offering a scathing indictment of the manner in which members of the British monarchy have ever held onto their privileged positions.

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Richard III Although Richard III was first published in 1597, most scholars believe that this play about the rise and fall of a wicked king was written several years earlier, probably in 1592 or 1593, and was first performed shortly afterward. Evidence shows that it was popular from the beginning. The Elizabethan actor Richard Burbage achieved distinction playing Richard III, and the character’s final line—‘‘A horse! A horse! My kingdom for a horse!’’—was already famous by the time Richard Corbet wrote a poem about the play in 1618 or 1621. Historians believe that Shakespeare’s audiences would have especially appreciated the patriotic speech given by Richmond, who becomes King Henry VII in the last act and was Queen Elizabeth I’s grandfather.

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Early critical assessment of Richard III was mixed. Sir William Cornwallis (1600) and William Winstanley (1660), for example, objected to Shakespeare’s portrayal of King Richard as ‘‘a monster.’’ In contrast, the poet John Milton (1650) argued that the character in the play was ‘‘true to his historical counterpart.’’ Today, most scholars agree that Shakespeare based the drama primarily on Edward Hall’s The Union of the Two Noble and Illustre Famelies of Lancastre and Yorke (1548). Hall’s work relies on both fact and fiction to tell the history of King Richard III’s family, the House of York, and its long power struggle—known as the Wars of the Roses—with King Henry VII’s family, the House of Lancaster. A secondary source was

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probably Raphael Holinshed’s Chronicles of England, Scotland, and Ireland (1587). In turn, each of these works was based upon Sir Thomas More’s witty and ironic Historie of King Richard the Thirde, published around 1513. In this account, More—who grew up in the household of the bishop of Ely, a minister to Henry VII— used a dry, almost humorous tone to describe Richard as hunchbacked, tyrannical, and evil. Shakespeare’s play varies from its sources in numerous ways but two are of particular importance. The first is that, although Shakespeare borrowed More’s ironic narrative tone, he placed it in Richard’s mouth, so that the character becomes a complex, semicomical villain who laughs at himself and others even while he is plotting to do harm. The fact that Richard III functions as a sequel to Shakespeare’s three plays on the previous monarch, King Henry VI, accounts for the second of Shakespeare’s significant modifications: in Richard III, Margaret, the widow of Henry VI—the Lancastrian king who was murdered by Richard in Henry VI, Part Three—remains in England, where the play is set, rather than sailing home to France, as she did according to history. Onstage, Margaret voices her opinion on the action in the play, predicting the doom and misery that will serve as her revenge on Richard and his supporters. In cursing those who brought about her and her husband’s downfall, Margaret serves the same dramatic function as a chorus; a chorus, or individual choral figures, are sometimes used to describe events that occur before the beginning of a play or to comment on the play’s action as it unfolds. Richard’s complexity and Margaret’s haunting presence have generated much critical discussion, especially with regard to the play’s themes of divine retribution. Richard’s coronation comes toward the end of the Wars of the Roses, a long period of bloody civil strife, and some critics argue that his wickedness functions as both divine punishment against the warring parties and also as a method of cleansing England in preparation for a new era of peace. Margaret proves intricately involved in the development of the play, with her curses on each guilty character eventually being fulfilled. Above all, Richard is the central focus of the play. He is a ruthless, compellingly witty character who arguably has firm control of the people and events around him. In large measure thanks

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to Richard’s dazzling wickedness, Richard III remains one of Shakespeare’s most popular plays.

PLOT SUMMARY Act 1, Scene 1 At the beginning of Richard III, on a London street, Richard, Duke of Gloucester and brother to King Edward IV, remarks that times of war have come and gone—and since his deformed person (he was purportedly hunchbacked) turns him away from romantic or peaceful interests, he will play the villain and convince King Edward that their other brother, George, Duke of Clarence, is a threat. Indeed, Clarence enters, guarded by Brakenbury, and laments that he is being imprisoned simply for bearing a name that starts with the letter G; a wizard has told King Edward that someone named so should be disinherited. Feigning sympathy, Richard declares that Queen Elizabeth and her brother Earl Rivers must have slandered him. Brakenbury interrupts, and as Clarence is led away, Richard promises aid to his brother. Once alone, Richard remarks that he intends to have Clarence murdered immediately. Lord Hastings, himself just released from prison, arrives to note that King Edward is sick. When Hastings leaves, Richard declares that he intends to marry Lady Anne, whose father-in-law and husband—King Henry VI and his son Edward—Richard recently killed.

Act 1, Scene 2 Lady Anne is seeing the coffin of Henry VI transported through the streets, and the funeral procession pauses so that she can mourn his death—and curse his murderer, Richard. As they prepare to move on, Richard enters and forces them to pause again. When Anne curses Richard to his face, he begs for pity and flatters her. He also denies having killed her husband, blaming Edward instead, but admits to killing Henry, who he claims is better off in heaven. He then professes a desire to gain Lady Anne’s bedchamber, asserting that he in fact killed both men because he was moved by her beauty. She still wishes revenge on Richard, who says that he will love Anne better than did her deceased husband. He then expounds upon how he had never been moved to shed a tear until he was struck by her beauty. When she continues to scorn him, he offers his sword, that she might slay him. She moves to do so—but when he again praises her

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is simply jealous of the political advancement of her kin. Richard accuses Queen Elizabeth of causing Clarence’s imprisonment, which she denies. Queen Margaret, the widow of King Henry VI, then enters to watch the quarreling unnoticed. While Richard speaks of the good deeds he has done on behalf of King Edward, Margaret criticizes him bitterly in asides. Richard accuses Rivers and the others of backing Henry’s house of Lancaster, to which Rivers replies that he was simply serving his king.

Richard III, King of England

beauty, she lowers the weapon. He then tells her that if she again asks him to kill himself, he would; she does not, however, and when Richard offers her his ring, she accepts it. Richard then bids Anne retire to Crosby House, where he will meet her after directing Henry VI’s body to its burial place. When left alone, he reveals that he does not intend to ‘‘keep’’ Anne for long. He even professes amazement that Anne should show him any favor, given how virtuous her deceased husband had been. In the meantime, he will attire himself well.

Act 1, Scene 3 At the palace, Queen Elizabeth is consoled by her brother and sons about the possible death of her husband; Queen Elizabeth also laments that her own son Edward, the heir apparent, would be placed under the guardianship of Richard if King Edward dies. The Duke of Buckingham and Lord Stanley then arrive to note that the king is in fair health and wishes to make peace between parties that have been quarreling recently. Richard then enters to complain that people such as Lord Grey have been unfairly speaking ill of him; Queen Elizabeth retorts that Richard

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At length, Margaret comes forth to declare that she is ignoring her banishment and demanding recognition of the extreme sorrows she has suffered. Invoking the earlier death of Rutland, Richard rouses Queen Elizabeth and the others present to condemn Margaret. Furious, Margaret curses nearly everyone present for their treachery to her family; she lays her longest curse on Richard, warning the others that they will one day wish they had supported that cursing. She expresses no ill will toward Buckingham alone, who tries to make peace, but Margaret insists that God will see that her revenge is had and that they will all regret allying with Richard. When Margaret leaves, Richard plays the role of a penitent and forgiving Christian. After Catesby arrives and ushers everyone else off toward King Edward, Richard muses over how he has convinced Derby, Hastings, and Buckingham that Queen Elizabeth and her relatives conspired against Clarence. The two men whom Richard has hired to kill Clarence then arrive and accept a warrant from Richard. He urges them to kill Clarence without listening to any of his pleas.

Act 1, Scene 4 Clarence relates to the Keeper the dream he had the previous night, in which Richard seemed to knock him overboard accidentally as they were crossing the sea to France; after long drowning and gazing at the morbid wonders beneath the sea, he traveled to hell to be tormented by the souls he had wronged. After Clarence prays for his family’s welfare, he falls asleep; Brakenbury then enters and speaks a few words about the glory of princes, to be followed in by the two Murderers, who present their warrant. After Brakenbury and the Keeper leave, the Murderers have second thoughts about their deed when they remember Judgment Day. They regain their resolve thinking about the reward

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that Richard will give them, with the Second Murderer ruminating on the eternal nagging of the conscience—and losing his resolve again. Clarence awakes, and the two men inform him that they have come on behalf of King Edward to kill him. Clarence pleads that he deserves no harm from them, having never done them harm, but the men invoke the authority of King Edward—which Clarence insists should be ignored if it contradicts the authority of God. But the Murderers point out that Clarence forsook his oath to serve King Henry VI, leaving Clarence to question how Edward, for whose sake he rebelled against Henry, can be justified in ordering his murder. The Murderers inform Clarence that Gloucester—who had correctly anticipated Clarence’s pleading—was no ally of his. Clarence continues to plead, and the Second Murderer hesitates, but the First Murderer finally manages to stab Clarence. He then takes Clarence away to throw him in a wine cask, while the Second Murderer repents.

alive. At length, the children mourn their father’s death, Queen Elizabeth mourns her husband’s death, and the Duchess mourns both deaths. Richard, Buckingham, and others arrive to announce a plan to send a small party to bring the deceased king’s son, also named Edward, to London. Buckingham and Rivers voice their concern over the fragility of the rule of such a young man. Expressing his own hopes of maintaining peace, Richard sends Queen Elizabeth and his mother to fetch the young prince. Buckingham then reveals that he intends to help Richard turn Queen Elizabeth’s kin against young Edward.

Act 2, Scene 3 Three Citizens gather and speak of political matters. Knowing that King Edward is dead, they wonder how effectively the young prince will rule. The Third Citizen points out that both Queen Elizabeth’s kin and Richard might conspire to gain the throne. The First Citizen voices some optimism, but the others have little hope that peace will hold.

Act 2, Scene 1 King Edward delights in the peacemaking he has accomplished among the various courtly parties before him, including Hastings, Rivers, Dorset, Buckingham, and Queen Elizabeth. When Richard arrives, he likewise speaks out in a grand and lofty style on behalf of making peace. Queen Elizabeth then suggests that Clarence should be shown mercy, at which Richard announces that Clarence has died in prison. When Stanley arrives in an untimely fashion to beg clemency for his servant, who committed murder, Edward laments that no one had seen fit to beg him to show clemency to Clarence, as Clarence had done him so much service. When King Edward expresses fear of God’s retribution and departs with others, Richard voices to Buckingham his suspicion that Queen Elizabeth and her kin ordered Clarence’s death.

Act 2, Scene 2 At the palace, the old Duchess of York, mother of King Edward, Richard, and Clarence, is talking to Clarence’s son and daughter about his death and Edward’s sickness. The children inform their grandmother that Richard has blamed Edward for Clarence’s death, which the Duchess disputes. Queen Elizabeth then enters to relate that King Edward has just died. The Duchess expresses her grief over the deaths of the two virtuous images of her husband, with only the ‘‘false glass’’ of Richard remaining

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Act 2, Scene 4 The Duchess of York and Queen Elizabeth wonder at how much Prince Edward has grown, especially in relation to his brother the sprouting Duke of York. York remarks that Richard had told him that weeds grow quickly, flowers slowly; the Duchess remarks that Richard grew slowly but was certainly no flower, and York relates a jest he might have made at Richard’s expense. A Messenger then arrives to announce that Rivers, Grey, and Sir Thomas Vaughan have been taken prisoner, leading Queen Elizabeth to be alarmed at the coming ruin of her house. The Duchess despairs, and Queen Elizabeth and the young York head for sanctuary.

Act 3, Scene 1 Richard and Buckingham welcome Prince Edward, who is weary with travel and grief over his deceased uncles. Richard assures him that they died for being false friends, which Edward doubts. Edward greets the Mayor and Citizens kindly, then wonders why his mother and brother have not arrived; Hastings then enters to note that the two have taken sanctuary, and Buckingham denounces Queen Elizabeth’s peevishness and asks the Cardinal to fetch York. The Cardinal objects, but Buckingham convinces him that to do so would not be a violation of the laws of sanctuary.

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Richard suggests to Prince Edward that he lodge at the Tower, which was built by Julius Caesar. Prince Edward contemplates the nature of fame and determines that he will someday attempt to conquer France. The Cardinal returns with York, who then parries wits with his uncle. At length, Richard persuades York and Prince Edward to proceed to the Tower; when they depart, Buckingham remarks that Queen Elizabeth must have incited York to be insolent. He then asks Catesby whether Hastings will join them in their plot to gain Richard’s coronation as king. Catesby leaves to probe Hastings while informing him of the impending execution of Queen Elizabeth’s kin, Hastings’s enemies; Richard asserts that Hastings will be beheaded if he does not cooperate.

Act 3, Scene 2 At the house of Hastings, a messenger arrives from Lord Stanley, who dreamt that he was beheaded by Richard, ‘‘the boar,’’ and is concerned over the meetings of the separated councils. Hastings tells the messenger that Stanley need not worry, as Catesby will inform him of goings-on at the alternate council. Catesby arrives and tells Hastings of the impending executions, and Hastings rejoices— but remarks that he would never support Richard’s coronation as king, leading Catesby to comment in an aside about Hastings’s impending execution. Stanley then arrives and expresses his concern in person, which Hastings dismisses. Hastings then tells a Pursuivant (a royal messenger) of his delight in the execution of Queen Elizabeth’s kin, and he holds brief counsel with a priest. Buckingham then fetches Hastings to dine—and die—at the Tower.

Act 3, Scene 3 At Pomfret Castle, Ratcliffe leads Rivers, Grey, and Vaughan to their deaths. Rivers and Grey lament the fulfillment of Margaret’s curses.

Act 3, Scene 4 A number of lords are dining at the Tower and planning the date of Edward’s coronation, with Hastings declaring that he will speak on behalf of Richard in his absence. Richard then arrives; after sending the Bishop of Ely to fetch him some strawberries, Richard learns from Buckingham of Hastings’s unwillingness to join their plot. Richard and Buckingham exit, leaving Hastings to assert that Richard is evidently in good spirits.

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When the two men return, Richard complains that Queen Elizabeth and Jane Shore, Edward’s mistress, had practiced witchcraft against him, crippling his arm. Hastings utters a comment that Richard insists is a treasonous defense of Shore and declares that Hastings will be immediately beheaded. Hastings, too, laments the fulfillment of Margaret’s curse.

Act 3, Scene 5 At the Tower, Richard and Buckingham greet the Mayor with a display of paranoia over traitors. When Hastings’s head is brought in, Richard declares that Hastings had been associating with Shore, and Buckingham says that Hastings had been plotting their murders. They express regret that their supporters had seen fit to execute Hastings so hastily, as the Mayor could not then hear his guilty testimony. The Mayor believes them and departs, and Richard tells Buckingham to go to London and persuade the people that Edward’s line is corrupted with bastardy. Meanwhile, Richard will have holy men join him at Baynard’s Castle and remarks that he will have Clarence’s children confined to solitude.

Act 3: Scene 6 The Scrivener who copied the indictment of Hastings notes that the entire episode seems tainted with treachery, but he knows better than to put his own life at risk by saying anything.

Act 3, Scene 7 At Baynard’s Castle, Buckingham reports to Richard that he managed to convince some people that the late King Edward was himself a bastard child and that Richard should be named king instead of Prince Edward. The response to his assertions was unenthusiastic, but the idea was established nevertheless. Richard then enters the castle, while Buckingham will pretend to be seeking an audience with him but having difficulty. Catesby acts as messenger, telling Buckingham in the Mayor’s presence that Richard’s religious duties are his priority; Buckingham then comments pointedly about Richard’s piety, in contrast to the late Edward’s purported adultery. After Catesby goes back inside, Richard appears in the presence of two Bishops and asks why Buckingham and the others have sought him there. Buckingham declares that Richard would be doing the

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nation good service by accepting the crown, but Richard humbly refuses, saying that he has no ambition to rule the nation and that Prince Edward will prove a perfectly capable leader. Buckingham insists, noting there are serious doubts about Prince Edward’s legitimacy as heir to the throne. Richard refuses, Buckingham expresses severe disappointment, and the Mayor and the others leave; Richard then has Catesby call them back, and he tells them that he will accept the kingship for the good of the nation after all. Buckingham announces that the coronation should take place tomorrow, and Richard retires with the Bishops.

Act 4, Scene 1 The Duchess of York, Queen Elizabeth, and Anne cross paths at the Tower. There, Brakenbury informs Queen Elizabeth that Richard— whom he calls first king, then Lord Protector— has disallowed any contact with the Princes Edward and York. Stanley then arrives, sent by Richard to bring Anne to be crowned queen, and Queen Elizabeth mourns that Margaret’s curse is coming to pass; she urges her son Dorset to flee to join Richmond, the stepson of Stanley, in Breton (Brittany), France. Before leaving with Stanley, Anne regrets that she allowed herself to be wooed by the man who killed her husband; in fact, since she cursed whoever would be Richard’s wife, she cursed herself. Before again heading for sanctuary, Queen Elizabeth bids the Tower’s stones keep her sons safe.

Act 4, Scene 2 After being helped to the throne by Buckingham, Richard eventually manages to tell him that he wishes that Prince Edward be slain. Buckingham asks for time to consider the order, and Richard immediately loses confidence in Buckingham and instead asks a page if he knows anyone who would commit murder for a fair reward; the page suggests a man named Tyrrel. Stanley arrives to report that Dorset has fled to the aid of Richmond. Richard then tells Catesby to spread rumors that Anne is grievously ill and declares that he intends to find a lowly mate for Clarence’s daughter while he himself will marry King Edward and Queen Elizabeth’s daughter. Tyrrel arrives, and Richard orders him to kill Edward and York. Buckingham then returns, and while Richard muses over the threat of Richmond, Buckingham boldly and repeatedly asks for the earldom of Hereford, which Richard had

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promised him. When Richard refuses, Buckingham resolves to flee.

Act 4, Scene 3 Tyrrel reveals that two men murdered the princes on his behalf—and afterward regretted doing so. After receiving this news, Richard reveals that Clarence’s children have been dealt with and that Anne has also passed away. Richard then notes that he would woo Elizabeth, daughter of Queen Elizabeth, in part because Richmond might otherwise do so in a ploy to gain the throne. Ratcliffe arrives to announce that the Bishop of Ely has fled to Richmond and that Buckingham is rallying an army of rebellious Welshmen.

Act 4, Scene 4 Queen Margaret, slinking about the palace, happens upon the grieving Queen Elizabeth and Duchess of York. Margaret eventually approaches the women as if to extend sympathy, but instead she rejoices in their sorrows, which she sees as fitting retribution for the wrongs she herself has suffered. She castigates the Duchess for having given birth to Richard, who has brought about so many deaths. Elizabeth wishes only to learn how to issue curses from Margaret, but she merely turns and departs. King Richard then appears, to be intercepted by the two women. He initially has his trumpeters drown out their chiding, but the Duchess demands an audience; she prophecies that Richard will die in battle, with his enemies heartened by the souls of King Edward’s slain children. Queen Elizabeth starts to leave after the Duchess, but Richard asks her to stay and inquires of her daughter, also named Elizabeth. Queen Elizabeth declares that she would sooner damage her own self by declaring that someone other than King Edward was the girl’s father than allow her to be used—or killed—for Richard’s advantage. At length, Richard admits that he wishes to marry young Elizabeth, but Queen Elizabeth doubts that his love is genuine and asks how he could actually woo her, given all of their family members whose deaths he ordered. Still, Richard describes how Queen Elizabeth could regain her former stature and rebuild her family by endorsing the match; in place of the sons she lost, she would be blessed with royal grandchildren. Queen Elizabeth resists, offering various objections to the match; when Richard begins to swear an oath, she points out that he

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has already forsaken all sacred people and things and thus has no one and nothing to swear on. Still, Richard insists that only a union between himself and Elizabeth can bring peace to the nation, and Queen Elizabeth at last relents and goes to speak to her daughter. Ratcliffe arrives to inform Richard that Richmond’s navy is awaiting the help of Buckingham’s army on the western coast. Richard seems confused in giving orders to Catesby and Ratcliffe. Stanley arrives and confirms that Richmond is at sea, presumably on his way to ally with Dorset and Buckingham and seek the crown. Stanley assures Richard that his loyalty lies with him, not with his own stepson, and so Richard bids him to raise troops in the north— while another of Stanley’s sons, George Stanley, will be held hostage. Two Messengers arrive to report that various lords are up in arms, but a Third Messenger reports that Buckingham’s army is scattered, and a Fourth Messenger declares that Richmond’s navy has been dispersed by a storm. Finally, Catesby arrives to report that Buckingham has been taken and that Richmond has landed at Milford.

Act 4, Scene 5 Stanley sends Sir Christopher to tell his stepson Richmond that he cannot send aid while his other son is being held by Richard but also that Queen Elizabeth has consented to give Richmond her daughter’s hand. Sir Christopher notes that Richmond has already been joined by a number of valiant soldiers.

Act 5, Scene 1 As he is led to his execution, Buckingham expresses remorse for his role in Richard’s rise to the throne and admits that he deserves the punishment he is receiving.

Act 5, Scene 2 At Richmond’s camp, Richmond announces that they are receiving reinforcements from Stanley and condemns Richard’s bloody tyranny, which brings words of support from Oxford, Blunt, and Herbert.

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for Stanley and retires to his own tent to discuss strategy. In turn, Richard dispatches Catesby to bid Stanley to join them before sunrise; Richard then asks for wine, inquires as to the melancholy Northumberland, and confesses to being somewhat low in spirits. At length, he sleeps. Stanley then arrives at Richmond’s tent to assure him that he will offer his aid in the coming battle; however, with his son’s life at stake, Stanley cannot be too obvious in his support. Richmond prays for his soldiers and likewise falls asleep. As the two men lie unconscious, the ghosts of Richard’s many victims—including King Henry VI, Henry’s son Edward, Clarence, Rivers, Grey, Vaughan, Hastings, the young Princes Edward and York, Lady Anne, and Buckingham—pay them visits, all telling Richard to despair and die and telling Richmond that he should take heart and be victorious. When Richard wakes, he frets over his afflicted conscience and realizes that he deserves the love of no one—and does not even love himself. He imagines that he dreamed the visits of the many ghosts. Ratcliffe then enters to rouse Richard to prepare for battle; fearing the desertion of his friends, Richard entreats Ratcliffe to join him in eavesdropping on their men. Richmond, too, then wakes, much heartened by the kindly visits from the ghosts that he seemed to have dreamed. He delivers an oration to his men, asserting that they are on the side of good, fighting against evil, and that Richard’s allies, who certainly fear him and would rather not be ruled by him, are bound to desert him when confronted in battle. Richard, meanwhile, is reassured as to his men’s loyalty but despairs now at the fact that the sun will not shine that day. Norfolk reveals that he received a cryptic note, which Richard dismisses as a ruse by the enemy. Speaking to his own army, Richard denounces the rebels as unruly, greedy, pathetic vagabonds from France. A Messenger arrives to report that Stanley will not join them, and Richard demands the head of Stanley’s son—but Norwich points out that the enemy is advancing, and they set off to battle.

Act 5, Scene 4 Act 5, Scene 3 At Bosworth Field, Richard’s tent is pitched, and Norfolk assures Richard that Richmond’s rebel army is only a third of the size of the royal army. Meanwhile, Richmond dispatches Blunt with a note

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In the heat of the battle, Catesby seeks help for Richard, who has fought fiercely even on foot. Having slain five of Richmond’s doubles, Richard exclaims that he would give his kingdom for a horse.

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that his son George has fortunately not been killed. Richmond declares that in marrying young Elizabeth, he will at last be uniting his own house of Lancaster with Elizabeth’s house of York, ending the civil strife that has long plagued the nation.

MEDIA ADAPTATIONS A critically acclaimed motion picture version of Richard III was produced and directed by Laurence Olivier in 1955 through London Film Productions. The film features Olivier himself, John Gielgud, Ralph Richardson, and Claire Bloom. The film was distributed on video by Embassy Home Entertainment in 1985.  The British Broadcasting Corporation and Time-Life Television produced a televised performance of The Tragedy of Richard the Third in 1983, as part of the ‘‘Shakespeare Plays’’ series on PBS.  Another motion picture version of Richard III was directed by Richard Loncraine and produced by Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer/United Artists in 1995; it was set in an imaginary England of the 1930s, capturing the political atmosphere of instability and tyranny of the play’s true historical time period. Ian McKellen, who wrote the screenplay, fills the role of Richard III, with other stars including Annette Bening as Queen Elizabeth, Jim Broadbent as Buckingham, Robert Downey Jr. as Rivers, Nigel Hawthorne as Clarence, Kristin Scott Thomas as Anne, and Maggie Smith as the Duchess of York.  Al Pacino’s 1996 Looking for Richard is a unique film, mixing documentary interviews about the play with scholars, critics, actors, and people on the street with fully costumed and staged scenes from the play. Pacino directed, cowrote the narration with Frederic Kimball, and stars as Richard III. Winona Ryder is Lady Anne, Alec Baldwin is Clarence, and Kevin Spacey is Buckingham. Estelle Parsons is the cursing Queen Margaret. 

Act 5, Scene 5 Richmond slays Richard. Having taken the crown from the deceased King Richard’s head, Stanley turns it over to Richmond. Stanley notes

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CHARACTERS Lady Anne As the widow of Edward, Prince of Wales, who was the son and heir of King Henry VI, Anne hates Richard for murdering her husband and father-in-law, but Richard charms her into marrying him. As Richard’s unhappy queen, she dies of unstated causes after he tires of her. Anne first appears following the coffin of her father-in-law, Henry VI. She laments King Henry’s death and curses his murderer, Richard, and also places a curse on any woman who marries Richard— thus, ironically, cursing herself. When Richard enters and halts the funeral procession, Anne disgustedly calls him a ‘‘foul devil’’ and begs for lightning to strike him dead. But Richard is persistent: he flatters Anne and excuses his crimes by asserting that he was inspired by her beauty, claims he loves her, and even invites her to kill him with his own sword. Eventually, Anne relents. ‘‘I would I knew thy heart,’’ she tells him before agreeing to accept his ring. In acknowledging how implausible this scene is, critics have attempted to show how Richard successfully woos Anne. He carefully listens to her, observes her changing emotions, and adapts his arguments to these changes, eventually winning her sympathy. He plays upon Anne’s grief and skillfully manipulates her. Some critics argue that, in addition to being in mourning, Anne is susceptible to Richard’s advances simply because she behaves as women were expected to at the time. When Anne appears for the next and last time, in act 4, scene 1, she has married Richard and is miserable. She recalls the curse she had made on any woman ‘‘mad’’ enough to become his wife and bitterly laments, ‘‘Within so small a time, my woman’s heart / Grossly grew captive to his honey words, / And prov’d the subject of mine own soul’s curse.’’ She goes unwillingly to Westminster to be crowned Richard’s queen. Richard later starts a rumor that Anne is

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seriously ill, then later still he briefly mentions that she has died. Traditionally, Anne has been regarded as weak and vain for being fooled by Richard’s flattery. However, given Richard’s powerful position as brother to King Edward and his demonstrated ruthlessness, Anne certainly cannot kill him and so has little choice but to accept him. Although her appearance in the play is fairly brief, Anne’s role is important in that her encounter with Richard provides an early and revealing glimpse of his cunning and persuasiveness.

Boy and Daughter Clarence’s children, whose unmentioned names are Edward and Margaret, discuss their father’s death with their grandmother, the Duchess of York, revealing how thoroughly Richard had convinced them that King Edward was the one responsible.

Sir Robert Brakenbury Brakenbury is Lieutenant of the Tower of London and in charge of the prison, where first the Duke of Clarence and later King Edward’s two young sons are held.

Sir William Catesby As a supporter of Richard, Catesby is sent to find out whether Hastings will support Richard’s coronation and manages to probe and advise the lord without revealing his own relationship to the aspiring usurper. Catesby also assists in Richard’s deceptive posing as a man of religion at Baynard’s Castle and, during the battle on Bosworth Field, calls out for the rescue of the frantic King Richard.

Citizens Three Citizens discuss the death of King Edward IV and their low expectations with regard to the country’s future, demonstrating the opinions of the common people.

Marquis of Dorset Dorset is Queen Elizabeth’s son from a previous marriage. He joins the Earl of Richmond’s side after Richard is crowned king.

King Edward IV Edward IV is the king of England at the play’s opening. Edward is ill at the beginning of the play, and his only substantial activity is the peacemaking he accomplishes among his courtly

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followers and his wife’s family. After Richard appears and declares that King Edward’s pardon for their brother, the Duke of Clarence, came too late to save him from death, he laments that no one advised him to be merciful earlier. He then marches off and later dies.

Duke of Buckingham Buckingham is Richard’s primary coconspirator. He helps Richard become king but falls out of favor when he balks at murdering Edward IV’s two young sons. He joins the Earl of Richmond’s side against Richard but is later captured and executed. Serving as Richard’s right-hand man, Buckingham plays an important role in the play. Richard uses him as an adviser and a spy and in fact calls him ‘‘my other self’’ in act 2, scene 2. Buckingham’s first appearances give no indication that he is anything other than a minor character; Richard refers to him merely as one of several ‘‘simple gulls’’ or fools whom he is deceiving in act 1, scene 3. Once King Edward dies, Buckingham gains prominence, as he schemes to place the king’s heir—Edward, Prince of Wales—in Richard’s power by fetching the child to London without the protection of his mother or her kinsmen. When Queen Elizabeth flees to sanctuary with her youngest son, the Duke of York, Buckingham takes it upon himself to order the child brought back to London. In act 3, scene 5, Buckingham asserts that he is nearly as good an actor as Richard is: ‘‘I can counterfeit the deep tragedian,’’ he says, as he and Richard prepare to fool the Mayor of London into believing that Richard is a good man who has been cruelly betrayed. He insists, ‘‘Ghastly ` smiles; / looks / Are at my service, like enforceed And both are ready in their offices / At any time to grace my stratagems.’’ He proves his point well in scene 7 when he helps Richard stage so convincing a performance of pious humility and reluctant royal worth that the citizens of London entreat Richard to become king. Still, Buckingham falls short of being Richard’s ‘‘other self’’ when it comes to murdering the two young princes. In act 4, scene 2, the newly crowned Richard first hints then bluntly states that he wants King Edward’s heirs killed. Buckingham’s reply—‘‘Your Grace may do your pleasure’’—does not satisfy Richard, who needs a perpetrator for a crime so heinous. Buckingham’s next attempt to postpone making a decision only

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infuriates Richard, who mutters, ‘‘High-reaching Buckingham grows circumspect.’’ Later, when Buckingham returns to the question of the princes’ murder—as well as that of the earldom he hoped to earn through his treachery—Richard dismisses him. Buckingham’s hesitation costs him his life. Although similar to Richard, having likewise been described as a machiavel, ultimately Buckingham is no match for his deceitful king.

Edward, Prince of Wales The Prince of Wales is the young son and heir of King Edward IV. Along with his younger brother, the Duke of York, he is led to—and imprisoned in—the Tower of London by his ambitious uncle Richard. Later both children are murdered on Richard’s orders.

Queen Elizabeth Formerly Lady Grey, she is the wife of King Edward IV and the mother of Edward, Prince of Wales, and Richard, Duke of York, the King’s two young heirs. She shows a certain familial affiliation for Richard at first—supporting Richard’s schoolyard-style deflection of Margaret’s curse on him, confirming, ‘‘Thus have you breathed your curse against yourself’’—but ultimately Queen Elizabeth hates Richard for murdering her brother and her sons. Nevertheless, he persuades her to consider him as a mate for her daughter, Elizabeth. Queen Elizabeth’s presence and comments generally highlight Richard’s ruthless quest for the throne, since, as King Edward’s wife and the mother of the heir, she has perhaps the most direct interest in Richard’s success or failure. As early as the first scene, Richard is seen spreading lies regarding her influence over King Edward, revealing that Queen Elizabeth and her relatives are operating as a distinct faction in the context of the court. Queen Elizabeth first enters in act 1, scene 3, voicing her fears about the king’s illness to her brother, Lord Rivers, and her two older sons, Lord Grey and the Marquis of Dorset. She knows that if King Edward dies, her young son Edward, Prince of Wales, the heir to the throne, could be placed under Richard’s protection, ‘‘a man,’’ she tells her sons and brother, ‘‘that loves not me, nor none of you’’; indeed, Richard appears shortly afterward and insults her. In act 2, scene 1, Queen Elizabeth and her kinsmen reconcile with Richard and other members of the court at King Edward’s request. But

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by scene 2, he is dead, and the distraught Queen Elizabeth agrees with Richard that the Prince of Wales should be brought to court. By scene 4, her situation has worsened, as Richard has imprisoned Rivers and Grey, and also holds the Prince of Wales in his custody. Queen Elizabeth realizes that Richard now controls the government, remarking, ‘‘Insulting tyranny begins to jut / Upon the innocent and aweless throne.’’ She flees with her youngest son, York, into sanctuary, but Richard and Buckingham order York brought back to London to ‘‘lodge’’ in the Tower with the Prince of Wales, and in act 4, scene 1, Elizabeth is barred from visiting them. Elizabeth’s final and most famous encounter with Richard occurs in act 4, scene 4, when she apparently agrees to persuade her daughter to marry him. This scene has been described as a battle of wits between Richard and Elizabeth, and it is not clear who wins. Elizabeth never explicitly states that she will tell her daughter to marry him. Instead she asks, ‘‘Shall I go win my daughter to thy will?’’ and ends by telling Richard, ‘‘I go. Write to me very shortly, / And you shall understand from me her mind.’’ In act 4, scene 5, we are told that she has promised her daughter to the Earl of Richmond. Has Elizabeth been weak-willed and inconsistent, or has she finally outwitted Richard?

George, Duke of Clarence Clarence is the brother of King Edward IV and Richard. He is imprisoned in the Tower of London after Richard turns King Edward against him, never realizing that Richard is his enemy. The dream that he relates to the Keeper is filled with vivid metaphorical imagery that conveys the sense of doom eventually closing over many of the play’s characters. When Richard sends assassins to the Tower, Clarence nearly persuades them not to kill him, but the more determined of the two eventually stabs him.

Ghosts Among the Ghosts who visit King Richard and Richmond on the night before the battle at Bosworth are Edward, Prince of Wales, Henry VI’s son, who was stabbed by Richard; King Henry VI, who was murdered by Richard; Clarence; Rivers, Grey, and Vaughan; Hastings; the young princes Edward and York; Lady Anne; and Buckingham.

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Lord Grey Lord Grey is Queen Elizabeth’s son from a previous marriage; Richard has him assassinated.

Lord Hastings Sometimes called Lord Chamberlain, Hastings is assassinated for expressing that he would not support Richard’s ambition to be king.

Henry, Earl of Richmond Henry, known in the plays as Richmond, is a Lancastrian who raises an army to defeat King Richard III and end his reign of tyranny. Although he is the play’s hero, Richmond’s role is minimal; he interacts with other characters very little, giving only a few substantial speeches on his way to slaying Richard and gaining the throne to become Henry VII.

Margaret is the widow of King Henry VI, who was murdered by Richard. She prophesies revenge for herself and destruction for King Edward IV’s family and supporters. Margaret appears in only two scenes, but her influence is felt throughout the play. She first enters in act 1, scene 3, speaking—as she often does—in asides, commenting to the audience on the bickering among her Yorkist enemies, including Queen Elizabeth and her kinsmen, Richard, Clarence, and the various lords. When Margaret finally speaks directly to those present, she curses them, foretelling misery to Elizabeth and death to Rivers and Hastings, reserving her most virulent words for Richard. By the time she appears again in act 4, scene 4, most of her prophecies have been fulfilled. She exults in her revenge and gives Queen Elizabeth and the Duchess of York some brief advice about how to curse Richard, who has become, as Margaret had predicted, an enemy to all of them. When Richard III is produced onstage, Margaret’s role is frequently omitted on the grounds that the language in her scenes is too formal and repetitive to have an impact on modern audiences. On the other hand, Margaret provides useful background information on Richard’s grim quest for power. Her predictions and ghostlike presence—in act 4 she states, ‘‘Here in these confines slily have I lurk’d / To watch the waning of mine enemies’’—reinforce the theme of divine retribution in the play, as do the characters’ recollections of her prophecies when they are led to their executions. In act 3,

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scene 4, for example, Hastings laments, ‘‘O Margaret, Margaret, now thy heavy curse / Is lighted on poor Hastings’ wretched head.’’ Likewise, in act 5, scene 1, Buckingham cries, ‘‘Thus Margaret’s curse falls heavy on my neck.’’

Lord Mayor of London The Lord Mayor is the leader of the citizens of London. After the death of King Edward IV, Richard and Buckingham deceptively convince him that Richard deserves to become king.

Murderers The Two Murderers sent to dispose of Clarence manage to do so only after some hesitation resulting from moral qualms about the act.

Sir Richard Ratcliffe Ratcliffe provides crucial information regarding the activities of King Richard III’s enemies.

Queen Margaret

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Richard, Duke of Gloucester The younger brother of King Edward IV and George, Duke of Clarence, Richard later becomes King Richard III. The play’s opening couplet (‘‘Now is the winter of our discontent / Made glorious summer by this son of York’’) and the final line of act 5, scene 4 (‘‘A horse! A horse! My kingdom for a horse!’’) are probably the most famous lines in the play; appropriately, they are also the first and the last words that Richard speaks. Richard is the energizing force of the play and is responsible for most of its dark comedy, which usually occurs when he is mocking himself or ridiculing his victims. He has been called a machiavel—one who views politics as outside of morality and will use any means, however unscrupulous, to achieve political power— because of his ruthless drive for power. Almost as soon as he appears onstage he tells us that he is ‘‘determined to prove a villain’’ and mentions the traps he is setting against his own brothers. He describes himself as ‘‘deform’d, unfinish’d,’’ and so unpleasant to look at that dogs bark at him, and he blames his wickedness on his physical appearance. One scholar has noted that explicit connections were indeed drawn between external appearance and internal character in Shakespeare’s time. Richard does not announce his intention to become king until act 3, scene 1, but his plots and murders ever lead in that direction, and in act 4 he is finally crowned. A focus of critical debate has been whether Richard himself truly controls

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Antony Sher as Richard III and Penny Downie as Lady Anne in Act I, scene ii at the Royal Shakespeare Theatre, 1984 (Ó Donald Cooper/Photostage. Reproduced by permission)

events or whether he is simply a divine instrument meant to clear England of the corruption of civil war so that the country can begin afresh. In either case, toward the end of the play Richard has definitely lost control as well as his sense of humor; in act 5, scene 3, he notes, ‘‘I have not that alacrity of spirit / Nor cheer of mind that I was wont to have.’’ The night before battle, he is tormented by sleeplessness and haunted by the ghosts of those he has murdered. The following day he is killed in battle by Richmond. A frequent topic of discussion is the apparent contradiction between Richard’s monstrous behavior and his continuing attractiveness to audiences. One argument suggests that he is not meant to be a realistic character but a melodramatic, comic villain whose extreme antics lighten the mood of what would otherwise be an unendurably morbid play. A somewhat different view holds that Richard’s witty dialogue and his ability to mock himself lead audiences to disassociate him from the many murders that he orders but does not himself commit; the murders

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that he did commit occur before the action of Richard III. It has also been argued that—with the exception of the two young princes—Richard’s victims are not as innocent as they seem but are instead hypocrites who know they are being used and who try unsuccessfully to use Richard. According to this view, Richard is simply more clever than anyone else in the play at getting what he wants.

Richard, Duke of York The younger son of King Edward IV and thus second in line to the throne when his father dies, York demonstrates a certain cleverness in act 2, scene 4, and parries wits with Richard in act 3, scene 1. He is imprisoned in the Tower along with his elder brother by their ambitious uncle Richard, who later has them murdered.

Earl Rivers Rivers is Queen Elizabeth’s brother; Richard has him assassinated.

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Scrivener In discussing the indictment of Hastings that he copied, the scrivener demonstrates how poorly Richard is disguising his foul deeds.

Lord Stanley, Earl of Derby Stanley is the Earl of Richmond’s stepfather. Stanley demonstrates loyalty to Richard but is distrusted by him because he is related to the primary threat to Richard’s rule. As king, Richard takes Stanley’s son George as hostage, hoping to ensure that Stanley will not dare to fight on Richmond’s side. Stanley manages to prevent Richard from realizing that he is indeed supporting his stepson until just before the battle, when Richard has no time to have Stanley’s son executed.

Sir James Tyrrel Tyrrel is recruited by Richard to arrange for the murder of the two young heirs of Edward IV. His brief soliloquy on that heinous crime serves to highlight Richard’s evil.

Sir Christopher Urswick Urswick is a chaplain who sends a letter to Richmond on behalf of Stanley. He also informs Stanley of other supporters of Richmond.

Duchess of York The Duchess of York is the mother of King Edward IV, of George, Duke of Clarence, and of Richard. She mourns the deaths of King Edward and Clarence and curses Richard for his wickedness. After long inhabiting a passive role, commenting only offhand on her low opinion of the youngest of her three sons, she manages to vehemently curse Richard after gaining inspiration from Margaret.

THEMES Succession In act 2, scene 3, of Richard III, a group of English citizens worries over what will become of the nation now that King Edward IV has died and his heir, Edward, Prince of Wales, is still a child. The citizens know that a Protector will be appointed to govern for Prince Edward until he is old enough to rule by himself. They also know that the child’s uncles are vying with one another to be Protector, and the citizens are frightened

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that the inevitable power struggle will throw the country into turmoil. They have already endured a number of chaotic years in the course of the Wars of the Roses, as the Houses of York and Lancaster have fought back and forth for England’s throne, and the citizens of England long for peace and order. Instead, of course, they get Richard. The question of succession in English law, or the order—based on birth or marriage—by which a person lawfully and rightfully becomes monarch, was of much concern to the citizens of England during Shakespeare’s time since their aging queen, Elizabeth I, was unmarried and had no heirs. Although Elizabeth was England’s lawful queen, she had already weathered several challenges to her power, including those of Mary, Queen of Scots, a relative whom Elizabeth finally saw executed in 1587, and Philip II of Spain, who had sent his Armada in 1588 in hopes of unseating her. Thus, a play about an ambitious relative of a king who was determined to become king himself was very relevant to Shakespeare’s audience. Richard knows that he will in truth be a usurper: he will become king through illegal deeds and knows that if he does not at least appear to be England’s lawful ruler, then he will suffer endless challenges to his power. The string of murders that Richard commits and orders before and after he becomes king can be seen as attempts to legitimize his rule by eliminating others with claims to the throne. Of the three brothers—King Edward IV; George, Duke of Clarence; and Richard, Duke of Gloucester— Richard is the youngest of the king’s brothers and farthest from succession to the crown. Clarence is before him and might become the Protector of Edward’s son and heir, the Prince of Wales, when King Edward dies. Thus, when King Edward falls seriously ill, Richard plots to have Clarence killed, removing in one stroke a possible Protector and a potential claimant to the throne. Richard’s next move is to make certain that he alone becomes Protector to his nephew, the Prince of Wales. He eliminates Rivers, who is the prince’s uncle on his mother’s side, and also murders Lord Grey, the prince’s halfbrother. (The prince’s remaining half-brother, the Marquis of Dorset, escapes to join the Earl of Richmond.) Once Richard becomes the unchallenged Protector, he can more easily seize

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the throne for himself. He murders Hastings after that nobleman swears to remain loyal to Prince Edward’s right to the throne. By suggesting that the Prince of Wales and his younger brother, the Duke of York, are illegitimate and not true sons of Edward IV, and are therefore unqualified for succession, Richard and Buckingham convince the citizens that Richard is the only one left who, by lineage and virtue, deserves to be king. Even after Richard becomes king, he knows that his power is vulnerable to challenge as long as the Prince of Wales and the Duke of York remain alive; although imprisoned and hidden from sight, these two rightful heirs to King Edward’s throne could still serve as a rallying point for dissatisfied or ambitious subjects. So Richard adds the two young princes to his list of victims; still, he does not feel secure. He imprisons Clarence’s son because that child has a better claim to the throne than he, and he marries off Clarence’s daughter to a commoner to destroy any possibility of royal claimants coming from that blood line. Finally, Richard hears that his enemy the Lancastrian Earl of Richmond intends to marry Edward IV’s daughter Elizabeth and thus unite the royal families of York and Lancaster. Richard hopes to prevent this union and strengthen his own claim to the throne by marrying King Edward’s daughter himself, which is why he tries to persuade Queen Elizabeth to consent to such a marriage. Richard’s attempts to legitimize his power through bloodshed end when he is killed in battle by the Earl of Richmond, who begins a new line of succession—the Tudors—and is crowned Henry VII.

Retributive Justice Widespread in Shakespeare’s era was the idea that the members of the court of King Edward IV, inhabiting their positions of power and advantage only as a result of earlier bloodshed and sin, met their downfall as a result of divinely ordained retributive justice—justice that paid them back for what they had done. Based on the prominent references to that notion in Richard III, especially as represented in the curses issued by Margaret. E. M. Y. Tillyard goes as far as to assert, ‘‘The play’s main end is to show the working out of God’s will in English history.’’ Coppe´lia Kahn, in turn, descriptively notes, ‘‘Critics have often interpreted Richard III as the lump of chaos born of England’s chaos, the

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incarnation of its untrammeled slaughter of sons, brothers, fathers.’’ Indeed, Shakespeare calls much attention to the notion of God dispensing justice among those who have committed crimes or misdeeds. In his essay, ‘‘Angel with Horns,’’ A. P. Rossiter points out that Raphael Holinshed, the author of one of Shakespeare’s sources, makes reference to the notion of such justice and that the playwright then incorporated that notion throughout Richard III. In terms of the scenes, several are devoted explicitly to lamentations over those lost, with Margaret offering Queen Elizabeth this conclusion in act 4, scene 4: ‘‘Thus hath the course of justice whirled about / And left thee but a very prey to time.’’ In terms of the language, Shakespeare often has characters repeating lines or responding to each other in backand-forth patterns, suggesting what Rossiter dubs a ‘‘tennis-court game of rhetoric’’ that reflects the equality of payback. Above all, Rossiter highlights ‘‘the simple overriding principle derived from the Tudor historians: that England rests under a chronic curse—the curse of faction, civil dissension, and fundamental anarchy, resulting from the deposition and murder of the Lord’s Anointed (Richard II) and the usurpation of the house of Lancaster.’’ This curse, which issued forth originally from the mouth of Richard II and is later echoed in Richard III by Queen Margaret, is of course ultimately enacted by God alone. Perhaps ironically, then, God proves to enact these curses through the character of Richard III. Regarding Richard’s paradoxical status, Rossiter concludes, He is not only this demon incarnate, he is in effect God’s agent in a predetermined plan of divine retribution: the ‘‘scourge of God.’’ Now by Tudor-Christian historical principles, this plan is right. Thus, in a real sense, Richard is a king who ‘‘can do no wrong’’; for in the pattern of the justice of divine retribution on the wicked, he functions as an avenging angel.

Richard’s evil, then, was in a sense ‘‘good.’’ Shakespeare seems to have also weighted the notion of retributive justice by not including certain scenes that might have served to inspire greater sympathy in the audience. August Wilhelm von Schlegel suggests, ‘‘Shakespeare intended that terror rather than compassion should prevail throughout this tragedy: he has rather avoided than sought the pathetic scenes which he had at command.’’ Schlegel points out that the death of Clarence alone is depicted onstage, with the deaths

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TOPICS FOR FURTHER STUDY 





King Richard III was one of the most ruthless politicians ever to grace England’s royal throne, ordering numerous murders to ensure that no one could be considered to have a more legitimate claim to the throne than himself. In modern American politics, far different underhanded tactics are used by politicians to secure power. Write an essay on the American political tradition of mudslinging. Compare this tactic with the tactics used by Richard in moral terms, providing specific recent examples of mudslinging or other such competitive tactics that might be classified as immoral. As a Shakespearean villain and protagonist, Richard III has often been compared to Macbeth. Read Macbeth and write an essay in which you compare and contrast the two title characters. At least one critic has wondered why Shakespeare chose not to include the historical scene in which the Cardinal persuades Queen Elizabeth to release her son Richard, the Duke of York, from sanctuary (this occurs offstage in act 3, scene 1). Write a report on the concept of sanctuary in

of Anne and the young princes only mentioned; meanwhile, characters such as Hastings, Buckingham, and Rivers are not presented in ways that might inspire the audience to pity them. The overall effect, then, is that the audience is fairly indifferent, if not content, when many of these characters are eliminated; as such, the audience more readily agrees with the notion that these characters are being punished by God for their sins and for the sins of their forebears. Schlegel concludes, ‘‘Shakespeare has most accurately observed poetical justice in the genuine sense of the word, that is, as signifying the revelation of an invisible blessing or curse which hangs over human sentiments and actions.’’

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medieval law, discussing whether you believe the Cardinal should or should not have acted as ordered by Buckingham in not truly recognizing York’s right to sanctuary. 

Identify a modern film in which the villain is not only the center of attention but also is depicted in a way that solicits the viewer’s sympathy. In an essay, analyze the ways in which the director, writer, and actor in this film humanize the villain, comparing their methods with the theatrical strategies used by Shakespeare in Richard III. (If possible, also view a filmed version of Richard III and address the methods used by the actor playing the title character in your discussion.)



The idea of retributive justice is still invoked in modern times. Write an essay about recent religious leaders who have claimed that events or occurrences signaled punishment from God. Analyze these leaders’ motivations for making such claims and discuss reactions among various segments of the public. (For example, certain figures called the Indian Ocean tsunami of 2004 a retributive act of God.)

STYLE Dark Comedy A persistent thread of comedy runs through Richard III. Since the play is mostly about treachery and vengeance, the comedy it contains is appropriately dark, consisting of dramatic irony as well as parody. On the other hand, this comedy can be partly understood as intended to brighten the somber tone of that period of history. William E. Sheriff proposes that Shakespeare perhaps wished to enhance the last entry in his first group of four history plays from the plays of his competitors: ‘‘A cold-blooded approach to the throne, with no humor in Richard’s character

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and, as a result, less interest, would have repeated the pattern of so many of the contemporary history plays.’’ Some of Richard’s humor comes from his self-ridicule, but much of it comes when he mocks the confidence that others mistakenly place in him. Dramatic irony occurs when the audience understands the real significance of a character’s words or actions but the character or those around him or her do not. Richard’s sympathetic comments to his brother Clarence as he is being taken to prison constitute dramatic irony because the audience knows from Richard’s opening soliloquy that he is responsible for Clarence’s being jailed. Dramatic irony occurs again in act 3, scene 2, when Catesby suggests that Richard should be crowned king in lieu of the Prince of Wales, and Hastings declares: ‘‘I’ll have this crown of mine cut from my shoulders / Before I’ll see the crown so foul misplac’d.’’ We already know from Richard’s conversation with Buckingham one scene earlier that Hastings will indeed lose his head if he opposes Richard. Both of these incidents are intended to make the audience smile, if perhaps grimly, at Richard’s trickery and his victims’ naı¨ vete´. Parody is the use of exaggerated imitation to ridicule someone or something that was meant to be taken seriously. Richard mocks both himself and Anne when he parodies a preening lover in act 1, after Anne—against all odds—accepts his ring: ‘‘I’ll be at charges for a looking-glass, / And entertain a score or two of tailors / To study fashions to adorn my body.’’ Part of the humor comes from Richard’s ability to laugh at himself. Richard’s most triumphant parody occurs when he fools the citizens of London into petitioning him to be their king. By imitating a holy man (which he most certainly is not) and appearing reluctant to accept the crown, Richard succeeds in getting the power he wants.

The Ultimate Actor Richard’s character is so central to Richard III that many commentators believe that the play in production is entirely dependent on that one role. For a play to revolve around a single role, that role must perhaps feature the utmost degree of dramatic complexity—and thus demand the utmost theatrical expertise. As quoted by Howard Staunton in The Complete Illustrated Shakespeare, Nathan Drake remarks of Richard,

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While to the explorer of the human mind he affords, by his penetration and address, a subject of peculiar interest and delight, he offers to the practised performer a study well calculated to call forth his fullest and finest exertions. He, therefore, whose histrionic powers are adequate to the just exhibition of this character, may be said to have attained the highest honours of his profession.

Indeed, in terms of character, Richard himself can be understood as first and foremost an impeccable actor. A. P. Rossiter offers perhaps the most comprehensive discussion on Richard’s theatricality. He first makes note of ‘‘the appeal of the actor: the talented being who can assume every mood and passion at will, at all events to the extent of making others believe in it.’’ He then points out why the machinations of Richard, however wicked, prove so riveting: ‘‘The specific interest here is the power that would be in the hands of an actor consummate enough to make (quite literally) ‘all the world a stage’ and to work on humanity by the perfect simulation of every feeling.’’ The art of self-presentation, in fact, might be considered the particular realm of both the actor and the politician. Richard has so fine-tuned his ability to present himself that he is able to deceive and outmaneuver all others likewise seeking to claw their way to power. The notion of the ultimate actor is closely related to the notion of the Superman, elaborated most extensively by the nineteenth-century German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche. Nietzsche contended that the human being with complete control over his emotions and complete harnessing of his ‘‘will to power’’ could in effect out-evolve the rest of humanity, becoming a ‘‘Superman.’’ Rossiter notes that Shakespeare, who predated Nietzsche by two hundred years, would have been exposed to the similar concepts of the Italian political theorist Niccolo` Machiavelli in The Prince. Rossiter notes that Machiavelli’s Prince and Shakespeare’s Richard seek to embody the same quality: ‘‘a lifelong, unremitting vigilance in relentless simulation and impenetrable deception.’’ Rossiter then invokes the language of Nietzsche, asserting, ‘‘There, precisely, lies the super-humanity of the Superman. The will-topower is shorn of its effective power without it. He is an artist in evil.’’ Richard, then, despite his ultimate downfall, was perhaps one of the greatest artists in superhumanity in history.

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Curses and Prophecies Language is a potent weapon in Richard III, particularly as a source of retribution. Prophecies and curses are delivered and fulfilled, while oaths that are sworn but later broken bring about disaster. Curses, prophecies, and false or imprudent oaths occur so frequently and are so powerful that they should be understood as having a profound effect on the play’s outcome. As early as act 1, scene 3, Margaret curses virtually every principal character in the play. She prays for the death of King Edward as well as his heirs and for a life of misery for Queen Elizabeth. She curses Hastings and Rivers with early death, Richard with sleepless nights and ruin. She finishes by prophesying that Buckingham will be betrayed by Richard: ‘‘O Buckingham, take heed of yonder dog! / Look when he fawns, he bites; and when he bites / His venom tooth will rankle to the death.’’ By the end of the play, nearly all of Margaret’s predictions and curses have been fulfilled. Ironically, many of the characters bring destruction upon themselves by reinforcing Margaret’s curses with their own false oaths and selfcurses. For example, in act 4, scene 4, Richard swears to Queen Elizabeth that he loves her daughter, and he supports this oath with a selfcurse that is meant to take effect if his oath proves false: ‘‘God and fortune, bar me happy hours! / Day, yield me not thy light, nor, night, thy rest!’’ Richard’s oath is indeed false: he does not love Elizabeth’s daughter but hopes to marry her to consolidate his power. His self-curse—ruin and sleepless nights—is identical to Margaret’s curse in act 1, and by the end of the play, it is fulfilled.

HISTORICAL CONTEXT Man or Monster? The depiction of Richard III is without question the centerpiece of the play bearing his name, and in turn, the historical accuracy of that depiction— and whether Shakespeare actually sought to portray Richard accurately—has been much discussed. On this topic, John Julius Norwich observes, ‘‘King Richard III, the only English ruler since the Norman Conquest to have been killed in battle, is also the only one to have become a legend. That legend, due first to Sir Thomas More and then to Shakespeare, is that of the lame and twisted hunchback whose misshapen

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body reflects the evil heart within it.’’ One problem is that the printing press was only just coming into use during Richard’s lifetime, so historical records from his era are rare and hard to verify. The ultimate source of most of the information used by Shakespeare—More’s Historie of King Richard the Thirde—was written by a Tudor historian who was quite explicitly describing events from the point of view of Henry VII, the sovereign he was serving. As a result, some modern historians have conjectured that More portrayed Richard with emphasized if not exaggerated monstrosity. Robert Ornstein asserts that More describes Richard ‘‘as an explorer might describe a rare and horrifying species of poisonous snake. Never allowing his reader to savor Richard’s histrionic performances, More makes each of Richard’s successes an occasion for moral outrage, disgust, and scorn.’’ Others have suggested that More demonstrated ample integrity both in other works and throughout his life, and that there is insufficient grounds for questioning his honesty with regard to his portrait of Richard. Norwich points out that More is ‘‘a formally canonized saint’’ in contending, ‘‘Nothing that we know of his character suggests that he would have . . . deliberately written what he knew in his heart to be untrue.’’ Ultimately, no scholarly authority can determine with certainty the degree to which More was faithfully representing the villainy of Richard III. Regardless of the accuracy of More’s portrayal, Shakespeare chooses not to portray Richard as an utter monster. He also endows him with a variety of appealing characteristics. Ornstein declares that what Shakespeare does ‘‘is make Richard’s perversity credible and, more than that, enjoyable, for the heartless murderer More depicts becomes in Shakespeare’s play a humorist and a comedian so cheeky, frank, and enthusiastic in his wickedness that most of his betters seem unpardonably dishonest and dreary.’’ Indeed, much of Richard’s appeal comes from his sense of humor, a trait perhaps prized above all others by some entertainment-seeking audiences. William E. Sheriff asserts that, in this respect, the playwright perhaps sees Richard’s comic depth and intelligence as necessities: ‘‘Shakespeare realized we had to put up with this fellow until we had him seated on the throne in order for the play to sustain interest.’’ That is, if Richard had been portrayed as a mere caricature of a murderous

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COMPARE & CONTRAST 

1470s: The notion that God will exact revenge on those who participated in the usurping of King Richard II’s throne is in the forefront of the minds of those who are yet suffering through the Wars of the Roses. 1590s: Citizens of Elizabethan England trust that with the retributive justice brought about by King Richard III, peace may be likely to hold—but rebellions must still occasionally be put down. Today:: Wars and disasters are still invoked by some religious leaders as evidence that God is displeased with humankind.



1470s: With written records scarce, people in positions of power can easily manipulate public perceptions of the truth by determining what information is made available. 1590s: Written records are more available, making the falsification of historical events more difficult—but far from impossible.

Today: While journalists and historians usually manage to ensure that people are made aware of historical truths, at least in more open societies, people in powerful political positions still have opportunities to manipulate public perceptions for their own ends. 

1470s: Murders are committed and executions are ordered with fair regularity by both those who aspire to, and those who hold, England’s royal throne. 1590s: Queen Elizabeth has maintained her reign for some thirty years, having survived several uprisings by Catholics looking to install her cousin, Mary, Queen of Scots— who is eventually executed. Today: The last assassination of an American president was that of John F. Kennedy in 1963; among modern politicians, underhanded tactics are generally limited to slanderous mudslinging.

villain, the play’s central role might have lacked the desired level of psychological and dramatic tension.

this major piece of the plot, Shakespeare does portray Richard as more evil than history indicates he was, if not as more monstrous.

Still, Shakespeare walks a fine line in his effort not to make Richard too likable. Norwich points out that the playwright leaves the audience understanding that Richard is responsible for Clarence’s imprisonment and death. In his opening soliloquy, Richard boasts about how he had set Edward and Clarence at odds with each other, thus, in a sense, claiming responsibility for Clarence’s arrest. Later, Richard is shown giving orders to the Murderers, whom he calls ‘‘my executioners,’’ and the two subsequently declare that their ‘‘reward’’ will come from ‘‘the Duke of Gloucester’s purse’’ and perform their deed uncertainly and as if illicitly. However, in reality, Clarence fully earned his detention in the Tower by, among other missteps, suggesting that Edward was illegitimate, and Edward did consequently condemn him to death. With respect to

Sheriff, meanwhile, posits that even if Shakespeare softened Richard’s monstrosity overall, he made an artistic decision to lessen Richard’s appeal toward the end of the play, as demonstrated by his failure to sway Queen Elizabeth in act 4, scene 4, with his usual conversational ruses. Sheriff states of the playwright,

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It is my opinion that he wished to balance the presentation of his characterization of Richard; that is, whereas he first convinced us of the powers of this monstrous comedian, he now wishes to destroy that image in order that the entire concept of Richard’s character can be shattered on Bosworth Field without regret on the part of the spectator. The qualities we found fascinating in Richard, his brilliant wit, his corrupt sense of humor, his ability to stand outside the scene and watch himself, are missing in his

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encounter with Queen Elizabeth, and we are in this manner prepared for the concluding act of the play.

In other words, as a prelude to his well-deserved death, Shakespeare’s Richard can be understood to demote himself from mesmerizing monster to a merely villainous man.

CRITICAL OVERVIEW Overwhelmingly, to be sure, critical attention to Richard III has focused on the title character. Indeed, as Mark Eccles notes, Richard speaks over a third of the plays’ lines and appears in fourteen of twenty-five scenes—with five of his ten soliloquies occurring in the first three scenes—such that ‘‘his shadow hangs over the rest.’’ Thus, the play as a total creation merits judgment based on the single portrait of King Richard III. In that Richard III began life in performance, then, the actors who have inhabited the character of Richard deserve discussion in the context of critical opinion. Indeed, at the turn of the nineteenth century, Nathan Drake asserted that the play had gained renown largely by virtue of the portrayals of the title character: ‘‘The popularity of [Richard III], notwithstanding the moral enormity of its hero, may be readily accounted for, when we recollect that, the versatile and consummate hypocrisy of the tyrant has been embodied by the talents of such masterly performers as Garrick, Kemble, Cooke, and Kean.’’ Regarding those men—all of whom graced the stage in the latter half of the eighteenth century or the beginning of the nineteenth—Eccles confirms that David Garrick was ‘‘the most brilliant actor of his time’’; John Philip Kemble, as Richard, was ‘‘stately and eloquent’’; and George Frederick Cooke made the villain ‘‘diabolical.’’ Eccles offers especial praise for Edmund Kean, who distinguished himself as Richard in London beginning in 1814. After citing Samuel Taylor Coleridge, who said that watching Kean was like ‘‘reading Shakespeare by flashes of lightning,’’ and John Keats, who lauded the actor’s ‘‘intense power of anatomizing the passions,’’ Eccles offers his own assessment: ‘‘The play gave Kean chances to display the whole range of his virtuosity: his violent passions, his pantherlike gaiety, his energy and power. In the last act he held his audience

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spellbound. His awakening from his nightmare sent a shudder of terror through the spectators.’’ Shakespeare is understood to have had Richard Burbage, one of the leading actors in his own company, in mind when he conceived of the role of King Richard III—and if the playwright had not had access to Burbage’s talent, he might have written that role quite differently. Regarding the role itself, A. P. Rossiter finds Richard to be ‘‘a huge triumphant stage personality, an early old masterpiece of the art of rhetorical stage writing, a monstrous being incredible in any sober, historical scheme of things.’’ Similarly, Morton J. Frisch declares, Shakespeare has performed the extraordinary feat of presenting the serpentine wisdom of the tyrannic soul in such a way that it cannot fail to excite our sensibilities. In the satisfaction we receive in contemplating the character of Richard, in the various situations in which Shakespeare has shown him, it is almost as if we lost sight of the cold-blooded, calculating tyrant whose ugly soul is overshadowed and even to some extent obscured by the marvelous play of his intellect.

In turn, William E. Sheriff praises the portrayal of Richard for its prodigious fusion of tragedy and comedy: ‘‘As the dramatist developed in his handling of the English history play genre, he obviously became more adept at using comic elements to enrich his work. He dared to portray his most wicked king as his most comic king.’’ Rossiter, too, highlights Richard’s comedic traits in the context of his theatricality: ‘‘Through his prowess as actor and his embodiment of the comic Vice and impish-to-fiendish humor, he offers the false as more attractive than the true (the actor’s function), and the ugly and evil as admirable and amusing (the clown’s game of value reversals).’’ Indeed, from almost every imaginable perspective, critics have praised and wondered at the extraordinary, sometimes paradoxical complexity of Shakespeare’s King Richard III. The play Richard III is often considered in its context in Shakespeare’s First Tetralogy, where it is the closing entry, following the three parts of Henry VI. August Wilhelm von Schlegel, quoted by Howard Staunton in The Complete Illustrated Shakespeare, asserts that in terms of tone and content, the four do function together as a unified work. Comparing the quality of Henry VI, Part Three and Richard III, E. M. W. Tillyard gives the latter qualified praise: ‘‘In style the play is

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better sustained than its predecessor. There is less undifferentiated stuff, and the finest pieces of writing (as distinguished from the finest scenes) are more dramatic.’’ Tillyard speaks less enthusiastically about the overall length and pace of the play in light of Shakespeare’s artistic endurance, contending, ‘‘Richard’s plotting with Buckingham and his acquisition of the throne though strongly organized must have tired Shakespeare. There are even signs of strain in the last stage of the process when Richard appears between the two bishops; the verse droops somewhat. After this . . . the vitality flags, except in patches.’’ Other commentators offer similar criticism of minor or peripheral aspects of the play. Rossiter notes that certain scenes, like the collective lamentation of Queens Margaret and Elizabeth and the Duchess of York, constitute such contrived ‘‘quasi-realistic costume-play stuff’’ that ‘‘even editors have found the proceedings absurd.’’ Overall, however, critics have expressed great appreciation for this fairly early Shakespearean history.

CRITICISM James L. Calderwood Calderwood provides an overview of Richard III’s attitude toward death, noting that the title character perceives the deaths of those around him not as ‘‘real deaths’’ but as ‘‘merely the removal of impediments.’’ In this cavalier attitude toward death, the critic argues, Shakespeare himself is implicit, since his aim with the tragedy is to see that such deaths happen. . . . Richard’s mockery of murder at the end of 1 Henry VI is continued throughout Richard III. From his impatient point of view, brothers, lord, dukes, and princes are merely so much material stuff, so many annoying tubs of guts blocking his path to the crown; their deaths are not real deaths, merely the removal of impediments. And in some degree we share his attitude. Richard seduces us as he seduces Lady Anne, and by the same device—by announcing his desire. He has, he tells us, a goal to achieve, a crown to gain, and plots to gain it by. By keeping us informed of Richard’s plots Shakespeare arouses in us the desire for form, for the completion of an aesthetic pattern. ‘‘Form,’’ Kenneth Burke said years ago, in what is still the best definition we have of the elusive concept, ‘‘is

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the creation of an appetite in the mind of the auditor, and the adequate satisfying of that appetite.’’ When Macbeth speaks of how ‘‘withered murder’’ moves ‘‘towards his design’’ like a ghost, his phrasing echoes the sense of aesthetic form implicit in the Witches’ prophecies and Macbeth’s wicked imaginings on the heath, both of which forecast his movement throughout the play toward the completion of murderous designs. Whatever or whoever frustrates this teleology frustrates us as well as the hero, and must be gotten rid of if the proper end is to be attained. Aaron, Iago, Edmund, and Macbeth all make us long perversely for the successful prosecution of forbidden acts. In a larger sense, Shakespeare the tragic dramatist plays as villainous a role outside his plays as his Machiavellian plotters do within them. He too has murderous desires and designs. Tragedy, after all, is a killing kind of play, and it is the dramatist’s dark business to see that this killing takes place, to try conclusions. Hence, like Richard III and the others, he establishes an appetite in us for a formal completion not just of the villains’ plots but of his own tragic plot, whether there are villains or no. He creates in us an appetite for death the satisfaction of which compensates us for the pity and fear we have been made to suffer. Yet death is not truly death when it is reduced to playing a culminating part in the plot, a part we expect it to play and, in our aesthetic perversity, want it to play. Death in tragedy is denied, demeaned, and diverted. It is also dignified beyond its due. To be touched with a poisoned foil like Hamlet or stabbed by one’s own dagger like Othello is not the same thing as coughing and retching one’s way to the grave like Keats. Most deaths are ugly, pathetic events, and Shakespeare must have seen his share of them in bodies tettered by the pox, made noseless by syphilis, or festering blackly from the plague. Tragic death transcends all of this. When the Player in Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead speaks well of histrionic killings and dyings, Guildenstern is indignant: Actors! The mechanics of cheap melodrama! That isn’t death! (More quietly.) You scream and choke and sink to your knees, but it doesn’t bring death home to any one—it doesn’t catch them unawares and start the whisper in their skulls that says—‘‘One day you are going to die.’’ (He straightens up.) You die so many times; how can you expect them to believe in your death?

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IN RICHARD III, FOUR WIDOWS WALK THE

WHAT DO I READ NEXT?

STAGE: MARGARET, ELIZABETH, THE DUCHESS OF YORK, AND ANNE. . . . THEY LEARN THAT THEIR HUSBANDS WERE NOT ONLY THE SOURCE OF THEIR POWER, BUT

Christopher Marlowe’s Tamburlaine the Great, Parts I and II (1590) retells the story of a Mongol warrior who, like Richard, uses deception to rise to power and eventually meets his downfall.  John Milton’s epic poem Paradise Lost (1667) features the character of Satan, to whom Shakespeare’s Richard has been compared. 



In her novel The Daughter of Time (1951), featuring a modern British detective who decides to investigate Richard’s crimes, mystery writer Josephine Tey offers a sympathetically revised portrait of Richard III.



Desmond Seward offers a historical account of the life of this play’s main character in the biographical Richard III: England’s Black Legend (1982).

To which the Player replies ‘‘On the contrary, it’s the only death they do believe.’’ Both are right. Theatrical death is the only death they believe, because it lends an aura of vitality and excitement to the drab deaths outside the theater that they dare not believe in because to do so sets off those fatal whispers in the skull. From this standpoint theater itself becomes an immortality system, not merely because it sands the rough edges from death but because it intensifies and glamorizes all human behavior, superimposing on life a grander life replete with grander deaths. Source: James L. Calderwood, ‘‘Tragedy and Death,’’ in Shakespeare and the Denial of Death, University of Massachusetts Press, 1987, pp. 133–35.

Irene G. Dash In her examination of the powerlessness of women in Richard III, Dash focuses primarily upon Margaret, Anne, and Elizabeth. She describes Margaret as ‘‘dynamic,’’ remarking also that she

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WORSE STILL, OF THEIR IDENTITY.’’

is the least conventional of the three women and the character most often left out of productions of the play. Dash describes Anne, by contrast, as more compliant and more typically ‘‘feminine’’ in her obedience to Richard. Finally, she asserts that Elizabeth, who at first seems somewhat lackluster, grows more complex in Act IV, after Richard has murdered her young sons and she has asked Margaret to teach her how to curse her enemies. At this point, Dash compares the two wooing scenes, observing that where Anne falls victim to Richard’s clever words, the more experienced Elizabeth turns the tables on him. In Richard III, four widows walk the stage: Margaret, Elizabeth, the Duchess of York, and Anne. If women are confused by the meaning of power when they are young, being wooed or acting as wives to men of power, they realistically discover its meaning when they become widows. They learn that their husbands were not only the source of their power, but worse still, of their identity. How does a woman cope with this discovery, this becoming a nonperson? Shakespeare offers four versions in Richard III, from the simple acceptance of her status by the Duchess of York to the anxious search for new patterns by Elizabeth, who first entered this tetralogy when, as a widow suing for rights to her husband’s lands, she discovered her powerlessness for the first time. Saved by her wit and beauty, she then moved from powerlessness to power. Like Margaret earlier, she became a queen and the mother of princes. When, in Richard III, the pattern repeats itself, Elizabeth seeks more substantial answers. Her experience continues to mirror Margaret’s despite deviations. Elizabeth’s husband, instead of being murdered by Richard, dies, his illness aggravated by Richard’s histrionics. Instead of losing one son and heir to the throne,

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A scene from the 1995 film Richard III, with Ian McKellen, Annette Bening, and Maggie Smith (Reproduced by permission of The Picture Desk, Inc.)

she loses two. Instead of being childless at the end of the play, she remains a mother with surviving children. Instead of being a widow of a defeated monarch, she is widow of a man who was in power. But it little matters. Like Margaret, Elizabeth too loses power, discovering the strength of the patriarchal system. Finally, near the play’s close, she seeks alternatives. Shakespeare offers a tentative glimpse at women supporting women, women relying on women, women bonding— even if in bitterness—with women. To do this, the dramatist alters history and creates one of the most interesting studies in the play—he retains Margaret. Historically, she never returned to England after the deaths of her son and husband. Moreover, she died before the time of the action of this play. According to the chronicles, she roamed the French court, a woman in mourning for the rest of her life: And where in the beginning of her tyme, she lyved like a Quene, in the middel she ruled like an empresse, toward thende she was vexed with troble, never quyet nor in peace, & in her very extreme age she passed her dayes in Fraunce, more lyke a death then a lyfe, languishyng and

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mornyng in continuall sorowe, not so much for her selfe and her husbande, whose ages were almost consumed and worne, but for the losse of prince Edward her sonne (whome she and her husband thought to leve, both overlyver of their progeny, and also of their kyngdome) to whome in this lyfe nothyng could be either more displeasant or grevous.

Shakespeare not only brings her back to England but gives her an important role in the play. She acts as narrative voice; she is seer and sibyl [a female prophet], predicting the doom of those responsible for the deaths of her son and husband; but she is also a dynamic woman, an anomalous character, roaming the palace of a rival monarch, expressing her opinions in positive language, sneering at York’s unattractive progeny who now control power. Having lost all, she fears no one. Margaret, who weaves in and out of this tetralogy [Henry VI, parts 1–3, and Richard III], the only woman character whose growth we observe from youth to old age, may also have challenged Shakespeare as a creative artist. Knowing that she walked through the court in

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France, a person in constant mourning, he might have wanted to project this image on the stage. Would such a woman have learned anything? Would she have grown? How might she have handled life, alone, in a hostile environment? Finally, has she made any breakthrough in selfknowledge; did she learn anything about herself as a woman? Before she enters, Shakespeare introduces her principal antagonist, Richard, the title character. He defines the power and powerlessness of women in the first scene of Richard III. Introduced in soliloquy, he confides his plans to reach the throne despite the mass of relatives standing between him and his objective. ‘‘I am determined to prove a villain’’ (I.i.30), he proclaims, baring his plot to frame his brother Clarence. When the latter enters, en route to prison, Richard immediately blames a woman for Clarence’s present fate. ‘‘Why, this it is, when men are rul’d by women’’ (62), Richard asserts, implying Queen Elizabeth’s evil influence on Edward. Misogyny runs wild, for Clarence easily agrees, adding Mistress Shore’s name to those who ‘‘rule’’ the King. Before the scene closes, a third woman is mentioned. Richard, again in soliloquy, admits, . . . I’ll marry Warwick’s youngest daughter. What though I kill’d her husband and her father? The readiest way to make the wench amends Is to become her husband and her father. (I.i.153–56) Moments later Anne, the play’s third widow, walks on following the coffin of King Henry, her father-in-law, and taking it to burial. Asking the pall bearers to ‘‘set down’’ their ‘‘honorable load’’ (I.ii.i), Anne delivers a long set speech of mourning explicitly cursing the murderer, Richard. She then orders the pall-bearers to resume the trek to the place of burial. Richard, unobserved, interferes, countermanding her order. ‘‘Stay, you that bear the corse, and set it down’’ (33). At their attempt to continue, Richard threatens with his sword. They obey. Graphically, this scene illustrates Richard’s power and Anne’s powerlessness. Helpless to challenge him physically, she attempts to disarm him with words. She seeks to force her will. Scorn, hatred, vehemence, curses: all fall from her lips. Little anticipating the aim of his confrontation, she is astonished and completely bewildered when Richard offers marriage.

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Historically, Richard pursued Anne for two years before winning her. Shakespeare compresses this into one scene, choosing a moment when she is most confused and emotionally most unstable. In a long protracted courtship, their debates—her responses to his persistent claims— would have to be developed so that the many variables in personality could influence the decision. When compressed into a single scene, his duplicity and her confusion must be apparent at once. Some critics believe that the scene offers an opportunity to prove Richard’s extraordinary ability. More recently critics have become aware of the psychological vulnerability of a person at a time of emotional crisis such as the loss of a husband and a father-in-law. First Richard tries flattery, but Anne resists, assuring him that she would scratch her beauty with her nails (I.ii.126) if she thought it were the cause of the death of her husband or father-inlaw. Then Richard, the consummate actor, offers her his sword and ‘‘lays his breast open’’ for her to kill him. He challenges her in a style that she cannot fathom. Untrained in the use of the sword, unwilling to take a human life, Anne reacts as a normal human being might, especially someone who has not been initiated into the games of war and murder. Although Richard continues ‘‘Nay, do not pause: for I did kill King Henry— / But ’twas thy beauty that provoked me’’ (179–80), she drops the sword. But Richard’s words are really superfluous. All of her training as a woman assures him success. Men are trained to kill. Woman are not. Here, against a defenseless person, in a time of uncertain peace, to kill the brother of the King would be insanity as well as suicide. Richard then poses a false dichotomy for her: ‘‘Take up the sword again, or take up me’’ (I.ii.183). He leaves her no option; she must either kill him or accept him as her husband. Caught between suspicion and her training as a woman, Anne can do no more than say, ‘‘Arise, dissembler! Though I wish thy death, / I will not be thy executioner’’ (184–85). Still she does not acquiesce to marriage. The key interchange between them occurs moments later when Richard offers ‘‘Then bid me kill myself’’ (186) but refuses to accept her words, ‘‘I have already’’ (187). Instead, he then questions the honesty of her original intention. ‘‘That was in thy rage. / Speak it again’’ (187–88) he challenges, promising to kill himself for love. Anne’s agonized words, ‘‘I would I knew thy

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heart’’ (192) are spoken by many of the characters throughout the play. No one knows Richard’s ‘‘heart’’—his intention—until it is too late. For a woman being wooed, however, the price is particularly high—not friendship or allegiance, but marriage. Although Richard congratulates himself on his success—‘‘To take her in her heart’s extremest hate, / With curses in her mouth, tears in her eyes’’ (I.ii.231–32)—Shakespeare here creates a situation in which a manipulative liar has the best chance of success, a moment when his prey is most confused. Richard’s timing, audacity, overwhelming flattery, and histrionics with the sword are beyond Anne’s ability to cope. She belongs with such characters as Ophelia [from Shakespeare’s play Hamlet], who is conforming, obedient, docile, ‘‘feminine.’’ Historically, having resisted Richard for two years, she may have had more of the strength of Margaret or an Elizabeth. She may also have had as few options as they did, being sought by the persistent brother of the King. But rather than repeat a pattern already twice told, Shakespeare creates another type of woman, caught in a different situation, and reacting on a level not yet dramatized in this tetralogy. The man she must confront is the man who boasted in the previous play: Why, I can smile, and murther whiles I smile, ... Deceive more slily than Ulysses could, ... Change shapes with Proteus for advantages, ...

Can I do this, and cannot get a crown? Tut, were it farther off, I’ll pluck it down. (3 Henry VI, III.ii.182–95) Richard applies his abilities, skills, and techniques to convince Anne. Critics have been harsh in their evaluation of her. August W. Von Schlegel, the nineteenthcentury German scholar, writes that ‘‘Anne disappears without our learning anything further respecting her: in marrying the murderer of her husband she had shown a weakness almost incredible.’’ William Richardson, in the eighteenth century, concludes that ‘‘She is represented by Shakespeare of a mind altogether frivolous; incapable of deep affection; guided by no steady principles of virtue . . . ; the prey of vanity, which is her ruling passion.’’ As Richardson continues,

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he not only says that Richard understands her perfectly but that she is a character of ‘‘no rational or steady virtue, and consequently of no consistency of character.’’ He even suggests that it is ‘‘resentment, rather than grief, which she expresses.’’ Georg Gervinus, the nineteenthcentury German literary historian, offers a more balanced appraisal, however, when he writes, ‘‘We must take into account extraordinary degree of dissimulation, which deceives even experienced men,’’ nothing also how stereotypical a portrait Shakespeare creates in Anne by having her delight in saving ‘‘such a penitent.’’ Anne appears in only one other scene, and that without Richard. Now married, she hopes to visit her nephews—the heirs apparent—held in the tower by her husband. Unlike her historical prototype, she admits: Lo, ere I can repeat this curse again, Within so small a time, my woman’s heart Grossly grew captive to his honey words, And prov’d the subject of mine own soul’s curse. (IV.i.77–80) She is self-deprecating, and blames herself for her fate. Her conventionality is perhaps best testified to by the fact that she survives in all versions of the play. In Colley Cibber’s version, Richard even tries to tempt her to commit suicide. In a recent production at the Cort Theatre starring Al Pacino, she appears so cold, selfrighteous, and vindictive that audiences applaud Richard’s success. There, although the text that remains is Shakespeare’s, the cuts are reminiscent of Cibber’s popular eighteenth-century work. On the other hand, the one woman who most frequently disappears from productions is the one who challenges Richard, the least conventional woman—Margaret. Cibber set the pattern in 1700 when he eliminated her from his text. Since then, his version with its heavy emphasis on the male ‘‘star’’ role has seldom left the stage. But even when Shakespeare’s text is used, Margaret frequently disappears or loses most of her lines. For example, in a Phelps 1845 prompt-book, she no longer functions as an individual, cursing the many members of the court, but acts rather as a choral voice of doom. Very similar cutting appears in a 1964 typescript of the play. She is also absent from Laurence Olivier’s film version and from the Pacino 1979 production. Comparing the Cibber version

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with Shakespeare’s play, Arthur Colby Sprague writes that: the more obviously memorable episodes . . . have survived. . . . But Margaret is gone and Clarence and Hastings and Edward: the price paid for compactness was high. It is a version . . . which does best when it keeps to surfaces and shallows; an opportunist version, cunning, prosaic and vulgar.

Many productions of Richard III, like Olivier’s and Pacino’s mentioned above, follow Shakespeare’s text but also take their cues for cutting from Cibber. It is perhaps difficult for audiences to realize how deeply eighteenthcentury changes—perhaps because they reflect attitudes toward women that still exist—continue to intrude on, shape, and gently distort the text. Margaret’s absence necessarily affects the total impact of the play; her entrance, in Act I, scene iii, offers a welcome antidote to Richard’s swaggering triumph with Anne. Listening to Queen Elizabeth and Richard arguing, Margaret, once again, as she did so long ago in 1 Henry VI speaks in asides. This time, however, her asides are not the questions of a young virgin but the bitter comments of an old woman. She listens to the conversation of those in power. To Elizabeth’s ‘‘Small joy have I in being England’s Queen’’ (109), Margaret mutters to herself: And less’ned by that small, God I beseech him! Thy honor, state, and seat is due to me. (I.iii.110–11) At once we are reminded that Margaret is a deposed queen. We wonder at her presence in this court. Commenting on Richard’s words, but still speaking in aside, she exclaims: Hie thee to hell for shame, and leave this world, Thou cacodemon, there thy kingdom is. (142–43) Only the audience hears her; nevertheless, her lines establish her strange position. What is she doing at the court, this woman, so unafraid of Richard who, in asides, tells us of the murder of Henry in the tower and the killing of her son Edward? When she speaks aloud, Margaret pierces the false veneer of Richard, but also reveals antagonism for the woman who has made her a shadow, a nonbeing, the woman who is Queen. Although Richard reminds Margaret that she is ‘‘banished on pain of death’’ (166), she dismisses the threat, challenging him to enforce it. ‘‘I do find

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more pain in banishment / Than death can yield me here by my abode’’ (167–68). He then pursues another direction. Always aware of his audience, the people around him on the stage, he attacks Margaret for the murders of York and Rutland. As a result the squabbling members of the court unite against her. Aware of Richard’s technique, she taunts: What? were you snarling all before I came, ... And turn you all your hatred now on me? (187– 89)

She then curses each of them. Still wrestling with the patriarchal values she has absorbed, she first curses the Queen, her alter ego in this strange arrangement where kings are murdered to make way for kings but queens in number are permitted to survive. Listing the parallels between them, Margaret wishes the other woman a fate like her own: Though not by war, by surfeit die your king, As ours by murther, to make him a king! Edward thy son, that now is Prince of Wales, For Edward our son, that was Prince of Wales, Die in his youth by like untimely violence! (I.iii.196–200) She keeps returning to her role of mother. Long mayst thou live to wail thy children’s death, And see another, as I see thee now, Deck’d in thy rights as thou art stall’d in mine! (203–5) Finally, she condemns Elizabeth to a fate too familiar to women. Long die thy happy days before thy death, And after many length’ned hours of grief, Die neither mother, wife, nor England’s queen! (206–8) In this long passage, Margaret details her own life as queen. Unlike the curses one might choose for a man, those chosen for Elizabeth have a different emphasis—not death but life continued after joy has passed. When the bitter woman fails to stop her cursing, Richard interrupts. In verbal battle, she responds, wishing him a fate more heinous than the others. Her curse concludes with ‘‘Thou

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detested—.’’ Never one to refuse a challenge, Richard quickly interjects the word ‘‘Margaret.’’ But she is not to be deflected from her purpose. Her sentence continues, ending with ‘‘Richard!’’ Elizabeth, although she bears no love for Richard, is still a victim of that minority status psychology that mandates she express her deepest contempt for another woman. ‘‘Thus have you breath’d your curse against yourself’’ (239), she mocks. Her words are hardly worth including in this exchange except to remind us of the difference between the two women—the sibyllike, intense, passionate Margaret, and the more pedestrian, rational Elizabeth. Finally, Cassandra-like, Margaret warns the one person exempt from her vengeance to beware of Richard: Have not to do with him, beware of him; Sin, death, and hell have set their marks on him, And all their ministers attend on him. (I. iii. 291–93) But Buckingham rejects her warning. Nevertheless, he shudders at her curses. Ironically, she is attacked as being a witch and a lunatic although her listeners recognize the core of truth in her words. During this scene Dorset, the new young lord who is Elizabeth’s son, warns ‘‘Dispute not with her, she is lunatic’’ (253). Buckingham expresses the impact of the curses for all of them. ‘‘My hair doth stand on end to hear her curses’’ (303). When her curses come true, she believes her mission is completed. But Shakespeare suggests that one possibility lies ahead—women extending their hands to each other in support—creating bonds with each other, rather than living in separate isolated worlds, connected only with the men whom they have wed. Entering in Act IV, scene iv, Margaret, in soliloquy, mutters ‘‘So now prosperity begins to mellow’’ (IV. iv. 1). Still bitter, overflowing with anger and hatred, she plans to go to France, hoping the lives of those who robbed her of son and husband will prove ‘‘bitter, black, and tragical’’ (7). She is a figure from the revenge tragedy of the period, asking right for right and Plantagenet for Plantagenet. It is only after the Duchess of York exclaims O Harry’s wife, triumph not in my woes! God witness with me, I have wept for thine (IV. iv. 59–60)

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that Margaret explains herself to them: ‘‘I am hungry for revenge’’ (61). She prays for Richard’s end. Aware of her anomic position, Margaret returns to the theme of displacedness—‘‘Thou didst usurp my place’’—and to the role of childlessness and widowhood. She cannot establish a bond with any woman—not lend support, or seek help, or accept friendship. ‘‘Vain flourish of my fortune’’ (IV. iv. 82), she had called Elizabeth. Detailing its meaning, the displaced Queen recognizes the role she played, ‘‘One heav’d ahigh, to be hurl’d down below’’ (86). She knows now that she was merely The flattering index of a direful pageant; ...

. . . a bubble; A queen in jest, only to fill the scene. (85–91) She then enumerates the functions of a queen, listing the bending peers and thronging troops that followed her and Elizabeth when each was Queen. This speech, by the dramatist who later was to list the many roles of man as he progressed from infancy to old age, vibrates with the emptiness of a woman’s roles. ‘‘Vain flourish of my fortune,’’ Margaret had repeated. It is a line that many older women might speak, watching young women seeking success in the world and misreading their husbands’ glories for their own. Although Margaret’s words are full of venom, hatred, and disappointment, Elizabeth seeks to create some bond, some tenuous connection, with this other woman. The scene marks a shift in attitude and is the first in which these women finally speak to each other as equals. Frequently referred to as the scene of the wailing women, it is also the beginning of mutual supportiveness. ‘‘My words are dull, O, quicken them with thine!’’ (124), Elizabeth begs, asking Margaret for instruction in cursing. Think that thy babes were sweeter than they were, And he that slew them fouler than he is. (IV. iv. 120–21) The older woman offers a basic premise that provides strength for Elizabeth’s next encounter. Clues to a sometimes ambiguous exchange between characters frequently appear in the sequential arrangement of Shakespeare’s scenes. Moments after Margaret’s advice to Elizabeth, Richard enters and asks for Elizabeth’s

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daughter’s hand in marriage. Uncle Richard, murderer of the young woman’s brothers, now King, anticipates success. In the debate between them, Elizabeth has her first opportunity to apply her newly learned lesson. Questions rather than answers characterize most of her replies. ‘‘Shall I be tempted of the devil thus?’’ (418), she asks. ‘‘Ay, if the devil tempt you to do good’’ (419), Richard sanctimoniously replies. ‘‘Shall I forget myself to be myself’’ (420), she continues. ‘‘Ay, if yourself’s remembrance wrong yourself’’ (421), he answers. When she seems to equivocate, Richard simply carries on as best he can, picking up what he thinks are hints of affirmation. Even Elizabeth’s ‘‘Yet thou didst kill my children’’ (422) fails to daunt him. He offers what he considers a perfectly logical response: But in your daughter’s womb I bury them; Where in that nest of spicery they will breed Selves of themselves, to your recomforture. (IV. iv. 423–25) This speech, so ugly in its lasciviousness, reflecting the character of the man who is speaking, must be answered without disgust by a mother. Again Elizabeth resorts to a question, rather than an answer. ‘‘Shall I go win my daughter to thy will?’’ (426). Has she finally fooled Richard? Immediately after her departure, he gloats, ‘‘Relenting fool, and shallow, changing woman’’ (431). She should not fool us. We have heard her scene with Margaret. We have listened to her first words to Richard in this encounter—‘‘For my daughters, Richard, / They shall be praying nuns, not weeping queens’’ (201–2)—and we have seen her pity for Anne. The choice of a convent for her grows not from religious conviction—we have not heard any deep expressions of religious faith from Elizabeth—but from the wish to give her daughters control over their own bodies. Elizabeth has expressed herself on this subject from the time of her first appearance in 3 Henry VI. When one compares Anne’s response to Richard with Elizabeth’s series of rhetorical questions topped by the instruction: ‘‘Write to me very shortly, / And you shall understand from me her mind’’ (428–29), one realizes Shakespeare’s artistry. Richard, thinking that he is repeating an earlier wooing scene, assumes a repetition of that success—this time with far less effort than in his encounter with Anne. Because of his misogyny, he fails to hear the nuances that separate the responses of the

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women. He forgets the differences between them: one a young, unwordly heiress, the other a mature woman who has lived a varied existence. Finally, he has figured without understanding the impact of the death of one’s child on a parent. The superb manipulator of people, Richard fails to read a woman accurately, because he fails to understand her feelings toward herself and her children. To an extent, then, Elizabeth has triumphed. She has begun to understand the meaning of power and the necessity for choosing one’s language with care, for restraining one’s words, refraining from cursing. She has learned that she must function alone, leading, not leaning. In this her first test after her encounter with Margaret and her awareness of the role of queen as shadow, she has begun to understand the limits of power for a woman. She succeeds in fooling Richard, but had he not lost his life in battle, she probably would have been powerless against him. Her daughter, instead of becoming a nun, marries Richard’s victorious adversary: Richmond, later Henry VII. Thus, she too becomes a queen, wearing the borrowed robes of power. The women in these plays, queens and duchesses, wives of men of political strength, seek to exert power but discover its elusiveness. Margaret Fuller writes: ‘‘A profound thinker has said ‘No married woman can represent the female world, for she belongs to her husband. The idea of Woman must be represented by a virgin.’’’ Perhaps the Queen in Shakespeare’s audience believed this. The women in these plays, however, demonstrate the powerlessness of women whether virgins, wives, or widows. Fuller herself countered the argument by blaming marriage and ‘‘the present relation between the sexes, that the woman does belong to the man, instead of forming a whole with him.’’ This chapter opened with references to power and to women’s powerlessness in a society where sexual politics is so pervasive that women have internalized the message. Shakespeare illustrates this by revealing the minority psychology of the women. They scorn other women, attempt to imitate men, and tend to believe in their own inferiority. The men too believe the women inferior to them, whether the women are selfconfident and challenge male power, or whether they acquiesce, seeking to appease male anger. The stereotypes do not exist solely among the characters in the plays,

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but appear also in the world outside the plays—in the criticism and productions. We read of Margaret’s unwomanly strength, and of Richard’s womanly guile. A recent critic describes the character’s histrionic talents and sensitivity to people and atmosphere: ‘‘His awareness of other people has, in the best Hitlerian manner, an almost feminine subtlety. The list of roles he assumes is endless’’ (italics mine). On the basis of evidence within the plays, one might have expected a different conclusion For—as well as Richard—York, Edward, Buckingham, and Warwick have been the supreme manipulators, men of guile, organizing behind the scenes and plotting insurrection. Misogyny persists. Optimistically, Fuller recommends that women not be influenced by men because they fail to see the entire picture. She instructs women to look within themselves to find their own ‘‘peculiar secret.’’ This means rejecting the stereotypes and accepting their own strengths. Margaret, struggling with the concept that strength is ‘‘masculine,’’ is vulnerable to the attack of ‘‘unwomanliness.’’ Elizabeth, perhaps discovering her own ‘‘peculiar secret,’’ tries to establish a bond of friendship or support with the woman she had scorned. But learning to curse is hardly a start on the path to understanding that the stereotypes (for ‘‘maleness’’ strength, courage, and initiative; and for ‘‘femaleness’’ docility, passivity, and weakness) must be denied if women are to gain power, not over the lives of others, but over their own lives. Shakespeare dramatizes the reality that women cannot do this alone. These plays reveal the limited world that exists as long as people believe that power belongs to men and powerlessness to women, refusing to recognize ‘‘the benefits . . . the world would gain by ceasing to make sex a disqualification for privileges and a badge of subjection.’’ Source: Irene G. Dash, ‘‘The Paradox of Power: The Henry VI-Richard III Tetralogy,’’ in Wooing, Wedding, and Power: Women in Shakespeare’s Plays, Columbia University Press, 1981, pp. 155–207.

Paul N. Siegel In this excerpt, Siegel closely examines Richard’s speeches and concludes that Richard uses the vocabulary of business in any endeavor he undertakes, whether it be planning the assassination of his brother Clarence or seeking Queen Elizabeth’s blessing to marry her daughter.

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RICHARD IS VERY MUCH OF THE NEW CAPITALIST WORLD. HE USES THE LANGUAGE OF BUSINESS AND DISPLAYS ITS ATTITUDES THROUGHOUT.’’

Richard is very much of the new capitalist world. He uses the language of business and displays its attitudes throughout. Much attention has been paid to the stylization of the play’s dialogue, with its stychomythia in the wooing scene of Anne, its ritualistic curses of Margaret, its chorused laments of the three queens, but little notice has been taken of what Charles Lamb called the ‘‘sprightly colloquial’’ language of Richard, which acts as a counterpoint to this stylization. It is a colloquial language that often recalls the contemporary turns of phrase expressing the values of our own business civilization. We might begin by looking at a line of images which can be called that of ‘‘the peddler and his packhorse.’’ In his soliloquy at the end of the first scene of the play, Richard says that Edward ‘‘must not die/Until George be packed with post horse up to heaven’’ (I, 4, 145 f.). He regards Clarence as a bale of goods which he will sling over a horse’s back and ship express from the kingdom of England to the kingdom of heaven. Richard’s quick mind then leaps ahead to his plans after Clarence and Edward are dead, but he stops himself with the jocular reminder: ‘‘But yet I run before my horse to market. / Clarence still breathes, Edward still lives and reigns; / When they are gone, then must I count my gains.’’ (I, 1, 159–161) ‘‘I run before my horse to market’’ was a proverbial phrase meaning ‘‘I’m running ahead of myself in my eagerness’’ or, as Kittredge glosses it [in his The Complete Works of Shakespeare]. ‘‘I count my chickens before they’re hatched.’’ The packhorse has to take one’s goods to the market before one can make his profit. Only then, when one has carried out his plans, can he sit down to total up what he has made. The image of the peddler and his packhorse is used again when Richard says to Queen Elizabeth of his labors in behalf of her

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husband Edward ‘‘I was a packhorse in his great affairs’’ (I, 3, 121) and also, a little later, when he says in disclaiming any desire to be king, ‘‘I had rather be a peddler.’’ (I, 3, 148) It is an image which seems to spring naturally to his lips. Richard also frequently uses financial and monetary terms. ‘‘Repaired with double riches of content’’ (IV, 4, 319), ‘‘advantaging their loan with interest / Of ten times double gain of happiness’’ (IV, 4, 323 f.), ‘‘go current from suspicion’’(II, 1, 96)—that is, pass as genuine currency without being suspected of being counterfeit— these are but a few examples. In addition to these uses of such terms and subsequent ones I shall cite, I have counted eight others . . . When Richard wishes to entice Elizabeth to marry her daughter to him, he tells her that, after having conquered Buckingham, he will to her daughter ‘‘retail my conquest won, / And she shall be sole victoress.’’ (IV, 4, 323 f.) ‘‘Retail’’, derived from the earlier meaning (OED 1) [OED stands for Oxford English Dictionary] ‘‘to sell (goods, etc.) in small quantities’’, signifies (OED 2) ‘‘to recount or tell over again’’, suggesting not only relating in detail but counting and recounting money. Richard is, therefore, promising Elizabeth’s daughter the joys of gaining all of England, which he represents as something to be counted out bit by bit. Richard uses not only monetary terms but business language. He greets the men he has hired to kill Clarence with ‘‘How now, my hardy stout-resolved mates! / Are you now going to dispatch this thing?’’ and sends them off with ‘‘about your business straight. Go, go, dispatch.’’ (I, 3, 339 f., 353 f.) ‘‘Dispatch’’ was a word with business connotations. One of its meanings was (OED I, 3) ‘‘to dismiss (a person) after attending to him or his business; to settle the business and send away’’. This was easily extended to (OED I, 4) ‘‘to get rid of or dispose of (any one) by putting to death; to make away with, kill’’. Richard is playing on the word: the murder of Clarence is just a little business matter to be speedily taken care of. Clarence may try to talk them out of it, but the professional killers, enterprising free-lance forerunners of Murder, Incorporated, know their jobs (after all, ‘‘business is business’’) and will not allow themselves to be diverted. The word ‘‘business’’ in ‘‘about your business straight’’ suggests the same

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The murder of the princes, Act IV, scene iii (Ó Shakespeare Collection, Special Collections Library, University of Michigan)

coldbloodedness as in Edmund’s words in calculating his course, ‘‘A credulous father, and a brother noble . . . I see the business’’ ([King Lear] I, 2, 195–198). Richard is twice referred to by other characters as a business agent. Buckingham, urging him before the citizens to rule in his own stead, not as the lord protector of the boy king, tells him to take on ‘‘the charge and kingly government of this your land; / Not as protector, steward, substitute, / Or lowly factor for another’s gain.’’ (III, 7, 130–133) ‘‘Steward’’ meant, of course, the business manager of an estate, and ‘‘factor’’ meant the business agent acting in behalf of his principal. Richard, despite his public professions, was really not content to be either, but the irony is that in the last analysis a business agent is all that he is: Margaret, reciting the many deaths of guilty persons that have already occurred, says, ‘‘Richard yet lives, hell’s black intelligencer, / Only reserved their factor to buy souls / And send them thither.’’ (IV, 4,

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71–73) He is the business agent of hell, buying souls and shipping them off to it. As a businessman, Richard is, to use the language of Babbitt, a ‘‘real hustler,’’ a ‘‘gogetter.’’ [George Babbitt is an American businessman in Sinclair Lewis’s novel Babitt.] He displays enormous energy from the time in 3 Henry VI he says that he is as one ‘‘lost in a thorny wood’’ from which he will ‘‘hew’’ his ‘‘way out with a bloody axe’’ (III, 2, 174–181) until the time of his last battle when he dashes frantically about calling ‘‘A horse! / My kingdom for a horse!’’ (V, 4, 7) Hustle and bustle characterize his behavior throughout. ‘‘Delay leads impotent and snailpaced beggary’’(IV, 3, 53)—inactivity is invariably followed by bankruptcy—he exclaims, calling forth to combat. On the eve of his last battle, he says, in an attempt to regain his old zest, ‘‘Tomorrow is a busy day.’’ (V, 3, 18) And before entering the final fray he cries out, ‘‘Come, bustle, bustle, / Caparison my horse.’’ (V, 3, 290) His underlings in their way speak his language. ‘‘Tut, tut, my lord, we will not stand to prate. / Talkers are no good doers,’’ says the First Murderer, (I, 3, 349 f.), assuring him that they will not allow Clarence to engage them in conversation and move their pity. ‘‘Talk is cheap’’ and ‘‘time is money.’’ Richard’s energy is the energy of the bourgeoisie. ‘‘The bourgeoisie,’’ says The Communist Manifesto, ‘‘has disclosed how it came to pass that the brutal display of vigor in the Middle Ages, which reactionists so much admire, found its fitting complement in the most slothful indolence. It has been the first to show what man’s activity can bring about . . . Constant revolutionizing of production, uninterrupted disturbance of all social conditions, everlasting uncertainty and agitation distinguish the bourgeois epoch from all earlier ones.’’ The word business, it may be pointed out, is derived from ‘‘busyness.’’ With Clarence dead, says Richard, ‘‘God take King Edward to his mercy / And leave the world for me to bustle in!’’ (I, 1, 151 f.) The world which had been rejected by medieval otherworldliness as one of the three great temptations—‘‘the world, the flesh, and the devil’’—he welcomes as his sphere of activity, gladly relinquishing an alleged heaven to Edward. In response to Gratiano’s attempt to joke away Antonio’s melancholy by telling him that he has too great care for the things of this world,

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Antonio replies, ‘‘I hold the world but as the world, Gratiano—/ A stage where every man must play a part’’ (I, 1, 75–78)—a theatre with the ephemerality of the theatre in contradistinction to the eternity of heaven. But for Richard this world is all. The bourgeoisie, says The Communist Manifesto, ‘‘has drowned the most heavenly ecstacies of religious fervor . . . in the icy water of egotistical calculation.’’ Source: Paul N. Siegel, ‘‘Richard III as Businessman,’’ in Shakespeare Jahrbuch, Vol. 114, 1978, pp. 101–06.

A. C. Hamilton Hamilton demonstrates how Richard III ‘‘combines the genres of history play and tragedy,’’ pointing out that if we look at the play’s action through Richard’s eyes, we see the history of his political progress; on the other hand, Margaret turns the play into a tragedy as each of her curses are fulfilled. Finally, Hamilton observes that the momentum of the play is toward Richard’s isolation, since everyone connected with him is destroyed by him; moreover, it is Richard’s isolation which eventually results in his own destruction. Richard III, in its Quarto title ‘‘The Tragedy of King Richard the Third,’’ combines the genres of history play and tragedy. [In drama, a tragedy recounts the significant events or actions in a protagonist’s life which, taken together, bring about the catastrophe.] The demands of history itself upon the history play cause no opposition between the two genres: the strong Lancastrian bias of the age allowed the historical Richard to be as great a villain as the imagination of a tragic dramatist could desire. [John] Milton [in Eikonoklastes, 1650] rightly praises Shakespeare both for being ‘‘so mindfull of Decorum’’ in portraying Richard as a tyrant who counterfeits religious faith, and also for not ‘‘departing from the truth of History, which delivers him a deep dissembler, not of his affections onely, but of Religion.’’ As the stage history of the play demonstrates and any reading confirms, Richard is the greatest of Shakespeare’s historical characters. He embodies all the qualities of the political characters in the Henry VI plays who manipulate events to fit their own desires. [Henry VI, parts one, two, and three, are three plays by Shakespeare which precede Richard III.] He gathers within himself Joan’s duplicity, Eleanor’s aspirations, Winchester’s pride, Buckingham’s and Somerset’s ambition, Margaret’s and Suffolk’s scheming, Clifford’s revengeful fury, and, above all, York’s intense

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ALL THE WORLD LOVES A LOVER, ESPECIALLY IF HE IS ALSO A VILLAIN WHO MAKES EVIL ATTRACTIVE.’’

passion. He stands—or crouches—as the final expression of one who uses time and opportunity to dominate his environment, overcoming for a season the adversity of circumstance, fortune, and fate by sheer human will. If, at his insistence, we look at the play from his perspective, we see a history play that shows his political triumphs, until the final moment brings his faltering before Richmond. Early in the play, however, Margaret opposes Richard; she ensures that his history play becomes a tragedy, the climax to the tragic form that emerges in the Henry VI plays. After the opening scene in 1 Henry VI sets the stage for a tragedy with the funeral of Henry V, the action in that play turns to historical events; Salisbury’s ‘‘woeful tragedy’’ (I.iv.77) is only an episode in the war with France, and the tragedy of Talbot is only one consequence of dissension in England. 2 Henry VI contains the ‘‘tragedy’’ (III.ii.194) of Gloucester’s death and his enemies’ ‘‘plotted tragedy’’ (III.i.153), which ends in chaos with York’s first claim to the crown. 3 Henry VI leads quickly to ‘‘The True Tragedie of Richard, Duke of Yorke’’ (the play’s Quarto title) and concludes with the brutal murder of Henry and his son. In Richard III, the tragic form encompasses the whole play and all the major characters. At the height of the action, Margaret feeds upon the fall of her enemies: So now prosperity begins to mellow And drop into the rotten mouth of death. Here in these confines slily have I lurk’d To watch the waning of mine enemies. A dire induction am I witness to, And will to France, hoping the consequence Will prove as bitter, black, and tragical. (IV.iv.1–7) She is the instrument through which the historical events in Richard’s reign, including finally Richard himself, become an ‘‘induction’’ [prologue] leading to a catastrophe that proves ‘‘bitter, black, and tragical.’’

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Richard III differs from the earlier history plays in its source. More’s Historie of King Richard the Thirde had already transformed mere chronicle event into a literary tradition with considerable dramatic potentiality. Shakespeare knew More through Hall, [in The Union of the Two Noble and Illustre Famelies of Lancastre and Yorke, 1548] and he may have known also the dramatic treatments in Thomas Legge’s Richardus Tertius (1579) and the anonymous True Tragedie of Richard the Third (1594). The tradition needed only one further transformation to achieve in Richard III one of the most popular plays on the English stage, second perhaps only to Hamlet. The place of Shakespeare’s play within this tradition can be quickly indicated. More describes Richard as an absolute villain: Richard duke of Gloucester . . . was in witte and courage egall with the other [Clarence], but in beautee and liniamentes of nature far underneth bothe, for he was litle of stature, eivill featured of limnes, croke backed, the left shulder touche higher than the righte, harde favoured of visage, such as in estates is called a warlike visage, and emonge commen persones a crabbed face. He was malicious, wrothfull and envious . . . He was close and secrete, a depe dissimuler, lowlye of countenaunce, arrogante of herte, outwardely familier where he inwardely hated, not lettynge to kisse whom he thought to kill, dispiteous and cruell, not alwaie for eivill will, but ofter for ambicion and too serve his purpose, frende and fooe were all indifferent, where his avauntage grewe, he spared no mannes deathe whose life withstode his purpose. He slewe in the towre kynge Henry the sixte, saiynge: now is there no heire male of kynge Edwarde the thirde, but wee of the house of Yorke: whiche murder was doen without kyng Edward his assente.

As a historian, More cannot crown his villain by accusing him of Clarence’s death. He admits that ‘‘of these poinctes there is no certentie, and whosoever divineth or conjectureth, may as wel shote to fer as to shorte’’ (sig.A.Aii). To answer these conjectures, Shakespeare shows how Richard plans that murder, persuades the king to condemn Clarence, and hires the murderers. What the historian does not deny, the dramatist, being ‘‘mindfull of Decorum,’’ supplies, in order that from the beginning his villain may be guilty of an offense that ‘‘hath the primal eldest curse upon’t— / A brother’s murder.’’

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To More’s discussion of Edward’s possible implication in his brother’s death Hall adds the moral lesson: . . . what a pernicious serpent, what a venemous tode, & what a pestiferous Scorpion is that develishe whelpe, called privye envye? Agaynst it no fortres can defend, no cave can hyde, no wood can shadow, no foule can escape, nor no beaste can avoyde, her poyson is so stronge, that never man in authoritie coulde escape from the bytyng of her tethe, scrachyng of her pawes, blastyng of her breath, defoulynge of her tayle. Wherefore, let every indifferent persone, serche Histories, rede Chronicles, looke on aucthores, aswell holy as prophane, and thei shall apparauntly perceive, that neither open warre, daily famyne, or accustomed mortalitie, is not so muche an enemie, nor so greate a malle to destroye, and suppeditate high power and nobilitie, as is roted malice, inwarde grudge, and dissimuled hatred. (sigs. Rrivv-R[r]vr])

In place of this moral abstracted out of the chronicles, Shakespeare offers an image, in which ‘‘that develishe whelpe, called privye envye’’ is embodied in Richard. Earlier dramatic treatments follow More in displaying Richard as the Senecan tyrant [Seneca, a Roman statesman, author, and philosopher of the first century A.D., is famous for nine melodramas which had a great influence on tragic drama in Elizabethan England]. The dramatic limitations of this form show clearly in the True Tragedie, where Richard declares: ‘‘I hope with this lame hand of mine, to rake out that hatefull heart of Richmond, and when I have it, to eate it panting hote with salt, and drinke his blood luke warme’’ (ll. 1979–81). Felix E. Schelling [in his Elizabethan Drama: 1558–1642] believes that Shakespeare continues the line of Tamburlaine [a play by Christopher Marlowe, 1590] by a ‘‘concentration of interest in the heroic dimensions of a unified personality, the master passion of which carries the auditor’s sympathies with it.’’ Yet Shakespeare’s hero differs radically from Marlowe’s. In place of one Threat’ning the world with high astounding terms, And scourging kingdoms with his conquering sword (Prologue, Part 1) he offers one whose victories are shameful—over the simple, believing Clarence, a woman’s captive heart, two innocent babes, the trusting Hastings, a gullible commons, and a ‘‘Relenting fool, and shallow, changing woman’’ (R.III IV.iv.431).

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Tamburlaine’s relentless ranting here changes into the direct speaking voice of one who can say to the brother whose death he arranges because of his name: Alack, my lord, that fault is none of yours: He should, for that, commit your godfathers. O, belike his Majesty hath some intent That you should be new-christ’ned in the Tower. (I.iv.47–50). Since the plot leads to Clarence’s death by being ’’ newchrist’ned’’ in a malmsey-butt, murder has become matter for a brutal jest. Richard’s tone ranges from the vigor of ‘‘Chop off his head’’ (III.i.193) to the sanctimonious ‘‘O, do not swear, my lord of Buckingham’’ (III.vii.220), from the Faustian [from Christopher Marlowe’s play Doctor Faustus] cry, ‘‘Have mercy, Jesu!’’ (V.iii.178) to the heroic ‘‘A horse! a horse! my kingdom for a horse!’’ (V.iv.13), or to the quiet thrust of his insolent question, superbly timed to shatter the peace of soul for which the dying Edward yearns: ‘‘Who knows not that the gentle Duke is dead?’’ (II.i.79). Shakespeare displays Richard’s character in the second scene, the wooing and winning of Anne. We know that she was fifteen when she first married Henry VI’s son in December 1470, that after her husband’s death in the following May she was disguised as a kitchen maid by Clarence in an effort to gain Warwick’s estates, and that she was found by Richard, who placed her in sanctuary until the king let him marry her. Shakespeare knows only the curious fact that Richard married her the year after he murdered her husband. Accordingly, he invents the scene in which Richard woos her as she attends the funeral of Henry VI, also one of his victims. The scene proves startling from the outset. In his opening soliloquy, Richard scorns Mars [the Roman god of war] for having smoothed his wrinkled front and capering nimbly into a lady’s chamber, while he himself in his deformity must remain, as Mars had been, ‘‘wrinkled’’ and ‘‘grim-visag’d’’: And therefore, since I cannot prove a lover To entertain these fair well-spoken days, I am determined to prove a villain And hate the idle pleasures of these days. (I.i.9, 28–31) In the closing soliloquy to this opening scene he refers to his ‘‘deep intent’’ (l. 149) in causing Clarence’s death, which we take to be his chance at the throne if the king and his brothers’

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Antony Sher as Richard III in Act V, scene iii, at the Royal Shakespeare Theatre, 1984 (Ó Donald Cooper/ Photostage. Reproduced by permission)

children should die. Instead of saying so, however, he adds surprisingly: ‘‘For then I’ll marry Warwick’s youngest daughter’’. (l. 153). Though he hints at having ‘‘another secret close intent’’ (l. 158) in marrying her, that intent, as it turns out, is to prove a villain by proving a lover.

Was ever woman in this humour woo’d? Was ever woman in this humour won? (ll. 227–228)

What! I that kill’d her husband and his father— To take her in her heart’s extremest hate, With curses in her mouth, tears in her eyes, The bleeding witness of my hatred by; Having God, her conscience, and these bars against me, And I no friends to back my suit at all But the plain devil and dissembling looks, And yet to win her, all the world to nothing! Ha! (I.ii.230–238)

he asks us; yet he need not pause for an answer. In literature, at any rate, no other woman has been wooed and won by her husband’s murderer while she attends the funeral of her husband’s father, who was also murdered by him. Anne’s yielding cannot be explained by fear, or by her desire for him, or by a sense of guilt because her beauty drove him to murder, or by her not being deceived but cunningly deceiving him. Moral or psychological ‘‘explanation’’ only lessens the scene’s dramatic impact. Anne’s submission becomes ours: with her we recognize the reasons to curse Richard, yet we find our horror replaced by fascination. All the world loves a lover, especially if he is also a villain who makes evil attractive. Her yielding defines the kind of world we must accept, with its outrage of all human feelings, its perversion of love and marriage, and its human weakness when self is divided against self.

The wooing is meant to shock, even as it shocks Richard himself.

Yet the scene’s final dramatic impact lies not in Anne’s submission but in Richard’s triumph. In

Richard’s seduction of Anne is a triumph, as he realizes in mock wonder. No lover’s triumph is more complete:

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the opening soliloquy, where he scorns lovers who trip into ‘‘a lady’s chamber’’ (I.i.12), the suddenness of transition to the lines: And leave the world for me to bustle in! For then I’ll marry Warwick’s youngest daughter (ll. 152–153) astonishes us, and perhaps Richard himself. In his soliloquies and asides throughout the play he reveals himself so intimately that we become his accomplices: in sharing his keen delight in villainy, we share his guilt. No other dramatic character, except possibly Hamlet, appeals on quite the same level in being both intimate and archetypal. If his villainy were less monstrous, if we knew less about him, or even if he took himself seriously, he would become a monster. Instead, he invites our delight in his villainies and browbeats us into accepting him. Yet here we achieve less than full intimacy: he plays a trick on us, and on himself, by proving such a successful lover. His trick is to provide the delight for which we come to the theater, the enjoyment of a moral holiday staged by a consummate actor who always plays his part and plays it perfectly. Hence the delighted surprise with which he trips nimbly into a lady s chamber. The scene takes us into Richard’s mind, where all the significant dramatic action takes place. While the play’s significant action occurs internally as our dramatic interest focuses upon Richard’s mind, the external action is controlled by Margaret. Her role is to project the play as a historical tragedy. She remains at the English court, contrary to historical fact, in order to revile those who have offended against her. In the scene that follows Richard’s seduction of Anne, our attention turns from Richard to Margaret, whose railing causes him and the others to attack her. Ironically, he teaches her how to curse when he claims that York’s curses from bitterness of soul Denounc’d against thee are all fall’n upon thee; And God, not we, hath plagu’d thy bloody deed. (I.iii.179–181) In amazement, she learns that curses are effective: Did York’s dread curse prevail so much with heaven

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That Henry’s death, my lovely Edward’s death, Their kingdom’s loss, my woeful banishment, Should all but answer for that peevish brat? Can curses pierce the clouds and enter heaven? Why then, give way, dull clouds, to my quick curses! (ll. 191–196) She rails no longer and curses each in turn. Each has brought her curse upon himself by wronging her. In effect, she writes the complots of the tragedies that each then acts out to fulfill her word. Edward, Elizabeth, Rivers, Grey, Hastings, the young Edward, Buckingham, and finally Richard—all suffer and ‘‘die the thrall of Margaret’s curse’’ (IV.i.46). They exist upon the level of her dreams to become what she wishes. In 2 Henry VI, the banished Suffolk wishes ‘‘would curses kill’’ (III.ii.310); now they do, and the action of the play shows how her words become deeds. Within the play, the entire action becomes a play directed by her. Although Richard bustles in the world, dominating it for the present moment through his intelligence and will, he is her chief actor. She is the Past, the present witness to previous wrongs, and her curses determine the future. Allegorically, she is Conscience, Revenge, or one of the Destinies, with the difference that she is involved herself in the guilt, revenge, and fate that she brings on others. The play is organized into rituals of grief. Elizabeth defines the ritual when she bewails the death of the king. In her agony of grief, she is ready to ‘‘join with black despair against my soul / And to myself become an enemy.’’ To the Duchess of York’s question, ‘‘What means this scene of rude impatience?’’ she replies, ‘‘To make an act of tragic violence’’ (II.ii.36–39). The play is composed of such acts of tragic violence. 1 Henry VI has only Talbot’s lament upon the death of his son; 2 Henry VI has Gloucester’s lament, Margaret’s and Suffolk’s lament upon his exile, and Clifford’s lament upon the death of his father; and 3 Henry VI has York’s raging when Margaret goads him to ‘‘rude impatience,’’ Henry’s lament on the molehill, joined by the laments of the father who has slain his son and of the son who has slain his father, and finally Henry’s raging against Richard. In Richard III, every character except Richmond laments, and

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entire scenes are organized into rituals of lamentation.

in [Shakespeare’s] Titus Andronicus that contain a dramatic gathering of rituals of lament.

There is even a competition in weeping. When Elizabeth bewails the death of her husband, the Duchess of York lays claim to having greater cause to grieve,

Lamentation rises to a lyrical climax in a later scene when the Duchess of York, Elizabeth, and Margaret gather to mourn. Elizabeth, who has learned of the murder of her children, wails:

Thine being but a moiety of my moan— To overgo thy woes and drown thy cries, (II.ii.60–61) while Clarence’s children refuse to join Elizabeth’s lament because she did not weep for their father’s death. She responds that she needs no help in weeping, for her tears alone can drown the world. Then their voices join in a three-part ritual of lament: Eliz. Ah for my husband, for my dear Lord Edward! Child. Ah for our father, for our dear Lord Clarence! Duch. Alas for both, both mine, Edward and Clarence! Eliz. What stay had I but Edward? and he’s gone. Child. What stay had we but Clarence? and he’s gone. Duch. What stays had I but they? and they are gone. Eliz. Was never widow had so dear a loss. Child. Were never orphans had so dear a loss. Duch. Was never mother had so dear a loss.

This triple threnody [a song of lamentation for the dead] concludes with the Duchess of York’s lament for them all: Alas! I am the mother of these griefs! Their woes are parcell’d, mine is general. She for an Edward weeps, and so do I: I for a Clarence weep, so doth not she. These babes for Clarence weep, and so do I: I for an Edward weep, so do not they. Alas, you three on me, threefold distress’d, Pour all your tears! I am your sorrow’s nurse, And I will pamper it with lamentation. (II.ii.71–88) Such scenes may be compared to the complaint scenes that are a vehicle for Lucrece’s curses and laments in her poem [Shakespeare’s ‘‘The Rape of Lucrece’’], and to a similar competition in weeping between her father and Collatine. They are even closer to similar scenes

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Wilt thou, O God, fly from such gentle lambs And throw them in the entrails of the wolf? When didst thou sleep when such a deed was done? (IV.iv.22–24) Margaret responds, ‘‘When holy Harry died, and my sweet son’’ (l. 25), and the Duchess of York laments that she is the chronicle of all their woe. When they sit together, Margaret claims the seniority of her griefs and catalogs their woes: I had an Edward, till a Richard kill’d him: I had a husband, till a Richard kill’d him; Thou hadst an Edward, till a Richard kill’d him; Thou hadst a Richard, till a Richard kill’d him. (ll. 40–43) Elizabeth’s overwhelming grief, which leads her to cry out for ‘‘my tender babes! / My unblown flowers, new-appearing sweets!’’ (ll. 9– 10), is modulated with both the quietness of the Duchess of York, who has long been overwhelmed by grief, for So many miseries have craz’d my voice That my woe-wearied tongue is still and mute, (ll. 17–18) and Margaret’s joy in their grief: O upright, just, and true-disposing God, How do I thank thee that this carnal cur Preys on the issue of his mother’s body (ll. 55–57) Though such formalized scenes are often omitted in modern productions as being too stylized for our taste, they shape the play into a tragic history. The story of Hastings, as one ‘‘act of tragic violence,’’ illustrates some features of the play as a historical tragedy and distinguishes it from the earlier history plays that have similar stories of Talbot, Gloucester, and York. For although Shakespeare follows More closely in telling Hastings’ story, he adds ironic humor. Hastings’

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innocent remark on Richard’s cheerful look, ‘‘There’s some conceit or other likes him well’’ (III.iv.51), provides a broadly comic touch, for the ‘‘conceit’’ is the means of chopping off his head. Ironically, in his refusal to support Richard’s claim to the throne, he pronounces his own doom: I’ll have this crown of mine cut from my shoulders Before I’ll see the crown so foul misplac’d. (III.ii.43–44) In his later remark, ‘‘God knows I will not do it to the death’’ (l. 55) he speaks more truly than he knows. Such ironic comedy changes the significance of his fall. More, seeing in it an example of ‘‘the vayne surety of mans mynde so neare hys death,’’ comments: ‘‘O lorde God the blyndnesse of our mortal nature, when he most feared, he was in moste suretye, and when he reconed hym selfe moste surest, he lost his lyfe, and that within two houres after’’ (sig. C[C]iiir–v). In the play, Hastings himself recognizes how ‘‘too fond’’ (III.iv.83) he has been, repents that he triumphed over his enemies while he felt secure in grace, and then interprets his own tragedy: O momentary grace of mortal men, Which we more hunt for than the grace of God! Who builds his hope in air of your good looks Lives like a drunken sailor on a mast, Ready with every nod to tumble down Into the fatal bowels of the deep. (ll. 98–103) Through these lines his earlier affability toward Richard—‘‘I thank his Grace, I know he loves me well . . . His gracious pleasure’’— gains new meaning. Just before the blow falls, he speaks of ‘‘The tender love I bear your Grace’’ (l. 65): His Grace looks cheerfully and smooth this morning . . . I think there’s never a man in Christendom Can lesser hide his love or hate than he; For by his face straight shall you know his heart . . . Marry, that with no man here he is offended; For, were he, he had shown it in his looks. (ll. 50, 53–55, 59–60)

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Here we see him hunting for the grace of a mortal man, as he builds his hope in air of Richard’s good looks. Hastings’ moral state is central to the play. Margaret speaks of her murdered son as now in the shade of death, Whose bright out-shining beams thy cloudy wrath Hath in eternal darkness folded up, (I.iii.267–269) Elizabeth of her dead husband in ‘‘his new kingdom of ne’erchanging night’’ (II.ii.46), Richard of the dead Clarence as one ‘‘who I indeed have cast in darkness,’’ (I.iii.327), and Margaret of Elizabeth’s dead sons as having their ‘‘infant morn’’ dimmed to ‘‘aged night.’’ (IV.iv.16), Elizabeth sees herself wrecked by Richard, in such a desp’rate bay of death, Like a poor bark, of sails and tackling reft, Rush all to pieces on thy rocky bosom. (ll. 232–234) In his dream Clarence falls ‘‘overboard / Into the tumbling billows of the main’’ (I.iv.19– 20). The play shows the world poised to fall ‘‘into the fatal bowels of the deep’’; for the bonds between earth and heaven are broken when a ‘‘foul devil’’ (I.ii.50) becomes ‘‘the Lord’s anointed’’ (IV.iv.150). Prayers to God are for revenge, not mercy. Elizabeth accuses God of throwing ‘‘gentle lambs . . . in the entrails of the wolf’’ and sleeping while evil is done. The apocalyptic imagery of harvest, coming darkness, and chaos rises to a scream in Margaret’s curse: But at hand, at hand, Ensues his piteous and unpitied end. Earth gapes, hell burns, fiends roar, saints pray, To have him suddenly convey’d from hence. Cancel his bond of life, dear God, I pray, That I may live and say ‘‘The dog is dead.’’ (IV.iv.73–78) Movement within this world is downward: Clarence’s dream anticipates his descent into hell, Margaret interprets Elizabeth’s state as ‘‘One heav’d ahigh to be hurl’d down below’’ (l. 86), the death that threatens Stanley’s son is a ‘‘fall / Into the blind cave of eternal night’’ (V.iii.61–62). The movement suggests a world ready for the Last Judgment. England becomes ‘‘this slaughterhouse’’ (IV.i.44), and Hastings prophesies for his country ‘‘the fearfull’st time to thee / That ever wretched

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age hath look’d upon’’ (III.iv.106–107). When Buckingham ‘‘pleads’’ with Richard to assume the throne because England is ‘‘almost should’red in the swallowing gulf / Of dark forgetfulness and deep oblivion’’ (III.vii.128–129), he mocks the truth. That final shouldering is left to Richard, his high shoulder being the symbol of his malignancy. The hell that each character inhabits is a mental state. Its chief lyrical statement in the play, Clarence’s dream, has three stages: first the blow of being shouldered into the ocean by Richard, then the pain of drowning when the waters smother his soul within him, and finally the ‘‘tempest to [his] soul’’ (I.iv.44) when he enters hell to be accused by those against whom he has sinned: With that, methoughts, a legion of foul fiends Environ’d me, and howled in mine ears Such hideous cries that, with the very noise, I trembling wak’d, and for a season after Could not believe but that I was in hell, Such terrible impression made my dream. (ll. 58–63) The first stage of his dream, that of being knocked overboard by Richard, is the ‘‘real’’ world of historical event where Richard arranges Clarence’s death and the deaths of the others who stand between him and the throne. The second stage, the agony of death, is the demonic world that Richard creates, expressed in the imagery of drowning. The third stage, the tempest to the soul, is the state of despair, the private hell into which the characters fall under the burden of guilt. Edward on his deathbed seeks to reconcile opposing factions at the court, in order that ‘‘more at peace my soul shall part to heaven’’ (II.i.5); but the news of Clarence’s death leaves him to die with his soul ‘‘full of sorrow’’ (l. 96), fearing God’s justice. Elizabeth resolves to ‘‘join with black despair against my soul / And to myself become an enemy.’’ Each character dies weighed down by guilt. One by one, those who stand between Richard and the crown—Clarence, Edward, Rivers, Grey, Vaughan, Hastings, the two princes, Margaret, Elizabeth, the Duchess of York, Anne, and Buckingham—make an ‘‘act of tragic violence.’’ Together they are an ‘‘induction’’ to the thirteenth fall, a catastrophe that proves ‘‘bitter, black, and tragical’’: the death of Richard. The whole movement of the play

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effects his gradual isolation, the cutting away of all supporting human relationships. By the end he stands alone; but, being unsupported, he falls. The tragic irony of his actions is that those who stand in his way support him: after they fall, he must fall. Richard’s fall has two stages: In the first he confronts the lamenting women, the Duchess of York and Elizabeth. Earlier in the scene, Elizabeth begs Margaret: O thou well skill’d in curses, stay awhile And teach me how to curse mine enemies! (IV.iv.116–117) Margaret teaches her, even as she was taught: Forbear to sleep the nights, and fast the days; Compare dead happiness with living woe; Think that thy babes were sweeter than they were, And he that slew them fouler than he is. Bett’ring thy loss makes the bad-causer worse; Revolving this will teach thee how to curse. (ll. 118–123) Then Elizabeth, in turn, teaches the Duchess of York to curse. Up to this moment, the Duchess has submitted patiently to her sorrow, reduced almost to silence, seeing in herself Dead life, blind sight, poor mortal living ghost, Woe’s scene, world’s shame, grave’s due by life usurp’d, Brief abstract and record of tedious days. (ll. 26–28) Now she asks, ‘‘Why should calamity be full of words?’’ and Elizabeth replies: Windy attorneys to their client woes, Airy succeeders of intestate joys, Poor breathing orators of miseries, Let them have scope; though what they will impart Help nothing else, yet do they ease the heart. (ll. 127–131) The Duchess now prepares to forgo her patient resignation and make her ‘‘scene of rude impatience’’: If so, then be not tongue-tied. Go with me, And in the breath of bitter words let’s smother My damned son that thy two sweet sons smother’d.

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The trumpet sounds; be copious in exclaims. (ll. 132–135) When Richard enters, she forces him to stand and ‘‘patiently hear my impatience’’ (l. 156). Her curses determine the shape of his future actions: Therefore take with thee my most grievous curse, Which in the day of battle tire thee more Than all the complete armour that thou wear’st! My prayers on the adverse party fight; And there the little souls of Edward’s children Whisper the spirits of thine enemies And promise them success and victory. Bloody thou art; bloody will be thy end. Shame serves thy life and doth thy death attend. (ll. 187–195) Now, when Richard triumphs over Elizabeth, as earlier he triumphed over Anne, the parallel only reinforces the contrast. Before, he needed only to flatter Anne; now he must curse himself and so swear away his future: As I intend to prosper and repent, So thrive I in my dangerous affairs Of hostile arms! Myself myself confound! Heaven and fortune bar me happy hours! Day, yield me not thy light; nor, night, thy rest! (ll. 397–401) The triple curse upon him by Margaret, his mother, and himself begins its fulfillment in his dream before the final battle. This dream marks the start of the second, and final, stage of his fall. The ghost of each of his victims urges him to ‘‘despair and die’’ (V.iii.120 ff.): that is, to despair at the moment of death and be eternally damned. Hall, worrying over Richard’s fate after death, ends his story with ’’ . . . but to God whiche knewe his interior cogitacions at the hower of his deathe I remitte the punyshment of his offences committed in his lyfe’’ (sig. [KKv]). If Richard repents at the last moment and so escapes hell, history provides a poor example for posterity. Holinshed [in his Chronicles of England, Scotland, and Ireland, 1587] reproduces Hall’s remark almost exactly, adding hopefully that if it happened that God did punish Richard severely, ‘‘who shall be so hardie as to expostulate and reason why he so dooth.’’ Obviously, this answer does not satisfy.

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Shakespeare answers the question through the cry of the ghosts, ‘‘despair and die,’’ ten times repeated. Yet each cry leaves a gap between ‘‘despair’’ and ‘‘die,’’ affording that moment in which he could repent. But the ghost of Buckingham, who had helped Richard rise to the throne, now assures his fall: O, in the battle think on Buckingham, And die in terror of thy guiltiness! Dream on, dream on of bloody deeds and death; Fainting, despair; despairing, yield thy breath! (V.iii.169–172) Buckingham’s curse gives Richard no instant for repentance; it dooms him, as he dies, to despair, and while he despairs, to die. He does dream on of bloody deeds and death: ‘‘Give me another horse. Bind up my wounds’’ (l. 177). That final Faustian cry, ‘‘Have mercy, Jesu!’’ comes, as with Faust, too late; for when he awakes and dismisses his dream—‘‘Soft! I did but dream’’ (l. 178)—he is damned. In the final battle he asks only for a horse, and the kingdom that he is willing to give in exchange is greater than he knows. Source: A. C. Hamilton, ‘‘The Resolution of the Early Period: Richard III,’’ in The Early Shakespeare, The Huntington Library, 1967, pp. 186–202.

SOURCES Berman, Ronald, ‘‘Anarchy and Order in Richard III and King John,’’ in Shakespeare Survey, Vol. 20, 1967, pp. 51–9. Blanpied, John W., ‘‘The Dead-End Comedy of Richard III,’’ originally published in Time and the Artist in Shakespeare’s English Histories, Associated University Presses, 1983, pp. 85–97. Brooks, Harold F., ‘‘Richard III, Unhistorical Amplifications: The Women’s Scenes and Seneca,’’ in Modern Language Review, Vol. 75, No. 4, October 1980, pp. 721–37. Dillon, Janette, ‘‘‘I Am Myself Alone’: Richard III,’’ in Shakespeare and the Solitary Man, Rowman and Littlefield, 1981, pp. 49–60. Eccles, Mark, ‘‘Introduction,’’ in The Tragedy of Richard the Third, by William Shakespeare, edited by Mark Eccles, Signet Classic, 1988, pp. lxiii–lxxi. ———, ‘‘Richard III on Stage and Screen,’’ in The Tragedy of Richard the Third, by William Shakespeare, edited by Mark Eccles, Signet Classic, 1988, pp. 232–45.

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Frisch, Morton J., ‘‘Shakespeare’s Richard III and the Soul of the Tyrant,’’ originally published in Interpretation: A Journal of Political Philosophy, Vol. 20, No. 3, Spring 1993, pp. 275–84. Gurr, Andrew, ‘‘Richard III and the Democratic Process,’’ in Essays in Criticism, Vol. 24, No. 1, January 1974, pp. 39–47. Heilman, Robert B., ‘‘Satiety and Conscience: Aspects of Richard III,’’ in The Antioch Review, Vol. 24, No. 1, Spring 1964, pp. 57–73. Kahn, Coppe´lia, ‘‘‘Myself Alone’: Richard III and the Dissolution of Masculine Identity,’’ in The Tragedy of Richard the Third, by William Shakespeare, edited by Mark Eccles, Signet Classic, 1988, pp. 227–31. Kott, Jan, ‘‘The Kings,’’ in Shakespeare Our Contemporary, translated by Boleslaw Taborski, Methuen & Co., 1965, pp. 3–46. Krieger, Murray, ‘‘The Dark Generations of Richard III,’’ Criticism, Vol. 1, No. 1, Winter 1959, pp. 32–48.

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Sheriff, William E., ‘‘The Grotesque Comedy of Richard III,’’ originally published in Studies in the Literary Imagination, Vol. 5, No. 1, April 1972, pp. 51–64. Tanner, Stephen L., ‘‘Richard III versus Elizabeth: An Interpretation,’’ in Shakespeare Quarterly, Vol. 24, No. 4, Autumn 1973, pp. 468–72. Tillyard, E. M. W., ‘‘Richard III,’’ originally published in Shakespeare’s History Plays, Chatto & Windus, 1944, pp. 198–214. Velz, John W., ‘‘Episodic Structure in Four Tudor Plays: A Virtue of Necessity,’’ in Comparative Drama, Vol. 6, No. 2, Summer 1972, pp. 87–102. Weber, Karl, ‘‘Shakespeare’s Richard III, I.iv.24–33,’’ in Explicator, Vol. 38, No. 3, Spring 1980, pp. 24–6. Wilson, John Dover, ‘‘Introduction,’’ in Richard III, by William Shakespeare, Cambridge University Press, 1954, pp. vii–xlv.

Muir, Kenneth, ‘‘Image and Symbol in Shakespeare’s Histories,’’ in Bulletin of the John Rylands Library, Vol. 50, 1967–1968, pp. 103–23. Neill, Michael, ‘‘Shakespeare’s Halle of Mirrors: Play, Politics, and Psychology in Richard III,’’ in Shakespeare Studies, Vol. 8, 1980, pp. 99–129. Nietzsche, Friedrich, Beyond Good and Evil: Prelude to a Philosophy of the Future, translated by Walter Kaufmann, Vintage Books, 1966. Norwich, John Julius, Shakespeare’s Kings, Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1999. Ornstein, Robert, ‘‘Richard III,’’ in A Kingdom for a Stage: The Achievement of Shakespeare’s History Plays, Harvard University Press, 1972. Richards, Jeffrey, ‘‘The Riddle of Richard III,’’ in History Today, Vol. 33, No. 8, August 1983, pp. 18–25. Ritchey, David, ‘‘Queen Margaret (Richard III): A Production Note,’’ in North Carolina Journal of Speech and Drama, Vol. 7, No. 2, 1973, pp. 37–41. Rossiter, A. P., ‘‘Angel with Horns: The Unity of Richard III,’’ in Angel with Horns and Other Shakespeare Lectures, Longmans, 1961, pp. 1–22. Shakespeare, William, The Complete Illustrated Shakespeare, edited by Howard Staunton, 1858, reprint, Park Lane, 1979. ———, The Tragedy of Richard the Third, edited by Mark Eccles, Signet Classic, 1988. Shaw, George Bernard, Shaw on Shakespeare, edited by Edwin Wilson, E. P. Dutton, 1961.

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FURTHER READING Fields, Bertram, Royal Blood: Richard III and the Mystery of the Princes, Regan Books, 2000. A lawyer as well as a writer, Fields approaches the historical records from the time of Richard III with a well-honed skepticism and ability to conjecture, offering revisions of the more onesided versions of the king’s story. Hicks, Michael, The Wars of the Roses: 1455–1485, Routledge, 2003. Hicks provides a thought-provoking discussion of the causes of the Wars of the Roses in this relatively concise volume. Marshall, Christopher D., Beyond Retribution: A New Testament Vision for Justice, Crime, and Punishment, William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 2001. This even-keeled work discusses concepts of justice found in the Bible and considers their relevance to modern institutionalized systems of justice. Olivier, Laurence, On Acting, Simon & Schuster, 1987. Widely recognized as one of the greatest Shakespearean actors in history, Olivier provides a far-reaching discussion on the nature of acting, drawing on the lessons he learned playing the most demanding Shakespearean roles, including that of Richard III.

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Romeo and Juliet 1595

Romeo and Juliet, William Shakespeare’s tragedy of star-crossed lovers, is one of the most popular romantic tragedies in English literature. The drama has been reworked and adapted to the likes and times of audiences from the sixteenth century until today. Shakespeare himself adapted his drama from a folktale that originated at least one hundred years earlier than his play. Despite the changes in the story over the centuries, whether they were made for religious, political, or social concerns, at the core of this drama is a tale that has not been changed and that reaches deeply into the psyche. It is a story about growing up, experiencing love, rebelling against authority, surrendering to the power of fate, and facing mortality—of friends and lovers as well as one’s own. In a capsule, Romeo and Juliet is a play about life. The drama’s consistent popularity proves it. Everyone, at some stage of their lives, can relate to Romeo and Juliet. Pinning down the publication date of this play is difficult. What is known is that Shakespeare wrote it around the same time he wrote Richard II and A Midsummer Night’s Dream, which would place Romeo and Juliet around 1595. The official date that has been recorded for the printed version of the play is 1597. Although most critics are sure Shakespeare’s tragedy was presented earlier, there are no specific performances of this play recorded until 1662. By then, the original style of the play had been drastically changed. For example, Sir James Howard’s version of the play during that

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year provided a happy ending to this originally tragic story. The inspiration for Shakespeare’s version of this old story came from Luigi da Porto (1489– 1529), a scholar living in northern Italy, who wrote a story called Giulietta e Romeo. Then in 1562, Arthur Brooks (d. 1563) introduced this story to England via a long poem he called The Tragical History of Romeus and Juliet, which became Shakespeare’s primary source. Shakespeare left many of the same events that occurred in the poem; however, in bringing his work to the stage, Shakespeare sharpened some of the details for dramatic effect. For instance, he shortened the time frame; he reduced Juliet’s age to a more innocent thirteen years; and increased the emphasis on some of the minor characters, adding contrast between them and the young lovers in order to provide more complexities to the personalities of Romeo and Juliet. Since the play was taken from a popular story of the time, Shakespeare’s audiences were not as surprised as modern audiences might be to be told right in the beginning of the play what would happen. Shakespeare’s audiences came not to be surprised but rather to witness how Shakespeare would tell the familiar story. In some ways, this continues today, with modern audiences going to see updated versions of this wellknown story.

PLOT SUMMARY Act 1, Prologue The Prologue of Romeo and Juliet is read by a chorus of one or more people. In many productions of this play, the Prologue is often read by Prince Escalus, the lawmaker of this drama. In a 1997 movie version of this play, the Prologue is read by a television reporter, who presents it as a news report.

Act 1, Scene 1 Two servants from the Capulet household, Sampson and Gregory, talk about their dislike of the Montagues. The young men boast of how they will fight with the men and what they may also do to the women. When young men from the Montagues appear, the men fight. Benvolio, from the Montagues, tries to stop the fighting. However, Tybalt (of the Capulets) misinterprets Benvolio’s drawn sword and attacks.

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Capulet, the head of the family, arrives and sees the master of the Montague family. Capulet calls for his sword. The older men call one another names, but the prince appears and breaks up the impending fight. The prince declares that the feuding between the families must stop, promising a death sentence for anyone who is caught fighting again. Capulet leaves with the prince, while Montague questions Benvolio about who started this brawl. Lady Montague changes the topic, asking if Benvolio has seen her son, Romeo. Benvolio replies that he has seen him and that Romeo appeared depressed. Montague describes Romeo as being different from the other young men. Romeo likes to be alone. He stays up at night and shuns the daylight and is often seen in tears. Then, seeing Romeo approach, Benvolio leaves, telling the Montagues he will find out what troubles Romeo. When Benvolio presses Romeo to tell him why he is sad, Romeo describes the love he feels ‘‘Love is a smoke made with the fume of sighs; / Being purged, a fire sparkling in lovers’ eyes: / Being vexed, a sea nourished with loving tears.’’ He continues, being somewhat dramatic in his descriptions. Benvolio pokes fun at Romeo, then suggests that he look at other women. As Romeo and Benvolio part, Romeo says: ‘‘Thou canst not teach me to forget [this love].’’ And Benvolio replies: ‘‘I’ll pay that doctrine, or else die in debt.’’ In other words, Benvolio has accepted Romeo’s challenge and will do his best to make Romeo forget this love that Benvolio believes Romeo has completely invented.

Act 1, Scene 2 Capulet invites Paris, a kinsman of the prince, to Capulet’s masquerade party. He also talks to Paris about Juliet. Capulet tells Paris that his daughter is too young to marry, but in a couple of years ‘‘we may think her ripe to be a bride.’’ He suggests that Paris woo her and win her heart, but to wait until Juliet is ready. Then Capulet tells Peter, one of his servants, to announce the masquerade party around town. He gives Peter a list of people to invite. Peter leaves but is concerned because he cannot read. He bumps into Romeo who reads the list and finds Rosaline’s name. Peter invites Romeo and Benvolio to come to the party, providing they are not Montagues (he does not know who they are). Benvolio encourages Romeo to go

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will be present that night at the party. Juliet promises her mother that she will pay attention to Paris.

Act 1, Scene 4 Romeo, Mercutio, and Benvolio are about to enter the Capulet’s masquerade party. Romeo remains in his melancholy mood, claiming he is more comfortable just observing the party but not participating. Mercutio teases Romeo, trying to bring him out of his depressed mood. Mercutio tells Romeo that if he is in love, he should use that love to lighten his state of mind. Romeo insists that love is not tender but rather ‘‘too rough, / Too rude, too boist’rous, and it pricks like thorn.’’ Romeo tries to change the subject, speaking of dreams. Mercutio says that dreams lie. Romeo, on the other hand, believes that dreams tell of the future. Mercutio tells the story of Queen Mab, a fairy queen who visits people in their dreams. Mercutio’s story quickly goes from the lightly romantic to the slightly bizarre; and Romeo tells him to be quiet. The point that Mercutio wants to make is that dreams ‘‘are the children of an idle brain, / Begot of nothing but vain fantasy.’’ Mercutio is trying to tell Romeo that it is time for Romeo to wake up and live. Shakespeare, in the meantime, is contrasting Mercutio’s cynical reaction to love with Romeo’s romantic notions.

Romeo speaking with an apothecary, Act V, scene i (Ó Shakespeare Collection, Special Collections Library, University of Michigan)

to meet other women. Romeo agrees, but his reason is to not to meet any one new but to be closer to Rosaline.

Act 1, Scene 3 Lady Capulet searches for her daughter Juliet. When Juliet is found, Lady Capulet dismisses the Nurse, but then changes her mind and asks the Nurse to stay. This points out Lady Capulet’s lack of confidence as a mother. Lady Capulet, remembering that she was Juliet’s age when she gave birth to her daughter, asks Juliet if she has given any thought to marriage. Lady Capulet mentions that Paris has stated an interest and

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Act 1, Scene 5 Romeo is asking who Juliet is, when Tybalt recognizes Romeo’s voice. Tybalt is furious that Romeo has crashed the party. He wants to fight Romeo. Capulet interferes, yelling at Tybalt to not destroy the party. Romeo is heard talking to Juliet for the first time. Note that just before Tybalt leaves the scene, he speaks in rhyme. Then as Romeo and Juliet speak, they also talk in rhyme. This continues, sometimes with Romeo beginning a rhyme and Juliet finishing it, and vice versa. The rhyming helps to soften the mood, building up to Romeo and Juliet’s first kiss. Note also how quickly Romeo forgets about Rosaline as soon as he sets eyes on Juliet. Arguments have been made that this shows Romeo’s immaturity. Others state that Rosaline represented Romeo’s lack of worldly experience; and Juliet marks the beginning of Romeo’s maturity.

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Nurse interrupts the young lovers, and Romeo finds out, through Nurse, that the young woman he just kissed is a Capulet. Shortly after, Juliet also asks Nurse to identify Romeo. Nurse returns and tells Juliet that he is a Montague. ‘‘My only love,’’ Juliet says upon finding out, ‘‘sprung from my only hate!’’ Here again, Shakespeare is setting up opposites. Juliet emphasizes the contrast by stating: ‘‘Prodigious birth of love it is to ` enemy.’’ The me / That I must love a loathed scene ends with everyone leaving the party.

Act 2, Prologue Act 2 begins with another prologue. The chorus recites another sonnet, this time summarizing the events that took place in act 1.

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can they tell if what they are feeling for one another is true love and not just infatuation that will disappear? They decide that the way to prove that they are committed to one another is to get married.

Act 2, Scene 3 Friar Laurence is working with his plants, mentioning how some make poisons. Romeo enters and talks of love. Friar Laurence reacts dismally, thinking Romeo still longs for Rosaline. When Romeo tells him that it is Juliet, Friar Laurence first teases Romeo about the fickleness of his love, but then seems pleased. Friar Laurence hopes that the love between the two young people will end the feuding. Romeo asks Friar Laurence to marry them. The friar consents.

Act 2, Scene 1 Romeo is alone again. Benvolio and Mercutio are looking for him. Mercutio is fed up with Romeo and his romantic ideals, believing that Romeo is still pining for Rosaline. ‘‘The ape is dead, and I must conjure him,’’ Mercutio says. Mercutio talks about the physical aspects of lovemaking. He does not imagine a higher, more spiritual kind of love. Benvolio wants Mercutio to leave Romeo alone, fearing that what Mercutio is talking about will only anger Romeo.

Act 2, Scene 2 This scene incorporates the famous balcony scene at the Capulets’. Romeo has jumped over the garden wall and sees a light in a room he assumes is Juliet’s. He hides under the balcony when she appears. When Juliet and Romeo speak in this scene, they no longer talk through sonnets. They now speak in blank verse, suggesting that they have strayed away from the stereotypical literary protocol of lovers, like the poems that Romeo was once so fond of when he was infatuated with Rosaline. Juliet’s famous line is read: ‘‘O Romeo, Romeo! wherefore art though Romeo?’’ She does not know that Romeo is listening, as she announces that she wants Romeo to deny his name, which she will also do, if that is what it will take for them to love one another. The emphasis on her speech is on the meaninglessness of names and words. She is asking why a name should keep them apart. But this emphasis is also Shakespeare’s way of bringing up the topic of love. Juliet and Romeo are trying to define what love is. Romeo has read about it. He knows the words of love. But how

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Act 2, Scene 4 Mercutio and Benvolio mention a letter Romeo has received, containing a challenge from Tybalt. Mercutio states that Romeo ‘‘is already dead, stabbed / with a white wench’s black eye, run through the ear with / a love song.’’ Mercutio is speaking metaphorically but also prophetically. When Romeo appears, Mercutio makes fun of Romeo’s poetic nature. The young men banter back and forth. Mercutio constantly makes sexual overtones in his speech, but he is happy that Romeo appears to have dropped his melancholy mood. Nurse makes an appearance, reminding Romeo that Juliet awaits a word from him. Romeo tells Nurse to have Juliet meet him at Friar Laurence’s.

Act 2, Scene 5 Nurse relates Romeo’s message, including that Juliet should have a ladder ready so that after the wedding, Romeo can enter Juliet’s bedroom.

Act 2, Scene 6 Romeo is waiting with Friar Laurence, when Juliet enters. Friar Laurence joins them in marriage.

Act 3, Scene 1 The tone of the play quickly changes as the wedding scene moves toward the impending trouble. Two groups of men assemble in the streets, one group includes Benvolio and Mercutio; the other group is headed by Tybalt. There is tension between Mercutio and Tybalt until Romeo appears. Then Tybalt challenges Romeo to a

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duel. Tybalt calls Romeo a villain. Upon hearing this, Romeo says that if Tybalt thinks he is a villain, then Tybalt does not really know him. Romeo claims to love Tybalt but says he cannot, right at that moment, explain this. Mercutio, who is too anxious to fight, can stand it no longer. He draws his sword and challenges Tybalt, who responds by drawing his sword. Romeo tries to stop them but cannot. Tybalt thrusts his sword into Mercutio then runs. Mercutio curses both families. Romeo cannot believe Mercutio is badly hurt, but Mercutio states: ‘‘No, ‘tis not so deep as a well, nor so wide as a church door; but ‘tis enough, ‘twill serve. Ask for me tomorrow, and you shall find me a grave man.’’ Here Mercutio is making a morbid pun, not really saying that he is mortally injured but at the same time knowing that this is the case. Then Mercutio dies. Romeo says: ‘‘This day’s black fate on more days doth depend; / This but begins the woe others must end,’’ thus prophesying the other deaths that will follow. Benvolio tries to stop Romeo from fighting with Tybalt, but he is unsuccessful. Tybalt dies. Benvolio tells Romeo to run. The prince appears, and Benvolio tells him what has happened. Lady Capulet wants Romeo to suffer for having killed Tybalt. However, Montague argues that Romeo did only what the law would have done by killing Tybalt for having murdered Mercutio. So the prince decides to banish Romeo from Verona, instead.

Act 3, Scene 2 Juliet beseeches Nurse to tell her what has happened. Nurse moans that someone is dead. Juliet believes it is Romeo. Nurse says she has seen the wound in Tybalt’s chest; so Juliet thinks both Tybalt and Romeo are dead. Nurse finally tells Juliet that it is Tybalt who has died and Romeo has been banished. When Nurse settles down, she tries to soothe Juliet, telling her to prepare. Nurse will find Romeo and bring him to Juliet to sleep with her that night.

Act 3, Scene 3 Romeo has not yet heard the prince’s punishment, so he is afraid he might lose his life. But when Friar Laurence tells Romeo he has been banished, Romeo states that it would have been better that he had been put to death, since he will now be so far from Juliet. This makes the Friar

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lose his patience with Romeo, saying: ‘‘O rude unthankfulness!’’ The prince has granted Romeo mercy and the Friar is disappointed that Romeo does not recognize his great fortune. Nurse arrives, telling Romeo that Juliet is feeling miserable. Romeo states that he wants to stab himself. Friar Laurence is again disgusted with Romeo, asking if he really is a man. After a long speech telling Romeo how awfully he has been behaving, Friar tells Romeo, ‘‘Go get thee to thy love, as was decreed.’’

Act 3, Scene 4 Capulet with his wife and Paris console one another about Tybalt’s death. Then Capulet tells his wife to prepare Juliet for Paris’s declaration of love and that on Thursday, they will be married.

Act 3, Scene 5 Romeo and Juliet have spent the night together. Romeo knows he must leave before dawn. He has been banished to Mantua (in northwestern Italy). As the two young lovers say good-bye, their language is filled with poetic images, showing that they have matured. Their love is no adolescent crush. Juliet urges him to be gone so that no one will find him still in the city. Romeo says they will be together again. However, Juliet has a vision of Romeo’s death. Lady Capulet enters the bedroom. She believes Juliet is crying because of Tybalt and promises Juliet that she will send someone to Mantua to poison Romeo. In an ambiguous statement, Juliet tells her mother: ‘‘Indeed I never shall be satisfied/With Romeo till I behold him— dead—/Is my poor heart so for a kinsman vexed.’’ This can be read in two ways. One way is that Juliet is trying to appease her mother, having it sound like she wants to see Romeo dead. But in another reading, Juliet means that her heart is dead until she sees Romeo again. Lady Capulet tells her daughter that she will wed Paris. Juliet rebels against her father’s wishes. Her father says he will disown her if she does not obey. Later, when Juliet turns to Nurse for advice, Nurse tells her to marry Paris.

Act 4, Scene 1 Juliet goes to Friar Laurence pleading for help. Friar Laurence gives her a concoction that will put her into a deep sleep, making it look like she is dead. She will awaken in the tomb, and Friar

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Laurence will make sure Romeo is there to take her to Mantua.

Act 4, Scene 2 Juliet goes back home, and when her father asks where she has been, she tells him she went to church to confess her sin of disobedience.

Act 4, Scene 3

MEDIA ADAPTATIONS In 1936, Romeo and Juliet was produced on film under George Cukor’s direction. It was nominated for four Academy Awards, including Best Picture and Best Actress (Norma Shearer).  Almost twenty years later, in 1954, another film version was made. Laurence Harvey starred in this version, which was directed by Renato Castellani. 

Juliet goes to bed and drinks the sleeping potion.

Act 4, Scene 4 It is the next day, and the Capulet household prepares for the wedding.

Act 4, Scene 5 Nurse goes to Juliet’s room and thinks she has found Juliet’s dead body. Capulet, his wife, and Paris all mourn the loss. Friar Laurence quickly appears, pretending not to know what is going on. He tells the family not to mourn, because ‘‘she’s best married that dies married young.’’ The funeral is prepared.

Act 5, Scene 1



Using Leonard Bernstein’s musical score, a story based on Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet was adapted for the screen in 1961. Natalie Wood starred as Maria (the Juliet character) in West Side Story. The movie won ten Academy Awards.



Romeo and Juliet was adapted as a film by Italian director Franco Zeffirelli for Paramount Studios in 1968. The movie won an Academy Award for costume design and cinematography and featured the acting talents of Olivia Hussey, Leonard Whiting, Michael York, and Milo O’Shea.



In 1996, Leonardo DiCaprio and Claire Danes starred in a Baz Luhrmann version of Romeo and Juliet that used modern scenery (it was set in Miami Beach) but retained the language of Shakespeare.

Balthasar, Romeo’s servant, appears in Mantua and mistakenly tells Romeo that Juliet is dead. Distressed, Romeo seeks out the Apothecary for a poison he can take so that he can join Juliet.

Act 5, Scene 2 Friar John appears at Friar Laurence’s, telling him that he was unable to deliver the letter to Romeo, telling him that Juliet is not dead but just in a deep sleep. Friar Laurence says he will make sure another letter is sent to Romeo, and in the meantime, he will hide Juliet until Romeo arrives.

Act 5, Scene 3 Romeo is at the vault and tells Balthasar to take a letter he has written to his family. When Romeo enters the tomb, Paris is inside protecting Juliet’s body. Paris tries to stop Romeo. The two young men fight. Paris dies. Romeo sees Juliet’s body and is surprised that death has no power over her beauty. Romeo kisses her, drinks the poison, and dies. Friar Laurence comes across Balthasar and is happy to hear that Romeo is at the vault. He hurries over. He sees Paris’s bloody body, and then he notices Romeo, who is very pale. Juliet awakens. The friar tells Juliet of the deaths and

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asks her to come to his place. He will take her to a nunnery. The friar leaves, and Juliet kisses Romeo. When a watchman startles her, she finds Romeo’s dagger and stabs herself. Watchmen, Friar Laurence, and the prince enter. Capulet and his wife, as well as Montague, eventually show up. Montague says his wife has died of grief at Romeo’s banishment. The prince demands the friar tell them everything he knows. Then Balthasar brings Romeo’s letter, which fills in all the missing details. The prince points out how both families have been punished for their hatred of one another. Capulet and Montague promise peace, and the prince ends the play with

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the line: ‘‘For never was a story of more woe / Than this of Juliet and her Romeo.’’

After Juliet’s death, Capulet makes peace with Montague.

Lady Capulet CHARACTERS Apothecary A maker of drugs and medicines who sells Romeo the poison with which he kills himself.

Balthasar Balthasar, Romeo’s servant, is a minor character in this play. He travels to Mantua to inform Romeo of Juliet’s supposed death. Balthasar then travels with Romeo back to the Capulets’ tomb where Juliet lies. Romeo commands that Balthasar wait outside. He therefore cannot prevent the tragic ending.

Lady Capulet is Capulet’s wife and Juliet’s mother. Her role in the play is small. She is not a warm-hearted mother and is raising her daughter without much affection. She favors Juliet’s marriage to Paris and, with her husband, rebukes her daughter when Juliet protests the match. She also demonstrates that she knows far less about her daughter than Nurse does. In fact, it is Nurse that Juliet turns to for counsel and comfort, not Lady Capulet.

Chorus The chorus narrates the prologues to acts one and two.

Prince Escalus Benvolio Benvolio, who tries to live up to the meaning of his name that implies a man of goodwill, is Montague’s nephew and Romeo’s and Mercutio’s friend. Benvolio tries to make peace between the fighting servants of the Montague and Capulet families in the beginning of the play. He also tries to talk Romeo out of his love sick state when Romeo is infatuated with Rosaline. Later Benvolio attempts in vain to prevent the fight between Mercutio and Tybalt. Adults in this play turn to Benvolio to find out what has happened between the members of Benvolio’s generation. In this way, Shakespeare implies that Benvolio might be the more rational and the more mature of all the young people. Benvolio also is one of the least tainted (along with Romeo and Juliet) by the feud between the Capulets and the Montagues.

Capulet Capulet is the head of the Capulet household and Juliet’s arrogant and domineering father. He is protective of Juliet and is careful about arranging her marriage at first. However, after Tybalt’s death, Capulet insists that Juliet marry Paris. When Juliet refuses, Capulet threatens to abandon her. Capulet, at times in this play, appears to be somewhat level headed, such as when he stops Tybalt from creating a disturbance at the masquerade party when it is discovered that Romeo is there. However, Capulet also often exposes his hot temper, such as when he demonstrates that he is willing to completely disown his daughter.

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Escalus is the prince of Verona and represents the law. He attempts, unsuccessfully, to prevent the public brawls between the feuding houses of the Montagues and Capulets. After Romeo kills Tybalt in a duel, Escalus banishes Romeo from Verona. At the end of the play, at Capulet’s tomb, it is the prince who delivers the news of the deaths of Romeo and Juliet to their parents. It is also the prince who preaches at the parents, making them understand the way their actions have led to these untimely deaths.

Gregory Gregory opens act 1 as he walks down the street with a fellow servant from the Montague household. He boasts of how he will take the Capulet men and their women. Shortly after, he becomes involved in a brawl with Capulet men. Gregory, along with the other young men in this first scene, sets the stage for further developments in the escalating feud between the two families.

Friar John Friar John is a minor player in this drama. A Franciscan monk, he is quarantined in Verona because of the plague and is therefore unable to deliver Friar Laurence’s letter to Romeo which would have told him that Juliet’s death has been contrived.

Juliet Juliet is the tragic heroine of this play, the daughter of Capulet and Lady Capulet, raised almost entirely by the character Nurse. The play opens

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Still of Claire Danes and Leonardo DiCaprio from the 1996 movie Romeo and Juliet (Reproduced by permission of The Picture Desk, Inc.)

with Juliet at the age of thirteen—old enough, her parents believe, to be married. But Juliet has not put much thought into marriage yet, at least, not until she meets Romeo.

symptoms. When she awakens in the Capulet vault to find Romeo dead, she commits suicide by stabbing herself with Romeo’s dagger, preferring not to live without her Romeo.

Juliet’s parents have no interest at all in Romeo. He is the heir of the Montague family, their arch rivals. Instead, at the ball, they introduce her to Paris, who is kin to the prince. Juliet is, at that point, an obedient daughter, who tells her mother she will try to love Paris. But at that same ball Juliet meets Romeo, and she is more taken by him. When the two of them appear together, it is immediately noticeable that Juliet is more level-headed than Romeo. Romeo is rash, where Juliet is calm and rational. Romeo is romantic, where Juliet is practical. But it is through her sudden and deep love of Romeo that Juliet matures, quite quickly.

Juliet represents innocence in some ways. She is not completely innocent when it comes to sex, but she strives for a higher form of connection between a man and a woman. She is innocent, also, in that she is not contaminated by the hatred that runs through her family. She knows of the family feud but does not take part in it. She also elevates herself in this realm, realizing that the only difference between the families is in their names. In other ways, however, Juliet is worldly and wise. She chastises Romeo for being in love with love, for attempting to practice love as if one could read directions for it from a book. She awakens Romeo to his real feelings and is daring enough to make up her own definitions of love. At the end of the play, she kills herself, as Romeo has, but not in the same manner. She uses a dagger, which one might argue is more aggressive than using poison.

Juliet secretly marries Romeo and defies her parents, protesting when they insist that she marry Paris. After Romeo is exiled, Juliet plans her false death to avoid becoming Paris’s wife. She drinks a potion that produces death-like

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Friar Laurence Friar Laurence is the Franciscan priest who marries Romeo and Juliet in a secret wedding. His hope in doing so is that the Montague and Capulet families will stop feuding. After Romeo is banished from Verona, Friar Laurence advises Juliet to marry Paris. Then it is Friar Laurence’s suggestion that leads Juliet to feign her death. Friar Laurence writes a letter to Romeo to explain the false death of Juliet, but his letter does not get to Romeo. At the end, Friar Laurence explains to the families what has happened to the young lovers. Friar Laurence is a catalyst in the play. This is fitting, since besides his religious calling, he also studies the chemical properties of plants. It is through Friar Laurence’s scheming that the tragedy takes place, although his thoughts run in an entirely different direction. He hopes his actions will heal the city and resolve the battle between the two families. Ultimately this does happen, but not until two precious members of those families are dead. Throughout the play, Friar Laurence serves as a friend and counselor to both Romeo and Juliet. He provides a religious dimension to the play, as he attempts to restore peace in Verona and dispel the evil. The Friar is generally viewed as a good man who exercises poor judgment when he hastily marries the lovers. He stands by his actions, however, and tries to prevent Juliet’s marriage to Paris by devising the sleeping potion scheme. The play also offers another perspective of the Friar. Numerous references demonstrate that had he, too, acted with less haste, the tragic deaths of Romeo and Juliet may have been prevented. For example, had the priest sent the message concerning Juliet’s assumed death to Romeo via Balthasar rather than Friar John, the final catastrophe might have been averted. No matter how one interprets his role in the play, Friar Laurence is indeed an active agent in bringing about the lovers’ tragedy.

Mercutio Mercutio, Romeo’s playful friend, is very witty with a touch of sarcasm. He does not believe in love and pokes fun at Romeo for his affections toward Juliet. He quarrels with Tybalt and ends up being killed by him in a duel; this is the critical event that motivates Romeo to seek revenge. The bawdy, or humorously obscene, language of Mercutio (as well as of the Nurse) presents a

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contrast to the innocence of Romeo and Juliet’s passion. For this reason, Mercutio is often interpreted as a comic ‘‘foil’’ to the lovers. (A foil is a character who, through strong contrast, underscores or enhances the distinctive traits of another character.) Mercutio is renowned for his vitality. He is viewed as an extreme egotist and sensualist, whose open personality and coarse sexual humor reflect his individuality and naturalness. Shakespeare has been particularly praised for his well-defined portrait of Mercutio’s character.

Montague Although Montague is Romeo’s father, his role in this play is small. He is the head of the Montague household. He reconciles with Capulet after Romeo’s and Juliet’s deaths and promises to erect a statue in the young girl’s name.

Lady Montague Lady Montague is Montague’s wife and Romeo’s mother. She dies from grief over Romeo’s banishment from Verona.

Nurse Nurse is Juliet’s attendant and provides some comic relief to this tragedy. She has raised Juliet from a baby, having lost her own child. She is more like a mother to Juliet than Lady Capulet is. Her humor often stems from sexual innuendos, providing a contrast to Juliet’s innocence and high ideals of love. Nurse helps arrange Juliet’s secret marriage to Romeo, but after Romeo’s banishment, Nurse advises Juliet to marry Paris. It is Nurse who finds Juliet on the morning of Juliet’s wedding to Paris, in a druginduced fake death. Nurse believes, however, that the death is real and she laments the loss. The Nurse, a well-conceived, rich, and natural character, is often considered one of Shakespeare’s greatest comic creations. Her bawdy, or humorously obscene, language presents a stark contrast to the purity of Romeo and Juliet’s passion. For this reason, her character is often interpreted as a comic ‘‘foil’’ to the lovers.

Paris Paris is a nobleman and Prince Escalus’s kinsman. Paris is just the opposite of Romeo, in that he is very straightforward and lacks passion. He becomes engaged to Juliet without apparent

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love. But his feelings for Juliet appear real when he believes that she has died. In an attempt to protect her body from harm, he duels with Romeo at the Capulet vault. Paris dies at the hands of Romeo.

Peter Peter is a Capulet servant, who is asked to distribute the news around town of a party Capulet is holding. Peter is worried because he cannot read the list of people’s names, and stops to ask Romeo, who happens by, to read it for him. Romeo notices Rosaline’s name. Peter leaves but not before inviting Romeo to the party, assuming he is not a Montague.

Romeo Romeo, along with Juliet, is the main character of this play, the sixteen-year-old (or so) tragic hero. He is the son of Montague and Lady Montague. In the beginning of the play, Romeo sounds much like an immature young man. He is moody and hides from his family and friends so that he might brood in solitude. The reason for his melancholy is his infatuation with Rosaline, a character that never appears in the play, thus alluding to the probability that she is barely aware of Romeo. His love for her, more than likely, is manufactured from the love poems he reads. Romeo wants to be in love, in other words, like the poets that he reads, so he imagines that he is. It is not until he meets level-headed Juliet that Romeo begins to mature. He falls instantly in love with her, this time for real. He is taken by her wit and beauty. Juliet is flesh and blood, not a figment of his imagination. Romeo’s passion now has a true and fulfilling focus. Unfortunately, Romeo’s passion, once it is ignited through his love for Juliet, becomes a bit wild, or uncontained. Whereas before he met Juliet, he shunned the duels that his Montague friends engaged in with the Capulets, now he seeks revenge. When Mercutio is killed, Romeo acts as if he cannot help but kill Tybalt. This sets into action a train of fateful events that will lead to Romeo’s death. But still, Romeo could have stopped that train. Had he but been more patient and sought counsel with Friar Laurence after finding Juliet in the Capulet tomb, this story would have been a romance instead of a tragedy.

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Rosaline Rosaline never appears on stage; she is merely mentioned in the early part of the play. Romeo’s seeming melancholy in the beginning of the play is due to his infatuation with Rosaline. Rosaline, it is said, has taken the vow of chastity, never to love any man. Rosaline is used to provide a contrast between Romeo’s rational but contrived feelings of love as opposed to the emotions that will quickly swoop him off his feet when he meets and falls for Juliet. Rosaline is mentioned throughout much of the play, as many of the characters believe that Romeo’s emotional state is caused by his love for Rosaline. They mock him, believing that his feelings are the result of his reading too many love poems and really have nothing to do with Rosaline at all. When Friar Laurence discovers that Romeo has found a new love with Juliet, someone who returns Romeo’s love, Friar Laurence realizes that Romeo has finally matured.

Sampson Sampson, a young servant of the Montague household, helps to open the first act of this play, as he is walking down a street in Verona with a fellow servant, Gregory. The two young men boast of triumphing over Capulet men and taking their women. Sampson ends up getting in a brawl with some of the Capulet men, thus demonstrating in the beginning of the play the bad feelings between the two families.

Tybalt Tybalt is Lady Capulet’s nephew and Juliet’s cousin. Tybalt is the most unruly and most hotheaded of all the young men in this play. He seems to have no greater goal in life than to fight with the Capulets. He is looked upon as the leader of his group of men, and his ultimate goal, or trophy, appears to be a duel with Romeo. After mortally wounding Mercutio in a fight, he gets his wish. However, Tybalt is killed by Romeo.

THEMES Love In examining the nature of Romeo and Juliet’s relationship, it is important to achieve an understanding of how love is viewed in this play. In some ways, the young lovers’ emotions reflect

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the practice of so-called courtly love that was prevalent in the Middle Ages and affected the European literature of the Renaissance. Although courtly love influenced a part of Romeo and Juliet’s relationship, by definition Romeo’s affection for Rosaline is more closely identified with the language, conventions, and sentiments of this type of relationship. Courtly love was a late medieval tradition that defined what love was and established a code of behavior for lovers. In essence, under this system, love is illicit (not between husband and wife) and is accompanied by great emotional suffering. The lover (in literature, usually a knight) falls in love at first sight and agonizes over his situation until his affection is returned, which it often is not, since the target of the knight’s affection might not even know of him. Whether the feelings are returned is not essential. The emotions that the knight feels as a result of his love are enough to propel him to do great deeds. Romeo’s affection for Rosaline is based on his reading about courtly relationships. He is consumed by the poetry (some of which goes back to the ballads of troubadours) and believes he has fallen in love with this young woman, who never appears on stage. This distance builds the allusion that she is unaware of Romeo’s existence. Therefore, Romeo suffers through his emotional upheaval in solitude, pining for a woman who might not even know Romeo exists. Romeo’s courage to attend the Capulet’s masquerade party is the direct result of his feelings for Rosaline; taking this risk is Romeo’s ‘‘great deed’’ of courtly love. Romeo’s love for Juliet (and hers for him) is also tinged with the precepts of courtly love. According to the conventions of courtly love, the lovers pledge their fidelity to one another and vow to keep their union a secret. Romeo and Juliet have a clandestine relationship, meeting at night and telling no one but Nurse and Friar Laurence of their plans. There are other elements of courtly love that Romeo and Juliet’s affair closely follow: they fall in love at first sight and their love is strengthened rather than weakened by the challenges they must face (in their case, because of their families’ feud). However, Shakespeare takes Romeo and Juliet’s love a step deeper, definitely demonstrating the influence of these concepts, but wanting to show that there is more to love than the

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bookish conventions that order love into neat categories. Whereas Romeo’s love affair with Rosaline followed the concepts of courtly love more faithfully, his love for Juliet differs in major ways. Romeo and Juliet have a love that has a spiritual quality. The couple treats love with great reverence. They are more grounded in one another, facing their fears as they try to define their love not by the book but through their feelings. They also take their love higher than Nurse’s and Mercutio’s bawdy definitions that are based on sex. Romeo removes from his mind the fantasies of the poems he has been reading and the images they presented to him and feels love from his heart instead of from his head. It is Romeo and Juliet’s faithfulness to this higher element of love in the face of violence and hatred, and even to the point of meeting their deaths, that ultimately restores peace and order to Verona. It is as if Shakespeare was saying that, whereas courtly love might read well, it does not have the power of real love. The playwright, through this play, also exposes the power of marrying for love rather than marrying as obedience to one’s parents. There is also the sexual love as talked about through Mercutio and Nurse. Mercutio represents love for carnal pleasure. This type of love does not elevate the object of love but rather generalizes the object. Thus, one woman is as good as any other, for Mercutio’s satisfaction. He does not linger long enough to find out who the woman is or what she thinks or feels. He uses her to satisfy his needs. Nurse also talks about men and women in terms of their sexual drives. However, she adds another element to the discussion of love. When Juliet goes to Nurse for counsel when Capulet insists that Juliet marry Paris, Nurse tells Juliet to forget Romeo and to marry Paris. This is contractual love—marrying someone for rational reasons, whether it be for money, title, or land. Love might develop, but it is not the motivating force.

Hate Just as love is used as a theme, its opposite, hate, is also woven through this play. The hate between the Capulets and the Montagues is demonstrated immediately at the opening of the play. Shakespeare offers no reason for this hate, he only shows how this negative emotion affects everyone in the play. Tybalt, for example, has this hate so enmeshed in his thoughts and his psyche that he believes his honor has been

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crushed merely by Romeo’s presence at the Capulet masquerade party. This hate, unchecked, ends in Mercutio’s and Tybalt’s deaths. The hate is questioned, however, when it extends to Romeo and Juliet. They each fall for one another without knowing what family the other belongs to. When they discover that they are on the opposite sides of the warring families, they must look through their families’ horrible dislike for one another in order to see through to their love. In some ways, it is because of this hate that Romeo and Juliet create such an instantaneous and pure love. Because they are shocked to find out the truth about each other’s families, they question the hate that has been handed down to them. It is through this foil of hate that they realize how deeply felt their love is.

Passion The most obvious example of passion in this play is that of Juliet’s and Romeo’s love for one another. But there are other passions that run through this drama. Mercutio, for example, is a person who does not believe in the passion of love, but does exhibit a passion for life. Mercutio believes that Romeo’s passions for Rosaline robs Romeo of the pleasures of life. He wants to awaken Romeo out of his dark melancholy and show him the beauty of light—he wants Romeo to dance rather than hide in the shadows, to enjoy women rather than pine for them. But Mercutio is not all fun and light himself. He also has dark passions. In act 1, scene 4, Mercutio teases Romeo about his dreams, saying they mean nothing. His joking, however, goes quickly from imagining fairies to conjuring demons. Mercutio begins by talking about love and suddenly turns to talking about cutting throats, exhibiting his own passion for fighting and death. In act 2, scene 4, Mercutio compares different kinds of passion. Mercutio believes that Romeo’s passion for love has made him blind, weak, and useless. In other words, the uplifting emotions of love have left Romeo less than a man, unprepared for the challenges a man must face, such as Tybalt’s duel. But even Tybalt falls short of the fighting passion that Mercutio sees as most pure. Though Tybalt is a master swordsman, Tybalt is too distracted by appearances. He talks with a fake accent and is too interested in all the new clothing fashions. Mercutio, in comparison, is an old-fashioned kind of man, which

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Shakespeare does not fully define but he has Mercutio say: ‘‘Why, is not this a lamentable thing, grandsire, that we should be thus afflicted with these strange flies, these fashionmongers, these pardon-me’s, who stand so much on the new form that they cannot sit at ease on the old bench?’’ Whatever the ‘‘old bench’’ is, it is not the likes of Tybalt. There is another incident with Mercutio, who begins act 3, scene 1 by telling Benvolio that he argues too much. However, as soon as Tybalt makes an appearance and asks to speak to them, Mercutio says: ‘‘And but one word with one of us? / Couple it with something; make it a word and a blow.’’ This further demonstrates the difference between Tybalt and Mercutio. Tybalt’s passion might be for swordsmanship; but Mercutio’s is the pleasure of fighting. Words are meaningless, Mercutio implies. He wants something more, like blood. Mercutio’s passion is so strong in this area that he pushes Tybalt into dueling with him. It was not Mercutio’s fight and yet he makes it so. When Romeo arrives, Mercutio is insulted by Romeo’s attempts to calm Tybalt. ‘‘O calm, dishonorable, vile submission!’’ he yells. Mercutio will not allow this night to end without a fight. Passion is exemplified in other characters as well. Capulet, for instance, who asks for peace at his masquerade party when Tybalt discovers Romeo’s presence. However, when Tybalt pushes him, Capulet exhibits his own fighting passions as he raises his voice at Tybalt and threatens him if Tybalt dares to disrupt the party. Capulet also exposes the range in his passions when at one point he tells Paris that his daughter is too tender to marry at the age of thirteen, then suddenly changes his position and he becomes so furious at Juliet’s refusal to obey him that he is willing to cast her out of his life if she does not consent to marrying Paris a few days later In addition, there is a quiet but dominant passion that drives the prince to find peace between the feuding families. There is also Friar Laurence’s misguided passion that drives him to marry Romeo and Juliet, knowing that their families would not approve. He then concocts schemes to make sure Romeo and Juliet can find a way to be together, because he hopes, like the prince, for an end to the family feud.

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Harold Perrineau as Mercutio, giving the Queen Mab speech, from the 1996 film Romeo and Juliet (Ó 20th Century Fox Film Corp/Everett Collection)

Fate As in many of his plays, such as Julius Caesar and Macbeth, Shakespeare explores the theme of fate in this drama. From the opening lines in the prologue to the last act, the characters are helpless to do anything other than what fate directs them to do. Romeo goes to Capulet’s party to seek comfort from Rosaline. He does not even know, at that point, that Juliet exists. And yet, once he sets his eyes upon her, he falls in love instantly. Although Friar Laurence, upon hearing that Romeo wants to marry Juliet, believes this marriage might end the feud between the Capulets and Montagues, fate has twisted this fairy tale. While the coming together of Romeo and Juliet ultimately does end the feud, it is their deaths and not their love that brings the two families together. Also, no matter how hard Friar Laurence works to make sure that the two young people are protected from their families’ hatred, it is Friar Laurence who brings about their deaths. Fate has played against Friar Laurence, disallowing his letter to be delivered. Romeo faces Tybalt in a confident mood

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after he has married Juliet. Even though Romeo extends the love he has for Juliet to her kinsman, fate again steps into the picture. Hot-tempered Mercutio, either too impassioned with hate or too protective of Romeo, decides that the battle should be between himself and Tybalt. Had Mercutio held his temper, Romeo might have walked away, and Tybalt might have put his sword back in its sheath. But Romeo and Juliet, as the chorus states in the prologue, are star-crossed lovers. Thus, their love may be strong but it is not meant to last, at least not on this mortal plane. Had Romeo, on the other hand, mourned Mercutio’s death and declared that the killings should stop there, his life and Juliet’s life might have been spared. But fate would not allow it. Had Capulet not forced his young daughter to marry Paris, Juliet would have had no need to fake her death. And if Romeo had not acted so hastily upon seeing Juliet’s drug-induced slumber, he might not have swallowed the poison. And what would have happened had Juliet awakened a few minutes earlier?

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TOPICS FOR FURTHER STUDY 

Bring a copy of the video West Side Story to class. Set up a schedule with your teacher for showing it. After you have seen the video, lead a discussion about the similarities or differences between this story and that of Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet. Questions you can ask to begin the discussion might include: What are the themes of the two stories? How are the emotions of the main characters similar? Do the differences in setting or in time affect the story in any way?



Suppose that before Juliet dies, she writes a letter to her parents. What do you think she would say? How would her remarks differ when she addresses her father and then her mother? Also have her include a note to Nurse. Really try to get into the emotions she would have for each person and use those emotions to affect her words.

Shakespeare uses all these incidents to present the world as a place ruled by a higher power. No matter what the characters intend or wish to do, fate determines the lives all of the characters will lead.

STYLE Passage of Time A prominent aspect of the construction of Romeo and Juliet is Shakespeare’s handling of the passage of time. He has set up the short time frame to underscore the lovers’ hasty actions. This is most clearly emphasized in Romeo and Juliet’s headlong rush to fulfill their love for each other. Shakespeare most notably emphasizes this haste by compressing the several months’ worth of action found in Brooke’s Tragical

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In the seventeenth century, some producers changed the play so that it would end happily. Prepare a script for Romeo and Juliet and act it out with a partner in front of your class. Start with Romeo coming and seeing Juliet in the tomb. What would happen next? What would they have to say to one another? How would they react when their parents show up? How could they stop the family feud without dying?  Create two panels of students, one of four or five boys, the other of four or five girls. The topic will be definitions of masculinity. Begin with a presentation of how Shakespeare defines masculinity through this play. Add some research notes that you have made about men of the sixteenth century, from any country, including your own. Then ask your panel to discuss how those definitions have changed over the years. Or have they changed at all? 

History of Romeus and Juliet to only five days in his play. Subtle patterns of swift imagery and lively dialogue, as well as the chorus’s commentary, create an undercurrent of tension and impulsiveness that is discernible throughout the play. On several occasions, Shakespeare ironically contrasts the notion of time and haste with a particular character’s dialogue. One example of this technique is the contradiction between the play’s hurried pace and Friar Laurence’s warning to Romeo at the end of act 2, scene 3: ‘‘Wisely and slow. They stumble that run fast.’’ The priest later fails to heed his own advice, however, when, in act 5, he is startled and hastens from the tomb, leaving Juliet to her fate. Shakespeare employs all of these devices to create a frantic atmosphere in which the characters behave recklessly.

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Construction of a Tragedy Some critics have had trouble deciding if Shakespeare’s tragic design is effective and therefore an authentic tragedy. In drama, a tragedy traditionally recounts the significant events or actions in a protagonist’s life which, taken together, bring about the catastrophe. The ambiguity surrounding the cause of the lovers’ deaths has led some critics to regard the play as an apprentice tragedy, one in which Shakespeare had not yet developed his skills as a tragic dramatist. In fact, Romeo and Juliet is often considered an experiment in tragedy, in which the playwright attempts to break free of traditional patterns by omitting the necessary cause-andeffect relationship between the lovers’ characters and their catastrophe. In trying to determine the validity of the construction of Shakespeare’s play, critics have proposed three main ways to interpret Shakespeare’s arrangement of events and circumstances in Romeo and Juliet. One method of looking at Shakespeare’s arrangement of events is to regard Romeo and Juliet as helpless victims of the arbitrary operation of fate. Numerous tricks of chance in the play support this theory. For example, there are Romeo’s failed attempt to stop the fight between Mercutio and Tybalt, and Friar John’s inability to leave Verona due to the plague. References to fortune and the stars throughout the play, particularly the description of Romeo and Juliet in the prologue to act 1 as ‘‘star-crossed lovers,’’ also uphold this argument. This emphasis on fortune as a guiding force that determines one’s destiny was probably not lost on Elizabethan audiences, who would have been familiar with, and would have likely endorsed, this belief in fate. A second perspective is that Romeo and Juliet is a tragedy of providence or divine will. Proponents of this interpretation maintain that the seemingly coincidental or accidental events in the play are in fact initiated by God to punish and, ultimately, to reconcile the feuding families. God finally achieves this reconciliation by using the deaths of the lovers as a moral example for the others. A third reading of Shakespeare’s tragic design holds that the lovers’ own reckless passion leads to their double suicide. Supporters of this viewpoint sometimes regard Friar Laurence as a spokesman for Shakespeare himself, for the

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monk does not completely endorse Romeo and Juliet’s impetuous behavior but rather cautions them toward a moderate love. These three perspectives on Shakespeare’s tragic design are perhaps the most commonly discussed issues in Romeo and Juliet. At various times throughout the centuries since the tragedy was written, critics have generally emphasized one or another of these interpretations of the play’s construction. Recently, however, commentators have argued that Shakespeare actually presents a balance of all three concepts in the play.

Sonnet Shakespeare uses prose, blank verse (unrhymed metered lines), and sonnets in this play. The sonnets are the most poetic, having metered as well as rhymed lines. The prologues in the beginning of the first and second acts are in the form of sonnets. When Romeo and Juliet first profess their love in act 1, scene 5, they also speak in a sonnet form, in which they divide the lines between them. Many critics believe that it is through the sonnet that Shakespeare imparts the highest of emotions in his early plays. As Shakespeare matured as a writer, however, he used sonnets less frequently. A sonnet is a fourteen-line poem in iambic pentameter (pairs of five double syllables, the first of which is unstressed, the second of which is stressed). The lines are carefully patterned in rhymes. If you look at lines 1 through 14, in the prologue prior to act 1, you will see that the last word in line 1 rhymes with the last word in line 3; the last word in line 2 rhymes with the last word in line 4. Then the pattern changes. Line 5 rhymes with line 7; line 6 rhymes with line 8. Line 9, rhymes with 11; and 10 rhymes with 12. Then lines 12 and 14 rhyme with one another. This is one patterned formed in the sonnet. The rhyming, even if audiences are unaware of it, helps the lines flow together more smoothly than normal speech. The rhymes, as well as the rhythm, hold the speech to a very distinct size and form. The word sonnet comes from the Italian word sonetto meaning ‘‘little song.’’ So when characters on stage recite a sonnet, it is somewhat like having them sing to the audience.

Use of Puns for Comic Relief A pun is a figure of speech that plays on various meanings of a word, usually to create a comic

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sexual connotations, especially in the speeches of Nurse and Mercutio.

Zubin Varla as Romeo and Lucy Whybrow as Juliet in Act V, scene iii, at the Royal Shakespeare Theatre, 1995 (Ó Donald Cooper/Photostage.

In the first scene of act 1, less serious puns are spoken between Sampson and Gregory, two servants of the house of Montague. As they walk down the street, the first young man mentions the word coal, which is Shakespeare’s time also referred to an insult. The second young man picks up on the meaning of coal as modern readers would understand it, a fuel, stating that if they ‘‘carry coals’’ they then would be called ‘‘colliers,’’ which refers to people who bring the fuel in wagons to various houses to sell it. Then Sampson mentions the word ‘‘choler,’’ which sounds the same as the word ‘‘collier,’’ but means ‘‘anger.’’ And Gregory continues this word play by mentioning the word ‘‘collar,’’ an allusion to the rope noose that is used to hang a person and a word that sounds the same as ‘‘choler.’’ In Shakespeare’s time, the audience would have understood all these allusions as well as the playful confusion between the double meanings of the words and how those meanings completely change the context of the young men’s speech. In this way, despite the fact that the men are talking about dueling, anger, and possible murder, the audience cannot help but laugh at the word play.

Reproduced by permission)

Use of Oxymoron to Deepen or to Deflect Meaning response or ambiguity. Romeo and Juliet is filled with puns. Shakespeare uses many puns in this play to offset some of the tension of the sword fights, the deaths, and the anxiety that builds toward the deaths of his two protagonists. Although audiences in the twenty-first century might not understand the puns that Shakespeare uses in this play, his audiences in Early Modern England would have grabbed their meaning and laughed out loud at the humor and clever wit of the author. Some of the puns are lost on audiences today because the words that are used as puns no longer exist in contemporary language. However, some are still evident. Such a one is in Mercutio’s statement after he has been wounded by Tybalt. In act 3, scene 1, Mercutio says: ‘‘Ask for me tomorrow, and you shall find me a grave man.’’ His reference to ‘‘grave man’’ implies both a serious man as well as a dead man. Many other of the puns have

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An oxymoron is another figure of speech that is used to describe a feeling or an object by using two words that appear to contradict one another. In contemporary language, the use of the term friendly fire to describe the action of one army killing one of their own helps to soften the true meaning of the action. Killing one’s own is a terrible event, a tragedy. But by calling it ‘‘friendly fire’’ it downplays the accident, the causes, and the blame. Shakespeare uses an oxymoron in Juliet’s comment when Romeo must leave her. She says, in act 2, scene 3: ‘‘Parting is such sweet sorrow.’’ Sorrow is painful, so why would she refer to it as sweet? Possibly because the sorrow is caused by her love for Romeo, which is definitely sweet. Also in act 1, scene 1, Romeo speaks, using an oxymoron. He uses phrases such as ‘‘heavy lightness,’’ ‘‘Feather of lead,’’ ‘‘cold fire,’’ and ‘‘sick health’’ to explain how melancholy he is in his love for Rosaline.

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Imagery through Metaphor The use of imagery provides the audience with more than the words that are spoken by the actors. Imagery is used to describe some feeling or a person or an action. Using metaphors as imagery involves bringing two unlike things together and showing how they are actually very similar. For example, Romeo describes love in act 1, scene 1 like this: ‘‘Love is a smoke made with the fume of sighs.’’ This allows the audience to first see the smoke, then replace that image with a person sighing. Everyone knows what they feel like when they sigh. There is a sadness or maybe a joy that takes one’s breath away. So this is how Romeo is feeling when he thinks about love. Shakespeare uses the metaphor not only to describe the feeling but to help the audience to share in that feeling as well.

HISTORICAL CONTEXT Religion in Elizabethan England Queen Elizabeth’s father, King Henry VIII (1509–1547), changed the structure of religion in England. Upon falling in love with Anne Boleyn and wanting a divorce from his first wife, King Henry appealed to the Pope, the head of the Catholic religion, of which King Henry was a part. The Pope refused to grant the dispensation that would allow the king to dissolve his marriage to his first wife, Catherine of Aragon. So King Henry turned to his parliament, which produced a series of legal acts that reduced the supreme authority of the Roman Catholic Pope in England. When Henry appealed to the Archbishop of Canterbury and went forward with his plans to marry Anne, Pope Clement VII, in 1533, excommunicated King Henry VIII from the Catholic Church. This action was the beginning of the English Reformation, the breaking away of England from the Catholic Church. In 1534, with the Act of Supremacy, Henry VIII declared himself the head of the Church of England; the Pope no longer had any jurisdiction in Henry’s country. During Queen Elizabeth’s reign Catholics and Protestants (Christians who did not recognize the Church under the rule of the Pope) both lived in England. During the reign of Queen Mary I (1553–1558), the power of the Catholic Church had been returned to England, when Mary repealed the Act of Supremacy. However, Elizabeth overturned all the attempts Queen

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Mary had made to reinstate the Pope as the head of the church in England. Through a second Act of Supremacy that Elizabeth pressed for in parliament, she became, as her father had intended, the head of the church. However, England was in no way settled on the issue of religion. Prior to Queen Elizabeth, depending on which monarch was in rule, either Catholics or Protestants were persecuted, losing their land, wealth, status, or even their lives if they acted out against the professed religion of the country (the country was protestant during Henry’s term and Catholic during Mary’s). Elizabeth wanted those persecutions to stop. She believed that Catholics should be allowed to practice their religion as long as their actions did in no way present any danger to the country’s peace or any rebellion to Elizabeth’s rule. Major differences between Catholics and Protestants in England during that time were that the Catholics believed that priests and the Pope were divinely chosen and only they could interpret the Bible and dictate to the people the meaning of religion in the parishioners lives. The Protestants, however, believed ministers of the religion were ordinary people who could marry, wear regular street clothes, and were not responsible for interpreting anything spiritual for the other members.

Short History of Elizabethan Drama Prior to the Elizabethan drama traditions of Shakespeare’s time were the mystery and morality plays of medieval times. In contrast to the Elizabethan dramatic themes, the medieval plays focused on teaching people the morals that were influenced by the Christian religion and were most often produced and played by religious monks. These early plays were produced in order to help the audience learn the teachings of their religion; these plays were basically dramatized interpretations of stories from the Bible. Mystery plays were popular between the tenth and fifteenth centuries. At the end of the fifteenth century in England, a new type of play appeared that was less didactic and less serious than the mystery play and often contained a bit of humor. This type of play was performed most often at the houses of noblemen and was called an Interlude. Performed during special holidays, Interludes were very simple at first but they evolved over time to include music and dance and, under French influence,

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COMPARE & CONTRAST 



1600s: Dueling is a popular way to settle socalled uncivil behaviors between gentlemen that have caused a loss of honor. King James I attempts to ban stories that postulate this practice as he fears dueling is a threat to law and order. 1800s: In the United States, the most famous duel was between two prominent politicians, Alexander Hamilton and Aaron Burr. Pistols were used, with both men being shot and Hamilton dying the next day. Today: Gangs in many of large United States cities use drive-by shootings as a way to settle arguments or disputes between warring gang members. 1600s: The city of Verona, located in northern Italy between Venice and Milan, enjoys enormous prosperity as part of the Republic of Venice. The many wealthy families of Verona, as well as the affluent religious sects, build large mansions and monasteries in the city.

bouts and tournaments, the arena is newly dedicated to the art of theatric performances. Today: Verona is one of Italy’s biggest tourist attractions. In the city, a balcony on the side of an ancient building, falsely named Casa di Giulietta (The House of Juliet), draws tourists and lovers. They stand at the bottom of the balcony and write love notes that they leave taped to the walls. They also have their pictures taken next to a bronze statue of Shakespeare’s tragic heroine. 

1600s: In many European countries, marriage is made official through the sanctioning of the families of the bride and groom, and through a final ceremony at the church. 1800s: Due to Lord Harwicke’s Marriage Act of 1753 in England, the state government becomes involved in sanctioning marriages, with parental consent until age 21 and a legal license required.

1800s: The Roman-built Arena of Verona, constructed in the first century C . E ., is one of Europe’s most stunning and well-preserved amphitheaters. Once used for gladiatorial

Today: Marriage laws are being contested by people who want same-sex marriages approved by the government and sanctioned by the church.

farce—an exaggerated form of comedy. John Heywood (c.1497–1580) was one of the more famous of London’s playwrights at that time, creating several Interludes, one of which was called The Play of the Wether, a New and Mery Interlude of All Maner of Wethers (1533).

write his own play, based on the life of King John of England, sometime around 1596.

Another type of play also was developed in the early sixteenth century. This was the historic play. John Bale (1495–1563), who also wrote mystery plays and interludes, is often cited as one of the more important first playwrights of history plays. Bale’s Kynge Johan (1538) would influence a new direction for other writers, including Shakespeare, who would go on to

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Humanism—a term applied to the philosophical and intellectual flow of thought that valued the ability of the individual to determine what was truth and what was not—and specifically Renaissance humanism, influenced the stage and its productions in the mid-fifteenth century. Through this influence, dramatists began turning to classical works of Greece and Rome. During this time, writers looked to ancient Greek and Roman dramas as sources of new works, which eventually lead to the birth of English tragedy.

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Often accredited as the first English tragedy is Richard Edwards’s Damon and Pythias (1564), a play based on a Greek story about the power of strong friendship. This early tragedy did not contain the elements that would later be used by playwrights such as Shakespeare, however. Those elements were brought to English tragedies first by Jasper Heywood (1553–1598) who translated the plays of a classical Roman playwright called Seneca. It was through Seneca’s work that elements such as blood and violence, grand rhetorical speeches, and the appearance of ghosts would become part of staged productions, such as is seen in Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar (1599). However, Shakespeare was not the first to write an Elizabethan tragedy. That honor is attributed to two lawyers, Thomas Sackville (1536–1608) and Thomas Norton (1532–1584) who wrote Gorboduc in 1561. This was a play whose message was directed at Elizabeth I, suggesting the importance of her leaving a definite heir to the throne. This was also the first English play to be written in blank verse. The themes and the format of this play are believed to have greatly influenced Shakespeare’s later play King Lear (1605). Queen Elizabeth I supported the arts and viewed many of the staged dramas of her time. Through her encouragement, she helped to create the great contributions that sixteenth and seventeen English dramatists would provide the world—those plays that continue to be enjoyed by twenty-first-century audiences and which are referred to as Elizabethan drama.

Petrarch, His Poetry, and Laura There are several allusions to Petrarch in Romeo and Juliet, especially in the first few acts when Romeo is very much under the influence of love poems. Francesco Petrarch (1304–1374) was an Italian poet, considered to be one of the fathers of the Renaissance and the poet laureate of Rome. Petrarch never married (although he fathered a couple of children) but he is famous, among other things, for passionate poems he wrote to a woman known as Laura. Petrarch’s love of Laura, at least as he writes of it in his poems, was always from a distance, and it is filled both with joy and with anguish. It was through his poems dedicated to Laura that the form of the sonnet was modified, a form that latter poets followed. For his character Romeo, however, it was not the form of the sonnet but rather the sentiments that Petrarch portrayed, the deep longing for the love of a woman who

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will never be reached, the melancholy, the selfpity, and the need to be alone in his suffering.

CRITICAL OVERVIEW Romeo and Juliet’s early stage history is only based on speculation. As Andrew Dickson writes in The Rough Guide to Shakespeare, ‘‘It seems probable that Romeo and Juliet was put on initially at the Theatre in Shoreditch [outside London], then perhaps at the nearby Curtain after Shakespeare’s company moved there temporarily in 1597.’’ But there is no recorded evidence to prove this. It was not until William Davenant, a possible godson of Shakespeare’s, produced his version of the play in 1662 that the event was actually recorded. Samuel Pepys, a famous seventeenth-century English diarist attended, and according to Davenant, wrote that after seeing the play, he ‘‘couldn’t decide which he detested more, the play or the actors.’’ Despite this disapproving comment, as Anthony Davies states, writing for The Oxford Companion to Shakespeare, ‘‘the early quartos [published texts of the play] attest to the play’s popularity in the theatres.’’ Davies also mentions that proof of the popularity of this play could also be found in the fact that a preacher named Nicholas Richardson quoted the play ‘‘in a sermon in 1620.’’ However, literary critics tended to point out Shakespeare’s ‘‘over-indulgence in punning and rhyming.’’ The play went through changes in the next decade, returning to the stage as the adapted The History and Fall of Caius Marius (1679), written by Thomas Otway and set in ancient Rome. Otway emphasized the politics of the day, for one thing, but he also changed the ending. Unlike Sir James Howard’s version, which gave the play a happy ending, Otway had Juliet awakening before Romeo dies, giving the lovers an extra scene in which to exchange their love. This version brought audiences back to the theatre, and the ending was retained in future productions in the next century. However, Davies points out that prior to the late nineteenth century: ‘‘Romantic writers and artists across the English-speaking world and continental Europe . . . regarded the play as an unqualified presentation of an ideal love too good for the corrupt world.’’ After this, critics began to focus on whether the play was truly a tragedy. As Maurice Charney writes, in his All of Shakespeare, Romeo

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and Juliet, although classified as a tragedy has more of an affinity with Shakespeare’s romantic comedies written at the same time. ‘‘Shakespeare has trouble endowing Romeo and Juliet with tragic stature; in some ways they are not tragic at all.’’ These characters do not bring tragedy onto themselves, states Charney, ‘‘and they have no identifiable tragic flaw or weakness of character.’’ Therefore, Charney believes, ‘‘they don’t qualify as tragic protagonists.’’ Charney goes on to say that Shakespeare filled the beginning of the play with ‘‘forebodings and portents,’’ but these ‘‘aren’t always relevant to the dramatic context.’’ It is not until Mercutio’s death, according to Charney, that the play takes a turn toward tragedy. ‘‘There seems to be a rush now to realize the implications of all the forebodings.’’ Despite these misgivings, Charney does refer to a part of this play that he likes: ‘‘The representation of love is magical in this play,’’ he writes. However, Charney concludes: ‘‘It is exceedingly difficult to make an emotion as complex and ambivalent as love seem an adequate motivating cause for tragedy.’’ Countering Charney’s point of view is Northrop Frye, in his book Northrop Frye on Shakespeare. Frye writes that tragedy has an ironic side, by which Frye means, in this instance, that the audience knows more than the characters. Tragedy also has a heroic side. Frye contends that Juliet and Romeo were heroic. ‘‘Romeo and Juliet are sacrificial victims, and the ancient rule about sacrifice was that the victim had to be perfect and without blemish.’’ The belief underlying this concept was that nothing that is perfect can exist in this world of imperfection. That which is perfect, ‘‘should be offered up to another world before it deteriorates.’’ It was not only the beauty of Juliet that was perfect, it was also the passion that the two young lovers shared. Their ‘‘passion would soon burn up the world of heavy fathers and snarling Tybalts and gabby Nurses if it stayed there.’’ This not merely a story of love that goes wrong, Frye writes, ‘‘It didn’t go wrong: it went only where it could, out. It always was, as we say, out of this world.’’ Frye concludes his opinions of this play by stating: ‘‘It takes the greatest rhetoric of the greatest poets to bring us a vision of the tragic heroic, and such rhetoric doesn’t make us miserable but exhilarated, not crushed but enlarged in spirit.’’ That is why, he contends, that people all over the world, all through the past centuries have fallen in love with this tragedy.

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The variation of productions is vast. In 1845, the American actress Charlotte Cushman, ‘‘caused a sensation when she played Romeo to her sister’s Juliet at the Haymarket,’’ writes Dickson. The critics loved it. Dickson quotes a newspaper review that states: ‘‘’Miss Cushman’s Romeo is a creative, a living, breathing, animated, ardent, human being.’’’ Then in the mid 1900s, as Dickson writes, Peter Brook used ‘‘a virtually bare stage,’’ meant to emphasize ‘‘the play’s violence.’’ Brook also ended the play without the reconciliation of the feuding families after the deaths of Romeo and Juliet, further darkening the mood of the play. In more modern times, as Dickson writes, the play has gained in popularity, having been ‘‘revived over 350 times internationally in the half-century following World War II.’’ There are at least sixty different filmed versions, with the 1996 version by Baz Luhrmann staging the production near a Miami beach filled with bikini-clad women; with young boys who drive supped-up cars; and an innocent Juliet who falls head-over-heels into a swimming pool when she first meets her Romeo. Norrie Epstein, in The Friendly Shakespeare sums up the play with these words: ‘‘Like adolescence itself, the play has many moods: it is delicate yet intense, occasionally obscene, sometimes funny, and always heartbreaking . . . you’re in for a delightful surprise. This play is terrific.’’

CRITICISM Tom F. Driver Driver examines Romeo and Juliet in terms of the necessity of condensing ‘‘real’’ time into stage time in such a way that the audience will believe the events of the play have actually taken place. The critic points out that Shakespeare compressed the action of Romeo and Juliet in two ways: first, he considerably shortened the length of the action as it appeared in his source, Arthur Brooke’s The Tragicall Historye of Romeus and Juliet; second, he used very brief scenes to acount for longer periods of time. This compression, Driver asserts, underscores the theme of haste in the play. The critic also notes how Shakespeare varies the rhythm of the drama, slowing down or speeding up the action to match its meaning.

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IN LIFE, TIME IS CONSTANT. THE DULL DAYS LAST AS LONG AS THE EVENTFUL ONES, IF NOT LONGER. IN A DRAMA TIME SPEEDS UP OR SLOWS DOWN ACCORDING TO THE MEANING OF THE ACTION.’’

In Romeo and Juliet the young Shakespeare learned the craft of creating on stage the illusion of passing time. The Prologue is a kind of author’s pledge that we are to see something that really happened. At least, and for technique it amounts to the same thing, it could have happened. Two households, both alike in dignity, In fair Verona, where we lay our scene, From ancient grudge break to new mutiny, Where civil blood makes civil hands unclean. [Prologue, 1–4] The story is further summarized, and the Prologue ends with this couplet: The which if you with patient ears attend, What here shall miss, our toil shall strive to mend. [Prologue, 13–14] Once such a beginning is made, the author is under obligation to be as faithful to the clock as possible. He must show one thing happening after another, according to its proper time, and he must keep the audience informed as to how the clock and the calendar are turning. Shakespeare was well aware of the obligation, Romeo and Juliet contains no less than 103 references to the time of the action—that is, 103 references which inform the audience what day things take place, what time of day it is, what time some earlier action happened, when something later will happen, etc. In every case but one Shakespeare was thoroughly consistent. It is not enough, however, for the dramatist to be consistent. He also must be able to make us believe that in the short time we sit in the theater the whole action he describes can take place. He must compress the action of his story into the length of a theatrical performance.

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The fearful passage of their death-marked love, And the continuance of their parents’ rage, . . . Is now the two-hours’ traffic of our stage. [Prologue, 9, 10, 12] Faced with a dramatic necessity, Shakespeare decided to make capital of it. If he has much business to set forth in a short time he will write a play about the shortness of time. In Granville-Barker’s words, Romeo and Juliet is ‘‘a tragedy of precipitate action’’. No little part of the attraction of the play is due to this frank exploitation of a dramatic necessity. Come, Montague; for thou art early up To see thy son and heir more early down. [V. iii. 208–09] In addition to the 103 chronological references noted above, the play contains 51 references to the idea of speed and rapidity of movement. I shall mention only briefly the two ways by which Shakespeare has achieved the uncommonly tight compression of action in this play. His first stratagem was to shorten the length of the action, as found in his source, from nine months to four or five days. With this he achieved two results: he heightened the sense of ‘‘o’er hasty’’ action considerably, and he enabled himself more easily to appear to account for all the ‘‘real’’ time in the story. He did not, of course, account for every hour, but he came nearer to a correspondence between stage time and ‘‘real’’ time. His second stratagem was to make very short scenes on the stage account for comparatively long periods of ‘‘real’’ time. This effect, which has been called ‘‘double’’ time, was mastered by Shakespeare in the course of writing Romeo and Juliet. The play has two notable scenes in this respect: I. v, the feast at Capulet’s house, and V. iii, the final scene. In both, the technique is to focus attention upon a series of small scenes within the major scene, one after another, so that we are forgetful of the clock, and then to tell us at the end that so-and-somuch time has gone by. Because the story has advanced, we are willing to believe the clock did also. So much for the problem of compressing ‘‘real’’ time into stage time and for Shakespeare’s use of the resulting rapidity as a theme in his play.

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There remains a further complexity owing to the drama’s being a performed art. That is the problem of tempo. The sense of rapidity in the movement of the action must be varied. The play must have a rhythm different from the movement of the clock, however that clock may have been accelerated. There must be a fast and slow, and that fast and slow will account for much of the subtle form which the play assumes under the hand of the dramatist. Here is a major difference between art and life. In life, time is constant. The dull days last as long as the eventful ones, if not longer. In a drama time speeds up or slows down according to the meaning of the action. The excitement of dramatic art lies very largely in the tension thus established between chronological tempo and artistic, or dramatic, tempo. Roughly speaking, Romeo and Juliet has four periods or phases—two fast and two slow. It opens in a slow time. True, there is a street fight to begin with; but that is in the nature of a curtain-raiser skillfully used to set the situation. Basically, the first period is the ‘‘Rosaline phase’’, and it moves as languidly as Romeo’s mooning. The second period, of very swift action, begins to accelerate in I. iii. with talk of Paris as a husband. It rushes headlong, with only momentary pauses, through love, courtship, and marriage until Tybalt is impetuously slain. Here there is a pause, while the audience waits with Juliet to see what will happen, and while Friar Laurence cautions Romeo to be patient until he can ‘‘find a time’’ to set matters straight. It is important to notice that this pause accounts for only a very small period of ‘‘real’’ time. The pause is purely psychological—or rather, dramatic. In the midst of it Shakespeare prepares to accelerate the action once more by inserting between two of the lovers’ andante [moderately slow] scenes the very remarkable staccato [abrupt and disjointed] scene iv of Act III, in which Capulet arranges with Paris for Juliet’s marriage. In this short scene of 35 lines there are no less than 15 specific references to time and haste. The scene is all about how soon the marriage can take place—counterpoint to the mood of the lovers, who would turn the morning lark into a nightingale. In the final phase of the play, speed takes over again and we rush to the catastrophe. It is in the last phase that the most interesting relations between dramatic rhythm and chronological clarity may be seen. Two or three

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Chiwetel Ejiofor as Romeo and Charlotte Randle as Juliet in Act III, scene v, at the National Theatre, London, 2000 (Ó Donald Cooper/Photostage. Reproduced by permission)

days of ‘‘real’’ time are required to pass in order to make sense of the action: Romeo must be exiled, Friar Laurence must put his plan for Juliet’s false death into effect, messengers must travel, family must grieve, and a funeral be held. But the drama, once Juliet takes the sleeping potion, requires a swift conclusion. Therefore, after that event, references to exact time, which hitherto have been profuse, almost entirely disappear from the text. There is no way for an audience to know when any of the scenes in Act V begins. There are no clues as to what day it is, let alone what time of day, until line 176 of scene iii, when the Watch informs us that Juliet has been buried two days. The vagueness is deliberate. The ‘‘real’’ time is comparatively long, but the play wants to move swiftly. Therefore the audience is given an impression of speed, but specific time references are withheld.

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WHAT DO I READ NEXT? Romeo and Juliet in Jerusalem, published in 2003, is a collection of short stories written by H. C. Kim, about star-crossed modern lovers who must struggle through very difficult situations to realize their love.  Butterfly Lovers: A Tale of the Chinese Romeo and Juliet by Fan Dai (2000) takes the theme of star-crossed lovers and adapts it to the Chinese experience. The young female protagonist, Yingtai, the only daughter of a prosperous family, must disguise herself as a man in order to enter school. At school she meets and falls in love with Shanbo, but she does not reveal that she is a woman. Later she is called home, for her parents have arranged a marriage for her. Shanbo finds out that Yingtai is a woman and immediately wants to marry her. The 

The foregoing remarks should make it clear that in such a play as Romeo and Juliet, where the story demands a setting more or less realistic, Shakespeare strings his art between two poles: on one side, accurate imitation of what would really happen; on the other, bold shaping of events into an aesthetic pattern. We may say that the play results from a tension between these two. The actual technique is to move from one to the other. Tension, however, expresses our feeling about the play. Imagination and reality seem to be combined in a system of stresses and strains. Time is real, and to imitate action is to imitate time. But there is also in men a capacity for transcending time, which the playwright-artist and his audience know well. Time and its events alone do not produce an action; the imagination, transcending but not escaping time, may do so. Source: Tom F. Driver, ‘‘The Shakesperian Clock: Time and the Vision of Reality in Romeo and Juliet and The Tempest,’’ in Shakespeare Quarterly, Vol. XV, No. 4, Autumn 1964, pp. 363–70.

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book is well-written with turns and twists that match Shakespeare’s tale.  Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream is another drama of love, confusion, parental control, and other themes similar to Romeo and Juliet. A Midsummer Night’s Dream was written around the same year, in 1595, and has an added element of fantasy.  Another of Shakespeare’s plays written around the same time as Romeo and Juliet is Richard II (1595). The play is based on real life events of England’s king, whose reign was contaminated with Richard’s focus on his wardrobe, rich friends, and meaningless wars rather than on the common people. The play is a tragedy, ending with the king’s death in prison. 

The 1957 musical West Side Story tells a tragic love story that was often referred to as a Romeo and Juliet kind of story. The original story for the play was written by Arthur Laurents but it was adapted to novel form by Irving Schulman in 1999. The story is set in New York City and tells of a love that develops between a young woman and young man who are associated with two warring city gangs.

SOURCES Charney, Maurice, All of Shakespeare, Columbia University Press, 1993. Dickson, Andrew, The Rough Guide to Shakespeare, Rough Guides, Inc., 2005, pp. 305–12. Dobson, Michael and Wells, Stanley, eds., The Oxford Companion to Shakespeare, Oxford University Press, 2005, pp. 397–401. Epstein, Norrie, The Friendly Shakespeare, Penguin Books, 1993, p. 316. Fallon, Robert Thomas, How to Enjoy Shakespeare, Ivan R. Dee, 2005. Frye, Northrop, Northrop Frye on Shakespeare, edited by Robert Sandler, Yale University Press, 1986, pp. 15–33. Mack, Maynard, Everybody’s Shakespeare, University of Nebraska Press, 1993. Shakespeare, William, Romeo and Juliet, edited by Peter Holland, Penguin Books, 2000.

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FURTHER READING Bergeron, David M., ‘‘Sickness in Romeo and Juliet,’’ in CLA Journal, Vol. 20, No. 1, March 1977, pp. 356–64. This is a detailed analysis of the imagery of sickness, disease, and remedy in Romeo and Juliet and how it contributes to the tragic structure of the play. Bloom, Harold, ed., Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet, Chelsea House, 1999. Harold Bloom has collected some of the most important critical essays of the twentieth century on Shakespeare’s play in this book. Bruce, Brenda, ‘‘Nurse in Romeo and Juliet,’’ in Players of Shakespeare: Essays in Shakespearean Performance by Twelve Players with the Royal Shakespeare Company, edited by Philip Brockbank, Cambridge University Press, 1985. This book provides a theatrical insight into the Nurse’s character, describing how she interpreted the role for a 1981 Royal Shakespeare Company production of Romeo and Juliet. Cole, Douglas, ed., Twentieth Century Interpretations of ‘‘Romeo and Juliet,’’ Prentice-Hall, 1970. This volume is a collection of scholarly essays on Romeo and Juliet. Greenblatt, Stephen, Will in the World, W. W. Norton & Company, 2004. Greenblatt presents an interesting view of Shakespeare’s life through the events of his years as well as through his literature.

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Harbage, Alfred, ‘‘Mastery Achieved: Romeo and Juliet,’’ in William Shakespeare: A Reader’s Guide, Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1966, pp. 139–61. Harbage offers a scene-by-scene plot summary of Romeo and Juliet accompanied by critical commentary on various aspects of the play. Smith, Warren D., ‘‘Romeo’s Final Dream,’’ in Modern Language Review, Vol. 62, No. 4, October 1967, pp. 577, 580–83. This article considers the lovers’ immortality a major theme of Romeo and Juliet, arguing that several scenes in the play support the Christian ideal of resurrection after death. Wells, Stanley, ‘‘Juliet’s Nurse: The Uses of Inconsequentiality,’’ in Shakespeare’s Styles: Essays in Honour of Kenneth Muir, edited by Philip Edwards, Inga-Stina Ewbank, and G. K. Hunter, Cambridge University Press, 1980, pp. 51–66. This article examines the content and structure of the Nurse’s speech, noting that its lack of intellectual logic marks a new dramatic style for Shakespeare. Williamson, Marilyn L., ‘‘Romeo and Death,’’ in Shakespeare Studies, Vol. 14, Fairleigh Dickinson University Press, 1981, pp. 129–37. Williamson contends that Romeo’s suicide is not motivated by his love for Juliet but rather by a death wish he harbored before he met her. Williamson admits, however, that the feud does play a part in the catastrophe; because of the feud, Romeo not only expects an early death, he desires one to escape the guilt he suffers regarding the conflict.

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The Sonnets 1592

Historians and scholars are uncertain as to when Shakespeare composed his sonnets; he may have written them over a period of several years, beginning perhaps in 1592 or 1593. Some of the fourteen-line poems were being circulated in manuscript form among the author’s acquaintances as early as 1598, and in 1599 two of them— Sonnets 138 and 144—were published in The Passionate Pilgrim, a collection of verses by several authors. The sonnets as modern readers know them were certainly completed no later than 1609, the year they were published in a quarto by Thomas Thorpe under the title Shake-speares Sonnets. While many scholars have expressed the belief that Thorpe acquired the manuscript on which he based his edition from someone other than the author, modern critics generally see little reason to doubt the text’s authenticity. On the other hand, few believe that Shakespeare directly supervised the publication of the manuscript, as the text is riddled with errors—and Thorpe, not Shakespeare, authored the dedication. Regardless, Thorpe’s 1609 edition is the basis for all modern texts of the sonnets. With only a few exceptions—Sonnets 99, 126, and 145—Shakespeare’s verses follow the established English form of the sonnet. Each is a fourteen-line poem in iambic pentameter, comprising four sections: three quatrains, or groups of four lines, followed by a couplet of two lines. Traditionally, different, though related, ideas are expressed in each quatrain, and the argument or

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theme of the poem is summarized or generalized in the concluding couplet. Many of Shakespeare’s couplets do not have this conventional structure or effect. However, the poet did consistently employ the traditional English sonnet rhyme-scheme: abab cdcd efef gg. Where Shakespeare incorporates feminine rhymes, or rhymes of two syllables with the second unstressed, the last syllable constitutes an added eleventh syllable in the line in question. Shakespeare’s 154 sonnets, taken together, are frequently described as a sequence, and this is generally divided into two sections. Sonnets 1– 126 focus on a young man and the narrator’s intimate friendship with him, and Sonnets 127– 152 focus on the narrator’s relationship with a woman. (The narrator is often referred to as the poet.) However, in only a select number of the poems in the first group can the reader be certain that the person being addressed is male; in fact, most of the poems in the sequence as a whole are not directly addressed to another person. The two concluding verses, Sonnets 153 and 154, are adaptations of classical verses about Cupid; some critics believe they serve a specific purpose—though they disagree about what this may be—but many others view them as providing the collection with perfunctory closure. The English sonnet sequence reached the height of its popularity in the 1590s, when the posthumous publication of Sir Philip Sidney’s Astrophil and Stella (1591) was widely celebrated and led other English poets to put forth their own sonnet collections. In turn, all of these sequences, including Shakespeare’s, are indebted to some degree to the literary conventions established by the Canzoniere, a sonnet sequence composed by the fourteenth-century Italian poet Petrarch. By the time Shakespeare wrote his sonnets, antiPetrarchan conventions had become established, whereby traditional motifs and styles were satirized or exploited. Commentators on Shakespeare’s sonnets frequently compare them to those of his predecessors and contemporaries, including Sidney, Sir Thomas Wyatt, Henry Howard, Samuel Daniel, and Edmund Spenser. The principal topics of twentieth-century critical commentary on the sonnets are their themes and poetic style. Analyses of formal elements in the poems include examinations of the rhetorical devices, syntax, and diction Shakespeare employed throughout. The multiple and indefinite associations of his words and phrases have proved

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especially intriguing—and problematic—for scholars as well as for general readers. The complexity and ambiguity of Shakespeare’s figurative language is also a central critical issue, as is the sequence’s remarkable diversity of tone and mood. Shakespeare’s departures from and modifications of the poetic styles employed by other sonneteers have also drawn a measure of critical attention. Many of Shakespeare’s themes are conventional sonnet topics, such as love and beauty, and the related motifs of time and mutability. Yet Shakespeare treats these themes in his own distinctive fashion, most notably by addressing the poems of love and praise not to a fair maiden but to a young man and by including a second object of passion: a woman of questionable attractiveness and virtue. Critics have frequently called attention to Shakespeare’s complex and paradoxical representations of love in the sonnets. They have long discussed the poet’s claim that he is immortalizing the young man’s beauty in his verses, thereby defying the destructiveness of time. The themes of friendship and the betrayal of friendship are also significant, as is the nature of the relationship between the poet and the young man. The ambiguous eroticism of the sonnets has elicited varying responses, with some commentators asserting that the relationship between the two men is platonic and others contending that it is demonstrably sexual. Because Shakespeare’s lyrics are passionate, intense, and emotionally vivid, over the centuries many readers and commentators have grown convinced that they must have an autobiographical basis. However, little concrete evidence indicates that this is so. Still, biographers have produced endless speculation about what the sonnets may tell us about their creator, and various scholars have attempted to identify the persons who were the original models for the persons the poet refers to and addresses. The fact remains, however, that no one can determine to what degree Shakespeare’s personal experiences are reflected in his sonnets. Likewise, no one can know with any certainty whether the persons depicted in the poems are based on actual individuals or are solely the product of Shakespeare’s observation, imagination, and understanding of the human heart. Overall, contradictions and uncertainties abound in Shakespeare’s sonnets. Both individually and as a collection, the poems resist generalities

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and summations. Their complex language and multiple perspectives have given rise to a number of different interpretations, all of which may in some respect be valid—even when they contradict each other. Few modern critics read the sonnets as personal allegory, with most commentators asserting that speculation as to implications about Shakespeare’s life, morals, and sexuality is a useless exercise. The narrator of the poems, then, is precisely the person he seems to be to each individual reader; as in much great poetry, his confused and ambiguous expressions of thought and emotion serve to heighten readers’ own sentiments about universal matters such as love, friendship, jealousy, hope, and despair.

PLOT SUMMARY Shakespeare’s sonnets do not describe or enact a clear sequence of events, nor do they follow a straightforwardly logical or chronological order. They allude to only a few specific actions, and even these are presented in general rather than particular terms. The setting, too, is generalized, with no reference to any specific locales. A sense of time elapsing is evoked through the sonnets’ portrayal of developments in the speaker’s relationships with the young man and the woman, but only one suggestion is made about how long either of these associations lasted. Below, the sonnets are broadly summarized in a small number of commonly recognized groupings. Only sonnets that belong to connected series or that bear some particular overall significance are mentioned individually; these series and significances were largely gleaned from the Arden Shakespeare’s Sonnets, Third Series, edited by Katherine Duncan-Jones.

Sonnets 1–17 In the first seventeen sonnets—the most coherent group in the sequence, often referred to as the ‘‘procreation sonnets’’—the speaker urges a young man of aristocratic birth to marry and have children so that his extraordinary beauty will be preserved for the ages. The young man is portrayed in this opening group as somewhat vain or narcissistic, through lines such as ‘‘Or who is he so fond will be the tomb / Of his selflove, to stop posterity?’’ (Sonnet 3). Thus, he is understood to be uninterested in procreating because he only truly loves himself. The poet frequently stresses that the young man’s beauty

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Title page of the Sonnets, 1609 (Ó The Folger Shakespeare Library)

will fade as he ages, to be lost entirely upon his death—and saved only in the person of his offspring. Sonnet 1 begins with the argument that the ‘‘fairest creatures’’ are the ones that ought to procreate; Duncan-Jones equates this suggestion with the modern concept of eugenics, wherein the breeding of humans might be controlled so as to improve the race. In Sonnet 11, the poet again states that those whom nature has ‘‘best endowed’’ should seek to reproduce. In Sonnets 5 and 6, the poet likens the process of marrying and begetting children to the process of preserving the essence of a rose by distilling rose water. In Sonnet 10, the poet first reveals that he not only appreciates the young man’s beauty but also bears some degree of affection for him, requesting, ‘‘Make thee another self for love of me.’’ Soon thereafter, in Sonnet 13, the poet calls the young man ‘‘dear my love.’’ In the last three sonnets in this group the poet presents another

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means of forestalling the destructiveness of time: the poet will immortalize the friend’s beauty in his verses.

Sonnet 35 the poet seems somewhat conflicted but forgives his friend. In Sonnets 40–42, the poet reveals that the young man betrayed him by associating with a mistress of the poet’s.

Sonnets 18–126

In Sonnets 43–45 the poet again speaks of an absence from his friend and of seeing his friend’s image at night; he also divides up what Elizabethans understood as the four basic elements, associating earth and water with himself, fire and air with the young man. In Sonnets 46 and 47 the poet’s eyes and heart first compete with each other over the young man, then share in appreciating him. By Sonnet 49, however, the poet is anticipating a future in which the poet and young man will no longer be friendly acquaintances. In Sonnet 50 the poet reluctantly embarks on a journey, once again achieving an absence from the young man, which he laments in the following two sonnets. In Sonnets 53–55, the poet now praises the young man’s moral virtue (irrespective of the earlier mention of betrayal) and asserts that he will immortalize that virtue through his verse. Then again, in Sonnet 56, the poet mentions that the love between the two men has diminished.

As with the first twenty-six sonnets in Shakespeare’s sequence, the ensuing 109 are understood to revolve around the relationship between the poet and the young man (even though many of the sonnets make only unspecific, ungendered reference to a beloved). The two experience absences from each other, and at length the young man is understood to have somehow betrayed the poet in matters of love. Nevertheless, the poet remains largely infatuated with and reverent toward his friend, frequently expressing his devotion. Later on, the poet seems to have likewise been somehow unfaithful to the young man. The last poem in this group is fairly inconclusive, allowing for various interpretations and conjectures as to the fate of the men’s friendship. Overall, Sonnets 27–126 depict a recurring cycle of contrition and coldness on the part of the friend and forgiveness, understanding, praise, and reproach on the part of the poet. The poet vacillates between, on the one hand, confidence in his art and in his friendship with the young man and, on the other, doubt and anxiety that either of these will prove to be of lasting value. Laying aside his insistence that the young man procreate, the poet elaborates on the notion that he can partly preserve his friend’s beauty through his verse in Sonnets 18–26. The poet makes extravagant claims about the fame and durability of his poetry but also expresses some artistic humility. In addition, new motifs are introduced, particularly, in Sonnet 20, the possibility of a physical relationship between the poet and the friend; this famously ambiguous sonnet has been cited both to refute and to support the notion that Shakespeare himself had homosexual inclinations. In Sonnet 21 the poet compares his work to that of other poets; later on, he will make explicit mention of a rival poet. In Sonnets 27–31, the poet relates the emotional experience of suffering his friend’s absence; in Sonnets 27 and 28 he cannot escape the image of the young man at night, while in Sonnets 29 and 30 he laments the failures of his life but is consoled by thoughts of the man. In Sonnets 33 and 34 the poet invokes metaphorical language, speaking of sun, clouds, and rain, to allude to some betrayal committed by the young man; in

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In Sonnets 57 and 58 the poet refers to himself as the young man’s ‘‘slave,’’ reflecting his utter subservience to the friend. In Sonnets 59 and 60, the passage of time and its effects on the world are discussed. In Sonnet 63—which number, being seven times nine, Duncan-Jones refers to as the ‘‘grand climacteric,’’ as associated with great changes in life—the poet ruminates more directly on how the young man must eventually age; in Sonnet 64, the poet anticipates the young man’s death. Duncan-Jones notes that Shakespeare may have made Sonnet 66—which has twelve rather than fourteen lines—a particularly despairing one in connection to the biblical connotations of the ‘‘evil’’ number 666. In the two following sonnets, in turn, the broader corruption of society is mentioned. The poet returns to his friend’s moral qualities in Sonnets 69 and 70, asserting that his outward appearance belies his inward degradation— then suggesting that he is perhaps denounced by others simply because he is so beautiful. In Sonnets 71–74 the poet anticipates his own death and implores the young man to dissociate himself from the disrespected deceased. In Sonnets 76 and 77 the poet focuses on the quality of his verse, as inspired by the young man. In Sonnets 78–80 and 82–86, then, he speaks of

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others who have also written poetry about his friend, perhaps of superior quality; in Sonnet 80 the poet specifically remarks, ‘‘A better spirit doth use your name.’’ However, the poet asserts that even if his verse is plainest, his love for the young man, at least, is the purest and best. Duncan-Jones notes that Sonnet 87 may be interpreted as something of a turning point within the collection of verses about the young man: ‘‘The use of feminine rhymes in every line except 2 and 4 draws attention to the sonnet as unusual in form . . . , perhaps to mark a new phase in the sequence: the rival poet is forgotten, but all is not well with the friends.’’ Sonnets 88– 90, then, focus on a separation between the two men brought about by the disparity in their respective worths. In Sonnets 91 and 92, the poet describes the grief that the young man’s rejection of him would cause and the relief that he would thus find in death; in Sonnets 93–95 he regrets the deceptiveness of the young man’s beautiful, kindly appearance, while in Sonnet 96 he lauds the young man even for his faults. Sonnets 97–99 make further reference to separation between the two men, this time employing the imagery of the seasons. Sonnet 100 is referred to by Duncan-Jones as a ‘‘new beginning,’’ as the poet is attempting to revive his Muse’s interest in the young man. The Arden editor writes, ‘‘We may imagine either that a period of poetic silence has elapsed between 99 and 100, or that the speaker’s absence and preoccupation with mere shadows of the youth [from Sonnet 98] constitutes a poetic desertion of him.’’ In Sonnets 101–103, then, the poet speaks further with his Muse and ponders his recent dearth of verse. In Sonnet 104 the young man seems to finally be aging, though the poet professes to still love him greatly in this and the following verse. Sonnet 107 is understood to allude to the death of Queen Elizabeth—‘‘The mortal moon hath her eclipse endured’’—and the accession to the throne by James I. The poet seems to take stock of his achievements thus far in Sonnet 108, at which point he has matched the length of the seminal sonnet collection by Sir Philip Sidney, Astrophil and Stella. Sonnets 109 and 110 deal with the poet’s voluntary separation from the young man. Sonnet 111 has been widely interpreted as making reference to Shakespeare’s public career as an actor. In Sonnets 113 and 114 the poet speaks of yet seeing the young

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man’s image in all things, while in Sonnets 115 and 116 he ponders the evolving nature of love. In Sonnets 117 and 118, the poet is now defending himself against accusations of unfaithfulness. Afterward, in Sonnets 119 and 120, he contemplates his estimation of his self and the extent to which his love for the young man persists, hoping for forgiveness—but in Sonnet 122 he reveals that he no longer possesses some written work given to him by the young man. In Sonnets 123–125, the poet speaks in somewhat obscure terms about the passage of time, reminiscence about the past, political fortunes, and the permanence of his love. Finally, in Sonnet 126, the poet returns to the subject of the young man’s death, ending with two lines containing naught but empty parentheses. Duncan-Jones provides a survey of possible meanings for these cryptic punctuation marks, including ‘‘marks in an account-book enclosing the final sum, but empty’’; ‘‘the shape of an hourglass, but one that contains no sand’’; or ‘‘a repeated waxing and waning of the moon, pointing to fickleness and frailty.’’ She lastly suggests that they may point to the young man’s failure to have procreated: ‘‘The poet’s verse is incomplete, and so is the youth’s life.’’ Regardless, the sonnets making exclusive reference to the young man have come to a close.

Sonnets 127–154 Sonnets 127–154 portray the poet’s relationship with the woman known as the ‘‘dark lady.’’ The poet offers even less of a sequential story line here than he did in the first 126 sonnets. His attitude toward his mistress—and toward himself—shifts radically from one poem to the next. He teases her, insults her lusty sensuality, accuses her of repeated infidelities, praises her unfashionable dark beauty, upbraids himself for his own carnal desires, and plays bawdily on the numerous meanings of ‘‘will.’’ As with the majority of the sonnets to the young man, the poet’s conflicting thoughts and emotions do not follow any logical sequence; indeed, critics disagree about whether either of these two sections of Shakespeare’s sonnets comes to a close with a sense of finality or resolution. In Sonnet 127, the poet opens the sonnets about the ‘‘dark lady’’ by contrasting her complexion with that of both traditional and modern, cosmetically enhanced beauties. In Sonnet 130, he goes as far as to describe her individual

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MEDIA ADAPTATIONS 

Sir John Gielgud, a legendary British theater figure, offered a reading of 120 verses from Shakespeare’s Sonnets in 1963. It was produced by Caedmon Audio and was redistributed in 1996.

Dove Book Audio produced readings of the 154 sonnets and other verses in The Complete Sonnets of William Shakespeare: With ‘‘A Lover’s Complaint’’ & Selected Songs in 1996. The various verses are read and performed by Roscoe Lee Browne, who narrates, as well as Christopher Cazenove, Vanessa Redgrave, Elliot Gould, Alfre Woodward, and Michael York.  A comprehensive audio version of William Shakespeare: The Sonnets appeared in 1996. It was produced by HighBridge Classics and was read by the London-born dramaturge Simon Callow.  Another audio version entitled William Shakespeare: The Sonnets, featuring all 154 sonnets, was produced by Naxos AudioBooks in 1997, and was read by the English actor Alex Jennings. 

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relations. Sonnet 145 is unique in that it features tetrameter instead of pentameter, with the last lines (and the mentions of ‘‘‘hate’ away’’ and ‘‘And’’) perhaps indicating that the Sonnet was written for Anne Hathaway early in Shakespeare’s life. Sonnet 146, in turn, has received critical attention for its religious elements. In Sonnets 147 and 148 the poet speaks of his poor judgment, as debilitated by his affections, while in Sonnet 149 he comments further on his emotional dependence on the mistress in question. Sonnets 151 and 152 speak of the poet’s descent, along with the woman, into sexual sinfulness and her betrayal of him. Finally, in Sonnets 153 and 154 the poet uses a mythological framework to comment on sexual encounters and sexually transmitted diseases, seeming to conclude that even the pain of disease does not quench his libido.

CHARACTERS No ‘‘characters’’ are present in Shakespeare’s sonnets as the term is usually understood in literary analysis. None of the figures to whom the poet refers in the sequence is given a proper name. Specific details about physical features and demeanors are noticeably scarce. For the sake of convenience, many modern commentators have adopted some form of the designations used here, but these names do not appear in the sonnets themselves.

The Dark Lady

features as not apt for comparison to certain traditionally invoked objects. In Sonnet 133 and 134, he laments that the woman has also reduced a friend of his to a sort of amorous servitude. Sonnets 135 and 136, in turn, make fairly explicit reference to the woman’s sexual prowess and desirability. The poet admits that he has been deceiving himself with regard to the woman’s virtue, having judged her based on her attractive appearance, in Sonnets 137 and 138. In Sonnets 139 and 140 he elaborates on the woman’s infidelity, which greatly disturbs him, and in Sonnet 143 he describes her neglect of him. The poet seems to make additional reference to the young man in Sonnet 144, in which he speaks of his ‘‘two loves’’ having had sexual

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While she is specifically called ‘‘dark’’ only once, the woman discussed by the poet in Sonnets 127–152 is understood to have dark hair and eyes. Her social rank or status in society is not specified. She may be married, but the poet refers to her as his ‘‘mistress.’’ He alternately describes her as ill favored and attractive, while characterizing her as sensual, tyrannical, and playful. He eventually alleges that she has betrayed him by seducing his friend, often understood to be the young man of the earlier sonnets. Commentary on the ‘‘dark lady’’ often deals more with the speaker’s frame of mind than with the woman herself. Again, as with the young man, most critics doubt that anyone will ever definitively determine if a ‘‘real-life’’ prototype for the ‘‘dark lady’’ can be determined. Regardless, the reader can consider her character based only on the sonnets that allude to her.

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Indeed, as befits her name, the ‘‘dark lady’’ of Shakespeare’s sonnets is even more shadowy than the young man. She is consistently described as lusty and seductive, and the poet professes that he is irresistibly drawn to her, but little concrete evidence of her character is provided. Commentators suggest that although the poet loves her— or has loved her in the past—he also despises her, perhaps in that through her he has compromised his own virtue. The woman has apparently seduced the young man while carrying on an affair with the poet, but the extent of her promiscuity—along with the question of whether she is married and therefore an adulteress—is not evident to all readers. Several critics have evaluated the ‘‘dark lady’’ sonnets in the context of literary conventions, arguing that these verses offer a parody of Petrarchan lovers through the depiction of a mistress who has neither virtue nor beauty. Over the centuries, many commentators have identified the woman in question with a debased form of love. However, late twentiethcentury studies, especially those written from feminist perspectives, have been more sympathetic, challenging the accuracy or reliability of the poet’s account of his mistress and calling for an appraisal that takes into account his obvious bias. Regarding the poet’s disparaging portrayal of the ‘‘dark lady,’’ James Winny points out that most of the poet’s descriptions of her suggest, rather brutally, that she is fickle, ill-favored, and cruelly contemptuous of his feelings. J. B. Leishman notes that the poet not only despises her but also loathes himself for loving a woman who has made a slave of his young friend. Similarly, John Klause argues that the poet continues to desire the woman despite his revulsion and that their mutual depravity keeps them together. Philip Edwards, in turn, finds more evidence of the poet’s conflicted attitude toward the woman than of the character of the woman herself in the various descriptions; he pointedly contrasts the warm and charming description of the mistress in Sonnet 130 with the subsequent depiction of her as ‘‘an agent of damnation’’ from whom the poet turns away in disgust. Indeed, as Heather Dubrow and others have remarked, negative appraisals of the woman have often been countered by negative appraisals of the poet himself. Dubrow maintains that the poet’s inconsistent portrait of his mistress should make us wary of trusting his judgment and forming any definitive interpretations about her character.

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Among those who have agreed that the lens of the poet’s verse distorts the image of the woman, S. Schoenbaum suggests that because the disclosures about the woman are obscure and contradictory, and because the speaker’s hostility toward her is so apparent, reliable conclusions about her simply cannot be drawn. Likewise, M. L. Stapleton argues that the poet’s descriptions of his mistress are neither accurate nor reliable. We must always keep in mind, she warns, that the ‘‘dark lady’’ is entirely a creation of the poet’s—and he is a self-admitted liar. Kenneth Muir is one of several critics who have emphasized the bitterness and anger present in many of the ‘‘dark lady’’ sonnets, pointing out that the mood changes swiftly and frequently as the poet turns from attacking or insulting her to begging for her kindness or forgiving her transgressions. Several commentators—including Douglas L. Peterson, Katharine M. Wilson, and James Winny—have read the ‘‘dark lady’’ sonnets as a satirical treatment of Petrarchan sonnet conventions, in which context the mistress herself becomes something of a gross caricature of an ‘‘immoral’’ woman by design. Peterson maintains that Shakespeare’s verses effectively mock the Petrarchan ideal of the fair beloved in a sustained parody of the traditional sonnet modes of praise, complaint, and plea. Wilson, meanwhile, asserts that the ‘‘dark lady’’ sonnets specifically satirize the artificiality of sonnets written by Shakespeare’s English predecessors and contemporaries. Reading the sonnets about the poet’s mistress as a subversion of conventional attitudes toward love in the Petrarchan tradition, Winny identifies several targets of Shakespeare’s satire, including the lover’s devotion, the beloved’s moral perfection, and the ennobling power of love. The character of the ‘‘dark lady,’’ then, especially by virtue of her evident lack of virtue, would be the most essential aspect of this satire.

The Poet As used here, the term poet denotes the narrator of the sonnets—who of course speaks at length of his poetry—as distinguished from the man who wrote them. The poet is a complex and contradictory figure. He appears to be generous and long-suffering—even self-effacing—yet he also expresses anger and pride. The poet describes himself as older than the young man and the mistress, but he gives few indications of what his actual age may be. Furthermore, he

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variously described as enigmatic, self-deluded, inconsistent, and servile. Both Philip Martin and John Klause have discussed the poet’s deferential attitude to the young man. In Martin’s judgment, the poet abandons the self-effacing demeanor of the early sonnets once he and the young man have achieved a relationship of greater intimacy; thus, the poet is initially selfeffacing for the same reasons that any person seeking a relationship with a person deemed of greater worth would be self-effacing. In contrast, Klause argues that the poet’s self-deprecation is one of the strategic ploys he uses as he tries to teach the youth the meaning of love. In Klause’s estimation, the poet’s other strategies include flattery, rebuke, forgiveness, and deceit.

William Shakespeare (AP/Wide World)

refers to himself as untruthful, raising doubts about his reliability in reporting the interpersonal and social situations he describes. This fact is important because only through the poet does the reader know anything about the other figures in the sonnets. Most late twentieth-century critics maintain that the psychological portrait of the poet is in fact the principal focus of the sonnets. In their judgment, the sequence depicts a mind torn between conflicting thoughts and emotions as the speaker deals with issues that are central to human existence: love and friendship; birth and death; self-knowledge and self-delusion; sin and virtue; and the vagaries of fortune and the ravages of time. Many commentators view the poet as prone to misjudge both himself and the young man. Others contend that he willfully avoids facing the truth about the young man’s nature and conduct—either because he continues to love his friend or because he does not want to acknowledge the malignant effect of the relationship on himself. Most agree that the sonnets depict a man who is struggling to make sense of his life and bring order out of chaos. In accord with the poet’s expression of his tortured thoughts and feelings, he has been

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Many critics have disparaged the poet’s servile attitude toward the young man. Others similarly condemn his acquaintance with the ‘‘dark lady,’’ remarking that the poet seems unable to break away from relationships that he finds degrading. Indeed, the poet’s passivity or hesitancy to take action has been frequently noted, as he seems trapped in a state of reflection and beset by fears and anxieties. Belying his otherwise servile attitude, the poet repeatedly notes his own deceitfulness; some critics maintain that the poet himself is the principal victim of his dishonesty, as he brings suffering upon himself by sustaining relationships that he must lie to sustain. In turn, many critics caution that since the poet represents himself as an unreliable witness, the reader should not assume that what he says about the young man and the woman are necessarily true or accurate. Indeed, his descriptions of the other figures in the sequence may reveal as much about himself as about those he describes. The poet’s moral, ethical, and intellectual confusion is fairly prominent. He often refers to the dilemma he faces in remaining constant to a beloved who has proved inconstant. Sometimes he demonstrates generosity, while other times he seems subtly or obviously selfinterested. With respect to his art, he sometimes proudly affirms the power of his poetry and sometimes expresses grave doubts about the value of art and the worth of his own verses. Such inconsistencies in the poet’s characterization have been variously explained. Some commentators allege that if the sonnets were reordered the poet could be shown progressing steadily from one state of mind to the next rather

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than fluctuating back and forth throughout the sequence. Others view this wavering between confidence and uncertainty as a function of the discrepancies in age and social rank between the poet and the young man. Still others see it as a realistic portrayal of the quandary facing a man whose beloved is simultaneously attractive and loathsome. Regarding the poet’s dishonesty—his distortion of the truth or evasion of it—Heather Dubrow argues in her book Captive Victors that this characteristic reflects the poet’s moral confusion and underscores the general absence of truth and certainty in the sonnets. Furthermore, she suggests that the reader’s wavering confidence in the poet’s truthfulness influences his or her responses: the reader may sometimes identify with him, but when his honesty is called into question, the reader may become more detached. Whether the poet is deceiving himself as well as his readers has been addressed by a number of commentators. Emily E. Stockard, for one, maintains that when he can no longer deny the reality of his friend’s desertion, the poet adopts a strategy of consolation designed to isolate him from that reality; thus, he claims to find comfort in the young man’s absence, even though he is essentially deluding himself. Similarly, Michael Cameron Andrews argues that in the sonnets that refer to the young man, the poet is initially unaware of his friend’s true nature, but when the young man’s duplicity becomes evident, the poet devises a series of specious arguments to rationalize or justify what he cannot bear to confront. From Andrews’s perspective, the poet is caught up in a profound struggle as he tries to hide his feelings from himself. Other critics who have considered the issue of the poet’s self-deception include Philip Edwards and James Winny. Focusing on the ‘‘dark lady’’ sonnets, Edwards argues that here the poet desperately tries to make sense of his life—to understand why a man such as himself would betray the nobler aspects of his nature and be ruled by base instinct. Edwards traces the poet’s various attempts, all grounded in selfdeception, to portray carnal desire as something other than a degradation. Also directing his attention to Sonnets 127–151, Winny maintains that these poems depict the poet struggling with the recognition of his mistress’s unworthiness on the one hand and his inability to resist her on the other. In Winny’s opinion, the poet ultimately

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judges himself as harshly as he judges the woman with whom he has been associating.

The Rival Poet(s) Sonnets 21, 78–80, and 82–86 refer to a competitor or competitors for the young man’s favor and patronage. The poet describes his rival(s’) verses as more ornate and artificial than his own, and he represents them as a threat to his relationship with the friend. The rival poets exist in the sonnets almost exclusively in name, as the narrating poet mentions only their verse, not their persons, and only in passing. Katherine DuncanJones notes that Francis Davison, John Davies, Samuel Daniel, George Chapman, and Ben Jonson, all contemporaries of Shakespeare, have been identified as possible inspirations for the rival poets of the Sonnets.

The Young Man The man about whom the poet writes much of his verse is characterized as younger, as holding superior aristocratic rank, and as unmarried. The poet describes him as unusually beautiful, and at times his inner virtue seems to match his outward nature. On other occasions he appears cold, narcissistic, and morally corrupt. Sometimes he returns the poet’s love, but he is also accused of having an illicit sexual relationship with a woman—perhaps one who was the poet’s mistress. Commentary on the friend has been a mixture of biographical speculation and literary analysis. Many modern commentators believe that the issue of who inspired so many of the sonnets will never be resolved. Thus, they have instead focused attention on the picture of the friend that the poet provides and on what can be determined or inferred about the friend in light of the poet’s constantly changing point of view. Critics have variously viewed the young man as aloof, sensitive, vulnerable, impulsive, and inscrutable. Many have emphasized his essential egotism. While the opening sonnets celebrate his physical beauty, subsequent ones question his integrity and faithfulness, and he is increasingly portrayed as arrogant and self-important. A number of critics have proposed that the young man can be understood as a profoundly contradictory figure. Stephen Spender, for one, explicitly describes him as having a dual or divided nature. On the one hand, Spender observes, the poet relates an idealized portrait of his friend as a young man of incomparable beauty and worth; yet based on the flustered and frustrated

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reactions he occasionally produces in the poet, the young man must also be understood as cold, selfish, proud, and decadent. Similarly, Hallett Smith notes that while the poet focuses on his friend’s merits and beauty, the young man demonstrates that he is capable of slighting and even rejecting the poet. Providing a less sympathetic view of the young man, John Klause emphasizes his inferior judgment and character. From Klause’s perspective, the young man has not yet learned how to love or how to be worthy of love. Also highlighting the friend’s contradictory nature, Michael Cameron Andrews remarks on the disparity between the youth’s attractive appearance and his offensive behavior. In Andrews’s judgment, the friend’s unusual beauty masks a ‘‘rampant sexuality,’’ and his most prominent attribute is deception. Interestingly, the treatment of the young man throughout the sonnets features a remarkable lack of specificity. To begin with, his beauty is generalized rather than particularized; J. B. Leishman observes that the reader is never told anything of his height, for example, or of the color of his eyes and hair. Beyond the young man’s appearance, the reader only hears of his words and actions through the poet’s responses and reports, and in fact, the young man is never portrayed or described in the midst of some activity where he displays the charms and graces the poet ascribes to him. The poet eventually accuses him of a grave fault—seemingly of a sensual nature—but even this fault is never completely particularized. Thus, the young man is a thoroughly indistinct figure, presented suggestively rather than concretely. Heather Dubrow has noted that the friend never functions as an active participant in the sonnets. She also highlights the fact that in addition to being nameless and shadow-like, he has no voice of his own; the poet either reports what the young man has said or predicts what he is likely to say. In Dubrow’s judgment, this contributes to a sense of detachment—a failure of engagement—between the reader and the friend. Several commentators have called attention to the significant change in the relationship between the poet and the friend after Sonnets 1–17. Hallett Smith proposes that Sonnet 18 signals that the poet’s friend has become his beloved, and Kenneth Muir offers a similar assertion. Muir also argues that in Sonnet 20 the poet recognizes that his love for the young man is erotic as well as

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spiritual. Robert Crosman interprets Sonnets 1–17 as reflecting a period when the poet and the friend were establishing a personal association—one that would grow from friendship and patronage to a union of kindred souls, linked by mutual sympathy and understanding. Yet, as Katherine DuncanJones notes, the last sonnet in the portion of the sequence devoted to the young man, with its closing of two lines of empty parentheses, seems to indicate that ultimately, the friendship in question came to some sort of an end.

THEMES Love of All Kinds Human love—in a variety of manifestations—is a principal focus of Shakespeare’s sonnets. Among the many different kinds of love expressed in these verses are spiritual and erotic, parental and filial, and love that ennobles and love that corrupts. The poet explores the paradoxical nature of human passion at length from different perspectives, sometimes idealizing love and sometimes treating it sardonically. Many critics have highlighted Shakespeare’s innovative and unique treatment of the traditions of courtly and Petrarchan love, comparing the Renaissance ideal of human love— a relationship in which earthly and heavenly desires are balanced and complementary—with the sonnets’ representation of these desires as polar opposites. In Shakespeare’s sonnets, critics have argued, love is sometimes presented as an inspiration for transcendent art, with the lover claiming that he can eternalize his beloved’s worth and beauty by enshrining them in his poetry. Thus, love and art can unite to triumph over time and its destructive effects. Love is also represented as an impulse that can help a person realize the noblest aspects of human nature: patience, understanding, selflessness, and forgiveness. On the other hand, some commentators maintain that the sonnets’ depiction of self-effacing love represents a satire on the servile lover of sonnet tradition, who willingly assumes the role of abject servant and devotes himself to obeying his mistress’s every wish. Critics have pointed out that love in the sonnets sometimes manifests itself as infatuation, turning the lover’s head and blinding his judgment. It is also represented, particularly in Sonnets 127–152, as lust or carnal desire, a passion that corrodes the soul and debases the

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lover. Yet, as critics have pointed out, some of the ‘‘dark lady’’ sonnets wittily and exuberantly portray sensual love as a vital expression of human nature. Love is also represented as friendship, and some commentators have read the relationship between the poet and the friend in terms of the classical notion that an intimate friendship between two men has greater intrinsic value than a sexual relationship between a man and a woman. Among the commentators who have discussed the paradoxical nature of love as presented in the sonnets, David Lloyd Stevenson, for one, discusses the literary conventions that shaped Shakespeare’s depiction of human passion. In Stevenson’s judgment, the bard made use of conventional romantic sentiment but rejected the traditional notion of idealized love. Instead, he argues, Shakespeare emphasized the irrationality of human love—the conflicting impulses of aversion and attraction that are characteristic of the experience of sexual desire. Likewise addressing the sonnets’ depiction of love as contradictory or paradoxical, Anthony Hecht notes that these verses exploit, and to a certain extent seek to reshape, the traditional philosophical notion that the antagonism between soul and body can be resolved when sacred and profane love are brought together in an ideal relationship. Marion Bodwell Smith similarly evaluates the theme of love in the sonnets in the context of Renaissance philosophy, concluding that Shakespeare disavowed the notion that love could encompass both spiritual and physical values. Instead, Smith maintains, the sonnets portray the two faces of love as polarities: in the verses to the young man, love is a joining of souls, but in the ones involving the mistress, love is an enslavement of the body. Stephen Spender suggests that one conflict in the sonnets is that between the appearance of love and the actual experience of it. He suggests that the poet is committed to reconciling the disparity between the outward semblance of love in the young man and his corrupt inner nature.

Ambiguous Eroticism Over the centuries, commentators have alternately denied, confronted, accepted, and celebrated the ambiguous eroticism of the sonnets. In 1640 John Benson infamously exchanged all the masculine pronouns and adjectives with their feminine counterparts so that the beloved of Sonnets 1–126 became a woman. Eighteenth- and nineteenth-century editors and commentators

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likewise struggled with the implications of the use of masculine address in the central portion of the sequence. Twentieth-century critics, in turn, were divided on the issue of whether the relationship between the poet and the young man should be considered sexual. In turn, critics remain unsure as to whether the nature of the relationship portrayed in the sonnets sheds light on the personal life of their author. Regardless of the presence of autobiographical aspects, critical discussions of the nature of the relationship between the poet and the young man typically raise the question of whether it is represented as love-in-friendship or whether it has a sexual component. Kenneth Muir, for one, interprets Sonnet 20—a verse at the center of this controversy—as the poet’s frank admission that his feelings for the young man are not only spiritual but also erotic. In that verse, the poet praises the young man as being like a woman but superior in several respects, with his eyes brighter and his emotions more constant. The poet goes on to express regret over the fact that nature had not left him a woman, as he was ‘‘first created,’’ but had added ‘‘one thing’’ to make him a man. The pun in line 13 leaves no doubt as to what this addition was, as the poet, addressing the young man, rues that nature ‘‘pricked thee out for women’s pleasure.’’ The question, then, is whether the poet and the young man can or should be understood to enjoy any sort of sexual relationship regardless of whom nature intended them to please. Muir, for one, asserts that even if the poet experiences erotic inclinations toward the young man, he never seems to consider acting on them: ‘‘There seems to be no thought in his mind of the possibility of a physical consummation of his love, or even that he would have been tempted if the possibility had existed.’’ To the contrary, in his 1985 book Such Is My Love: A Study of Shakespeare’s Sonnets, Joseph Pequigney put forth one of the first comprehensive readings of the poems as demonstrating sincere homosexual affection. He contends ‘‘that the friendship treated in Sonnets 1–126 is decidedly amorous—passionate to a degree and in ways not dreamed of in the published philology, the interaction between the friends being sexual in both orientation and practice,’’ as well as ‘‘that Shakespeare produced not only extraordinary amatory verse but the grand masterpiece of homoerotic poetry.’’ Like many preceding commentators, Pequigney

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Paul Innes describes social and cultural norms governing relationships between men in the English Renaissance. He notes that the system of literary patronage deepened the gap between aristocratic benefactors and socially inferior writers. Calling attention to the connection between ‘‘the language of love and the discourse of patronage’’ in the sonnets, Innes suggests that one of the poet’s greatest fears is that if the young man rejects his love, he will lose the social and monetary benefits he presently enjoys. Overall, while various critics have made various suppositions about the degree of amorousness between the poet and the young man, no one is expected to ever be able to offer irrefutable proof on the matter.

Infidelity

Henry Wriothesley, Earl of Southampton

offers a detailed examination of Sonnet 20. After a complex analysis of the possible meanings and connotations of various words within the sonnet, including ‘‘purpose’’ and ‘‘treasure,’’ he concludes, ‘‘Even though Nature’s creative ‘addition’ may be represented as an obstacle to fleshly intimacy between the friends, its presence does not divert the poet’s ‘passion’ but may, indeed, serve as a principal cause of its arousal.’’ Pequigney goes on to identify Sonnets 52, 75, and 87 as seeming to contain sexual innuendo regarding interactions between the men. Other critics have offered diverging perspectives on the eroticism inherent in the sonnets. Marion Bodwell Smith suggests that Shakespeare’s sequence simply traces the development—and dissolution—of love-in-friendship, as the poet moves from confidence to doubt and from despair to an acceptance of the contradictions inherent in human love. Anthony Hecht calls attention to the fact that from the classical era through the Renaissance, male friendship was seen as an advanced form of human relations— that is, superior to heterosexual love. Hecht suggests that from this perspective, Shakespeare’s sonnets constitute an inquiry into the truth of that notion. Likewise reading the sonnets in the context of the era in which they were written,

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In Shakespeare’s sonnets, an important theme associated with love is the betrayal of love. Most commentators agree that although the poet accuses his mistress of sexual infidelity, he is far less concerned about her faithlessness than he is about the young man’s. As critics have noted, the poet fears that the young man will prove inconstant, yet he tries to suppress his doubts and trust his friend. When the young man betrays him, the poet attempts to justify and excuse his infidelity, then reproaches the young man for his deception and himself for believing in the youth. Several commentators have remarked that the shock of the betrayal is intensified because the poet is convinced that there is a direct symmetry between the young man’s outward appearance—his extraordinary beauty—and his inner self; when the poet finds disparity rather than correspondence there, he is desolate. Indeed, physical beauty was more often associated with moral virtue in the Elizabethan era than in modern times, with both sorts of assets being grouped together as gifts bestowed on individuals by nature. In the case of Shakespeare’s Sonnets, the poet must come to terms with the moral deficiency of the beautiful man, as manifested in his infidelity. Overall, commentators generally agree that the poet’s love for the young man is sustained to the end, as tempered by a more realistic appraisal of the friend’s true nature. Critics have generally agreed with regard to the poet’s gradual revelations regarding the young man’s true nature. M. M. Mahood highlights the poet’s frequently expressed fears that the young man is treacherous and deceitful and

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concludes that the young man is destined to be unfaithful. Still, Mahood confirms that the poet’s love endures: even when the young man repudiates him, the poet assures him of his continuing affection. Hilton Landry focuses on the poet’s response to betrayal in Sonnets 92–96, finding in this series a variety of reactions, including fear, irony, ambivalence, and concern for the young man’s well-being. Kenneth Muir also sees irony and ambivalence in the poet’s reactions to his friend’s faithlessness, but in addition he detects disgrace and shame. The poet certainly experiences precisely the wide range of emotions one would expect him to display given the emotional circumstance of having to come to terms with the infidelity of a beloved.

Narcissism Several critics have asserted that narcissism is an important motif related to the principal theme of love. Indeed, this motif is most evident in the socalled ‘‘procreation sonnets,’’ the first seventeen, in which the poet urges the young man to marry and beget children so that his beauty and virtue will be replicated in succeeding generations of his family. Many of these initial verses underscore the sterility and deceptiveness of self-love and emphasize the belief that ‘‘To give away yourself keeps yourself still’’ (Sonnet 16). Critics have pointed out that the sonnets equate self-love with barrenness in other ways as well. A narcissistic view of one’s natural gifts as personal assets rather than attributes to be shared with others is also a sort of sterility; hoarding one’s treasures rather than using them is the same as wasting them, for time will ultimately consume them. Moreover, some commentators observe, the sonnets warn that self-love inevitably traps the narcissist into believing what false friends and lovers tell him about himself. Philip Martin proposes that Shakespeare’s treatment of the young man’s narcissism is unusually complex. Self-love, the critic argues, is portrayed as a destructive alliance with ‘‘devouring time,’’ for by concentrating on himself the friend will inevitably lose his essence instead of perpetuating it through procreation and love of others. In a psychoanalytic reading of the sonnets, Jane Hedley contends that the poet himself is caught up in narcissism. She asserts that by loving a youth of incomparable beauty, the poet is able to recapture an idealized image of himself—one that has been eroded as he has grown older. Similarly, Stephen Spender discusses the affinity between the narcissistic young man and the poet

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TOPICS FOR FURTHER STUDY Pick one of Shakespeare’s 154 sonnets and write an intense examination of the verse without the assistance of an editor’s annotations. With regard to style, discuss the nature of the rhymes, any possible variations in the meter, and poetic qualities like assonance and alliteration. Look for multiple meanings in words, and provide a discussion of the overall thematic content and message of the poem. Afterward, consult critical comments and annotations on the sonnet and mention any noteworthy discrepancies, corrections, and agreements provided by the scholars in question. Finally, comment on the process of analyzing Shakespeare’s verse without any assistance.  In an essay, provide a full account of ancient Greek conceptions of love (of all kinds) between men, then contrast this historical perspective with prevalent societal attitudes toward love between men in modern America.  Images from nature appear frequently in Shakespeare’s Sonnets. Write a report in which you identify ten sonnets featuring images from nature and compare and contrast the various connotations and symbolic meanings of these images. 



Research the nature of the plagues that occasionally afflicted London and its environs during Shakespeare’s lifetime. In an essay, present your findings and offer a detailed comparison of the overarching threat of plague to some similar threat that has been experienced in modern society.



Write an essay about the Japanese haiku, a poetic form with historical significance comparable to that of the sonnet.

who seeks to immortalize his beauty. In Spender’s judgment, both men regard the friend’s beauty as a ‘‘unique value’’ that must be preserved in some way, and in their shared determination to achieve this, they become one.

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STYLE The Absence of a Narrative Assessments of narrative elements in the sonnets frequently begin by pointing out that the order in which Shakespeare’s sonnets appear in most modern editions follows the one established by Thomas Thorpe in the original publication of these verses in 1609. Historians are unsure as to whether Shakespeare had any hand in this publication, and thus no one can definitively assert that he intended them to be read in the order they are presented therein. Many scholars, believing that a coherent story would emerge if the sonnets were rearranged, have revised the order, but none of these rearrangements has gained significant acceptance among other critics and commentators. While countless summaries of the narrative line of Shakespeare’s sonnets have appeared in print, ranging in length from one sentence to thirty pages or more, critics generally agree that few traces of a traditional plot can be found in the sonnets. Indeed, most commentators offer some analysis regarding the absence of a definable progression of events, specific actions, and indications of time and place. More recently, critics have considered the possibility that some of Sonnets 1–126— long assumed to all be addressed to the young man—may be addressed to the ‘‘dark lady.’’ Of course, since scholars cannot be certain as to whom many of the sonnets refer, they cannot easily trace the course of a developing—if illogical—narrative. Thus, in that critics have generally agreed that the sonnet sequence focuses not on a linear series of events but on the speaker’s thoughts and emotions, debate has revolved around the extent to which the sequence does contain narrative or dramatic elements. Most twentieth-century commentators find little more than a skeletal ‘‘story’’ in these verses. Kenneth Muir, for instance, summarizes what he termed ‘‘the basic facts’’ of the sonnets in a single sentence. He reminds readers that the verses do not represent a novel in poetic form, although he acknowledges that Shakespeare effectively convinces the reader that the sonnets are sincere expressions of the speaker’s emotions, from one day to the next and from year to year. Heather Dubrow stresses the fact that only rarely do the sonnets relate even a brief chronological sequence of events. She calls attention to the lack of specific references to time and place,

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and to the scarcity of sonnets that describe something that actually happens to the poet, the young man, or the mistress. Thus, the experiences of the poet, in being vague, are more universal, and the resulting emotions are more easily vicariously felt by the reader. From the middle of the nineteenth century to the present, Shakespeare’s sonnets have frequently been read as a series of dramatic speeches. Thus, many commentators describe the sonnets as ‘‘dramatic’’ in that they provide immediate emotional contact between the poet, who can be thought of as a speaker, and his reading audience. Indeed, Dubrow, for one, interprets the sonnets as a series of internal monologues, delivered in a lyrical mode, bringing before the reader, immediately and intensely, the conflicted mind of the speaker. In a way, dramatic confrontations occur not between external forces but between the poet’s competing or contradictory thoughts and emotions, and this struggle is conveyed through meditations that resemble, to some degree, soliloquies in plays. Michael Cameron Andrews also maintains that the sonnets are dramatic in the sense that they constitute a dynamic portrayal of a mind at war with itself. He argues that these poems vivify the tempestuous flow of conflicting emotions in the speaker’s mind as he tries desperately to resolve—through justification, pretense, self-deception, and other subterfuges—the discrepancy between his idealized vision of the young man and the knowledge that his friend has deceived him. G. K. Hunter similarly maintains that Shakespeare’s sonnets bring readers into direct contact with the poet’s suffering and, through their poignancy and immediacy, evoke the same feelings of pity and terror elicited by tragic drama. Furthermore, some critics view the tensions that the poet describes between himself and the young man, and between himself and his mistress, as essentially dramatic in nature. On the other hand, some critics argue that the sonnets are non-dramatic in that they seem to take place in an eternal present.

Multifaceted Language The linguistic inventiveness of the sonnets is one of their most celebrated characteristics. Critics have noted that the language is dense and complex, with richness in significance, contradictions, overtones, and echoes. Many have pointed out that Shakespeare’s vocabulary, imagery, and diction are inseparable from the various themes or

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topics within each poem. Some have argued that the ambiguity of Shakespeare’s language is a reflection of his ambivalent attitude toward the subjects of his poetry. Others have suggested that the wide range of tone in the sequence—with the often abrupt shifts from playfulness to derision, intensity to detachment, ecstasy to despair— should be read as evidence of Shakespeare’s extensive understanding of the multifaceted operations of the human mind under the influence of love. In general, studies of the sonnets’ elaborate verbal patterns have focused on such elements as alliteration, assonance, syntax, neologisms (words originally coined), punning, and other forms of wordplay, as well as on Shakespeare’s use of paradox and antithesis. Regarding the connections between verbal and stylistic patterns and the sonnets’ various themes and topics, Philip Martin argues that the poems characteristically display an intimate connection between themes and linguistic modes. Martin offers a deft analysis of the phraseology of Sonnet 1, observing the manner in which certain words balance others in terms of meaning, rhythm, and poetic quality. In the first line, for example, ‘‘From fairest creatures we desire increase,’’ the words ‘‘creatures’’ and ‘‘increase’’ are connected by placement within the line, by alliteration, and by logical association; in the seventh line, in turn, ‘‘Making a famine where aboundance lies,’’ the words ‘‘famine’’ and ‘‘aboundance’’ are contrasted through placement, rhythm, and meaning. Regarding the ambivalent nature of this opening sonnet, Martin concludes, ‘‘It is not just the equivocality of attitude which is characteristic of so many later sonnets: it is the slyness of tone which goes with this attitude and reveals it.’’ Calling attention to the patterns of balance, repetition, and reiteration that occur throughout Sonnets 1–17, Martin suggests that in addition to stressing the idea that the youth must marry and have children, this group of verses introduces or suggests all the central themes of Sonnets 1–126. Thus, he concludes, the initial verbal balancing effort is directly related to the overall ideological balancing effort: ‘‘This is not a clever balancing-act or parrying of experience, nor an attempt to stand outside or above it: it is a recognition of many-sidedness, of the need to give full weight to the various and sometimes conflicting elements which may be present simultaneously in human affairs.’’ Jane Hedley, in turn, emphasizes the regular appearance

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of ambiguity, obsessive repetition, contradiction, and specious argument in the sonnets dealing with the young man. She links these verbal patterns to the poet’s frequent shifts between identification with and estrangement from the young man. In countless instances, the words and images in Shakespeare’s sonnets—as in his plays—have multiple meanings and associations. Stephen Booth compiled an exhaustive commentary on the many connotations, nuances, and references in almost every line of the 154 sonnets. He offers encouragement to modern readers, asserting that Shakespeare’s original audience would have been as challenged and bemused alike by the poet’s words and phrases. Philip Martin recommends that the reader proceed slowly through each sonnet in order not to miss the networks of meanings embedded in the lyrics; this is ‘‘a poetry for contemplation,’’ he advises, that can only be fully appreciated through careful consideration of each line and phrase. In offering a close reading of Sonnet 94, Hilton Landry remarks that this particular verse has been interpreted in many different ways; the language is so allusive, he argues, that the poem must be read in the light of those that precede and follow it, such that its richness, complexity, and subtlety are given some context.

Interconnected Imagery The figurative or metaphorical language of the sonnets is a chief topic of critical interest. Generally, critics agree that the imagery of Shakespeare’s sonnets is functional rather than merely ornamental: imagery often serves as a unifying agent between individual sonnets, creating formal patterns that link together poems that are otherwise discontinuous in logic or topic. Various commentators have contended that single images are often intentionally endowed with multiple associations, such that readers should not try to find one meaning in the rich mixture of connotations that is more significant than the others. Images drawn from nature appear frequently throughout the sequence, particularly with reference to heavenly bodies, to the passing of the seasons, and to cycles of growth and decay. Other important metaphorical patterns are linked to treasure or riches, corruption and disease, scarcity and abundance, and the effectiveness of procreation and poetry as means of immortalizing beauty and defying time.

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Among the many critics who have discussed images and metaphors in the sonnets and their connections with thematic issues are Winifred M. T. Nowottny, James Dawes, Arthur Mizener, Neal L. Goldstien, and Anne Ferry. Focusing on the first six sonnets, Nowottny demonstrates that within an individual sonnet various images may at first seem unrelated, but closer examination shows that they are connected to images in adjacent verses. Thus, Shakespeare used imagery not merely for its beauty but as a means of integrating different parts of the sequence and intensifying the expression of the poet’s experience. In an examination of images that represent mutability and constancy, Dawes similarly notes the unifying effect of the sonnets’ imagery. He asserts that clusters of images that recur throughout the sequence function as substitutes for a traditional narrative or plot, weaving together different parts of the sequence. Mizener analyzes Shakespeare’s compound metaphors, calling attention to the rich blend of connotations in many of them. No one meaning stands out from the others, he declares, or claims the reader’s exclusive attention; instead, all meanings should be seen and understood simultaneously. Goldstien directs readers’ attention to the various forms and associations of money imagery in the sonnets, noting that Shakespeare often uses riches as a synonym for sexuality and links treasure and beauty. Goldstien argues that these interwoven associations underscore the poet’s profoundly ambivalent attitude toward love. Ferry assesses the significance of Shakespeare’s immortalizing metaphors or conceits, particularly in Sonnet 15. Through metaphors that associate immortality with art and vegetation, she argues, the poet accentuates the principal idea of that poem: that he is at war with time. Ferry also points out that the use of the present tense in this sonnet represents another expression of the poet’s attempt to control time.

The Art of Poetry The topic of poetry as an art form merits brief mention here in that it is present in Shakespeare’s Sonnets both thematically, with the poet often referring to the quality and possible immortality of his verse, and in the style of the work itself. That is, to a certain extent, Shakespeare devised poems that aptly reflect the mindset of his narrator not just in content but also in form. Katharine M. Wilson supports the notion that Shakespeare shaped his verse with the utmost deliberation: ‘‘He is an artist; that is to say, a

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conscious practitioner in the art of expressing feeling. He does not write by chance, nor wholly by intuition, but with deliberate design.’’ In particular, both Winifred Nowottny and Douglas L. Peterson have commented on the frequent juxtaposition of an artificial or ornate style with a more direct or simpler one. Nowottny points out that the artificial style predominates when the speaker is most self-conscious; by contrast, when he expresses his feelings more sincerely, the style tends toward the commonplace. Peterson focuses on the sonnets invoking the rival poets and the ‘‘dark lady,’’ concluding that the verses in both these groups demonstrate that Shakespeare found the traditional plain style employed by some sonnet writers just as insincere and exaggerated as the overly eloquent mode used by others.

The Sonnets as Parody Few critics have disputed the notion that Shakespeare’s sonnets are fairly extraordinary when viewed in light of the English sonnet tradition, for two primary reasons: first, most of the sonnets praise the beauty and virtue not of a woman but of a young man, and second, when Shakespeare finally does get around to glorifying a woman, he readily admits that the woman in question is not conventionally, if at all, attractive and can hardly be described as virtuous. Based on these and other aspects of the sonnets, then, some critics have concluded that Shakespeare wrote his sonnets with the express intent of producing a parody. Katharine M. Wilson offers a comprehensive analysis of the sonnets as parody in her text Shakespeare’s Sugared Sonnets. She first offers a discussion of the history of the sonnet, especially as employed by Englishmen in the sixteenth century. By the 1590s, she notes, sonnets were largely being passed around within a concentrated community of respected poets, almost all of whom were connected to the royal court in some way. Shakespeare, she asserts, ‘‘was neither a courtier nor a knight. He did not grow up in any such atmosphere. Although as a person he seems to have been respected, his status as an actor would not qualify him to be called a gentleman.’’ The point she goes on to develop is that Shakespeare was not necessarily the type of person who would have played the game of courtly sonneteering simply for the sake of adhering to aristocratic social conventions. In fact, Wilson

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Engraving of William Shakespeare performing on stage before Queen Elizabeth I

observes that the nature of the era itself seems to suggest that such a genius as Shakespeare would not have undertaken the writing of sonnets as a serious endeavor. Regarding Queen Elizabeth, she remarks, ‘‘It was in her reign that the English love sonnet had its short flowering. Perhaps I should say fruitage rather than flowering since by this time it was over ripe, at the decadent end of its history, with no basis in social reality.’’ Evoking Shakespeare’s personal history, then, she asserts that he would have found ‘‘sonnet love’’ to be marked by ‘‘unreality and artificiality.’’ Wilson next observes that Shakespeare’s plays evidence a fairly critical attitude toward the sonnet tradition, such as in the very early comedy Love’s Labours Lost, where a group of young men somewhat perfunctorily adopt the practice of penning poetry as if simply taking the next logical step after falling in love. Katherine Duncan-Jones likewise contends that Shakespeare demonstrates a disparaging attitude toward poetry in his plays, citing Much

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Ado About Nothing, All’s Well That Ends Well, and The Merry Wives of Windsor as all containing derogatory references to the writing of sonnets. Finally invoking a pair of Shakespeare’s most famous male protagonists (the former coming from As You Like It), she observes, ‘‘Two of Shakespeare’s most intelligent lovers, Orlando and Hamlet, deliver themselves when in love of puerile verses (though not in sonnet form) which suggest mental and aesthetic collapse. In the theatre, it seems, Shakespeare almost invariably presents the writing of love poetry in general, and sonnets in particular, as ridiculous.’’ Having drawn the same conclusion regarding the plays, Wilson finally addresses the nature of Shakespeare’s sonnets themselves. The character of the ‘‘dark lady’’ alone certainly attests to the possibility that Shakespeare was not being serious, as she is essentially opposite to the traditional woman of sonnet idolatry in every respect; she is dark in mind and character as well as in complexion. Further, Shakespeare seems to have

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closely imitated certain sonnets by his contemporaries, including Barnabe Barnes, Samuel Daniel, and Henry Constable. Wilson identifies sonnet VII in Thomas Watson’s Passionate Centurie of Love as being one candidate for the basis of parody in Shakespeare’s Sonnet 130. Among other such similar lines, where Watson writes, ‘‘Her lips more red than any coral stone,’’ Shakespeare counters, ‘‘Coral is far more red, than her lips red.’’ She identifies numerous other sonnets that Shakespeare is likely to have read, and whether or not he intentionally parodied specific verses, he certainly seems to have parodied the types of verses in question. Overall, then, in the ‘‘dark lady’’ series, he took the typical sonnet proceedings and applied them to a situation that made them absurd. Wilson makes similar arguments with respect to the sonnets associated with the young man. To begin with, sonnets simply were not traditionally addressed from one man to another, and Shakespeare’s doing so would have been understood as comical by his contemporaries. Regarding Sonnets 1–17, all advocating procreation for the sake of the preservation of beauty, Wilson asserts that they effectively twist arguments made in a treatise by the Dutch Renaissance scholar Desiderius Erasmus; she states, ‘‘All seventeen sonnets are structured to climb wittily to their inevitable end in an identical laughable climax which parodies equally Erasmus and the sonneteers.’’ Wilson goes on to offer side-by-side comparisons of the remainder of Shakespeare’s sonnets with contemporary verse, as well as with poetry by the ancient Roman Ovid, ever noting that given Shakespeare’s genius and nature, he could not have been so pedantic as to offer such obviously unoriginal verse in any seriousness.

HISTORICAL CONTEXT The Story of the Sonnet Of all poetic forms, the sonnet perhaps occupies the most singular and influential place in history. In her text The Sonnet Over Time: A Study in the Sonnets of Petrarch, Shakespeare, and Baudelaire, Sandra L. Bermann remarks, ‘‘It would not be an exaggeration to say that the sonnet as first popularized by Petrarch and his Italian imitators played a larger role than any other single form in building a highly competitive, if also cohesive, European literary community.’’ In discussing

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Petrarch’s contributions, Bermann notes that the fourteenth-century Italian’s sonnets were widely copied with respect to form as well as theme and particular rhetoric throughout the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. In fact, in the Elizabethan era originality was not held as so important a quality in poetic or dramatic works; Shakespeare appropriated a variety of stories from the annals of history and world literature for use in his plays, and some ‘‘poets’’ did little more than directly translate work from foreign languages—such as the sonnets of Petrarch. In theorizing as to the sonnet’s popularity, Bermann points out that since the rhyme and meter were loosely standardized, poets could distinguish themselves by making only minor adjustments to the form. Interestingly, Bermann connects the appeal of a well-defined verse structure among the poetic community to the bourgeois mode of life: ‘‘Countless sonnet voices called for a hearing in the sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries. Together they moved in the direction of the solidifying ideals of middle-class culture: an easy freedom within constraint, a graceful containment of the individual within the larger community.’’ In England, the publication of Sir Philip Sidney’s Astrophil and Stella in 1591 essentially launched a sonnet craze within courtly circles in England. As Stanley Wells notes, within the next six years, around twenty sonnet sequences were published by various poets; Bermann notes that with its publication date of 1609, ‘‘Shakespeare’s sequence appeared at the very end of the English Renaissance sonnet vogue.’’ Offering an elaboration of Bermann’s cultural analysis regarding the sonnet’s popularity throughout Europe, Paul Innes ties the brief but intense popularity of the sonnet in England to its adherence to idealized notions of courtly love. That is, in writing verse that presented women in traditionally objectified ways, with the various parts of their bodies compared to various objects in nature, English Renaissance poets were invoking a chivalric aspect of human interaction that had largely been forsaken. Shakespeare, then, in writing of a woman of questionable virtue in his Sonnets, can be understood as responding to the gradual shift away from patriarchal feudalism and toward a less distinctly gendered society. Innes concludes, ‘‘Shakespeare’s sonnets can therefore be seen as an attempt to manage the feminine subject in the midst of change.’’

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Aside from Shakespeare’s treatment of the ‘‘dark lady’’ in his sonnets, he diverged from the form’s English and Italian roots in other unconventional ways. Bermann highlights Shakespeare’s verbal intricacy, especially as marked by ambiguity and contradiction, as marks of his poetic originality; in her words, ‘‘The disturbing, often paradoxical play of Shakespeare’s wit and the open-ended nature of his sequence make the Sonnets undoubtedly the most complex and problematic lyric collection of the era.’’ Further, sonneteers before Shakespeare had rarely directly addressed their thoughts and statements to their beloved, as Shakespeare so often does. In that he incorporates the person being praised or discussed into the context of his verse, using the word ‘‘thou’’ with fair frequency, he adds a significant dramatic dimension to the work. A last singular aspect of Shakespeare’s verse is the cumulative effect of his style on the reader, which commentators have attempted to describe in various ways. Bermann cites Samuel Taylor Coleridge as having described this aspect with particular eloquence; he remarked that Shakespeare constantly creates and evolves ideas throughout his individual poems, ‘‘just as a serpent moves, which makes a fulcrum of its own body and seems forever twisting and untwisting its own strength.’’ In summarizing Shakespeare’s relationship to the overall development of the sonnet, Bermann is especially insightful. After commenting on how Shakespeare approached the sonnet from innovative angles while yet working within its accepted parameters, she states, ‘‘Though Shakespeare’s Sonnets could hardly have been more tied to the tradition it deftly revised, the sequence virtually ended the sonnet’s Renaissance phase.’’ Noting that historical factors unrelated to Shakespeare’s actual composition of his poems certainly influenced the sonnet’s diminution in cultural relevance, she goes on to link his efforts to more expansive literary forms: ‘‘His revolutionary use of the sonnet found its most immediate echoes in larger lyric forms, as well as in the drama and narrative, which his well-defined sonnet personae and their ‘plot’ prefigure. But with the rise of these more capacious forms, the sonnet itself was gradually abandoned until, in the eighteenth century, it all but disappeared.’’ Thus, in a sense, Shakespeare’s literary successors could not outdo his performance in the Sonnets without turning to a less confining genre.

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Shakespeare’s Intentions Scholars have long understood that Shakespeare composed and published his two narrative poems Venus and Adonis and Lucrece during a two-year-period early in his career when the London theaters were closed due to an outbreak of the plague. He would have been searching for income, and publishing poems dedicated to a noted literary patron would have helped him to both establish his reputation and secure his livelihood. The Sonnets, in contrast, were published midway through Shakespeare’s career, in 1609, and scholars agree that he had written at least a portion of them back in the mid-1590s. Many historians, then, have wondered why, given his talent and primary interest in acting and the theater, Shakespeare chose to write such a substantial and unique sequence of courtly love sonnets. Regarding the timing of the publication of the Sonnets, Katherine Duncan-Jones notes that from 1606 through 1610 plague indeed again infected London, resulting in the frequent closure of theaters. In fact, she suggests that the sonnets Shakespeare wrote early in his career ‘‘were, perhaps, being saved up against a plague-ridden day.’’ Thus, once the closures had extended long enough to erase his theater income, he would have been financially obligated to make use of his poetry. Some historical scholars have contended that Thomas Thorpe, the man who published the text and also authored its cryptic dedication, in fact published the poems without Shakespeare’s approval. Recent scholars, however, often citing Thorpe’s distinguished and respectable publishing record as well as his friendship with the poet, have generally settled on the notion that Shakespeare probably failed to author the dedication himself simply due to a need to attend to business outside of London— as well as a desire to escape the plague-ridden urban environment as quickly as possible. With the publication of the Sonnets accounted for, scholars have been left to wonder more specifically what Shakespeare’s motivations were in writing them in the first place. In that the sonnet as a poetic form had arguably already moved beyond the pinnacle of its fashionableness in 1609, some commentators have contended that the ingenious Shakespeare was explicitly attempting to offer a new interpretation of the form. After pointing out the low opinion of poetry that the playwright demonstrates in his stage drama, Duncan-Jones

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states, ‘‘One answer, then, to the question of why Shakespeare composed a sonnet sequence might be literary. He sought to appropriate and redefine the genre, rejecting the stale conceits of mistress-worship, and to create a sonnet sequence so different from all his predecessors that the form could never be the same again.’’ Stanley Wells offers similar comments, focusing on Shakespeare’s portrayal of the ‘‘dark lady’’ in relation to the conventional adulatory praise of beautiful women: ‘‘The sonnets clearly addressed to a woman revile her for cruelty and infidelity, speak ill of her appearance, and explore a self-disgusted emotional and physical entanglement in language of, at times, gross sexuality. Shakespeare’s sonnets can be seen, then, as both an endorsement of a convention and a fierce reaction against it.’’ In a more conjectural vein, Katharine M. Wilson contends that Shakespeare in fact sought to parody the systematic and conventional sonnets of some of his contemporaries, thus seeking to produce a humorous effect. Wilson herself came across the Sonnets in the course of researching Elizabethan sonnets as a genre, and having so recently perused the same publications that Shakespeare is likely to have read, she could not help but view them as intentionally comical. She asserts, ‘‘Shakespeare must have had the cadences, imagery and ideas of his predecessors in his mind as he wrote. He used the same or similar tunes and the same imagery and conceits as the other sonneteers, to pay the same flattering and devoted attention, but to a man, not a woman.’’ Wilson concludes that by virtue of the manner in which Shakespeare directly imitated his predecessors with such contrary premises, ‘‘He reduced the whole thing to the absurd.’’ Ultimately, of course, Shakespeare’s precise intentions can presumably never be proved.

The Autobiographical Question Perhaps since the first publication of Shakespeare’s Sonnets, scholarly and lay readers alike have wondered as to what extent, if at all, the verses are autobiographical. Certain well-read commentators have made statements for or against this notion, igniting or swaying their contemporaries: In the early nineteenth century, William Wordsworth declared in a poem that the sonnets were the key with which ‘‘Shakespeare unlocked his heart,’’ and as Kenneth Muir notes, critical discussion throughout that century revolved around that contention. More

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recently, Stephen Booth’s pronouncement on what is termed the biographical fallacy has been frequently cited by other critics: ‘‘William Shakespeare was almost certainly homosexual, bisexual, or heterosexual. The sonnets provide no evidence on the matter.’’ Muir cites J. W. Lever as notably advocating a balanced perspective with regard to the possibility of the sonnets’ containing autobiographical material; Lever remarked, ‘‘The danger is twofold; of naivety, in accepting any sonnet as literal autobiography; or of false sophistication, in dismissing it off hand as mere ‘literary exercise.’’’ Robert Giroux elaborates on the notion that scholars would be unwise to dismiss the possibility that autobiographical material can be gleaned from Shakespeare’s Sonnets. Giroux cites John Berryman as asserting, ‘‘‘One thing critics not themselves writers of poetry occasionally forget is that poetry is composed by actual human beings, and tracts of it are very closely about them. When Shakespeare wrote, ‘Two loves I have,’ reader, he was not kidding.’’’ Likewise, Giroux concludes that one should not assume either that any given sonnet is autobiographical or that none of them are, declaring, ‘‘The truth is that we cannot assume anything. To eschew the biographical approach in favour of the antibiographical, in the hope of obtaining a purer or more accurate literary understanding of the sonnets, is an illusion.’’

The Identity of the Young Man For hundreds of years, researchers have attempted to determine whether Shakespeare modeled the young man of the sonnets on a specific person. Many critics have considered investigations into the identity of the young man to be more important than those conducted in search of the ‘‘dark lady.’’ As Robert Giroux observes of the mistress of the sonnets in opposition to the gentleman, Her identity really makes very little difference to our knowledge of most of the poems. The identity of the young man is quite another matter, because, if it can be determined, it would throw great light on the date of the poems’ composition, on puzzling textual questions, and on matters of poetic sincerity and truth, and would thus increase enormously our understanding and appreciation of the sonnets.

Most searches for the young man’s identity have begun with the enigmatic dedication of the 1609 edition of the poems to ‘‘Mr. W. H.,’’ described as ‘‘the only begetter of these ensuing

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sonnets.’’ Some scholars have contended that ‘‘begetter’’ means that ‘‘Mr. W. H.’’ provided the publisher with the text of Shakespeare’s sonnets. Others believe that ‘‘Mr. W. H.’’ alludes to the young man who inspired the poems, and over the centuries, an impressive array of possible candidates has been proposed. At the top of the list are Henry Wriothesley, Earl of Southampton (1573–1624), and William Herbert, Earl of Pembroke (1580–1630). Henry Wriothesley, commonly referred to as Southampton, has generally been supported as the most likely candidate by those who consider the Sonnets to have been almost entirely written in the mid-1590s, early in Shakespeare’s career. Shakespeare did dedicate both Venus and Adonis and Lucrece to Southampton, which makes him a strong candidate for a subsequent dedication. Robert Giroux finds a significant correlation between these two dedications and Sonnet 26, with its emphasis on ‘‘duty.’’ R. J. C. Wait, meanwhile, contends that Southampton must be the man in question because, the critic posits, Sonnet 126 seems to refer to the fact that a son and heir was finally born to the young man he had been urging to procreate all along. In contrast to Giroux, Katherine Duncan-Jones contends that the sonnets were written over a greater span of time, with Shakespeare having devoted energy to them not only in the mid1590s but also around 1600, around 1603, and through the end of 1608 into 1609, just before their publication. Duncan-Jones suggests that if this dating is accepted, Southampton is less probably the young man of the sonnets in part because he was thirty-five years old by 1609, such that Shakespeare would not have been likely to write poetry then as if Southampton were far younger. In addition, Shakespeare makes no mention of any of the activities in which Southampton was involved as a young man, such as military matters—and, of course, his actual initials, H. W., would have to be inexplicably reversed to get the initials in the dedication in the Sonnets. Duncan-Jones, then, considers the more likely candidate to be William Herbert, also referred to as Pembroke. Later, in 1623, Shakespeare’s First Folio would be dedicated to Pembroke and his brother, Philip Herbert, such that an earlier dedication to the earl would not have been unlikely. Duncan-Jones cites J. Dover Wilson as suggesting that Herbert’s mother, the

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Countess of Pembroke, may have asked Shakespeare to meet the young man on the occasion of his seventeenth birthday, in 1597, and to write seventeen sonnets devoted to the virtues of procreation. In fact, Pembroke proved unwilling to marry women suggested by his parents on several occasions, matching his character to that of the young man of the Sonnets. Further, by the time Shakespeare published his poems, Pembroke had proven willing to provide writers with financial remunerations for their efforts; Duncan-Jones describes him as ‘‘an exceptionally generous and intelligent patron of letters, and even something of a poet.’’ Thus, of course, his sympathies are that much more likely to have lain with an established playwright and poet like Shakespeare. Regarding the dedication’s reference to W. H. as ‘‘Mr.,’’ rather than as ‘‘Earl,’’ which seemingly would have been more proper, Duncan-Jones notes that in using the title that Pembroke would have borne until his father’s death around 1601, Shakespeare could have been referring to the earlier period of time when Pembroke served as his inspiration. Overall, then, the editor of the Arden Sonnets argues quite convincingly that Pembroke is both the subject of the dedication and the gentleman on whom Shakespeare modeled the young man in his verses.

The Identity of the Dark Lady As with the young man, much of what has been written about the ‘‘dark lady’’ over the centuries has been concerned with whether she has a historical antecedent. While her identity arguably bears less relevance to the full comprehension of the sonnets than the identity of the young man, some critics have focused on the ‘‘dark lady’’ far more ambitiously. Katherine Duncan-Jones posits two reasons for this particular focus: To begin with, proving the existence of a particular woman with whom Shakespeare was enamored would have made his enshrinement among the greatest European sonneteers—many of whose objects of affection gained substantial renown— much easier than if the woman in question was imaginary. Further, and perhaps more significantly, critical focus on the identity of the ‘‘dark lady’’ essentially served to divert attention from the fact that the majority of Shakespeare’s sonnets are actually about a young man. As Duncan-Jones relates, ‘‘The foregrounding of ‘the Lady’ strongly implies that the predominant thrust of Shakespeare’s Sonnets is heterosexual. Devotees of an idealized, domesticated image of

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COMPARE & CONTRAST 

1609: Men receiving secondary education are likely to be exposed to the ancient Greek notion that the love shared between men can be superior to the love shared between men and women; still, Shakespeare’s sonnets, with their depiction of a poet’s fierce and possibly romantic appreciation for a young man, do not prove popular. Today: In Western cultures, after centuries in which homosexuality has been widely outlawed and condemned, a large proportion of men have difficulty displaying genuine affection toward other men; in mainstream films, romances between men as part of the central plot are extremely rare.

Shakespeare the man may be a little uncomfortable at a suspicion of adultery, but this is nothing like so alarming as a suspicion of pederasty.’’ Regardless of the motivation for the search, the question of the identity of the ‘‘dark lady’’ bears some relevance to the study of the sonnets themselves, partly in that arguments in favor of certain women affect arguments in favor of certain young men, as the two are romantically linked in the Sonnets. Mary Fitton, a lady in waiting to Queen Elizabeth, has been high on the list of candidates, but Duncan-Jones points out that evidence suggests that Fitton had a fair complexion; also, given her position within the royal court, Shakespeare would have likely had few, if any, opportunities to consort with her. Other candidates have included Luce Morgan, a London brothel-keeper, and Emilia Lanier, a woman whose virtue was apparently regularly compromised. Evidence regarding real-life inspirations for the ‘‘dark lady’’ is scarcer than that for the young man, such that few scholars proclaim with confidence that they have discovered a certain correlation. Anthony Burgess offers a useful perspective to adopt in this respect: ‘‘It is best to keep the Dark Lady anonymous, even

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1609: Actors have difficulty subsisting on their talents during outbreaks of the plague, as theaters were periodically closed to prevent the spread of the disease. Today: Thanks to ever-increasing numbers of cable channels, television acting jobs are becoming easier to obtain.



1609: Sexually explicit references in Shakespeare’s Sonnets are considered partly responsible for its lukewarm reception. Today: With children of all ages exposed to such lewd entertainment vessels as MTV and Howard Stern’s radio show, people are understood to be gaining sexual consciousness earlier in life.

composite. Shakespeare was a long time in London, and we cannot think that he limited himself to one affair. The Sonnets make statements of permanent validity about some of the commonest experiences known to men—obsession with a woman’s body, revulsion, pain in desertion, resignation at another’s treachery.’’ The ‘‘dark lady,’’ then, can be understood as an essential inspiration for these universal sentiments regardless of what her name might have been.

CRITICAL OVERVIEW While Shakespeare’s sonnets are generally celebrated in modern times, they were in fact long ignored, denounced, and even despised. In her introduction to the work, Katherine DuncanJones contrasts the sonnets’ reception to those experienced by Venus and Adonis and Lucrece, Shakespeare’s more successful poetic publications, both of which eventually saw numerous quarto runs. Referring to the sonnet quarto as ‘‘Q,’’ as do many commentators, Duncan-Jones

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remarks, ‘‘Whereas the early narrative poems were received with immediate enthusiasm, prompting dozens of early allusions, citations and imitations, the 1609 Q seems to have been greeted largely in silence—a silence the more surprising given Shakespeare’s literary celebrity in 1609, in contrast to his relative obscurity in 1593– 1594.’’ Duncan-Jones notes that the public may very well have been disappointed and even upset by the sonnets, likely because of the nature of the material. She posits that the contemporary author Ben Jonson, for one, may have found Shakespeare’s narrator’s devotion to a young man to be ‘‘morally compromising’’; in turn, many readers may have found repugnant the fairly explicit, if colloquial, references to sexual activity in the ‘‘dark lady’’ sonnets. Thus, the verses may not have been publicly discussed simply for propriety’s sake. One anonymous reader annotated the end of a copy of Shakespeare’s Sonnets with the remark, ‘‘What a heap of wretched Infidel Stuff.’’ In fact, Shakespeare gained critical exposure when a pirated copy of the Sonnets was produced in 1640 by John Benson, who changed the pronouns in the references to the young man, such that the poems’ addressee became a woman. Benson also reordered the sonnets and interspersed them with other works, but his publication was largely accepted as accurate for over a century. Regardless, critical opinions remained generally unfavorable; the sonnet itself became fairly unfashionable, and Shakespeare’s sonnets in particular rarely garnered attention. In 1793, George Steevens displayed great disdain for the sonnets in excluding them from a copy of Shakespeare’s collected plays and declaring that not even an act of Parliament could compel readers to find them favorable. Kenneth Muir notes that the renowned English poet William Wordsworth once offered a particularly negative view of the ‘‘dark lady’’ sonnets, calling them ‘‘abominably harsh, obscure and worthless’’ and describing them as characterized by ‘‘sameness, tediousness, quaintness, and elaborate obscurity.’’ Critical inattention or rejection continued through the nineteenth century, often on the grounds that Shakespeare was essentially promoting homosexuality. Muir notes that in 1839 the scholar Henry Hallam, making reference to the sonnets—and undoubtedly alluding to the narrator’s devotion to the young man—declared,

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‘‘There is a weakness and folly in all excessive and mis-placed affection, which is not redeemed by the touches of nobler sentiments that abound.’’ Duncan-Jones points out that Oscar Wilde demonstrated particular interest in Shakespeare’s sonnets, approvedly theorizing in The Portrait of Mr. W. H. (1889) that the ‘‘begetter’’ of Shakespeare’s sonnets was the boy actor Willie Hughes. In that Wilde was later jailed for two years for homosexual acts, his affiliation with Shakespeare certainly did not soften attitudes toward the ambiguously erotic Sonnets. Duncan-Jones points out that critical attitudes finally, if slowly, grew more sympathetic and approving once the British Parliament made homosexual activity legal for consenting adults in 1967 (making Steevens’s aforementioned comment somewhat ironic). In general, modern commentators have managed to appreciate the poetry of Shakespeare’s Sonnets irrespective of the supposed moral worth or biographical relevance of their contents. In distinguishing the appeal of Shakespeare’s collection from that of other such sequences published during the same era, R. J. C. Wait asserts that some of Shakespeare’s sonnets ‘‘are generally thought to be among the finest poetry in the English or any other language.’’ Echoing that sentiment almost exactly, Stanley Wells remarks, ‘‘Shakespeare’s sonnets include some of the greatest individual love poems in the English language.’’ Wait also aptly verbalizes the notion that the sequence as a whole bears a certain unique historical value: ‘‘If some or all of its contents do indeed reflect personal experiences and emotions they represent practically the only personal statement which has been left to us by one of the greatest figures of the world’s literature.’’ Indeed, Shakespeare has somewhat tantalizingly left behind a collection of poetry that begs for interpretation in light of his personal life, even though any given line or word may have entirely fictional connotations. Wait concludes, ‘‘The immortality which their author claimed for the Sonnets, and about which the modern reader also holds no doubts, is due, not to any key which they may or may not contain to the secrets of Shakespeare’s heart, but simply to their quality as poetry.’’ Wells likewise focuses on the quality of the poetry itself, finding the challenging nature of the Sonnets to be especially redeeming. He notes that reading the verses in order is a difficult endeavor in that the final couplets limit the overall flow, no narrative

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sequence is provided, and the poet’s mood changes so abruptly; further, the poet’s emotions are at times quite dark, as characterized by disillusionment, self-abasement, and self-contempt. Wells admiringly concludes, ‘‘The single poem which is Shakespeare’s Sonnets will never have the popularity of some of its parts, but, in its rapid shifts of mood, its intense exploration of the ‘heaven’ and the ‘hell’ of being in love, it is far greater than the sum of those parts.’’ Also perceiving a lack of autobiographical content in the Sonnets, Katharine M. Wilson contends that the sequence as a whole constitutes a grand parody of the sonnet tradition; in analyzing Shakespeare’s approach from this angle, her appreciative critical stance is quite distinct from those of many of her fellow scholars. She writes, ‘‘As to method, Shakespeare gets fun out of such things as making play with the imagery or the situation, with exaggerating and mocking, with naive explanations or expressions of surprise that his experience is different, with translating sonnet situations into terms of reality and by treating them seriously showing how absurd they are.’’ Wilson goes on to declare that the art of the sonnets is not diminished by their lack of gravity: ‘‘The parody has a sort of greatness, which I should say is sensed chiefly in its music. It mimics in a dance that has its own breadth, dignity and grace.’’ She concludes that Shakespeare’s sonnets ‘‘have the sound of great poetry’’ and ‘‘reveal a new aspect of his genius.’’ Overall, critical inquiry into the Sonnets is likely to continue indefinitely, given the many ambiguities surrounding Shakespeare’s sequence. Critics may ever theorize with regard to the degree of autobiographical content; the identities of the young man and ‘‘dark lady’’; the dates when the individual poems were written; the influence of contemporary authors on Shakespeare’s creative imagination; and, of course, the meanings inherent in the poems themselves. Duncan-Jones notes that women were responsible for many of the most insightful readings of the late twentieth century; she conjectures that women may be generally better tuned to the ‘‘predominantly reflective, introspective subject matter’’ of the Sonnets while also perhaps being ‘‘able to remain at once calmly observant of, yet emotionally receptive to, the masculine homoerotic thrust of 1–126 that has caused such upset to generations of male readers.’’

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In offering what he unabashedly frames as his own subjective reading of the Sonnets, David K. Weiser compares the multiplicity of meanings to be found therein with the countless combinations of moves that can be carried out in a game of chess. He writes, ‘‘Standard gambits and strategies do exist, but gifted players still devise endless variations. . . . There are 154 sonnets, most of them packed with enough complexity to inspire a dissertation. And there are infinite ways of combining them into meaningful patterns.’’ Duncan-Jones echoes the thought that the Sonnets should be especially prized for their complexity, as possible ‘‘semantic readings,’’ she asserts, ‘‘are, in truth, inexhaustible.’’ She satisfactorily concludes, ‘‘Here, even more than in the rest of Shakespeare’s work, it is open to each and every reader to arrive at an individual and original response. The notorious truism that no two people ever concur in interpreting Sonnets is not cause for despair, but for rejoicing.’’

CRITICISM Maurice Charney In this concise appraisal of various issues associated with Shakespeare’s sonnets, Charney pays particular attention to Shakespeare’s development of the sonnet form and the effectiveness of his concluding couplets. Charney also discusses the motifs of time and mutability, the presence of both lyric and dramatic elements in the sequence, and the poet-speaker’s reflections on his creative powers. Thomas Thorpe published 154 Sonnets by Shakespeare followed by A Lover’s Complaint (also said to be by Shakespeare) in 1609. Unlike the texts of Venus and Adonis and The Rape of Lucrece, the printed text has many obvious errors, and Shakespeare clearly did not proofread it or see it through the press. Although the Sonnets seem to have an authoritative manuscript behind them, they were certainly not published with Shakespeare’s knowledge or permission. Sonnets usually circulated in handwritten ‘‘books’’ among one’s private friends and acquaintances. It was not considered necessary or even desirable to publish them. The great vogue of sonnet writing was in the 1590s, and we know from Sonnet 104 that three years had passed since the poet first saw his ‘‘fair friend,’’ which makes it likely that the writing of

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SONNET 20 SEEMS TO LAY OUT CLEARLY THE DISTINCTION BETWEEN AN ENNOBLING LOVE BETWEEN TWO MALE FRIENDS AND THE POTENTIALLY DEBASING SEXUAL LOVE BETWEEN A MAN AND A WOMAN.’’

the Sonnets occupied at least three years in the 1590s, probably the early 1590s. Some of the Sonnets may have been written in the early 1600s, but the bulk of them are associated with Shakespeare’s ingenious, heavily conceited, and self-consciously rhetorical style of the early and mid-1590s. In 1598 Francis Meres mentions in Palladis Tamia Shakespeare’s ‘‘sugred sonnets among his priuate friends,’’ an obvious compliment to his elegant style, although we may have some doubts about sugred as a term of praise. In 1599 two Sonnets, 138 and 144, were printed in a slightly different form in The Passionate Pilgrim. The Sonnets were dedicated to ‘‘Mr. W. H.’’ as ‘‘the only begetter,’’ but it is hard to know whether this is the poet’s or the publisher’s dedication. It is unlike the formal dedications of Venus and Adonis and The Rape of Lucrece to the Earl of Southampton, and it may be that Mr. W. H. is the only begetter in the sense that he made his manuscript copy of Shakespeare’s Sonnets available to the publisher. There has been endless and mostly fruitless biographical speculation about the Sonnets, and even more elaborate autobiographical guessing about Shakespeare’s own personal relation to the experience described in the Sonnets and to characters in the Sonnets such as the Friend, the Dark Lady, and the Rival Poet or Poets. There is no independent confirmation in other writing or records of the time of anything factual that is said in Shakespeare’s Sonnets. We would expect, at the least, some outside confirmation of the Rival Poet’s activities: his sonnets to the friend or to the lady, or some account of his love life. It is curious that in the elaborately punning Sonnets 135 and 136 it seems that Shakespeare, the Dark Lady’s husband, and the Friend are all named Will. This is convenient because will is also a word for carnal appetite and lust.

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Portrait of William Shakespeare, part III (Ó Shakespeare Collection, Special Collections Library, University of Michigan)

We know nothing definite about the historical identity of the Dark Lady and the Friend. The Sonnets seem to be strongly homoerotic, but in terms of Petrarchan love conventions, the Platonic idea of friendship offers a much higher ideal than heterosexual love, as we can see plainly in the opening sequence between Leontes and Polixenes in The Winter’s Tale or in the friendship of Palamon and Arcite (and Emilia and Flavina) in The Two Noble Kinsmen. Leontes’ fiendish jealousy seems to be generated, like Original Sin, from sexuality itself, as Hermione his wife so keenly recognizes. Sexual love is represented repeatedly in the Sonnets as a source of

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grief and enslavement, nowhere more strongly than in Sonnet 129, ‘‘Th’ expense of spirit in a waste of shame.’’ Sonnet 20 seems to lay out clearly the distinction between an ennobling love between two male friends and the potentially debasing sexual love between a man and a woman. The Friend has ‘‘A woman’s face, with Nature’s own hand painted’’ and is ‘‘the master mistress of my passion.’’ Nature first created him ‘‘for a woman,’’ but then ‘‘fell a-doting, / And by addition me of thee defeated.’’ Nature’s ‘‘addition’’ seems to be clearly a penis, as we learn from the punning couplet close: But since she pricked thee out for women’s pleasure, Mine be thy love, and thy love’s use their treasure. There is a clear distinction between the noble ‘‘love’’ and the lesser ‘‘love’s use,’’ or intercourse. We learn later that the Dark Lady has seduced the Friend and engaged him in a sexual relationship (Sonnets 35, 40, 41, etc.). Sonnet 20 makes a sharp distinction between noble friendship and physical love. Sex is excluded from the relation with the Friend. The Shakespearean or English sonnet is derived from the Earl of Surrey and has three quatrains (rhyming abab, cdcd, and efef) with a concluding couplet (gg) all in iambic pentameter. Most of the sonnets have fourteen lines, although there is one (Sonnet 99) of fifteen, with an introductory first line, and one of twelve (Sonnet 126), which has six couplets. There are vestiges of the Italian sonnet in Shakespeare, in which an octave is set against a sestet. The octave of two quatrains contrasts with the sestet, which consists of a quatrain and a couplet considered as a single unit. These are relatively uncommon in Shakespeare, although Sonnet 18 has the feeling of an Italian sonnet: it has three quatrains and a couplet, but the third quatrain has a different logical movement from the first two. The feeling of a distinct sestet is continued through the triumphant couplet: So long as men can breathe or eyes can see, So long lives this, and this gives life to thee. This couplet provides an upbeat ending. The most problematic feature of the Shakespearean sonnet is the couplet close, which is sometimes disappointing because it is so

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epigrammatic, so didactic, so much like a neat summary tacked on to a poem that doesn’t need it. There are many feeble couplets, for example the one in Sonnet 37: Look what is best, that best I wish in thee. This wish I have, then ten times happy me! This seems like mere filler for a sonnet that is clearly not one of the best, but is nevertheless complex, about a poet ‘‘made lame by Fortune’s dearest spite,’’ who shares in his friend’s ‘‘abundance.’’ This certainly doesn’t indicate that the poet is literally ‘‘lame,’’ and the couplet doesn’t do justice to the poetic reasoning of the three previous quatrains. The couplet works wonderfully well in Sonnet 73, and is generally successful when it has an element of dramatic surprise, like a punch line. In Sonnet 19 the couplet comes upon us as a sudden peripeteia to the irresistible powers of ‘‘Devouring Time’’: Yet do thy worst, old Time; despite thy wrong, My love shall in my verse ever live young. This couplet introduces an alternative with its ‘‘Yet’’ and ‘‘despite’’ that comes upon us as a hidden truth. Sonnet 65 is similar. Against ‘‘sad mortality’’ and his ‘‘spoil of beauty’’ there is no protection, except for the miracle of poetry trumpeted in the couplet: O, none, unless this miracle have might, That in black ink my love may still shine bright. The couplet form lends itself in the Sonnets (and in Shakespeare’s plays, too, especially scene-ending couplets) to bold and emphatic statement. Sonnet 56 is not particularly memorable, but its couplet ending vibrates with promise and new possibility. The poem is an appeal to ‘‘Sweet love’’ to ‘‘renew thy force,’’ presumably in a period of absence or neglect. The ‘‘Return of love’’ is connected syntactically with the couplet: Or call it winter, which being full of care, Makes summer’s welcome thrice more wished, more rare. A series of five accented syllables beginning with thrice in the last line is driven home with the unusual fourth-beat caesura, or mid-line pause, after wished. More rare soars in a way that redeems the entire poem.

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Time is the most frequently repeated concept and image in the Sonnets. This is the pervasive Renaissance theme of mutability, and the poet presents various ways to defy Time. The first seventeen Sonnets constitute the most distinctive unit of the whole sequence, which is arranged more or less logically by similarity of theme. We don’t, of course, know who devised the ordering of the Sonnets or what relation the sequence has to date of composition. The first seventeen sonnets all urge the young friend to marry and to reproduce his beauty in children. This is the familiar doctrine of use that is part of Venus’s argument to Adonis in Venus and Adonis and that echoes the often-repeated parable of the talents in Matt. 25: 14–30. Man is the steward, not the owner, of his good qualities and possessions, and he is obligated to put his natural gifts to use for the benefit of others. If you are beautiful, you must make use of your beauty (as money accumulates ‘‘use’’ or interest) by having children on whom to bestow your god-given gifts. The beginning of the first sonnet announces the immortality of beauty through propagation: From fairest creatures we desire increase, That thereby beauty’s rose might never die. You are not allowed to be in love with yourself and waste your substance in ‘‘niggarding,’’ or hoarding, to be ‘‘contracted to thine own bright eyes’’ and feed ‘‘thy light’s flame with self-substantial fuel.’’ This is to make ‘‘a famine where abundance lies,’’ that is, the potential abundance that comes from creating children to perpetuate one’s beauty. Children are like ‘‘flowers distilled’’ (Sonnet 3), or perfume, that defies the tyranny of Time. Another way to wage war against Time is to write verse, which confers a kind of immortality upon the Friend. This is a repeated theme in the Sonnets. Posterity and poetry both do battle against oblivion. Nature is a destroyer of beauty, but poetry is immutable and guarantees that ‘‘thy eternal summer shall not fade’’ (Sonnet 18). In Sonnet 65 there is a series of unanswerable questions about Time, one in each of the first two quatrains, and two in the third:

from the ravaging hand of Time, who threatens to seize him and put him in his chest. How can ‘‘beauty hold a plea’’ against the rage of Time? The only solution to this ‘‘fearful meditation’’ is the miracle of poetry: ‘‘That in black ink my love may still shine bright.’’ The immanence and immortality of poetry are postulated as a defense against the ravages of Time. Two sonnets dwell specifically on music, 8 and 128, but the musicality of the Sonnets as a group is striking. The slow, sad lyrical effects are the most impressive, and they lend themselves to being set to music (as many sonnets have been). Sonnet 30 is best remembered as supplying C. K. Scott Moncrieff with the English title for Proust’s A La Recherche du Temps Perdu. It is artful in its heavy use of alliteration and its legal / commercial imagery. In the first quatrain, ‘‘remembrance of things past’’ is summoned to appear at the ‘‘sessions of sweet silent thought,’’ in which the poet presumably sits in judgment on the events of his own life. The predominance of s-sounds in the opening line immediately establishes a mood of reverie and meditation—the sibilants are associated with sleep, as in the colloquial expression a few z’s, meaning a short nap. ‘‘My dear Time’s waste’’ continues the most repeated theme in the Sonnets of Time the Destroyer. The memorializing of the second quatrain presents a mournful threnody for ‘‘precious friends hid in death’s dateless night,’’ ‘‘love’s long since canceled woe,’’ and ‘‘th’ expense of many a vanished sight.’’ The sonnet is an elegy to death, the expiration of love, and the gradual disappearance of all that is lovely and beautiful. There is a sense in the third quatrain that ‘‘grievances foregone’’ can never be forgotten and that ‘‘The sad account ` moan’’ must be paid anew as if of fore-bemoaned it had never been paid before. The music of the three quatrains is an almost perfect elegy for ‘‘remembrance of things past,’’ but the couplet is jarring and facile: But if the while I think on thee, dear friend, All losses are restored and sorrows end.

O, fearful meditation, where, alack, Shall Time’s best jewel from Time’s chest lie hid?

It is as if a mere thought of the ‘‘dear friend’’ is enough to cancel the previous three quatrains. This is one of the most disturbing and inappropriate couplets in the Sonnets. We are soon to learn of many negative and unfavorable aspects of the ‘‘dear friend.’’

Presumably, ‘‘Time’s best jewel’’ is the beautiful Friend, whom the Poet is trying to conceal

Sonnet 73 is similar to Sonnet 30 in its elegiac tone and in its meditation on man’s mortality. It

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does not use such deliberate alliteration, but its prominent caesuras, or midline pauses, slow the rhythm down, especially in the three caesuras of line 2:

The pangs of despised love, the law’s delay, The insolence of office, and the spurns That patient merit of th’ unworthy takes . . . (Hamlet 3.1.70–74)

That time of year thou mayst in me behold When yellow leaves, or none, or few, do hang Upon those boughs which shake against the cold . . .

Despite verbal similarities in the catalogues of ills, in Hamlet’s ‘‘To be, or not to be’’ speech they are part of an intolerable strain that includes the possibility of suicide. In Sonnet 66 the cry for ‘‘restful death’’ is rejected in the couplet close because it would isolate the poet from his love. The sonnet itself is a self-contained logical unit that ends by rejecting the possibilities of the first three quatrains. It has no relation to a highly characterized speaker or to a specific point in the dramatic action.

The numerous accented syllables in the fourth line also slow down the movement of the poem practically to a funeral dirge: ‘‘Bare ruined choirs where late the sweet birds sang.’’ ‘‘Bare ruined choirs’’ and ‘‘sweet birds sang’’ are all heavily accented without any intervening unaccented syllables. The autumn of the first quatrain is matched by twilight in the second, with black night and sleep, which is described as ‘‘Death’s second self.’’ In the third quatrain, the embers of the fires of youth match autumn and twilight as images of death. The fire consumes ‘‘that which it was nourished by.’’ In this sonnet, the couplet is a perfect conclusion to the somber mood and adagio movement of the first three quatrains: This thou perceiv’st, which makes thy love more strong, To love that well which thou must leave ere long. Love is intimately connected with death, and the idea of mutability and mortality should serve to make love more intense. The Sonnets are obviously related to the plays, but generically there are important differences between lyric and dramatic expression. The wooing sonnet in Romeo and Juliet (1.5.95ff.), for example, is a playful and witty part of the early courtship of Romeo and Juliet—they answer each other—but it would be inappropriate later in the play. If we consider specific sonnets in relation to plays, it is clear that Sonnet 66 looks ahead to Hamlet in its account of ‘‘The slings and arrows of outrageous fortune’’ (3.1.58), especially in the third quatrain: And art made tongue-tied by authority, And folly (doctorlike) controlling skill, And simple truth miscalled simplicity, And captive good attending captain ill. Hamlet’s ‘‘sea of troubles’’ includes the whips and scorns of time, Th’ oppressor’s wrong, the proud man’s contumely,

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Even if radical differences exist between the Sonnets and the plays, the best sonnets still use dramatic devices that are similar to those in the plays. The sonnets that are most appealing seem to be those that explore a strong sense of turmoil and perturbation and that consequently offer poignant, often negative, characterizations. Sonnet 94 is powerfully dramatic—not theatrical in the sense of any imagined scenes—in its characterization of the Friend as cold, disdainful, and unattached. Despite all the earlier sonnets on the doctrine of use and the insistence on man’s stewardship rather than absolute possession of his beauty, in the octave the Friend ironically claims to be one of those who are ‘‘the lords and owners of their faces’’ rather than ‘‘stewards of their excellence.’’ He is ` cold’’ and husbands ‘‘nature’s riches ‘‘Unmoved, from expense.’’ The opening line, ‘‘They that have pow’r to hurt and will do none,’’ is so frightening because the powerful Friend is affectless, lacedemonian, and uninvolved. Therefore his beauty is like a flower that suffers ‘‘base infection,’’ and that is why, finally, ‘‘Lilies that fester smell far worse than weeds.’’ The lily pretends to be a nobler flower than a weed, and hence its possibilities of corruption are more extreme. The Friend is characterized in this and many of the surrounding sonnets as incapable of real love. A comparably dramatic sonnet is 129 about the Dark Lady, who appears in Sonnets 127–52. She is much more specifically sexual than any of Shakespeare’s dramatic heroines, including Cleopatra and Cressida, and she seems to enslave the Poet (and his Friend, too) in an irresistible but shameful intensity of lust, such as Tarquin’s selfdefeating lust in The Rape of Lucrece. Sonnet 129 is not directly about the Dark Lady, but about her demonic effect on the Poet, who doesn’t

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know how ‘‘To shun the heaven that leads men to this hell.’’ Active lust involves ‘‘Th’ expense of spirit,’’ or the expenditure of seminal fluid, ‘‘in a waste of shame,’’ which may pun on waste and waist. Until ejaculation, male lust follows the pattern of Tarquin, who seems to be arguing with another self that he doesn’t recognize: lust ‘‘Is perjured, murd’rous, bloody, full of blame, / Savage, extreme, rude, cruel, not to trust.’’ The spondaic thrust of the last line carries some of the metrical and phonetic harshness of the meaning. Lust is deceptive and self-defeating: ‘‘Enjoyed no ` straight’’ and ‘‘A bliss in sooner but despised proof, and proved, a very woe.’’ The stark alternatives make this a very dramatic sonnet, as if lust is entirely outside a man’s power to control. The Dark Lady is therefore both the heaven and the hell of the Poet. The personal anguish of Sonnet 129 is displaced in the witty, mannered, sexual puns of Sonnet 151, ‘‘Love is too young to know what conscience is.’’ It is as if the Poet has finally mastered the ‘‘sensual fault’’ (Sonnet 35) and ‘‘Lascivious grace’’ (Sonnet 40) of earlier poems, and he can proceed to the ‘‘sensual feast’’ (Sonnet 141) without any trepidations or pricks of conscience. The Poet willingly betrays his soul to his ‘‘gross body’s treason,’’ and ‘‘flesh’’ (specifically the penis) doesn’t wait for any further excuses, ‘‘But, rising at thy name, doth point out thee, / As his triumphant prize.’’ The double entendres on erection—reason, rising, pride, stand, and rise and fall—resemble Shakespeare’s early comedies. Lust is no longer an excruciating torment, but rather an entertainment. The couplet cadence is playful:

cliche´s of a woman’s beauty that were made so much fun of in Love’s Labor’s Lost and Shakespeare’s early comedies. The Dark Lady, by definition, doesn’t fulfill the Nordic criteria of beauty established in the 1590s: exceptionally white skin, brightly rosy cheeks, and brilliantly blonde hair, which standards were met more vividly by cosmetics than by nature. As Hamlet complains to Ophelia: ‘‘I have heard of your paintings, well enough. God hath given you one face, and you make yourselves another’’ (Hamlet 3. 1. 143–45). The Dark Lady, then, has eyes that ‘‘are nothing like the sun,’’ presumably in clarity and brilliance. She lacks the classic war between the white and the red in her cheeks: I have seen roses damasked, red and white, But no such roses see I in her cheeks. Her lips are not as red as coral nor her breasts white as snow. They are, in fact, ‘‘dun’’ colored, or dark and swarthy, like Cleopatra’s, another Dark Lady, who shows a ‘‘tawny front’’ (Antony and Cleopatra 1.1.6) and is sunburned, ‘‘with Phoebus’ amorous pinches black’’ (1.5.28). The Dark Lady is a practical and seemingly unromantic figure: her breath ‘‘reeks,’’ her speaking voice is not very musical, and ‘‘when she walks’’ she is unlike a goddess because she ‘‘treads on the ground.’’ The couplet conclusion, however, is in an entirely different and unexpected tone: And yet, by heaven, I think my love as rare As any she belied with false compare.

This is a good example of a couplet that really concludes the three preceding quatrains and seems to answer the opening proposition of the sonnet. I am not offering the ingenious Sonnet 151 as an example of one of Shakespeare’s best sonnets, but it does provide a contrast to the ferocious energy and reckless mood of Sonnet 129.

The soaring assertion and affirmation in the couplet is out of keeping with Sonnet 129, ‘‘Th’ expense of spirit in a waste of shame,’’ that immediately precedes it. This should give us pause about making exact autobiographical claims for Shakespeare’s Sonnets. We don’t know who arranged the poems in their present order—perhaps it was the printer, or perhaps he was only following the sequence of his manuscript—but there are some striking inconsistencies of tone and mood. The Dark Lady is hardly the same figure in Sonnets 129 and 130, nor do her sexual attractions seem to match in Sonnets 129 and 151.

The wittiest sonnet is undoubtedly 130, which is endlessly quoted although it is not at all characteristic of Shakespeare’s entire sequence. It stands out because it satirizes the very Petrarchan conventions upon which Shakespeare so firmly depends. Specifically, it ridicules the accepted

We are struck by Shakespeare’s skepticism about his own powers as a poet and a dramatist. He is excessively deferential to the Rival Poet or Poets, who are also writing sonnets to the Friend and the Dark Lady. His ‘‘poor rude lines’’ (Sonnet 32) are ‘‘exceeded by the height of

No want of conscience hold it that I call Her ‘‘love’’ for whose dear love I rise and fall.

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happier men’’—‘‘happier’’ in the sense of more gifted. The ‘‘proud full sail’’ of the Rival Poet’s ‘‘great verse’’ has ‘‘struck me dead’’ and swallowed up ‘‘my ripe thoughts in my brain,’’ as if their womb became their tomb (Sonnet 86). This undercuts in some important way the power of the Poet to confer immortality on the love object through his poetry. Shakespeare feels himself unable to cope with the newer and more refined style of such poets as John Donne and the Metaphysicals, who wrote what the Elizabethans called ‘‘strong lines.’’ In Sonnet 76, Shakespeare complains that his verse is ‘‘barren of new pride,’’ ‘‘far from variation or quick change,’’ but ‘‘still all one, ever the same.’’ He cannot seize the moment and use ‘‘new-found methods’’ and ‘‘compounds strange.’’ The explanation is rather facile: ‘‘I always write of you,’’ ‘‘So all my best is dressing old words new.’’ We feel that the Poet is dissatisfied with the fact that ‘‘every word doth almost tell my name,’’ but he doesn’t know how to shift into a more innovative style. The Poet expresses even stronger dissatisfaction with his public career as a playwright and actor, in which he feels trapped. In a striking image from daily life: And almost thence my nature is subdued To what it works in, like the dyer’s hand. (Sonnet 111) Like Macbeth’s, the dyer’s hand is ‘‘incarnadine’’ (Macbeth 2.2.61), and ‘‘all great Neptune’s ocean’’ (59) cannot change its color. Shakespeare is engaged in a profession to please the public, and ‘‘public means’’ breed ‘‘public manners.’’ From this obvious cause comes the fact that ‘‘my name receives a brand.’’ In the previous sonnet (110), Shakespeare apologizes to the Friend that he has made himself ‘‘a motley,’’ or clown dressed in a motley, parti-colored costume, ‘‘to the view,’’ and ‘‘Gored mine own thoughts, sold cheap what is most dear.’’ In other words, he has betrayed his innermost thoughts to the public scrutiny of the theatrical public. I am not assuming that this is an autobiographical statement of utmost sincerity, but merely that it is an essential part of the fictional persona (and personas) created in the Sonnets. If Shakespeare is the most unrevealing and paradoxical English Renaissance author in his plays, there is no convincing reason to believe that he bares his heart in the Sonnets. The very

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directness of the revelations should put us on our guard. It is unfortunate that Shakespeare’s Sonnets have attracted a mass of biographical speculation different from that expended on the plays. Some of the same questions haunt all of Shakespeare’s works, both dramatic and nondramatic: the ambiguous nature of art, revealing and concealing at the same time; the tendency to dramatize experience, as if ‘‘All the world’s a stage, / And all the men and women merely players’’ (As You Like It 2.7.138–39); and, most comprehensively, the fictionalizing of human experience on the assumption that we enact and represent a reality that we create in our minds from our own histrionic imagination. The Sonnets share these qualities with Shakespeare’s other works, especially those of the earlier 1590s. They can’t be dealt with autonomously as if they were written by a poet separate from the man who wrote the plays. Source: Maurice Charney, ‘‘The Sonnets,’’ in All of Shakespeare, Columbia University Press, 1993, pp. 388–99.

Stephen Spender Spender—the distinguished English poet and critic—suggests that the young man of the sonnets possesses a double or divided nature. Sometimes the friend’s mind and heart appear to be as beautiful as his outward form, but on other occasions he is cold, selfish, arrogant, and dissolute. The poet reacts to this basic disparity in various ways, Spender observes, ranging from objectivity and irony to bitterness and despair. Spender also discusses what he sees as the friend’s narcissism. He suggests that the poet’s determination to preserve the young man’s beauty in his verses reveals that he endows it with the same inestimable value as does the young man himself. Clearing our minds of preconceptions, if we read the sonnets simply accepting what they tell us about [the young man], what impression would we get? The first thing that would strike us is, I think, that he has opposite characteristics. He is divided between his ideal nature, corresponding to his outward beauty, and his actual behavior, which is shown to be cold, self-seeking, proud, and corrupt. On the one hand the poet reiterates the theme of ‘‘kind and true’’ and ‘‘For nothing this wide universe I call, / Save thou, my rose; in it thou art my all’’ (109). On the other hand the rose is cankered (95):

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SO THE SONNETS EXPRESS THE CONFLICT BETWEEN IDEALIZATION OF THE YOUNG MAN AS THE LIVING EQUAL OF THE POET’S IMAGININGS, AND THE REALIZATION THAT HE IS DIFFERENT FROM THIS.’’

How sweet and lovely dost thou make the shame Which, like a canker in the fragrant rose, Doth spot the beauty of thy budding name! On the one hand the young man is pure essence; on the other hand he is essence tainted at the source. Shakespeare was, of course, addressing the sonnets to the friend. He was not making a word portrait of him, and we attempt to deduce his character from things written to him, about him. What we see are two things, characteristics which the poet doubtless found present in the real young man, but which are so idealized that it is difficult to form a realistic picture from them: and, opposite to this, references to the friend’s lasciviousness, sensual faults, coldness, falsity, and his ill reputation, a kind of counter-image held up before his eyes as a terrible example. One cannot but be reminded of the scene in which Hamlet holds up before his mother’s eyes ‘‘the counterfeit presentment of two brothers,’’ one with ‘‘a station like the herald Mercury,’’ the other ‘‘like a mildew’d ear.’’ From reading the sonnets and making my own deductions—which may be very different from those of other readers—the picture I have is of a person who produced in the minds of others the double impression of the self-fixated. The doubleness in such people consists essentially in their being loved, but being unable to love back in return, through the cold self-sufficiency and self-attachment which is the result of their very beauty. They like to be loved partly because being loved is reflected self-admiration, but partly also because they would themselves perhaps like to love and think that through being loved they may learn to do so. The combination of beauty, coldness, and desire to learn to love, gives them a kind of purity. But in their behavior they may be corrupt because they accept, with

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Shakespeare’s Contemporaries (clockwise from top): Ben Jonson, John Fletcher, Michael Drayton, James Shirley, Philip Massigner, Francis Beaumont, and Spenser (center) (Ó Shakespeare Collection, Special Collections Library, University of Michigan)

involuntary indifference, whatever love they get, though they retain the air of perpetual seeking. What they are genuinely seeking is those qualities which they lack. When such a person is loved by an artist, he has the attraction of being an empty vessel, a blank page into which the admirer can read his own ideal. [Bernard] Shaw points out that however much Shakespeare may have suffered on account of the dark lady, it is wrong to regard him as a victim. She can hardly have been happy reading about herself in 127, 130, and 138. The same holds good for the young man, whose behavior the sonnets analyze and excoriate. From the internal evidence of the sonnets he sometimes tried to answer accusation with counter-accusation. In 120 the poet admits in lines close to doggerel:

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For if you were by my unkindness shaken As I by yours, you’ve pass’d a hell of time, And I, a tyrant, have no leisure taken To weigh how once I suffer’d in your crime. There are critics who idealize the young man and others who abhor him. But the poet’s attitude to the friend is hardly discussed; and there is surely an element of unfairness in putting pressure on him to be something that he is not, and of then turning on him because he has failed to be the ideal. The poet seems often as much in love with the picture in his mind of the arranged relationship of complete mutuality as with the young man, who has to fit into this picture. Yet so long as the poet continued to write sonnets I think that he must have believed in some ultimate quality of pure being which resided in the young man, under the misbehavior and the falsity. Even after bitter disillusionment he reverts to the purity of the original concept; in 105, for example: Kind is my love to-day, to-morrow kind, Still constant in a wondrous excellence. So the sonnets express the conflict between idealization of the young man as the living equal of the poet’s imaginings, and the realization that he is different from this. Sometimes the difference is analyzed as betrayal, sometimes the poet endeavors to find a basis on which he can accept it and yet retain the relationship. Sonnet 36 is an extreme example of acceptance of difference, in which he admits that their ways must be separate: ‘‘Let me confess that we two must be twain’’ and yet their ‘‘undivided loves are one.’’ He invents metaphors for the relationship which suggest a rethinking of what it really is or must be. In 37, it is of father and son, and, indeed, where the young man fails, it tends to shift from the pattern of mutuality to that of a son whose errors are seen and suffered and forgiven by a loving father. In 33, contemplating the withdrawal of the ‘‘sun’’ into the ‘‘region cloud,’’ the poet resumes the pun in the couplet with: Yet him for this my love no whit disdaineth; Suns of the world may stain when heaven’s sun staineth. In 93, desperation drives the poet to the metaphor of a ‘‘deceived husband’’; and frequently he is a slave who tends upon, and waits for, his lord. Whether one thinks, as I do, that Shakespeare continued, in spite of everything, to love and (like a forgiving father) believe in the young

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man, or that the disillusionment of realization led to his regarding him only (or with very little qualification of charitable feeling) as a subject for irony, affects one’s interpretation of the very important 94, ‘‘They that have power to hurt and will do none.’’ After a very close analysis, William Empson concludes (in Some Versions of Pastoral) that this sonnet expresses almost total contempt for the friend. The contempt is qualified only by the poet discovering, through his pretending to praise what he does not admire, ‘‘a way of praising W.H. in spite of everything.’’ It is not possible here to argue my way through Empson’s close analysis, for which I have great respect. My disagreement with him is not in disputing his interpretation of references and complexities of meaning in particular phrases, but because I think that, through the irony and the realization, there seems to me a note of exhortation which still clings to belief, and which arises from a love that endures. In a word, I would say the sonnet found ‘‘a way of loving in spite of everything,’’ rather than, or as well as, a way of praising. The love is cruel, but praise would be nothing except cruel and contradictory, since it means praising what the poet did not regard as praiseworthy. If it is praise, the sonnet is, as Empson notes, an ‘‘evasion.’’ But if it is love, it is more in the nature of a desperate warning. My argument is clear if I say that the two last lines of the previous sonnet (93), ‘‘How like Eve’s apple doth thy beauty grow, / If thy sweet virtue answer not thy show!’’ are more exhortatory than condemnatory. The poet still clings to the hope that even if while the young man’s face shows nothing but sweet love (’’ . . . heaven in thy creation did decree / That in thy face sweet love should ever dwell’’) his heart (unlike others whose false hearts show in the ‘‘wrinkles strange’’ of their faces) may be false—that even so, he can, by an effort of willing truth, make inner being conform to the outward appearance of love. The kind of exertion required is not of making a lie true, but of making what is true, which has for some perverse reason become falsified, revert to its real nature, become true again. It is an argument based on love which appeals to the imagination to realize in action the truth which exists. It is a creative attitude different from a modern irony, though of course it uses irony. In fact it is very much the type of

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argument which Hamlet uses to his mother when, showing her the pictures of her two husbands, he appeals to her to use her eyes (her inner eyes) in order to make a choice which is imposed on her simply by her seeing which is false and which is true. Condensing the argument of 94, the desperate appeal, based on a cool appreciation of the young man’s nature, seems to me of this kind: ‘‘If you are cold and self-centered as I have now come to realize you are, then you may perhaps participate in the power, justice, and virtue of those who are detached from passion, but who nevertheless control the lives of others; but to be like them, you must have the virtue of coldness which is chastity. You are, after all, more like the funereal lily than the generous rose; but remember that when the cold are false, their corruption is far more evil than that of the warm.’’ The thought is perhaps that the warm, being essentially more alive (and not like stone) go on being capable of self-renewal and repentance. This is very much the attitude that a father, himself believing in the personal values of human relations and love and imagination, might feel toward a much-loved son, whom he discovered to be of a cold nature, but possessed of beauty and power to entrap others. The father does not cease to love his son, but begins to realize that his moral character will be ruined, unless he match his power with scrupulousness, his coldness with chastity. Otherwise the corruption of his personality will be worse than that of a person who is lascivious but warm-hearted, and because warm-hearted, capable of contrition and change. The sonnet expresses, of course, a change of attitude, coming—as 93 and 95, the sonnets on each side of it, show—from a shock of realization of the deep corruption of the young man. That the powerful are praised has surprised many readers. Previously, although a world of power has been taken for granted, it has not been discussed; it has remained the background to personal relations. But suddenly the poet expresses his admiration for the cold and powerful. If one remembers once again that the sonnets are one side of a dialogue, this is not so surprising. Number 94 was written perhaps during a phase when the poet was most critical of the friend’s character. Surely, the friend may have said to the poet: ‘‘The truth is that your sorts of people are not mine. The people I admire are the

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great and powerful, and I want to belong to them.’’ In this case the sonnet may be seen as taking up the theme, accepting, with whatever undertones of bitterness and despair, that the friend might belong to this other world, but using the acceptance as another way of hammering in the lesson of pure being. Although 94 expresses such a shift from personal to public values, from the imagination to the world of power, the thematic material introduced in the sestet, which indicates the presence of the young man, remains the same as in earlier sonnets. In fact the poem takes the form of a general statement about the virtues of the great and powerful, in the octave and then, in the sestet, applies this to the young man. The octave is, as it were, a different voice, not quite that of the poet, but to which the poet assents, indeed lends his gift, stating a case in the strongest and most favorable terms. The case is that those who are great and powerful and who, although they might do so, do not use their power to cause others pain— those who, while making others act, remain immovable themselves, and are untempted, incorruptible—merit their position. There is a feeling of rendering unto Caesar that which is Caesar’s. There is irony, but there is also assent. Angelo, in Measure for Measure, is admired so long as he remains cold and powerful. It is when he becomes lascivious and corrupt that he appears far worse than the carnal sinners on whom he sits in judgment. In the first line of the sestet the young man appears in a guise with which we have been made familiar very early on, in fact in the first sonnet, where we read of the young man, ’’ . . . thou, contracted to thine own bright eyes, / Feeds’t thy light’s flame with self-substantial fuel.’’ Here he is the summer’s flower, ‘‘to the summer sweet, / Though to itself it only live and die.’’ The position is restated. In the first sonnet the self-sufficient lovely boy is asked to marry. Later he is asked to love the friend. Now he is being warned that perhaps he would do well to model himself on the coldly powerful, since he is himself cold. But if he does so, let him remain like them, solitary, chaste. If he does not do so, the lily (which he has chosen to become rather than the rose to which he has previously been compared) will, festering, ‘‘smell far worse than weeds.’’

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Doubtless there is irony here, and bitterness, but what seems to me the strongest feeling is a despairing acceptance of the young man’s coldness combined with an equally despairing warning. The first seventeen sonnets are usually . . . regarded as being outside the main series. They are so, but they are also a kind of prelude, and throw light on the character of the friend. Here, when the poet is exhorting the friend to marry, he also makes very apparent the reasons why he should not do so. They are that he is concentrated on, almost married to, his own image. The arguments used to persuade him to marry are that a son would provide, as it were, a mirror projecting the image of that beauty which culminates in his face now, into the future (13): O, that you were yourself! but, love, you are No longer yours than you yourself here live. So while the friend is warned of the dangers of ‘‘having traffic with thyself alone,’’ the poet nevertheless shares with him the view that he is the paragon. The poet puts himself at the young man’s side fighting for the cause which is that a means should be found to perpetuate his beauty exactly as it now is. The poet offers two means of achieving this result. One is fathering a child, and the other, which plays an even more persistent part in the sequence, is the poetry. Sonnet 17 unites these two themes in the culminating couplet: But were some child of yours alive that time, You should live twice; in it and in my rhyme. So that while the poet dutifully uses the poetry to urge the friend to marriage, his verse itself is advertized as a means of achieving the same result as a son might do. In a manner of speaking, both child and poetry are mirrors of the young man’s own face. The modern reader may well be tempted to condemn the obvious narcissism of the friend, which Shakespeare exploits so much as argument. But it should be noted that Shakespeare does not appear to condemn it, though he may, later, deplore its callous effects. But he is in complete agreement with the friend as to his beauty, as though it is a value which both share, the young man having his face, and the poet having his poetry, which he identifies with the lovely boy. The poet has an attitude towards the young man’s beauty which seems exactly the same as that of the young man himself. Both

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regard it as a unique value which must by every means possible be preserved. The young man’s narcissism—which, versed in modern psychology, we are apt to condemn— may indeed have been precious to the poet. For it is very difficult in the world of the sonnets to draw a line between the young man’s selfregard—which the poet supports—and the claims that the poet makes for his immortal verse. To us, the readers, they may seem very different, but given the extraordinary aesthetic cult of the young man’s external appearance, which is central to the sonnets, they may seem the same thing. Again and again the argument is put forward that the poetry is the immortalization of the young man’s beauty. The boy’s beauty has the inestimable virtue of being life. The virtue of the poetry is as a perpetuating mirror which freezes on its bright surface the fleeting image which will die. The attraction of the young man is that of all life, made incarnate in an incomparable beauty of form. Narcissus fell in love with himself, but the water in which he gazed at his reflection surely also fell in love with his image. The mirror is in love with the mirrored because it becomes the gazer—that which the gazer never succeeds in doing himself. The poet through his poetry can retain the beauty which the friend himself is bound to lose. Moreover, the poet is changed into the beauty of the youth by virtue of retaining that image in his heart (22): My glass shall not persuade me I am old, So long as youth and thou are of one date ... Most critics are puzzled by the insistence of the poet on the contrast between his ‘‘chopped antiquity’’ and the young man’s beauty and youth. Nothing is really less surprising. For a relationship which is based on the idea of identity is inevitably upset by dissonances. So the great and perhaps excessive insistence on the immortality of the poetry in these poems is a claim made not for the poet but for the friend. It is he who is going to survive in these lines, we are told through many variations (63): His beauty shall in these black lines be seen, And they shall live, and he in them still green. So the poet was occupied in giving back, by the means of his poetry, the image of the friend to himself. To us this bargain seems unequal,

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because all we have of the young man is the written words, which are Shakespeare’s self. We should remember, though, that for the poet, the matter was different. He was taking life in its miraculous complexity and giving back words. The fact that the words are so marvelous is due (or may have seemed to him due) to the fact that the living reality was of such extraordinary value. Occasionally, for example, in 53, we experience the impact of million-faceted flesh, worshipped as the moment of beauty never matched in all past time: What is your substance, whereof are you made, That millions of strange shadows on you tend? The mirror image constantly occurs in the sonnets. There is also implicitly the idea of two mirrors reflecting one another with rays that reach into infinity. When the ‘‘lovely boy’’ looks into the friend’s poetry, he sees not only his own image, but that the physical presence of the poet has been changed into that beauty.

been—in the young man’s external beauty, and leading there to the love in which they shared their being. The poetry is a plea to him to be true to his own appearance, and in doing this, true to the poet’s imagination. Source: Stephen Spender, ‘‘The Alike and the Other,’’ in The Riddle of Shakespeare’s Sonnets, Basic Books, 1962, pp. 91–128.

Winifred T. Nowottny Nowottny examines in detail the relation between diction, syntax, and imagery in the first six sonnets of Shakespeare’s sequence. Particularly in Sonnets 5 and 6 she finds a carefully crafted organization of formal elements that enhances the development of the principal motifs in this group: beauty as a physical attribute and beauty as a treasure or inheritance that must be accounted for. Nowottony maintains that this harmony of ideas and style is sustained throughout the collection.

Perhaps the significance of the narcissism of the friend may be that if the narcissist has a character that requires a mirror, the artist also requires a mirror of life in which to see his art. As Hoelderlin observed in Socrates and Alcibiades, ‘‘often in the end the wise pay homage to the most beautiful.’’ The world of art or thought which fills the mind of genius is essentially lonely. He finds it least of all reflected in the minds of other artists, and the public. He seeks it therefore in the beautiful, particularly among those in whom nature seems to have flowered spontaneously without the interruption of toomuch intellectual process. The narcissist, in his self-cultivation (Montherlant describes the poet as one who gives himself up to ‘‘noble selfcultivation’’) may appear to have an affinity with the artist. The narcissist might be described as a living poem going in search of a poet. At the same time, the discovery that the narcissist is vulgar, that his self-absorption and isolation do not prevent his belonging to the ‘‘region cloud,’’ that he will look in any broken fragment of glass to see the same reflection of himself, is inevitable. But there was a time in the sonnets when the young man’s beauty seemed of the season which is fresh in nature and which was also incomparably fresh in Shakespeare’s poetry. The failure was that of the poet to discover his own inner being mirrored—as it should have

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Dawes, James, ‘‘Truth and Decay in Shakespeare’s Sonnets,’’ in Cahiers Elisabethains, Vol. 47, April 1995, pp. 43–53. Devereux, James A., ‘‘The Last Temptation of Shakespeare: The Sonnets and Despair,’’ in Renaissance Papers 1979, edited by A. Leigh Deneef and M. Thomas Hester, Southeastern Renaissance Conference, 1980, pp. 29–38. Dubrow, Heather, ‘‘‘Conceit Deceitful’: The Sonnets,’’ in Captive Victors: Shakespeare’s Narrative Poems and Sonnets, Cornell University Press, 1987, pp. 169–257. ———, ‘‘Shakespeare’s Undramatic Monologues: Toward a Reading of the Sonnets,’’ in Shakespeare Quarterly, Vol. 32, No. 1, Spring 1981, pp. 55–68. ———, ‘‘‘Incertainties Now Crown Themselves Assur’d’: The Politics of Plotting Shakespeare’s Sonnets,’’ in Shakespeare Quarterly, Vol. 47, No. 3, Fall 1996, pp. 291–305. Duncan-Jones, Katherine, ‘‘Introduction,’’ in Shakespeare’s Sonnets, by William Shakespeare, Thomas Nelson and Sons, 1997, pp. 1–105. Edwards, Philip, ‘‘The Sonnets to the Dark Woman,’’ in Shakespeare and the Confines of Art, Methuen, 1968, pp. 17–31. Ferry, Anne, ‘‘Shakespeare,’’ in All in War with Time: Love Poetry of Shakespeare, Donne, Jonson, Marvell, Harvard University Press, 1975, pp. 3–63. Giroux, Robert, The Book Known as Q: A Consideration of Shakespeare’s Sonnets, Atheneum, 1982. Source: Winifred T. Nowottny, ‘‘Formal Elements in Shakespeare’s Sonnets: Sonnets I–VI,’’ in Essays in Criticism, Vol. II, No. 1, January, 1952, pp. 76–84.

Goldstien, Neal L., ‘‘Money and Love in Shakespeare’s Sonnets,’’ in Bucknell Review, Vol. 17, No. 3, December 1969, pp. 91–106. Grundy, Joan, ‘‘Shakespeare’s Sonnets and the Elizabethan Sonneteers,’’ in Shakespeare Survey, Vol. 15, 1962, pp. 41–9. Hecht, Anthony, ‘‘The Sonnet: Ruminations on Form, Sex, and History,’’ in Antioch Review, Vol. 55, No. 2, Spring 1997, pp. 134–47.

SOURCES Allen, Michael J. B., ‘‘Shakespeare’s Man Descending a Staircase: Sonnets 126 to 154,’’ in Shakespeare Survey, Vol. 31, 1978, pp. 127–38. Andrews, Michael Cameron, ‘‘Sincerity and Subterfuge in Three Shakespearean Sonnet Groups,’’ in Shakespeare Quarterly, Vol. 33, No. 3, Autumn 1982, pp. 314–27. Bermann, Sandra, The Sonnet Over Time: A Study in the Sonnets of Petrarch, Shakespeare, and Baudelaire, University of North Carolina Press, 1988.

Hedley, Jane, ‘‘Since First Your Eye I Eyed: Shakespeare’s Sonnets and the Poetics of Narcissism,’’ in Style, Vol. 28, No. 1, Spring 1994, pp. 1–30. Hunter, G. K., ‘‘The Dramatic Technique of Shakespeare’s Sonnets,’’ in Essays in Criticism Vol. 3, No. 2, April 1953, pp. 152–64. Innes, Paul, Shakespeare and the English Renaissance Sonnet, St. Martin’s Press, 1997.

Booth, Stephen, ‘‘Commentary,’’ in Shakespeare’s Sonnets, by William Shakespeare, Yale University Press, 1977 pp. 135–538.

Kay, Dennis, ‘‘The Sonnets and A Lover’s Complaint,’’ in Sonnets and Poems, by William Shakespeare, Twayne, 1998, pp. 96–152.

Burgess, Anthony, Shakespeare, A. A. Knopf, 1970.

Klause, John, ‘‘Shakespeare’s Sonnets: Age in Love and the Goring of Thoughts,’’ in Studies in Philology, Vol. 80, No. 3, Summer 1983, pp. 300–24.

Crosman, Robert, ‘‘Making Love Out of Nothing at All: The Issue of Story in Shakespeare’s Procreation Sonnets,’’ in Shakespeare Quarterly, Vol. 41, No. 4, Winter 1990, pp. 470–88.

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Landry, Hilton, ‘‘The Unmoved Movers: Sonnet 94 and the Contexts of Interpretation,’’ in Interpretations in

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Shakespeare’s Sonnets, University of California Press, 1964, pp. 7–27. Leishman, J. B., ‘‘Shakespeare’s Sonnets on Love as the Defier of Time,’’ in Themes and Variations in Shakespeare’s Sonnets, Hutchinson, 1963, pp. 102–18. Mahood, M. M., ‘‘Love’s Confined Doom,’’ in Shakespeare Survey, Vol. 15, 1962, pp. 50–61. Martin, Philip, ‘‘Sin of Self-Love: the Youth,’’ in Shakespeare’s Sonnets: Self, Love and Art, Cambridge University Press, 1972, pp. 15–43. Mizener, Arthur, ‘‘The Structure of Figurative Language in Shakespeare’s Sonnets,’’ in Southern Review, Vol. 5, No. 4, Spring 1940, pp. 730–47. Muir, Kenneth, Shakespeare’s Sonnets, Allen & Unwin, 1979, pp. 55–149. Neely, Carol Thomas, ‘‘The Structure of English Renaissance Sonnet Sequences,’’ in ELH, Vol. 45, No. 3, Fall 1978, pp. 359–89.

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Stevenson, David Lloyd, ‘‘Conflict in Shakespeare’s Sonnets,’’ in The Love-Game Comedy, AMS Press, 1966, pp. 174–84. Stockard, Emily E., ‘‘Patterns of Consolation in Shakespeare’s Sonnets 1–126,’’ in Studies in Philology, Vol. 94, No. 4, Fall 1997, pp. 465–93. Wait, R. J. C., The Background to Shakespeare’s Sonnets, Schocken Books, 1972, pp. 1–8. Weiser, David K., Mind in Character: Shakespeare’s Speaker in the Sonnets, University of Missouri Press, 1987. Wells, Stanley, ‘‘Introduction,’’ in Shakespeare’s Sonnets, Oxford University Press, 1985, pp. 1–11. Wilson, Katharine M., Shakespeare’s Sugared Sonnets, Allen & Unwin, 1974, pp. 26, 80–3, 149, 320–21. Winny, James, ‘‘The Dark Lady,’’ in The MasterMistress, Chatto & Windus, 1968, pp. 90–120.

———, ‘‘Detachment and Engagement in Shakespeare’s Sonnets: 94, 116, and 129,’’ in PMLA, Vol. 92, No. 1, January 1977, pp. 83–95. Pequigney, Joseph, Such Is My Love: A Study of Shakespeare’s Sonnets, University of Chicago Press, 1985, pp. 1, 37. Peterson, Douglas L., ‘‘Shakespeare’s Sonnets,’’ in The English Lyric from Wyatt to Donne, Princeton University Press, 1967, pp. 212–51. Platt, Michael, ‘‘Shakespearean Wisdom?’’ in Shakespeare as Political Thinker, edited by John Alvis and Thomas G. West, Carolina Academic Press, 1981, pp. 257–76. Rowse, A. L., Shakespeare’s Sonnets: The Problems Solved, Macmillan, 1973. Schoenbaum, S., ‘‘Shakespeare’s Dark Lady: A Question of Identity,’’ in Shakespeare’s Styles: Essays in Honour of Kenneth Muir, edited by Philip Edwards, Inga-Stina Ewbank, and G. K. Hunter, Cambridge University Press, 1980, pp. 221–39. Shakespeare, William, Shakespeare’s Sonnets, edited by Katherine Duncan-Jones, Thomas Nelson and Sons, 1997. Shore, David R., ‘‘‘So Long Lives This’: Turning to Poetry in Shakespeare’s Sonnets,’’ in English Studies in Canada, Vol. 14, No. 1, March 1988, pp. 1–14. Smith, Hallett, ‘‘Personae,’’ in The Tension of the Lyre: Poetry in Shakespeare’s Sonnets, Huntington Library, 1981, pp. 13–41. Smith, Marion Bodwell, ‘‘The Poetry of Ambivalence,’’ in Dualities in Shakespeare, University of Toronto Press, 1966, pp. 53–78. Stapleton, M. L., ‘‘‘My False Eyes’: The Dark Lady and Self-Knowledge,’’ in Studies in Philology, Vol. 90, No. 2, Spring 1993, pp. 213–30

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FURTHER READING Bell, Ilona, Elizabethan Women and the Poetry of Courtship, Cambridge University Press, 1999. In a work well respected by scholars, Bell examines the courtly poetry of Elizabethan England from the perspective of women, discussing their responses to poetic suitors and their own poetic works. Sidney, Philip, Sir Philip Sidney: The Major Works, edited by Katherine Duncan-Jones, Oxford University Press, 2002. Duncan-Jones, who edited the third Arden edition of Shakespeare’s Sonnets, presents the most important works by a man who was not only a contemporary of Shakespeare’s but also the uncle of William Herbert, who may have been the renowned young man of the Sonnets. Smith, Bruce R., Homosexual Desire in Shakespeare’s England: A Cultural Poetics, University of Chicago Press, 1995. Smith offers what is widely viewed as the most comprehensive analysis of the homoerotic content of English Renaissance poetry, with substantial discussion of Shakespeare’s sonnets. Spiller, Michael R. G., The Development of the Sonnet: An Introduction, Routledge, 1992. Focusing partly on its Italian origins but mostly on its evolution in England, Spiller offers an excellent introductory examination of many aspects of the poetic form of the sonnet.

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The Taming of the Shrew 1592

Shakespeare is thought to have written The Taming of the Shrew between 1590 and 1594, although the only version that has survived is the one published in the First Folio in 1623. It appears to have been staged several times during Shakespeare’s lifetime at both the Globe and the Blackfriars theaters, and a sequel written by John Fletcher between 1604 and 1617 attests to its popularity. It was also produced in 1633 at the court of Charles I. The play has a complex structure. It begins with a two-scene ‘‘Induction’’ or introductory segment, which concerns an elaborate practical joke played by a nobleman on a drunken tinker. At the end of the Induction the various characters settle down to watch a play. This play within a play, which in turn consists of a main plot and a complex subplot, constitutes the main action of The Taming of the Shrew. The depth and complexity of The Taming of the Shrew is evidenced by the wide range of interpretations that attend it, both on stage and in literary criticism. Moreover, modern interpretation of the play is complicated by the centrality to the play of issues that are hotly debated in our own time—in particular, the question of what roles men and women can and should play in society and in relationship to each other. The play raises probing questions about society and relationships. Is Petruchio a loving husband who teaches his maladjusted bride to find happiness in marriage, or is he a clever bully who forces her

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to bow to his will? Does Katherine’s acquiescence in playing the part of obedient wife reflect a joyous acceptance of her assigned role as a married woman and the beginning of a fulfilling partnership with her husband? Does it, instead, mean that she has learned to play the obedient wife in public so as to get her own way in private? Or does it reflect the defeat of a spirited and intelligent woman forced to give in to a society that dominates and controls women and allows them only very limited room for self-expression? The answers to these questions may have less to do with the play itself than with readers’ attitudes about the issues and ideas it explores.

PLOT SUMMARY Induction At the beginning of The Taming of the Shrew, Christopher Sly, a drunken tinker, is expelled from a tavern and falls asleep on the ground. He is discovered by a lord and his huntsmen. As a joke, the lord orders his men to dress Sly in fine clothes, lay out a feast, and put him to bed at the lord’s home in the best chamber. When Sly awakes, lord and servants conspire to convince him that he is really a nobleman. Meanwhile, a traveling group of actors has come to the lord’s home, and he asks them to perform for his guest. He only tells them not to react to the odd behavior of the other lord in the house. Sly is told that a comedy will be played for him to aid his recovery. The lord’s page (a young male attendant) dresses like a woman and pretends to be Sly’s wife, delighted that he has finally come to his senses after all those years of believing he was a beggar. After some initial confusion and a great deal of convincing by the servants, Sly accepts that he is a nobleman. Sly will comment briefly on the play at the end of act 1, scene 1, then disappear from the text.

Act 1 The play-within-a-play begins. Lucentio, son of a wealthy Pisan merchant, and his servant, Tranio, arrive in Padua, where Lucentio intends to study. Baptista Minola, his two daughters (Katherine and Bianca), and two suitors to Bianca arrive. Katherine is outraged and loud, and Baptista informs the suitors that until Katherine, his elder daughter, is married, Bianca must remain single. From the remarks of Bianca’s suitors, Hortensio

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and Gremio, and Katherine’s angry reaction to them, it appears that Bianca is perceived as sweetnatured and mild, while Katherine is considered a shrew—a stubborn, domineering, and sharptongued woman. Lucentio tells Tranio that he has fallen in love with Bianca. In order to gain access to Bianca, they plan that Lucentio will pretend to be a schoolmaster, while Tranio will pretend to be Lucentio and present himself as another suitor for Bianca. Petruchio and his servant, Grumio, arrive in Padua from Verona. Petruchio tells Hortensio that he has come to Padua to find a wealthy wife. Hortensio tells him about Katherine, warning him that while she is wealthy and beautiful, she is shrewish in temperament. Petruchio insists that he cares nothing for looks, youth, or manners, so long as his bride is rich. Grumio enters with Lucentio, whom he presents as Cambio, a schoolmaster for Bianca. Tranio also enters, dressed as Lucentio, and reveals his intention to woo Bianca. Lucentio hopes that the other suitors will be distracted by the competition of a third suitor, thus leaving him freer to woo Bianca. Tranio and the other suitors agree that they can be friendly toward one another, and they leave for drinks.

Act 2 Katherine beats Bianca, whose hands are tied. When Baptista scolds Katherine, she accuses him of favoritism. A group of men come to the door, interrupting the squabble. Petruchio presents his suit for Katherine and offers Litio (actually Hortensio in disguise) as a music teacher for her. Baptista welcomes Petruchio but expresses doubt that he will find Katherine to his liking. Gremio presents Cambio (actually Lucentio in disguise) as a schoolmaster, while Tranio (in disguise as Lucentio) asks to be admitted among Bianca’s suitors. Baptista and Petruchio quickly agree on terms for Katherine’s hand. Petruchio is not fazed when Hortensio appears with his head bleeding, after Katherine hit him with the lute he attempted to teach her to play. In their first meeting, Katherine responds to Petruchio’s compliments by telling him to leave. She finds that Petruchio, unlike the men with whom she is used to sparring, is as quick-witted and biting as she. Their ensuing exchange of insults soon turns to sexual innuendo. She hits him, and he threatens to hit her back if she does

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tattered and mismatched clothing and riding a broken-down horse. Baptista asks him to change into clothes that are more appropriate, but he refuses. While Petruchio and the others go off in search of Katherine, Tranio tells Lucentio of his plan to have someone pose as Lucentio’s father, while Lucentio suggests that he may elope with Bianca. Gremio enters and reports on the wedding ceremony: Petruchio swore at and struck the priest, threw wine in the sexton’s face, and kissed the bride noisily. The wedding party enters. Although Katherine wants to stay for the banquet, Petruchio draws his sword, announces that he will protect his property, and forces her to leave with him immediately. Once they are gone, the wedding party wonders how two such people ever got married, and Baptista turns his attention to Bianca’s wedding.

‘‘The Music Lesson’’ (Ó Shakespeare Collection, Special Collections Library, University of Michigan)

it again. When Baptista enters with Gremio and Tranio, Katherine denounces Petruchio as ‘‘one half lunatic / A madcap ruffian and a swearing Jack.’’ Petruchio, however, insists that they have reached an agreement to marry on the coming Sunday, and Baptista agrees to the marriage. Baptista immediately turns to the matter of a match for Bianca, settling on ‘‘Lucentio’’ (Tranio) when he offers the largest dower (her inheritance should she be widowed). However, he stipulates that Lucentio’s father must first guarantee the dower. Tranio resolves to find an old man to pose as Lucentio’s father.

Act 3 Cambio and Litio take turns tutoring Bianca. While pretending to translate a passage from Ovid, Cambio reveals his identity to Bianca; Bianca responds by the same method, telling him, ‘‘presume not . . . despair not.’’ While she does not tell him she loves him, she does not reject him, either. When Litio subtly lets her know of his love, she outright rejects him. When she and Cambio leave, he is alone and resolves that if Bianca will not marry him, he will simply find another woman who will. On Katherine’s appointed wedding day Petruchio first is late, and then appears wearing

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Act 4 Petruchio and Katherine arrive at Petruchio’s country house after various mishaps along the way. Petruchio is unhappy that the servants are not prepared to attend to him and his bride properly, and he demands a meal. Petruchio finds fault with everything the servants do, cursing and beating them and refusing to let Katherine eat supper because, he says, the meat is overcooked. Katherine, exhausted herself, attempts to speak out on the servants’ behalf, asking Petruchio to be kinder and more patient. He refuses to take her advice, insisting that his bride will only have perfection. After Katherine and Petruchio exit to the bridal chamber, one of the servants reports that Petruchio is ‘‘making a sermon of continency’’ to Katherine, while she sits bewildered, ‘‘as one new risen from a dream.’’ In a soliloquy, Petruchio compares his treatment of Katherine to the taming of falcons, which were left hungry and deprived of sleep until they became docile. He decides that he will keep her from sleeping by complaining all night. Meanwhile, in Padua, ‘‘Lucentio’’ (Tranio) convinces ‘‘Litio’’ (Hortensio) to abandon his suit after they find Bianca flirting with ‘‘Cambio’’ (Lucentio). Hortensio tells Tranio he will marry a wealthy widow. Tranio tells Bianca and Lucentio that Hortensio will go to Petruchio’s ‘‘taming school’’ to learn to control the widow. By a clever ploy, Tranio persuades an aged Pedant (scholar) to pose as Lucentio’s father. Back at Petruchio’s house, Hortensio is visiting. Petruchio invites

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MEDIA ADAPTATIONS The 1929 production by Pickford Corporation, Elton Corporation, and United Artists is the earliest film version of The Taming of the Shrew. It was an early talkie featuring the only pairing of real-life couple Mary Pickford and Douglas Fairbanks. The film was distributed by Nostalgia Family Video, and was a Critics’ Choice Video. It was reedited in 1966.  In 1953 MGM released Kiss Me Kate, the film version of the 1948 Cole Porter musical based on The Taming of the Shrew, directed by George Sidney. In this version, two divorced actors are unable to separate their real lives from their stage lives after they are cast to play Katherine and Petruchio in a production of Shakespeare’s play. Howard Keel and Kathryn Grayson star as Petruchio and Katherine.

two scenes from the play: Petruchio vows to marry Katherine, and he begins the process of taming her.





Columbia’s 1967 The Taming of the Shrew was a lavish screen version, starring Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton, and directed by Franco Zeffirelli. It is distributed by Columbia Tristar Home Video, The Video Catalog, and PBS Video.



In 1974, the International Film Bureau produced The Taming of the Shrew, which presents

Katherine to eat with them, but insists that she thank him before allowing her to eat. A tailor and a haberdasher arrive with new clothes that Petruchio has ordered for Katherine, but he finds fault with everything they offer and, despite Katherine’s protests, sends the men away. After announcing that they will leave for Padua immediately he begins talking nonsense, saying they will mount their horses and go on foot and claiming that it is morning when it is afternoon. When Katherine corrects him, he states that before they go to Padua, ‘‘It shall be what a’ clock I say it is.’’ Back in Padua, Tranio, the Pedant, and Baptista agree to meet at Lucentio’s lodgings to seal

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NET’s 1980 The Taming of the Shrew features a performance by the American Conservatory Theatre at the Geary Theatre in San Francisco. It is distributed by WNET/ Thirteen Non-Broadcast.



In 1981, the BBC released its version, produced by Cedric Messina and Jonathan Miller. It stars John Cleese and Sarah Badel, and is distributed by Ambrose Video Publishing. Jonathan Miller also directed, envisioning Petruchio as an early Puritan who values essences over social superficialities.



In 1981 a documentary titled Kiss Me, Petruchio was produced by the New York Shakespeare Festival, directed by Christopher Dixon. It is a backstage look at the New York Shakespeare Festival’s production of The Taming of the Shrew, with legendary performances by Meryl Streep as Katherine and Raul Julia as Petruchio. It is distributed by Films Inc. Video, Professional Media Service Corporation.

Bianca’s betrothal. Meanwhile, on their way to Padua, Petruchio and Katherine argue about whether the sun or the moon is shining. Petruchio insists they will not continue to Padua until she agrees with him. Katherine gives in, saying, ‘‘What you will have it nam’d, even that it is, / And so it shall be so for Katherine.’’ Hortensio tells Petruchio that ‘‘the field is won.’’ They encounter an old man, whom Petruchio addresses as a young woman. Katherine follows Petruchio’s lead, calling the old man a ‘‘budding virgin.’’ When Petruchio then corrects her, she begs pardon for her ‘‘mad mistaking.’’ The old man turns out to be Lucentio’s real father, Vincentio, and they all continue to Padua together.

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Act 5

First Huntsman

Lucentio and Bianca sneak off to be married. Katherine, Petruchio, and Vincentio arrive at Lucentio’s lodgings. The Pedant and Vincentio argue violently over which of them is Lucentio’s father, and Vincentio is in danger of being arrested until Lucentio and Bianca, newly married, arrive on the scene, explain the deception, and beg pardon of their fathers. They all exit, and Katherine wants to follow; but Petruchio first obliges her to kiss him in public. At the wedding banquet, the men place bets as to which of them has the most obedient wife. All three send for their wives, but only Katherine obeys and appears. Petruchio sends her to bring the other wives. The men concede the bet to Petruchio, but he insists on a further demonstration. He tells Katherine to take off her cap and stamp on it, which she does, then orders her to tell the women their ‘‘duty’’ to ‘‘their lords and husbands.’’ Katherine responds with a long speech in favor of wifely obedience. Petruchio praises and kisses her, and they go off to bed as the other men congratulate Petruchio on having tamed his shrew.

This is one (of two) of the Lord’s huntsmen who are with him when he discovers Sly.

Gremio Gremio is an elderly man, but one of Bianca’s suitors. In act 3, scene 2, he tells Lucentio and Tranio about Petruchio’s scandalous behavior during the marriage ceremony between Petruchio and Katherine.

Grumio Grumio is Petruchio’s servant. He often misunderstands, or pretends to misunderstand, Petruchio’s commands, with comic results. In act 4, scene 1, he recounts the various mishaps that befell him, Katherine, and Petruchio on their way to Petruchio’s country house. Later, he teases Katherine when she asks for food.

Haberdasher The haberdasher is summoned by Petruchio to make new clothes for Katherine.

Hortensio CHARACTERS Bartholomew The Lord’s page (a young male attendant) on the Lord’s orders, dresses like a woman and pretends to be Sly’s loving and obedient wife.

Another of Bianca’s suitors, and a friend of Petruchio’s, Hortensio pretends to be a music teacher named Litio in order to see Bianca. When he discovers her flirting with ‘‘Cambio,’’ he abandons his suit and marries a wealthy widow after visiting Petruchio in the country to obtain tips on controlling a woman.

Hostess Bianca Baptista’s younger daughter initially appears quiet and submissive. However, she skillfully intrigues with Lucentio, with whom she eventually elopes, and in the final scene of the play refuses to come when her husband calls her.

Biondello As one of Lucentio’s servants, Biondello is aware of Lucentio and Tranio’s ploy of changing identities but is not immediately told the reason for it.

Curtis Curtis is one of the servants at Petruchio’s country house. Grumio tells him about the journey from Padua to the country house. Later, Curtis tells the other servants about Petruchio’s odd behavior during the marriage ceremony.

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The hostess ejects Sly from the tavern at the beginning of the play.

Joseph Joseph is a servant at Petruchio’s country house.

Katherine Katherine (Katherina or Katharina, according to some sources), or simply Kate, is established as a shrew—a loud, unmanageable, bad-tempered woman—by her own behavior and by the comments of other characters, who repeatedly characterize her as ill-tempered and unreasonable. Unlike the stock character of the shrew found in many plays from Shakespeare’s time, however, Katherine emerges as a complex individual who engages the audience’s sympathy and concern. Baptista’s obvious preference for Katherine’s sister, Bianca, his crassly materialistic approach to his daughters’ marriages, and the shallowness

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and rudeness of the Paduan suitors suggest possible reasons for Katherine’s shrewish behavior. Her shrewish remarks are generally also clever and to the point, suggesting that she possesses a keen intelligence. Moreover, despite her shrewishness, she is capable of concern for others, repeatedly trying to shield the servants from Petruchio’s violent displeasure. Katherine’s personality is so strong that it dominates nearly every scene in which she is present. Katherine first appears in act 1, scene 1, where she vigorously protests both Baptista’s decision not to allow Bianca to marry until a husband is found for Katherine, and also the insulting remarks of Gremio and Hortensio. This leads Tranio, who is looking on with Lucentio, to comment that she is ‘‘stark mad or wonderful froward [disobedient, unmanageable].’’ Despite her strong temper, Katherine sometimes follows the leadership of the men in her life. In Katherine’s first meeting with Petruchio, she meets his initial overture with hostility and insults. He responds with sexual innuendos to the point that she strikes him. When her father enters, she denounces Petruchio as ‘‘one half lunatic’’ and responds to his insistence that they have agreed to be married on Sunday by commenting, ‘‘I’ll see thee hang’d on Sunday first.’’ But when Petruchio claims that she is only pretending to oppose the marriage and Baptista agrees to the match, she exits without saying anything further. In act 3, when Petruchio at first fails to show for his wedding, Katherine complains bitterly: not only has she been forced against her will to accept ‘‘a mad-brain rudesby full of spleen,’’ but now she is being made a fool. She exits weeping. Nonetheless, when Petruchio insists that they leave immediately after the ceremony, Katherine resists, first entreating Petruchio to stay, then firmly refusing to leave. When Petruchio insists on his right to make her leave, she goes with him without further comment. In Petruchio’s house, two of Katherine’s traits reveal themselves—her compassionate side, and her acceptance of Petruchio’s will. After her horse falls on her, Petruchio begins to beat Grumio, and Katherine ‘‘waded through the dirt to pluck him off.’’ When at the country house Petruchio upbraids and strikes the servants, Katherine defends them and urges him to be patient. In subsequent scenes, Petruchio repeatedly imposes his will despite Katherine’s

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resistance and verbal protests. In act 4, scene 5, as they return to Padua for Bianca’s wedding, Katherine again contradicts Petruchio, saying that the sun is shining when he has commented on the brightness of the moon. When he refuses to go on unless she agrees with him, she gives in, only to have him insist that it is indeed the sun. Commenting that ‘‘the moon changes even as your mind,’’ Katherine gives in again, agreeing to call it whatever he chooses. Katherine’s acceptance of Petruchio’s will here is generally seen as a turning point in their relationship, although critics have offered varying opinions as to Katherine’s mood, as well as the real meaning of this turning point. When the travelers meet Vincentio on the road, Katherine easily falls in with Petruchio’s joke of addressing the old man as if he were a young woman. In Padua, as the Bianca-Lucentio subplot comes unraveled, Katherine wants to follow the other characters to see the outcome. Petruchio insists that she first kiss him publicly, and after brief resistance, she complies. At Bianca’s wedding banquet, Katherine becomes involved in an argument with the Widow when the latter refers to Katherine’s reputation as a shrew. Later, when Petruchio, Lucentio, and Hortensio place bets on their respective wives’ obedience, Katherine is the only wife to come when summoned. She obediently brings in the other wives, and when Petruchio tells her to take off her cap and stamp on it, she complies. When Petruchio orders her to instruct the other wives on their duty to their husbands, Katherine responds with a long speech advocating wifely obedience. Emphasizing the ‘‘painful labor’’ a husband takes on to ensure the security of his wife, she states that wives owe husbands a ‘‘debt’’ of ‘‘love, fair looks, and true obedience.’’ She remarks that women are ‘‘soft’’ and ‘‘weak,’’ and urges them to give up their pride, ‘‘for it is no boot’’ [there is no remedy]. In her final words in the play, she offers to place her hand under Petruchio’s foot, to ‘‘do him ease.’’ The complexity of Katherine’s character is evident in the interpretive range of her final speech. Directors and actresses have adopted a variety of approaches to this speech, depending on their interpretation of the play’s meaning. Sometimes it is delivered ironically, as if Katherine does not mean what she says and is either humoring Petruchio or treating his wager as a joke. When the speech is delivered seriously,

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the tone adopted may vary from one of joyful acceptance to one of despair and resignation.

Lord Returning from a hunt, the Lord finds Sly drunk and asleep. As a practical joke, he and his men try to convince Sly he is a nobleman. The Lord arranges for the players to present the play that constitutes the main action of The Taming of the Shrew.

Lucentio The son of a wealthy Pisan merchant, Lucentio comes to Padua intending to study but immediately falls in love with Bianca, whom he sees in the street. He pretends to be a schoolmaster named Cambio in order to gain access to Bianca, and eventually elopes with her.

Messenger The messenger announces that the play is about to begin.

Baptista Minola Baptista is a wealthy Paduan merchant with two daughters, Katherine and Bianca. He decides that he will not allow Bianca to marry until a husband is found for Katherine.

Nathaniel Nathaniel is a servant at Petruchio’s country house.

Nicholas Nicholas is a servant at Petruchio’s country house.

Pedant The pedant is an elderly scholar from Mantua who is persuaded by Tranio to pose as Lucentio’s father.

Petruchio The traditional interpretation of the character of Petruchio sees him as a romantic and dashing figure, sweeping Katherine off her feet with his manly energy, intelligence, and determination. His displays of violence and bad temper are presented as merely a ploy, intended either to show Katherine the absurdity of her own violence and bad temper, or to shock her out of her habitual contrariness. While this remains the most common dramatic interpretation of the role, more recently literary critics and some productions of

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the play have portrayed Petruchio as a less than ideal man. These interpretations present his violent, domineering, and frequently unreasonable behavior as an intrinsic part of his character, rather than as an affectation assumed for Katherine’s benefit. They also tend to stress the crudity of many of his comments about marriage and about Katherine. Petruchio first appears at the beginning of act 1, scene 2. When he tells Hortensio he has come to Padua to seek a wife, Hortensio tells him he knows of a woman who is very wealthy, but shrewish. Despite warnings from both Hortensio and Gremio about Katherine’s temperament, Petruchio insists that he will woo her, claiming that wealth is his sole requirement in a wife and that he will not be frightened off by mere noise. In act 2, Petruchio presents himself to Baptista as a suitor for Katherine and immediately opens negotiations about the amount of money to be settled on Katherine. He and Baptista swiftly reach agreement. When Baptista stipulates that Petruchio must first obtain Katherine’s love, Petruchio replies that ‘‘that is nothing,’’ adding that he is ‘‘as peremptory as she proud-minded’’ and predicting that she will ‘‘yield’’ to him. Petruchio is a bit of a schemer and seems to enjoy engaging his mind in unusual endeavors. In a soliloquy in act 2, scene 1, just before his first meeting with Katherine, Petruchio describes his plan for dealing with her. Whatever she does, he will act as if she has done the opposite: If she is verbally abusive, he will praise her sweet voice; if she refuses to speak, he will applaud her eloquence; if she refuses to marry, he will ask her to set a date. When Katherine enters, they become embroiled in an exchange of insults that soon turns to sexual innuendo. When she strikes him, he threatens to strike her back if she hits him again. Despite Katherine’s hostility, when Baptista returns Petruchio says they have agreed to marry. When Katherine protests, Petruchio claims they have agreed that she will continue to behave shrewishly ‘‘in company.’’ Baptista agrees to the marriage. Petruchio’s irreverence for authority reaches its height on his wedding day. He arrives late and dressed in rags, defending his inappropriate attire by saying that Katherine is marrying him, not his clothes. His behavior at the ceremony, which takes place offstage, offends Gremio, who subsequently describes it: Petruchio swore in

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church, struck the priest, guzzled the wine and threw the remainder in the sexton’s face, and kissed the bride noisily. After the ceremony, Petruchio insists that he and Katherine must leave immediately. He overrides Katherine’s objections by announcing that he ‘‘will be master of what is [his] own’’ and pretending to protect her against the others’ desire to detain her. Never hiding his true self, Petruchio shows what kind of master he is as soon as he and Katherine arrive at his country house. He verbally abuses and beats the servants and sends the dinner back uneaten, telling Katherine it is burned and bad for their health. In the bridal chamber, he treats her to a lecture on selfrestraint. In his second soliloquy, Petruchio likens Katherine to a wild falcon that must be prevented from eating and sleeping until it is tamed. Subsequently, he repeatedly frustrates Katherine’s needs and desires, all the while insisting that he does so for her own good. He also insists that Katherine agree with him even when he contradicts the most obvious realities, leading even his friend Hortensio to comment on his unreasonableness. Later, on the road to Padua, he repeatedly changes his opinion as to whether the sun or the moon is shining and refuses to continue until Katherine agrees with him. Her eventual statement that ‘‘What you will have it nam’d, even that it is’’ is usually regarded as marking her capitulation to Petruchio. When they meet Vincentio on the road, Katherine plays along with her husband’s joke when he pretends to think the old man is a young woman. Through the remainder of the play Petruchio repeatedly tests Katherine’s compliance. When they reach Padua, he threatens to return home unless she kisses him in the street. At Bianca and Lucentio’s wedding banquet, a number of the other guests imply that Petruchio has failed to get control over Katherine. Petruchio proposes a wager on which of the three new wives—Katherine, Bianca, or the widow Hortensio has married—is most obedient. When Katherine is the only one of the three wives to come when summoned, Petruchio sends her to fetch the other wives, then tells her to take off her cap and stamp on it. Finally, he orders her to ‘‘tell these headstrong women / What duty they do owe their lords and husbands.’’ At the end of Katherine’s long speech in favor of male authority and female obedience, Katherine offers to

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place her hand under her husband’s foot, to ‘‘do him ease.’’ Petruchio praises her, kisses her, and takes her off to bed, suggesting as they leave that Hortensio and Lucentio have a hard road before them in their marriages. Critical commentary and play productions reflect a wide diversity of opinion regarding both the nature of Petruchio’s treatment of Katherine and his reasons for it. Motivations ascribed to his character range from love for Katherine to a will to dominate, from self-interest to a simple enjoyment of a challenge. Similarly, a wide variety of interpretations have been put forward regarding the dynamics of his relationship with Katherine. Some see him as bullying his wife into submission; others claim that he insightfully leads her to an acceptance of her ‘‘true’’ nature and of her rightful role in society. Still others claim that in the course of the play, Katherine and Petruchio negotiate a mutually acceptable mode of co-existence within the limits imposed by their society.

Philip Philip is a servant at Petruchio’s country house.

Players The players are a group of traveling actors who arrive at the tavern. The Lord, who has seen them perform before, asks them to put on a play.

Second Huntsman The second (of two) of the Lord’s huntsmen is with him when he discovers Sly.

Servants The Lord’s attendants, who join in his practical joke on Sly.

Christopher Sly Sly is a poor tinker (a traveling mender of housewares). As a practical joke, a lord and his attendants try to convince him that he is really a nobleman who has been suffering from insanity. The play that constitutes the five acts of The Taming of the Shrew is put on for Sly’s entertainment. He comments once on the play at the end of act 1, scene 1, then disappears from the text.

Sugarsop Sugarsop is a servant at Petruchio’s country house.

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Tailor The tailor is summoned by Petruchio to make new clothes for Katherine.

Tranio As Lucentio’s servant, Tranio assists Lucentio in plotting the latter’s elopement with Bianca. On Lucentio’s orders, Tranio pretends to be Lucentio while Lucentio is pretending to be Cambio. As Lucentio, Tranio presents himself as a suitor for Bianca’s hand and is selected by her father to marry her.

Vincentio Vincentio is Lucentio’s father. On his way to Padua to visit Lucentio, he becomes the butt of a joke initiated by Petruchio and taken up by Katherine. On his arrival in Padua, he is nearly thrown into prison when Tranio, the Pedant, and Biondello all insist he is an imposter.

Walter Walter is a servant at Petruchio’s country house.

Widow Hortensio marries the widow when he gives up his suit for Bianca. In the final scene of the play, she quarrels with Katherine and refuses to come when Hortensio summons her.

THEMES Gender Roles Since Katherine’s shrewish behavior constitutes the central problem of the play, it is not surprising that most critical commentary on The Taming of the Shrew deals to some extent with the play’s vision of the relative roles of men and women. Until well into the nineteenth century, audiences and critics alike seem to have accepted at face value what appears to be the play’s central assumption about gender roles: that male dominance and female submission constitute the right and natural relationship between the sexes. In this context, Petruchio’s taming of Katherine was generally seen as innocent fun. By the end of the century, however, critics were beginning to show some discomfort with the relationship between Petruchio and Katherine. The play’s treatment of gender goes well beyond its basic plot. Unlike most playwrights who wrote plays about shrews in the early

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modern period, Shakespeare suggests possible motivations for Katherine’s shrewishness. Her father clearly favors her sister, Bianca; the prospective suitors are shallow and rude; father and suitors alike tend to treat marriage as a purely commercial transaction. Katherine’s relationship with Petruchio is complex. Their early verbal exchanges suggest a certain equality of intelligence. Although the text of the play leaves room for a wide variety of theatrical interpretations of the relationship, the traditional and most common approach emphasizes a strong sexual attraction between Katherine and Petruchio as well as a growing comradeship. Moreover, although Petruchio seeks to control Katherine, he appears to admire and value her spirit. The relationship between the play’s main plot, subplot, and Induction also affects its depictions of gender roles. A struggle for power between men and women is introduced as an issue from the beginning of the play, when, in the Induction, a woman—the Hostess—throws a drunken Christopher Sly out of her tavern. In the course of the Lord’s practical joke, one of his young male attendants dresses like a woman and pretends to be Sly’s noble, soft-spoken, and obedient wife. The practical joke itself can be seen as a parallel to Petruchio’s efforts to reform Katherine, as both involve attempts to transform one sort of character into another. For some critics, the Lord’s inability to effect a convincing change in Sly’s character contrasts with Petruchio’s successful transformation of Katherine in the main plot. For others, however, the obvious artificiality of both Sly’s transformation into a nobleman and the page’s transformation into a woman are meant to indicate that Katherine’s transformation is equally artificial.

Appearance versus Reality Confusion between appearance and reality is a principal source of humor in The Taming of the Shrew. In the Induction, Sly is misled by carefully orchestrated appearances into believing that he is really a wealthy nobleman rather than a poor tinker. The subplot likewise depends on the confusion of appearance and reality as various characters practice elaborate deceptions. Hortensio pretends to be the music teacher Litio. Lucentio poses as the schoolmaster Cambio. He and Bianca use Latin lessons as a cover for their courtship, and they deceive her father by eloping on the eve of her planned betrothal to another

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Heath Ledger and Julia Stiles in a scene from the movie 10 Things I Hate About You (Reproduced by permission of The Picture Desk, Inc.)

man. Lucentio’s servant, Tranio, pretends to be his master and persuades an elderly scholar to pose as his master’s father. In the main plot, the difficulty of distinguishing between appearance and reality is emphasized in various ways. Petruchio’s servant Grumio often misinterprets his master’s instructions, with comic results. More crucially, Petruchio’s strategy in dealing with Katherine often involves replacing the most apparent of realities with something more to his own liking. ‘‘Say that she rail, why then I’ll tell her plain / She sings as sweetly as a nightingale,’’ Petruchio resolves before his first meeting with Katherine. Although she insists she wants nothing to do with him, he tells her father they have agreed to be married. At his country house and on the road back to Padua he declares that it is morning when it is afternoon and that the moon is shining in broad daylight. When Katherine finally gives in to him, her surrender is signaled by her acceptance of his version of reality, in defiance of appearance: ‘‘What you will have it

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nam’d, even that it is,/ And so it shall be so for Katherine.’’ The various deceptions in the Induction and the subplot seem to poke fun at social distinctions, suggesting that the difference between a servant and a master, or between a poor Latin teacher and a wealthy merchant’s son, is merely a matter of appearance. This idea is echoed in the main plot by Petruchio when he appears at his wedding in rags and says of Katherine, ‘‘To me she’s married, not unto my clothes,’’ or when he tells Katherine not to worry about the way she is dressed because ‘‘’tis the mind that makes the body rich.’’ The theme of appearance and reality is also related to the play’s treatment of gender roles. Some commentators maintain that Petruchio transforms Katherine by refusing to accept her appearance of shrewishness as reality. Instead, he sets up a sort of alternate reality, insisting that she is really lovable and obedient until she accepts his view of her identity. Other people

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TOPICS FOR FURTHER STUDY 

There is critical controversy surrounding Katherine and whether or not she is really changed by the end of The Taming of the Shrew. What is your position on this issue? Find a partner and stage a debate in front of at least three people. Structure your debate so that each of you makes your case, the other has the opportunity to ask questions, and each presents a concluding speech to persuade your audience to adopt your position.



What specific techniques does Petruchio use to tame Katherine? Using the presentation format of your choice (poster board, Power Point, display board, etc.) list at least three, with details about how they would be used on a person. Predict how effective each of these would be and explain why. Conclude with a statement about the ethics of using such techniques in interpersonal relationships.



The dynamics among Baptista, Bianca, and Katherine are not uncommon, even today. Conduct psychological research in family dynamics to determine how realistic Shakespeare’s portrayal of the young women is. Based on your findings, what kind of wives and mothers will Bianca and Katherine

argue, however, that the continual confusion of appearances and reality in the play undermines the concept of male dominance. They suggest that with so much deception going on in the play, the audience should be suspicious of taking Katherine’s transformation at face value. Perhaps she is merely pretending to give in to Petruchio. Or perhaps—as other critics have maintained—male supremacy itself is shown to be merely an illusion.

Games and Role-Playing Closely related to the theme of appearance versus reality is the play’s emphasis on games and role-

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become? What kind of man will Baptista be as he continues to age?  Producing The Taming of the Shrew for a modern audience presents certain challenges. Imagine that you have been chosen to direct the play, and the producers have given you complete creative control. What decisions would you make? Would you do the play as Shakespeare wrote it? How would you direct Katherine, especially in her last speech? What would you look for in casting? Write out a plan for the producers, describing your vision and your approach. 

Gender roles and expectations comprise a major theme of The Taming of the Shrew. Gender roles continue to be discussed today. Create a timeline of major historical events related to this issue from 1600 to the present. Explain how the issue has evolved since Shakespeare’s time.



Read about Queen Elizabeth I’s upbringing, ascension to the throne, and reign. Given what you understand about her, what do you think her reaction to The Taming of the Shrew was? Write a diary entry in her voice on the evening after she first saw the play.

playing. It has been suggested that Petruchio treats social conventions—including the conventions governing relations between men and women—as a sort of game. The airy cynicism with which he discusses his search for a wife contrasts with both Lucentio’s romanticism and Baptista’s businesslike materialism. He treats the marriage ceremony itself as a joke, arriving late and poorly dressed, insulting the clergy, and forcing the bride to leave early. He seems to welcome Katherine’s shrewishness as an interesting challenge, and compares his efforts to tame her to a sportsman’s taming of a falcon. According to this view, Petruchio’s strategy in taming Katherine is

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to convince her to join in this game with him. This strategy seems particularly clear during the journey back to Padua in act 4, when Katherine finally decides to go along with Petruchio’s assertions contrary to fact and joins him in pretending that the aged Vincentio is a young woman. Katherine’s final speech to the other wives is then seen as marking her agreement to play the role of obedient wife, secure in the knowledge that she and her husband both know this is merely a role. Role-playing and playacting also figure prominently in The Taming of the Shrew. The play-within-a-play structure emphasizes to the audience members that what they are about to see is a performance—not reality, but someone’s interpretation of reality. Many of the characters become actors in the play: Tranio plays the role of Lucentio, Lucentio poses as Cambio, Hortensio poses as Litio, and so on. Thus, for instance, a single actor might appear as one of the players in the Induction, as Tranio at the beginning of act 1, and later as Tranio-playingLucentio. Petruchio himself often seems to be playing an exaggerated role for Katherine’s benefit. Recently, several critics have pointed out that Shakespeare also draws attention to the Elizabethan practice of using boys to play women’s parts. This is especially true in the Induction, where the page Bartholomew pretends to be Sly’s wife.

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The reader’s assumptions about the actors’ intention in performing this play for Sly will affect how much of the play is taken as farce and irony, and how much is taken as an honest portrayal of the characters and their situations.

Farce There has been much critical commentary about whether The Taming of the Shrew is farcical. While some critics point to the exaggerated antics and satire of the play to argue that it is farce, others point to the genuine feelings and realism of the play to argue that it is not. In either case, it is important to understand what farce is in order to follow the debate. Farce is a humorous dramatic approach that favors action over characterization. Its humor results from absurdity, wit, crudeness and vulgarity, and physical comedy. Farce appears outlandish and unrealistic on the surface, but its deeper content is often serious and pointed. Farce is often satiric, satire being a humorous way of criticizing customs, issues, trends, society, or people. Satirists generally take something that their audiences will recognize (usually a type of person or a social convention) and make its faults larger than life in order to point out those faults. Readers often see Katherine, Petruchio, or both characters as overdrawn to make a point about love relationships and the ability (or inability) to ‘‘tame’’ another person.

Imagery STYLE Play-within-a-Play Shakespeare begins The Taming of the Shrew with the Induction, whose purpose seems to be establishing that the rest of the play will be a playwithin-a-play. The action of The Taming of the Shrew is performed by an acting troupe for the entertainment of Christopher Sly. Oddly, Shakespeare does not return to Sly, the lord, and the troupe at the end of the play. Critics have debated the necessity of this technique, but the fact remains that readers must approach the play with the understanding that it is being performed, seemingly, for an audience of one. Based on what the reader imagines as the lord’s (or the troupe’s) motives with the entertainment, the play is being performed either to please him (reflecting his views) or to educate him (challenging his views).

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Of particular importance in The Taming of the Shrew is Shakespeare’s use of imagery in portraying various characters’ attitudes toward other characters, toward women in general, and toward marriage. The play is especially rich in animal imagery, beginning with the traditional use of the word shrew to describe a willful and quarrelsome woman. When Katherine and Petruchio first meet, their rapid exchange of insults is filled with references to animals, as is the exchange of jests by the wedding guests in the final scene of the play. Dogs and horses figure prominently in the play, and several characters are compared to animals. In act 4, Petruchio likens his handling of Katherine to the methods used in taming falcons or hawks. In many cases, the use of animal imagery to describe a character is clearly demeaning, as when Gremio refers to Katherine

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as a ‘‘wild-cat’’, or Hortensio describes Bianca as a ‘‘proud disdainful haggard [untamed hawk]’’. In other cases, the effect is more complex. While some critics see Petruchio’s use of animal imagery in referring to Katherine as indicative of a desire to subdue and control her, others have argued that Petruchio’s likening of Katherine to a falcon, for instance, reflects a recognition that a successful marriage requires two minds working in partnership. Much of the play’s animal imagery is also an imagery of games and sport. Early in the Induction the Lord arrives from hunting, and subsequently hunting is used to typify both the pursuit of women by the play’s various suitors, and the behavior of women toward each other. Clothing and entertaining, particularly dining, also figure prominently as images in the play. Petruchio’s strategy for subduing Katherine involves both his refusal to dress as expected when he arrives at their wedding in outlandish clothes, and his refusal to allow Katherine to purchase the clothing she wants. Clothing is also important to the various deceptions in the Induction and the subplot. At various points in the play, Katherine’s exclusion from or participation in banquets or dinner parties becomes an issue. Petruchio prevents her from taking part in the banquet at her own wedding, and later allows her to join him and Hortensio at dinner only after she has thanked him for providing food. Toward the end of the play he threatens to keep her from Bianca’s wedding banquet unless Katherine kisses him in public. Finally, it is at that banquet that Katherine makes the public display of obedience which convinces the other guests that she has truly been ‘‘tamed.’’

HISTORICAL CONTEXT Textual Background Shakespeare appears to have drawn on many sources in writing the play. The character of the shrew— a word used to indicate an opinionated, domineering, and sharp-tongued woman—is found in the folklore and literature of many cultures. The earliest example in English drama is thought to be the character of Noah’s wife in the medieval mystery plays. In the sixteenth century, shrewish wives were featured in a number of plays, many of which depicted cruel physical punishments for the shrew.

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The principal source of the Bianca-Lucentio subplot is George Gascoigne’s play The Supposes (1566). Gascoigne’s play was itself derived from an Italian play, Ludovico Ariosto’s I suppositi (1509), and many of its elements can be traced back to the classical Latin comedies of Plautus and Terence. As for the Induction, the story of a poor man tricked into thinking he is a nobleman was common in Europe and Asia in the sixteenth century. In addition, an anonymous play entitled The Taming of a Shrew and published in 1594 is generally thought to be either a pirated copy of Shakespeare’s play or an inaccurate copy of an earlier play that may have been another source for Shakespeare’s version. While the action of The Taming of a Shrew is very close to that of Shakespeare’s play, both the language and the names of the characters are different. One interesting difference between the two plays concerns the Induction. In Shakespeare’s play as we have it, the characters in the Induction are not mentioned in the text after the end of act 1, scene 1. In A Shrew, on the other hand, the story line of the Induction is brought to a conclusion at the end of the play. Some modern productions of Shakespeare’s Shrew incorporate material from The Taming of a Shrew in order to complete the story introduced in the Induction. Others eliminate the Induction altogether.

Reign of Queen Elizabeth Queen Elizabeth is remembered as the great Tudor monarch who brought stability and growth to England over the course of her reign. The daughter of Henry VIII and Anne Boleyn, Elizabeth became what many deem England’s greatest monarch. She was beloved by her people and respected among world leaders. During her rule, great artistic, literary, and naval figures rose to prominence. It was during her reign that the defeat of the Spanish Armada took place. Her years on the throne were not without conflict, however. Europe was in the throes of religious turmoil, and Elizabeth’s establishment of the Anglican Church, observing Protestantism, was controversial. Persecution against Catholics followed, with the religious question far from resolved. Elizabeth’s court was widely regarded as a great cultural center. In fact, Elizabeth herself was sometimes the subject of artistic expression.

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COMPARE & CONTRAST 

Late 1500s: London theater is thriving as the English language has become a major vehicle for literary expression. By combining English interests and culture with conventions of classical drama, the English theater is full of relevance. Besides portraying stories about relationships, history, and politics, the London theater has become a vital part of the passionate religious debates of the day.

Today: Theater must compete with television and film for audience interest. Although many theaters still attract large audiences, the most popular plays tend to be well-known musicals, or plays by already-established playwrights. While there is room in the theater world for experimental and modern drama, audiences for these types of plays tend to be made up of a small but committed group of theatergoers.  Late 1500s: Gender roles are well established, and characters such as Katherine are intended to portray the exception, or even the extreme, of feminine independence. In the play, Katherine is outspoken, rash, and independent, but she is still subject to the will of her father before her marriage and Petruchio’s will after her marriage. This reflects the limitations on women; even women from well-to-do families are expected to marry unless they choose to enter convents. The ideal woman is seen at the end of the play, when Katherine has been (at least seemingly) tamed. Men, on the other hand, are free to be docile or rowdy, with few social consequences. Today: Gender roles have been seriously challenged and redefined over the course of the twentieth century. Women are often as

Edmund Spenser dedicated his epic work, The Faerie Queene (1590), to her, explaining in a letter to Sir John Walter Raleigh that the queen represents Elizabeth. She employed foreign

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outspoken and independent as men, and the negative backlash of such behavior is lessening. As for marriage, women are free to choose not only whom they marry, but if they marry at all. 

Late 1500s: It is common for families to arrange marriages, and they can be arranged while the bride and groom are young teenagers. The parents make these deals with one another to try to improve the social or financial standing of their families. Gender roles in marriage remain traditional, with the man working to support his family and the woman overseeing domestic responsibilities. Women possess no political power (with the obvious exception of monarchs) and they are not empowered to own land. Submission to their husbands is important for the family to run smoothly and for the family to be respected in society. Today: Not just in England, but throughout the Western world, gender roles in marriage are more fluid than ever. Men and women decide whether they will both work, and if not, which of them will stay home. Men and women share an abundance of work opportunities, based on their education and experience rather than gender. This gives married couples a greater degree of flexibility than in the past to make decisions about how their work will factor into their marriage. At home, gender roles are no longer assigned or assumed. Either the husband or the wife may perform domestic duties, manage the family finances, or make social plans. The norm is for the couple to make major decisions together in equal partnership.

artists in her court to paint portraits and create theatrical pieces and other works. Elizabeth also patronized Thomas Tallis and William Byrd, arguably the greatest English composers of the

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time. She even set aside her religious intolerance for them; they were both Catholic, yet she extended her protection to them. Elizabeth was also a lover of theater, and Shakespeare was a favorite.

Shakespeare’s English Theater A prolific writer of comedies, tragedies, and histories, Shakespeare is credited with authorship of thirty-seven plays, many of which are frequently performed in today’s theater. As a playwright, Shakespeare’s achievement is considered by many to be unparalleled and his era to be a pivotal time in Western literature. Historians frequently observe that Shakespeare’s arrival on the London theater scene was well timed. In many ways, Shakespeare is a product of Elizabethan theater because the opportunity was wide open for his talent when he arrived. The theater was coming into its own as a serious literary venue, and plays were diverse in subject matter. The theaters in London were also well attended and patronized. Shakespeare’s unique ability to write about universal human experiences and truths brought depth and accessibility to his dramas as well as his comedies. By also writing histories, he reinforced the popular interest in national, classical, and monarchical history, while paying homage to the monarchs on whose support he depended. Shakespeare wrote during the reigns of Elizabeth and James, and he found the two monarchs preferred different things. Elizabethan drama often took neoclassical themes and settings, a thread obvious in Shakespeare’s body of work. Some of his histories include events in the lives of Elizabeth’s ancestors, such as Henry VII. Shakespeare also employed what is called Elizabethan bawdy, a type of low humor that specifically targets the mentally ill, the uneducated, and female sexuality.

CRITICAL OVERVIEW The Taming of the Shrew has received a great deal of critical commentary and, because of its subject matter, that commentary has reflected trends over the years. The central idea of the play is the taming of a shrewish woman, a concept that became less favorably received over the course of the twentieth century. Thus gender roles and the analysis of the play’s two main

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characters has been the subject of much criticism. The play is complex, however, lending itself to commentary on its themes, imagery, and even debate as to whether or not the play is a farce. Numerous critics have weighed in on the play’s treatment of gender roles: that is, what it has to say about socially accepted definitions of appropriate male and female behavior. In the end, Kate has apparently come round to the socially accepted definition, giving a long speech proclaiming the rightness of male dominance and female submissiveness. Until fairly recently, few people challenged this view of the play. In fact, the play knew centuries of popularity with audiences who found Petruchio’s taming of Katherine both inoffensive and amusing. Critics’ examinations of various aspects of the play have led to no consensus as to the play’s attitude toward gender roles. A number of critics continue to maintain that the play ultimately accepts and reinforces male dominance of women. In ‘‘Bad’’ Shakespeare: Revaluations of the Shakespeare Canon, Shirley Nelson Garner exposes what she sees as a misogynistic, or woman-hating, overtone of the play. Garner explains that even if a teacher offers an ‘‘ingenious reading’’ of the play, students will quite likely see through it. She adds, ‘‘They will know in their hearts that—at the least—there is something wrong with the way Kate is treated. And they will be right.’’ Later in her treatment of the play, Garner notes, ‘‘The central joke in The Taming of the Shrew is directed against a woman. The play seems written to please a misogynist audience.’’ Many of these critics also argue, however, that while accepting male dominance, the play emphasizes the need for mutual affection, cooperation, and partnership in marriage. Another view maintains that Katherine’s final speech should be read ironically, with the implication that she will pretend to defer to Petruchio in public while ruling the household in private. Yet other commentators argue that the play ultimately undermines male dominance of women by showing this dominance to be artificial and illogical. Directors of modern productions of The Taming of the Shrew have also offered a wide variety of interpretations of this issue. In fact, in her Introduction to Cambridge

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University Press’s edition of the play, Ann Thompson remarks:

this is ‘‘a symbol of her new realization of what she has been but is no longer.’’

[T]hroughout its stage history The Taming of the Shrew has probably received fewer completely straight performances than any other Shakespearean play of comparable popularity on the stage. The apparently unrelieved ethic of male supremacy has proved unpalatable, and generation after generation of producers and directors have altered and adapted the text in more or less flagrant ways in order to soften the ending.

Many different interpretations of Katherine’s character have been put forward both on the stage and by the critics. One popular view sees Katherine as a miserable and maladjusted woman at the beginning of the play who by its end has been transformed into a happy wife who has learned to accept joyfully her appointed role in society. A number of other critics see Katherine’s true character as loving and amenable. Others see her as a forerunner of Shakespeare’s later, more attractively drawn comic heroines, such as Rosalind in As You Like It and Beatrice in Much Ado about Nothing. Like them, these critics point out, Katherine possess a keen wit, a passionate nature, and a strong will.

Subsequently, many critics have sought to defend The Taming of the Shrew against charges of sexism by contending that the play takes a tongue-in-cheek view of traditional gender roles. The idea is that Katherine’s submission is not to be taken seriously. In this view, the audience is meant to perceive that Katherine will dominate the marriage by allowing Petruchio an outward show of mastery. More recently, several commentators have suggested that the play ultimately undermines conventional social and gender roles. Many critics, however, reject an ironic reading of Petruchio’s subduing of Katherine. The prevalence of animal imagery in The Taming of the Shrew, particularly imagery having to do with falconry and hunting, has been interpreted in various ways. Margaret Loftus Ranald in Essays in Literature finds this imagery very revealing. She notes that ‘‘Petruchio rejoices in Kate’s faults. She will be a haggard worth the taming, a good hawk for his hand.’’ Ranald explores this theme fully, concluding: [T]he hawking imagery carries more weight than the mere suggestion that wives and falcons are more tractable when half starved. Its real value lies in emphasizing the fact that the taming of a wild, mature falcon aims at achieving mutual respect between bird and keeper.

Images having to do with clothing and various forms of entertainment also figure prominently in The Taming of the Shrew. Norman Sanders in Renaissance Papers points out that while the domestic realm reveals the social implications of Katherine’s temperament, ‘‘it is by sartorial imagery that she is shown the personal [implications]. For clothes can be a measure of either the inward man or of the deception he practices on others or on himself.’’ Sanders adds that at the end of the play, it is Katherine’s cap that Petruchio tells her to throw down, and that

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A rather different interpretation also common on the stage is that Katherine is not really tamed at all. Rather, she learns to humor Petruchio’s need to feel that he is in control; she plays the obedient wife in public so as to exercise control at home. In an article for Modern Language Studies, Coppe´lia Kahn describes the last scene as one in which Petruchio finally achieves lordship over his wife and is seen as a superior husband compared to his peers. She adds that Shakespeare ‘‘just makes it clear to us, through the contextual irony of Kate’s last speech, that her husband is deluded.’’ In Shakespeare: The Invention of the Human, Harold Bloom analyzes the moment in which Katherine agrees with Petruchio that the moon is the sun. He asserts, ‘‘From this moment on, Kate firmly rules while endlessly protesting her obedience to the delighted Petruchio, a marvelous Shakespearean reversal of Petruchio’s earlier strategy of proclaiming Kate’s mildness even as she raged on.’’ A key question in interpreting The Taming of the Shrew is whether Shakespeare presents Petruchio as an admirable character or as an offensive one. Closely related is the matter of his motives for wanting to marry Katherine and his goals in taming her. Productions of the play have differed widely in their answers to these questions, as have the critics’ opinions. Many writers point to Petruchio’s energy, imagination, and firmness of purpose as qualities that make him an attractive character. Petruchio’s violent and willful behavior is not limited to the taming process, but is demonstrated in the play well before he meets Katherine. Petruchio, they

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argue, is even more shrewish than Katherine, but his behavior is considered acceptable and even praiseworthy because he is a man. Petruchio’s motives have also been the subject of critical debate. While some critics see Petruchio as a strong-willed man smitten with a woman who is strong enough to be his mate, others see him as little more than a bully. In Shakespeare’s Comic Sequence, author Kenneth Muir reminds readers that by his own admission, Petruchio is seeking a wealthy wife. Muir adds that Petruchio’s ‘‘method of taming Katherine is that of a bully.’’ Muir lists the ways Petruchio tames Katherine, including using his physical strength, humiliating her at her wedding, forcing her to leave her wedding feast, starving her into submission, forcing her to say untrue things, and betting on her. Muir concludes, ‘‘A high-spirited girl has been tamed by brutal and shameful methods into accepting slavery.’’ Bloom comments on how the process of taming Katherine worsens Petruchio’s character. He points to ‘‘their shared, quite violent forms of expression, which Petruchio ‘cures’ at the high cost of augmenting his own boisterousness to an extreme where it can hardly be distinguished from a paranoid mania.’’ As fascinating as Katherine and Petruchio are individually, the issue of their love for each other proves equally intriguing. George R. Hibbard in Shakespearean Essays concludes that the two enjoy a happy, healthy marriage. He explains, ‘‘It is their knowledge of, and their trust in, each other, which have grown out of experience, that give this pair such an advantage over the other two pairs at the end of the play.’’ Hibbard notes that Hortensio and his widow, and Lucentio and Bianca, do not even know each other, not yet having had the chance to build love and trust. He sees in the play Shakespeare’s distaste for arranged marriages. He writes, ‘‘The play’s disapproval of the arranged match, in which no account is taken of the feelings of the principals, could not be plainer.’’ Critics such as Ruth Nevo make the argument that Katherine is truly in love with Petruchio. Nevo writes in Comic Transformation in Shakespeare: That Kate is in love by Act V, is, I believe, what the play invites us to perceive. And indeed she may well be. The man she has married has humour and high spirits, intuition, patience, self-command, and masterly intelligence; and there is more than merely a homily for Elizabethan wives in her famous speech.

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Because of the complexity of the issues surrounding characterization, motivation, and true resolution, critics have not reached a consensus on whether The Taming of the Shrew is a farce or not. Harold C. Goddard in The Meaning of Shakespeare contends that ‘‘the play within the play is given a simplification and exaggeration that bring its main plot to the edge of farce, while its minor plot, the story of Bianca’s wooers, goes quite over that edge.’’ Kahn writes, ‘‘In making Kate react almost automatically to the contradictory kinds of treatment Petruchio administers . . . Shakespeare molds her to the needs of the farce.’’ Kahn adds that Shakespeare’s use of farce in this play is intended to reveal a failing in Petruchio: ‘‘It . . . pushes us to see this wish for dominance as a childish dream of omnipotence. In short, the farce portrays Petruchio’s manliness as infantile.’’ H. J. Oliver categorizes the play as a farce, but notes the realism in its portrayal of the problems of marriage at the time, ‘‘not as it appeared in the romances of the day, but as it was in Shakespeare’s England.’’ In his Introduction to The Taming of the Shrew, Oliver contends that Katherine is too sympathetic a character to be farcical: ‘‘It is as if Shakespeare set out to write a farce about taming a shrew but had hardly begun before he asked himself what might make a woman shrewish anyway—and found his first answer in her home background.’’ Oliver concludes, ‘‘We sympathize with Katherine—and as soon as we do, farce becomes impossible.’’ Garner accuses those who interpret the play as farcical of trying to find a way to keep the play in good standing, despite its depiction of women. She writes that efforts to see it as farcical or ironic are intended to ‘‘separate Shakespeare from [the play’s] misogynist attitudes, to keep him as nearly unblemished as possible.’’

CRITICISM Ervin Beck In this essay, Beck examines the passage in The Taming of the Shrew in which Petruchio orders Katherine to remove her cap. The critic contends that this act, far from serving as a final sign that Katherine has resigned herself to obey Petruchio, ‘‘may instead be a sign that he thereby liberates her from subordination to him’’

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As a visual preface to Kate’s sermon to wives, the cap in act 5 embodies St. Paul’s discussion of Christian headship in 1 Corinthians 11.3–15: TRADITIONALLY SEEN AS A FINAL SIGN OF KATHERINE’S CONDITIONED SUBSERVIENCE, PETRUCHIO’S TELLING KATHERINE TO REMOVE HER CAP MAY INSTEAD BE A SIGN THAT HE THEREBY LIBERATES HER FROM SUBORDINATION TO HIM.’’

Katherine’s encomium to wives at the end of The Taming of the Shrew is initiated by Petruchio’s command: Katherine, that cap of yours becomes you not. Off with that bauble, throw it underfoot. (1) Katherine’s plucking her cap off her head, throwing it to the floor, and possibly even stomping on it make up a crucial, symbolic event, although its theological significance seems to have passed unnoticed. Traditionally seen as a final sign of Katherine’s conditioned subservience, Petruchio’s telling Katherine to remove her cap may instead be a sign that he thereby liberates her from subordination to him. Critics usually see in the discarded cap merely a variation of act 4, scene 3, where Petruchio withholds from Kate the Haberdasher’s cap that she covets. By logical extension, then, in act 5 Kate’s obedience to Petruchio’s ‘‘impossibly humiliating demand’’ shows that ‘‘she has learned the pointlessness of such selfish stubbornness.’’ (2) By conflating both cap scenes in such a formalist manner, even a New Historicist like Stephen Greenblatt arrives at a similar single-minded conclusion in his discussion of Shakespeare’s use of the ‘‘fetishism of costume’’ to communicate ‘‘what can be said, thought, felt in this culture’’ (57). He, too, says that Kate’s discarding of her cap ‘‘demonstrates [Petruchio’s] authority’’ over his ‘‘tamed wife’’ (58). Whether or not the actual physical cap in act 5 is the one the haberdasher offered in act 3, the meaning of ‘‘cap’’ in Kate and Petruchio’s relationship has changed or expanded since the symbol was first introduced into the discourse of the play. In act 3, the cap raises the issue of who will decide which cap Kate will wear. But in act 5, the issue is the much larger theological issue of whether Kate needs to wear any cap at all.

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But I would have you know, that the head of every man is Christ; and the head of every woman is the man; and the head of Christ is God. Every man praying or prophesying, having his head covered, dishonoureth his head. But every woman that prayeth or prophesieth with her head uncovered dishonoureth her head . . . (3–6, King James Version)

Traditionally these verses have been used to justify the tradition of women having their heads covered during worship—and even in everyday life—to show respect to Christ by showing respect to their husbands. Kate’s wearing of a cap stands for submission to her husband. That well-established association is spoken to in ‘‘A Homily of the State of Matrimony’’ published in 1563 for reading in Anglican churches in The Second Tome of Homilies by Archbishop Matthew Parker, Bishop James Pilkington, Rachard Taverner, and others. (3) After discussing proper wifely obedience, the homily continues: This [obedience] let the wife have ever in mind, the rather admonished thereby by the apparel of her head, whereby is signified, that she is under coven or obedience of her husband. And . . . that apparel is of nature so appointed to declare her subjection [to her husband] . . . For if it be not lawful for the woman to have her head bare, but to bear thereon the sign of her power wheresoever she goeth, more is it required that she declare the thing that is meant thereby. And therefore these ancient women of the old world called their husbands lords, and showed them reverence in obeying them. (177)

This conventional value given to the woman’s head covering raises the intriguing possibility that by telling Kate to discard her cap Petruchio is actually freeing Kate from patriarchal subservience to him and creating a relationship of mutuality rather than hierarchy. Kate is now at liberty to do and say what she wants. Just as Kate’s encomium begins with a symbolic action initiated by Petruchio, so it concludes with another equally symbolic action initiated by Kate. That is, of course, her offer to place her hands under her husband’s foot as token of her full submission to him. Speaking first to the Widow and Bianca she says: And place your hands below your husband’s foot,

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‘‘The Wedding Trousseau’’, Act IV, scene i (Ó Shakespeare Collection, Special Collections Library, University of Michigan)

In token of which duty, if he please, My hand is ready, may it do him ease. (5.2.181–83) This speech has been used to support opposite interpretations of the play. If Kate indeed places her hands under Petruchio’s foot, then patriarchal dominance is confirmed. Most critics, however, have assumed that Petruchio does not allow Kate to do so. Her speech is, after all, only an offer. And Petruchio responds to the offer, not by asking her to humiliate herself, but by asking her to kiss him—‘‘Come on, and kiss me, Kate’’(184)—which emphasizes mutual affection rather than servile devotion. Just as Petruchio is testing Kate in this scene—by seeing what she is like when given freedom in the marital relationship—so Kate can be seen as testing Petruchio with her final offer to place her hands under his feet: Does he really mean that she now has the liberty to be what and who she wants to be? If so, then he will reject or ignore her offer, treat her as an equal—and the play concludes in a satisfactorily ‘‘romantic’’ manner. Meanwhile, during her speech and the final other lines, Kate’s symbolic cap has lain on the floor—perhaps even kicked around a bit—as a mute reminder of the bondage from which she is now free.

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The objections to so oversimplified an interpretation are, of course, obvious. It is Petruchio, after all, who has permitted—even commanded— Kate to reject this symbol of masculine authority. And her obedience to him in doffing the cap is fully in keeping with the successful conditioning of Kate that he has engineered in the preceding scenes. Yet Kate’s speech is so eloquently persuasive that it seems to come from the heart. And the symbolic actions that frame it help us believe in the freedom and sincerity with which Kate delivers it. Relating Kate’s cap to the I Corinthians text does not simplify the ending; in fact, it renders its possibilities more complex. It may show that Shakespeare is working within a conventional view of male and female relationships that is as old as the Wife of Bath’s tale in Chaucer: What does a woman want most of all? Sovereignty. What does she do as soon as she obtains sovereignty? Yield to the wishes of her husband— because she loves him. That may be merely male wish fulfillment, again, and it certainly does not match what feminist critics today regard as good gender relationships. But it helps establish a kind of mutuality in marriage that is usually present in Shakespeare’s

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documents give insight into the pertinent issues of the play, and commentary helps guide the reader into a deeper understanding of Shakespeare’s text.

WHAT DO I READ NEXT? 

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Shakespeare Reread: The Texts in New Contexts (1994) contains Linda Boose’s article, ‘‘The Taming of the Shrew, Good Husbandry, and Enclosure.’’ In her article, Boose relates the play’s treatment of social and sexual hierarchy to socioeconomic changes and class conflict in early modern England. In 1950’s Essays and Studies, Nevil Coghill’s essay ‘‘The Basis of Shakespearian Comedy’’ is one of the first essays to argue that Katherine, not Petruchio, is the one who succeeds in mastering the art and practice of matrimony. Frances E. Dolan’s 1996 ‘‘The Taming of the Shrew’’: Texts and Contexts considers the play from a wide range of perspectives, including feminist and cultural. Primary

romantic comedies and it makes a disputed comedy even more teasingly complex. Source: Ervin Beck, ‘‘Shakespeare’s The Taming of the Shrew,’’ in The Explicator, Vol. 57, No. 1, Fall 1998, pp. 8–12.



Anthony Holden’s 2002 William Shakespeare: An Illustrated Biography offers readers an honest attempt to present the facts of Shakespeare’s life, separate from the legends that surround the playwright. The book is brought to life by the inclusion of illustrations and mementos related to the Bard’s life.



Maynard Mack’s ‘‘Engagement and Detachment in Shakespeare’s Plays’’ appears in Essays on Shakespeare and Elizabethan Drama in Honor of Hardin Craig (1962). In his essay, Mack examines the psychological process by which Petruchio tries to change Katherine’s view of her own identity.



In Fashioning Femininity and English Renaissance Drama (1991), Karen Newman closely examines the portrayals of women in Elizabethan and Jacobean drama to see how their submission was depicted. She spends an entire chapter on family dynamics and The Taming of the Shrew.

done by making it appear that Katherine’s submission is not to be taken seriously, although sometimes productions go to the other extreme and imply that Katherine has been brainwashed. Thomspon concludes that contemporary social and political attitudes will continue to color productions of the play.

Ann Thompson In a review of the stage history of The Taming of the Shrew, Thompson suggests that the play has always ‘‘been disturbing as well as enjoyable’’ and that its ‘‘‘barbaric and disgusting’ quality has always been an important part of its appeal.’’ Until the middle of the nineteenth century, she points out, the play was almost always produced with considerable modifications to Shakespeare’s text. Many of the changes increased the roughness of Petruchio’s behavior, while others, often in the same version, ‘‘softened’’ the play, making it explicit that Katherine is in love with Petruchio and that Petruchio’s domineering behavior is only a ploy. More recently, as women’s rights have become an issue, directors have tended to give their productions an ironic tone. Usually this is

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Source: Ann Thompson, ‘‘Introduction,’’ in The Taming of the Shrew, Cambridge University Press, 1984, pp. 1–41.

H. J. Oliver In the following excerpt, Oliver analyzes Petruchio’s suitability for the task of ‘‘taming’’ Katherine. The critic rejects readings that see Petruchio as motivated by love as well as evaluations that suggest Katherine and Petruchio are merely ‘‘playing a game.’’ Instead, Oliver emphasizes Petruchio’s superior maturity and experience and his ability to make a plan and stick to it as the primary reasons for his success. The critic also suggests that Petruchio’s treatment of Katherine is at times so harsh that it would have won sympathy for Katherine even from an Elizabethan audience hardened to plays about ‘‘shrew-taming.’’

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tradition of parents arranging their children’s marriages was being challenged, while a new ideal of mutual love between partners was taking root. The Taming of Shrew satirizes the old, mercenary order, Hibbard maintains, especially in the scene where Baptista appears to auction off Bianca to the highest bidder. But it also rejects the romantic view of marriage depicted in the Bianca-Lucentio subplot in favor of matches such as Katherine and Petruchio’s, based on ‘‘real knowledge and experience.’’ The critic calls attention to the directness and honesty of the conflict between the latter couple and contrasts it with Bianca and Lucentio’s reliance on ploys and deceptions. A case, of sorts, can be made out for the view that The Shrew is designed to bring out and contrast the two opposed attitudes to marriage that existed at the time when it was written: the idea of marriage as a purely business matter, which may be called realistic since it corresponds to the facts, and the idea of it as a union of hearts and minds, which may be called romantic. That some kind of contrast is intended is evident from the conduct of the two plots, which alternate with each other in a regular and contrapuntal fashion until the final scene, where they come together and are rounded off. In this reading of the play the realistic attitude is embodied in Petruchio who makes no secret of his mercenary intentions. To Hortensio, who asks him why he has come to Padua, he replies: Antonio, my father, is deceased, And I have thrust myself into this maze, Haply to wive and thrive as best I may. [I. ii. 54–6] A few lines later he clinches the matter when, having said that the age and appearance of the lady are of no importance so long as she is rich, he adds: I come to wive it wealthily in Padua; If wealthily, then happily in Padua. [I. ii. 75–6] Source: H. J. Oliver, ‘‘Introduction,’’ in The Taming of the Shrew, Oxford at the Clarendon Press, 1982, pp. 1–75.

George R. Hibbard Hibbard suggests that The Taming of the Shrew contrasts opposing views of marriage that coexisted in Elizabethan England. He asserts that in the last decades of the sixteenth century, the

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He plainly belongs to the old conservative school of thought, and his views on wives and their place are in keeping. In III. ii, having married Katharina, he pretends to defend her against her friends and kinsmen, ostensibly telling them but in fact telling her: Nay, look not big, nor stamp, nor stare, nor fret, I will be master of what is my own.

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THE SCENES INVOLVING PETRUCHIO AND KATHARINA HAVE MUCH MORE VITALITY THAN THOSE INVOLVING BIANCA. WE ARE LEFT AT THE END WITH THE CONVICTION THAT THE ARRANGED MATCH IS A FAR MORE DURABLE AND SOLID THING THAN THE ROMANTIC ONE.’’

She is my goods, my chattels, she is my house, My household stuff, my field, my barn, My horse, my ox, my ass, my any thing. [III. ii. 228–32] The words are substantially a version of the tenth commandment and they serve as a forcible reminder of the weight of authority and tradition behind the attitude to woman which they express. In accordance with this same body of ideas, Petruchio feels that his wife should be in complete subjection to him; uses the appropriate means to subdue her to his will; and having achieved this purpose, explains its significance to Hortensio in V. ii by saying: Marry, peace it bodes, and love, and quiet life, An awful rule and right supremacy; And, to be short, what not, that’s sweet and happy. [V. ii. 108–10] In contrast to this story, in which the woman is treated as a chattel, enjoys none of the pleasures of court-ship and is humiliated and subdued, there runs alongside it the tale of Bianca. She enjoys the pleasures of being wooed by no fewer than four men, of making her own choice from among them, of deceiving her father, of stealing a runaway marriage, of having it approved of by both the fathers concerned, and, most important of all, of continuing to get her own way with her husband after marriage as well as before it. Put in these terms, The Shrew looks like an argument for the romantic attitude. But this conclusion only has to be stated for it to be found unacceptable. The scenes involving Petruchio and Katharina have much more vitality than

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those involving Bianca. We are left at the end with the conviction that the arranged match is a far more durable and solid thing than the romantic one. The most eloquent speech in the whole play is Katharina’s, extolling the principle of male dominance and female subjection as a law of nature, and it follows on Petruchio’s triumph over Lucentio in the matter of the wager. The main interest of the play is in Petruchio and Katharina, not in the rest. Does this mean, then, that Shakespeare has come down on the side of the arranged marriage and the old order? In general terms it would seem unlikely, for in his subsequent comedies love is the central value. More to the point, however, such an inference will not square with the evidence of the second half of II. i, which is a pointed and effective piece of comic satire on the marriage market. In the first half of the scene Petruchio has wooed Katharina and the match between them has been fixed. Petruchio makes his exit saying: Father, and wife, and gentlemen, adieu, I will to Venice—Sunday comes apace— We will have rings, and things, and fine array, And kiss me, Kate, we will be married o’ Sunday. [II. i. 321–24] The way is now open for Baptista to dispose of his younger daughter and he wastes no time in setting about it. The scene that follows, between him and Gremio and Tranio, is conducted on a blatantly commercial level. Baptista’s opening words, referring to the match that has just been concluded between Katharina and Petruchio, set the tone: Faith, gentlemen, now I play a merchant’s part, And venture madly on a desperate mart. [II. i. 326–27] Tranio catches the allusion at once, and endorses it by saying: ’Twas a commodity lay fretting by you, ’Twill bring you gain, or perish on the seas. [II. i. 328–29] Both of them regard Katharina as a questionable piece of goods that Baptista has done well to get off his hands. At this point Gremio puts in his claim for the hand of Bianca and Tranio promptly asserts his counterclaim. Both begin by saying that they love her, but the

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Richard Burton as Petruchio and Elizabeth Taylor as Katharina from the 1967 film The Taming of the Shrew (Everett Collection)

statement really amounts to nothing—in any case Tranio is only standing in for Lucentio— and Baptista immediately brings the whole thing down to the only terms that matter when he stops the incipient quarrel with the words: Content you, gentlemen, I will compound this strife, ’Tis deeds must win the prize, and he, of both, That can assure my daughter greatest dower, Shall have Bianca’s love. [II. i. 341–44] The dower involved here is the money the husband assured to his wife on marriage, in order to provide for her widowhood if he should die before her. It was an essential part of the marriage contract in Shakespeare’s England. Deeds in this context mean, not the service with which the lover of romance won his lady, but property and cash. There is surely a pun on the sense of title-deeds. Bianca’s fate is

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to be settled by an auction, not by a knightly combat. Gremio makes his bid; Tranio puts in a better; Gremio increases his offer; Tranio outbids him once more, and actually uses the word ‘‘out-vied’’ to describe his success. The satire is unmistakable. It is clinched by Baptista’s weighing of the two offers and settling, with a careful proviso, for the higher. Turning to Tranio, he says: I must confess your offer is the best, And, let your father make her the assurance, She is your own—else, you must pardon me, If you should die before him, where’s her dower? [II. i. 386–89] But, being a good business man, he keeps the second customer in reserve. If Tranio’s father fails to back up his son’s offer, Bianca will be married to Gremio after all. The scene leaves one in no doubt about the play’s attitude to the marriage market. With it in

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mind, it is now possible to go back to the two contrasted plots and to consider them afresh. The fundamental difference between them in terms of their construction has been well analyzed by Bertrand Evans, who shows that while the Bianca story is developed through an intricate series of deceptions and disguises, there is no deception whatever in the KatharinaPetruchio story. Petruchio is told in no uncertain terms about Katharina’s character before he meets her, and he, in turn, tells her, at their first meeting in II. i, that he intends to tame her. To use Evans’s own words: The Taming of the Shrew, then, is unique among Shakespeare’s comedies in that it has two distinct plots, one relying mainly on discrepant awarenesses, the other using them not at all.

This contrast is more than a matter of the mechanics of plotting and of exploiting two different kinds of awareness in the audience. It is functional, springing from the contrasted characters of those involved in the two actions and from the antithetical attitudes to life and marriage that are presented through them. Viewed in relation to the characters of the sisters, the two plots develop along the same lines, each containing a complete reversal. At the opening Bianca appears to be everything that the age thought a girl ought to be, obedient to her father, submissive to her elder sister, modest, unobtrusive and quiet. Katharina is her opposite, disobedient to her father, tyrannical towards her younger sister, aggressive, rebellious and noisy. In each case, however, these initial impressions are misleading. As the play goes on the two girls change places, as it were, until, at the end of it, Katharina is revealed as the perfect wife and Bianca as the difficult and troublesome one. Each has, in fact, shown herself as she really is. Nor has the change been an arbitrary one; it has been implicit from the beginning, where there are clear indications that things are not as they seem. Baptista’s initial offer in I. i to allow Gremio and Hortensio to court Katharina, if they wish, terrifies Gremio. His answer is an outraged recoil: To cart her rather: she’s too rough for me . . . There, there, Hortensio, will you any wife? [I. i. 55–6] Carting was, of course, the punishment inflicted on harlots. As well as being treated like a chattel by her father, Katharina is being

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grossly insulted by the old pantaloon. Her vigorous complaint to Baptista is fully justified: I pray you, sir, is it your will To make a stale of me amongst these mates? [I. i. 57–8] Stale has a double meaning. Primarily in this context it signifies ‘‘a laughing-stock,’’ but it also carries the sense of ‘‘whore.’’ Katharina is a woman of independent spirit revolting against a society in which girls are bought and sold in marriage. Moreover, the word mates, which she uses of Gremio and Hortensio, is also carefully chosen. It means ‘‘vulgar fellows of no real worth,’’ and its accuracy is borne out by their reactions to her contempt and her threats. ‘‘From all such devils, good Lord deliver us!’’ says Gremio, to which Hortensio adds, ‘‘And me too, good Lord!’’ [I. i. 66, 67]. They are both poor-spirited creatures, with no vigour or masculinity about them. Instead of standing up to Katharina, they are cowed by her. And she knows it. As Petruchio shrewdly remarks in II. i, ‘‘If she be curst it is for policy’’ [II. i. 292]. Her shrewishness is not bad temper, but the expression of her self-respect. Indeed, it even looks like a deliberately adopted form of self-defence, a means of testing the quality of the men she meets, in order to ensure that she has some say in the matter of marriage and is not sold off to a wealthy milksop. She is certainly not opposed to the prospect of marriage. The opening of II. i makes this plain enough, for in it she ill-treats Bianca for being so successful with men, and, when her father seeks to restrain her, she cries out in a jealous fury: What, will you not suffer me? Nay, now I see She is your treasure, she must have a husband, I must dance bare-foot on her wedding-day And for your love to her lead apes in hell. [II. i. 31–4] She detests the idea of being an old maid and of her younger sister preceding her in marriage. She is attached to traditional notions of order and fitness. Provided that she can find a man who will stand up to her and earn her respect, she is ready and even eager to marry. Her subsequent behaviour, including her final speech, is all of a piece with her character and attitude as revealed in these two appearances and in the analogy drawn by Petruchio at the end of IV.i between the process by which he tames her and the methods used to tame a haggard, for the

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Elizabethans believed that falcons and the like were really of an affectionate nature and could be brought to love the man who trained them. Gervase Markham, for example, after listing the various kinds of hawks, adds these words: ‘‘all these Hawkes are hardy, meeke, and louing to the man’’ [in his Country Contentments]. Moreover, in his subsequent directions for training them, he lays great stress on kindness, writing as follows: All Hawkes generally are manned after one manner, that is to say, by watching and keeping them from sleep, by a continuall carrying of them vpon your fist, and by a most familiar stroaking and playing with them, with the Wing of a dead Foule or such like, and by often gazing and looking of them in the face, with a louing and gentle Countenace, and so making them acquainted with the man.

‘‘Hardy (i.e. bold), meeke, and louing to the man’’ is a very accurate description of Katharina’s real character. At this stage in the action it is not yet clear what Bianca’s nature is. We still do not know whether Katharina’s hearty dislike of her is the result of jealousy, or whether it rests on other and more creditable grounds. Her role so far has been a passive one, though it is already evident that she is her father’s favourite and knows that she can rely on his support. In III. i, however, she appears in a new situation, and much that has hitherto been obscure ceases to be so. Alone with two of her suitors, Lucentio, disguised as a teacher of Latin, and Hortensio, disguised as a teacher of music, Bianca discards the submissive mask she has worn in the presence of her father and shows her true disposition. As the two lovers dispute over which of them shall give his lesson first, she asserts her authority, saying: Why, gentlemen, you do me double wrong, To strive for that which resteth in my choice: I am no breeching scholar in the schools, I’ll not be tied to hours nor ’pointed times, But learn my lessons as I please myself. And to cut off all strife, here sit we down: Take you your instrument, play you the whiles— His lecture will be done ere you have tuned. [III. i. 16–23] The kitten shows her claws. She is in complete control of the situation enforcing her will on both men, and she remains in control of it for the rest of the play. Her refusal in V. ii, after she

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has married Lucentio, to come at his bidding is already implicit in this scene. The differences between the two sisters are more than differences of character, they also have a representative quality which is reflected in the way the two plots are conducted. In a society where the subjection of women is taken for granted two courses are open to the woman who does not accept this assumption: she can either resort to open revolt, or she can take the more devious, and usually more effective, line of apparent acquiescence and submission as a means to getting her own way through deception, intrigue and petticoat government. Katharina and Bianca embody these two different kinds of reaction to the existing situation; and so do the two plots, the one proceeding openly through a conflict of wills and tempers, the other moving to its end through a complicated tangle of misdirection and disguises. The Taming of the Shrew is an incisive piece of social criticism as well as an amusing play. The scope of this criticism is widened and enriched by Shakespeare’s presentation and handling of the men. Here again the main instrument is contrast. As I have pointed out, the men of Padua, with whom Lucentio may be included though he comes from Pisa, are a poor-spirited lot, content to play the marriage game along the conventional lines of dowries and intrigue. Petruchio, however, is something quite different. From the moment that he enters the play, at the opening of I. ii, his masculinity is emphasized. He is violent and aggressive, thoroughly enjoying the row with his servant, Grumio. He is always frank and honest, with himself as well as with others. He resorts to no subterfuges, but states his motive in coming to Padua so openly and unashamedly that it sounds like a challenge to instead of an acceptance of, the conventions: I come to wive it wealthily in Padua; If wealthily, then happily in Padua. He bursts in on the intrigues rather like an Elizabethan buccaneer descending on a civilized but effete Mediterranean city. He brings a breath of fresh air with him; his very language is boisterous and blustering . . . Petruchio’s other great asset is his confidence in himself and his sportsman’s love of risk. Audacity is the keynote of his wooing. Recognizing Katharina’s spirit he deliberately engages her, through his calculated familiarity

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and impudence, in a battle of wits that leads on to a physical struggle and a battle of wills. She cannot resist the challenge he throws down; and the whole affair is conducted like a game within the limits supplied by certain rules which are tacitly accepted by both. She oversteps those rules when she strikes him, but the warning he gives: ‘‘I swear I’ll cuff you, if you strike again,’’, [II. i. 220], is enough to make her realize that the rules must be kept. Neither of them must injure the other’s self-respect and, once he has released her, there must be no further resort to direct physical force. The engagement—in the military as well as the marital sense of the word—that follows is really a process by which each of them comes to know and to appreciate the other fully. And it is very significant that although they are married in III. ii they do not seem to go to bed together to consummate their marriage until the very end of the play, by which time they are allies and lovers, for Katharina has kissed Petruchio in the street at the end of V. i. It is their knowledge of, and their trust in, each other, which have grown out of experience, that give this pair such an advantage over the other two pairs at the end of the play. Hortensio and his widow do not know one another, nor do Lucentio and Bianca. How should they? Hortensio has married on the rebound, and Lucentio’s wooing of Bianca has been conducted in terms that allow of no real engagement of heart or head. The stratagems that have led to his success have not been his own but Tranio’s. It is Tranio who gets rid of Hortensio as a rival wooer, who instructs the Pedant in his part and who tells Lucentio when and how to steal the marriage. Lucentio is depicted throughout as a man besotted by love of a rather fanciful kind and, consequently, incapable of initiating any action. The brittle, bookish, artificial style of his language as a lover is an effective criticism of his shortcomings as a man. He has nothing of Petruchio’s independence, self-reliance and grasp on essentials. His lyrical description of Bianca in V. i. when he refers to her as ‘‘the wished haven of my bliss’’ [V. i. 128], is a convincing proof that he has not so much as noticed the pointers to her true nature which are set out so clearly in III. i. That The Shrew is a gay, high-spirited, rollicking play, full of broad farcical scenes and richly comic narrative passages is self-evident. What I have tried to show is that it also has a

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serious side to it. Underneath the comic exaggeration it is basically realistic. It portrays the marriage situation, not as it appeared in the romances of the day, but as it was in Shakespeare’s England. And the criticism it brings to bear on it is constructive as well as destructive. Baptista, the foolish father who knows nothing about his daughters yet seeks to order their lives, is defeated all along the line. So is Gremio, the old pantaloon, who thinks he can buy a wife. The play’s disapproval of the arranged match, in which no account is taken of the feelings of the principals, could not be plainer. Within the framework of marriage as it existed at the time, it comes out in favour of the match based on real knowledge and experience, over against the more fanciful kind of wooing that ignores facts in favour of bookishly conventional attitudes and expressions of feeling. Paradoxically enough it is Katharina and Petruchio, for each of whom it is the other, as the other really is, that matters, who embody the new revolutionary attitude to marriage, rather than Lucentio and Bianca. Source: George R. Hibbard, ‘‘The Taming of the Shrew: A Social Comedy,’’ in Shakespearean Essays, edited by Alwin Thaler and Norman Sanders, University of Tennessee Press, 1964, pp. 15–28.

Norman Sanders In the following excerpt, Sanders focuses on the importance in the play of clothing and images related to household management. By disrupting the conventions of dining and proper attire, the critic suggests, Petruchio drives home to Katherine the social and personal implications of her disorderly behavior. In both the main action and in the subplot, the critic maintains, clothing becomes indicative of the discrepancy that can exist between a person’s appearance and his or her true identity. The critic also comments briefly on the symbolic significance of music in the play and on Shakespeare’s use of imagery to achieve dramatic unity. Dining and entertainment are traditionally and theatrically symbols of concord, amity and respect; and thus it is that Kate’s first lesson is given in a travesty of a feast. She is first dragged away from the wedding banquet where, as Petruchio says, the ‘‘honest company . . . Dine with my father, drink a health to me’’ (III.ii.192– 95). The entertainment she experiences at her new home is rather different. Grumio enters to set the scene of the journey from which the guests are to be received: a journey of tired jades, lost cruppers, burst bridles, and foul ways, with the travellers

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WHEN IN THE FINAL SCENE IT IS KATE’S CAP THAT PETRUCHIO ORDERS HER TO THROW AS A BAUBLE UNDER FOOT, IT BECOMES FOR THE AUDIENCE A SYMBOL OF HER NEW REALISATION OF WHAT SHE HAS BEEN BUT IS NO LONGER.’’

mere pieces of ice in a cold world. The reception is equally calamitous: there is ‘‘no man at the door’’ to hold a stirrup or take a horse, ‘‘no regard, no attendance, no duty,’’ and no meeting in the park by the ‘‘loggerheaded and unpolished grooms.’’ And, as the scene proceeds, the music accompanying the meal becomes snippets of old ballads, the washing of the hands a slapstick routine, and the dishes are used as aggressive weapons on ‘‘heedless joltheads and unmannered slaves.’’ The food itself is burnt and dried, mere overcooked flesh that ‘‘engenders choler, and planteth anger.’’ By Petruchio’s report Kate’s bed of rest after the journey is to be of a piece with her other entertainment: Last night she slept not, nor tonight she shall not: . . . some undeserved fault I’ll find about the making of the bed And here I’ll fling the pillow, there the bolster, This way the coverlet, another way the sheets. (III.iii.191–95) Later, at a less ‘‘formal’’ level of entertainment Grumio is to drive home the lesson, only to be followed by Petruchio with the rituals of dining, and a speech which demands for its true effect that the meal he has prepared himself be either microscopic or quickly taken away from her. But although by such inverted domestic rites Kate is shown the social implications of her disorder, it is by sartorial imagery that she is shown the personal ones. For clothes can be a measure of either the inward man or of the deception he practises on others or on himself. Kate’s persecution of Bianca early in the play takes this form in Bianca’s plea:

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but for these other gawds, Unbind my hands, I’ll pull them off myself, Yea, all my raiment, to my petticoat. (II.i.3–5) Once the wedding is planned, Petruchio (as well he might) sees his preparations in terms of garments: ‘‘I will unto Venice to buy apparel ’gainst my wedding day . . . I will be sure my Katherine shall be fine . . . We will have have rings and things and fine array’’ (II.i.307–16). Bianca will not dance barefoot but will help dress her sister’s chamber. However, when the day arrives this normality is transgressed by means of clothes. Biondello heralds Petruchio’s and Grumio’s approach in a long verbal tour de force describing ‘‘a monster, a very monster in apparel.’’ Petruchio’s attire is called a shame to his estate and an ‘‘eyesore to our solemn festival.’’ But as Tranio observes he ‘‘has some meaning in his mad attire.’’ His dress is a parallel to Kate’s equally ‘‘mad’’ attitude which only Petruchio sees as being something which is donned but not so easily doffed as his outlandish garb. To me she’s married, not unto my clothes. Could I repair what she will wear in me As I can change these poor accouterments, ’Twere well for Kate and better for myself. (III.ii.116–19) The clothes imagery becomes physical comedy in the scene with the tailor and haberdasher. Petruchio states normal practice again. And now, my honey love, Will we return unto thy father’s house And revel it as bravely as the best, With silken coats and caps and golden rings, With ruffs and cuffs and fardingales and things; With scarfs and fans and double change of brav’ry. (IV.i.52–57) But at the end of the scene, by sheer verbal pyrotechnics, he has reduced the topic of clothes and their maker to ‘‘a rag, a remnant’’ and mere ‘‘masquing stuff’’; and he can universalise his lesson. Our purses shall be proud, our garments poor, For ’tis the mind that makes the body rich; And as the sun breaks through the darkest clouds So honor peereth in the meanest habit. What, is the jay more precious than the lark

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Because his feathers are more beautiful? Or is the adder better than the eel Because his painted skin contents the eye? O no, good Kate. (IV.i.172–79) When in the final scene it is Kate’s cap that Petruchio orders her to throw as a bauble under foot, it becomes for the audience a symbol of her new realisation of what she has been but is no longer. In the Bianca/Lucentio plot, too, clothes are used as a means of deception and the theme runs as a more conventional commentary on the more complex deceptions practised by Kate and Petruchio. Tranio takes his master’s ‘‘colored hat and cloak’’ as a sign of his assumption of Lucentio’s role, and puts on his ‘‘apparel and countenance.’’ Vincentio is to notice first Tranio’s attire when they first meet: ‘‘O fine villain! A silken doublet! a velvet hose! a scarlet cloak! and a copatain hat!’’ (IV.iv.63–64). Lucentio will put on a further change and go disguised ‘‘in sober robes, / To old Baptista’’ as a pedant. A true Pedant, in his turn, is clothed as it becomes him to pretend he is Vincentio; and Hortensio plays his part as a musician. While the images of clothes and household management are used as a means of showing Kate’s adjustment to society, it is the imagery of music which conveys the degree and implications of her maladjustment in the main sections of the play. I need not dwell on this, for Mr. T. W. Herbert and Mrs. T. R. Waldo have presented all the pertinent evidence in an interesting article on the subject [in Shakespeare Quarterly, 1959]. Although their principal aim was to prove Shakespeare’s sole authorship of the play, they do make some points material to my case. They point out that man’s adjustment to nature and society was frequently seen in terms of musical harmony, the cosmic expression of which was the music of the spheres; and they gather together those allusions in the play which show Kate as ‘‘anti-musical,’’ allusions which culminate with a visual impact when she breaks the lute over Hortensio’s head. However, I think we may go further and notice that while Bianca, seen by Lucentio as ‘‘the patroness of heavenly harmony,’’ is contrasted with her sister in that she ‘‘taketh most delight / In music, instruments, and poetry,’’ we are given a hint of her married frowardness by her rejection of music in the scene with Hortensio, and her willing association

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with dalliance and disguise. Thus it is ironical that whereas Kate, who at first ‘‘chides as loud / As thunder when the clouds in autumn crack,’’ is taught to sing as sweetly as the nightingale; it is Bianca who finally causes her husband to lament of her ‘‘it is harsh hearing when women are froward.’’ One final point might be made about the conscious artistry and essential unity of the play. In the induction scenes all of the themes and images are mooted: from the harsh sound of hounds and hunting horns to the Lord’s assurance that if Sly would have music ‘‘twenty caged nightingales do sing’’; from the cold bed of rejection on which Sly sleeps so soundly to the luxurious bed of acceptance in which he wakes. The water, the conserves, the sack and costly raiment all make their appearance, and are offered to the tinker as he sits like Kate on her wedding night like one ‘‘new risen from a dream.’’ Here we find too the wife who is no wife and absents herself from her husband’s bed; but who is to all appearances a humble wife ready to show her duty and make known her love with kind embracements. And finally the Lord’s whole action is like that of Petruchio an experiment in the manipulation of a human personality: for Sly, like Kate, is ‘‘monstrous’’—though it is with ale rather than pride. It is for this reason too that, while admitting the final scene in The Taming of a Shrew has some attractive features, I think Shakespeare knew what he was about when he allowed Sly’s ‘‘flattering dream or worthless fancy’’ to pass early and without note into the certainly not profound but nevertheless assured comedy of Kate’s reformation. Source: Norman Sanders, ‘‘Themes and Imagery in The Taming of the Shrew,’’ in Renaissance Papers, April 1963, pp. 63–72.

SOURCES Bloom, Harold, ‘‘The Taming of the Shrew,’’ in Shakespeare: The Invention of the Human, Riverhead Books, 1998, pp. 516–45. Garner, Shirley Nelson, ‘‘The Taming of the Shrew: Inside or Outside of the Joke?,’’ in ‘‘Bad’’ Shakespeare: Revaluations of the Shakespeare Canon, edited by Maurice Charney, Fairleigh Dickinson University Press, 1988, pp. 105–19.

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Goddard, Harold C., ‘‘‘The Taming of the Shrew,’’’ in The Meaning of Shakespeare, University of Chicago Press, 1951, pp. 68–73. Hibbard, George R., ‘‘‘The Taming of the Shrew’: A Social Comedy,’’ in Shakespearean Essays, edited by Alwin Thaler and Norman Sanders, University of Tennessee Press, 1964, pp. 15–28. Kahn, Coppe´lia, ‘‘‘The Taming of the Shrew’: Shakespeare’s Mirror of Marriage,’’ in Modern Language Studies, Vol. 5, No. 1, Spring 1975, pp. 88–102. Muir, Kenneth, ‘‘The Taming of the Shrew,’’ in Shakespeare’s Comic Sequence, Barnes & Noble, 1979, pp. 22–8. Nevo, Ruth, ‘‘Kate of Kate Hall,’’ in Comic Transformations in Shakespeare, Methuen, 1980, pp. 37–52. Oliver, H. J., ‘‘Introduction,’’ in The Taming of the Shrew, Oxford at the Clarendon Press, 1982, pp. 1–75. Ranald, Margaret Loftus, ‘‘The Manning of the Haggard: or The Taming of the Shrew,’’ in Essays in Literature, Vol. 1, No. 2, Fall 1974, pp. 149–65. Sanders, Norman, ‘‘Themes and Imagery in The Taming of the Shrew,’’ in Renaissance Papers, April 1963, pp. 63–72. Shakespeare, William, The Taming of the Shrew, 2nd series, edited by Brian Morris, Arden Shakespeare, 1982. Thompson, Ann, ‘‘Introduction,’’ in The Taming of the Shrew, Cambridge University Press, 1984, pp. 1–41.

FURTHER READING Asp, Caroline, ‘‘‘Be bloody, bold and resolute’: Tragic Action and Sexual Stereotyping in Macbeth,’’ in Studies in Philology, Vol. 78, No.2, Spring 1981, pp. 153–69. Asp discusses the effect that stereotyping sexual roles has on the major characters in Macbeth. Bradbrook, Muriel C., ‘‘Dramatic Role as Social Image: A Study of The Taming of the Shrew,’’ in Shakespeare Jahrbuch, Vol. 94, 1958, pp. 132–50. Bradbrook examines Shakespeare’s adaptation of the traditional roles associated with characters in earlier treatments of the shrew story, focusing in particular on his development of the characters of Katherine and Petruchio.

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Brooks, Charles, ‘‘Shakespeare’s Romantic Shrews,’’ in Shakespeare Quarterly, Vol. 1, No. 3, Summer 1960, pp. 351–56. Brooks compares Katherine and Bianca with other Shakespearean female characters. Dusinberre, Juliet, ‘‘The Taming of the Shrew: Women, Acting, and Power,’’ in Studies in the Literary Imagination, Vol. 26, No. 1, Spring 1993, pp. 67–84. Dusinberre points out ways in which the play calls attention to the Elizabethan practice of using boy actors in female roles and examines the effect of this practice on the play’s portrayal of gender relations. Heffernan, Carol F., ‘‘The Taming of the Shrew: The Bourgeoisie in Love,’’ in Essays in Literature, Vol. 12, No. 1, Spring 1985, pp. 3–14. Heffernan analyzes the play’s portrayal of the values of the emergent middle class and its critique of the materialistic nature of Elizabethan marriage arrangements. Heilman, Robert B., ‘‘The ‘Taming’ Untamed, or, The Return of the Shrew,’’ in Modern Language Quarterly, Vol. 27, No. 2, June 1966, pp. 147–61. Heilman argues against twentieth-century interpretations of The Shrew that turn this ‘‘free-swinging farce’’ into ‘‘a brittlely ironic comic drama.’’ Ranald, Margaret Loftus, ‘‘The Performance of Feminism in The Taming of the Shrew,’’ in Theatre Research International, Vol. 19, No. 3, Fall 1994, pp. 214–25. This article provides a brief review of the play’s performance history, focusing in particular on how the relationship between Katherine and Petruchio has been portrayed. Traversi, Derek, ‘‘‘The Taming of the Shrew,’’’ in William Shakespeare: The Early Comedies, The British Council, 1960, pp. 14–22. Traversi maintains that The Taming of the Shrew defends the view that male domination of women is ordained by nature. West, Michael, ‘‘The Folk Background of Petruchio’s Wooing Dance: Male Supremacy in ‘The Taming of the Shrew,’’’ in Shakespeare Studies: An Annual Gathering of Research, Criticism, and Reviews, Vol. 7, 1974, pp. 65–73. West examines similarities between the play and folk traditions of courtship in arguing that the principal source of the play’s imaginative appeal is its lusty depiction of the rites of sexual initiation.

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The Tempest The first record of its performance, in the court Revels Account, indicates that The Tempest was presented before James I and his court on November 1, 1611, Hallomas night, at Whitehall, by Shakespeare’s own acting company, the King’s Men. The Tempest was performed for the court again around February 1613, along with a dozen other plays of a festive and celebratory nature, to celebrate the wedding of James I’s daughter, Elizabeth to the Elector Palatine, who would later briefly reign as the king of Bohemia. The performance date of November 1611 is especially useful in dating the composition of The Tempest because the play is not listed in the notebook of a London doctor named Simon Foreman, who jotted down the plays he saw. Foreman noted that he saw Cymbeline (1610) and The Winter’s Tale (1611) but does not list The Tempest. Foreman died in September of 1611.

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Its first printing appeared in 1623 when The Tempest was given pride of place in the commemorative Folio edition of Shakespeare’s plays, issued and introduced by two of his fellow players in the King’s Men, John Heminges and Henry Condell. It is a particularly good text among Shakespeare’s plays, where bad editions and poor printing can cause editors much distress. Its source is thought to be a clean copy made for publication directly from Shakespeare’s own papers by his acting company’s own scrivener, Ralph Crane. (The company’s scrivener was the man who copied out the plays

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and performed other secretarial functions, an essential person in an age before any mechanical reproduction existed other than printing done with moveable type set by hand.) Uncharacteristically, with the exception of Love’s Labors Lost, the plot of The Tempest has not been taken from any previous story. It is Shakespeare’s own invention, but it is compounded from folk stories and several significant contemporary elements and events. In June 1609, a fleet of nine ships with some 500 colonists set out from Plymouth, England, for Jamestown, Virginia, intending to settle in the New World. Around Bermuda, the lead ship, Sea Venture, was separated from the rest of the fleet in a storm. All the other ships safely reached the port of Jamestown. The Sea Venture’s crew and passengers, including the admiral and the governor-to-be of the colony, were given up for dead. However, on May 23, 1610, nearly a year later, the passengers from the wrecked ship arrived in Jamestown in two ships they themselves had made. Two accounts of their shipwreck, of the island in the Caribbean they happened upon, and of their subsequent experiences, were published in London in 1610. One was A Discovery of the Barmudas, otherwise called Ile of Divels by Sylvester Jourdain. The other, which appeared about a month later, was The True Declaration of the estate of the Colonie in Virginia. It was a report of the Virginia Company, which was financing the venture. Shakespeare was a friend of two of the leaders of the Virginia Company, the Earls of Southampton and Pembroke; he is likely not only to have seen the ‘‘Bermuda pamphlets,’’ as these reports were called, but to have considered their particulars with his friends. It is also certain that Shakespeare, in addition, had read Montaigne’s essay ‘‘Of the Cannibals,’’ in which the great French essayist speculates that the savages of the New World, despite their primitive ways, may have significant human virtues that the Europeans lack. Since the later part of the twentieth century, the intimate connection that The Tempest has with the discovery and exploitation of the New World has made it of particular interest to scholars concerned with colonialism, patriarchy, and the hierarchical relations associated with them. For people in the seventeenth century, before the closing of the theaters by the Puritans in 1642

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or after their reopening by Charles II with the Restoration of the monarchy in 1661, after the fall of the Puritan Commonwealth, The Tempest was a play that lent itself to celebratory spectacle and imaginative scenery. Shakespeare’s theater had not used scenery. It was an open air theater, modeled on the platforms that had been set up in inn-yards when plays were presented. But The Tempest includes a masque. The masque, a staged spectacular performed for court entertainment during the years of Charles I, was already gaining popularity under James I. It was heavily dependent upon scenery and stage effects. When Charles II reopened the theaters in 1661, he made Sir William Davenant head of a company of actors called The Duke’s Men and gave him performance rights to a number of preCromwellian plays including nine by Shakespeare, of which The Tempest was one. A storm, spirits, apparitions, magic, a monster, and an enchanted isle all lent themselves to the sort of spectacular opulence that Davenant recalled from when he had staged masques for King Charles I. In his effort to tame and to bring Restoration sophistication to plays which were considered rough and primitive, in addition to rewriting them, Davenant introduced scenery and spectacular stage machinery. The Tempest, now called The Enchanted Isle, rewritten by Davenant and John Dryden, with many new songs set to music thought to have been composed for the play by Henry Purcell, and staged by Davenant, was a very different play from Shakespeare’s. Significantly, however, it was one of the principle plays instrumental in inspiring the design of the proscenium stage, which could accommodate panels of painted scenery— called flats—and, consequently, helped shape how theaters were imagined and built until the middle of the twentieth century. Because it is the last complete play Shakespeare wrote without a collaborator, and since his death in 1616 followed the play’s composition only by some five years, and since it is a play about a magus giving up his magic (which can be seen as comparable to an artist separating himself from his art) and retiring into a life where ‘‘every third thought shall be my grave,’’ The Tempest has come to be seen as Shakespeare’s valediction, an attribute that clings to it even if some textual scholarship demurs.

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Act I, scene ii (Ó Shakespeare Collection, Special Collections Library, University of Michigan)

PLOT SUMMARY Act 1, Scene 1 The Tempest begins with a great sea storm tearing a ship apart, the efforts of the crew to save the ship, and the curses of some of the passengers, who seem to think the mariners are not making a great enough effort in trying to keep the ship afloat. But all is lost. The ship cracks in the storm and goes down.

Act 1, Scene 2 Miranda and her father, Prospero, sit on the shore watching the sea as Miranda describes the storm and the shipwreck, the clash of sea and sky. She tells her father, too, how her heart went out to the creatures on the ship and how she suffered with them. So deep is her pity, and so well is she acquainted with her father, that she guesses that the storm is his work, and begs him, if it is, to calm the waves he has set thrashing. Acknowledging her insight, Prospero tells her to

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be easy, that all aboard the ship are safe and that he has done nothing but for her benefit. He then asks her if she remembers anything of her childhood or how they came to be living on the island. She tells him she remembers several serving women who attended her, and he tells her the story of their life before the time she can remember, before their life on the island Prospero had been the Duke of Milan, but he had been more devoted to study than to governing his realm. He had given over that responsibility to his brother, Antonio. Greedy for power, rather than serving as an honorable deputy, Antonio confederated with the king of Naples, pledging to pay tribute taxes to him, in order to banish Prospero and take his place. Prospero and Miranda were cast off on a poor boat and left to whatever fate befell them at sea, but Gonzalo, an honest minister, supplied them with garments, food, and, of great importance, some of Prospero’s books. They survived at sea and the currents took them to an uninhabited

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island. Prospero tells Miranda that now fortune has sent all his enemies to him on the ship she has seen wrecked and that if he acts carefully, he can bring them both good fortune. But now he tells her she is feeling sleepy, and she sleeps. Prospero summons Ariel, a spirit of the air, whom he commands, and questions him how well he performed his task of simulating a shipwreck and if everyone is safe. Ariel reports that all went well and everyone is safe upon the island, but wandering about, dazed, in several separated groups. Thus the king of Naples thinks his son, Ferdinand, is drowned, and Ferdinand believes his father has perished. When Prospero tells Ariel there is more work to be done, Ariel reminds him that Prospero has promised to free him. Prospero responds angrily that he will but not ‘‘before the time be out.’’ He reminds Ariel of the condition he (Ariel) was in before Prospero arrived. Ariel had been the servant of an evil witch named Sycorax who had confined him in the hollow of a tree after he refused to obey her. When she died, Ariel remained imprisoned for twelve years until Prospero arrived and freed him. If Ariel complains, Prospero threatens, he will ‘‘rend an oak and peg’’ him in it for another twelve years. Ariel begs pardon and promises obedience, and Prospero promises him his freedom once his work is finished. He commands Ariel to turn himself into a sea nymph now and return to Prospero in that shape. When Ariel is gone, Prospero wakes Miranda and summons his other slave, the ugly and deformed Caliban. Not an airy spirit but a brute creature of the earth, whom Prospero employs to carry firewood, Caliban is the son of the witch Sycorax. When Prospero and Miranda arrived upon the island, they treated Caliban well and taught him to speak. He, in turn, showed them secret places on the island where they could get food. But Caliban’s nature is brutish and base. He tried to rape Miranda and people the island with his progeny. Prospero then made Caliban his slave rather than his pupil. He exercises his control by means of magic power: he disciplines and punishes Caliban by wracking him with intense body pain. After Prospero dismisses Caliban, Ariel returns. He is leading Ferdinand, the king’s son. Although Ariel is invisible to Ferdinand, Ferdinand can hear the songs he sings. One of them, ‘‘Full fathom five thy father lies,’’ reminds

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Ferdinand of his father, whom he believes is drowned. When Ferdinand and Miranda see each other, with one look exchanged, they fall in love. This is exactly what Prospero wishes to happen, yet to test the lovers, he says, and to make their love not seem too easy, he sets himself up as an obstacle to it, assumes a forbidding attitude, accuses Ferdinand of sneaking onto the island to steal his daughter and take his place. Miranda is shocked to see her father thus enraged, tells him how she loves Ferdinand, but Prospero rebuffs her. When Ferdinand tries to resist Prospero, Prospero casts a spell on him that makes his muscles powerless. Ferdinand says he does not mind being a prisoner as long as he can see Miranda but once a day from his prison. Miranda tells him not to worry, that her father is of a better nature than what he seems to be. To Ariel, in an aside, Prospero rejoices at their love and promises him his freedom after their work is completed

Act 2, Scene 1 On another part of the island, Alonso, king of Naples; his brother, Sebastian; Prospero’s brother, the usurping Duke of Milan, Antonio; Gonzalo, the counselor who had supplied Prospero with provisions and some of his books when he was set adrift; and several courtiers, all survivors of the wreck, wander about, amazed at this strange place. Gonzalo advises the king to be merry and not to despair of his son, Ferdinand, who is not among them. As Gonzalo and Alonso talk, Antonio and Sebastian mock them, particularly Gonzalo’s optimism, intended to distract the king from his grief. From their conversation, the audience/reader learns that they are all coming home from the marriage of Alonso’s daughter, Claribel, to the king of Tunisia. As they are speaking, Ariel enters invisible and casts a sleep spell on everyone except for Antonio and Sebastian. As the rest sleep, Antonio goads Sebastian to the murder of his brother Alonso, the king of Naples, so that he may take his brother’s place. Antonio reminds him by way of encouragement, how he successfully supplanted his brother, Prospero. As they stand with swords drawn about to commit murder, Ariel sets up a buzzing in Gonzalo’s ears. He wakes, sees them drawn, and wakes the king. Sebastian and Antonio explain that they drew their swords because they heard a noise as of a herd of dangerous cattle and were preparing to defend the king. Their explanation accepted, the

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party, weapons drawn, move from where they are to find a safer spot on the island. Ariel closes the scene, voicing his intention to report to Prospero what has so far happened.

Act 2, Scene 2 Caliban is alone on stage carrying wood for Prospero, cursing him, and describing how Prospero’s spirits torment him with cramps and aches for every small act of defiance. When he sees Trinculo, Alonso’s jester, approaching, he assumes it is one of Prospero’s agents come to punish him and he lies down, hoping to escape his notice. Trinculo, seeing a storm approaching, looks for some place to take shelter and sees Caliban’s form, mostly hidden under the garment he is wearing. Trinculo pokes about. Seeing in Caliban the strange shape of a ‘‘monster,’’ he reflects that such a creature put on display in England might make his fortune. Then he slips under Caliban’s garment for protection when he hears thunder in the distance. Stephano, the king’s butler, enters. He is carrying a bottle and he is drunk and singing a bawdy song. Caliban, fearing he is one of Prospero’s spirits about to hurt him cries out for mercy, startling Stephano, who wonders what he has come upon. Investigating, since Trinculo and Caliban are lying together under Caliban’s garment, he thinks there is a fourlegged monster partially in the shape of a man, partly in a more brutish, perhaps fish-like form. Caliban continues to cry out in fear. In order to calm the strange monster Stephano pours some of his liquor into Caliban’s mouth. Hearing Stephano talking to himself and to the monster, hidden Trinculo recognizes Stephano’s voice and calls out his name, amazing the drunken Stephano. Stephano drags Trinculo out from under Caliban’s garment. Caliban, now drunk, seeing the two, considers that they are ‘‘fine things.’’ Additionally, he believes that Stephano, bearing the bottle, must be a god. Caliban swears he will serve him. They all drink more, and the two survivors tease Caliban, Stephano saying he is the man in the moon, and are delighted by Caliban’s gullibility. Caliban promises to show them all the glories of the island, vowing again to serve Stephano now and proclaiming his freedom from Prospero.

Act 3, Scene 1 In front of Prospero’s cell, Ferdinand is doing Caliban’s work of log bearing. Miranda enters

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and Prospero follows, eavesdropping, unseen by either of them. Miranda expresses pity that Ferdinand must work as he does and offers to do the log bearing for him. He asks her name and she tells him, realizing she has violated her father’s command. They proclaim their love for each other, Ferdinand saying she is finer than any woman he may ever have cared for and Miranda saying that although she has not seen other men except her father and Caliban to compare him to, she would want no other but him. She calls him ‘‘husband.’’ He calls her ‘‘mistress, dearest.’’ They take hands and bind their hearts together. They depart in different directions leaving a delighted Prospero alone who proclaims that he can not be so glad of their love as they are, but that he could not have a greater gladness at anything than he has at their union.

Act 3, Scene 2 Caliban, Stephano, and Trinculo have gotten drunker. Caliban proclaims himself Stephano’s slave. In their drunkenness, they begin to quarrel, Caliban claiming that Trinculo mocks him. Ariel enters invisible and adds to the chaos and makes them more quarrelsome by throwing his voice and making it seem like Trinculo is indeed saying disrespectful things and calling both Caliban and Stephano liars. Caliban tells Stephano that the island is ruled by Prospero, whom he calls a tyrant and a sorcerer, who has cheated Caliban out of it. Caliban urges Stephano to seize Prospero’s magic books, burn them, and kill Prospero, then become king of the island and marry Miranda. Trinculo and Stephano agree to the conspiracy, but Ariel, invisible, makes music sound around them, amazing and frightening them. In response, Caliban explains the enchantments of the island to them, in a speech the beauty of whose language contradicts the brutishness of his character. They leave the stage unwittingly following Ariel, led by his music.

Act 3, Scene 3 The scene shifts to Alonso, Sebastian, Antonio, Gonzalo, and their party. They are also being led in a trance around the island until Gonzalo proclaims he is too weary to go any further. Alonso agrees and adds that it does not matter to him what they do since he is out of hope that his son Ferdinand is still alive. Antonio and Sebastian voice their gladness to each other that the king is in despair and plot to make a second attempt on his life that evening.

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Prospero and Ariel enter unseen and Ariel directs a group of spirits who bring in a table with a banquet set for the amazed travelers. But before they can begin to eat, the banquet vanishes and Ariel appears in the form of a harpy. Addressing Alonso, Sebastian, and Antonio, he calls them ‘‘three men of sin.’’ He tells them that they have been spat up on the island for the wrong they did to Prospero and that they will suffer unless they repent the evil they have done from the depths of their hearts. Prospero praises Ariel for his work and says that he is now going to visit Ferdinand and Miranda. Coming out of his trance, Alonso tells Gonzalo he heard Prospero’s name spoken and mention made of the crimes he has committed against him. The party advances and Gonzalo tells the courtiers to follow closely, for they are desperate men and he is old, slow, and tired.

Act 4, Scene 1 Prospero reveals his true, glad feelings about their love to Ferdinand and Miranda. He sets, however, a very serious condition for his continuing favor. Ferdinand must refrain from breaking Miranda’s ‘‘virgin knot,’’ before their wedding. Ferdinand vows that willingly he will obey. Prospero then summons Ariel and commands him to present a masque, a wedding pageant for the lovers. There follows then a little play within the play in which Iris, the goddess of the rainbow, which is a bridge between heaven and earth, Ceres, the goddess of agricultural plenty, Juno, goddess of heaven, and several nymphs sing, dance, and offer their best wishes for joy and plenty to the couple. A special point is made that Venus and Cupid, representatives of erotic rather than chaste love, are to be absent from the pageant. In the midst of the pageant, however, Prospero recalls the plot against him by Caliban, Stephano, and Trinculo, and in a sudden fit, breaks off the masque. Ferdinand is surprised by the sudden change. Prospero tells him not to be disturbed, and in a famous speech, ‘‘Our revels now are ended,’’ explains that what he saw were merely shadows which have vanished as everything will vanish, including ourselves, for ‘‘we are such stuff / As dreams are made on, and our little life / Is rounded with a sleep.’’ He tells them he will walk by himself a bit ‘‘to still his beating mind,’’ and wishing him peace, the lovers depart.

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Prospero summons Ariel to deal with Caliban and his cohorts. He commands Ariel to hang fancy garments on a clothes line. The drunken conspirators enter, soaking wet and contentious, having been led by Ariel’s music through foul bogs. Stephano and Trinculo are diverted from their purpose, murdering Prospero, by the allure of the garments. Caliban warns them to ignore the fancy clothing, that they are a snare and a delusion. The drunken servants are taken in by the glitter, however, and when they reach to take the garments, Prospero and Ariel set a pack of fierce dogs upon them.

Act 5, Scene 1 Prospero appears in his magic robes with his book and magician’s staff ready to conclude the work he undertook when he first planned the tempest. He asks Ariel how the king and his followers are faring. Ariel tells him they are all prisoners, unable to leave the lime grove in front of his cell. Alonso, Sebastian, and Antonio, he tells Prospero, are ‘‘distracted,’’ and the rest watch them, grieving. Ariel says the spectacle would be enough to soften his heart were he human. Prospero then reveals the motive for his plot when he agrees with Ariel and explains that he has set reason above fury and not brought his enemies to him for vengeance but, if they are penitent, for reconciliation. He instructs Ariel to bring the king’s party to him. Ariel departs. Alone, Prospero invokes the elves that haunt such natural places as hills, brooks, and lakes and whose powers he has commanded. He reviews the supernatural feats he has accomplished, like ‘‘bedim[ming] the noontide sun,’’ and vows now to ‘‘abjure’’ ‘‘this rough magic’’ when his work is finished. He has one more task to accomplish and afterwards, he will break his staff and drown his book. Ariel returns leading the king’s party, who now stand, captive, within a charmed circle; the king, Antonio, and Sebastian are jerking like madmen, the others are trying to attend to them. Prospero orders ‘‘solemn’’ music to sound and as their spirits are calmed, he addresses each, reintroducing himself. He speaks first to Gonzalo, recognizes his virtue, and calls him ‘‘honorable’’ and ‘‘good.’’ He rebukes Alonso for his role in his [Prospero’s] overthrow and similarly reprimands Sebastian. Turning to his own brother, first denouncing his unnatural ambition in usurping his place and then his plot to murder Alonso, Prospero forgives him. As the king’s party

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MEDIA ADAPTATIONS 

A Tempestade, an opera in Portuguese by Ronaldo Miranda, premiered in 2006.



Caliban’s Hour (1995) is a novel by Tad Williams set twenty years after the last act of The Tempest. Caliban travels to Naples, breaks into Miranda’s bedroom with the desire to avenge himself upon Prospero by murdering her, and tells her, first, the story of The Tempest from his point of view.



The 1957 science fiction movie Forbidden Planet turns Prospero’s island into a planet, the shipwrecked castaways into space cadets, Caliban into a robot named Robby, and Prospero himself into a mad scientist who has unleashed the destructive forces of the Freudian id.



In Prospero’s Books, John Gielgud is Prospero in Peter Greenaway’s highly sensuous reimagination of the play, which premiered in 1991.



‘‘Requiem for Methuselah,’’ episode No. 76 of Star Trek: Original Series, was first broadcast on February 14, 1969. The episode was written by Jerome Bixby, and

awakens from their spell, Prospero changes from his magician’s robe back into court clothing. Prospero then sends Ariel to the cove where the ship lies safely anchored, instructing him to bring the crew to him. Gonzalo is the first to speak. He issues a prayer that ‘‘some heavenly power guide us out of this fearful country!’’ Prospero interrupts him by introducing himself to the king as ‘the wronged Duke of Milan.’’ He embraces him and welcomes him to the island. In a daze, Alonso cannot be sure if what is happening is illusion and the result of enchantment or if the actual Prospero stands before him in reality. No matter which, Alonso says, since he has seen Prospero, ‘‘Th’affliction of

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directed by Murray Golden, and derives its plot and characters from The Tempest. 

The Tempest was an opera based on ` It preShakespeare’s play by Thomas Ades. miered in 2004 and featured a libretto by Meredith Oakes.



The Tempest, Derek Jarman’s 1979 film adaptation, deconstructs and recomposes Shakespeare’s play by cutting it into pieces, rearranging them, and adding some new ones, like the high camp ending—a production number with a chorus line of sailors dancing in a shower of golden glitter and singing ‘‘Stormy Weather.’’



Paul Mazursky’s 1982 film, called simply Tempest, turns Prospero into a bitter architect whose actress wife is unfaithful and who flees to a Greek island with his daughter and his girlfriend.



In 1998, Jack Bender directed a version of The Tempest starring Peter Fonda. It was set in the American south between 1851 and 1863 in the period preceding and including the Civil War.

my mind mends.’’ He imagines Prospero has ‘‘a most strange story’’ to tell, and without even being asked resigns as Duke of Milan and begs Prospero’s pardon for the wrongs he has done him. Prospero embraces Gonzalo, scolds Sebastian and Antonio for their plot against Alonso, but promises not to tell him of it, at least not now. He reviles Antonio again, whom he says he cannot call brother, but forgives him and demands his dukedom back. Throughout the scene Antonio says nothing. It is the job of the director and actor or the reader to imagine his response, whether he is gracious and penitent or resentful and capitulates only because he has no other choice.

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Alonso then tells Prospero that despite this good fortune his grief is still great because in the tempest he lost his son, Ferdinand. Prospero commiserates by telling that he has suffered a similar loss in the storm, that he has lost his daughter. Alonso speaks what must be Prospero’s very thoughts and the end of his scheme. ‘‘O heavens,’’ he says, ‘‘that they were living both in Naples, / The King and Queen there!’’ After Prospero reassures the company that he is Prospero, he shows them the cell in which he lives, and reveals Ferdinand and Miranda within playing a game of chess. Alonso is astonished by the vision of his son alive. Ferdinand kneels to his father. Miranda is dazzled by the sight of humanity and utters her astonishment: ‘‘O, wonder! / How many goodly creatures are there here! / How beauteous mankind is! O brave new world / That has such people in’t.’’ Prospero checks her delicately, having had experience of mankind, and says, ‘‘’Tis new to thee.’’ The parents all agree upon the marriage. Gonzalo gives voice to the optimism which governs the play and is the result of the triumph of reconciliation over revenge. He tells them to ‘‘rejoice beyond a common joy,’’ and asks rhetorically, ‘‘Was Milan thrust from Milan that his issue / Should become kings of Naples?’’ He ends by celebrating how ‘‘all of us’’ found ‘‘ourselves / When no man was his own.’’ Ariel enters with the amazed crew of the ship and then leaves to bring in Caliban, Stephano, and Trinculo. Prospero takes responsibility for Caliban: ‘‘this thing of darkness I / Acknowledge mine.’’ Caliban vows that he was ‘‘a thrice-double ass’’ to take Stephano for a god, and promises to be ‘‘wise’’ and to ‘‘seek for grace.’’ Prospero invites the court party into his small cell to rest and says that in the morning they can all set out for Naples where the wedding of Ferdinand and Miranda will be celebrated and then he will go back to Milan, to govern, but ‘‘where / Every third thought will be my grave.’’

Epilogue When the stage is clear, Prospero remains and addresses the audience directly as a man, like other men, with no magic powers, or even as the actor who has played Prospero. He has, he says no strength but the strength of prayer and begs the audience to set him free from the spell of the island with their applause.

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CHARACTERS Adrian Adrian is a courtier stranded on Prospero’s island with Alonso’s group.

Alonso The King of Naples, Alonso is returning from Tunisia, where he has given his daughter, Claribel, in marriage. He conspired with Antonio in the coup against Prospero some twelve years earlier.

Antonio Antonio overthrew his brother, Prospero, and became Duke of Milan twelve years before the start of the play. By his orders, Prospero and Miranda were set adrift at sea.

Ariel Ariel is an air spirit who had been confined in a tree by the witch, Sycorax. When Prospero arrived on the island, he freed Ariel from that prison, but did not grant him liberty, making him rather the primary artificer of his magic. Prospero promises, however, to free Ariel after his present enterprise. Ariel has the power to be invisible or to assume whatever shapes, or become whatever sounds, he chooses.

Boatswain The boatswain is one of the crewmen who battle the storm and must contend at the same time with the angry passengers in the first scene during the apparent shipwreck.

Caliban Caliban is a strange and monstrous creature, partially human, partially bestial. He is the son of the witch, Sycorax, and a demon. He is Prospero’s slave and drudge. Although Prospero had tried to tame him and had taught him language, Caliban remained a brute, but an eloquent brute with an aesthetic sensitivity as well as a debased appetite. Caliban attempted to rape Miranda. Prospero controls him by tormenting him, through his magic, with physical pain. When the shipwrecked party arrive on the island, Caliban is thrown into company with Alonso’s butler, Stephano, and with Alonso’s jester, Trinculo. Stephano gets Caliban drunk and, being drunk, Caliban takes Stephano for a god and makes him his new master, then goads

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him on to murder Prospero and become ruler of the island.

Ceres Ceres is the earth goddess of agricultural plenty who lost her daughter Persephone when Pluto raped her and took her to his death kingdom, Hades. Ceres appears in the wedding masque Prospero presents to Ferdinand and Miranda to wish bounteousness upon them.

Ferdinand Ferdinand is a prince, the son of Alonso, the king of Naples. He is cast upon Prospero’s island by himself, separated from his father during the shipwreck. Ferdinand is convinced that his father has been drowned. When he sees Miranda, he falls in love with her instantly. He is tender, upstanding, and chaste in his virtue.

Gonzalo Gonzalo is a wise and tired old counselor to Antonio. He had helped Prospero at the time of his expulsion from Milan, supplying him with provisions and the most important volumes of his books. Gonzalo is of an optimistic nature and on the island he tries to keep up the king’s good cheer.

John Light as Caliban and Patrick Stewart as Prospero in Act I, scene ii at the Royal Shakespeare Theatre, 2006 (Ó Donald Cooper/Photostage. Reproduced by permission)

Iris Iris is the goddess of the rainbow. She appears in Prospero’s wedding masque for Ferdinand and Miranda. With the rainbow she joins heaven and earth.

Juno The goddess Juno appears in Prospero’s wedding masque representing heavenly blessings.

Miranda Miranda is Prospero’s well-educated but innocent daughter. Until those who were shipwrecked appeared on the island, she had never seen a man save her father and Caliban (to the degree that he is a man). When she sees Ferdinand, Miranda falls in love with him immediately. She persists in loving him despite her father’s apparent objections to him and despite her usual obedience to her father.

arts, and to the practice of magic than to governing, Prospero delegated most of his authority to his brother Antonio. Antonio, thus elevated, was overcome by the lust to hold power completely and banished Prospero from Milan. With his infant daughter, Miranda, Prospero was set adrift in a small boat and left to the mercies of the sea. The currents carried the boat to an island inhabited only by spirits, an evil witch who ruled them, and her son. Through the power of his magic, Prospero overcame the power of Sycorax the witch, and assumed command of the spirits and of her son, the half-human, halfbestial Caliban.

Sebastian Prospero Twelve years before the start of The Tempest, Prospero had been the Duke of Milan. More devoted to his books, to the study of the liberal

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Sebastian is the brother of Alonso, the king of Naples. He, too, is shipwrecked on the island with his brother. Antonio goads Sebastian to kill Alonso and become king.

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Stephano Stephano is Alonso’s butler. On the island, he has found a cask of wine from the ship. He is drunk throughout the play. When Caliban drinks some of his liquor and gets drunk, he thinks Stephano is a god and convinces him to overthrow Prospero, take Miranda to wife, and rule the island.

Trinculo Trinculo is Alonso’s jester and Stephano’s friend. He participates in Caliban’s drunken plot to kill Prospero.

THEMES Revenge versus Reconciliation Nearly all the tragedies written during the reigns of Queen Elizabeth and King James I were plays about revenge. The greatest among them are by Shakespeare, who examined the theme dramatically, and the idea itself in nuanced soliloquies and conversations in his most complex tragedies. In The Tempest, he took a situation that the dramatists of his age were accustomed to present in a revenge tragedy and used it to fashion a reconciliation comedy. The first act of The Tempest actually comes after the events of a tragedy—the usurpatious brother overthrows the righteous ruler. Instead of killing Prospero, however, Antonio sets him adrift on the sea. And instead of seeking revenge, Prospero, the righteous ruler, forgives his brother, seeks reconciliation, and sets reason above passion.

Art, Magic, and Illusion The Tempest is a play about art, magic, and illusion, and it depends upon illusion for its effect. The art that Prospero has mastered, and Shakespeare’s art as a dramatist, reflect each other. Both can make unreal things seem real and both can influence, by their art, how others will feel. [And as any playwright may fear might happen among his audience or his readers, Prospero occasionally puts people to sleep.] Shakespeare’s audience would have been aware of two types of magic, the white (good) and the black (evil). Prospero is a theurgist. He practices white magic—a force derived from divine sources and used for the control of natural elements. This form of magic has affinities with the natural sciences, as in the study of alchemy (the

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forerunner of modern chemistry). The other form of magic, black magic, is tangentially related to the action of The Tempest. Black magicians, like Caliban’s mother, the witch Sycorax, derive their power from demonic forces.

Chastity Central to The Tempest is the theme of chastity. Prospero is adamant that Ferdinand and Miranda remain chaste until their wedding night. He warns Ferdinand that if he ‘‘break’’ Miranda’s ‘‘virgin knot before / All sanctimonious ceremonies may / With full and holy rite be minist’red,’’ that ‘‘No sweet aspersion shall the heavens let fall / To make this contract grow; but barren hate, / Soureyed disdain, and discord,’’ will be the result of their union. In the masque itself, Juno pointedly asks Iris about Venus and Cupid, patrons of unchaste, erotic love. Iris assures her they will not be present and will cause no trouble to Ferdinand and Miranda ‘‘Whose vows are, that no bed-right shall be paid,’’ until after their marriage. The importance of chastity for Prospero is its reliance on reason to command passion, which is his course with regard to vengeance and forgiveness, and which is what art (or magic) is: the domination of raw natural phenomena by the organizing and ordering process of the intelligence and the rational will.

Humanity Versus Brutality When Miranda exclaims upon seeing Alonso’s party for the first time, ‘‘O brave new world / That has such people in’t!’’ Prospero tempers her enthusiasm, saying, ‘‘’Tis new to thee.’’ In her naı¨ vete´, she is actually echoing a similar thought to the one Hamlet utters with much more sophistication when he declaims to Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, ‘‘What a piece of work is man.’’ What Prospero is pointing out to her is that, despite the pleasing form that most people present, bestiality resides in men as surely as it does in Caliban. Caliban represents the irrational and brutal forces that reside within mankind as well as the noble ones. And Caliban is also susceptible to noble insight as his final promise shows, and to delicate sensibility, as his exquisite speeches describing the island demonstrate. The discovery of savages and cannibals in the New World shook the common understanding of what people actually are. In The Tempest, Shakespeare seems to be tracing the range of human possibility from the bestial and brutish

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Valediction

TOPICS FOR FURTHER STUDY 

In a well-developed essay of not less than five hundred words, compare and contrast The Tempest (Shakespeare’s original) with Davenant and Dryden’s version (which is readily available on-line).



Imagine you are a social worker assigned the family of Prospero, Miranda, and Caliban as part of your case load. Write a report of your visit to that family including discussions of their environment, their characters, and their interactions. State what you think their essential problems are and what actions ought to be taken to aid this family.

Write one monologue each for three of the major characters of The Tempest in which that character gives his or her take on the events of the play. Present your monologues to the class.  Imagine you are a sailor on board the ship that is apparently shipwrecked at the beginning of The Tempest. Write a letter to a friend back in Milan describing what you experienced yourself, where you were during the action of the play, what you saw, and how it all has affected you. 





Write an adaptation of The Tempest set in contemporary times, in contemporary settings with contemporary characters and situations, reflecting similar themes and concerns to those found in The Tempest. Read Shakespeare’s King Lear, and in a thoughtfully crafted essay of at least five hundred words, compare Lear with Prospero. Focus on their relationships to their daughters, their power, and the consequences of their actions.

in Caliban, through the virtuous and rational, as exemplified, for example, by Ferdinand, and reaching to the ethereal, as represented by Ariel.

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The Tempest is the last complete play that Shakespeare wrote. Afterwards, he collaborated with John Fletcher on Henry VIII and The Two Noble Kinsmen. Only five years after finishing The Tempest, moreover, he died. Readers have always had a sense that when Prospero gives up the practice of magic, Shakespeare is suggesting his own farewell to playwriting and the theater. Like Shakespeare, Prospero makes the story of The Tempest happen. He set it in motion with the storm, and he directs the actions of the characters through his magical interventions. Like Prospero, Shakespeare is a kind of magician, having created characters out of thin air, his imagination, and past events in his plays. The story of The Tempest itself is, also, the conclusion of a much older and longer story, the overthrow of Prospero by his brother, and it is the resolution of that story. Prospero not only abjures his magic, but leaves his island to return home where death will be always in his thoughts. Similarly, Shakespeare retired to his home in Stratford, leaving the insular life that a London theater man lived. It is unwise to make a hard and fast connection between Prospero and Shakespeare simply because it is purely a fanciful hypothesis, and because the play works perfectly well without it. Nevertheless, an amplitude of sentiment is achieved when readers do bring the two figures imaginatively together, as inevitably, given what is known of Shakespeare’s life, they must.

STYLE Blank Verse While parts of The Tempest are written in prose, most of it, except for Ariel’s songs and the verse in Prospero’s wedding masque, is written in blank verse. Blank verse is composed of unrhymed pentameter lines usually written in iambics. A pentameter line is a line composed of five feet. A foot is made up of two syllables. In iambic pentameter, the first syllable of each foot is unstressed and the second is stressed. Look, for example, at line 303 in act 1, scene 2: ‘‘To every eyeball else. Go take this shape.’’ ‘‘To’’ is unstressed. ‘‘Ev’’ of ‘‘every’’ is stressed, while the second syllable of ‘‘every’’ is unstressed, but ‘‘eye’’ of ‘‘eyeball’’ is. Thus: ‘‘to EV/’ry EYE/ ball ELSE.’’ (The verse in the masque is generally composed of rhymed couplets, which are lines in

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pairs rhyming with each other. The continuous closure of the rhyme on each second line makes this kind of verse good for didactic and ceremonial verses. Blank verse, because of the absence of rhyme, flows like unregulated speech.)

Epilogue Like several of Shakespeare’s comedies, The Tempest closes with an epilogue, a speech made by a leading character (in this case Prospero), who partially steps out of his role and speaks directly to the audience, often alluding to a theme of the play in his request for applause. Prospero speaks of being forgiven and released from the bonds of sin.

Masque As part of the celebration of their marriage, and to give some pleasing example of his art as a magician, Prospero presents a masque before Ferdinand and Miranda. The masque is a form of entertainment that was fashionable in the courts of both James I and Charles I. Not really a play, it was a spectacular event with costumes, scenery, astonishing and sumptuous stage devices (machines that could lower supposedly divine characters down from the heavens, for example), music and dancing. There also was not a clear separation between the performers and the audience. In fact, the action of a masque centers around the audience, as it does in The Tempest, where the focus is on blessing its two viewers, Ferdinand and Miranda, and their coming nuptials. In the court masques, the king was usually at the center of the action. At the time Shakespeare wrote The Tempest his fellow playwright, and therefore his rival, Ben Jonson, was writing masques for the court regularly.

Mirroring Mirroring is a technique often found in Shakespeare’s plays, whether tragic or comic, which makes one set of characters or one line of action reflect another set of characters or another line of action. In The Tempest, Antonio and Sebastian’s plot to kill Alonso, Sebastian’s brother, so that Sebastian may become king of Naples reflects Antonio’s usurpation of his brother Prospero’s place twelve years earlier. The comic plot in which Caliban, Trinculo, and Stephano conspire to murder Prospero mirrors and burlesques both.

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Music, Song, Spectacle Music, song, dancing and stage machinery, like the throne on which Juno alights, are concentrated in the masque in The Tempest but are also structural parts of the entire play. Ariel actually sings three songs. Music sounds throughout the island and often is used to induce spells or to calm mental distress. Music also accompanies spectacular stage devices, as when Prospero appears ‘‘on the top,’’ in act 3, scene 3 and watches ‘‘several strange Shapes, bringing in a banquet; and dance about it’’ and, soon after, when Ariel appears as a harpy and the table disappears. Musical harmonies, in the Renaissance, were believed to have magical powers themselves; the nearer music in its harmonies approached the absolute music of the heavens, the greater the power. It was believed that the celestial frames that were thought to hold the heavenly bodies in their movements moved all the planets and the stars. The sound made by the harmonious motions of these spheres was called the music of the spheres.

The Unities The classical unities of time, place, and action, which Aristotle describes as being among the characteristics of a drama, were often ignored by playwrights writing during the reigns of Elizabeth I and James I. Shakespeare seldom followed the unities. Most of his plays sprawl, in the words of the chorus in Henry V ‘‘jumping o’er times, / Turning th’ accomplishment of many years / Into an hour glass.’’ In The Tempest, however, Shakespeare adhered strictly to the unities, so much so that Prospero even asks Ariel, at the beginning of act 5, ‘‘How’s the day?’’ and Ariel answers, ‘‘On the sixth hour, at which time, my lord, / You said our work should cease.’’ Everything happens in a single day. All the strands of the plot are woven together into the single action of reconciliation. The action occurs in a single place, on Prospero’s island.

HISTORICAL CONTEXT Magic Prospero is a magician who has come to his power through the study of the liberal arts. Magic, in the sixteenth and seventeenth century, was not the practice of amazing tricks which

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COMPARE & CONTRAST 

Today: Shakespeare’s plays still appeal to a mass audience and he is regarded as one of the greatest playwrights of all time 

mankind and changing the nature of the social landscape, are being discovered through the exploration of outer space, cyberspace, genetic research, and cloning.

1600s: Shakespeare’s plays appealed to a mass audience and Shakespeare was regarded as the foremost playwright of his era.

1600s: News of geographical exploration and discovery in the New World excited essayists like Montaigne in France and dramatists like Shakespeare in England to think about traditional European values, systems of governance, and even about the fundamental nature of mankind. Today: Once again, new and perplexing realms, which have the potential for redefining

defied the apparent laws of nature, as it is thought of presently, although Prospero is capable of such feats. Magic was considered a branch of knowledge not clearly distinguished from fields like mathematics and chemistry—which in those centuries was called alchemy and had magical and transformative associations. A prominent scholar named John Dee, who died impoverished in 1608 or 1609, studied magic and believed he conversed with spirits and gained the reputation of being an evil magician, seems a likely partial model for Prospero.

New Worlds James I granted a charter to the Virginia Company in June 1606 to establish a colony in the New World. On May 14, 1607, explorers working for the company landed on Jamestown Island and established the Virginia English colony. In 1609, some five hundred English colonists sailed from Plymouth, England, to Jamestown. They encountered a storm in the Caribbean and Sea Venture, the lead ship, was lost. The rest of the fleet of nine vessels made it safely to Jamestown. Nearly a year later, two boats arrived with the shipwrecked passengers,

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1600s: Young women were given in marriage by their fathers to their husbands, and were not considered independent persons in their own right Today: While in some cultural enclaves, even in countries like England, women are still subject to the rule of their fathers, in general, women have gained the right to live independently and to choose their husbands themselves or to live both unmarried and independently of their fathers.

including the admiral and the governor of the colony. The news spread to London and two personal accounts of the experience on the island of Bermuda and the return to civilization were written. They came to be known as ‘‘the Bermuda pamphlets.’’ Shakespeare undoubtedly saw them before composing The Tempest. The idea of the New World and of people who were different from Europeans had already become a matter for literary consideration by the time Shakespeare wrote The Tempest. Michel de Montaigne, the French essayist (1533–1592), speculated on the New World in an essay, ‘‘Of the Cannibals.’’ Gonzalo’s speech about a Utopian commonwealth is derived from that essay, which Shakespeare must have read in a translation by John Florio.

Revolution and Restoration From 1642, some thirty years after the composition of The Tempest, until 1649, a series of civil wars were fought between the forces of King Charles I and those loyal to Parliament. Parliamentary forces won, and in 1649, the English Commonwealth and then the Protectorate, were established in place of the monarchy. Beginning in 1642, the

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theaters in London were closed. When the monarchy was restored and the theaters were given license to function by King Charles II, in 1661, the theatrical style had changed considerably. While no theater had been ongoing in England, the court in exile had been established in France and theater continued to develop there, where conventions and mores were different. Two examples of the changes were that women, rather than boys, played women’s parts onstage and scenery was used on a proscenium stage, for example. Under these altered circumstances, The Tempest was often performed in its radically revised version entitled The Enchanted Isle by William Davenant and John Dryden.

CRITICAL OVERVIEW Thomas McFarland argues that The Tempest ‘‘constitutes the alpha and omega of Shakespeare’s comedy,’’ by the way it brings together ‘‘the two great realities of Shakespeare’s comic vision—the movement towards social concord on the one hand and on the other the recognition of disharmony and disruption.’’ While McFarland concludes that ‘‘The Tempest serenely reasserts the enchantment of brotherhood and social harmony,’’ other critics do not agree. William J. Martz emphasizes that the conflict of these forces occurs within Prospero himself as an internal, character struggle. The purpose of his struggle, according to Martz, is to overcome his own eroticized love for his daughter in the external world through reconciliation with his enemies. The plot of The Tempest, Martz argues, springs from Prospero’s need to create the context in which he may surrender his desire as he gives his daughter as a gift in marriage to the son of the king of Naples, the former enemy with whom he has become reconciled. Rather than focusing on theme or character, Derek Traversi sees Shakespeare as less concerned than he had been in plays like The Winter’s Tale, which just precedes The Tempest, ‘‘with the evolution of experience towards . . . its symbolic representation,’’ which is achieved through character and plot development. In The Tempest, he asserts, ‘‘the various characters and situations exist from the first entirely in terms of a definite ‘symbolic’ function.’’ Robert H. West believes that what is being symbolized in The Tempest is ‘‘the poignance of man’s insubstantial pageant . . . . of human

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happiness against the shadow of mortality.’’ In the ‘‘great tragedies,’’ West writes, Shakespeare explores the mystery of ‘‘iniquity;’’ while in The Tempest, Shakespeare examines ‘‘the mystery of felicity.’’ Early critics of The Tempest were as enthusiastic about the play as these middle and later twentieth-century critics. Rather, however, than emphasizing the psychological, philosophical, symbolic, or moral aspects of the play, they were excited by how it ‘‘show[ed],’’ as John Dryden wrote, in 1679, ‘‘the copiousness of [Shakespeare’s] invention.’’ Thirty years later, in 1709, Nicholas Rowe wrote that Shakespeare’s ‘‘greatness . . . do’s no where so much appear, as where he gives his Imagination an entire Loose, and raises his Fancy to a flight above Mankind and the limits of the visible World.’’ As a representative of this kind of imaginative invention, Rowe calls The Tempest ‘‘perfect.’’ Nearly fifty years later, Joseph Warton, in 1753, wrote, ‘‘Of all the plays of Shakespeare, The Tempest is the most striking instance of his creative power. He has there given the reins to his boundless imagination, and has carried the romantic, the wonderful, and the wild, to the most pleasing extravagance.’’ In a lecture given in 1811 or 1812, Samuel Taylor Coleridge still finds it essential to focus on the fact that in The Tempest, ‘‘Shakespeare has especially appealed to the imagination.’’ In a written ‘‘Analysis of Act I,’’ Coleridge asserts that ‘‘the power of poetry is, by a single word perhaps, to instil that energy into the mind, which compels the imagination to produce the picture.’’ Coleridge then cites Prospero’s phrase ‘‘hurried thence / Me, and thy crying self,’’ and argues that ‘‘by introducing a single happy epithet, ‘crying,’ . . . a complete picture is presented to the mind, and in the production of such pictures the power of genius consists.’’ Astonishment at the imaginative, dramatic and intellectual heights Shakespeare achieved in The Tempest continued throughout the nineteenth century. Nearly a hundred years after Coleridge, writing in 1909, the great novelist Henry James wrote that ‘‘the value of The Tempest is, exquisitely, in its refinement of power, its renewed artistic freshness . . . Prospero has simply waited, to cast his magic ring into the sea, till the jewel set in it shall have begun to burn as never before.’’ A major thrust of nineteenth-century criticism of The Tempest was allegorical criticism, wherein the critics see the text as a symbolic representation of something else, and the characters represent

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ideas or characteristics. Edward R. Russell, for example, argued that Prospero stood for God. Critics like W. A. Schlegel in Germany, Victor Hugo in France, Russell and John Ruskin in England, are but some of the most noteworthy to understand The Tempest as an attempt to represent universals—political or metaphysical or psychological or spiritual truths—symbolically, and who saw the play’s characters as representing abstract concepts like beauty, goodness, evil, et cetera. Starting in the 1930s, scholars like J. Middleton Murry, E. M. W. Tillyard, G. Wilson Knight, Reuben Brower, and Frank Kermode, while not repudiating the past writings on The Tempest, began to treat the play more carefully with regard to its structure, imagery, characters, unity, and historical context than had been the habit of earlier critics. In the 1980s, as critics grew interested in the connection between literature and historical or social phenomena, the way The Tempest appeared to treat European imperialism and colonial people became a significant topic in critical writing about the play. Francis Barker and Peter Hulme, for example, put forth the argument in 1985, in ‘‘The Tempest and Oppression,’’ that the real plot of the play is Prospero’s anxiety about his legitimacy as ruler of the island, and that the plot towards reconciliation which he generates and which seems to be the main action of the play is really a sub-plot.

CRITICISM Neil Heims In the following essay, Heims suggests there is a connection between Prospero’s decision to give his daughter in marriage and his decision to forgive rather than take revenge upon those who have wronged him. A common strand in many of Shakespeare’s plots concerns a conflict between a father and his daughter regarding her choice of a husband. In The Two Gentlemen of Verona, Romeo and Juliet, The Merchant of Venice, Othello, and Cymbeline, among other plays of his, Shakespeare presents a situation in which a daughter defies her father in the choice of a husband. The subsequent action in each of these plays always involves a consequence of that opposition and that defiance.

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THE DEFINING ACTION OF THE TEMPEST IS PROSPERO’S DECISION TO FORGIVE HIS ENEMIES RATHER THAN TO AVENGE HIMSELF FOR THE WRONGS DONE TO HIM.’’

Usually, this father/daughter conflict is central to tragedy, but Shakespeare has introduced it into comedies, too, as in A Midsummer Night’s Dream, where Hermia prevails over her father’s objections and marries Lysander. In The Tempest, Shakespeare resolves the father daughter conflict that has so often concerned him, turning the material of tragedy into comedy by connecting the father/daughter motif to what is probably the primary theme of the majority of his plays—revenge. The defining action of The Tempest is Prospero’s decision to forgive his enemies rather than to avenge himself for the wrongs done to him. In the period spanning the reigns of Elizabeth I and James I, when tragic drama was almost entirely made up of revenge tragedies, this reversal is unique in the body of Shakespeare’s work. The fundamental action of a revenge tragedy, whether it is one of the precursor plays to Hamlet like the blood soaked The Spanish Tragedy by Thomas Kyd, or such a sophisticated and complex play as Hamlet itself, King Lear, or Othello, consists of a wrong perpetrated and the crosscurrents of revenge that wrong-doing generates. In The Tempest, twelve years before the opening scene of the play, Prospero had been seized by his brother, stripped of his dukedom, and cast out to sea with his infant daughter, Miranda, in a small boat which was hardly sea worthy. That action, which comprises the usual opening for a revenge tragedy, is the prologue to The Tempest. The Tempest itself takes that action as its starting point and also recapitulates that past action of overthrowing Prospero in the two parallel subplots. The first subplot involves Antonio and Sebastian’s attempt to murder Alonso and usurp his crown. The second involves Caliban, Stephano, and Trinculo in their plot to murder Prospero and become rulers

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of the island. In these two threads, the tragic material is debased by what must be parody. That Antonio and Sebastian, who are shipwrecked and castaway on a strange, and apparently uninhabited, island should be concerned about staging a coup d’etat is ridiculous. For the three drunkards, the attempt to kill Prospero is an exercise in low comedy. Parodic as these two subplots are, nevertheless, they keep alive in the present two facts from the past. Antonio is still a villain, and Prospero and other figures of authority and order, like Alonso, the king of Naples, are still in danger. Disorder still threatens to destabilize the established order—even on this remote island. Even so, the principle action of The Tempest turns on the desire to return good for evil rather than to take revenge, to let anger go rather than to nurse it. Without forcing an absolute cause and effect relation between the two, it may be noticed that Prospero’s act of letting go of anger and eschewing revenge, and of letting go of his daughter, function simultaneously and may be seen as reflections of each other. If letting go of his anger means eschewing revenge, the question remains: what, in Shakespeare’s plays, does a father’s act of letting go of his daughter mean he is eschewing? Reflecting the social reality of their time in their assertion of the father/daughter bond as a bond of possession, Shakespeare’s plays, nevertheless, transform that social fact into a literary motif with its own literary function. The father’s control of his daughter, in Shakespeare’s worlds, seems to express a generalized characteristic of mankind, the desire to possess and the reluctance to yield. In Shakespeare’s plays, within that desire to possess and to control, there is often interwoven an erotic element. That element is often submerged and can be discovered through the study of images or through character analysis. But there are instances where the motif is overt. The most obvious example comes in the first of Shakespeare’s four last plays, Pericles, Prince of Tyre, of which The Tempest is the last. In Pericles, Antiochus, the king of Antioch, sets an obstacle for all suitors for his daughter. They must solve a riddle. The suitor who can solve the riddle will marry his daughter. Those who fail are beheaded and their heads hung on the pales of the gates surrounding the palace. Here’s the riddle:

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I am no viper, yet I feed On mother’s flesh which did me breed. I sought a husband, in which labour I found that kindness in a father. He’s father, son, and husband mild; I mother, wife, and yet his child. How they may be, and yet in two, As you will live, resolve it you. Pericles understands that to solve the riddle is to confront the king and his daughter with the fact of their incestuous relationship. In fear for his life, he flees. Later, when he has a daughter of his own and his wife has died, Pericles gives the daughter whom he cherishes into the care of the king and queen of Tharsus, whose land he has saved from famine. When he gives them his daughter to raise, he also makes a rather strange vow: Till she be married . . . By bright Diana, whom we honour all, Unscissored shall this hair of mine remain, Though I show ill in’t. He has developed a sort of traumatic response to his own experience with Antiochus and his daughter. Pericles’s vow, in the name of Diana, the goddess of chastity, seems to indicate a fear of falling into the same evil that Antiochus practiced. By putting his infant daughter, Marina, beyond his reach and by vowing not to cut his hair, although it will make him physically unattractive, until after she is married, Pericles attempts to protect himself and his daughter from the threat of incest. In The Winter’s Tale, the play Shakespeare wrote right before he wrote The Tempest, there is also a hint of the illicit attraction fathers can have for their daughters when Leontes, king of Sicilia, first sees Perdita, whom he does not know is his daughter, and says to Florizel, her betrothed, ‘‘I’d beg your precious mistress.’’ Perhaps the most significant example of the destabilization that the improper passion of a father for his daughter can cause is explored in King Lear. While there may or may not be suggestions in the text of an actual erotic fixation on his daughters, Lear’s desire to command their entire love is in itself a form of lust, as Cordelia herself intimates when she asks, ‘‘Why have my sisters husbands, if they say / They love you all? Haply, when I shall wed, / That lord whose hand must take my plight shall carry / Half my love with him, half my care and duty. / Sure I shall never marry like my sisters, / To love my father all.’’

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Alec Clunes, Patrick Wymark, and Clive Revill in a scene from The Tempest at the Stratford Festival, 1957 (Central Press/Getty Images)

In The Tempest itself, as Prospero is relating the story of his overthrow to Miranda in act 1, scene 2, just after he announces that ‘‘Twelve year since, / Thy father was the Duke of Milan,’’

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Miranda asks, at line 55, ‘‘Sir, are not you my father?’’ He answers that her mother was a virtuous woman and ‘‘She said thou wast my daughter.’’ It is an innocent enough exchange, and

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Miranda’s confusion at hearing so unexpected a revelation easily accounts for it. Yet the very inclusion of this exchange suggests the odd possibility that Prospero could have answered in the negative and left open Antiochus’ prerogative for himself. But, of course, he does not. The very purpose of his project, which constitutes the story line of The Tempest, is to transfer his possession of Miranda to a husband. When Prospero does give his daughter in marriage to Ferdinand, he is fierce in setting the condition that Ferdinand avoid the temptation to ‘‘break her virgin knot’’ before all proper marriage ceremonies and rituals are performed. With the firmness of one who has practiced similar self-restraint himself, Prospero imposes such restraint on Ferdinand. By doing so, Prospero is not only giving his daughter to Ferdinand, but he is passing on to the prince a particular piece of behavioral wisdom, essentially stated in his words to Ariel: ‘‘with my nobler reason ‘gainst my fury / Do I take part.’’ Prospero is teaching Ferdinand to serve reason, which is a faculty dependent upon the restraint of passion—fury being one sort of passion—rather than to be dominated by desire and thus become, in Hamlet’s phrase, ‘‘passion’s slave.’’ In his lesson, Prospero is not opposing possession. Rather he is opposing the lust to possess. Social order, according to Prospero, functions within the boundaries of possession. A husband possesses his wife; a king or a duke possesses his title and all to which, by that title, he is entitled. Prospero returns to Milan, after all, and resumes his role as the Duke of Milan. But even as he takes possession of his old dukedom, he has become wise enough to begin to let it go, promising that every third thought will be about dying. To grasp at a desire from passion for possession, as Antonio, Alonso, Sebastian, Caliban, Stephano, and Trinculo all do in The Tempest, does not further a just social order but rather, it furthers chaos and injustice. In the same way that Prospero does not oppose possession, Prospero does not oppose desire. He opposes allowing desire to overwhelm and vanquish reason. In the marriage of Ferdinand and Miranda, Prospero’s ideal is exemplified. It is a marriage in which reason and the restraints of ceremony on the one side, and passionate desire on the other, are in harmony. Reason governs passion and passion is satisfied through the mediating

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power of reason. Consequently, chaos is avoided and order is maintained. In The Tempest, Prospero can repudiate the sort of desire Caliban represents, a libidinal rapacity, because he is aware of it in himself. The recognition of a part of himself in Caliban helps to explain also the painful severity of the punishments he inflicts on Caliban. Prospero is not avenging himself on Caliban for Caliban’s brutish behavior. He is attempting to suppress it using a pre-Pavlovian sort of behavior modification. The restraint he enforces on Caliban with aches and stitches Prospero enforces on himself with reason. That Prospero recognizes that he and Caliban bear similarities, despite their great differences, is subtly conveyed toward the end of The Tempest when things are being sorted out. Pointing to Caliban, Prospero says, ‘‘this thing of darkness I / Acknowledge mine.’’ The versification is such that the acknowledgment has the force of a psychological insight. The line break comes after the word ‘‘I’’. Thus pointing to Caliban, Prospero says, ‘‘This thing of darkness I,’’ suggesting some identity between himself and Caliban—I am this thing of darkness—before he completes the thought in the next line with ‘‘Acknowledge mine.’’ It is tempting to argue that because Prospero has renounced possession of his daughter he is able to renounce vengeance and, consequently, to regain what he has lost and to cause the others, as Gonzalo says, in act 5, scene 1, to find themselves ‘‘when no man was his own.’’ Having overcome himself in the one sphere, Prospero is able to do so in the other. But even allowing only a restrained interpretation that avoids a direct cause and effect relationship, it is apparent that eschewing vengeance and letting go of his daughter are aspects of the same accomplishment of his soul and his intellect. Much earlier in his career, Shakespeare wrote in the thirteenth line of his sixteenth sonnet, ‘‘To give away yourself keeps yourself still.’’ By letting go of his daughter and his fury, Prospero becomes his own, recovering his dukedom and the humanity which comes from the recognition of mortality. Source: Neil Heims, Critical Essay on The Tempest, in Shakespeare For Students, Second Edition, Thomson Gale, 2007.

Craig Bernthal Bernthal examines the issues of guilt, judgment, and redemption in The Tempest. The play, he

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WHAT DO I READ NEXT? 

In 1921, William Butler Yeats published a poem called, ‘‘A Prayer for My Daughter.’’ Yeats’s poem follows the meditations of a father about the life he has led, and the life he wishes for his daughter, as he sits by the cradle of his infant daughter while a storm in the Atlantic rages outside.

Book IV of the Latin poet Virgil’s homage to Augustus Caesar and the Roman Empire, The Aeneid (29–19 B . C . E .), recounts the story of the bitter love affair between the Trojan Aeneas on his course to Italy after the Trojan War and Dido, Queen of Carthage, who kills herself for his love. There is also an opera, Dido and Aeneas (1689), by Henry Purcell with text by Nahum Tate (who revised Shakespeare’s King Learfor the stage in 1681).  Franc¸ois-Rene´ de Chateaubriand’s early nineteenth century novels, Atala and Rene (1801, are set in large part in the southern United States in forests among Indians. The people and the landscape suggest a different kind of world from the European world that Chateaubriand’s hero is fleeing from—and from which Chateaubriand himself fled on the eve of the French Revolution. 



In his 1846 poem, ‘‘Caliban upon Setebos,’’ nineteenth-century poet Robert Browning makes Caliban an emblem of man. As the speaker of a dramatic monologue, he considers the existence of a deity and his relation to it.



In 1904, W. H. Hudson published Green Mansions, a classic story of Rima the Bird Girl in the forest and the conflict of nature and culture.



Paul and Virginia, was published by JacquesHenri Bernardin de Saint-Pierre in 1787 as Paul et Virginie (Paul and Virginia). Hardly known today, it was immensely popular during the first half of the nineteenth century. The novel is set on the island of Mauritius amid natural beauty and its theme is the conflict of nature and civilization.



Peter Pan (1904) is J. M. Barrie’s classic tale of the conflict between grown up responsibility and the threatened paradise of childhood.





Aldous Huxley took the name of his famous 1932 novel, Brave New World, from The Tempest and also derived many of his themes from it, especially the conflict between the spontaneous brutality of nature and the controlled cruelty of imposed order.



‘‘Caliban in the Coal Mines’’ was Louis Untermyer’s 1914 poem about the plight of coal miners. The poem embodies them in the figure of Caliban, defining Caliban as an oppressed creature in an unjust society.

Daniel Defoe’s novel Robinson Crusoe, published in 1719, traces the history of an Englishman who is shipwrecked and becomes a castaway on an island; he asserts his command over the natural environment through his industriousness, and has to deal with ‘‘savages’’ and cannibals. Like The Tempest, Robinson Crusoe has its roots in a real event, the plight of the Scottish sailor, Alexander Selkirk, who had been cast away on an island off the Chilean coast in 1709. After his rescue, he published an account of his adventures in 1712.

notes, contains Biblical references to judgment and divine providence that audiences in Shakespeare’s time would have been extremely familiar with. The character of Prospero, for example,

attempts to induce guilt and extend forgiveness. In the end, Garber contends that in Shakespeare’s play, the concept of free will remains intact.

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PROSPERO’S METHOD OF ELICITING REPENTANCE FOLLOWS THE BIBLICAL MODEL. HE PREACHES WRATH TO PROMOTE A SENSE OF GUILT, HOPING THAT GUILT WILL LEAD TO SORROW AND SORROW TO TRUE REPENTANCE.’’

. . . [A]lthough Prospero can create tempests and illusions, cramp the muscles of his enemies, or make them fall asleep, he has no direct access to their hearts; he can only create situations and take actions that may lead Alonso, Antonio, and Sebastian to repent. Their wills remain their own. In this limitation, Prospero is like the three witches of Macbeth, who can plague a sailor with storms ‘‘sev’n-nights nine times nine,’’ but who have no power to sink the sailor’s ship or make him despair: ‘‘Though his bark cannot be lost, / Yet it shall be tempest tost.’’ If the man hangs onto his courage and will, he will survive— unless a power higher than the witches or sorcerers decrees otherwise. Prospero’s method of eliciting repentance follows the biblical model. He preaches wrath to promote a sense of guilt, hoping that guilt will lead to sorrow and sorrow to true repentance. Though repentance founded on ‘‘attrition’’—the sheer terror of divine punishment—was held to be acceptable to God, ‘‘contrition’’—repentance motivated by genuine sorrow for one’s sins—was better, for it acknowledged God’s justice as well as his power. (Thus, we see Duke Vincentio in Measure for Measure trying to reason Claudio out of the fear of death so that he can make a true act of contrition.) Prospero would prefer that Alonso, Antonio, and Sebastian be truly sorry for what they have done to him and Miranda, for the sake of their ‘‘fraughting souls’’ as well as his own satisfaction, so he forces them into situations in which they are forced to experience what he and Miranda have experienced. This is not eye-for-aneye vengeance, but an attempt to induce in the men some empathy for Prospero and Miranda’s sufferings. First, the men are made to believe that they have been shipwrecked, as have been Prospero and Miranda. Because Miranda, then a three-year-old, would likely have died along with

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‘‘The Raising of the Storm’’ (Ó Shakespeare Collection, Special Collections Library, University of Michigan)

her father, Prospero plagues Alonso with the apparent death of his son Ferdinand. On the island, the castaways find no apparent sources of food or water, and they have no idea how they will sustain themselves—problems they knew Prospero and Miranda would confront if they survived drowning. To drive this point home, Prospero tantalizes the men with a banquet that vanishes when they attempt to eat it. Robert Gram Hunter likens the banquet to the sacrament of Holy Communion, from which ‘‘notorious and unrepentant sinners are traditionally excluded . . . ’’ Clearly, none of the men is sorry for what they have done to Prospero and Miranda; Antonio and Sebastian only remember the coup as a precedent for murdering Alonso. Ariel, in the form of a harpy, removes the feast and pronounces the men’s guilt, adding understanding to their suffering. The ‘‘Homily on Repentance,’’ with which Shakespeare’s audience would have been very familiar, lists four requirements of adequate repentance: contrition of heart, unfeigned confession and acknowledgment of sins, faith that God will pardon one’s sins, and the amendment of one’s life, which included a sincere attempt to make restitution for previous wrongdoing. Prospero will try to take Alonso and his men

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along this path. Ariel begins by trying to induce a true sense of guilt in the men: You are three men of sin, whom Destiny,— That hath to instrument this lower world And what is in’t,—the never-surfeited sea Hath caus’d to belch up you; and on this island, Where man doth not inhabit,—you ’mongst men Being most unfit to live . . . For that’s my business to you,—that you three From Milan did supplant good Prospero: Expos’d unto the sea, which hath requit it, Him and his innocent child: for which foul deed, The powers, delaying, not forgetting, have Incens’d the seas and shores, yea all the creatures Against your peace. Thee of thy son, Alonso, They have bereft; and do pronounce by me Ling’ring perdition—worse than any death Can be at once—shall step by step attend You and your ways; whose wraths to guard you from,— Which here, in this most desolate isle, else falls Upon your heads,—is nothing but heartsorrow, And a clear life ensuing. (3.3.53–58; 69–82) The only way to avoid the wrath of Fate (Shakespeare could not use the word ‘‘God’’ because the 1605 Statue of Abuses forbade it to be said on stage) is through ‘‘heart’s sorrow’’ and a ‘‘clear [blameless] life ensuing,’’ which restates the standard church doctrine of repentance. Ariel’s pronoucement of guilt drives the three men to desperation, though in different ways. Antonio and Sebastian, with drawn swords, rush off stage to fight legions of fiends; Alonso, believing that his sins have caused Ferdinand’s death, threatens suicide: O, it is monstrous, monstrous! Methought the billows spoke, and told me of it; The winds did sing it to me; and the thunder, That deep and dreadful organ-pipe, pronounc’d The name of Prosper: it did bass my trespass. Therefore my son i’ th’ ooze is bedded; and I’ll seek him deeper than e’er plummet sounded,

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And with him there lie mudded. (3.3.95–102) Gonzalo, fearing that the men will harm themselves, tells the others to follow them. Gonzalo recognizes the guilt of the three, but moreover, recognizes the spiritual corruption within them: All three of them are desperate: their great guilt, Like poison given to work a great time after, Now ’gins to bite the spirits. I do beseech you, That are of suppler joints, follow them swiftly, And hinder them from what this ecstasy May now provoke them to. (3.3.104–09) At this point the play turns toward the comedy of forgiveness . . . Once Alonso feels the pain that Prospero has been put through, Prospero perhaps recalls his own pain and begins to feel a bond with his enemy. Even Ariel, nimble, mercurial, and inhuman, can feel the spiritual pain of the shipwrecked men: Ariel: The King, His brother, and yours, abide all three distracted, And the remainder mourning over them, Brimful of sorrow and dismay; but chiefly Him that you term’d, sir, ‘‘The good old lord, Gonzalo’’; His tears run down his beard, like winter’s drops From eaves of reeds. Your charm so strongly works ’em That if you now beheld them, your affections Would become tender. Prospero: Dost thou think so, spirit? Ariel: Mine would, sir, were I human. Prospero: And mine shall. Hast thou, which art but air, a touch, a feeling Of their afflictions, and shall not myself, One of their kind, that relish all as sharply Passion as they, be kindlier mov’d than thou art? Though with their high wrongs I am struck to th’ quick, Yet with my nobler reason ’gainst my fury Do I take part: The rarer action is In virtue than in vengeance: they being penitent, The sole drift of my purpose doth extend Not a frown further. (5.1.11–30)

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Prospero has clearly made the Christian choice. His judgment extends charity to others, as he hopes to attain it himself at the moment of his death. Yet, as the play draws to a close, Shakespeare raises doubts about whether Prospero’s god-like manipulation of events has led Alonso, Antonio, or Sebastian to sincere repentance, or whether Prospero’s decision against vengeance rises to the level of forgiveness. Certainly the three ‘‘men of guilt’’ have been scared out of their wits and Alonso has been bludgeoned with the death of his son. If any of the three feels sorry for what he has done, it is surely Alonso, and when Prospero reveals Ferdinand and Miranda playing chess, and Alonso knows his son to be alive and in love with a beautiful and noble woman, his reconciliation with Prospero, through the marriage of their children, seems sure. Alonso takes all the steps of repentance, asking forgiveness of the one wronged and offering to make reparations. He tells Prospero: ‘‘Thy dukedom I resign, and do entreat / Thou pardon me my wrongs’’ (5.1.118–19). Alonso’s transformation makes poetic truth of the song that Ariel sings to Ferdinand in act 1, which seemed to speak of Alonso’s death but also foreshadowed his rebirth and transformation through the baptism of shipwreck: Full fadom five thy father lies; Of his bones are coral made; Those are pearls that were his eyes: Nothing of him that doth fade, But doth suffer a sea-change Into something rich and strange. (1.2.399–403) From Sebastian, however, Prospero gets only an antagonistic lie. When Prospero tells Sebastian and Antonio that he knows about their plot to kill Alonso, he says ‘‘But you, my brace of lords, were I so minded, / I here could pluck his highness’ frown upon you, / And justify you traitors’’; Sebastian’s response is, ‘‘The devil speaks in him’’ (5.1.126–30). When Prospero forgives his brother, his speech strives toward forgiveness, but perhaps falls short: For you, most wicked sir, whom to call brother Would even infect my mouth, I do forgive Thy rankest fault,—all of them;—and require My dukedom of thee, which perforce, I know, Thou must restore. (5.1.130–34)

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Antonio gives Prospero no thanks in reply and offers no apologies. He does not ask to be forgiven, and he has nothing to restore to Prospero, Alonso having returned the dukedom already. Antonio does not find his voice until Caliban, Stephano, and Trinculo appear on stage, and then it is only to throw a verbal barb at Caliban. There is nothing to indicate that either Antonio or Stephano are repentant. Grace does not reach them. Stephano and Trinculo wish only to be free of their cramps and are only as repentant as children who want to stop being spanked. But perhaps Caliban has learned something, for he recognizes his foolishness: ‘‘I’ll be wise hereafter, / And seek for grace. What a thrice-double ass / Was I to take this drunkard for a god, / And worship this dull fool!’’ Perhaps Caliban’s resolution to seek grace refers only to his asking Prospero’s forgiveness, but we cannot be sure he does not refer to a higher source, and even if he does seek only Prospero’s ‘‘grace,’’ for Caliban that is a step in the right direction. Gonzalo brings the idea of Providence back into the play at this point, and his summary has the elevation of a psalm: . . . look down you gods, And on this couple drop a blessed crown! For it is you that have chalk’d forth the way Which brought us hither . . . Was Milan thrust from Milan, that his issue Should become Kings of Naples? O rejoice Beyond a common joy! and set it down With gold on lasting pillars: In one voyage Did Claribel her husband find at Tunis, And Ferdinand, her brother, found a wife Where he himself was lost, Prospero his dukedom In a poor isle, and all of us ourselves When no man was his own. (5.1.201–04; 205–13) Gonzalo’s characteristic optimism leads him to overstatement, since there is little evidence that Antonio and Sebastian or Stephano and Trinculo have found their lost selves, the selves they could become if they allowed grace to enter their lives. But in Shakespeare’s Christian view, which is certainly more Roman Catholic than Calvinist or Lutheran, every man’s soul is his own; free will remains intact, and no one is transformed who does not want to be. Source: Craig Bernthal, ‘‘Judgment and Divine Providence,’’ in The Trial of Man: Christianity and Judgment in the World of Shakespeare, ISI Books, 2003, pp. 248–55.

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Ernest Gohn In the following essay, Gohn discusses Shakespeare’s use—hitherto unprecedented in his plays—of the classical unities of time and place in The Tempest. He argues that the work’s structural unity, with action occurring as it does over the course of approximately three hours, is reflected in a thematic emphasis on the present. Gohn’s analysis continues by relating this dramatic sense of urgency and preoccupation with the ‘‘now’’ in the play to its themes of hoped-for redemption and reconciliation. Critics have spent so much time on characteranalysis—and upon possible biographical, allegorical, and symbolic implications of The Tempest— that they have overlooked the great emphasis put on the sense of the present in the play. But it is an emphasis which we cannot ignore: such words and phrases as ‘now’, ‘at this moment’, ‘at this instant’ echo and reinforce one another throughout the play. Furthermore, the episodes of the play are usually conceived in a present which is a crucial nexus uniting the past to the future: the past is relevant only as it affects the present, the future only as it grows out of the present. The past is defined as that which occurred years ago in Milan, the future as that which will take place after the characters leave the island. Shakespeare no sooner finishes his brief opening shipwreck scene than be begins to emphasize the crucial quality of the present. Prospero assures Miranda, who has been moved to pity by the sight of the wreck, that all he has done in raising the storm has been done in care of her, who is ignorant of what she and her father are. But now ‘‘Tis time’, says Prospero, ‘I should inform thee farther’ (I, ii, 22–33). Prospero’s care for his daughter, which has led him to raise the storm, is, then, intimately related to the time at which Miranda must learn of her past: he repeats, ‘For thou must now know farther’ (I, ii, 33). Prospero has at times in the past started to tell his history to her, but in the past he has always stopped, ‘Concluding, ‘‘Stay, not yet’’’ (I, ii, 36). At this moment, however, ‘the hour’, ‘the very minute’ (I, ii, 36–37) has come. Miranda must know of her origins before she can take her place in Prospero’s present scheme. As he assures her later in the midst of his narrative: Hear a little further, And then I’ll bring thee to the present business

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FURTHERMORE, THE EPISODES OF THE PLAY ARE USUALLY CONCEIVED IN A PRESENT WHICH IS A CRUCIAL NEXUS UNITING THE PAST TO THE FUTURE: THE PAST IS RELEVANT ONLY AS IT AFFECTS THE PRESENT, THE FUTURE ONLY AS IT GROWS OUT OF THE PRESENT.’’

Which now’s upon ’s, without the which this story Were most impertinent. (I, ii, 135–38) To Miranda, the ‘present business’ which is ‘now’ upon them must refer to the storm she has just witnessed. To Prospero, also, the shipwreck seems to be the ‘present business’; but he evidently has more in mind, for when Miranda asks him his reason for raising the tempest, he replies in most general terms, terms which neither she nor the audience can understand until the play is over: Know thus far forth. By accident most strange, bountiful Fortune, Now my dear lady, hath mine enemies Brought to this shore. And by my prescience I find my zenith doth depend upon A most auspicious star, whose influence If now I court not, but omit, my fortunes Will ever after droop. Here cease more questions. (I, ii, 177–84) Prospero’s storm is merely the first phase of a larger sense of the moment which he ‘now’ courts, a sense which includes everything in the play. It is, one supposes, to keep his larger scheme secret that he carefully sends Miranda to sleep before he calls for Ariel: ‘I am ready now’ (I, ii, 187). Ariel’s interview with Prospero is, of course, mainly further exposition: we learn how Ariel has acted as Prospero’s agent in creating the shipwreck and in disposing the various groups about the isle; we also learn of Ariel’s imprisonment by Sycorax (the pre-Prospero history of the island). But between these two bits of exposition,

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we are again recalled to the sense of the present, made vivid by the pressure of time: ‘The time ’twixt six and now / Must by us both be spent most preciously’ (I, ii, 240–41). In this instance, Prospero’s ‘now’ is that moment at least ‘two glasses’ after noon. But in Ariel’s slight attempt at rebellion and in its happy resolution (‘That’s my noble master! / What shall I do? Say what. What shall I do?’—I, ii, 299–300), we realize that for Ariel, as for Prospero, the ‘present business’ is ‘now’ in another sense. Having performed his duties in this scheme of Prospero, he will be free. He had asked for his liberty ‘Before the time be out’ (I, ii, 246), but in his glad acceptance of Prospero’s promise, we cannot help but think for Ariel the present is the larger action in which he must play his part.

Adrian though ridiculed by Antonio and Sebastian, extols the idyllic quality of the island. He is most amazed, however, that their clothes are ‘now’ (II, i, 68, 97) still as fresh as when they first put them on in Africa for the marriage of Claribel who ‘now’ (II, i, 98) is Queen at Tunis. Gonzalo’s moralizing does not ease the sorrow of Alonzo; rather, it stimulates lamentation for what he had done in the past that has occasioned the sorrow of the present. (Ironically, he does not realize how right he is, in a sense of which he is yet ignorant.) After Gonzalo’s description of the ideal commonwealth—the possibilities of their present predicament now so obviously contrary to what they had known in the past in Milan and Naples—Ariel sends them all, except Sebastian and Antonio, to sleep.

Having been sent off by Propero’s whispered command, Ariel returns, leading Ferdinand onstage. Ferdinand’s passion has been allayed by Ariel’s song, which, he recognizes, is ‘no mortal business’ (I, ii, 406). Prospero has thus prepared Ferdinand for the transcendant experience which he is now to have. Ferdinand ‘now’ (I, ii, 407) hears the music above him, and Prospero immediately directs Miranda to look at what she first thinks is a spirit. That Shakespeare’s young lovers love at first sight is certainly no news, but in no other play is the event revealed so dramatically in the present, in a moment so pregnant. Miranda thinks that Ferdinand must be something divine, Ferdinand that Miranda must be a goddess. They have, as Prospero recognizes, changed eyes ‘at first sight’ (I, ii, 440), but the intensity of the present is revealed must fully in their mutual wonder. As they recognize their humanity, Miranda reveals that this is the ‘first’ (I, ii, 445) man that she ever sighed for; Ferdinand ignores Prospero’s ungentle tone to propose marriage immediately. It is a ‘swift business’ (I, ii, 450) which causes Prospero to impose the test on Ferdinand. As the scene ends, Miranda comforts Ferdinand by assuring him that her father’s nature is gentler than it has just appeared: ‘This is unwonted / Which now came from him’ (I, ii, 497–98). Something about this occasion makes him act in a manner unusual to him.

For these men, left awake to do the wicked plotting which so explicitly reproduces the earlier plot against Prospero, the memory of the past stimulates the action of the present. Like Prospero, they see an occasion not to be missed. As Antonio begins to prod Sebastian.

As Shakespeare turns to the shipwrecked crew in Act II, we soon discover that for them, too, the present is of peculiar significance. Gonzalo immediately recognizes the miraculous quality of their preservation and, joined by

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The occasion speaks thee, and My strong imagination sees a crown Dropping upon thy head. (II, i, 207–9) Sebastian is ‘standing water’, but Antonio will teach him ‘how to flow’ (II, i, 221–22). As Antonio proceeds to be more explicit, he says ‘what’s past is prologue, what to come, / In yours and my discharge’ (II, i, 253–54). This murder must be performed now. If it were death that ‘now’ (II, i, 261) had seized the sleepers, they would be no worse off than they are ‘now’ (II, i, 262). In the past Prospero’s servants were Antonio’s fellows; ‘now’ (II, i, 274) they are Antonio’s men. Alonzo would be no better than the earth he lies upon, ‘If he were that which now he’s like, that’s dead’ (II, i, 282). Ready to carry out their treachery, they draw their swords, when Ariel enters to sing in Gonzalo’s ear. If the sleepers are not kept living, Prospero’s ‘project’ will not succeed (II, i, 299). In his song Ariel warns Gonzalo that conspiracy has taken this opportunity (‘His time’—II, i, 303). The conspirators are about to ‘be sudden’ (II, i, 306) but Gonzalo awakes, saying ‘Now good angels / Preserve the King!’ (II, i, 306–7). Even Sebastian’s lying explanation for their drawn swords stresses the present—‘Even now we heard a hollow burst . . . ’ (II, i, 311). In this episode we again see the overwhelming relevance of action in the present. For Antonio and Sebastian, the present

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‘‘The Prince in Servitude’’ (Ó Shakespeare Collection, Special Collections Library, University of Michigan)

moment (not before or later) is the occasion to carry out their evil purposes. They are stopped only by the timely appearance of Ariel. The Antonio-Sebastian-Alonzo subplot is thus intimately a part of Prospero’s larger project—his conduct of the ‘present business’ which is the major concern of the play. Were the conspirators to succeed now, Prospero’s unique opportunity for reconciliation with Alonzo would be lost. A lesser, evil instant would destroy the larger, good instant. When we next see the court party, they are weary from their fruitless search for Ferdinand, and, stopping to rest, Alonzo will ‘no longer’ (III, iii, 8) keep hope for his flatterer. Antonio and Sebastian see in the abandonment of hope and in the weariness the possibility of another attempt on the king’s life. They agree to take the ‘next advantage’ (III, iii, 13), which will be ‘tonight, / For now they are oppressed with travel’ (III, iii, 14–15). But at this moment Prospero again intervenes, this time with the dumb-show banquet. Sebastian will ‘now’ (III, iii, 21) believe in unicorns and in the phoenix; Gonzalo recognizes that if the reported this ‘now’ (III, iii, 28) in Naples, he would scarce be credited, although stories which had seemed unbelievable in his youth are ‘now’ (III, iii, 47) vouched for by travellers. As they approach the

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table to eat, Ariel appears in the guise of a harpy, the banquet suddenly vanishes, and Ariel delivers the speech which Prospero has commanded. In this speech Alonzo and his followers are first accused of evil, then reminded of their powerlessness (‘Your swords are now too massy for your strengths’—III, iii, 67). But Ariel’s most important business is to recall their treachery to Prospero in the past, again bringing the past into the context of the crucial present. The powers have delayed, not forgotten (III, iii, 73). Alonzo is promised punishment in the future, a punishment to be avoided only by repentance. Prospero compliments Ariel on his performance and observes that his enemies are ‘now’ (III, iii, 90) in his power. As Prospero goes off to join Miranda and Ferdinand, Alonzo recalls his early sin. For him, Ariel’s speech, with its references to Providence, Fate, Prospero, and foul deeds is the moment of moral awakening, although at this point it drives him to despair instead of repentance. As Gonzalo observes, after Alonzo and the others have run off: Their great guilt, Like poison given to work a great time after, Now ’gins to bite the spirits. (III, iii, 104–6) They must be stopped from the suicide to which they are ‘now’ (III, iii, 109) provoked. Following his formal gift of Miranda to Ferdinand (in the course of which Ferdinand promises not to violate her chastity, as he hopes for long life with ‘such love as ’tis now’— IV, i, 25), Prospero calls for Ariel so that he can present the masque. Ariel asks, ‘Presently?’ and Prospero replies, ‘Aye, with a twink’ (IV, i, 42– 43). Ariel promises to fulfill the task Before you can say, ‘come’, and ‘go’, Breathe twice and cry, ‘so, so’. (IV, i, 44–45) Ariel is not to approach until Prosporo calls for him, but it is after only six lines that Prospero bids, ‘Now come, my Ariel!’ (IV, i, 57). As the masque ends with a dance, Prospero suddenly recalls the Caliban-Stephano-Trinculo conspiracy, the ‘minute’ (IV, i, 141) of whose plot has come. Again, that is, Prospero recalls the importance of the moment: there is a minute for Alonso, for Ferdinand, and even for Caliban. We recall that from his first meeting with Stephano and Trinculo, Caliban, having discovered that they were not plaguing spirits, had perceived them as agents through whom to effect his own liberation.

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As Prospero breaks up the entertainment, the revels ‘now’ (IV, i, 148) are ended. When Caliban approaches the cell, he, too, is aware of the precious quality of the moment: ‘We are now near his cell’ (IV, i, 195). Caliban’s urgency can only be increased as Stephano and Trinculo are beguiled by the trumpery; Caliban will have none of it, for ‘we shall lose our time’ (IV, i, 248). The plotters being chased away, Prospero knows he is in absolute control: At this hour Lie at my mercy all mine enemies. Shortly shall my labors end . . . (IV, i, 263–65) The enemies are in Prospero’s power, but as Shakespeare approaches his fifth-act denouement [the final explanation or outcome of the plot] he maintains the emphasis on the present. The act opens with Prospero’s assertion that ‘Now’ his project gathers ‘to a head’ (V, i, 1). He asks Ariel the time and learns that it is the sixth hour, ‘at which time’ (V, i, 4). Prospero had promised their work would cease. Ariel tells Prospero how he had left the court party mourning—if Prospero ‘now’ (V, i, 18) beheld them, he would be moved. While Ariel goes to release Alonzo and the others, Prospero abjures his rough magic; he will break his staff as soon as he has commanded some heavenly music, which ‘even now’ (V, i, 52) he does. Ariel brings in the distracted party, whose charms are dissolving ‘apace’ (V, i, 64); as Prospero reminds them of their past sins, their understanding grows. It will ‘shortly’ be clear that ‘now’ (V, i, 81–82) is muddy. Ariel is asked to fetch Prospero’s Milanese garments ‘quickly’ (V, i, 86). Knowing that he will ‘ere long’ (V, i, 87) be free, Ariel can sing that he will live merrily ‘now’ (V, i, 93); he is then sent to bring the boatswain and the master to Prospero ‘presently’ (V, i, 101). Prospero, clad in his ducal robes, then reveals himself to the others, reassuring them that a living prince does ‘now’ (V, i, 109) speak to them. Alonzo immediately resigns the dukedom and entreats pardon, and Prospero embraces Gonzalo. Prospero could cause the disgrace of Sebastian and Antonio, but ‘at this time’ (V, i, 128) he will remain silent. Alonzo, thinking that the loss of his son is irreparable, laments, and Prospero reveals the living presence of Ferdinand, whom Alonzo greets, ‘Now all the blessings / Of a glad father compass thee about’ (V, i, 179–80). Miranda’s response to the brave new world now revealed to her echoes the

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immediacy of her response to Ferdinand. Learning that Miranda is Prospero’s daughter, Alonzo would ask her pardon, but Prospero, his purpose now accomplished, has no more use for the past: Let us not burden our remembrance with A heaviness that’s gone. (V, i, 199–200) As we approach the end of the play, we find that even the minor characters have experienced the suddenness of events. The master and boatswain had ‘even now’ (V, i, 232) been awaked and had been brought from the ship ‘on a trice’ (V, i, 238). Sent to free Caliban and his companions, Ariel drives them in only three lines later. Stephano (who is drunk ‘now’—V, i, 278) and Trinculo are recognized by the court party, and Prospero acknowledges Caliban as his; the three are ordered to trim the cell, as a condition of their pardon. From the events of the day, even Caliban seems to have learned something: he immediately assents to Prospero’s command (instead of cursing) and promises to be wise ‘hereafter’ (V, i, 294). The play ends with Prospero’s promise to tell the others his story and with his final command to Ariel. The auspicious gales provided, Ariel will then be free . . . When Prospero reveals his identity to Alonzo, Sebastian, and the others, he does not tell them, though they ask, how he came to be lord of the isle, For ’tis a chronicle of day by day, Not a relation for a breakfast, nor Befitting this first meeting. (V, i, 162–64) The play that Shakespeare has usually written is a chronicle of day by day: an event happening at a particular time causes another event at some subsequent time. The Tempest is not such a play. Except for the few details which he has told Miranda in the first act—and the added hints we get from the scenes with Ariel and Caliban—we in the audience know no more of the story of Prospero than does Alonzo. At the end of other plays, notably Hamlet, Shakespeare has one character promise to tell the ignorant and amazed auditory what has happened—as Prospero promises at the end of The Tempest. The difference is that we in the audience already know what Horatio will tell the others—in fact, we know some things about Hamlet of which Horatio is probably ignorant. In The Tempest we do not know. We can assume that Shakespeare

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considered such knowledge irrelevant to his play, that the tale of Prospero on the island is nonessential; for Shakespeare is here not interested in the sequence of day by day, but in the now which can redeem the past. If this reading of The Tempest is correct, we can find a reason for Shakespeare’s use of unity in this play, a reason which is, moreover, essential for our understanding of the play. What we perceived in the foregoing discussion is the great emphasis which Shakespeare puts on the idea of the present in The Tempest. If this play is, like the other romances, about reconciliation, it is about reconciliation now, within the few hours which Prospero must seize. Unlike Leontes, Prospero does not need time to repent. Rather, he needs to grasp the moment in which he can offer money, can stay his fury, can effect the awakening of Alonzo’s conscience, can restore his daughter to her proper place among mankind. To tell this story, incorporating such themes, Shakespeare used the form most likely to create this sense of the urgency of the moment. He wrote a unified play. Source: Ernest Gohn, ‘‘The Tempest: Theme and Structure,’’ in English Studies, Vol. 45, No. 2, April 1964, pp. 116–25.

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Nuttal, A. D., ‘‘The Tempest and Its Romantic Critics’’ and ‘‘The Tempest,’’ in Two Concepts of Allegory: A Study of Shakespeare’s The Tempest and the Logic of Allegorical Expression, Barnes & Noble, Inc., 1967, pp. 6–12. Rowe, Nicholas, ‘‘Solemn and Poetical Magic,’’ in Shakespeare: The Tempest: A Casebook, edited by D. J. Palmer, Macmillan, 1968, p. 31 . Shakespeare, William, Hamlet, edited by Edward Hubler, Signet Classics, 1963. ———, Henry V, edited by John Russell Brown, Signet Classics, 1965. ———, Pericles, Prince of Tyre, edited by Ernest Schanzer, Signet Classics, 1965, pp. 48–9, 100–01. ———, The Sonnets, edited by William Burto, Signet Classics, 1964, p. 56. ———, The Tragedy of King Lear, edited by Russell Fraser, Signet Classics, 1963, p. 43. ———, The Tempest, edited by Robert Langbaum, Signet Classics, 1964. ———, The Winter’s Tale, edited by Frank Kermode, Signet Classics, 1963, p. 140. Traversi, Derek, ‘‘The Tempest,’’ in Shakespeare: The Last Phase, Harcourt, Brace & Company, 1953, p. 193. Warton, Richard, ‘‘Amazing Wildness of Fancy,’’ in Shakespeare: The Tempest: A Casebook, edited by D. J. Palmer, Macmillan, 1968, p. 32–6. West, Robert H., ‘‘Ariel and the Outer Mystery,’’ in Shakespeare: 1564–1964, Brown University Press, 1964, p. 115.

SOURCES Barker, Francis, and Peter Hulme, ‘‘The Tempest and Oppression,’’ Shakespeare: The Tempest: A Casebook, edited by D. J. Palmer, Macmillan, 1968, p. 208. Coleridge, Samuel Taylor, ‘‘An Analysis of Act I,’’ in Shakespeare: The Tempest: A Casebook, edited by D. J. Palmer, Macmillan, 1968, p. 47. ———, ‘‘Lecture 9,’’ from ‘‘The Lectures of 1811–1812,’’ in The Tempest, by William Shakespeare, Signet Classics, edited by Robert Langbaum, 1964, p. 141. Dryden, John, ‘‘The Character of Caliban,’’ in Shakespeare: The Tempest: A Casebook, edited by D. J. Palmer, Macmillan, 1968, p. 30. James, Henry, ‘‘Introduction to The Tempest,’’ in Shakespeare: The Tempest: A Casebook, edited by D. J. Palmer, Macmillan, 1968, p. 76. Martz, William J., The Place of ‘‘The Tempest’’ in Shakespeare’s Universe of Comedy, Coronado Press, 1978, pp. 22–7. McFarland, Thomas, ‘‘‘So Rare a Wondered Father’: The Tempest and the Vision of Paradise,’’ in Shakespeare’s Pastoral Comedy, University of North Carolina Press, 1972, p. 146.

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FURTHER READING Brown, Paul, ‘‘‘This Thing of Darkness I Acknowledge Mine’: The Tempest and the Discourse of Colonialism,’’ in Political Shakespeare: New Essays in Cultural Materialism, edited by Jonathan Dollimore and Alan Sinfield, pp. 48–71, Cornell University Press, 1985. Brown reads The Tempest as a work that addresses British colonialism in Shakespeare’s time. Cobb, Noel, Prospero’s Island: The Secret Alchemy at the Heart of The Tempest, Coventure, 1984. Grounded in the works of the psychologists C. G. Jung and James Hillman, and starting with the idea that ‘‘images’’ are ‘‘the speech of the soul,’’ Cobb explores the nature and function of magic in The Tempest, and the power Prospero has as a magician. Hamilton, Donna B., Virgil and The Tempest: The Politics of Imitation, Ohio State University Press, 1990. Drawing on the story of Dido and Aeneas in the Aeneid, Hamilton sees parallels in The Tempest and argues that Shakespeare’s play

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‘‘is not a transcendent, indifferent text and that Shakespeare was not an apologist for monarchy,’’ but was proposing questions about the nature of proper government, and was describing some of the political ambiguities of his own era.

Orgel, Stephen., ed., Ben Jonson: Selected Masques, Yale University Press, 1970. Orgel introduces and annotates fifteen of Jonson’s masques, the extravagant spectacles glorifying the monarch which were presented in the courts of King James I and King Charles I.

Hollander, John, The Untuning of the Sky: Ideas of Music in English Poetry, 1500–1700, Princeton University Press, 1961. A dense and scholarly work, in which Hollander traces the changing use of music and ideas concerning the powers and properties of music during two centuries of English poetry.

Taylor, Gary, Reinventing Shakespeare, Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1983. Taylor chronicles the way Shakespeare was understood, adapted, and performed beginning in his own time and extending to ours. Taylor charts the eighteenth-century response to The Tempest in detail.

Montaigne, Michel Eyquem de, ‘‘Of the Cannibals,’’ 1577. In his essay Montaigne, who had himself met a cannibal in Rouen fifteen years before, considers the institutions of European civilization as they can be contrasted to the descriptions of how people live in the New World.

Vaughan, Alden T., and Virginia Mason Vaughan, Shakespeare’s Caliban: A Cultural History, Cambridge University Press, 1991. The authors provide a comprehensive view of the historical responses to and interpretations of Caliban, showing how he is made to reflect the ideas of each era.

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Twelfth Night William Shakespeare wrote Twelfth Night possibly as early as 1599 but more likely in 1601. The earliest performance recorded is dated February 2, 1602, at the Middle Temple. Written most likely after the comedies Much Ado about Nothing and As You Like It, and before the great tragedies Hamlet, Macbeth, and King Lear, Twelfth Night has earned critical praise over the centuries for its superb construction and comedic form. Twentieth-century director and critic Harley Granville-Barker, for example, called Twelfth Night ‘‘the last play of Shakespeare’s golden age.’’

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Twelfth Night is most often praised by critics for its comedic structure and artistic unity. Its interrelated themes are complex and intriguing and have inspired many controversial and contradictory theories. Some view it as Shakespeare’s farewell to comedy and note that its melancholy undertone foreshadow his great tragedies. However, most modern critics agree that festivity and Saturnalian pursuits lie at the heart of this play. Twelfth Night explores a variety of themes and issues. The major theme of celebration and festivity was prevalent in all of the sources from which Shakespeare drew. The conflict between appearance and reality is brought to the fore by the elements of role-playing and disguise. Additionally, the use of language to deceive as well as the failure of characters to communicate effectively or truthfully are also issues studied and debated among critics and students of the play.

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PLOT SUMMARY Act 1, Scene 1 Twelfth Night opens with Orsino, the Duke of Illyria. He is lovesick for Olivia and has been trying to court her. He has his musicians perform for him as he pines for Olivia. He surrenders to the way the music evokes emotions. When his attendant, Curio, suggests that getting out on a hunt might do him good, he responds that he would like to hunt Olivia. His attendant, Valentine, who has tried to get Orsino to face reality, arrives with the news that Olivia is discouraging suitors through her decision to mourn her brother’s death for seven years. She will allow no one to see her during that time, let alone consider marrying anyone. Orsino is not discouraged by this news but instead expounds on how a woman with such a sensitive and loyal heart would be devoted to her lover.

Act 1, Scene 2 Meanwhile, a young noblewoman, Viola, lands on the shore of Illyria after a shipwreck, assuming her twin brother, Sebastian, has been lost at sea. The captain who saves her tells her that he spotted Sebastian trying to stay afloat in the storm by tying himself to a mast. Viola is conflicted about whether or not to hold onto hope for his survival. Regardless, she is now alone and needs a way to support herself. The captain, who was reared in Illyria, tells Viola about Orsino, upon which she recalls hearing of him and remembering that he had been a bachelor. The captain informs her that he is still unwed but that he is quite in love with Olivia. The captain explains to Viola about the death of Olivia’s brother and her subsequent lengthy mourning period. When Viola says that she would like to work for Olivia and be isolated from the rest of the world (so she, too, can mourn her brother), the captain tells her that because Olivia refuses to see anyone at all, she is not likely to interview and hire anyone new. Viola then determines to disguise herself as a eunuch named Cesario so she can work for Orsino. There, she will sing, play music, and curry the duke’s favor. The captain agrees to help.

Act 1, Scene 3 At Olivia’s house, her lady-in-waiting, Maria, admonishes Olivia’s live-in uncle, Sir Toby, telling him that Olivia does not like his drinking and

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that she has heard that Sir Toby has brought a reckless friend, Sir Andrew Aguecheek, to court Olivia. Maria has heard that Sir Andrew is little more than a gambling, loud-mouthed drunkard. But Sir Toby insists that Sir Andrew is wealthy and well-educated, thus making him a good match for his niece. Sir Andrew, however, makes a bad first impression when he bungles Maria’s name. When Maria leaves, Sir Andrew confesses that he does not think Olivia cares for him in the least and that it might be best if he left her to Orsino. Sir Toby dismisses such a claim, convincing Sir Andrew that he is a much better match for her; through flattery, he persuades Sir Andrew to stay.

Act 1, Scene 4 After only three days in Orsino’s service, Viola/ Cesario has won his confidence. When Viola/ Cesario enters, Orsino sends the other attendants away so that the two of them may speak in confidence. Viola agrees to court Olivia for him, but secretly she wishes to be his wife. Although Viola attempts to convince Orsino that it is not a good time to romance Olivia, Orsino remarks that with as attractive a messenger as Viola/ Cesario, Olivia is sure to pay attention. In fact, Orsino asks Viola/Cesario to carry on as if he admires her as much as Orsino himself does.

Act 1, Scene 5 Meanwhile, in Olivia’s house, Maria and Feste, the jester, discuss Feste’s recent, inexplicable absence. Maria warns Feste that Olivia is likely to fire him, but he still refuses to tell Maria where he has been. Olivia arrives with her steward, Malvolio, and when she tells the servants to throw Feste out, he uses his wit to lift her mood. Feste also asks Olivia about her mourning, and she explains that her brother has died. Feste tries to encourage her by reminding her that if he is in heaven, there is nothing to mourn. Malvolio challenges Olivia’s decision to keep someone like Feste in her household, but Olivia defends her decision. When Viola/Cesario arrives to see Olivia, Malvolio attempts to send her away. Olivia, however, relents and receives Viola/Cesario after hearing how handsome and delicate he appears; Viola/ Cesario, in turn, begins romancing Olivia by abandoning her rehearsed speech. Olivia is intrigued and sends her attendants away as Viola/Cesario eloquently delivers the heart of Orsino’s message. But Olivia becomes more interested in the messenger than the message, asking Viola/Cesario about

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his upbringing and parentage. When she learns that he is of noble upbringing, she is impressed. Olivia ultimately sends Viola/Cesario back to Orsino with the message that she cannot love him, but also with an invitation for Viola/Cesario to visit again. To ensure Viola/Cesario’s return, she sends Malvolio after her with a ring she claims Viola/Cesario left behind.

Act 2, Scene 1 On the coast, a man named Antonio has been housing Sebastian, the twin brother Viola thought she lost at sea. Although Sebastian had at first used a pseudonym with Antonio, now that he is well enough to move on, he tells his host his real name and the story of his sister. Sebastian tells Antonio that Viola has drowned in the sea, where Sebastian would have died too if Antonio had not saved him. Sebastian carries on about Viola’s beauty and keen intellect, and wonders if it might have been better if he had died with her. Antonio decides it is best to leave Sebastian alone with his grief. Like Viola, Sebastian feels alone in the world and plans to travel aimlessly for awhile. Antonio has grown fond of Sebastian and wants to accompany him on his travels, but Sebastian is concerned that it might be too dangerous because of Antonio’s enemies in Orsino’s court. Sebastian leaves for Orsino’s court, but Antonio stays behind because of the enemies he has there. Ultimately, however, he decides to risk the dangers of the court and follow his friend.

Act 2, Scene 2 Back at Olivia’s house, Malvolio chases down Viola/Cesario with the ring Olivia sent. He is haughty and rebukes the young man for being so careless, telling him not to return on Orsino’s behalf. Malvolio throws the ring at Viola’s/ Cesario’s feet after she—playing along with the ruse—insists that Olivia keep it. Viola begins to realize the trouble her disguise has created. After Malvolio leaves, she picks up the ring and wonders if it signifies Olivia’s love for Cesario. She feels pity for Olivia, who has no idea she has fallen in love with another woman. She says it would be better for Olivia to love a dream. In a matter of days, Viola has found herself in the middle of a strange love triangle.

Act 2, Scene 3 Meanwhile, Sir Toby and Sir Andrew have been up late drinking. Noisily singing and talking,

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they begin discussing logic and scholarly matters. It is an exercise in nonsense. Feste finds the two and joins in their drunken revelry. When Feste sings for the boisterous Sir Toby and Sir Andrew (who has been called to bring more wine), Maria warns them that they need to be more quiet or Olivia will have Malvolio throw them out of the house. Malvolio arrives to quiet them but is mocked by the merrymakers. He is outraged to hear such talk in Olivia’s house, and he tries to shame Maria for taking part in the revelry. As Malvolio rushes off to tell Olivia what is happening, the trio plot revenge against him. Maria has the idea to exploit Malvolio’s overblown ego by writing letters as if they were from Olivia; the letters will talk admiringly and lovingly about Malvolio so that he will believe his mistress is in love with him. The three are anxious to see Malvolio made a fool, and Sir Toby and Sir Andrew will eavesdrop to see Malvolio’s response.

Act 2, Scene 4 The next day, Orsino talks about love to Viola/ Cesario, revealing that he can tell that Viola/ Cesario is in love. Viola/Cesario admits that Orsino is right and when pressed about the object of his affection, says that the one he loves is similar to Orsino. Clueless, Orsino encourages Viola/Cesario to give his affection to a younger woman who can keep a man’s fickle heart for longer. Orsino then sends for Feste, who entertains at both Olivia’s and Orsino’s homes. After Feste sings a sad love song, Orsino insists that Viola/Cesario go to Olivia again and tell her of Orsino’s great love for her. Speaking again in veiled language, Viola/Cesario tries to convince Orsino that Olivia is no more interested in him than he would be in a woman he did not love. To make a point, Viola/Cesario tells a story about his father’s daughter (whom Orsino assumes to be Cesario’s sister), who was in love with a man but never told him, and died as a result. His passion for Olivia still alive, Orsino sends Viola/Cesario with a jewel to present on his visit to Olivia.

Act 2, Scene 5 Back in Olivia’s garden, Maria, Sir Toby, Sir Andrew, and another servant, Fabian, are ready to launch their practical joke on Malvolio. Maria drops a letter where he will find it and runs away. The other three hide in the bushes to watch the action unfold. Surprisingly, Malvolio walks up and is musing aloud on what life would be like as

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Malcolm Scates as Fabian and David Calder as Sir Toby Belch in Act II, scene V at the Royal Shakespeare Theatre, 1997 (Ó Donald Cooper/Photostage. Reproduced by permission)

Olivia’s husband, the Count, enjoying all the power in the household. Just then, he finds the letter and identifies Olivia as the author. The letter is about her love for someone whose identity she cannot reveal, but it gives the following hint: MOAI. Malvolio concludes that it must be him because all the letters are in his name, after all. The letter goes on to say that Olivia wants to give power and status to her beloved. When he reads that Olivia wishes her secret love to confirm his love for her by appearing cross-gartered and in yellow stockings, being rude to Sir Toby and the servants, and smiling constantly, Malvolio assumes she is writing to him and plans to do everything she asks. Malvolio exits, and the men come out of their hiding place. Sir Toby is delighted with Maria’s work, and when she returns, they all laugh. They are particularly amused to learn that all of the things that Malvolio plans to do are things that Olivia hates.

the house, and the two enjoy some good-natured joking. Feste enters the house to announce Viola/Cesario’s arrival. While he is waiting, Viola/Cesario soliloquizes on the nature of playing a fool and how complicated it actually is. Then he encounters Sir Toby and Sir Andrew, drunk as usual. Olivia comes into the garden and sends everyone else away so she can give Viola/ Cesario her full attention. Olivia pleads with him not to bring any more messages from Orsino declaring his love. She boldly states that she is actually in love with Viola/Cesario. When he responds that he cannot love her or any other woman, he also tells her that he cannot return to her house. She begs him to come again, suggesting either that she thinks Viola/Cesario will change his mind or that she might be convinced to change her mind about Orsino. She is desperate for any excuse to see Viola/Cesario again.

Act 3, Scene 2 Act 3, Scene 1 Viola/Cesario returns to Olivia’s house as instructed by Orsino. He meets Feste outside

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Lamenting that Olivia has shown greater favor to Viola/Cesario than to him, Sir Andrew decides it is time for him to go. Not wanting Sir

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Andrew to leave, Fabian and Sir Toby goad him into challenging Viola/Cesario to a duel to prove his love. They make him believe that Olivia may just be trying to make him jealous. Sir Andrew agrees to challenge the youth, and Sir Toby and Fabian volunteer to deliver the challenge. When Sir Andrew leaves to write the letter, Sir Toby and Fabian laugh at the joke they have arranged. Maria interrupts them with news of Malvolio having been seen wearing yellow stockings and cross-garters. He is making a complete fool of himself and does not know it. They rush off to see the spectacle.

fight. Suddenly Antonio enters, and believing Viola/Cesario to be Sebastian, steps in to defend him. Antonio wants to fight in ‘‘Sebastian’s’’ place but is recognized and arrested. When this happens, he asks Viola/Cesario for his money to pay bail, but Viola/Cesario does not know him. Antonio responds by calling Viola/Cesario ungrateful after Antonio saved his life, and she realizes as Antonio is being taken away that he has mistaken her for her twin, Sebastian, who must still be alive. Immediately, Viola/Cesario races off in search of her brother, much to the confusion of Sir Andrew and Sir Toby.

Act 3, Scene 3

Act 4, Scene 1

In Illyria, Antonio catches up with Sebastian, offering to accompany him for protection, and asks Sebastian to keep his money for him. The reader learns that the reason Antonio is not safe in Orsino’s court is that there was a sea battle in which Antonio did significant damage to Orsino’s forces. Sebastian agrees to travel with Antonio, who then goes to make arrangements for their stay at a nearby inn. They agree to meet in an hour, and Sebastian heads into town on his own.

Outside Olivia’s house, Feste encounters Sebastian, thinking he is Viola/Cesario. Sebastian is understandably confused when Feste claims to know him and tries to get him to return to Olivia’s house. Sir Toby and Sir Andrew arrive, and Sir Andrew immediately attacks Sebastian because he thinks he is the man who just fled the duel. Sir Andrew strikes Sebastian to continue the duel, but is surprised by Sebastian’s skillful swordsmanship. Unlike Viola, Sebastian is not afraid to fight and begins hitting Sir Andrew with his dagger. Sir Andrew responds by weeping and begging for mercy. Feste threatens to inform Olivia that her new favorite is mistreating her uncle and her suitor. Sebastian has no idea what is going on around him and tries to leave, but Sir Toby stops him. After exchanging barbs with one another, they draw their weapons. Olivia approaches them, thinking that Sir Toby is about to fight the man she loves. She orders everyone away, apologizes to Sebastian for their behavior, and ushers him inside.

Act 3, Scene 4 Meanwhile, Olivia sends a servant after Cesario in hopes that he will come back to her. As she waits and plans for how she will entertain him, she sends for Malvolio because she needs someone level-headed to help her devise a plan. When Olivia and Maria encounter Malvolio in his garb, smiling incessantly, and speaking nonsense (actually, quotes from the letter), Olivia thinks he has gone mad and sends for Sir Toby and Maria to attend to him. She has received word that Cesario has returned, and she is anxious to get to him. Despite Olivia’s reaction, Malvolio still believes in the words of the letter. Sir Toby, Maria, and Fabian arrive to tend to him and pretend to be sure that he is possessed and determine to lock him in a dark room as treatment. Sir Toby takes advantage of the fact the Olivia thinks Malvolio has lost his mind and will not care what happens to him. Sir Andrew arrives with a written challenge for Viola/Cesario. Sir Toby promises to deliver it, but instead he decides to deliver his own oral version of the challenge. He goes between the two, telling each that the other is enraged, violent, and terrifying. Neither really wants to fight the other at all, but they reluctantly begin to

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Act 4, Scene 2 Meanwhile, Maria and Sir Toby disguise Feste as a priest named Sir Topas to torment Malvolio, who is being kept in a dark room. ‘‘Sir Topas’’ speaks in a disguised voice and uses just enough Latin phrases and philosophical comments to sound convincing. Malvolio begs to be released and insists that he is perfectly sane, but ‘‘Sir Topas’’ pretends to misunderstand, and he lies to Malvolio about the room to try to convince him that he really is crazy. But Malvolio knows he is sane and asks ‘‘Sir Topas’’ to pose questions to prove it. In response, ‘‘Sir Topas’’ asks absurd questions and toys with the answers. When Feste returns to his cohorts, they all have a good laugh, but Sir Toby tires of the game. He is

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concerned that if Olivia finds out how cruel they were being to Malvolio, she will make him leave her house. He decides to end Malvolio’s torment, and Feste returns to Malvolio, using his own voice and the one he used as Sir Topas so that it sounds as if they are having a conversation. Feste honors Malvolio’s request for paper and pen so that he can write to Olivia.

MEDIA ADAPTATIONS 

Act 4, Scene 3 Although he is happy in Olivia’s house, Sebastian wishes he could find Antonio to ask him advice. He comments that Antonio was not at the inn where they were supposed to meet. Olivia keeps giving him gifts and professing her love for him. He doesn’t understand this rich and beautiful noblewoman’s affection for him, and he keeps wondering if it is all a dream. Holding a pearl, however, gives him tangible proof that he is awake. He decides to go ahead and marry her when she shows up with a priest. They agree to have a more lavish ceremony later, as would be expected of someone of Olivia’s social standing. But for now, they are content to wed in secret.

Act 5, Scene 1 Orsino and Viola/Cesario arrive in front of Olivia’s house just as the duke’s officers enter with Antonio. Viola/Cesario tells Orsino that it was Antonio who rescued him from the duel earlier. Orsino remembers him and asks why he came to a place he knew would be dangerous. Antonio tells the whole story of housing Sebastian and becoming close friends with him, only to have him betray him in Illyria. Angry, he accuses Viola/Cesario of abandoning him and keeping his money. Orsino dismisses it because Viola/ Cesario has been in his service for three months. Olivia then arrives and mistakes Viola/ Cesario for Sebastian, her new husband. Orsino, thinking that Olivia has married his page, first wants to kill Olivia. He then decides to sacrifice his page, who willingly agrees to death if it would give the duke rest, and confesses her love for him. Believing herself betrayed, Olivia calls for the priest to attest to Viola/Cesario’s pledge, who confirms it. Just as the duke decides to banish Viola/Cesario and Olivia, Sir Andrew bursts in, accusing Viola/Cesario of wounding him and Sir Toby. Viola/Cesario, however, insists that he was nowhere near the brawl. Sir Andrew and Sir Toby leave to find a doctor.

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Perhaps the earliest media adaptation of Twelfth Night was the 1910 film by Vitagraph. It was a silent film directed by Eugene Mullins and Charles Kent.

The British Broadcasting Company (BBC) released a 1980 production as part of its ‘‘Shakespeare Plays’’ series (distributed by Ambrose Video Publishing) that continues to earn the respect of critics and viewers. It was directed by John Gorrie and starred Felicity Kendal as Viola, Michael Thomas as Sebastian, Sinead Cusack as Olivia, and Clive Arrindell as Duke Orsino.  A 1996 film adapted and directed by Trevor Nunn and produced by Renaissance Films starred Helena Bonham Carter as Olivia, Ben Kingsley as Feste, and Imogen Stubbs as Viola. Nunn adapted the original to a setting in the eighteenth century. 

Sebastian enters. He apologizes for his rough treatment of Sir Toby and Sir Andrew, and he is thrilled to see Antonio. As everyone looks at Viola/Cesario and Sebastian, the twins recognize each other. After a series of questions to confirm that they are each other’s twin, Viola/Cesario asks Sebastian to wait while she changes back into her woman’s attire. At that point, the onlookers understand that Cesario is actually a woman in disguise. Olivia realizes it is not Viola but Sebastian to whom she is married, and the duke gladly releases Olivia to him. Orsino realizes that Cesario is really a woman—Viola—who will gladly marry him. He recalls their conversations and understands that all along, Viola has told him that she loved him. Orsino is anxious to see Viola dressed as a woman, when suddenly everyone remembers Malvolio. Feste and Fabian earlier arrived with his letter, which is read aloud to the entire group. After hearing the contents of the letter, Olivia does not believe that he is insane and calls for him to be brought to her. When he

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is presented to her, he shows her the letter Maria wrote, and Olivia recognizes the handwriting. She quickly figures out the prank played on Malvolio and promises to grant justice to the wronged Malvolio, but he storms out vowing revenge. Fabian explains why the trick was played, and an announcement is made that Sir Toby has married Maria for her wit, as he suggested he might do earlier in the play. Orsino announces the upcoming double wedding (he and Viola will wed, along with Sebastian and Olivia), and Feste is the last one on the stage. He sings a song about growing old, and the play ends.

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that the prank against Malvolio has gone far enough, it is not because his conscience directs him to stop, but because he is afraid his niece will be angry and turn him out of her house. Sir Toby and Maria serve as contrasts against the stark seriousness and ego of Malvolio.

Captain The captain is Viola’s friend. He saves Olivia from drowning and assists her in disguising herself as a pageboy.

Curio Curio is one of the duke’s attendants. He and Valentine assist Orsino by sending messages for him.

CHARACTERS Fabian

Sir Andrew Aguecheek Sir Andrew is Sir Toby’s friend. He is manipulated by Sir Toby to romantically pursue Olivia, and he finds himself opposing Viola/Cesario and later Sebastian in a duel for Olivia’s favor. Sir Andrew is foolish and easily manipulated. It takes almost no convincing by Sir Toby to make him believe that an elite woman like Olivia would be interested in marrying him. Every time he tells Sir Toby he should leave because she is obviously not interested, Sir Toby tricks him into staying and continuing the pursuit.

Antonio Antonio is a sea captain and a friend to Sebastian. He saves Sebastian from drowning and leads him to Illyria. There, he risks his own life to protect his friend.

Sir Toby Belch Sir Toby is Olivia’s uncle. He lives with Olivia and wants her to marry his friend and benefactor, Sir Andrew, in order to maintain a place in her household. Sir Toby is essentially a user; he uses Sir Andrew for his money and as a ‘‘straight man’’ for his jokes, and he also uses Olivia to have a place to stay. Sir Toby is highly intelligent, and even when drunk (which is most of the time), he can craft a pun and engage in spirited wordplay. He can also be cruel in pranks. He toys with Viola/Cesario and his supposed friend, Sir Andrew, when he riles them to fight with each other, even though neither one really wants to fight at all. He also takes an active role in the prank against Malvolio. And when he decides

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Fabian is Olivia’s servant. He joins the merrymakers Sir Toby, Sir Andrew, and Maria in the humiliation of Malvolio.

Feste Feste is a clown. He is a servant to Olivia and entertains the residents of Illyria with his riddles and songs. He is the perpetrator of folly in the play and the polar opposite of his colleague Malvolio, Olivia’s other servant. Feste’s function in this society is to be an objective observer and commentator, and in so doing reveal the ridiculousness in the others’ behavior. In his first appearance, in act 1, scene 5, he convinces Olivia that it is foolish to mourn her brother’s death when his soul is in heaven. Later, in act 2, scene 4, Feste sings for Orsino, who requests a silly love song. Feste, however, perhaps to poke fun at Orsino’s excessive lovesickness, performs a melodramatic song about a lover who died alone for an unrequited love. The duke in response briskly dismisses him. When Feste, dressed as Sir Topas, a priest, visits Malvolio in his confinement in act 4, scene 2, he tries to convince Malvolio that he is blind and that things are really quite different from the way Malvolio perceives them. In the final act, Feste summarizes the play with a song. Commentators point out that, paradoxically, the character designated as a fool is the one who grasps the simple truths behind the action, which is that appearance does not always reflect reality. Feste observes of himself ‘‘cucullus non facit monachum [the cowl does not make the monk]: that’s as much to say, as I wear not motley in my brain’’—in other words, ‘‘the way

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I dress does not define me; while I may look stupid, my mind is quite sharp.’’ When first encountering Feste in act 3, scene 1, Viola is one of the few characters to appreciate the depth of his insight when she observes, ‘‘This fellow is wise enough to play the fool, / And to do that well, craves a kind of wit.’’

Malvolio Malvolio is Olivia’s steward. He is tricked by Sir Toby, Sir Andrew, and Maria into believing that Olivia is in love with him. He appears in yellow stockings with crossed garters, believing she wants him to do so to prove his love for her. Malvolio, whose name literally means ‘‘illwisher,’’ first appears in act 1, scene 5, with his lady Olivia. His disposition is in direct opposition to Feste the clown, as Feste softens Olivia with his wit. Malvolio, however, is not won over. His insults to the clown prompt Olivia to declare ‘‘O, you are sick with self-love, Malvolio, and taste / with a distempered appetite.’’ Malvolio is the center of the subplot that develops in act 2, scene 3, as Feste, Sir Andrew, Sir Toby, and Maria are participating in revelry. Malvolio interrupts the merriment to say that if they cannot be quiet they will have to leave. The merrymakers mock and disregard Malvolio, so he vows to tell Olivia of the disruption their festivities are causing. In revenge, the four merrymakers devise a plan to make Malvolio look foolish in Olivia’s eyes by capitalizing on his oversized ego. In the fifth scene of act 2, Maria writes a letter supposedly from Olivia and drops it in Malvolio’s path. He is letting his mind wander to the preferential way Olivia treats him and contemplating himself in the role of her husband, the Count. Suddenly, he spies the letter and reads the cryptic message. His vanity identifies him as the object of Olivia’s secret love, as he ‘‘crushes’’ the letters M.O.A.I. to fit his name. The letter asks its subject to appear smiling in yellow stockings and crossed garters, which Malvolio does at the first chance he gets to see Olivia, in act 3, scene 4. She thinks he has gone mad and sends for Sir Toby to look after him. The merrymakers torment Malvolio further in act 4, scene 2, by disguising Feste as a priest who convinces Malvolio that he has gone blind. Sir Toby finally decides to end the game, and Feste grants Malvolio’s request for pen and paper, which Malvolio uses to record the injustices

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done to him for Olivia to read. When he finally gets an audience with her in the final act, she promises Malvolio that he will be both ‘‘plaintiff and the judge / Of thine own cause,’’ but Malvolio storms out, declaring ‘‘I’ll be reveng’d on the whole pack of you!’’ Critics often note that the character of Malvolio stands in stark contrast to the atmosphere of gaiety that pervades the play. In a society where sensual indulgence is encouraged, Malvolio stands for law and order and is vilified for his position. He is fighting a losing battle. He has been compared by some scholars to the Puritans of Elizabethan times for his somber attitude and his crushing of the message in the letter to fit his fantasies, much like the Puritans bent the Biblical text to suit their own purposes. It is often noted that, because of his dissimilarity to the rest of the characters, Malvolio’s presence in the play is critical. He plays the defender of the rules meant to be broken, in order to provide a scapegoat for the pranks of the merrymakers. Without the tension his character creates, the comic possibilities of the play would be severely diminished. Malvolio’s punishment is particularly fitting because it exploits his own character defects. It is his own vanity that delivers him into the hands of the merrymakers and overcomes his rational restraint. Thus Malvolio is tricked into appearing to be the opposite of his true nature: the consummate killjoy is smiling and dressed like a clown.

Maria Maria is Olivia’s gentlewoman. She conceives and carries out the plan to humiliate Malvolio, and in the course of events she marries Sir Toby, who is her social superior. Maria respects her mistress and wants to help maintain order in the house, but she is enough of a rebel to be drawn into the plot against Malvolio. She is not a passive participant at all; it is she who devises the plan and writes the letter. With her wit and sense of biting humor, she catches Sir Toby’s eye. She and Sir Toby serve as contrasts against the stark seriousness and ego of Malvolio.

Olivia Olivia is a rich and beautiful countess. She rejects Orsino’s romantic attention in favor of Cesario, whose twin brother, Sebastian, she marries, mistaking him for the pageboy she loves. She also handily rejects Sir Andrew’s courtship,

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Duke Orsino Orsino is the Duke of Illyria. He is lovesick for Olivia, and is trying to win her affections. Like Olivia, he is driven by his own unchecked emotions, and he lives in his own world of excess. Characterized by melancholy, he pines painfully and longingly for Olivia at the beginning of the play but easily lets her go at the end when he discovers that Cesario is actually Viola, who is madly in love with him. He is prone to get caught up in his own emotional drama, which turns out to be very shallow. This is ironic in light of the speech he gives Cesario about how much deeper men’s passions are than women’s. In the end, he loves the one who admires him most. For all his emotionalism and rashness, Orsino is also known as a gentleman who is brave and honorable. That he values honor is evident in his memory of Antonio; he is an enemy, but he does not discredit Antonio’s honorable conduct in battle.

Priest The priest is a holy man. He conducts the wedding ceremony of Olivia and Sebastian.

Helena Bonham Carter from the 1996 film Twelfth Night (Reproduced by permission of The Picture Desk, Inc.)

Sebastian

which she never takes seriously. Olivia is a highly emotional person who is initially seen throwing herself into the depths of a self-imposed sevenyear mourning period for the death of her brother, and is later seen consumed with passion for Cesario. Olivia has little understanding of the needs and feelings of others and is content to have those in her court revolve around her every whim.

Valentine

For all her faults, however, Olivia is not a flat character. Although her sentimentality is extreme, she does possess genuine feelings of compassion and pity. After all, she allows her uncle, Sir Toby, to live with her despite his not being a courteous house guest. She also pities Malvolio in the last scene when she reads his letter. She is able to ascertain that he has been the subject of a prank and not only calls for his release but assures him that the wrongs will be made right. Olivia also exhibits wisdom in running her household and managing her sometimes out-of-control servants and houseguests.

It is important to discuss the relationship between Viola and Olivia to better understand the characters. The principal scenes shared by Olivia and Viola begin with scene 5 in act 1, when the two women meet face to face. Viola has heard of Olivia from the captain and Orsino, but meets her for the first time when she arrives with Orsino’s message. From early in the conversation, Viola/Cesario matches Olivia in wit and wins an audience with her, even though Olivia has heard Orsino’s message before. Yet she is intrigued with Viola/Cesario’s bold style and responds to Viola/Cesario’s request to lift

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Sebastian is Viola’s twin brother. The residents of Illyria assume he is Cesario, which leads to his betrothal to Olivia.

Valentine is one of the duke’s attendants. He and Curio assist Orsino by sending messages for him.

Viola Viola is Sebastian’s twin sister. She disguises herself as a pageboy named ‘‘Cesario’’ and courts Olivia on behalf of the duke. However, the plan backfires when Olivia falls for Cesario instead.

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her veil. Viola/Cesario encourages Olivia to not leave her beauty in the grave but to embrace love while she is young and can have children. When Olivia starts asking questions of Viola/Cesario, it becomes clear that her energies have shifted from maintaining her refusal of Orsino to learning more about the page who is such an eloquent gentleman. When in act 2, scene 2, Viola/Cesario receives the ring from Malvolio that Olivia claims she left, Viola begins to realize the futility of the love triangle her disguise has created: ‘‘My master loves her dearly, / And I, poor monster, fond as much on him, / And she, mistaken, seems to dote on me: / What will become of this?’’

of Twelfth Night; without the insights she shares with Olivia and Orsino on love and life, the lovesick duke and the stubborn object of his affections may have otherwise simply grown old and died in a stalemate. Furthermore, Viola becomes interchangeable with Olivia to the duke, as he abruptly ends his pining for Olivia when he learns that Viola is a woman and he accepts her in place of Olivia as a wife.

Olivia continues to pursue Viola/Cesario, and Viola continues to deflect her attentions. When Olivia encounters Sebastian in act 4, scene 1, she asks him back to her house. When he seems amenable to her affections, she wastes no time in finding a priest to officiate the fledgling commitment between them. This, however, creates a problem when Olivia meets Viola/ Cesario again in the final act, and Viola/ Cesario acts surprised at Olivia’s familiar tone. Viola confesses that she loves the duke, so Olivia, feeling betrayed and not wanting to be taken for a fool, brings out the priest to vouch for their vows. The confusion clears when Sebastian arrives on the scene, and Olivia realizes that she is indeed betrothed—to a real man. Viola is thus freed from her disguise and is engaged to marry the Duke.

Twelfth Night’s light-hearted gaiety is fitting for a play named for the Epiphany, the last night in the twelve days of Christmas. While the Christian tradition celebrated January sixth as the Feast of the Magi, the celebrations of the Renaissance era were a time for plays, banquets, and disguises, when cultural roles were reversed and normal customs playfully subverted. The historical precedent to this celebration is the Roman Saturnalia, which took place during the winter solstice and included the practices of giftgiving and showing mock hostility to those authority figures normally associated with dampening celebration.

The comparison of Viola and Olivia has engaged critics in frequent debate. Viola and Olivia, whose names are essentially anagrams of each other, are parallel characters in many ways; however, Viola is generally regarded as the principal character. The women begin the play in similar circumstances: Olivia disguises herself behind a veil of mourning, and Viola dresses as a pageboy. They both have also recently lost brothers. However, the women behave very differently. While Olivia chooses to waste her youth engaged in a meaningless ritual of mourning, languishing in exquisite selfdenial, Viola continues to hope for her brother’s welfare but chooses to get on with the business of living. Furthermore, it is Viola, some critics argue, who possesses the ability to see past the masks of the other characters, and who encourages Olivia to drop the veil and seize love while she is young. Olivia recognizes the value in this and does so, in a misdirected way at first, but with happy results in the end. Viola’s arrival in Illyria is key to the action

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THEMES Celebration and Festivity

While the action of Twelfth Night occurs in the spring, and no mention of Epiphany is made, the joyful spirit of the play reflects the Saturnalian release and carnival pursuits generally associated with the holiday. The youthful lovers engage in courtship rituals, and the one figure who rebukes festivity, Malvolio, is mocked for his commitment to order. The Saturnalian tradition of disguise is also a major theme in Twelfth Night, with Viola donning the uniform of a pageboy, Olivia hiding behind a veil of mourning, Malvolio appearing in cross-gartered yellow stockings, and the wisest of all characters, Feste, in the costume of a clown. However, some critics argue that, as Feste reminds the audience, nothing is as it seems; underneath the festival atmosphere of Illyria lies a darker side, which is revealed in brief episodes like the gulling of Malvolio. While the merrymakers contribute to the high comedy of the play through their practical joke, its conception lies in their desire for revenge.

Identity Nearly every character in Twelfth Night adopts a role or otherwise disguises his or her identity. Viola disguises herself as a man upon her arrival

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in Illyria, setting the plot in motion. Feste disguises himself as a priest and visits the imprisoned Malvolio. The deliberate deception of these consciously adopted disguises provides a contrast to the subtle self-deception practiced by Olivia and Orsino: when the play opens Olivia is clinging to the role of grieving sister long after the time for such behavior has passed, while Orsino stubbornly hangs on to the role of persistent suitor despite Olivia’s lack of interest in him. Yet another example of role playing can be seen in the duping of Malvolio, which involves outlining a role for him to play before Olivia—that of a secretly loved servant. Critics have attempted to show how these disguises and adopted roles relate to the various themes of the play. Their overall effect is to make Illyria a place where appearances cannot be trusted, and the discrepancy between appearances and reality is a central issue in Twelfth Night. The roles and disguises influence the major characters’ ability to find love and happiness.

Language and Communication Wordplay is one of the most notable features of Twelfth Night. Feste’s wittiness is an obvious example: words that seem to mean one thing are twisted around to mean another. He states that words cannot be trusted, yet he skillfully uses words for his own purposes. Viola, too, demonstrates a talent for wordplay in her conversations with Orsino, when she hints at her feelings for him, and with Olivia, when she makes veiled references to her disguise. In these instances, the listener must look beneath the surface meaning of the words being used to discover their true import. Thus, language contributes to the contrast of illusion and reality in the play. Commentators have also examined how the written messages in Twelfth Night also contribute to the theme of language and communication. When the play begins, Orsino and Olivia are engaged in a continuing exchange of messages that state and restate stubbornly held positions that lack any real emotion to back them up. Another formal message, in the form of a letter, dupes Malvolio into believing that Olivia loves him. In these instances, formal messages convey no truth but instead serve only to perpetuate the fantasies of the characters in the play. Malvolio’s message to Olivia is an exception: while he is imprisoned, Malvolio pleads his case passionately to her in a letter. This instance of true

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communication provides a contrast to the selfindulgent fantasizing of Olivia and Orsino.

STYLE Irony Because Viola has a dual identity, the opportunities for irony are rich. Viola, disguised as Cesario, is secretly in love with Orsino. When she talks to him, she hints at her feelings in a way that is very obvious to the audience (knowing she is a woman) but that eludes Orsino completely. She tells him that she is in love with someone very much like Orsino, and then she tells a story about her ‘‘father’s daughter,’’ who loved a man but died because she never told him. Of course, Orsino assumes Cesario is talking about his sister, not realizing that it is actually Viola talking about herself. When she tells that this sister died, Viola claims that now she represents all the daughters and sons of the house, which is true, but Orsino does not yet understand it. The irony is especially pointed because only Viola and the audience share the secret that reveals the irony. In the final scene, Orsino understands the ironic nature of their earlier conversations about love, and he immediately grasps the depth of Viola’s love for him. His sudden emotional change at the end of the play is ironic, given the diatribe he delivered to Cesario about how much more deeply men love than women. In fact, his love for Olivia, despite all of his sighing and begging, is quite shallow. He is content to love the one who admires him and supports his ego. Malvolio’s attempts to signal Olivia that he returns her love are ironic. He is deceived into believing that she wants her beloved to wear yellow stockings with crossed garters and smile all the time. In reality, Olivia hates yellow and crossed garters, and because she is mourning her brother, she does not want to see those around her having silly smiles pasted across their faces. Every effort Malvolio makes to bring him closer to Olivia ironically pushes him away from her. To make this point especially clear, Shakespeare makes Malvolio’s first appearance in this garb at a time when Olivia asks for him because she wants his help. She means to bring him near to her (though not romantically), but his ridiculous appearance and behavior provokes her to reject him completely.

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TOPICS FOR FURTHER STUDY 

Viola and Olivia are the central female characters in Twelfth Night, and their names are almost anagrams of one another. Create character sketches of these two characters in a sideby-side format that enables you to show their similarities and differences. What point or points do you think Shakespeare was trying to make with these two characters?



Twelfth Night remains one of Shakespeare’s most popular plays in production. Imagine that you have been chosen to direct the play, and the producers have given you complete creative control. What decisions would you make? How would you direct Viola and Sebastian to be convincing, yet distinguishable, in their alternate identities? Based on your perception of Malvolio, how would you direct your actor to make him more or less sympathetic? What would you look for in casting? Write out a plan for the producers, describing your vision and your approach.

‘‘If music be the food of love, play on,’’ declares lovesick Orsino. Literature is replete with metaphors for love, this being just one. Locate three other metaphors for love in literature (drama, poetry, or fiction) and use them, along with Orsino’s, to describe love to someone who has never been in love. You may act it out, write it in the form of a one-act play, or use any other presentation that is appropriate for your content.  Gender bending accounts for confusion and humor in Twelfth Night. Can you think of a modern example of a play, movie, or television show that utilizes the same technique? Compare the two, with the goal being to

conclude why this approach is universally entertaining, intriguing, and insightful. What is it about gender identity that is so basic to the human experience? Present a short lecture on your conclusions, giving examples to support your main ideas. Be sure to leave a short period of time for questions. 

If you had to choose one of the characters in Twelfth Night to love, who would it be? Which character is most appealing to you, and why? Write a love letter to this character, declaring your feelings in a way that would be best received by that particular character.



There is nothing quite like acting out Shakespeare. Choose an acting partner and together, select a dialogue to memorize and perform. Do your selection for your class or for a beginning acting class. How does putting yourself in the play affect your understanding or appreciation of it?



Twelfth Night has a second title, What You Will. What do you think this means, and would it be a better primary title for this play? Make your case in the form of a theater review in Shakespeare’s time, as if you are trying to convince the bard himself that your point of view is correct.



How would you characterize Illyria? Make a list of its qualities and those of its inhabitants. Is there a modern equivalent to this place? If so, what is it? If you are able to draw parallels between Illyria and a modern city, use photos of that city, quotes from Twelfth Night, and any other relevant selections to create a slideshow proving your point of view.



Hyperbole Love in Illyria is accompanied by overblown speeches and exaggerated emotional expression. Orsino is not simply in love with Olivia at the

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beginning of the play, he is obsessed with wallowing in his own sentimentality. He has his musicians play music for him that gives his feelings a rich context. Orsino is frequently swooning to

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music, love songs, and his own thoughts of Olivia. According to him, his extravagant love for her is equaled only by her cruelty at rejecting his passion. Even Viola indulges in hyperbole when she declares her love for Orsino in the final act. As she is ready to be taken off and killed, she remarks that she would willingly die ‘‘a thousand deaths’’ for him. Grief finds hyperbole in Twelfth Night, too. Olivia announces that to mourn her brother will require seven years of hiding her face behind a black veil and seeing no one. Viola finds this approach to grieving so desirable that, upon arriving in Illyria and hearing about Olivia, she wishes to be in her service and join her in solitary mourning. Sebastian, too, takes his grief over the edge. He warns Antonio that he needs to be alone with the weight of his grief because he is afraid it will burden Antonio. As it turns out, Sebastian is so overly emotional with his expressions that Antonio (of all people) does not want to be near him at that time.

HISTORICAL CONTEXT Twelfth Night In Tudor England, a winter festival began on All Hallow’s Eve (Halloween) and ended on the twelfth night after Christmas, or January 6. A Lord of Misrule was appointed to oversee the festival, and the Twelfth Night marked the end of his reign. Until then, his rule was characterized by the reversal of the normal order of things. This tradition of the Lord of Misrule traces back to the Roman festival of Saturnalia. Twelfth Night saw people feasting and taking down Christmas decorations. The king cake is traditionally served in France and England on the Twelfth Night to commemorate the journey of the Magi to visit the Christ child. In some Christian traditions, Christmas Day is the first of the Twelve Holy Days, ending on the Twelfth Night. This date, January 5, is the last night before Epiphany.

Textual Background Twelfth Night was most likely informed by an Italian play titled Gl’Ingannati, (The Deceived Ones), which also utilizes themes of mistaken identity. Written in 1531, this play, in turn, informed the story ‘‘Apolonius and Silla’’ by Barnabe Riche, in his Riche, His Farewell to the

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Military Profession, (1581). The latter story supplied Shakespeare with additional plot elements missing from the Italian work. Matteo Bandello’s 1554 Novelle, translated into French by Francois de Belleforest in his 1579 Histoires tragiques, is another version of this story. Twelfth Night also shares similarities with other plays within the Shakespeare canon: The Comedy of Errors also includes identical twins, and The Two Gentlemen of Verona includes a girl dressed as a page, who must woo another woman for the man she loves.

Reign of Queen Elizabeth Queen Elizabeth is remembered as the great Tudor monarch who brought stability and growth to England over the course of her reign (1533–1603). The daughter of Henry VIII and Anne Boleyn, Elizabeth became what many deem England’s greatest monarch. She was beloved by her people and respected among world leaders. During her rule, great artistic, literary, and naval figures ascended to prominence. Her efforts to strengthen England’s naval power would have made her sympathize with Orsino and his vendetta against Antonio, who seriously damaged Orsino’s fleet of ships at sea. It was during her reign that such events as the defeat of the Spanish Armada took place (1588). Her years on the throne were not without conflict, however. Europe was in the throes of religious turmoil, and Elizabeth’s establishment of the Anglican Church, observing Protestantism, was controversial. Persecution against Catholics followed, with the religious question remaining far from resolved. Elizabeth’s court was widely regarded as a great cultural center. In fact, Elizabeth herself was sometimes the subject of artistic expression. Edmund Spenser dedicated his epic work, The Faerie Queene, to her, explaining in a letter to Sir John Walter Raleigh that his title character represents Elizabeth. She employed foreign painters in her court to do portraits, theatrical pieces, and other works. Elizabeth also patronized Thomas Tallis and William Byrd, arguably the greatest English composers of the time. She even set aside her religious intolerance for them; they were both Catholic, yet she extended her protection over them. Elizabeth was also a great lover of theater, and Shakespeare was a favorite.

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COMPARE & CONTRAST 

Late 1500s: In Elizabethan theater, plays are performed exclusively by male actors, meaning that women’s roles had to be played by men. Because of their youthful appearance, slight frames, and lack of facial hair, young men were cast in these roles. Audience members were accustomed to this substitution and thus had no problem accepting that men were acting as women. In some plays, however, where characters were hiding their true genders, the gender-swapping added a layer irony. In plays such as Twelfth Night, the fact that a male actor was playing a female character pretending to be a man added humor to the performance. In fact, playwrights sometimes went so far as to write lines that indirectly acknowledged this truth of Elizabethan theater. Today: On the stage and screen, women play female roles and men play male roles. In cases where the actor’s gender is different from the character’s, the decision is made intentionally to make a statement, shock the audience, or play up comedic elements.



Late 1500s: Twelfth Night is a popular and widespread celebration marked by masquerades, feasting, festivities, and traditions. People caroused in taverns, sliced up the Twelfth Night cake to see who would be that night’s king or queen (one piece of cake had hidden in it a bean, coin, or small statue of baby Jesus), and drank wassail. In the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, participants added actors and performers

CRITICAL OVERVIEW With its hectic pace, intriguing characters, festivity, and trickery, Twelfth Night remains a favorite of audiences and critics alike. In fact, author and critic Harold Bloom writes in Shakespeare: The Invention of the Human, ‘‘I

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to the entertainment, and they often hosted elaborate balls. Today: Twelfth Night is all but forgotten, outside of the Christmas carol ‘‘The Twelve Days of Christmas.’’ Even with the popularity of that carol, most people have no awareness of the traditional Twelfth Night celebration. In some Hispanic cultures, ‘‘King’s Day’’ is still celebrated on January 6 to commemorate the Magi visiting the Christ child. 

Late 1500s: Ships are widely used for transporting people and goods across seas and oceans. Shipwrecks occur due to bad weather, faulty design or construction, unstable cargo, equipment failure, piracy, or navigational errors. Because maps are still being perfected, people who survive shipwrecks are often stranded with little idea where they are or how to get back. They also have little hope of being rescued. Today: Shipwrecks are very uncommon, thanks to advances in technology and shipbuilding. Ships are very safe, and the equipment used at sea helps them stay on course and avoid hitting icebergs, reefs, and other dangerous features. Further, when there is an incident, technology allows the captain to call for help. People generally travel across seas and ocean by plane, with the major exception of cruise ships used for leisure travel. Some industries, such as fishing, still rely heavily on ships (even in bad weather), but technology is available to keep the people aboard as safe as possible.

would have to admit that Twelfth Night is surely the greatest of all Shakespeare’s pure comedies.’’ Bloom finds that the structure of the play, although apparently spontaneous, is highly organized to reflect the craziness of the characters. He explains, ‘‘The play is decentered; there is almost no significant action, perhaps because

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nearly everyone behaves involuntarily.’’ Much of the humor of the play arises from the characters’s impulsive decisions regarding love. The themes of celebration and festivity were central to the sources that inspired Shakespeare in writing this play. The incorporation of the Twelfth Night holiday was probably suggested by the Italian play Gl’Ingannati, which contained a reference to La Notte di Beffania, the Epiphany. However, recent criticism has reached past the surface gaiety suggested by the title and delved into the themes behind the temporary release of a celebration. Thad Jenkins Logan of Studies in English Literature, 1500 to 1900 reveals darker undercurrents of the festivities of the play. He writes, ‘‘As its title suggests, the world of this play is a night world, and festivity here has lost its innocence.’’ Logan reminds the reader that the celebration in the play appeals to pleasure and shaking off restraints, and he even characterizes the people of Illyria as ‘‘parasitical pleasure-seekers.’’ He suggests that the message of the play is a cautionary one: ‘‘In Twelfth Night Shakespeare leads us to explore the possibility that our drives to pleasure are ultimately irreconcilable with social and moral norms of goodness.’’ Within this world of revelry, there are two characters, Malvolio and Feste, who serve as counter-balances to the other characters’s pursuits. Logan explains that as the play unfolds, the audience sees the need for the conscientiousness that Malvolio offers. He explains, ‘‘The play itself has discovered . . . the dangers of life without the principle of order that Malvolio stands for—’’ As for Feste, Logan writes: There is within the play world one character who provides an ironic commentary on revelry, who seems to know that the pursuit of pleasure can be destructive, and who leads the audience toward a recognition of the emptiness of festive excess. Paradoxically, this is Feste the jester, whose name and office closely associate him with the festive experience.

Many critics have identified the problem of identity as a major issue in Twelfth Night and correlate the self-deception and disguises that are prevalent in the play with this theme. In an article for Modern Language Quarterly on the subject of identity problems in Twelfth Night, J. Dennis Huston maintains that identity is an ongoing concern in Shakespeare’s work and is manifest in Viola in this particular play. He writes that as she washes up on shore, ‘‘Behind her is the sea of lost identity, which has washed

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away the foundations of her previous existence. Gone is her childhood tie to family, for her father is dead, her mother never to be heard of, and her brother apparently drowned.’’ Huston adds that Viola is separated from her hometown and must make her own way in the world. Her decisions lead to confusion about her own identity, and especially with her sexual identity, thus complicating her situation. But Viola must be appreciated as more than an angst-ridden young woman in search of her true self. Bloom finds her mysterious and enigmatic and remarks, ‘‘The largest puzzle of the charming Viola is her extraordinary passivity, which doubtless helps explain her falling in love with Orsino.’’ The use of language contributes to the sense of comedic festivity: much of the humor in the play centers on wordplay or choice of language. In Shakespeare’s Comedies: Explorations in Form, Ralph Berry emphasizes the central role of communication in Twelfth Night, explaining, ‘‘The burden of the theme of fantasy and reality is entrusted to a particular device: the message. The action of Twelfth Night is in great part the business, literal and symbolic, of communication.’’ He notes that the play begins with the message of Olivia’s vow to mourn her brother for seven years. He lists other important messages, such as the false message from Olivia to Malvolio as well as Malvolio’s letter. Because almost all messages are misleading, Berry comments that ‘‘the comic business develops the serious concern of Twelfth Night, the fallibility of human communication.’’ In an article for Shakespeare Survey: An Annual Survey of Shakespearean Study and Production, Elizabeth M. Yearling asserts that ‘‘often in Twelfth Night [Shakespeare] shows words to be frivolous, conventional, or false.’’ She ultimately concludes, ‘‘Character and theme emerge from the nature of the words and the way they are combined.’’ Yearling gives as examples words used ‘‘as mere decoration’’ by characters such as Sir Andrew, and ‘‘the language of compliment’’ that comes so naturally to the upper class, enabling them to seem polite when their intentions are altogether different. She pays special attention to Viola’s way of speaking, noting, ‘‘Much of Viola’s language, especially to Olivia, is affected, courtly, artificial, not the style we expect of a Shakespearian heroine. But Shakespeare exploits this conventional speech brilliantly.’’ Malvolio has intrigued critics for centuries. In the seventeenth century, Charles I was so taken by

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Malvolio’s mistreatment that he changed the name of the play in the Second Folio to Malvolio. Critics in the nineteenth century argued whether Malvolio was a Puritan, or whether he represented the emerging bourgeoisie class, questions that are still being debated today. David Willbern of Shakespeare Quarterly describes Malvolio as a ‘‘humorless steward, sick of merrymakers and self-love, [who] seems almost a stranger to the festive world of Illyria . . . . Everything about Malvolio’s character sets him apart from frivolity.’’ Bloom interprets Malvolio as a stage version of Shakespeare’s rival Ben Jonson. He elaborates, writing that Malvolio ‘‘is wickedly funny and is a sublime satire upon the moralizing Ben Jonson.’’ But there is a darker purpose in Malvolio’s presence in the play. In the University of Kansas City Review, critic Melvin Seiden suggests that Malvolio’s function in the play is as a scapegoat for the antics of the other characters. Seiden writes that Malvolio is in the play ‘‘so that Shakespeare’s lovers may preserve their status free from the nothing-if-not-critical comic scrutiny which would otherwise expose their romantic pretensions to the withering winds of laughter.’’ Seiden goes on to explain that Malvolio ‘‘is the scapegoat; he is the man who undergoes a sacrificial comic death so that they may live unscathed.’’ Willbern acknowledges the gravity of Malvolio’s sacrifice when he notes that the ‘‘underlying seriousness of Malvolio’s fall is further suggested by the nature of the punishment he suffers . . . . Malvolio is not only mortified; metaphorically he is also mortally assaulted, killed, and buried.’’ According to Seiden, Malvolio’s role in the drama is absolutely critical to the success of the play. He maintains that ‘‘without Malvolio the comedy of Twelfth Night would be impoverished; I would go farther and argue that without him the comedy, the play as a whole, would not work.’’ Willbern comments on the complexity of Malvolio’s character as a man fundamentally divided. He notes, ‘‘Up to the moment of his fall, Malvolio had been able to keep his overt behavior and his covert desires neatly separate.’’ Even at the end, Malvolio believes he is keeping up appearances, as Willbern explains, ‘‘But Malvolio’s careful division between act and desire, reason and fantasy, collapses when he falls into Maria’s trap, even though he himself is certain he has maintained it yet.’’

goes so far as to call Malvolio and Feste ‘‘symbolic brothers.’’ In fact, many critics pair these men as the two characters going against the current in Illyria. Feste is considered by many critics to be the best of Shakespeare’s fools. Bloom applauds the character, declaring, ‘‘The genius of Twelfth Night is Feste, the most charming of all Shakespeare’s fools, and the only sane character in a wild play.’’ According to Alan S. Downer in College English, ‘‘Feste is disguised both in costume and in behavior . . . . His disguise, like Viola’s, is a kind of protection; he is an allowed fool and may speak frankly what other men, in other disguises, must say only to themselves.’’ Feste also plays an important role for the audience; Downer remarks that Feste’s function is ‘‘to make plain to the audience the artificial, foolish attitudes of the principal figures.’’ Commenting on Feste’s pivotal role in the play, Downer points to the moment when Feste drives Sebastian and Olivia together. He writes, ‘‘It is Feste’s only direct contribution to the action of the play; it is also the single decisive action which cuts the comic knot; and it is a visual dramatic symbol of his relationship to the whole play.’’ ELH’s Joan Hartwig adds another dimension of meaning in interpreting Feste’s function in the play. According to Hartwig: Feste’s manipulation of Malvolio resembles the playwright’s manipulation of his audience’s will, but in such a reduced way that we cannot avoid seeing the difference between merely human revenge and the larger benevolence that control’s the play’s design.

CRITICISM Anthony Brian Taylor In the following essay, Taylor examines Twelfth Night in light of the mythological story of Narcissus, ‘‘the boy who confused illusion with reality and was deceived by his own image.’’ The critic sees evidence of the myth of Narcissus in the characters of Malvolio, Orsino, and—perhaps most importantly—Olivia.

According to Bloom, ‘‘Malvolio is, with Feste, Shakespeare’s great creation’’ in the play. Willbern

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Olivia, Maria, and Malvolio at Olivia’s house, Act III, scene iv

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WHAT DO I READ NEXT? 

Anthony Holden’s 2002 William Shakespeare: An Illustrated Biography offers readers an honest attempt to present the facts of Shakespeare’s life, separate from the legends that surround the playwright. The book is brought to life by the inclusion of illustrations and ephemera related to the bard’s life.

In Shakespeare’s Comedy of Love (1974), Alexander Legatt offers an extended analysis of the play, concluding that Twelfth Night is unique among Shakespeare’s comedies in its depiction of the opposition between an ideal ‘‘golden world’’ of order and the seemingly disordered everyday world.  As You Like It is among Shakespeare’s most popular comedies. Written in approximately 1599, the play explores themes of comedy, social expectations, and power. In addition to their affection for the heroine, Rosalind, audience members are intrigued by elements of gender confusion, trickery, and true love. 



Written for actors, producers, and directors, Michael Pennington’s Twelfth Night: A User’s Guide (2004) presents a solid understanding of the play, along with practical considerations for performing it on today’s stage.

Edited by Bruce R. Smith, Twelfth Night: Texts and Contexts (2001) contains a wide range of historical and cultural documents shedding light on such topics as Puritan conduct, household economy, the history of Twelfth Night’s production, and boy actors in Elizabethan drama.  The Teaching Shakespeare Institute’s Shakespeare Set Free: Teaching Twelfth Night and Othello (2006) is a resource for teachers and serious students, complete with in-depth essays, assignment ideas, and performance techniques. 

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Source: Anthony Brian Taylor, ‘‘Narcissus, Olivia, and a Greek Tradition,’’ in Notes and Queries, Vol. 44, No. 1, March 1997, pp. 58–62.

Cynthia Lewis Lewis positions Antonio as a Christ figure against which Viola’s moral growth, the central concern of the play, is measured throughout Twelfth Night. Viola demonstrates sacrificial qualities early in the play, but they only come to fruition through her service and ultimate sacrifice to Orsino. Her major obstacle is her fear of losing control, but her salvation, the critic asserts, is her clear-sightedness. This quality is demonstrated in Viola’s interpretation of Olivia returning the ring she claimed Viola left behind as opposed to Malvolio’s cloudy reasoning when attempting to decipher the letter he thinks is from Olivia. Antonio’s example of sacrificing himself for Cesario, whom he believes to be Sebastian, followed by Viola when she offers to take the punishment Orsino would like to deal to Olivia. The critic links the ideal of sacrifice to the manifestation of the Messiah in the Epiphany and asserts

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THIS KEY EPISODE IN WHICH VIOLA AND ANTONIO ARE CONTRASTED REVEALS THE MAJOR OBSTACLE THAT VIOLA MUST SURMOUNT BEFORE SHE CAN GROW TO LOVE COMPLETELY: FEAR OF LOSING CONTROL.’’

that Christian love informs romantic love in the play. Viola’s characterization throughout Twelfth Night reveals that the play concerns itself fundamentally with her moral growth. Shakespeare continually plays Viola off the other characters to illustrate how far she has come and how much farther she has to go. Initially, she has all the makings of an Antonio. She generously rewards first the sea captain and then Feste (I.ii.18, III.i.43), and she lashes out at ingratitude when Antonio accuses her of it (III.iv.354–57). Her willingness to woo another woman for the man she loves also indicates her magnanimity. Yet she often appears self-absorbed. Nowhere is this trait clearer than when she offers Antonio only half her coffer (III.iv.345–47). Next to the total altruism that Antonio showed Sebastian in the preceding scene (III.iii.38), Viola’s reserve seems downright stingy. Granted, Viola is not rich; nor does she even know Antonio. Her giving anything at all under these circumstances could thus be admired. But the contrast between the two characters is evident: Viola is willing to go far for someone else, but only so far. Similarly, Viola has good reason in III.iv to be stunned by the sudden possibility that Sebastian may yet live and thus to ignore Antonio’s arrest; but Antonio, having intervened to save her life, surely deserves more attention from Viola/Cesario than she gives. Even if Viola exits at the close of this scene in pursuit of Antonio and the officers, she apparently does so not to aid Antonio but to discover more about Sebastian’s history. This key episode in which Viola and Antonio are contrasted reveals the major obstacle that Viola must surmount before she can grow to love completely: fear of losing control. That she loves both her brother and her master is

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obvious to us, but a great deal of the potential and actual destructiveness in Twelfth Night arises from Viola’s refusal to expose herself openly to others—to give herself away. She is consistently associated with walls—barriers to love—throughout the play. Her disguise becomes an emblem of her and others’ fear: many such walls appear in the play and must be let down or broken through before genuine love can be enjoyed. Orsino uses cliche´d love language to put a safe distance between himself and Olivia (e.g., I.i); Viola refers to the hypocrisy of most people, who hide their wickedness behind the ‘‘beauteous wall’’ of appearance (I.ii.48); Viola herself attempts to use language like Orsino’s in wooing Olivia and in protecting herself, until she finds it will not shield her well (e.g., II.ii); Olivia hides in her house and behind her wit and her veil (II.ii, etc.). The spirit of Epiphany, represented by Antonio’s willingness to manifest his true self for the sake of another, is stifled behind these barriers. Viola’s brilliant repartee with Feste demonstrates her capacity for folly, for letting go and enjoying another’s company (III.i.1–59). Admiring his wit, she expresses appreciation for its wisdom and thus signals her own association with Christlike folly and her own understanding that folly comes in two forms: ‘‘For folly that he wisely shows is fit, / But wise men, folly-fall’n, quite taint their wit’’ (III.i.67–68). But when Feste cuts gently at Orsino’s folly (ll. 39–41), Viola resists hearing more: ‘‘Nay, and thou pass upon me, I’ll no more with thee’’ (ll. 42–43). Viola here seems reluctant to acknowledge the value of Feste’s remarks. For a long time she appears unable either to admit that Orsino’s attraction to Olivia is not genuine love or to deal directly with her feelings for Orsino. Her reaction to Feste’s song in II.iv exemplifies the poor judgment that results from her infatuation. ‘‘Come away, come away, death’’ has got to be some of the most morbid verse ever set to music, as Feste kindly suggests to Orsino (II.iv.73–78), and the music that accompanies it would be anything but cheering. But Viola identifies with its gloom: ‘‘It gives a very echo to the seat / Where Love is thron’d’’ (II.iv.21–22). Viola’s exaggerated sympathy for Orsino’s pain mirrors his selfindulgence. In its irrationality, Viola’s love for Orsino resembles Antonio’s love for Sebastian and Olivia’s for Viola/Cesario. It is potentially good

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Ben Kingsley as Feste in the 1996 movie of Twelfth Night (Reproduced by permission of The Picture Desk, Inc.)

folly. But enclosed within her, it waxes overly melancholic. When she can express it in even veiled language, as she does in II.iv, it regains some of its health: Vio. My father had a daughter lov’d a man As it might be perhaps, were I a woman, I should your lordship. Duke. And what’s her history? Vio. A blank, my lord; she never told her

love, But let concealment like a worm i’ th’ bud Feed on her damask cheek; she pin’d in thought, And with a green and yellow melancholy She sate like Patience on a monument, Smiling at grief. Was not this love indeed? (ll. 107–15) Perhaps because this passage demands that Viola objectify her feelings, it is less self-pitying than her attraction to Feste’s song. Furthermore, Viola’s hidden love at least eventually permits her to instruct Orsino: Vio. But if she [Olivia] cannot love you, sir? Duke. I cannot be so answer’d.

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Vio. Sooth, but you must. (II.iv.87–88)

Yet Viola herself realizes that secret longings fester within, ‘‘like a worm i’ th’ bud.’’ The self must be honestly exposed to survive; Viola must reveal her inner self to become fully human. Another of Viola’s potential virtues emerges as she is compared and contrasted with Malvolio. In much the same way that Malvolio seeks to unravel the letter he finds in II.v, Viola tries to read the significance of the allegedly returned ring in II.ii. The concept linking the two scenes is interpretation. On this score Viola obviously does much better than Malvolio. Her vision is not so dreamyeyed as to obscure the true meaning of receiving the ring, whereas poor Malvolio’s hopes absolutely blind him to the facts. Viola’s visionary quality— composed of a clear-sightedness like Feste’s and a power like Antonio’s to perceive how others feel— will guide her through the snarls to come. Yet on this point too she fudges, when she thrusts all responsibility onto an external force: ‘‘O time, thou must untangle this, not I, / It is too hard a knot for me t’ untie’’ (II.ii.40–41). Notwithstanding

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the partial truth of this statement, Viola will sooner or later have to participate in shaping her own life. Time can and does help, but it requires a cooperation from her, a total commitment of herself to love.

final scene Olivia also grows to accept Viola/ Cesario as a ‘‘sister’’ and Orsino as her brother (ll. 326, 317). The good folly that is well on its way to triumphing over all is not limited to romantic love, but leads to general good will and fellowship.

Whether or not Viola learns how to make such an investment directly from Antonio, the sea captain’s dramatic purpose is to provide such an example, and Viola comes to reflect his behavior. The turning point for her, when all the potentially fine qualities we have seen in her come together, is also the heart of the play. It comes in her answer to Orsino’s angry threat on her life:

Appropriately, after Viola’s declaration of devotion to Orsino, the majority of the characters are in some respect set free. Viola’s self-sacrifice is not the single twist in the plot that accounts for every subsequent revelation: many other actions, like Sebastian’s entrance (l. 208), intervene before Viola’s true identity is discovered. But Viola’s new openness to love sets a tone early in the scene for the series of manifestations and apparent miracles to follow. The twins are reunited; the four lovers are rightly matched; the sea captain who has possession of Viola’s clothes is ‘‘enlarged’’ (l. 278); and Malvolio is ‘‘deliver’d’’ (l. 315), though that does not guarantee his freedom, which only he can claim for himself. Even Fabian, caught up in the ‘‘wonder’’ of ‘‘this present hour,’’ freely confesses the joke on Malvolio and tries to ease the tension between the revelers and the steward (ll. 355–68). ‘‘Golden time’’ is ripe for love like Antonio’s.

I’ll sacrifice the lamb that I do love, To spite a raven’s heart within a dove. (V.i.130–31) The Christian implications of the ‘‘sacrificial lamb’’ ought to ring clear, and Viola’s sudden ‘‘willingness’’ to give not just some, but all, endows her with new virtue: And I most jocund, apt, and willingly, To do you rest, a thousand deaths would die. (ll. 132–33) Like Antonio, who has earlier offered to protect her with his life (III.iv.312–14), Viola now substitutes herself for Olivia, in order to give Orsino ‘‘rest.’’ She gladly takes upon herself the punishment through which Orsino would ‘‘spite’’ another. Here lies the Epiphany in Twelfth Night, where the meaning of Christ’s birth, His sacrifice for humanity, manifests itself in the actions of human beings. Viola’s commitment of her life to love is the wisest folly she can pursue. To dismiss all barriers to love, to disregard even the welfare of one’s physical being, is divine. Viola’s altruistic attitude toward love, which alludes to a Christian ideal, permits spiritual love and romantic love to be linked in Twelfth Night. Ultimately, we are not shown a world in which different types of love—say, physical and nonphysical—are qualitatively different or are opposed. Rather, Christian love, as epitomized in Antonio, works itself into the worldliest of relationships through the four lovers, principally Viola, as well as through Feste. Thus, Christian love can inform romantic love, and the two comic traditions that shape the play—the romantic and the serious—are joined compatibly as Viola grows to become more like Antonio. Significantly, in this

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But the play’s problematic nature persists to the end, modifying and augmenting the harmonious resolution. For instance, what of Antonio? Are we to assume that Orsino will also set him free? It seems rather that the question of Antonio’s future, like so many other questions at the closing, is left dangling for a reason. Interestingly, the other salient loose end here is that Viola has still not removed her disguise by the time Twelfth Night is finished. These two details do more than blur the play’s resolution, as do questions about whether Malvolio will repair his ruined pride and whether Maria will help curb her new husband’s former excesses. Most importantly, these unresolved elements involve the audience’s sense of responsibility in determining their own future. Indeed, Act V would not challenge us morally if it clearly and simply showed that all ended well. Twelfth Night finally asks us whether we will make all well by divesting ourselves of the walls around us that shut out love like Antonio’s and keep it imprisoned. Will we embrace the spirit of Epiphany, which shapes the play throughout, and thus free Christian love in our own world? By agreeing to, we will, in effect, liberate Antonio and change as radically as if we moved, along with Viola, from male to female. When Twelfth Night closes, it has already ‘‘pleased’’ us, as Feste promises (V.i.408). If it is also going to teach us when

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the ‘‘play is done’’ (l. 407), then we must respond to it by unveiling. Source: Cynthia Lewis, ‘‘Viola, Antonio, and Epiphany in Twelfth Night,’’ in Essays in Literature, Vol. XIII, No. 2, Fall 1986, pp. 187–99.

Elizabeth M. Yearling Yearling contends that in Twelfth Night, language communicates truth, despite the play’s deliberate deceptions and wordplay. Choice of language helps to convey a sense of character: Viola’s ability to adapt to changing circumstances, for example, is reflected in her speech, which varies from courtly compliments to ‘‘rude jargon’’ depending on her audience. Sir Toby mixes colloquial expressions with elaborate language, reflecting his ‘‘disorder’’ as a knight with questionable habits. Malvolio, even when he is alone, chooses pretentious words, reflecting his egotism. Yearling goes on to show how language supports a thematic contrast of the play: throughout Twelfth Night, characters abruptly switch from elaborate, indirect speech to short, direct, action-focused sentences, reflecting the contrast between the make-believe world of holiday festivities and the ordinary world of work and responsibility.

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Street scene with the Duke, Viola, Antonio, and Olivia, Act V, scene i (Ó Shakespeare Collection, Special Collections Library, University of Michigan)

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SUBJECT TO EVERY FLEETING WHIM, WHAT CAN SOMEONE LIKE ORSINO DO? HE CANNOT DO MUCH MORE THAN TALK ABOUT WHAT HE MIGHT DO, OR, AT BEST, DEMAND THAT OTHERS DO URGENTLY FOR HIM WHAT HE CAN ONLY URGENTLY DEMAND THEM TO DO.’’

Michael Taylor Taylor compares the passive posturing of Orsino, who reflects the acceptance of events shaped by a carefree or festive approach, to the more active stance of Viola, who aptly captures the essence of the subtitle ‘What You Will’. Olivia and Orsino both retreat from reality in their respective emotional indulgences: Orsino’s in unrequited love and Olivia’s in grief for her brother. The critic contends that Malvolio, however, believes he can change his reality through sheer force of will and therefore also acts according to the subtitle in his quest for greatness. Although the exact chronology of Shakespeare’s plays is still in dispute, on the available evidence most commentators think Twelft Night to be the last of the Romantic Comedies, close in time to Hamlet. The piquancy of this association has not gone unnoticed, and there is occasionally an anachronistic ring to critical judgements on Twelfth Night, caught best by the one that thrusts Hamlet’s greatness upon Malvolio. Yet the dilemma which confounds the tragic protagonist appears also to disturb the equanimity of those in the comedy who, like him, balk at what seem to them excessively difficult situations, and who, like him also, are unable to end their troubles simply by opposing them. Even in indulgent Illyria, retreat into langour or knock-aboutcomedy does not muffle entirely the clamorous demands from the real world for decisions to be made and actions taken. Over the play hangs Sir Toby’s great question, ‘Is it a world to hide virtues in?’ (I.3.117–118).

Source: Elizabeth M. Yearling, ‘‘Language, Theme, and Character in Twelfth Night,’’ in Shakespeare Survey: An Annual Survey of Shakesperian Study and Production, Cambridge University Press, Vol. 35, 1982, pp. 79–86.

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In many ways, of course, Illyria, unlike Hamlet’s Denmark, offers its aristocratic inhabitants a life freed from the obligation to exercise their virtues. The kind of licence that the play’s main title conveys can be enjoyed at its most

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Aislin McGuckin as Olivia and Richard Cordery as Malvolio in Act III, scene iv at the Royal Shakespeare Theatre, 2005 (Ó Donald Cooper/Photostage. Reproduced by permission)

untrammelled in the simple indulgences of the sub-plot. Although Sir Toby has as much contempt for his drinking companion, Sir Andrew Aguecheek, as he has for his puritan enemy, Malvolio, Sir Andrew’s naive conception of the good life lies at the heart of their activity: ‘it rather consists of eating and drinking’ (II.3.10– 11). If it were not for Maria, who hatches the plot against Malvolio, the sub-plot would have little to offer other than the spectacle of aimless roistering. Despite Sir Toby’s noisy contempt for ‘the modest limits of order’ (I.3.8), or his lack of respect for place, persons and time (to echo Malvolio’s accusation), his belligerent claim to the hedonistic life does not amount to very much. The festive spirit, given free reign on Twelfth Night, depends here, as elsewhere in the play, upon an essential passivity on the part of its adherents.

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Passivity in the guise of a carefree enjoyment of the good things of life may be more tolerable than in the form it takes with Orsino, whose contribution to a Twelfth Night philosophy has nothing to recommend it. Of all Shakespeare’s romantic heroes his role must surely be the most difficult for any actor to make attractive. Supine in his passion, Orsino conducts his love-affair with Olivia through emissaries, Valentine initially, and then Viola as Cesario. This leaves him free to contemplate the tyrant sway of his ‘love-thoughts’ from which in fact he longs to escape, or says he does: ‘And my desires, like fell and cruel hounds / E’er since pursue me’ (I.1.123–24). Unable to act, he cannot take responsibility for his own feelings, as his figure indicates, divorcing himself from them as though they were external agents sent to plague him. He seems no more able to translate words into deeds than Olivia’s other suitor, Sir Andrew, whom he also resembles, though on a more highly poetic plane, in his vacillation and instability of opinion. In the space of some ninety lines in Act II, Orsino moves from a conception of himself as devoted to the ‘constant image of the creature / That is beloved’ (II.4.18–19) through an attack on the inconstancy of men’s affections when compared with women’s (II.4.32–34) to an attack on women’s inconstancy in love when compared with men: Alas, their love may be called appetite, No motion of the liver but the palate, That suffers surfeit, cloyment, and revolt. (II.4.96–98) Orsino’s patronizing regret, here, for the crudity of women’s love for men not only contradicts his recent opinion as to ‘giddy and unfirm’ masculine fancies, but does so in language which cannot but remind us of the play’s opening lines, where he appeals on his own behalf for a medicinal ‘surfeiting’ in order that his ‘appetite may sicken and so die’ (I.1.3). ‘Surfeit, cloyment, and revolt’, in fact, constitute the cycle from whose paralyzing influence Orsino escapes only in his marriage to Viola. Subject to every fleeting whim, what can someone like Orsino do? He cannot do much more than talk about what he might do, or, at best, demand that others do urgently for him what he can only urgently demand them to do. ‘Be clamorous and leap all civil bounds’ (I.4.20) he urges Viola, for (in a pophetic line) ‘It shall become thee well to act my woes’ (I.4.25). ‘What

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shall I do?’ (V.1.109) he asks Olivia, whose reply nicely balances courtesy and contempt: ‘Even what it please my lord, that shall become him’ (V.1.110). Although his question may not be so inane as Sir Andrew’s ‘What is ‘‘pourquoi’’? Do, or not do?’ (I.3.83), between them they voice in comic fashion the alternative which faces Hamlet: do, or not do. In both their cases (unlike his), any attempt to take decisive action is doomed to be comically ineffectual. When Orsino discovers that Olivia believes herself to be in love with Cesario he indulges his fury in self-dramatization and empty threats: Why should I not, had I the heart to do it, Like to th’Egyptian thief at point of death, Kill what I love? (V.1.111–113) Such bombast circumstance gives way to a recognition of impotence (though still phrased bombastically): ‘Live you the marble-breasted tyrant still’ (V.1.118). Indolence, passivity and impotence are constitutive of a Twelfth Night philosophy: care must be, indeed, the enemy of this life. With Viola’s entry onto Twelfth Night’s stage, the emphasis shifts temporarily (to return each time she returns) to a meaning of the play’s sub-title ‘What You Will’ which offers itself as a genuine alternative to the main title. She supplies what those idling through an Illyrian Twelfth Night lack: direction, willed purpose, persistence and decisiveness. ‘I’ll serve this duke’ (I.2.55) she says when we meet her first, indicating how much more than simply an Orsinian lament was her original question: ‘And what should I do in Illyria?’ (I.2.3). In her disguise as Cesario, she obeys Orsino’s instructions to the letter, much to Malvolio’s discomfiture. ‘He’s fortified against any denial’ (I.5.138–139) Malvolio complains to an intrigued Olivia, ‘He’ll speak with you, will you or no’ (I.5.147–148). How much her purposefulness becomes her is indicated, of course, in Olivia’s admiring, ‘You might do much’ (I.5.263). In these circumstances, Viola’s perplexity over Olivia’s continued rejection of Orsino’s suit does not extend beyond herself. We can see quite clearly why her active involvement in Illyrian affairs should in a trice break down Olivia’s self-denying and artificial barriers against natural feeling. ‘Even so quickly may one catch the plague?’ (I.5.281) wonders Olivia. In these circumstances, even so.

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Having caught it Olivia does not retire into sweet beds of flowers, even though she suffers the same treatment from Viola that she has been according Orsino. Her resilience here does not come as a total surprise to us, for she has displayed, from the outset, her own brand of willed purpose. In her misplaced determination to mourn her brother’s death for seven years, we acknowledge a strength of will, however perverse. Valentine’s caustic account to Orsino of her decision grasps its comic impropriety: But like a cloistress she will veiled walk, And water once a day her chamber round With eye-offending brine: all this to season A brother’s dead love, which she would keep fresh And lasting in her sad remembrance. (1.1.29–33) Valentine reduces Olivia’s daily expression of devotion to an unthinking exercise in the art of sad remembrance, as mechanical as watering flowers, except that the salt in Olivia’s tears hurts her eyes. His metaphor from preserving meat, the ambiguity in ‘eye-offending’ and his pointed use of the transferred epithet (‘a brother’s dead love’) tell us why Olivia might well have to strain hard for her tears. Her persistence is unnatural and foolish, a stubborn exertion of the misdirected will. A determination to pursue a course of action, no matter how fatuous, obviously provides no real alternative to an indulgence of inertia. Olivia’s activity in memory of her dead brother resembles Orsino’s languor in behalf of love: each a retreat from reality. In Shakespeare’s presentation of Malvolio (whose name means ‘bad will’), his conviction that reality can be transformed by an exercise of the will overwhelms all his notions of social decorum and subdues his common-sense. Malvolio has no intention of hiding his virtues, for he is, in Maria’s words, ‘the best persuaded of himself; so crammed as he thinks, with excellencies that it is his grounds of faith that all that look on him love him’ (II.3.136–139). Maria’s trick against him exploits this supreme conceit, relying on Malvolio’s strength of will to pursue inanity to excess and surfeit. Her letter cleverly appeals to his ‘blood’ and ‘spirit’, askin him to inure himself ‘to what thou art like to be, cast thy humble slough and appear fresh’ (II.5.135–137). Unlike Orsino, Malvolio finds nothing difficult nor

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distasteful in the activities demanded of him, despite their demeaning tricks of singularity: Be opposite with a kinsman, surly with servants. Let thy tongue tang arguments of state; put thyself into the trick of singularity . . . Remember who commended thy yellow stockings and wished to see thee ever cross-gartered. (II.5.137–141)

Malvolio’s performance exceeds expectation. Only a man blindly convinced of his own worth, assured that in no circumstances can he possibly appear ridiculous, could parade himself in this manner. Arrogantly self-willed, Malvolio, more extremely than Olivia, brings the notion of self-assertion in the play’s sub-title into greater disrepute than Sir Toby the license implicit in ‘Twelfth Night’. The letter speaks to his deepest convictions about himself, especially in one of its last injunctions: ‘Go to, thou art made, if thou desir’st to be so’ (II.5.142–143) [my italics], releasing in him a flood of ‘wills’: I will be proud, I will read politic authors, I will baffle Sir Toby, I will wash off gross acquaintance, I will be point-devise, the very man. (II.5.148–150)

Such a rhapsody, despite his insistence on Jove’s benign intervention, places Malvolio squarely in the second and third of the three categories of greatness the letter describes: ‘Some are born great, some achieve greatness, and some have greatness thrust upon ‘em’ (II.5.132–134). Source: Michael Taylor, ‘‘Twelfth Night and What You Will,’’ in Critical Quarterly, Vol. 16, No. 1, Spring 1974, pp. 71–80.

SOURCES Berry, Ralph, ‘‘The Messages of Twelfth Night,’’ in Shakespeare’s Comedies: Explorations in Form, Princeton University Press, 1972, pp. 196–212. Bloom, Harold, ‘‘Twelfth Night,’’ in Shakespeare: The Invention of the Human, Riverhead Books, 1998, pp. 226–46. Downer, Alan S., ‘‘Feste’s Night,’’ in College English, Vol. 13, No. 5, February 1952, pp. 258–65. Granville-Barker, Harley, ‘‘Preface to Twelfth Night,’’ in Prefaces to Shakespeare, Vol. 6, B. T. Batsford Ltd., 1974, pp. 26–32. Hartwig, Joan, ‘‘Feste’s ‘Whirligig of Time’ and the Comic Providence of Twelfth Night,’’ in ELH, Vol. 40, No. 4, Winter 1973, pp. 501–13.

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Huston, J. Dennis, ‘‘When I Came to Man’s Estate: Twelfth Night and Problems of Identity,’’ in Modern Language Quarterly, Vol. 33, No. 3, September 1972, pp. 274–88. Logan, Thad Jenkins, ‘‘Twelfth Night: The Limits of Festivity,’’ in Studies in English Literature, 1500 to 1900, Vol. 22, No. 2, Spring 1982, pp. 223–38. Seiden, Melvin, ‘‘Malvolio Reconsidered,’’ in University of Kansas City Review, Vol. 28, No. 2, December 1961, pp. 105–14. Shakespeare, William, Twelfth Night, 2nd Series, edited by J. M. Lothian and T. W. Craik, Arden Shakespeare, 1975. Willbern, David, ‘‘Malvolio’s Fall,’’ in Shakespeare Quarterly, Vol. 29, No. 1, Winter 1978, pp. 85–90. Yearling, Elizabeth M., ‘‘Language, Theme, and Character in Twelfth Night,’’ in Shakespeare Survey: An Annual Survey of Shakespearean Study and Production, Vol. 35, 1982, pp. 79–86.

FURTHER READING Berry, Ralph, ‘‘The Season of Twelfth Night,’’ New York Literary Forum, Vol. 1, Spring 1978, pp. 139–49. Berry compares late nineteenth-century productions of the play with modern ones, finding that the former emphasized comedic elements of the play at the expense of its darker themes. ———, ‘‘’Twelfth Night’: The Experience of the Audience,’’ in Shakespeare Survey, Vol. 34, 1981, pp. 111–19. Berry contends that the play would have had a disturbing effect on its original audiences, much like a joke that goes too far. Crane, Milton, ‘‘Twelfth Night and Shakespearean Comedy,’’ in Shakespeare Quarterly, Vol. 6, No. 1, Winter 1955, pp. 1–8. Crane places Twelfth Night in the context of Shakespeare’s comedies, which Crane contends are based upon themes of classical comedy but depart from these conventions to an increasingly larger degree in the later plays. Donno, Elizabeth Story, ‘‘Introduction’’ to Twelfth Night or What You Will, by William Shakespeare, Cambridge University Press, 1985, pp. 1–40. Donno provides an overview of issues relating to the play, including its sources, theatrical history, and critical commentary. Eagleton, Terrence, ‘‘Language and Reality in ‘Twelfth Night,’’’ in The Critical Quarterly, Vol. 9, No. 3, Autumn 1967, pp. 217–28. Eagleton delves into the complex relationship between language, roles, and illusion in the play.

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Fleming, William H., ‘‘Twelfth Night,’’ in Shakespeare’ Plots: A Study in Dramatic Construction, Hutchinson & Co., 1949, pp. 68–76. Fleming praises the lyrical elements of Twelfth Night as a means of expressing the theme of love, and discusses the humor, farce, and satire within the play. Fortin, Rene´ E., ‘‘Twelfth Night: Shakespeare’s Drama of Initiation,’’ in Papers on Language and Literature, Vol. 8, No. 2, Spring 1972, pp. 135–46. Fortin provides a symbolic interpretation of the play as a drama centering on Viola’s search for her sexual identity. Gaskill, Gayle, ‘‘The Role of Fortune in Twelfth Night,’’ in Iowa English Bulletin, Vol. 30, No. 1, Fall 1980, pp. 20–23, 32. Gaskill examines the workings of fortune in the play and how each character’s nature is revealed by their reaction to it. Gerard, Albert, ‘‘Shipload of Fools: A Note on Twelfth Night,’’ in English Studies, Vol. 45, No. 2, Autumn 1964, p. 109. Gerard demonstrates that in Twelfth Night, there are intimations of the tragic themes of Shakespeare’s later plays. Lewalski, Barbara K., ‘‘Thematic Patterns in Twelfth Night,’’ in Shakespeare Studies: An Annual Gathering of Research, Criticism, and Reviews, Vol. 1, 1965, pp. 168–81.

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Lewalski discusses the pagan celebration of Twelfth Night and examines the Christian concept of Epiphany in the play. Siegel, Paul N., ‘‘Malvolio: Comic Puritan Automaton,’’ in New York Literary Forum, Vol. 6, 1980, pp. 217–30. Siegel analyzes Malvolio as a representation of Puritan self-discipline and predictability. Stane, Bob, ‘‘The Genealogy of Sir Andrew Aguecheek,’’ in The Shakespeare Newsletter, Vol. 32, Nos. 5–6, Winter 1982, p. 32. Stane suggests that the role of Sir Andrew Aguecheek was inspired by a personality type readily recognizable to all levels of English society. Swander, Homer, ‘‘Twelfth Night: Critics, Players, and a Script,’’ in Educational Theatre Journal, Vol. 16, No. 2, May 1964, pp. 114–21. This article surveys critical reactions to various New York productions of the play, arguing that to be successful a production must convey the underlying moral warning against self-love and folly. Williams, Porter, Jr., ‘‘Mistakes in Twelfth Night and Their Resolution: A Study in Some Relationships of Plot and Theme,’’ in PMLA, Vol. 76, No. 3, June 1961, 193–99. Williams shows how the mistakes made by characters in the play reveal themes of love and personal relationships common to all of Shakespeare’s comedies.

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Venus and Adonis 1593

Venus and Adonis is one of Shakespeare’s two most substantial narrative poems, the other being Lucrece. Shakespeare is commonly believed to have written both of these poems early in his career while the London theaters were closed to prevent the spread of the plague. Also, both narrative poems were dedicated to the Earl of Southampton, a noted literary patron; critics have noted that, as courtly poetry, the works signaled a fair degree of ambition on Shakespeare’s part. M. C. Bradbrook notes in Shakespeare: The Poet in His World that with the dissemination of Venus and Adonis, ‘‘The author at once received recognition and respectful notice, even among those who despised, or affected to despise, the work of the common stages.’’ Venus and Adonis certainly merits comparison with Shakespeare’s drama; at nearly twelve hundred lines, the poem is fully two-thirds the size of his shortest play, The Comedy of Errors. Given the poem’s complex and nuanced treatment of its universally appreciated subject matter—love, lust, and desire—it has perhaps received more critical attention and praise. In his introduction to the play, Jonathan Crewe speaks of its ‘‘rhetorical brilliance and showiness,’’ its ‘‘conventional yet extraordinarily sophisticated reflection on relations between nature and art,’’ and its ‘‘densely layered allusion to other texts and literary traditions.’’ Venus and Adonis also received a great degree of immediate popular attention, as some

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sixteen editions were produced between its initial publication in 1593, and 1640. Venus and Adonis is often referred to as an epyllion, which is a narrative poem in the style of an epic poem but shorter. It is largely based on the work of the ancient Latin poet Ovid, whose Metamorphoses contains not only a seminal version of the story of Venus’s courtship of Adonis but also other myths that shaped Shakespeare’s portrayal of the pair. Crewe also refers to the work as an ‘‘etiological poem,’’ in that it describes the origins of some axiomatic truth; specifically, at the poem’s conclusion, Venus condemns the relationships of all future lovers to confusion and strife. The figurative heart of the poem is its depiction of the ambling discourse between the aggressive Venus and the withdrawn Adonis. That depiction has received a wide variety of interpretations— perhaps unsurprisingly, as where love is concerned, beauty as well as truth are in the eye and mind of the beholder.

PLOT SUMMARY Lines 1–96 In the opening stanza of Venus and Adonis, the narrator establishes the basis of the poem: the young Adonis has gone out hunting and is indifferent to romance, while the lovesick Venus has become infatuated with Adonis and has begun to boldly court him. They are understood to be meeting each other somewhere in the forest. Venus compares Adonis’s beauty to that of a flower and asks him to dismount so that she can kiss him. Indeed, she takes his hand, ‘‘plucks’’ him from his horse, holds him under her arm, confines his horse, and finally pushes him to the ground. With the two lying down beside each other, Venus caresses Adonis, who begins to protest but is cut off by Venus. Adonis grows ashamed of the compromising situation, but Venus kisses him repeatedly, in various places, nevertheless. As he lies still, ‘‘forced to content,’’ she delightedly inhales his breath. Adonis is likened to a bird caught in a net; he remains sullen, even as she constantly entreats him. She then declares that she will never remove her hand from his chest if he does not help dry her tears by returning just a single kiss. He seems to agree, raising his chin—but at the last moment he turns away, leaving Venus hot and bothered.

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Title page of Venus and Adonis, with three stanzas, 1593

Lines 97–174 Venus launches into an extensive plaint to Adonis. She mentions how Mars, the god of war, had once wooed her and had essentially become her slave, giving her the chance to teach him to be more light-hearted. Still, Adonis had somehow mastered her. She looks him in the eyes and asks once more for a kiss, saying that if he feels ashamed, he can always simply close his eyes. She says his youth and beauty should not be wasted in want of romance, and since she has no defects of person, physical or psychological, why should he refuse her company? She has her own youth (of an immortal kind, of course) and beauty and merely in speaking with him she would transport him to a wonderful place. Love itself is deemed something ‘‘light,’’ such that she herself can be supported by mere flowers and doves. She eventually wonders if he is simply infatuated with himself, like Narcissus, and thus

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incapable of love. She concludes that as a living creature he is obliged to reproduce, particularly so that his beauty can be passed to his offspring.

looks, leading her to again shed tears. She takes him by the hand.

Lines 367–450 Lines 175–258 As the sun passes overhead, Adonis declares that he must give no more thought to love and remove himself from the heat. Venus assures him that with her immortal powers she can cool him, and regardless, the heat of the sun is no stronger than the passion that he inflames her with. She laments his hard-heartedness and again begs for kisses, eventually declaring that he must not be a man if he has no romantic inclinations. Venus then can speak no more, as she is overwhelmed by her tears. Venus is beside herself, gazing and clutching at Adonis, while he tries to free himself from her grasp. She compares herself to a park, him to a deer, imploring him to graze wherever he will, as he will need live or roam nowhere else. Still, Adonis smiles disdainfully, producing dimples in his cheeks that nevertheless only enchant Venus further. As she pleads, he hastens toward his horse.

Lines 259–366 Just then, a lusty young female horse emerges from a nearby copse, provoking Adonis’s horse to break free from his reins, which were tied to a tree. Adonis’s horse leaps and bounds about, breaking his saddle straps and crushing his iron bit in his throes of passion. The stallion’s display seems intended to exhibit his strength to the mare, and indeed, the horse appears fitter than any a painter might conceive: he is perfectly proportioned and, as the narrator states, lacks only a ‘‘proud rider.’’ The stallion continues frolicking about, neighing to the mare, while the mare, herself proud, resists his courtship. At length he grows agitated—and the mare finally relents and grows kinder toward him. When Adonis, then, tries to recapture his stallion, the two horses run off together. Thoroughly angered and sorrowed, Adonis sits down and curses his horse—perhaps leaving him ripe to finally be courted by Venus and her sweet words. Indeed, she approaches him and he is emotionally revived, although he lowers his hat to hide his anger and pretends not to notice her. She kneels before him, raises his hat and strokes his cheek. Still, he resists her wooing

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Venus resumes entreating Adonis, offering him solace, but he asks her to release his hand—and so she asks him to release her heart. He then grows agitated himself, blaming her for his lost horse and declaring that he can think only of how to get the stallion back. In turn, she advises him to learn something from his stallion and give priority to matters of love; indeed, the stallion was inspired to free himself from confinement at the sight of the beautiful mare. Venus cannot understand Adonis’s coldness, but he affirms that he simply does not intend to ‘‘know love,’’ which he understands to mark the end of the youthful, adventurous hunting life he treasures. He beseeches her again to release his hand. She laments that his words would be so unkind, especially in that his voice is yet so melodious to her. She adds that she would need but any one of her five senses to appreciate and love him.

Lines 451–546 Adonis opens his mouth to speak, and in anticipation Venus feels the sting of his words even before they emerge; in fact, his look alone causes her to fall to the ground. Believing she has actually died, Adonis softens at heart and claps at her cheek; he even kisses her to revive her, but she remains cunningly still. At length, she opens her eyes, and only his vexation clouds the shining of their met gazes. Venus exclaims that she has been brought back from death by Adonis’s kiss and begs for more, declaring that she would essentially sell herself for his affection. She goes so far as to detail the number of kisses that will purchase her heart. Still, he declares that he simply cannot love until he knows himself; he believes himself metaphorically too unripe to be eaten. As it is late, he suggests that they finally part, offering one last kiss—and in kissing, they fall back to the ground together.

Lines 547–612 Finally, Venus has the chance to draw as much treasure from Adonis’s lips as she can, and like an infant lulled by rocking, he fully submits to her advances. Indeed, Venus would not have gained love’s rewards had she not been so insistent in courting him.

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After a while, Adonis yet demands that he be allowed to leave, and Venus has decided to no longer hold him by force. He declares that she will remain sorrowful until they meet again, which she hopes will be tomorrow—but he announces his intent to instead hunt boar with his friends. At this she grows fearful and throws her arms around his neck, pulling him atop her as she lies back on the ground. As he fails to take advantage of the situation, she seeks to kiss him again, but he only again demands his release.

Lines 613–714 To begin a lengthy speech, Venus declares that hunting boar is like courting death, given the boar’s sharp tusks and his warlike disposition. The boar is well insulated from attack and even lions avoid him, and a boar will pay no heed to Adonis’s beauty. She has grown very apprehensive at the thought of him hunting, and in her mind, she sees an image of Adonis slain, gored by a boar—and indeed, she prophesies that if he hunts tomorrow, he will die. She urges him to chase some harmless creature instead: The hare, for one, is cunning and can use the scents of other animals deceptively, making for a worthy chase. Venus conjures the image of a hare standing on a hilltop and growing sorrowful at the sound of the hounds resuming their chase of him, to then be scratched by the thornbushes he runs through.

Lines 715–810 When Venus pauses, Adonis declares that he wishes to hear no more. Venus states that the moon is clouded over because she is shamed in being less beautiful than Adonis. Indeed, the moon, as a goddess, has arranged for destiny to sometimes overtake nature’s beautiful creations, through such ‘‘mischances’’ as smaller illnesses and plagues alike; even the most beautiful, then, might be stuck down by some misfortune. As such, to ensure humanity’s survival, Adonis should feel obliged to breed before exposing himself to mortal danger. Adonis declares that he is not at all swayed by Venus’s unending entreaties, as he is unaffected by her mermaid song. He asserts that his heart rests peacefully alone at night and that he is averse not to love itself but to Venus’s wantonness. Indeed, though she speaks of reproducing, he deems her overly lustful, and lust to him is the very opposite of love. He again declares that he shall leave, ashamed and saddened by her conduct.

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Lines 811–912 Adonis indeed runs off, and Venus chases him, but he is eventually obscured by the night. Venus then lies down, lost and overcome with woe, and sings to herself throughout the rest of the night, until the lark signals the coming of the new day’s sun, which Venus greets with words of Adonis’s own shining beauty. At length, idling in a grove, Venus hears the hounds and horn of Adonis’s hunt. She runs toward them, hindered by the bushes, and then hears that the hounds have cornered some wild animal, stoking her anxiety. She is certain that they have found some dangerous animal, as it is not running but making a stand. She finds herself frozen with fear, and in trying to calm herself she sees the boar itself, its mouth frothing and bloody. Now maddened with fear, Venus knows not which way to run.

Lines 913–1026 Venus then comes across a few hounds, all licking their wounds and sorrowful, then all howling. Seeing the bleeding creatures, Venus grows certain that Adonis has been taken by death, which ‘‘grim-grinning ghost’’ she rebukes for claiming so fair a youth. Tears storm onto and over her face again and again, stricken as she is with countless sorrows. Suddenly, Venus hears a huntsman call out, and she imagines that the man is Adonis, stemming the flow of her tears. Indeed, the narrator notes that those in love often suffer from extremity of emotional reaction. In Venus’s mind, Adonis most definitely lives, and Venus instinctively retracts the unduly harsh words she spoke of death. She blames the boar for having provoked her to such vengeful anger and flatters death greatly. She calls out to Jove, declaring her own foolishness in believing that such a beautiful youth would be allowed to die. She hears a horn.

Lines 1027–1123 Venus rushes off in the direction of the horn—to suddenly happen upon Adonis, slain after all, sending her eyes reeling back into her head, unable to see anything more. But her wounded heart groans, causing parts of her body to quake and her eyes to open again—and she again sees the deceased Adonis, who had been gored in the flank, leaving the ground drenched with his blood. Venus is left in disbelief, her mind

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CHARACTERS Adonis

MEDIA ADAPTATIONS 

The Royal Shakespeare Company and the Little Angel Theatre collaborated to produce an hour-long marionette version of Venus and Adonis in 2004. The production was directed by Gregory Doran. A video was recorded by, and is held at, the Theater Museum of the United Kingdom’s National Museum of the Performing Arts.

distorting and multiplying the sights of the wound, his face, and his limbs. She exclaims in despair that not one but two Adonises are dead and that her heart has been turned to lead: the most beautiful thing on earth has ceased to exist. She passes blame to the sun and wind, who had sought to rob him of his fairness. Even the most feral animals, she notes, had been enchanted by him. Fish and birds, likewise, favored him. But the boar, she posits, had been looking groundward and had not seen him; or if it had seen Adonis, it had only gored him in trying to kiss him. She realizes that she, too, would have gored him had she been so naturally armed. She falls to the ground and embraces him.

Lines 1124–1194 Venus touches and speaks to the slain Adonis, opening his eyes to witness the absence of light there. Having lost her own love, she prophesies now that ever after, love will ultimately bring jealousy and strife, afflicting people of all sorts with foolishness and confusion and even causing wars. Adonis then melts away, leaving only a flower of mottled purple (or blood-crimson) and white. Venus plucks the flower, to keep it always near her heart, treating it as Adonis’s only kin. Venus is then carried off into the skies by her silver doves to Paphos, her home.

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Although he says far less than his counterpart in the tale, Adonis merits as much attention by virtue of his character’s complexity. In fact, where Venus’s speeches leave little doubt in the reader’s mind as to her nature, Adonis’s comparative silence has provoked many commentators to proffer elaborate explanations regarding his state of mind. In fact, comparatively few analyses revolve around the major speech he delivers from lines 769 to 810, in which he seems to relate that his reluctance simply stems from his low opinion of the genuine nature of Venus’s ‘‘love.’’ (Nevertheless, these lines have been highlighted by Belsey, among others, as revealing much about the Elizabethan conceptions of love and lust.) To the contrary, Adonis is generally understood to shy away from Venus’s advances simply because he has not yet reached a state of manhood. Shakespeare establishes early on that Adonis is but a ‘‘tender boy,’’ and throughout the poem he blushes and pales with embarrassment and shame in treading what is evidently unfamiliar romantic territory. Many critics have invoked the language of psychology in discussing Adonis’s character, making reference to theorists such as Sigmund Freud and Erik Erikson. In psychological terms, Adonis’s youth and reluctance can be understood to signal that he has yet to form his own identity; without an identity, he would not be able to cope with the merging of selves brought about by sexual union. Coppe´lia Kahn elaborates, ‘‘The Adonis of Shakespeare’s poem is caught between the poles of intimacy and isolation: intimacy with Venus, which constitutes entry into manhood, and the emotional isolation of narcissism, which constitutes a denial of growth, change, and the natural fact of mortality that underlies them.’’ Indeed, Adonis’s evident narcissism, or excessive self-love, may be understood to stem in part from his exceptional beauty. Just as any other young man or woman might, Adonis seems to perceive his beauty as enhanced by his purity, which would be ‘‘lost’’ were he to lose his virginity. William E. Sheidley, for one, contends that the poem’s conclusion—Adonis’s death at the tusks of the boar—signifies that the author has, to a certain extent, sided with Venus, who argues all along that sexual love is simply necessary for

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the propagation of the human race. Sheidley writes, ‘‘The chaste and sexless beauty of Adonis shadows forth an ideal perfection that precludes the phallic. But the poem reveals that, no matter how attractive it may be, the notion of its existence in the temporal world is an illusion that must be exploded.’’

The Boar Although making only the briefest appearance— receiving one stanza of description upon its appearance before Venus—and though not even human, the boar plays so significant a role in the poem as to merit recognition as one of its characters. Indeed, critical works such as William E. Sheidley’s ‘‘‘Unless It Be a Boar’: Love and Wisdom in Shakespeare’s Venus and Adonis’’ and A. T. Hatto’s ‘‘Venus and Adonis—and the Boar’’ reveal that the boar may be seen as the symbolic key to the entire story. Sheidley views the boar as ‘‘the locus of the missing phallic impulse’’—that is, where Adonis refuses to provide Venus with the sexual gratification she desires, the boar intrudes and with his tusk inflicts that ‘‘phallic impulse’’ on Adonis, killing him. Hatto draws on a long history of boars symbolizing sexual potency in literature, citing works by the fourteenth-century Italian poet Giovanni Boccaccio and the Englishman Geoffrey Chaucer, to make a similar argument. Sheidley, in turn, furthers this line of argument by citing the various instances in Shakespeare’s plays where mention is made of the boar, such as in A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Cymbeline, and As You Like It, all of which give the boar sexual connotations. Succinctly summing up other critical perspectives on the poem’s violent beast, Sheidley writes, ‘‘The Boar has received various interpretations, ranging from his role as winter or the advent of winter in the seasonal explication of the myth, through a generalization upon his function that renders him Death personified, to the iconographical gloss through swine as gluttony.’’ Considering the historical context, M. C. Bradbrook notes that the boar ‘‘may be a direct symbol of the plague, for the wound is in the flank or groin, where the dreaded plague spots, the ‘bubos,’ appeared—under the armpits and at the crotch.’’ Overall, no single interpretation of the boar’s role need be favored to the exclusion of the others, as Shakespeare may very well have had all of the suggested meanings in mind—or, consciously, none at all—as he wrote.

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The Horses The horses, in turn, are given enough attention by Shakespeare—the episode of their courtship constitutes a full sixty-six lines—to merit discussion. In general, critics assert that the romantic display provided by the horses serves as a contrast to the romantic attention that Adonis fails to bestow on Venus. Indeed, Venus says to Adonis with regard to his horse, ‘‘learn of him . . . / To take advantage on presented joy,’’ and, shortly afterward, ‘‘learn to love; the lesson is but plain.’’ Even the narrator, who insinuates himself into the action of the poem only subtly— such as by occasionally offering comparisons between the main characters and animals— remarks that all the virile stallion lacks is ‘‘a proud rider on so proud a back.’’ Indeed, continuing his comprehensive analysis of the poem’s beasts, Sheidley remarks of the horses, ‘‘By painting that picture of sexuality untrammeled by obstacles or perversions, Shakespeare provides a standard by which the defects in the relationship between Venus and Adonis may be precisely measured and defined.’’

Venus As she speaks something close to half of the poem’s twelve hundred lines, Venus has been the focus of much of the critical attention devoted to the work. In fact, Venus’s convictions, expressions, and actions are doubly significant in that she is the mythical personification of Love, such that Shakespeare can be understood to be commenting upon that most central of all human emotions through his depiction of her. Much of the discourse between the two, of course, concerns their impressions of love and lust. Perhaps Venus’s most prominent trait is her sexual aggression, a fairly unique feature among romantic heroines even in modern times. Catherine Belsey notes that Shakespeare did not shy away from highlighting this aspect of the story, as ‘‘the text makes witty capital out of the scandal it creates when Venus draws explicit attention to the role reversal.’’ In line 369 Venus imagines how the situation might be improved if their positions were reversed back to the traditional ones, remarking, ‘‘Would thou wert as I am, and I a man.’’ In taking note of the goddess’s assertiveness in a broader sense, Christy Desmet states that Venus can be viewed as ‘‘the earliest Shakespearean woman to have beauty, passion, and a golden tongue,’’ such that

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she merits comparison alongside such characters as Isabella from Measure for Measure and Helena from All’s Well That Ends Well. Venus’s aggression seems to account for much of Adonis’s reluctance to engage in a physical relationship with her; he remarks in line 789, ‘‘I hate not love, but your device in love.’’ Indeed, with her forcible restraint of Adonis and her single-minded persistence in gaining his favor, Venus has been noted as aggressive to the point of comedy, nowhere more pointedly than when she first ‘‘plucks’’ Adonis from his horse. Making reference to this aggression, Jonathan Crewe offers an assessment of her characterization: ‘‘Venus as an older woman implies the threat stereotypically experienced by young men of being overwhelmed by demanding, suffocating mother figures.’’ In fact, Venus refers to herself with maternal connotations in several instances, most notably when she compares herself to a park and Adonis to a deer which should feed there, evoking the idea of her providing sustenance. This reference is made more explicit when she speaks of her ‘‘pleasant fountains,’’ the breasts that would provide nourishment to her infant. The scholar Peter Erickson, for one, has noted that Shakespeare may have portrayed Venus as maternal in part because he was thereby making subtle political reference to Queen Elizabeth.

THEMES Desire The nature of desire is a major theme in Venus and Adonis, especially as represented by Venus and as absent in Adonis. Indeed, Shakespeare has portrayed the personification of love as simply overflowing with desire, and many commentators have thus seen Venus’s characterization as largely negative and fairly comical. Catherine Belsey provides a survey of other critics who have used terms such as ‘‘sick excess,’’ ‘‘unnatural and disorderly,’’ and ‘‘perverse’’ to describe Venus’s emotional state. Belsey contends that the desire itself is given more blame than the woman who embodies it: ‘‘Irrational, irregular, incited by prohibition, and thus quite unable to take ‘no’ for an answer, desire is in every sense of the term an outlaw.’’ Thus, Venus is not just overflowing with, but also dominated by, her desire for Adonis.

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Belsey notes that a key passage is the one in which the narrator compares Venus to the legendary birds who were deceived into thinking that grapes painted by Zeuxis, an ancient Greek, were real. Belsey writes, ‘‘In the same way, despite her best efforts, Venus finds that the provocative outward image of Adonis conceals nothing to her purpose: his beauty evokes a longing, which remains unsatisfied, for his desire.’’ When she cannot conjure Adonis’s desire, Venus only craves his company all the more. Belsey concludes by noting that Adonis’s metamorphosis after his death is the culmination of the discussion about desire: ‘‘The flower—beautiful, fragile, mutable, and all that remains of a youth who became an object of desire for the goddess of love—thus appears in its elusiveness the quintessential signifier of desire itself.’’ That is, in that the flower cannot be permanently possessed by anyone—once plucked, it is bound to wither and die—it represents all objects of affection which ultimately fail to return that affection. With respect to Adonis, his failure to exhibit any desire is equated with his enduring boyhood. As Coppe´lia Kahn notes, ‘‘In Venus and Adonis Shakespeare is saying that the life apart from eros is death, and that for a man, sexual love of woman is vital to masculinity.’’ Thus, rather than depending in any way on Venus’s actions or exhortations, Adonis’s desire for the opposite sex may be seen as simply not yet existing. Outside of the levels of desire exhibited by the title characters, accounts of the poem may take into account the desire of a third personage: the reader. Indeed, some critics have noted that one function of the poem, which is widely referred to as ‘‘erotic’’ literature, is to spark desire in the reader. Bruce R. Smith remarks of Venus and Adonis and two contemporary works, ‘‘Sexual arousal in these poems is as much the reader’s as the protagonists’.’’ Sheidley, in turn, notes, ‘‘Fruition is denied in Venus and Adonis, but Shakespeare makes sure that it exists in his reader’s mind as a ready potentiality.’’ He adds that the reader’s experience with the poem necessarily includes ‘‘desires orchestrated by Shakespeare and substantiated by the philosophy of Venus’’; that is, Venus effectively argues that without desire—and more to the point, without the consummation of desire—the human race would cease to exist. And the reader is perhaps more likely to agree with this hypothesis when moved by desire of his or her own.

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Birds are mentioned in a variety of contexts throughout Venus and Adonis. In an essay, discuss the nature of these references and their relevance to the poem as a whole.  Some critics have suggested that Shakespeare portrayed Adonis as refusing Venus’s advances because he had homosexual leanings. Research and write a report on the history of the gay rights movement in the United States. 

Discuss how modern American concepts regarding love, lust, and chastity are reflected in movies, on television, and on the Internet.  In Ovid’s version of the myth of Venus and Adonis, Venus relates the story of Atalanta and Hippomenes; Shakespeare may have excluded this digression because it did not fit with his interpretation of the overall story. Read Ovid’s version of the myth of Atalanta and Hippomenes, then write several stanzas to be included in the appropriate location in Venus and Adonis in which Venus relates that myth. Alter that myth however you choose so that it best fits into Shakespeare’s narrative poem. 

STYLE Mythology In that the entire story of Venus and Adonis originates in Roman mythology, Shakespeare’s poem is worth examining not only as an individual work but also alongside that myth and others from which the author drew. Shakespeare did not exclusively adhere to the facts of the primary myth, which he is understood to have learned from Ovid’s Metamorphoses, written around 8 C.E. Most notably, Ovid depicts Venus as fairly reserved in terms of her sexuality. John Doebler notes of Ovid’s Venus, ‘‘Dressed as a virginal

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Diana hunting harmless game, she is content to haunt the presence of Adonis,’’ while ‘‘her love is protective, reserved, and maternal, in no way rapacious.’’ The goddess does bestow kisses on the youth, but she otherwise simply sits with him and relates the tale of Atalanta and Hippomenes.

TOPICS FOR FURTHER STUDY

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In fact, Shakespeare’s exclusion of the retelling of the myth of Atalanta and Hippomenes is also significant, as in Ovid’s version the tale may be understood to illustrate the danger of seeking to satisfy lust. In roughly the same place in the framing tale of Venus and Adonis, Shakespeare inserted the episode of the horses’ courtship, which, to the contrary, endorses the notion of allowing oneself to be guided by animalistic attractions. Shakespeare also omitted other aspects of Ovid’s tale that seemed to warn against the satisfaction of lust. He failed to mention the fact that Venus and Mars were ridiculed by the other gods when Vulcan, Venus’s husband, exposed the two, and he makes no mention of the fact that Adonis was conceived through incest between father and daughter. As Doebler notes, in Ovid’s tale, ‘‘The fate of Adonis completes a cycle of retribution arising from illicit passion.’’ In Shakespeare’s work, meanwhile, only Adonis’s own words— and some of the narrator’s—reflect the notion that excessive passion might cause any woe. Shakespeare is understood to have borrowed from several other classical myths in shaping his characters in Venus and Adonis. The manner in which Adonis rejects Venus is reminiscent of the rejection of Echo by Narcissus, who loves himself so much that he has no affection to offer to anyone else. Coppe´lia Kahn notes that Adonis also fairly resembles Hermaphroditus, who likewise refused to love a woman and subsequently met with an unkindly fate. Further, Shakespeare’s Venus is quite similar to the character of Salmacis, the woman who forcibly embraces Hermaphroditus, resulting in the merging of their sexualities. Kahn observes that while the fates of the two women are distinct, ‘‘Venus’s style of wooing is, in general, inspired by that of Salmacis, who first offers herself to Hermaphroditus boldly, but in carefully controlled rhetoric.’’ Overall, Shakespeare drew on classical mythology in various inventive ways to achieve precisely the effect he desired in his own retelling of the story of Venus and Adonis.

Red and White As in all of Shakespeare’s longer works, recurring imagery plays a substantial role in the poetic

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construction. The most prominent image motif in Venus and Adonis features what Coppe´lia Kahn calls ‘‘the beauteous war of red and white.’’ Those colors are mentioned, individually and together, in various contexts throughout the poem. Most frequently, red represents love, passion, and emotion, as when Venus is ‘‘red and hot as coals of glowing fire’’ over Adonis, or when she speaks of leading Mars by a ‘‘red-rose chain.’’ Adonis is associated with red almost exclusively when he blushes—that is, when he is overcome with emotion. White, on the other hand, represents virtue, coldness, and to a certain extent, chastity. Adonis, of course, is often referred to as pale or white in some respect, Venus less frequently so. Still, Venus seems to contain more ‘‘white’’ than Adonis contains ‘‘red’’; two significant lines related to this topic come early in the poem: ‘‘Being red, she loves him best, and being white, / Her best is bettered with a more delight.’’ These lines might be interpreted as an assertion that passionate feelings and virtue are compatible and are embodied by Venus. However, a later passage seems to indicate that while the sentiments or traits symbolized by the two colors can coexist, they cannot do so peacefully. When Venus approaches Adonis after his horse has fled, the narrator mentions ‘‘the fighting conflict of her hue, / How white and red each other did destroy! / But now her cheek was pale, and by and by / It flashed forth fire, as lightning from the sky.’’ The colors red and white appear in two of the poems most important scenes: on the boar’s ‘‘frothy mouth, bepainted all with red, / Like milk and blood being mingled both together,’’ and on the flower that Adonis becomes, ‘‘Resembling well his pale cheeks, and the blood / Which in round drops upon their whiteness stood.’’ Indeed, Kahn highlights the relevance of this last intermingling of the two colors: ‘‘His transformation to a purple (from Lat. purpureus, a variety of red) and white flower represents the ending of the war of white and red mentioned so often. Adonis’s pale coldness opposes Venus’s fiery ardor; in death, his red blood stains the perfect whiteness of his skin.’’

HISTORICAL CONTEXT The Elizabethan Concept of Love The most prominent reason for examining Venus and Adonis in its historical context is that conceptions regarding love—and lust—in Elizabethan times were vastly different from those in

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modern times. As Russ McDonald notes in his Bedford Companion to Shakespeare, marriage frequently had little, if anything, to do with the degree of love shared by the partners in question. Especially among upper class families, who possessed capital and estates that potential brides could give to their suitors as dowries, the agreeability of the financial arrangement and the effect the union would have on the social status of each were frequently the most important matchmaking factors. While ‘‘love’’ certainly sprang from such arrangements over time, the unions often functioned more as partnerships than as marriages. William E. Sheidley notes that the story’s conclusion—Adonis meeting death after spurning Venus—can, and perhaps should, be read as his punishment for failing to give himself over to the goddess of love. Sheidley frames his discussion in part around the contrast between religious and secular points of view, which he differentiates as ‘‘the mystical neoplatonic vision of love as the pathway to God, and the somewhat less exotic and more characteristically Shakespearean understanding of love, through its consummation in marriage and procreation, as the ordering principle and unifying bond of the cosmos.’’ That is, without love—and sex— the human race would cease to exist. Taking note of the literary climate, he states, ‘‘English poets of the era, like many members of the Christian humanist intellectual community in general, frequently express ambivalence or perplexity about the traditional poetic vision of love.’’ Indeed, some Elizabethan writers came to adopt ‘‘antilove’’ standpoints, which better accorded with contemporary religious views touting the virtues of chastity. Shakespeare, to the contrary, perhaps recognized that humans, like all earthly mammals, could certainly enjoy physical love outside of the context of a spiritually pure romantic relationship. Sheidley asserts that in Venus and Adonis, Shakespeare ‘‘conveys his realization that sexual love is not composed entirely of soft sweetness and warmth, but involves an untender element, an element even, as with human nature itself, of the bestial.’’ He concludes, ‘‘The properly ordered human being must acknowledge and integrate this lower nature.’’ Catherine Belsey frames her discussion on the subject around the Elizabethan connotations of the words love and lust. Adonis, of course, draws a very fine distinction between the words, concluding

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Venus and Adonis (oil on canvas), by Charles Joseph Natoire (Venus and Adonis (oil on canvas), Natoire, Charles Joseph (1700-77), photograph. Giraudon, Musee des Beaux-Arts, Nimes, France/The Bridgeman Art Library International)

several stanzas of comparisons with the twin dec` lies.’’ larations, ‘‘Love is all truth, lust full of forged Yet Belsey notes that this distinction is not played out in the rest of the text, with love and lust used interchangeably to describe Venus’s emotional state. Belsey states, ‘‘The emergence of a radical distinction between the two—a process inadvertently encouraged, as it turns out, by the voice of Adonis—marks a moment in the cultural history of desire which . . . has proved formative for our own cultural norms and values.’’ That is, in modern times, love and lust largely have precisely the connotations that Adonis assigns them. Belsey draws on a wide variety of sources to show that at the time of the publication of Venus and Adonis, lust quite often had perfectly positive connotations, as associated and coupled with virtuous ‘‘true love.’’ The years afterward witnessed a gradual shift, such that ‘‘by the mid-seventeenth century the term had acquired a primarily sexual and strongly pejorative meaning.’’

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Queen Elizabeth While the powerful and manipulative woman was not a common character in literature in Shakespeare’s time, one would not have to search very hard to find a prime example of just such a personage: Queen Elizabeth herself. Commentators have noted that Shakespeare would certainly have been conscious of the possibility that comparisons would be drawn between his female lead and the nation’s, especially because Elizabeth never married or produced an heir, such that her possible romantic relations were ever on the mind of the public. Indeed, as Peter Erickson notes in his essay on the topic, ‘‘Venus evokes the erotic flirtation in Elizabeth’s practice of courtship.’’ Erickson highlights the fact that Shakespeare wrote Venus and Adonis—as well as the subsequent Rape of Lucrece—for the Earl of Southampton, a subordinate to the queen. As such, both poems can be seen to evidence a ‘‘responsiveness to the latent gender tension involved in male reaction to female rule.’’

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COMPARE & CONTRAST 

1590s: England, a nation that is primarily patriarchal both legally and socially finds itself under the rule of a woman, Queen Elizabeth, for over forty years. Today: A nation whose laws generally provide for the equal treatment of the sexes, the United States of America, has yet to be led by a female president.



1590s: The words love and lust have yet to receive wholly distinct connotations, such that lust is often referred to positively. Today: Lust is widely recognized as one of the ‘‘seven deadly sins,’’ in the United States. But the proliferation of health programs

Erickson goes on to note, ‘‘Venus’s domination evokes Elizabeth’s control, and this undercurrent helps to account for the poem’s unstable tonal mixture of defensive jocularity and genuine alarm.’’ That is, while some critics have lamented that the poem itself seems unsure as to whether it wishes to be comedic or tragic, Erickson asserts that both of these moods result naturally from the historical context. He concludes that the pair of narrative poems Venus and Adonis and The Rape of Lucrece—which, as indicated by the title, entails the ultimate subordination and violation of a woman—together amount to a literary fantasy of revolt: ‘‘The primary wish fulfilled by the overall progression of the two poems is the elimination of the threat of Elizabeth’s power.’’ Heather Dubrow draws very similar conclusions, stating, ‘‘Venus’s assertions of power may well reflect resentment of Elizabeth herself.’’ Dubrow, too, takes note of the poem’s alternating tone and the associated alternately favorable and unfavorable depictions of Venus: ‘‘Ambivalence about an unsuccessfully manipulative heroine encodes ambivalence about a brilliantly manipulative queen.’’

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preaching abstinence rather than the use of condoms suggests that lust is to be ignored. 

1590s: As the word homosexual would not be coined for some three hundred years, people are not categorized according to their sexual desires. Today: For many, the question of ‘‘sexual identity’’ is crucial and must be answered in some definitive way to allow for full maturation. While some social scientists have suggested that all people fall not into a category but somewhere along a range of sexuality, fewer than 2 percent of Americans identify themselves as bisexual.

Sexuality In that Adonis, a perfectly healthy young male, remains unstirred by Venus’s advances, some scholars have speculated that Shakespeare intentionally depicted him in a way that left his sexuality in question. To begin with, Adonis is repeatedly described not merely as an attractive or powerful male but as a beautiful male. His blushing shyness, in turn, is more typically a feminine trait. In Homosexual Desire in Shakespeare’s England, Bruce Smith notes that owing to ‘‘their androgyny,’’ or combination of traditional femininity and masculinity alike, Adonis and two other male figures in contemporary works ‘‘embody, quite literally, the ambiguities of sexual desire in English Renaissance culture and the ambivalences of homosexual desire in particular. They represent, not an exclusive sexual taste, but an inclusive one. To use the categories of our own day, these poems are bisexual fantasies.’’ Other critics have drawn different conclusions regarding the perspective on sexuality revealed in the poem. C. L. Barber has raised the possibility that the boar’s goring of Adonis with his tusk can be interpreted as representing

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an act of homosexual rape. Meanwhile, in Shakespeare and the Earl of Southampton, G. P. V. Akrigg discusses the possibility that the earl and literary patron was in fact homosexual. Peter Erickson then notes that if the poem itself is meant to express frustration over the rule of the female monarch, it was perhaps also intended to reveal ‘‘ambivalence about Southampton in the role of Adonis-like courtier.’’ Erickson concludes, ‘‘Adonis’s refusal can be read as heterosexual impotence that implies a homosexual motive, toward whose fulfillment the poem expresses reservations as strong as its restiveness about female power.’’ Regardless of what interpretation of Adonis’s sexuality is favored, Shakespeare’s treatment of the subject can be understood to reflect the cultural realities of the era.

CRITICAL OVERVIEW Critical opinions of Venus and Adonis have varied greatly over the years, especially because earlier critics invested less energy in what was long considered a minor Shakespearean work. Indeed, Heather Dubrow notes of both this poem and the subsequent Rape of Lucrece, The habits of not reading them sensitively and of not reading them at all both stem from the same preconception: these poems are a mere ‘gorgeous gallery of gallant inventions.’ We are prone, in other words, to consider them literary samplers: we assume that their author is principally involved in displaying the tropes and other formal devices that he, like his contemporaries, had so thoroughly learned in grammar school. This assumption shapes what critics find—and, more to the point, fail to find—in the poems.

Although some critics have found fault with a seeming lack of moral clarity to the poem, others have interpreted that lack of clarity as utterly intentional and relevant in literary terms. William Sheidley cites, ‘‘Kenneth Muir, for instance, taxes the poem with an ‘ambivalence’ which ‘is caused partly by the poet’s own acceptance of conflicting feelings about love.’’’ Similarly, Catherine Belsey describes early critics as having been ‘‘tantalized by the poem’s lack of closure,’’ such that they ‘‘sought to make something happen, at least at the thematic level, by locating a moral center that would furnish the work with a final meaning, a conclusion, a definitive statement.’’ To the contrary, Sheidley himself declares, ‘‘The poem’s seeming contradictions

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result from the multiplicity of its viewpoints on its subject. Shakespeare generates a dialectic between ideals and possibilities, developing the recognition that, with love as with everything else, it is self-defeating to demand perfection in an imperfect world.’’ Sheidley concludes that ‘‘with a brilliant stroke,’’ Shakespeare puts forth ‘‘a compelling poetic argument with important moral, philosophical, and artistic implications.’’ Coppe´lia Kahn likewise refers to Shakespeare’s improvisation on several tales by Ovid as ‘‘brilliantly’’ done. Like Dubrow and Sheidley, Kahn gives the poem greater praise than she had seen given by her predecessors: ‘‘Venus and Adonis has long been seen as a young man’s poem for relatively superficial reasons: its erotic subject matter and sensuous playfulness. But Shakespeare deserves more credit than he has been given for his understanding of youth’s deeper conflicts, of how eros shapes the growing masculine self.’’

CRITICISM Lauren Shohet Shohet provides an analysis of the ‘‘different poetic and erotic modes’’ found in Venus and Adonis. The critic argues that past criticism of the poem has adequately failed to compare the work’s treatment of love with its poetic language. In particular, she addresses the ‘‘range of disagreements between Venus and Adonis—sexual, linguistic, and representational.’’ In Shakespeare’s Venus and Adonis, when Venus solicits Adonis, he famously turns away, Venus entreats: ‘‘Vouchsafe, thou wonder, to alight thy steed, And reign his proud head to the saddle-bow; If thou wilt deign this favor, for thy meed A thousand honey secrets shalt thou know.’’ Adonis rebuffs her, because ‘‘Hunting he lov’d, but love he laugh’d to scorn’’ (line 4). The critical tradition has discussed in great detail Adonis’s refusal to love. But, importantly, this line does not begin with a refusal. Rather, it introduces Adonis with a positive predicate: he ‘‘loves’’ hunting. Moreover, the ‘‘but’’ that conjoins his predilection for hunting with his antipathy to love has dialectical overtones: Adonis would seem to scorn ‘‘love’’ more as an alternative to the hunt than as an independent proposition.

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desire, and exploring how different poetic and erotic modes might inflect one another. ADONIS’S DESIRE DIFFERS FROM VENUS’S BOTH IN ITS TARGET AND IN THE WAY IT RELATES SUBJECT TO OBJECT. WHEREAS VENUS DESIRES AN EROS THAT MERGES LOVER AND BELOVED. ADONIS DESIRES THE HUNT, WHICH DEPENDS UPON BOUNDARIES BETWEEN SUBJECT AND OBJECT (ALBEIT CONTINGENT AND PERHAPS TEMPORARY ONES).’’

The two characters thus articulate distinct forms of ‘‘love’’ that present competing models of desire. Furthermore, the poem provocatively interrelates models of desire and language. In the stanza cited above, if Adonis alights, Venus will reward him with ‘‘‘a thousand honey secrets.’’’ Not only does Venus promise the linguistic reward of ‘‘‘secrets’’’ for erotic surrender, but her proposal of ‘‘‘honey secrets’’’ as ‘‘‘meed’’’ (‘‘reward,’’ punning on ‘‘mead’’ [honey liquor]) also intertwines these linguistic treats with the honeyed sexual ‘‘‘secrets’’’ also on offer (‘‘‘honey’’’ denoting moreover sexual bliss). And while Adonis straightforwardly ‘‘loves’’ hunting, he does not simply ‘‘scorn’’ Venus—as grammatical parallelism would have him do—but rather ‘‘laugh[s] to scorn’’ her (my emphasis). Metrical contingency aside, this doubled verb adds a layer of complexity to Adonis’s response to ‘‘love.’’ Whereas hunting elicits an unmediated affective response (‘‘hunting he loved’’), the poem’s evocation of eros emphasizes the mode through which Adonis (unlike Venus) distinctively expresses his response of affective withdrawal. Such intersections of desire and discourse have been remarked in various literary contexts—commentators include Michel de Montaigne and Michel Foucault—and have occasioned innumerable provocative analyses In criticism of the last two decades. Relatively less explored in Shakespeare studies have been the questions of whether different kinds of desire require different poetics, and whether, conversely, different modes of discourse produce different kinds of desire. I propose that we might fruitfully read Shakespeare’s Venus and Adonis as addressing just these questions: as considering multiple and competing discourses of

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Previous criticism of Venus and Adonis certainly has remarked on the poem’s engagement with love on the one hand and language on the other. But most scholarship on Venus and Adonis focuses either on questions of desire and subjectivity or on issues of language and representation. More significantly, the limited number of analyses that bring these areas together tend to take only one of the two categories as a complex and multiple field. In considering the poem’s ‘‘taxonomy of desire,’’ for example. Catherine Belsey argues that the poem innovatively distinguishes between the concepts of love and lust. But while her focus on the difference between these terms has discursive implications. Belsey’s interest lies in contrasting modes of desire, not modes or representation. Similarly, Heather Dubrow connects Venus’s ‘‘linguistic’’ and ‘‘psychological’’ ‘‘habits,’’ but relies on a unified notion of ‘‘language itself,’’ whereas I would propose that the poem encompasses multiple and competing notions of what language is. In one further example, James Schiffer remarks (in passing) that the poem illustrates the interdependence of economies of language and desire in Lacanian analysis (‘‘Venus’ prophecy-curse also reminds us of the relationship throughout the poem between language and desire’’), but Schiffer distinguishes neither among kinds of desire (as Belsey does) nor kinds of language. In this essay, by contrast, I want to focus particularly on the range of disagreements between Venus and Adonis—sexual, linguistic, and representational—to explore how these contrasting views come together into distinct (if asymmetrically articulated) discursive models of poetic subjectivity. Venus’s amorous eagerness is met with Adonis’s disdainful withdrawal; Venus’s heteroerotic desire for Adonis with his homoerotic desire for the hunt; Venus’s invocations of a mythic realm of abstraction, personification, and analogy with Adonis’s emphasis on the historical realm of particular experience; Venus’s reliance on literary convention with the narrative innovation of Adonis’s erotic refusal. Wryly dissociating the seduction and ‘‘venery’’ (‘‘hunting’’) linked in traditional puns and mythography, the poem distinguishes between Venus’s views of language, desire, and selfhood— largely consonant with the dominant Elizabeth models Jane Hedley characterizes as ‘‘static, synchronistic, and centripetal’’—and Adonis’s desires, which sketch out a tentative exploration

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of alternatives. The vagueness of my last locution reflects the difficulty of definitively discerning Adonis’s desires in a text largely controlled by the opposition. For Shakespeare’s poem rearticulates the traditionally fecund venus genetrix in Venus’s extraordinary volubility; she gushes forth stanza after stanza of erotic desire, hampering intrusions by her interlocutor or even, it seems, the narrator. Rather like the copious production of panegyric by Elizabeth’s court. Venus’s linguistic facility leaves little room for alternatives, effectively preventing Adonis’s admittedly rather inchoate desires from coming fully into focus. Yet, as I shall argue below, the openendedness of Adonis’s aims is an important part of what makes them distinctive. For Adonis does formulate positive aims. To be sure, Adonis’s first direct speech in the poem (not granted him until line 185) is ‘‘‘Fie, no more of love!’’’: the next line adds to this wholesome rejection the intransitively negative ‘‘‘I must remove’’’ (line 186). Adonis is, however, fleeing toward something as well. He actively ‘‘‘removes’’’—re-moves— to the homosocial alternative of the boar hunt. He prefers keeping faith with his male hunting band to tarrying with Venus: ‘‘‘I am,’ quoth he, ‘expected of my friends’’’ (line 718). And, as we have seen, the poem’s very first claim about Adonis reports. ‘‘Hunting he lov’d’’ (line 4). Although it might be possible to interpret ‘‘hunt-love’’ here as an ironic aggregation opposed to the second phrase’s ‘‘love’’ (‘‘love he laugh’s to scorn’’). Adonis protests in other lines as well that he does indeed ‘‘love’’ hunting, or perhaps the hunt, or even the deadly boar himself: ‘‘‘I know not love,’ quoth he, ‘nor will not know it. / Unless it be a boar, and then I chase it’’’ (lines 409–10). Adonis’s desire differs from Venus’s both in its target and in the way it relates subject to object. Whereas Venus desires an eros that merges lover and beloved. Adonis desires the hunt, which depends upon boundaries between subject and object (albeit contingent and perhaps temporary ones). Adonis’s desire fits somewhere along a homosocial-homoerotic continuum that is distinct in both its ends and its means from Venus’s desires, as shown by three elements of his preference: Adonis’s attraction to the boar itself his allegiance to the masculine hunting band and the ways in which the hunt suggests patriarchal order. The poem’s presentation of the boar is, of course, quite phallic. Unlike Venus’s suggested alternatives of foxes, hares, and roes (which Adonis spurns), the boar has tusks, a ‘‘‘battle set / Of

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bristly pikes’’’ (lines 619–20), and a grave-digging snout. Adonis’s keen interest in the boar hunt and simultaneous disdain for innocuous quarries betray some attraction to the deadly possibility of being penetrated by the boarish tusk. More significant than this genitally suggestive imagery are the abstract qualities linking the boar not merely to the penis but to the phallus, with the full weight of cultural privilege which that term connotes. For the poem emphasizes the boar’s powers of intention, resolution, invulnerability, and efficacy. As Venus fearfully describes him. Being mov’d, he strikes, what e’er is in his way, And whom he strikes his crooked tushes slay. ‘‘His brawny sides, with hairy bristles armed, Are better proof than thy spear’s point can enter; His short thick neck cannot be easily harmed; Being ireful, on the lion he will venter, The thorny brambles and embracing bushes, As fearful of him, part, through whom he rushes.’’ (lines 623–30) Moreover, Adonis’s desire draws him to the more abstractly phallic order of the hunt: an activity that develops identity—what Lacan calls the ‘‘social I’’—by projecting the power, knowledge, and autonomy that the subject hopes to gain onto the ever-receding Other who putatively commands this mastery (who, in Lacanian terms, possesses the phallus). Hence, whereas in discussing the boar as the ‘‘locus of the missing phallic impulse’’ William Sheidley uses ‘‘phallus’’ more or less synonymously with ‘‘penis,’’ the Lacanian notion that the ‘‘phallus’’ is always illusory would suggest that the hunt itself, rather than the boar, embodies the ‘‘phallic impulse’’ that constitutes masculine self-realization. In the poem (as in culture generally), the compensation for the impossibility of these young men ever attaining full mastery—because no subject ever realizes complete autonomy—is nothing other than patriarchy: a fraternal band, excluding women and children by the nature of its mission, linked in the bonds of a common purpose made all the more permanent because the goal never can be definitively accomplished (i.e., because patriarchy operates without authentic patriarchs). ‘‘‘Expected of my friends.’’’ Adonis is not only awaited by his friends, but also, partitively, expected to become ‘‘of’’ his friends: part of a masculine order based on perpetual quest.

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Detail of Venus and Adonis by Antonio Canova (Ó Mimmo Jodice/Corbis)

Significantly, the poem articulates Adonis’s desire not as finding, overcoming, or killing the boar, but rather as ‘‘chasing’’ him: ‘‘‘I know not

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love,’ quoth he, ‘nor will not know it. / Unless it be a boar, and then I chase it’’’ (lines 409–10). It is pursuit itself that attracts Adonis: a relation

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that depends upon preserving distance between desirer and object. By its nature, the ever-receding object of his desire is constitutively ungraspable. By contrast, Venus’s erotics specifically seek to vanquish this distance: as Coppelia Kahn notes, Venus desires the ‘‘blurring of boundaries, an anonymous merging of eyes and lips.’’ Merging and boundlessness characterize Venus’s version of erotic idyll: ‘‘‘My smooth moist hand, were it with thy hand felt. / Would in thy palm dissolve, or seem to melt’’’ (lines 143– 4). Significantly, these same qualities prove fatal to Adonis, culminating in the images of commingling surrounding his death. The boar’s mouth is painted with red, ‘‘Like milk and blood being mingled both together’’ (line 902); as the wound breaches Adonis’s bodily boundaries, ‘‘No flow’r was nigh, no grass, herb, leaf, or weed, / But stole his blood, and seem’d with him to bleed’’ (lines 1055–6). Congruently, whereas Venus’s erotics suspend time at the moment of consummation, pursuit rather than capture is endless in Adonis’s ‘‘chase.’’ (Accordingly, one of Adonis’s two moments of erotic engagement with Venus comes at a point when he believes her to be similarly unattainable, in her deathlike swoon [lines 475–80]; In the other, he teases Venus with a kiss proffered and retracted [lines 88–90]). The proximity and the breaching of boundaries that constitute infinite and ecstatic fulfillment for Venus are inherently fatal in the hunt, an opposition emphasized by Venus’s use of ‘‘‘kiss[ing]’’’ to describe the boar’s mortally wounding Adonis (line 1114). Indeed, the successful approach of hunter to quarry necessarily signals the end of the hunt, usually accompanied by the death of one or more participants. Associated with these different modes of desire are different modes of poeisis. Venus’s hermeneusis relies on mythic/conventional presentation; Adonis tends toward the palpable and the particular. Venus seeks to inscribe Adonis into an archetypal tale of seduction, speaking as the goddess of love who advocates eros and procreation as general principles: ‘‘Upon the earth’s increase why shouldst thou feed, Unless the earth with thy increase be fed? By law of nature thou art bound to breed. That thine may live, when thou thyself art end.’’ (lines 169–72)

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Near silent for most of the poem and dead at the end. Adonis struggles less than articulately to assert a character whose volition is undetermined by tradition or myth. Venus serves, perhaps, as the ‘‘straight’’ reader of Ovid, following the mythic script. Adonis resists this, but the sophisticated, ironic, self-reflective Ovid of the elite Elizabethan reader does not seem fully available to him either. Instead, eschewing both elegant rhetoric and erotic action, Adonis refuses to be written into the timeless seduction scene and insists on his present, idiosyncratic discomfort and lack of interest: ‘‘‘Fie, no more of love! / The sun doth burn my face, I must remove’’’ (lines 185–6). In Adonis’s narrative, particularity makes Venus and Adonis into personae with some degree of agency, rather than inherited figures whose desires are determined by the metatextual drama they enact. The poem renders the mythic and realistic modes emphatically incompatible; indeed, the pointedly ridiculous effect of realistically narrating mythic action creates the poem’s humor. Comically, the mythic/conventional narrative relishes a poetic eloquence that the realistic eschews. The meter of the poem’s opening lines is unapologetically elegant: Even as the sun with purple-color’d face Had ta’en his last leave of the weeping morn, Rose-cheek’d Adonis hied him to the chase; Hunting he lov’d, but love he laugh’d to scorn. (lines 1–4) The stanza’s concluding couplet, on the other hand, introduces the seduction theme in a burlesque rhyme: ‘‘Sick-thoughted Venus makes amain unto him. / And like a bold-fac’d suitor gins to woo him’’ (lines 5–6). The second stanza reverts to the stylishness of the first four lines, but in the third stanza, when Venus ceases lauding Adonis and begins soliciting him, singsong meter and comically overblown feminine rhyme return (‘‘‘Here come and sit, where never serpent hisses. / And being set, I’ll smother thee with kisses’’’ [lines 17–8]). When Venus finally takes decisive action, in couplet lines, the metrical reinforcement of the plot is farcically pat: ‘‘Being so enrag’d, desire doth lend her force / Courageously to pluck him from his horse’’ (lines 29–30). The caesura trumpets dramatic suspense; the iambic regularity of the fast-reading, five-foot, mostly monosyllabic line 30 underlines the physical ease with which Venus

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accomplishes her kidnap, the melodramatic acceleration in tempo pointing up the ludicrousness of sweatily embodying the Goddess of Love.

Kissing, speaking, the refracting and multiplying of Venus’s speech, and the silencing of Adonis are simultaneously effects of a single gesture:

More significantly, the poetic and narrative effects of the two discourses work to opposite ends. Venus’s linguistic and erotic initiatives alike impede the diegetic progress of the suspended hunt narrative that Adonis desires to resume. For, although language serves many needs for Venus, narrative momentum is not one of them. Her discourse winds along digressive paths shaped by the figurative logic of her images or the forensic logic of her conventional arguments, interrupting the progression of the plot. In the opening stanzas discussed above, Venus addresses Adonis for three and a half figure-laden stanzas before seizing him. By contrast, the poem’s so-called ‘‘action’’—Adonis’s sporadic bursts of motion away from Venus and toward the hunt—moves briskly forward precisely whenever Venus stops talking. Even Adonis’s most extended speech, the seven stanzas that culminate in his narratively decisive departure,

now doth he frown, And gins to chide, but soon she stops his lips, And kissing speaks, with lustful language broken, ‘‘If thou wilt chide, thy lips shall never open.’’ (lines 45–8)

With this he breaketh from the sweet embrace Of those fair arms which bound him to her breast. And homeward through the dark laund runs apace. (lines 811–3) seems terse and active in comparison to the preceding twenty-five stanzas of Venus’s attempts to dissuade him—a passage that confuses even Venus, who must ask in the middle ‘‘‘Where did I leave?’’’ (line 715). As judged by capriciousness, poetic versatility, facility, and claims on the reader’s attention—i.e., by the standards of humanist sprezzatura—it is Venus who owns language in the poem. The poem associates Adonis’s silences with his refusal of Venus’s erotics: inverting this link. Venus’s language is inextricably intertwined with the passion governing and governed by the goddess. Language and desire produce and magnify one another: That all the neighbor caves, as seeming troubled, Make verbal repetition of her [Venus’s] moans; Passion on passion deeply is redoubled: ‘‘Ay me!’’ she cries, and twenty times, ‘‘Woe, woe!’’ And twenty echoes twenty times cry so. (lines 830–4)

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Even the ruptures in Venus’s speech—the kisses that render her ‘‘‘lustful language broken’’’—do not impede language so much as disperse it. Greedily inserting itself everywhere, Venus’s language operates in an economy of lust that utterly overcomes Adonis’s volition. When Adonis tries to articulate his refusal of Venus’s arguments, her kiss prevents him: ‘‘He saith she is immodest, blames her miss: / What follows more, she murthers with a kiss’’ (lines 53–4). ‘‘Murthers’’ figuratively realizes the earlier threat that disobedient lips ‘‘‘shall never open’’’ (line 48); ‘‘‘smother[ing]’’’ Adonis (line 18), her kisses deny him both oxygen and argument. Through conventional rhetorical strategies, Venus’s discourse blurs temporal and rhetorical boundaries as well, to ends equally antipathetic to Adonis. Substitution of the figurative for the literal permeates Venus’s arguments. She assures Adonis: ‘‘The kiss shall be thine own as well as mine. What seest thou in the ground? hold up thy head, Look in mine eyeballs, there thy beauty lies; Then why not lips on lips, since eyes in eyes?’’ (lines 117–20) Departing from the Neoplatonic axiom that beauty lies in the beholder’s eye, Venus advances a formal argument for acknowledging through action the commensurability between lips and eyes already established by conventional logic and by analogy. Erasing substantive difference between gazes and kisses, Venus’s argument—like Scholastic or indeed Petrarchan reasoning—treats ‘‘‘eyes’’’ and lips ‘‘‘lips’’’ as interchangeable subjects of formal manipulation. This congruence rhetorically anticipates concession, further eroding distinctions between logic and volition, suggestion and acquiescence, wish and fulfillment. Furthermore, love’s language propels its speakers out of narrative temporality into the timelessness of the mythic: ‘‘copious stories, oftentimes begun. / End without audience, and are never done’’ (lines 845–6). Accordingly, Venus’s first declaration of

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passion for Adonis violates temporal boundaries by serving as prophecy, articulating the future in the present. The floral—and, inconguously, also apocalyptic—images she addresses to Adonis prefigure his eventual transformation in death: he is, ominously, ‘‘‘more lovely than a man’’’ (line 9). Furthermore, ‘‘‘Nature, that made thee with herself at strife. / Saith that the world hath ending with thy life’’’ (lines 11–2). As metaphoric comparison that also serves as literal prediction, this language of desire likewise dissolves the semantic distinction between vehicle and tenor. Venus’s reasoning from analogy, together with her characteristic equation of distinct categories, thus exemplifies what Foucault calls ‘‘analogical’’ thought, distinct from the ‘‘modern’’ disjunctions between words and things and among kinds of things. ‘‘Analogic’’ thought ponders a world that ‘‘fold[s] in upon itself, duplicate[s] itself, reflect[s] itself, or form[s] a chain with itself so that things can resemble one another’’; this language ‘‘partakes in the worldwide dissemination of similitudes and signatures.’’ Whereas Venus’s discourse is predicated on proximity and analogy, Adonis’s is more invested in separation and substitution—in Foucault’s terms, with ‘‘modern’’ signification: that is, the ‘‘ordering of things by means of . . . fabricated signs’’ for a ‘‘knowledge based upon identity and difference.’’ The poem figures Venus’s affect through pathetic fallacies: her thoughts leach into nature as troubled ‘‘neighbor caves’’ murmur her longing (line 830) and ‘‘shrilltongu’d tapsters’’ share her anxiety (line 849). Adonis’s death, by contrast, is represented by signifiers requiring interpretation: the ‘‘sad signs’’ (line 929) the narrator associates with ‘‘apparitions . . . and prodigies’’ (line 926). Adonis’s hunting hounds are saddened by his death, but not with the same kind of pathetic sorrow that Venus’s caves express. Whereas the caves iconically participate in Venus’s affect (in Roman Jakobson’s sense of ‘‘icons’’ as signifiers that represent a signified by sharing its essence), the hounds suggest a signifying narrative. In their silence, wound licking, and scowling (lines 914–7). the hounds present information that is interpretable but not transparent, emphasizing disjunctions and incommensurabilities where the caves and tapsters emphasize contiguities. Hence the hunting hounds do not share a language with Venus, but rather preserve distinctions among species of discourse: ‘‘here she meets another

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sadly scowling, / To whom she speaks, and he replies with howling’’ (lines 917–8, my emphasis). Adonis’s death and metamorphosis further link him to semiotic habits associated with separation, distinction, and mediated ‘‘signification,’’ as opposed to comparison, analogy and iconicity. The flower that Adonis becomes functions not as an icon but as a sign. To be more precise, it is a sign in the terms of his story: the meanings of the metamorphosis—indeed of metamorphosis in general—diverge significantly in the two logical frameworks. Venus attempts rather desperately to impose an analogical likeness onto the blossom: in her vision of the dead Adonis, the flower ‘‘Resemb[les] well his pale cheeks’’ (line 1169), and Venus informs the flower that it shares a kinship tie with Adonis: ‘‘‘Here was thy father’s bed’’’ (line 1183). But despite her insistence on the filial continuity between bloom and man, the point of view we can infer from Adonis’s words as well as his representation in the poem makes the flower function as an incommensurable standin—like a sign—for the young man made absent by death. For existence as a flower, immobile and delicate, is utterly incompatible with existence as a hunter. Despite herself. Venus betrays the gap between Adonis and the flower by disingenuously suggesting that she has won the amorous contest. Claiming that her breast was ‘‘‘thy father’s bed’’’ and announcing with a certain compensatory triumph that ‘‘‘There shall not be one minute in an hour / Wherein I will not kiss my sweet love’s flow’r’’’ (lines 1187–8) Venus glosses over a crucial inversion of agency: she had begged for the live Adonis to kiss her. The conventional association of flowering with completion or fulfillment casts further ironic light on the phrase ‘‘‘my sweet love’s flower’’’; Adonis’s transformation hardly constitutes Venus’s love come to flower, but rather its final frustration. Soon to wither, deprived of the potential to grant the acquiescence Venus craves, the blossom escapes Venus’s erotics despite its imprisonment in the ‘‘‘hollow cradle’’’—we might emphasize ‘‘‘hollow’’’—of her breasts (line 1185). Metamorphosis directly engages questions of contiguity and separation, sameness and difference, the object as Ding an sich and the object as contingent and mutable manifestation of first matter, ideal form, or similar early modern notions of the cosmic relatedness of all things. In its play on form as stable, autonomous

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identity versus form as signifier of other potential or erstwhile states, metamorphosis provides the poem another arena for working through the difference between the mythic/conventional and the historical/particular modes of narrative, desire, and subjectivity. Like the actual metamorphosis that closes the tale, other metamorphoses figuratively invoked earlier in the poem provide double interpretative possibilities. These transformations contrast metamorphosis as the transcendent instantiation of analogy (similarity among things) to metamorphosis as destruction (the annihilation of a thing, alienated when a profoundly different form overcomes it). As part of her seduction argument, for example, Venus suggests an extended analogy between Adonis and a deer: ‘‘since I have hemm’d thee here Within the circuit of this ivory pale, I’ll be a park, and thou shall be my deer: Feed where thou wilt, on mountain, or in dale: Graze on my lips, and if those hills be dry, Stray lower, where the pleasant fountains lie.’’ (lines 229–34) Within the logic of Venus’s poetics, the deer figure allows Adonis to be both himself and something else. That is. Venus proposes a metaphor that provides an alternative lexical framework for actions—whether grazing or caressing—that are equally possible for a man or a deer. The easy continuity in Venus’s discourse between vehicle and tenor underlines the full congruence between Venus-as-body and Venus-as-park, conveying the wholesomeness, the delightful variety, and the naturalness of habitat (she maintains) for hart and lover alike. Adonis’s transformation into a fragile flower, whose inevitable demise Venus rudely hastens, retroactively suggests a dissenting view of this same image: the deer metamorphosis that Adonis refuses would transform the young man into an entity inimical and fatal to his self—in fact, into quarry for his proper self. The echoes of Actaeon in the metamorphosis Venus offers heighten the opposition Adonis seems to see between heteroerotic seduction and hunting. Such alienation would certainly follow from a deer grazing/gazing on a goddess: Actaeon’s transformation turned him from hunter to hunted, and Adonis wants no part of it. Adonis’s metamorphosis simultaneously realizes and frustrates both Venus’s and Adonis’s aims. Adonis escapes Venus’s logic only to be

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returned helplessly to her bosom: Venus finally sees Adonis’s scrupulously defended boundaries breached only to render him incapable of satisfying her passion. In its traditionally tragic end, the myth of Venus and Adonis explores the impossibility of erotic satisfaction when mortals are involved; Shakespeare’s text distills this aspect of the tale into Venus’s version of the story. This poem’s reluctant Adonis renders another kind of fulfillment impossible—a pleasure that depends on escaping Venus. The entire narrative has shown the two figures’ desires to be incompatible: analyzing Adonis’s metamorphosis shows that the mere existence of each desire undermines the other’s conditions of possibility. On one side, Adonis’s distaste for Venus’s proposals, together with the ways the poem pokes fun at Venus’s excesses, suggests her limitations. On the other, Venus’s use of mythic logic, her assertions of infinite analogy, and her own identity as the personification of love operate as inherently self-evident and universal: hence, they cannot accommodate compromise. Notably, however, Adonis offers objections rather than alternatives: Venus’s poetic dominance makes post-lively articulating other erotics, poetics, or values impossible. Thus, whereas Peter Erickson and Patrick Murphy have interpreted the poem’s cautiousness in representing alternatives to Venus’s views as mere political circumspection, I would argue that the poem’s recourse to indirect suggestions of vaguely delineated choices indicates more than strategic self-censorship. Adonis’s hesitations also gesture toward emergent paradigms of subjectivity and semiotics that are not sufficiently manifest to be clearly represented: something akin to what Francis Barker characterizes as the ‘‘incipient modernity’’ of Hamlet’s ‘‘anachronistic’’ longing for a more modern subject position than his historical moment permits. If we were to characterize the poem’s competing modes of desire and representation historically, then, my understanding of Adonis’s [proto] subjectivity would lead in the opposite direction from Nona Fienberg’s conclusions. Fienberg associates Andonis with an aristocratic ‘‘fixity,’’ ‘‘absoluteness,’’ and ‘‘patriarchy’’ that she characterizes as essentially medieval, while her Venus evidences a ‘‘mutability and diversity’’ that ‘‘provid[e] . . . a way to reevaluate patriarchy.’’ While I agree to an extent that the poem associates Adonis’s desires with ‘‘fixity’’ and ‘‘patriarchy.’’ I would argue that these do not, as Fienberg claims, constitute the status quo in the

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poem—nor, entirely, in its historical context. Rather, the Venus whom Fienberg argues to be fluid and ‘‘dynamic’’ uses this ‘‘flexibility’’ only instrumentally, within traditional humanist rhetorical practice, to ingeniously and irrefutably perpetuate paradigms based on rhetorical analogy, ontological continuity, and the authority of mythic and literary-conventional tradition. Whereas Fienberg (in a move medievalists might find oversimplifying) characterizes Adonis as ‘‘a relic of the time before the commercial and humanist revolutions, when value was a given’’ who ‘‘holds on to his old ways of measuring time, growth, maturity, and value.’’ I would argue that through inclining in both his desires and his semiotics toward deferral, separation, and idiosyncrasy. Adonis emerges as something of a figure for protomodernity, or at least for resistance to the values Venus espouses. It is semiotic absoluteness, autonomous identity, and social patriarchy, I think, that the poem presents as constituting a departure. The poem’s simultaneous representation of different discursivities and subjectivities might, however, give pause to the project of firmly historicizing these modes as (a Foucauldean version of the Whiggish march to modernity). It might be more fruitful, and more accurate, to consider what I have called the poem’s protomodern and nonmodern modes as simultaneous aspects of a typically mixed cultural moment. Indeed, particularly intriguing about this poem (and its milieu) are the differences between the modes and interests here aligned as congruent (femininity/status quo/speech for example, versus versus masculinity/marginality/silence) with our more expected aggregations. This is not to say that the poem celebrates a happy heteroglossia of Elizabethan culture. By confining its represented action to what Venus witnesses, and by demonstrating the limitations of her practices, the poem thematizes the difficulty of representation competing models (whether we trace this difficulty to an authoritarian queen, the poetic demands of generic convention, a watershed moment in the history of subjectivity, covert cultural contests between masculinist poetic culture and propagandists for the Cult of Elizabeth—or concede it to be overdetermined). The hunting band provides the locus for alternatives to Venus’s authority, in a way that may have been particularly satisfying for the primary 1590s (male) readership at the Inns of Court or indeed the royal court—but precisely what these alternatives

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would be remains pointedly oblique. In the end, the poem draws much of its energy from this obliqueness, creating an epyllion about what Ovidian poetry cannot represent—a gushing epideictic on an overbearing queen, a camp triangulation of a Venus who does not realize she is in a poem, an Adonis who half realizes and does not want to be, and a reader who smugly knows the score. And in this obliqueness, I suggest, Adonis’s positions come closest to a kind of realization, insofar as the poem’s silences draw the reader into fleshing out what the text occludes. Venus argues her familiar positions all too thoroughly, leaving the reader no task but assent. But drawing the reader into chasing an alternative that is not fully visible, traceable from two steps behind through prints left between the lines, does not the poem invite the reader into the oppositional hunting band? Source: Lauren Shohet, ‘‘Shakespeare’s Eager Adonis,’’ in Studies in English Literature, 1500–1900, Vol. 42, No. 1, Winter 2002, pp. 85–102.

Anthony Mortimer In the following excerpt, Mortimer examines how Shakespeare drastically altered the story line for Venus and Adonis from the original source for the tale, Ovid’s Metamorphoses. However, contends Mortimer, Shakespeare stayed true to the original tale in one crucial respect: the ending. For much of Venus and Adonis Shakespeare seems careful to avoid direct confrontation with his source for the tale in the Metamorphoses, Book X. It is not simply that he omits all the antecedents that Ovid provides (the incestuous union of Cinyras and Myrrha, the miraculous birth of Adonis, the wounding of Venus with Cupid’s arrow) and modifies the whole situation by making Adonis resist the advances of the goddess. The striking fact is that most of the frequent Ovidian echoes seem to derive from anywhere in the Metamorphoses except the passage which gave him the story in the first place. The sexually aggressive female and the reluctant youth recall Salmacis and Hermaphroditus (IV. 285–388) and, to a lesser extent, Echo and Narcissus (III. 339–510); the Lament of Venus owes little to Ovid’s goddess, but a great deal to his long line of desperately eloquent human heroines (including those of the Heroides); the episode of Mars and Venus harks back to Book IV (171–89): even the description of the boar takes its details not from the boar of Book X, but from

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THE BIRTH OF ADONIS WAS THE RESULT OF AN

WHAT DO I READ NEXT?

INCESTUOUS FATHER-DAUGHTER UNION (CINYRAS AND MYRRHA); VENUS EXPLOITS HIS DEATH AND METAMORPHOSIS TO ENVISAGE A FURTHER INCEST

William Sheidley notes that Shakespeare likely gleaned certain notions regarding procreation from the poem Zodiake of Life (1543), by Marcellus Palingenius, which was translated by Barnabe Googe in 1976.  Edmund Spenser, a contemporary of Shakespeare’s, also retold the tale of Venus and Adonis, in the third book of his epic poem The Faerie Queene (1590).

WHICH IS THAT OF MOTHER AND SON.’’





Many comparisons have been drawn between Venus and Adonis and Christopher Marlowe’s Hero and Leander (1598)—which was completed by George Chapman—especially with respect to the two poems’ erotic content.



A world classic that deals with a woman who looks outside her marriage to satisfy her sexual needs is Anna Karenina (1877), by Leo Tolstoy.

the Calydonian boar of Book VIII. Shakespeare, while happy to plunder the riches of the Metamorphoses, is not writing the kind of paraphrase, adaptation or expansion that keeps sending his readers back to the original. There is, however, one moment when the direct confrontation becomes unavoidable. However much of the Ovidian story Shakespeare might omit and however he might change the relation between the protagonists, the final metamorphosis had to remain: this was the moment his readers had been waiting for and, with Ovid in mind, they would expect a virtuoso performance. Shakespeare’s task, briefly put, was to provide a metamorphosis that would rival Ovid’s while still conforming to his own rereading of the myth. The challenge, it must be said, was formidable. Here is Ovid in his most dazzling form and the passage must be quoted in full if we are to appreciate the significance of the Shakespearean revisions . . .

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‘But all shall not be in your [the Fates’] power. My grief, Adonis, shall have an enduring monument, and each passing year in memory of your death shall give an imitation of my grief. But your blood shall be changed to a flower. Or was it once allowed to thee, Persephone, to change a maiden’s form to fragrant mint, and shall the change of my hero, offspring of Cinyras, be grudged to me?’ So saying, with sweetscented nectar she sprinkled the blood; and this, touched by the nectar, swelled as when clear bubbles rise up from yellow mud. With no longer than an hour’s delay a flower sprang up of blood-red hue such as pomegranates bear which hide their seeds beneath the tenacious rind. But short-lived is their flower; for the winds from which it takes its name shake off the flower so delicately clinging and doomed easily to fall. Ovid’s conclusion to the story is finely balanced between consolation and regret. Venus establishes an annual ritual (the Adoniazusae) to commemorate the death of her lover. She does not have the power to grant him anything like a fullblown apotheosis and she needs to invoke the precedent of Persephone in order to justify the metamorphosis. But she does, at least, bring into being a flower that will continue to embody his

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beauty and his fragility. The last two lines, with the wonderfully mimetic suspension of the syntax and the final sighing exhalation of venti, leave us with the consolation that beauty, in some form or other, will always be renewed and with the regret that its specific incarnations will always prove transient. In turning to Shakespeare, the first thing we notice is that his Venus is incapable of offering Adonis even the limited form of perpetuation granted in the Metamorphoses. Ovid’s Venus defies the Fates (‘all shall not be in your power’) first by creating the ritual and then by performing the metamorphosis. Shakespeare’s Venus seems too overcome by events to think of such positive action. There is, first of all, no suggestion of an annual commemoration and this is hardly surprising if we consider the tone of the immediately preceding speech where, under the guise of etiological prophecy, she has pronounced a curse on love and lovers: Sith in his prime death doth my love destroy, They that love best their loves shall not enjoy. (1163–4) A communal rite of mourning would, after all, be a way of coming to terms with death and a gesture of solidarity that Shakespeare’s vindictive Venus, out of love with the world, is in no mood to make or accept. Even more important is the fact that in Shakespeare the metamorphosis of Adonis appears as a natural miracle which owes nothing to the intentions or powers of the goddess: By this the boy that by her side lay killed Was melted like a vapour from her sight, And in his blood that on the ground lay spilled A purple flower sprung up check’red with white. (1165–8) ‘By this’ is typical of the poem’s rapid transitions (‘At this’, ‘With this’, ‘This said’) and, as we can see from previous occurrences (175, 877, 973), indicates mere succession with no necessary suggestion of causality—especially since the preceding speech contains no reference whatsoever to metamorphosis. Venus, therefore, has no power over the natural world and the metamorphosis appears less as a consolation for the death of Adonis than as the last stage of the process that takes him from her. A number of details confirm that Shakespeare is, in fact, consciously undermining traditional readings of the myth. Not

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only is there no indication that Adonis embodies the vegetative and seasonal cycle (an aspect that is, in any case, barely perceptible in Ovid), but even the idea that the flower will somehow perpetuate his beauty is frustrated by the action of Venus herself. She bows her head the new-sprung flower to smell, Comparing it to her Adonis’ breath, And says within her bosom it shall dwell, Since he himself is reft from her by death. She crops the stalk, and in the breach appears Green-dropping sap, which she compares to tears. (1171–6) This gesture, absent in Ovid, is the one she has conventionally attributed to Death (‘thou pluck’st a flower’, 946), but it also recalls her own attempt to crop the flower of Adonis’s virginity and her argument that flowers should be ‘gath’red in their prime’ (131). By now literalizing her own metaphor Venus inverts its significance. The metaphorical cropping of the youth’s virginity would have ensured his perpetuation through offspring; the literal cropping of the flower cuts off any hope of regeneration. In this context, it may well be significant that Shakespeare does not identify the flower. Ovid specifies that, though it resembles the bloom of the pomegranate, it is, indeed, the flower that takes its name from the wind, the anemone (from Greek anemos) that his readers could recognize. By omitting to name the flower Shakespeare may be implying that it no longer exists; its beauty, like that of Adonis, has been lost without trace. We remember that Venus had urged on Adonis the reproductive example of ‘sappy plants’ (165), but here the ‘green-dropping sap’ of the Adonis-flower falls to the earth like wasted semen. Shakespeare clearly modifies Ovid by depriving the metamorphosis of its consolatory function. And yet this modification remains in the spirit of Ovid where the metamorphosis usually involves two stages—first the progressive dissolution of the human identity and then the subject’s reemergence in a radically simple form reflecting the status to which he or she has been reduced by the story. As Leonard Barkan remarks, ‘the artistic effect of metamorphosis is to transform human identities into images’. Thus, to take only one example, the metamorphosis of Arachne (Met. VI. 1–145) eliminates all that made her an individual—her lowly birth, her

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professional pride, her irreverence towards the gods—and makes her simply a spider, the embodiment of skill in weaving. Even where the concluding image is more attractive, as with Daphne transformed into a laurel, admiration at the aesthetic solution is still tempered with a sense of human loss. Shakespeare’s Adonis receives the same kind of treatment. Not only is the complex adolescent we have known reduced to a single image of beauty, but, in conformity with his role throughout the poem, it is a beauty that will not be reproduced. Since Venus has not herself performed the metamorphosis, she remains uncertain as to how it should be understood. The radical ambivalence of her gesture in cropping the flower is reflected in a final speech that hovers between a recognition that it is no real perpetuation of Adonis and a desire to cherish it as his child. ‘‘Poor flower’’, quoth she, ‘‘this was thy father’s guise— Sweet issue of a more sweet-smelling sire— For every little grief to wet his eyes; To grow unto himself was his desire, And so ’tis thine, but know it is as good To wither in my breast as in his blood. ‘‘Here was thy father’s bed, here in my breast; Thou art the next of blood, and ’tis thy right. Lo, in this hollow cradle take thy rest, My throbbing heart shall rock thee day and night; There shall not be one minute in an hour Wherein I will not kiss my sweet love’s flower’’. (1177–88) The two stanzas complete Venus’s rewriting of the story which, omitting all reference to her sexual aggression and his resistance, has already transformed the stubborn young hunter into a marvellous child who, like the child in Virgil’s Fourth Eclogue restores Nature to a prelapsarian harmony where the lamb need no longer fear the wolf and where even the boar only wounds Adonis in a misguided attempt to kiss him (1081–1116). Now the Adonis-flower becomes both a child to be cradled at her breast and the lover that Adonis has never been. Jonathan Bate has argued persuasively that the image of the son who takes his father’s place in the mother’s bed is an ‘adroit variation’ on the Myrrha story in Ovid. Ovid begins his tale with Adonis as a son issuing from a tree, Shakespeare ends his with a flower issuing from Adonis who thus becomes a father. Shakespeare’s Venus acts out an

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extraordinary family romance. By imaging her lover as a father, she makes herself into the mother and the flower into the fruit of their union. But the logic of the imagery dictates that the flower is her sexual partner as well as her child, for it clearly substitutes for Adonis himself.

The birth of Adonis was the result of an incestuous father-daughter union (Cinyras and Myrrha); Venus exploits his death and metamorphosis to envisage a further incest which is that of mother and son. But even without reference to the Myrrha story, it would still be clear that incest is the only conclusion that can satisfy Venus’s desire to possess Adonis both as child and as lover. Throughout the poem she has alternated between bouts of sexual aggression and moments of maternal protectiveness. She concludes with the only image that can reconcile her ‘variable passions’ (967). Venus exploits the power that the living usually have over the dead, that of being able to transform them into self-flattering fictions. The Adonis-flower, unlike Adonis himself, cannot answer back to say that he is no longer a child and will not be a lover. But the passage suggests that Venus is not really convinced by her own rhetoric. The consolation involved in seeing the flower as the child of Adonis is undermined by her memory of the Adonis who refused procreation despite her argument that ‘things growing to themselves are growth’s abuse’ (166). To grow unto himself was his desire, And so ’tis thine, but know it is as good To wither in my breast as in his blood. (1180–2) This, surely, is a recognition that the metamorphosis must be ultimately meaningless. Even cradled at her breast, the flower will still wither and is, therefore, no real perpetuation of Adonis. Only ironically can the flower be made to resemble Adonis by being rendered barren. There is a touch of the same vindictiveness that marked her curse on love. Adonis himself has vanished without trace, and so she condemns the flower to the same extinction. Venus had prophesied that the world and its beauty could not survive the death of Adonis (10–11, 1019–20); that prophecy has obviously not been fulfilled (‘The flowers are sweet, their colours fresh and trim’, 1079), but she does her best to take revenge for Nature’s indifference by cropping whatever beauty comes to hand.

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It is, finally, disgust with the world that gains the upper hand over the illusory consolations of the metamorphosis. Thus weary of the world away she hies, And yokes her silver doves, by whose swift aid Their mistress, mounted, through the empty skies, In her light chariot quickly is conveyed, Holding their course to Paphos, where their queen Means to immure herself, and not be seen. (1189–94) There is a fine irony in the suggestion that Venus, whose habitual imagery has been so all-embracing, so world-welcoming, (the metaphorical expansion of her body into a deer-park, 229–40) now intends, by immuring herself, to imitate the attitude of Adonis who yearned for ‘quiet closure’ and the solitude of his bed-chamber (781–6) As for the flight, the couplet may, as Roe suggests, contain an echo of Virgil . . . She herself through the sky goes her way to Paphos, and joyfully revisits her abode, where the temple and its hundred altars steam with Sabaean incense and are fragrant with garlands ever fresh.

If Shakespeare is indeed inviting comparison with the Virgilian passage, then our attention is drawn to the difference between the role of the goddess in his poem and her very different status in the epic. Virgil’s Venus leaves her son, Aeneas, with words of encouragement after demonstrating her power to protect him; Shakespeare’s Venus leaves Adonis whom she regards as the son she has been unable to protect. Aeneas is destined to become the father of a great race; Adonis has no progeny. In the Aeneid Venus flies away in a joyful spirit to receive the homage of her worshippers and to be greeted with ‘garlands ever fresh’; in Venus and Adonis she is ‘weary of the world’, ‘means to immure herself’ and carries a flower that will wither at her breast. For Virgil’s Venus divinity involves a power to change the world; for Shakespeare’s goddess divinity offers, at best, an escape from the world that she cannot change. There is, of course, also a flight to Paphos in Ovid. After warning Adonis of the dangers of hunting, Venus leaves for Paphos and is recalled in mid-flight by the groans of the dying youth (Met. X. 717–20). Thus Ovid’s story ends not with Venus abandoning the world, but with her

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returning to it, accepting her share of grief and offering the consolation of a ritual and a metamorphosis. Shakespeare’s Venus has nothing to offer the world except her curse. Ovid’s version concludes with a goddess who stands on earth, sharing our common human experience of transience and loss; but Shakespeare’s goddess has already been all too human—frustrated, sweating and repeatedly falling to the ground. Being a creature of extremes, she reacts by a rejection of humanity. There is no trace here of the goddess who, according to Heather Asals, undergoes a Neoplatonic education and rises from lust to love. For most of the poem Venus has been descending not ascending the Neoplatonic ladder (see her inversion of the hierarchy of the senses, 433–50), and the sensuality of her last incestuous image does not suggest that she has changed very much. What has changed is that the goddess of love has discovered what it is like to be subject to her own law (‘Poor queen of love, in thine own law forlorn’, 251) and has not enjoyed the experience. It is precisely because her descent has ended in defeat that her ascent sounds so resentfully definitive. The comparisons with Virgil and Ovid might lead us to think that Venus and Adonis ends with the desolate vision of a world deprived of divine sympathy or protection, overarched by ‘the empty skies’ and abandoned to the meaningless violence of the boar. But any sense of gloom is surely dispelled by the grace, swiftness and lightness of the imagery. Venus may intend to ‘immure herself’, but her actual movement is one of aerial and unrestricted freedom. There is, if anything, a sense of relief in seeing the goddess restored to her supernatural element of space and soaring flight, finally released from the gravity that bound her to earth and to the human condition. We respond this way because we too are released from gravity, freed from any temptation to read this ending as the conclusion to a real human tragedy. The burden of pathos that might have been imposed on the reader by seeing Venus as a mater dolorosa is lifted by this magical Venus whose silver doves draw her chariot through the skies. We need not feel too sorry for someone who can so easily shake off the weight of the world and we are, indeed, slyly encouraged to think that her protestations of eternal devotion to the memory of Adonis should be taken with a pinch of salt. We are not told that she will, in fact, ‘immure herself, and not be seen’, only that she ‘means’ to do so. Shakespeare does not go as far as Ronsard who

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reminds us that she will soon replace Adonis with the Phrygian shepherd, Anchises (‘Telles sont et seront les amitiez des femmes’), but there is a hint of the same urbane cynicism. Shakespeare’s handling of the conclusion works on two levels: on the one hand, as we have seen, he undermines the positive significance or the metamorphosis as a perpetuation of beauty or as a myth of seasonal regeneration; on the other hand, he clears the atmosphere and lightens the spirit by finally restoring the tale to the realm of fable. And this procedure brings to the surface some of the assumptions that underlie Shakespeare’s treatment of his Ovidian source. For all the portentous interpretations of classical myth offered by Renaissance Neoplatonists (some of them still plague criticism of Venus and Adonis), the Ovidian revival of the sixteenth century did not necessarily lend itself to solemnity. Though an occasional allegorical gloss might come in useful to deflect censorship, there is little evidence that Lodge, Marlowe, Shakespeare, Drayton and other authors of epyllia regarded classical mythology as a repository of universal wisdom. Given the reverence with which modern criticism usually uses the term ‘myth’, it might be better to speak of the Ovidian stories as ‘fables’— fables which did not invite the reader to suspend his disbelief and which, therefore, allowed Renaissance poets to treat potentially serious sexual themes without committing themselves to seriousness. The ending of Venus and Adonis is consistent with this attitude. It is designed to distance the reader from the often hilarious but frequently uncomfortable psychological realism of the poem he has been reading. The real and final metamorphosis is that of a frustrated woman and a sullen youth into miraculous apparitions who vanish in the turning of a verse. Adonis is ‘melted’ from our sight and Venus disappears into ‘the empty skies’. The whole poem, so fraught with unresolved tensions, so psychologically convincing, so solidly rooted in our earthly experience, dissolves like the masque in The Tempest,freeing us to regard as entertainment the disturbing passions it has entertained. Source: Anthony Mortimer, ‘‘The Ending of Venus and Adonis,’’ in English Studies, Vol. 78, No. 4, July 1997, pp. 334–41.

Wayne A. Rebhorn In this essay, Rebhorn examines the character of Venus in Venus and Adonis, arguing that previous

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scholarship has oversimplified her character. On the one hand, Rebhorn contends, Venus has been seen as a vehicle of female lust, and on the other as a symbol of sexual reproduction. Instead, the critic contends, Venus’s love for Adonis ‘‘is really dominated by a strongly maternal response.’’ With few exceptions, readers of Venus and Adonis have either condemned Venus as lust, praised her as the spokeswoman for generation and propagation, or argued for her ambiguity as a representative sometimes of lust and sometimes of generation. In the last few years especially, there has been a tendency to evaluate her more positively and at the same time to criticize Adonis for self-centered egotism and for his refusal to accept his duty to propagate his kind, a refusal sometimes proposed almost as a kind of justification for his being killed by the boar. Yet the identification of Venus as lust or generation or both oversimplifies her character in the poem. It fails to deal adequately with her complex responses, both verbal and physical, to Adonis and ignores the very real and justifiable fears Adonis has of the particular sort of love she offers him. Although the element of sexual desire in Venus’ attraction to Adonis cannot be denied, her love for him is really dominated by a strongly maternal response, which renders that love— and Venus’ character generally—far more interesting than equations with lust and generation would suggest. The maternal nature of Venus’ love explains Adonis’ fear of her, is the source of the narrator’s and reader’s ambivalence about her character, and is the cause of a certain nervousness that infects the laughter produced by the poem’s inversion of normal male-female courtship roles. Finally, by characterizing Venus’ love for Adonis as primarily a desire to mother the boy, Shakespeare’s poem reveals itself as something more than either a condemnation of lust or a celebration of generation; it offers a fundamental revelation concerning the nature of man’s—and especially Renaissance man’s—fear of women, a fear that lay behind the characterizations given to the enchantresses, whether human or divine, who appear in both courtly love lyrics and heroic romances. From the start of the poem, Venus appears a creature of superior power who descends to woo a mere mortal, a member of a weaker, inferior order. Physically stronger than Adonis, able to pluck him off his horse and carry him easily under her arm, Venus seems a massive figure

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ALTHOUGH THE ELEMENT OF SEXUAL DESIRE IN VENUS’ ATTRACTION TO ADONIS CANNOT BE DENIED, HER LOVE FOR HIM IS REALLY DOMINATED BY A STRONGLY MATERNAL RESPONSE, WHICH RENDERS THAT LOVE—AND VENUS’ CHARACTER GENERALLY— FAR MORE INTERESTING THAN EQUATIONS WITH LUST AND GENERATION WOULD SUGGEST.’’

out of a canvas by Rubens. The flowers beneath her, though she claims to ‘‘trip’’ lightly upon them (146), really do seem to support her ‘‘like sturdy trees’’ (152). Despite her reference to her ‘‘youth’’ (1120), a term that included a period in life now referred to as mature adulthood, Venus has been perceived by readers of the poem as considerably older than the boy she courts, a middle-aged amazon at the very least. While there is no hard evidence in the poem for ascribing any particular age to this conventionally ageless goddess, such responses are sound intuitions. Venus does totally dominate Adonis in a physical way just as she overwhelms him with rhetoric, and she is consistently portrayed as a mature woman of wide sexual experience whereas Adonis is consistently seen as a virginal slip of a boy. The most important reason, however, why readers of the poem have been led to perceive Venus as an older woman is the consistency with which she is presented as a mothering figure in relation to Adonis, while he in turn is characterized as an infant or child. In her first address to Adonis, Venus praises him as being ‘‘more lovely than a man’’ (9), an ambiguous phrase of courtship, which both elevates him above the status of mere mortality and suggests that his particular loveliness is really that of a boy. Later, Venus will make the true basis of her praise patent: she will reproach Adonis as ‘‘flint-hearted boy’’ (95), coax him to love her by calling him her ‘‘fondling’’ (229), a term of endearment usually reserved for infants, and finally rail against Death for blindly having cleft ‘‘an infant’s heart’’ (942). When Adonis goes off to hunt the boar, Venus refers to him as a ‘‘son that sucked an earthly mother’’ (863),

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thus identifying him not as an adult lover or an object of sexual desire but as a nursing infant, an innocent and helpless babe. Moreover, like Venus, Shakespeare’s narrator also characterizes Adonis in these terms, describing him as a ‘‘tender boy’’ (32) and comparing him, when he passively refuses to respond to Venus’ desperate advances, to a ‘‘froward infant stilled with dandling’’ (562) Finally, Adonis himself, quite aware of his own immaturity, stresses it repeatedly in resisting Venus’ attacks (415–20, 523 ff.), and his responses to her are frequently described in terms that suggest childish behavior: he blushes and pouts (33), frowns and frets (75), and petulantly chides Venus for having spoiled the fun he could have had that day (380). The love Venus feels for this boy has a complementary maternal character. For instance, in her first speech to Adonis, Venus conjures up a childhood world to tempt him off his horse: the two of them will share a ‘‘thousand honey secrets’’ (16) together and will play at kissing, shortening long summer days with ‘‘time-beguiling sport’’ (24). Later, in a wittily erotic passage, Venus transforms her body metaphorically into a ‘‘park’’ (229 ff.) where Adonis can wander and play at will. This passage also underscores a second aspect of Venus’ love, which defines its maternal quality: in her ‘‘park’’ she offers Adonis nourishment as well as a playpen. In fact, Venus’ language throughout the poem is marked by gustatory metaphors: the secrets she holds out to Adonis are ‘‘honey’’ (16); her lips provide ‘‘plenty’’ (20); and when she transforms her body into a ‘‘park,’’ she offers it as a feast for Adonis in which her breasts become fountains and he is invited to nibble her ‘‘sweet bottom-grass’’ (236). Finally, the maternal love Venus holds out to Adonis is characterized by a distinctively protective quality. No ‘‘serpent hisses’’ (17) at the spot where he is invited to sit down with her, and the secluded park of her body, with its ‘‘brakes obscure and rough, / To shelter thee from tempest and from rain’’ (237–38), is a secure retreat into which no dog could penetrate to harm her precious ‘‘deer’’ (239). Clearly, in offering a love that provides the innocence of sports and games, complete nourishment, and secure protection, and in being portrayed as the physically dominant and more widely experienced member of the pair, Venus plays mother to Adonis’ infant. It is thus quite fitting that the narrator twice refers to the arms

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Engraving of Greek mythological figures Venus and Adonis (after a painting by Titian) (Time Life Pictures/ Mansell/Time Life Pictures/Getty Images.)

and hands with which she imprisons him as a ‘‘band’’ (225, 363), a term that meant a restrictive binding but was also a common ellipsis for a swaddling band. If Adonis fails to realize the sexual element in his coy responses to Venus’ advances, Venus hardly understands the maternal character of her responses to him. Her explicit arguments all focus on the pleasure and innocence of sex and on the duty of man to propagate children, but in her treatment of Adonis and in her frequent descriptions of him as a child or infant, she seems to want to mother him as much as—or

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more than—to have sex with him. Either Venus wants some sort of incest without knowing it (one should recall that Adonis himself sprang from an incestuous union), or she really wants an infant to cradle and confuses her maternal and sexual impulses, not seeing Adonis as the father of her child but as her child itself. There is a fine ambiguity in the last dramatic gesture she makes in the poem when she snaps off the flower that grew from Adonis’ blood. She treats it like a child, placing it within the ‘‘hollow cradle’’ of her breasts to be rocked by her ‘‘throbbing heart’’ (1185–86). Although she addresses the flower as the ‘‘sweet issue of a more sweet-smelling sire’’

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(1178), the flower is not Adonis’ child but Adonis himself metamorphosed; he whom she called metaphorically the ‘‘field’s chief flower, sweet above compare’’ (8) has literally become a flower and in this ultimately passive form can no longer avoid the cradling Venus has wanted to give him from the start. That Venus sees this flower as Adonis’ child and not as Adonis himself is eloquent testimony to her ignorance of the real nature of her motives. This last gesture serves as a stunning conclusion, a final revelation in vivid terms of what Venus wanted all along. The striking images of predatory animals with which Venus is associated in the poem (eagle, vulture, falcon) and her frequent references to Adonis as food, as a feast to devour, as the object of her gluttony, all appropriately have been summoned up as evidence to identify her as lust. Granting such an interpretation, it could be argued that Venus is involved in a fundamental self-contradiction. On the one hand, her maternal instincts lead her to wish to protect and nourish Adonis, while on the other, her lust moves her to want to devour and destroy him in an act of incestuous cannibalism. But it could also be argued that these images essentially reveal a contradiction inherent in the maternal love Venus feels. This inherent contradiction can best be understood if the ‘‘park’’ receives a bit more scrutiny. As she describes that ‘‘park’’ to Adonis, it is both a world of security, nourishment, and play and unmistakably a trap or prison. It is walled by an ‘‘ivory pale’’ (230; Venus’ arms), the means by which Adonis has been ‘‘hemmed’’ (229) in. In fact, until he leaves to hunt the boar, he is almost continuously ‘‘prisoned’’ (362) within the ‘‘band’’ Venus throws around him, and he twice is compared by the narrator to a bird tangled in a net, a wild creature eventually ‘‘tamed with too much handling’’ (560). The maternal security and nourishment Venus offers thus involve at the same time a surrendering of freedom and loss of autonomy, which imply the giving up of selfhood and personal identity. In loving Venus as she wants, not only would Adonis be returning to the innocent gaiety and security that mark the child’s condition, but Shakespeare’s images also suggest he would be totally engulfed by Venus, swallowed up in her embrace, smothered, as she herself says (18), beneath the awesome load of her kisses. Seen in terms of this perspective, Adonis really is a morsel for Venus to devour;

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the metaphors of eating not only suggest lust but also imply the swallowing up of Adonis’ self that giving in to Venus’ love entails. Adonis does indeed face the danger that Venus will ‘‘draw his lips’ rich treasure dry’’ (552) a phrase that hints at vampire-like horrors, at loss of breath and vital fluid, perhaps even loss of soul. The loss of autonomy involved in loving Venus is precisely the reason why Adonis finds that love so threatening and explains why the more she persists, the more adamantly he refuses her. To be sure, in rejecting Venus Adonis may be faulted for self-centeredness, a priggish refusal to dally with a charming female, and an insane rejection of generation in favor of loving the boar and all it represents. But just as surely, he must be granted some credit for sensing the danger Venus’ love poses for him and for having wisely refused it. Though he may be accused of waxing puritanical in denouncing Venus as a ‘‘glutton’’ (803) because of her lust, as a caterpillar feeding on the leaves of his beauty (795–98), his images harmonize perfectly with those used by Shakespeare’s narrator himself to characterize Venus’ love throughout the poem. Moreover, Adonis’ most persistent argument against Venus stresses that he is still ‘‘unripe’’ (524), still a ‘‘bud’’ (416) and not a flower, still a green plum that if ‘‘early plucked’’ would taste sour. (527–28) In all these images he responds directly to the predatory character of Venus’ love, refuses implicitly the return to childhood that that love entails, and insists upon his need for freedom to grow up into manhood even if that means the risk of possible death beneath the tusks of the boar. However lacking in compassion Adonis may appear to be in leaving Venus, he is at least somewhat justified in rejecting an offer that promises his enduring infantilization. As he goes out to hunt the boar, he really does reject—though his phrase may be understood differently—a love he aptly calls a ‘‘life in death’’ (413). The maternal character of Venus’ love also generates the particular features she attributes to the boar in the poem. In fact, it should be noted that the reader largely sees the boar through her eyes, understands it in her terms. Adonis does not describe it when saying he likes to hunt it, and the narrator says relatively little about it, except on a few occasions when he may well be attempting to present how it looks from Venus’ perspective. Venus, however, goes on about it at length. At what must be considered the turning

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point of the poem, startled by Adonis’ announcement that he will hunt the boar (589), she describes it fearfully as a ‘‘butcher’’ (618), a beast whose snout digs sepulchers (622), which cannot be injured by spears (626), and which causes plants and animals—all of nature—to scurry terrified out of its way (629–30). Later, Venus’ language suggests that she identifies the boar with Death: she sees both as aggressive creatures ‘‘striking’’ at whatever gets in their way (623, 938); both have piercing instruments of death, the boar’s ‘‘tushes’’ and Death’s ‘‘dart’’ (941); and both are ultimate powers that cannot be destroyed. Consistent with the image pattern established throughout the poem, where Venus is identified with predatory birds and animals and Adonis with deers and hares and helpless birds, the boar and Death are both personified, one as a ‘‘butcher’’ and the other as the ‘‘invisible commander’’ (1004). They are thus identified as humans whose superior force allows them to hunt down both predatory animals and their victims alike. Fittingly, as Venus runs off toward the sound of hunting horns to seek Adonis, she is compared to a falcon flying to a lure (1027), a bird of prey man has tamed and taught its ultimate impotence. Finally, Venus characterizes both the boar and Death as diabolic and serpent-like. The former is one of the ‘‘foul fiends’’ (638) and is frequently imagined as a snake: the wounds it gives the dogs are ‘‘venomed’’ (916); when Venus hears the cry of the hounds, she starts like one who has spied an adder (878); and at one point she imagines Adonis lying beneath the boar’s ‘‘fangs’’ (663). Death is likewise berated as ‘‘earth’s worm’’ (933), a frequent term for serpent. This distinctly diabolic characterization of the boar and Death relates directly to the world of maternal security Venus would offer Adonis. She would give him the garden of her body, an enclosure that barking dogs—and the hunters who follow them—could not penetrate. Almost the first thing Venus offers Adonis is security from diabolic evil: ‘‘Here come and sit, where never serpent hisses’’ (17). Unfortunately for her, Adonis refuses to return to the childhood garden of false innocence she offers him. From Venus’ point of view, he has succumbed to the temptation of the serpent who rules this fallen world of experience, and his fall into death not only destroys Venus’ illusory paradise but, according to her final prophecy, perverts love forever. Ironically, the strength of Venus’ maternal drive half-blinds her to the illusory nature of the paradise she offers Adonis. Clearly, she wants to

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present that world as though it were free from evil, time, and death. The ‘‘sport’’ Venus would have Adonis play is significantly described as ‘‘time-beguiling’’ (24), a phrase that suggests man’s triumph over time, though it may also be interpreted as implying his self-deception about its passage. Whether at this point Venus recognizes the power of time over all things mortal, including Adonis and his beauty, may be doubted, but in her long speech attempting to persuade him into her embrace, when she sounds the carpe diem theme and stresses the importance of generation, she demonstrates a real schizophrenia concerning Adonis’ exposure to time and death. At one point, she implicitly acknowledges his mortality: By law of nature thou art bound to breed, That thine may live when thou thyself art dead; And so, in spite of death, thou dost survive, In that thy likeness still is left alive. (171–74) And yet, in the very same speech, Venus also argues in radically different terms, which hark back to her original identification of Adonis as a flower: Fair flowers that are not gath’red in their prime Rot and consume themselves in little time. (131–32) Clearly in these two passages Venus contradicts herself, both recognizing the law of mutability and decay that rules all earthly things and pretending to Adonis—and herself—that by being plucked he can paradoxically escape decay. Her last gestures in the poem reinforce the impression that Venus is more than a little selfdeceived, perhaps seduced by the power of her maternal yearnings into imagining she can provide an enduring paradise for her ‘‘fondling.’’ At the very moment she remarks to the flower she has plucked, ‘‘it is as good / To wither in my breast as in his blood’’ (1181–82) she also declares that her heart will rock it day and night, that there will be no ‘‘minute in an hour / Wherein I will not kiss my sweet love’s flow’r’’ (1187–88). Finally, Venus’ long prophecy of doom for love after Adonis’ death testifies to her implicit self-deceiving belief that the childhood garden of love she offered him would have preserved his beauty intact and kept him from the fall that has taken the world and love down with him. Whatever Venus’ personal version of

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the myth of the fall may be, however, the reader is directed by the implications of her carpe diem arguments to see it as personal projection rather than objective truth. Venus and Adonis dwell in this fallen world, where the earthly paradise is, for Venus, an illusory maternal fantasy and, for Adonis, an alluring, treacherous bower of bliss. The smothering maternal love that appears negative from Adonis’ point of view is not presented quite so negatively by the narrative as a whole. Though predatory and suffocating, threatening complete loss of personal autonomy through permanent infantilization, Venus’ love, when looked at from the perspective of her motives, is considerably more ambiguous. The narrator deliberately shapes the reader’s responses to emphasize this ambiguity, and the status of Venus and Adonis as a comi-tragedy, a work transformed from high comedy to pathetic drama somewhere near its middle, can be directly related to the ambiguity of Venus’ love. During the first half of the poem, the narrator suppresses most of the positive elements in this love, repeatedly characterizing Venus as a predator and Adonis as her hapless prey. Even here, however, he roguishly praises Venus’ cleverness in stopping Adonis’ reprimands with a kiss (469–74) and criticizes Adonis for his ‘‘lazy sprite’’ (181), implying that he has failed to give Venus the sexual satisfaction a ‘‘real man’’ would offer her. Nevertheless, it is principally after Adonis announces his intention to hunt the boar that the narrator begins to shift his and the reader’s sympathies markedly toward Venus. In the second half of the poem, Venus’ desperate pleading with Adonis to stay and her repeated references to him as an infant emphasize the truly protective and nurturing side of the maternal love she feels. Moreover, because the boar and Death are both depicted as all-powerful human or diabolic predators, Venus, who at first appeared an all-powerful, predatory mother, now experiences the genuine limits of her powers. The narrator, by means of a series of effective images, underscores the pathos of her inability to save the life of the infant she loves. Though she urges Adonis to hunt the hare, her lengthy description of the hunt reveals her identification with the pursued little animal and not the hunters. When she sees Adonis’ dead body, she is compared to a snail, ‘‘whose tender horns being hit, / Shrinks backwards in his shelly cave with

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pain’’ (1033–34). The frothy-mouthed boar appears to her mothering vision as having ‘‘milk and blood’’ (902) mixed on its snout, in a stark suggestion of infant massacre. And in an absolutely wrenching image, which climaxes all those that render sympathetic the maternal element in Venus, the narrator describes her as a ‘‘milch doe whose swelling dugs do ache / Hasting to feed her fawn hid in some brake’’ (875–76). Here the brake is a real one, not the metaphoric brake of Venus’ body, and it hinders this less-than-allpowerful goddess from reaching her love rather than serving as a place of protection and pleasure for him. Both Venus and the ‘‘fawn’’ she aches to feed are pathetic victims of forces beyond either’s control. The effect of all these images and the narrator’s shift of perspective on Venus, in seeing her first as a victimizer and later as a powerless victim, is not to obliterate but, rather, to qualify the previously presented negative features of her maternal drive and to characterize it as the paradoxical force it really is. If Venus’ smothery mothering makes the reader’s lustful laughter at her sexual forwardness rather nervous at times, Venus as a protective, pathetic maternal figure arouses the quite different response of pity and sympathy. Even though her last gesture of plucking Adonis’ flower is an outrageous, though unconscious, fulfillment of her destructive side, her despairing prophecy of lost love, her grief over Adonis’ death, and her final decision to retreat from the world, all balance that destructive gesture and leave the reader with a firm sense of the ultimate ambivalence of her character . . . Source: Wayne A. Rebhorn, ‘‘Mother Venus: Temptation in Shakespeare’s Venus and Adonis,’’ in Shakespeare Studies, Vol. 11, 1978, pp. 1–19.

SOURCES Akrigg, G. P. V., Shakespeare and the Earl of Southampton, H. Hamilton, 1968. Barber, C. L., and Richard P. Wheeler, The Whole Journey: Shakespeare’s Power of Development, University of California Press, 1986. Belsey, Catherine, ‘‘Love as Trompe-l’oeil: Taxonomies of Desire in Venus and Adonis,’’ in Shakespeare Quarterly, Vol. 46, No. 3, Fall 1995, pp. 257–76.

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Bradbrook, M. C., Shakespeare: The Poet in His World, Columbia University Press, 1978, pp. 72–5. Crewe, Jonathan, ‘‘Introduction,’’ in The Narrative Poems, by William Shakespeare, Penguin Books, 1999, pp. xxix–lii. Desmet, Christy, ‘‘‘Who Is’t Can Read a Woman?’: Rhetoric and Gender in Venus and Adonis, Measure for Measure, and All’s Well That Ends Well,’’ in Reading Shakespeare’s Characters: Rhetoric, Ethics, and Identity, University of Massachusetts Press, 1992, pp. 134–63. Doebler, John, ‘‘The Reluctant Adonis: Titian and Shakespeare,’’ in Shakespeare Quarterly, Vol. 33, No. 4, Winter 1982, pp. 480–90. Dubrow, Heather, ‘‘‘Upon Misprision Growing’: Venus and Adonis,’’ in Captive Victors: Shakespeare’s Narrative Poems and Sonnets, Cornell University Press, 1987, pp. 21–79. Erickson, Peter, ‘‘Refracted Images of Queen Elizabeth in Venus and Adonis and The Rape of Lucrece,’’ in Rewriting Shakespeare, Rewriting Ourselves, University of California Press, 1991, pp. 31–56. Hatto, A. T., ‘‘Venus and Adonis—and the Boar,’’ in Modern Language Review, Vol. 41, No. 4, October 1946, pp. 353–61. Jahn, J. D., ‘‘The Lamb of Lust: The Role of Adonis in Shakespeare’s Venus and Adonis, in Shakespeare Survey, Vol. 6, 1970, pp. 11–25. Kahn, Coppe´lia, ‘‘Self and Eros in Venus and Adonis,’’ in Man’s Estate: Masculine Identity in Shakespeare, University of California Press, 1981, pp. 21–46. Muir, Kenneth, ‘‘Venus and Adonis: Comedy or Tragedy?,’’ in Shakespearean Essays, edited by Alwin Thaler and Norman Sanders, Knoxville, 1964. Shakespeare, William, Venus and Adonis, in The Narrative Poems, Penguin Books, 1999, pp. 2–48.

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Sheidley, William E., ‘‘‘Unless It Be a Boar’: Love and Wisdom in Shakespeare’s Venus and Adonis,’’ in Modern Language Quarterly, Vol. 35, No. 1, March 1974, pp. 3–15. Smith, Bruce R., Homosexual Desire in Shakespeare’s England: A Cultural Poetics, University of Chicago Press, 1991.

FURTHER READING Gray, John, Men Are from Mars, Women Are from Venus: The Classic Guide to Understanding the Opposite Sex, Harper, 2004. In this modern bestseller, Gray, who holds a doctorate, discusses the many emotional and psychological differences typically found between men and women. Haynes, Alan, Untam’d Desire: Sex in Elizabethan England, Stackpole Books, 1997. While his writing style has been described as overly ornate, Haynes nevertheless provides an incisive account of cultural attitudes toward sex in Shakespeare’s era. Morford, Mark P. O., and Robert J. Lenardon, Classical Mythology, Oxford University Press, 2002. This academic work presents not only a comprehensive retelling of classical myths but also analyses of their historical relevance. Wilson, Marie C., ed., If Women Ruled the World, Inner Ocean Publishing, 2004. This volume includes a variety of essays, anecdotes, and meditations by women who ponder what the world would be like if more women held positions of political power.

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The Winter’s Tale In his Diary, Simon Forman, an Elizabethan astrologer and surgeon, records that he saw The Winter’s Tale performed on May 15, 1611, at the Globe Theater, the home of the King’s Men, Shakespeare’s acting company. A performance on November 5, 1611 is recorded in the Revels Account; another performance was given in the spring of 1613. In 1623, Sir Henry Herbert, Master of the Revels, refers to The Winter’s Tale as ‘‘an olde playe formerly allowed by Sir George Bucke.’’ Bucke had been appointed Master of the Revels in 1610, making it relatively certain that The Winter’s Tale had not been written before 1610. (The Master of the Revels was an officer of the royal court who licensed plays for performance in London and selected which plays would be performed at court. He also functioned as a royal censor.) The ‘‘Dance of the Satyrs,’’ which a servant introduces in act 4, scene 4, of The Winter’s Tale, and says had been performed at court, is presumed to be a dance performed before King James on January 1, 1611 as part of Ben Jonson’s Masque of Oberon.

1610

The Winter’s Tale first appeared in print in 1623 in the Folio edition of Shakespeare’s plays, which was assembled as a tribute to him by Henry Condell and John Hemminges, two of his fellow actors in the King’s Men. Although the play appears as the last among the comedies and was probably a late addition to the Folio, it is considered by editors to be a good, reliable text, thought to have been printed from a manuscript

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prepared by Ralph Crane, the company’s scrivener or secretary-copyist. Robert Greene’s novella, Pandosto, or The Triumph of Time, written in 1588 and frequently reprinted afterwards, is the source for The Winter’s Tale. Despite numerous alterations, including the happy ending and the statue of Hermione, Shakespeare followed the core story as Greene devised it. Shakespeare’s words are sometimes very close to Greene’s, too, as in Hermione’s defense of herself and the oracle’s pronouncement. However, Shakespeare added Paulina and Autolocus, whose tricks he derived from another work by Greene, The Second Part of Cony-catching, 1591, a study of the London criminal underworld. The Winter’s Tale enjoyed great popularity on the Jacobean stage. It was presented at court in 1618, 1619, 1624, and 1634. The theaters were closed in 1642 and did not reopen until 1661, after the Puritan revolution had failed and the monarchy was restored in 1660. The re-opening of the theaters under King Charles II did not see the restoration of The Winter’s Tale to the stage, however, until 1741, when it was performed at the small theater of Goodman’s Fields successfully enough for it to be moved to the larger Covent Garden the next year. But Shakespeare’s play, in its original form, was supplanted for the rest of the eighteenth century by Macnamara Morgan’s adaptation, The Sheep-Shearing: or Florizel and Perdita, which was first produced in 1754 at Covent Garden; and by another play by the actor-manager David Garrick, whose play, Florizel and Perdita, A Dramatic Pastoral, was first staged at the Drury Lane theater in 1756. Both of these adaptations placed a great emphasis on spectacle, replacing drama with scenery and singing, and significantly cutting much of the grim first three acts and focusing on the pastoral romance of the fourth. During the nineteenth century, Shakespeare’s original was returned to the stage, although usually cut. In 1802, John Philip Kemble produced The Winter’s Tale, omitting the choral figure of Time. In 1856, Charles Kean set his production in ancient Greece, using elaborately evocative Hellenic sets and costumes. Henry Irving and Sir Herbert Beerbohm-Tree both produced spectacular versions of the play with elaborate costumes and scenery during the last decades of the nineteenth century. In 1910,Winthrop Ames staged The Winter’s Tale

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in Jacobean style on an apron stage—the common Elizabethan stage surrounded by the audience on three sides—the first such staging since 1634. In 1912, Harley Granville-Barker staged the play with far less emphasis on scenery and spectacle and more focus on the actual text than had come to be the practice since 1634. In 1951, Peter Brook directed The Winter’s Tale at the Old Vic in London with Sir John Gielgud as Leontes in a performance that has come to be considered a classic. Since then, The Winter’s Tale has become one of Shakespeare’s most frequently staged plays, by both amateurs and professionals.

PLOT SUMMARY Act 1, Scene 1 The Winter’s Tale opens with Camillo, Leontes’s Lord Chamberlain, and Archidamus, one of the lords of Bohemia, exchanging courtesies. Archidamus is visiting Leontes’s court in Sicilia with Polixenes, King of Bohemia. Archidamus commends Leontes’s hospitality and confesses that when Leontes visits Polixenes in Bohemia, they will not be able to match its magnificence, but their love will be as great. Camillo assures him that the hospitality is freely given and nothing is expected in return. He rejoices at the great love for each other the two monarchs share and recalls its deep roots. Their bond goes back to their childhood. Archidamus says he thinks there is nothing which could make them alter their love for each other. He remarks what a treasure the young prince of Sicilia, Mamillius, is. Camillo agrees, saying how much he delights the people’s hearts and how they long to stay alive, even if they must bear the infirmities of age, just for the pleasure of seeing him grow to manhood. Archidamus asks if otherwise they would be ‘‘content to die.’’ Camillo says they would, if they had no other reason to live. Archidamus disagrees, saying they would always find a reason for wishing to stay alive, even if it were only to wait for the king to have a son.

Act 1, Scene 2 Polixenes tells Leontes that he has already stayed nine months with him and must end his visit and return to Bohemia. Leontes asks him to stay a while longer. Polixenes tells him it is not possible. His absence so long may even threaten the

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Douglas Hodge as Leontes and Rolf Saxon as Polixenes in Act I, scene ii at The Roundhouse, London, 2002 (Ó Donald Cooper/Photostage. Reproduced by permission)

security of his throne. Leontes persists in his entreaties and Polixenes continues to insist he must leave. Leontes then turns to his queen, Hermione, who is big with child, and asks her to try to persuade Polixenes to stay longer. When Hermione succeeds, rather than rejoicing, Leontes becomes overwhelmingly jealous. Insulted that Polixenes has acceded to her request while refusing his, he reasons they must be lovers and that the child Hermione is carrying belongs to Polixenes. In order to persuade Polixenes to stay, Hermione offered him, teasingly, the choice of being either her guest or her prisoner. Polixenes chivalrously accepted the offer to be her guest, saying that to be her prisoner would suggest he had offended her. She then asks him about himself and Leontes and how they were when they were boys. Polixenes paints a picture of a world of innocence in which they were innocent, before they knew the sin of sexual desire. Hermione chides him for suggesting that she and his wife are devils who have caused him and Leontes to fall, but assures him that if they have only fallen with their own wives, it has been no sin. It is at this point that Leontes asks, ‘‘Is he

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won yet?’’ and Hermione answers ‘‘He’ll stay, my lord,’’ and Leontes says (it is up to the director or the actor to say whether he says it aloud or mumbles it to himself and to choose his tone of voice), ‘‘At my request he would not,’’ which begins Leontes’s nightmare descent into jealousy. Through what seems to be nearly innocuous dialogue, Shakespeare begins to present the internal development of Leontes’s jealousy. He says to Hermione, when she tells him Polixenes will stay that this is the second time she has spoken well. She asks when the first time was; he answers when she agreed to be his wife, but even as he speaks, there is a bitter tinge to his ` months’’ remark because it took ‘‘three crabbed before he could win her consent. Her answer, courtly in intent, cuts him. She seems to equate having ‘‘forever earned a royal husband’’ and having secured ‘‘for some while a friend’’ to stay. As Hermione walks with Polixenes and engages him in conversation, Leontes speaks, but only for the audience to hear, and describes the physical symptoms of his jealousy and turns

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every gesture of Hermione’s and Polixenes’s into an indication of their mutual passion shamelessly exhibited. He takes his young son, Mamillius, on his lap and continues his self-tormenting monologue until Polixenes notices that Leontes seems distraught and comments on it to Hermione. She asks Leontes if something is disturbing him. He says no, he is only lost in thought looking at Mamillius. He says he recalled himself as a boy. He asks Polixenes if he is as fond of his son as he, Leontes, is of Mamillius. Polixenes describes the delight he takes in his boy. Hermione and Polixenes and some attendants leave for a walk around the garden. Leontes tangles himself further in jealous fantasies and rage and sends Mamillius off to play, giving the word a more sinister meaning as he repeats it to himself. ‘‘Go play, boy, play: thy mother plays, and I / Play too—but so disgraced a part.’’ When Mamillius is gone, Camillo remains with him. Leontes, seeming to speak casually, comments that Polixenes will stay. Camillo conversationally responds that it was difficult to get him to stay and remarks that he would not at first agreed to when Leontes had asked, that it took Hermione’s entreaty. This response is exactly what can nourish Leontes’s jealousy. He imagines he is already being spoken about as a deceived husband. When Camillo speaks of Hermione, he calls her the ‘‘good Queen.’’ Leontes repeats his words with a bitter emphasis implying the opposite. Leontes confides in Camillo his surety that Hermione and Polixenes are lovers. Camillo denies it and calls the instances of proof Leontes offers ‘‘nothing.’’ But Leontes is relentless and will not be convinced that his jealousy is mistaken madness. Camillo sees that Leontes cannot be shaken and is violent in his jealous passion. Consequently, to assuage him, he seems to come around. When Leontes suggests that Camillo, who serves as Polixenes’s cupbearer, might poison him, Camillo agrees to do it on condition that once Polixenes is dispatched, Leontes will promise to do Hermione no harm. Leontes agrees and says Camillo’s advice conforms to his own thinking. As Leontes leaves, Camillo tells him that if he poisons Polixenes, he will be rewarded, but if he fails to, he will himself be executed. Camillo promises to do it, although equivocating, saying he is not Leontes’s servant if he does not. Alone, Camillo reflects on Hermione’s sad plight and then upon his own danger. He will not poison ‘‘good Polixenes,’’ and his only option

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then is to leave Sicilia and the court. As he is ruminating, Polixenes enters and asks Camillo if something is wrong: Leontes looks distraught and his behavior has changed. Camillo tells him that Leontes is ill with the disease of jealousy, that he believes Polixenes has slept with Hermione, is the father of her child, and that he has ordered Camillo to poison him. Polixenes understands how great Leontes’s fury must be. If it were true, it would be a grave violation of trust and friendship. He is afraid. Camillo proposes that Polixenes leave Sicilia immediately and that he, Camillo, go with him in order to escape Leontes’s wrath for disobedience. They go.

Act 2, Scene 1 The scene begins with Hermione expressing vexation. Mamillius is with her and she asks one of the women to take him. She says ‘‘he so troubles me, / ’Tis past enduring.’’ It is not clear that she is referring to Mamillius. If she is, there is no indication why. ‘‘He’’ may also refer to the child in her womb, who, as children in the womb do, can cause painful discomfort by kicking and moving about. Or it maybe Leontes to whom Hermione is referring. His behavior has become strange enough for Polixenes to have noticed. Hermione’s women banter with Mamillius and talk about his mother’s pregnancy with him. Hermione, feeling easier, takes the boy to her again, and at her urging, he begins to tell her a story. As he begins his tale of a man who ‘‘dwelt by a churchyard,’’ a graveyard, Leontes enters speaking distractedly to several courtiers about how Polixenes and Camillo have stolen away from the court and how their hasty departure confirms his jealous fears and makes him realize that Camillo was part of a plot by Polixenes to steal his wife, kill him, and take his crown. He orders Hermione to give him Mamillius, and sends the boy away. In front of the court, Leontes accuses Hermione of carrying Polixenes’s child. She denies it. He reaffirms that she is an adulteress, will not hear her protestations, and orders that she be taken to prison. She leaves with dignity, saying tears would have been appropriate only if she had been guilty and she voices tender concern for Leontes, sorry that she will see him having to be sorry. After Hermione has been removed, his courtiers try to convince Leontes that he is mistaken, that the queen is innocent and no woman more virtuous than she. He refuses to hear them and stubbornly insists on the truth of his indictment

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and on his sole power to bring it. He adds, however, that he has sent messengers to Delphos to enquire about Hermione’s guilt of the oracle in order to confirm his judgment and not seem tyrannical.

Act 2, Scene 2 Visiting the prison in which Hermione is held, Paulina is forbidden to see the queen. She learns from Emilia, a lady-in-waiting with Hermione, that Hermione has given birth to a girl. Paulina convinces the jailer to allow her to take the baby to Leontes, thinking that the sight of his new daughter may cause him to soften.

Act 2, Scene 3 In torment, Leontes thinks that if he has Hermione executed he may have some peace. A servant enters and informs him that Mamillius has rested well after becoming ill. Leontes tells the servant that the boy is ill because he is ashamed of his mother’s transgression. Leontes continues to entertain crazy thoughts of taking vengeance on Hermione, and regrets that Camillo and Polixenes are out of reach of his punishment. He imagines that they are laughing at him. Paulina, carrying the baby, tries to enter the chamber. A Lord prevents her, but she rebuffs him, scolds him for obeying Leontes, whom she brands a tyrant. She reproaches the Lord for not being concerned about the queen. She tells the Lord she comes to bring Leontes comfort. Leontes, hearing the altercation, asks who is there. When told it is Paulina, he tells the Lord not to admit her and tells Antigonus, one of his courtiers and Paulina’s husband, that he told him to keep her away, but when Antigonus says that he did, Leontes reproaches him for not being able to control his wife. Paulina answers that regarding any act of virtue, he can, but she will not be ruled not to be virtuous, and Antigonus backs her up. Paulina shows Leontes the baby and defies him when she calls the queen good by reasserting the adjective when he denies it. She lays the baby at his feet. He calls her a witch. He orders Antigonus to pick up the baby, whom he calls the bastard, and give it back to Paulina. Paulina puts a curse on him if he picks up the baby. When Antigonus heeds his wife, Leontes calls him a traitor. He protests and so does Paulina. Leontes threatens to burn Paulina, but she returns his rage with defiance. She leaves, telling him to care for his daughter. Leontes orders

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Antigonus to throw the baby into the fire. Antigonus and the other courtiers beg Leontes to spare the child. He concedes, ordering, instead, that Antigonus take it to some distant, barren place and expose the child to the elements. Antigonus takes up the baby and departs to fulfill the command. A servant enters and tells the king the messengers are returned from Delphos with the oracle’s judgment.

Act 3, Scene 1 Cleomenes and Dion are galloping back to Leontes palace from the Delphic oracle carrying the oracle’s judgment. They remember the power and mystery of Delphos and express their belief in Hermione’s innocence and their hope that the judgment of the oracle will make all well.

Act 3, Scene 2 Leontes calls Hermione’s trial to order, proclaiming how painful a thing it is for him to do and how he hopes it will clear him of the charge of being tyrannical in his proceedings against his wife. He orders Hermione brought in, although he calls her ‘‘the prisoner’’ rather than using her name. In her presence, the indictment is read. She is accused of treason for committing adultery with Polixenes, plotting the murder of Leontes, and aiding in the flight of Camillo and Polixenes. Hermione proclaims her innocence, speaking quietly and eloquently. She speaks of her honor, her upbringing, her past life with Leontes, and the propriety of her behavior with Polixenes. Leontes dismisses her, saying that her denials are merely an indication of her boldness as a deceiver. She refutes the accusations in his indictment point by point, and he reverts to them afterwards. She tells him he is but dreaming. He repeats his delusions as if they were facts and threatens her with death. She responds that she has no dread of death, everything in her life which she valued having been taken from her, but she requests he consult the oracle before passing sentence. He says it is a fair request and has, in fact, done so. Dion and Cleomenes enter with the oracle’s judgment. It is opened and read. The oracle says that Hermione is chaste, Polixenes blameless, Camillo a true subject, that Leontes is a tyrant, and that he will live without an heir if something which has been lost is not found. Leontes responds by crying out that the oracle is false. A messenger runs in with the news that his son Mamillius has died. Hermione

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drops in a death swoon. Leontes orders her taken away saying her heart was strained but she will recover. He says that he has been wrong and has believed his own suspicions. He orders that Hermione be cared for and humbles himself before Apollo for profaning his oracle. He proclaims he will repent, reconcile himself with Polixenes, woo Hermione anew, and recall Camillo. He confesses his own misdeeds and is filled with horror at what he has done and how he has been. Paulina enters, rails against him, condemning each of his actions, says she cares not what punishment he can give her for speaking against him. She finishes by reporting that Hermione is dead. Rather than punishing her for her vilification of him, Leontes tells her to continue. She apologizes for speaking as she has, but he tells her he wishes her to continue to recount his faults. He makes her a sort of minister of penance to him. The scene ends as Leontes goes to visit the chapel where the bodies of his wife and son lie, vowing to visit it daily and live his life a penitent.

Act 3, Scene 3 The scene changes to the seacoast of Bohemia where Antigonus arrives with Hermione’s baby. The skies are stormy. Antigonus orders the mariner to return to the ship while he finds a place to lay the bundled baby. He speaks to himself, regretting that he must do it and remembers a dream he had last night. Weeping, Hermione appeared to him in a white robe, instructed him to leave the child in Bohemia and to name it Perdita. For being the instrument, although unwillingly, of this exposure, she tells him he will never see his wife again. Antigonus believes Hermione is dead, thinks that she has chosen Bohemia to deposit the child because it is Polixenes’s, blesses the child, lays it down with a bundle of letters indicating who she is, along with gold, and attempts to return to the ship, which is beset by a storm, but he is pursued by a bear as he exits and is devoured by the bear. A shepherd enters, complaining to himself about the follies of youth. He spots the baby and the bundle, gathers them up and says he will take and care for the baby but will wait for his son to return before he goes home. His son, the Clown, of whom he had been speaking before he noticed the baby, saying what a bother young people are, enters and tells his father that he has seen a man devoured by a bear and a ship go down in the storm. His father, saying that his son has seen

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dying things, but he has seen newborn things, shows him the child and the gold. The clown tells his father good fortune has come to them. He tells him to go home with the child while he goes to see if the bear has finished with the man and then together they will bury what is left of him.

Act 4, Scene 1 The figure of Time steps forth from inside the confines of the play and acts as a chorus, telling the spectators that sixteen years have passed, that Leontes has spent them grieving, but that the scene has shifted to Bohemia where Perdita has grown into a graceful and beautiful young woman and that the son of Polixenes, who had been mentioned earlier, has now grown to manhood. Time wishes that we never spend time worse than watching the play he is presenting and to which he now returns us.

Act 4, Scene 2 Polixenes begs Camillo to put away his desire to return to Sicilia and Leontes and to remain in Bohemia. He tells him how great his service to him has been and how greatly he still requires him. In fact, he tells him that he is troubled that his son is often absent from the court and his spies have informed him that Florizel spends most of the time at the home of a lowly shepherd who has unaccountably risen in fortune. Camillo says he has heard of him and that he has a beautiful daughter. Polixenes responds that he fears it is to see the girl that he is drawn there, and suggests that they themselves, in disguise, go to the shepherd’s house to see what is going on. Camillo agrees.

Act 4, Scene 3 With a burst of song celebrating the re-appearance of spring (although it is autumn) and the sprouting of daffodils, of red-blooded energy, of larks and unruly lovemaking, Autolycus, a mirthful and frolicsome figure, a pickpocket and a fast-talking con man appears. He tells the audience that he has served Florizel, that he steals the linen hung out to dry on lines on washdays, but that he keeps his crimes small because he does not want to be beaten or hanged. As he is pattering, he sees the Clown, the Shepherd’s son and Perdita’s brother, approaching. The Clown is off to make purchases of sugar, currents, spices, dates, figs, and raisins for a sheepshearing celebration, and he is occupying his time remembering his shopping list and trying to tally the profits of the sheep-shearing in his head, but the

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arithmetic confounds him. Autolycus pretends that he has been robbed and beaten and calls out for his help. The good Clown stops to help him, and as he lifts him from the ground, Autolycus picks his pocket and then graciously refuses some money when the Clown offers to help him. They part, the Clown to buy his provisions, for which he will find he does not have the money, and Autolycus, merrily singing, to go to the sheepshearing feast, where he will fleece the guests.

Act 4, Scene 4 Florizel and Perdita appear at the sheep-shearing feast. He is dressed as a lowly shepherd and she as the queen of the festival. He remarks on her beauty and she admits misgivings to be so adorned and to see him dressed so below his rank. He says he blesses the time his falcon strayed across her father’s land and he met her, but she says the disparity in their rank makes her fearful for their love and of his father’s disapproval. The prince tells her not to worry and to rejoice, and he reminds her of all the gods who assumed human form for the sake of a beloved, but none compares to her, and that he is superior to those gods since his love is honorable and chaste. She responds that his father’s disapproval, nevertheless, will chasten his love for her, but he denies it, saying he will choose her, if a choice has to be made, over his kingdom. She prays that it be so. The guests approach and the old Shepherd lovingly chides her for not attending to them, describing how his wife bustled about the table serving the guests when she was alive. Polixenes and Camillo, in disguise, are among the guests. Perdita offers them flowers with her greeting. She gives them rosemary and rue, signifying grace and remembrance, and she notes those flowers can survive the winter. Polixenes thanks her, noting that winter flowers are appropriate to their ages. Perdita, continuing to speak of flowers, notes that in their season, now autumn, the fairest flowers are carnations and streaked gilyvors, which are called nature’s bastards and that she will not plant those in her garden. Polixenes explains to her that they are flowers produced by grafting two separate stocks together, a wild one and a gentle one, to produce such flowers. She says she will not have them just for the reason that they are the products of art rather than nature, and says it is like a woman wearing make-up. But Polixenes tries to correct her, arguing that the art which is used to produce such flowers is an art taught by nature, an art which

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‘‘mends’’ nature and is thus itself natural. But she persists and protests she will not plant such flowers. Once again, she welcomes them to the feast, and Camillo praises her beauty. She says she wishes she had spring flowers to give to Florizel and to the maidens, and she thinks of the flowers that Proserpina (or Persephone) dropped when she was kidnapped by Dis (or Hades), the god of the underworld, and taken to the underworld. (There is an echo of the very story of The Winter’s Tale in her allusion to the story of Proserpina’s rape. Demeter (Ceres) her mother, the goddess of vegetation, withdrew her energy from the earth when her daughter was abducted, and winter was the result. Demeter resembles Hermione; Proserpina resembles Perdita.) After Perdita expresses her desire to cover Florizel with flowers, he asks her if she means to bestrew him like a corpse. She answers that it would rather be like a bank for them to lie on loving, and he describes her as a flowing wave. Even Polixenes is taken with her beauty as they watch the lovers whisper to each other. Autolycus bursts into this festive setting like a peddler with ribbons, gewgaws and ballads to sell, and there is country clowning, romancing, singing and dancing. During the festivities, Polixenes tells Camillo that the attachment between Florizel and Perdita has gone too far and that it is time to part them. With this in mind, Polixenes asks Florizel why he did not buy Perdita trinkets in order to show his love and increase hers. Florizel responds that she does not value such trifles. Instead he takes her hand and vows his love before the assembled company and as they are about to join themselves in a rustic wedding, Polixenes inquires if Florizel’s father knows of his love. Florizel answers that he does not and that he will not. As Florizel then says ‘‘Mark our contract,’’ meaning his engagement to Perdita, Polixenes reveals himself, crying ‘‘Mark your divorce.’’ He tells Florizel if he ever finds him near Perdita again, he will prevent him from becoming king. He threatens to scratch Perdita’s beauty with thorns and to sentence her to death and to execute her father, too. He does not apply to his son and Perdita the philosophy of grafting he had advocated with regard to horticulture a little earlier. After he leaves, Perdita says this is just what she had been afraid of. But Florizel tells her it changes nothing, that he is constant. Camillo has

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remained at the feast. He asks Florizel what his plans are. Florizel tells him he has determined nothing but to leave Bohemia with Perdita, but where he will go he does not know and it is not Camillo’s business, anyhow. Camillo suggests, however, that he take Perdita to Sicilia and tell Leontes he has been sent by his father with greetings. Camillo can supply him with documents and credentials, and once he arrives in Sicilia, before being presented to Leontes, Camillo can arrange for them both to be properly attired. Florizel and Perdita agree. Spotting Autolycus, Camillo has him change clothes with Florizel. Florizel and Perdita, now disguised—she wearing Autolycus’s hat—set off to Sicilia. Camillo then reveals the rest of his plan. So great is his longing, as he has already told Polixenes when Polixenes denied him permission to go, to see Sicilia, that he will tell Polixenes of the lovers’ flight, confident that they will then follow them to Sicilia. Left by himself, Autolycus muses that he is not the only one who practices deception. Moreover, he decides that since it would show honesty in him to let Polixenes know of Florizel’s departure, he will not do it. The Shepherd and the Clown enter, frightened that they will be executed because of their relationship to Perdita. They have brought the chest that was bundled with her, in which the papers revealing her actual identity and her infant swaddling clothes are stored, in order to show them to Polixenes to exculpate themselves. Autolycus waylays them, tells them he is a courtier, frightens them, and promises to bring them to him. But he actually intends to bring them to Florizel to show him their bundle, thinking it may concern him.

has arrived with his princess and desires to see Leontes. Leontes is surprised at such a sudden visit and that Florizel is not accompanied by an entourage. The servant speaks of Perdita’s beauty and Paulina reproaches him for slighting Hermione’s memory. The presence of Florizel also painfully recalls the absence of Mamillius, who died when Leontes persecuted his mother. Upon seeing Florizel, Leontes notes how much he resembles Polixenes by saying that his mother was true to wedlock. Florizel says he has stopped at Sicilia at his father’s command to give Leontes his greetings. Leontes gives him welcome and praises Perdita’s beauty. Florizel tells him she is a Libyan princess. As they speak, a Lord enters with news that Polixenes has landed in Sicilia and asks that Leontes take Florizel prisoner because he has defied his father and eloped with a shepherd’s daughter. In addition, he reports that Perdita’s father has arrived in Sicilia, too, and has met with Polixenes. Florizel says Camillo must have betrayed him, and Leontes rejoices to hear him named. Perdita laments over what will become of her poor father and adds that they will never be able to be married now. When Leontes hears that they are not married and that Perdita is not a king’s daughter, he becomes stern. Momentarily, too, he expresses his own desire for Perdita, and when Paulina reproaches him for betraying the memory of his queen, he says he thought of Hermione as he looked at Perdita. When Florizel assures him that he and Perdita have remained chaste, Leontes promises to intervene with Polixenes on their behalf.

Act 5, Scene 1

Act 5, Scene 2

In Sicilia, Leontes tells the courtiers who argue that he has mourned and done penance long enough and ought to think about marrying again and producing an heir lest there be a problem regarding succession after his death. Paulina encourages his resistance. They recall Hermione’s splendor and his betrayal of her virtue. To marry again would kill her again, Paulina and Leontes agree. Furthermore, Leontes promises that if he does marry again it will only be with Paulina’s permission, and Paulina says she will only approve his marriage when Hermione is alive again.

The revelation of Perdita’s identity and the reconciliation of Leontes and Polixenes is not shown but rather described in the conversation between a group of Gentleman. Autolycus is among them, but he says little until they finish narrating the events of the disclosure, how they saw the proofs of Perdita’s identity, how the participants wept with joy and sorrow, and how Paulina invited them to her house so that they might see a statue of Hermione that she owns. When Autolycus is alone, the Shepherd and his son, the Clown, enter. They have now become gentlemen and they promise to protect Autolycus, providing he mends his ways, which he promises to do.

A servant enters and announces that a young man purporting to be Prince Florizel of Bohemia

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one’s pardon, blesses everyone, and asks Paulina to lead them from her house so that, at their leisure, they may tell how they have lived in the sixteen years that they have been separated.

MEDIA ADAPTATIONS

CHARACTERS



In 1962, The Winter’s Tale was filmed for the BBC, with Robert Shaw as Leontes.



A 1968 London production of The Winter’s Tale, directed by Frank Dunlop and starring Laurence Harvey as Leontes and Jane Asher as Perdita, was released as a film.



A 1981 BBC film version of The Winter’s Tale was directed by Jane Howell.



The 1999 Royal Shakespeare Company production of The Winter’s Tale was also made into a film.



Wintermaerchen (2000) is an operatic adaptation of The Winter’s Tale by Philippe Boesmans, a Belgian composer.

Antigonus Antigonus is Paulina’s husband. Leontes orders him to take his newborn daughter, Perdita, insisting she is not his but Polixenes’s, and expose the infant in the wilderness. Despite misgivings, Antigonus obeys and, following a visitation from Perdita’s mother, Hermione, in a dream vision, leaves the baby on the seacoast of Bohemia with a letter and gold. Antigonus is then eaten by a bear.

Archidamus Archidamus is a Bohemian courtier who visits Leontes’s court in Sicilia with Polixenes.

Autolycus Autolycus is a free-spirited pickpocket who makes mischief but accomplishes good.

Act 5, Scene 3 All have gathered in Paulina’s chapel for the unveiling of a statue of Hermione. When they see it, everyone is overcome by its perfect resemblance to Hermione and by a wonderful lifelike quality in the marble. When Paulina sees how touched they are, she asks them if they would like to see more. Leontes assures her he does, and she demands his assurance that he will not accuse her of witchcraft. Readily he agrees. She commands music to be played and Hermione descends from her pedestal, no longer a marble statue but a living woman. Hermione embraces Leontes and then turns to Perdita and begs a blessing of the gods for her and then, like a loving mother, asks where she has lived, how she has lived, how found her way back to the court. Of herself she says that knowing from Paulina that the oracle gave hope that Perdita was alive, she has preserved herself in hope of seeing her again. Paulina says there is time enough to answer all the questions later, but right now she calls them all winners and tells them to rejoice in each other as she withdraws alone into her solitariness. But Leontes interrupts her and says she must have a husband and joins her with Camillo. Leontes begs each

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Camillo Camillo is a courtier in Sicilia, and Leontes’s chief counselor. Rather than obey Leontes’ order to poison Polixenes, Camillo tells Polixenes of the danger he is in because Leontes believes he has had sexual relations with Hermione, Leontes’s wife. Camillo flees with Polixenes to Bohemia, where Camillo becomes Polixenes’s chief adviser. Sixteen years later, Camillo, longing to return home, helps Perdita and Florizel flee to Sicilia because Polixenes has forbidden her marriage to his son, Florizel.

Cleomenes Cleomenes is one of the courtiers Leontes sends to the Delphic Oracle to find out the truth about Hermione’s suspected infidelity with Polixenes.

Clown The Clown is the Shepherd’s son. When Antigonus abandons Perdita on the seacoast of Bohemia, he sees him devoured by a bear before he can reach his ship; the ship then goes down in a raging storm. The Clown is a simple but virtuous bumpkin.

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Dion Dion is the other courtier Leontes sends to consult the Oracle at Delphi regarding Hermione’s marital fidelity.

Paulina’s guidance. Leontes stays a penitent for sixteen years, until his daughter, Perdita, whom he had ordered exposed to the elements, is found.

Mamillius Dorcas Dorcas is one of the peasant girls who attends the sheep-shearing festival in act 4, scene 4.

Mamillius is Leontes’s and Hermione’s young son. He dies of grief after his father imprisons his mother for adultery.

Emilia

Mopsa

Emilia is one of Hermione’s serving women who accompanies her to jail when Leontes imprisons her.

Mopsa is a country wench who is a participant at the sheep-shearing festival.

Paulina Florizel Florizel is the son of Polixenes, king of Bohemia. He falls in love with Perdita, the daughter of Leontes and Hermione, when everyone thinks she is the Shepherd’s daughter. When Polixenes learns of their intended marriage, which Florizel has kept hidden from him, he forbids it. With the help of Camillo, Florizel and Perdita flee to Sicilia with the hope of getting married there. Florizel is upright, virtuous, and chaste. At the sheep-shearing he is called Doricles.

Hermione Hermione is Leontes’s virtuous and patient queen, nine months pregnant as the play begins. She persuades Polixenes to extend his visit to Sicilia after Polixenes refuses Leontes’s request to stay. Offended that she succeeded when he had been rebuffed, Leontes attributes her success to a sexual relationship between her and Polixenes. Jealous, he imprisons her for treason and orders her death. Their son, Mamillius, dies of grief. Leontes then orders the death of their daughter, claiming it is Polixenes’s child, not his. After sixteen years, her lady-in-waiting, Paulina, presents a statue of Hermione to the reconciled kings and their children. When she orders music to be played, Hermione’s statue moves and Hermione returns to life.

Leontes Leontes is king of Sicilia. When Polixenes, king of Bohemia, his childhood friend, declines his request to extend his visit to Sicilia but agrees to stay when Hermione presses him, Leontes becomes jealous. Believing that Hermione has been unfaithful with Polixenes, Leontes orders Camillo to poison him; after Polixenes and Camillo flee, Leontes imprisons Hermione. After his son and wife die, Leontes repents and undergoes the life of a penitent, under

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Paulina is Antigonus’s wife and Hermione’s lady-in-waiting. When Leontes falsely accuses Hermione of adultery, Paulina rebukes him for his tyrannical stupidity. After Hermione is reported dead and Leontes repents, Paulina takes on the role of his officer of penance for the sixteen years that separate the first part of the play from the last. Paulina, unbeknownst to Leontes, cares for Hermione, whom she gives out as dead for the sixteen years that Perdita is missing. It is Paulina who returns Hermione to Leontes after Perdita is found, when she presents her as a statue that comes to life. The suggestion clings to Paulina that she has supernatural skills.

Perdita Perdita is the daughter of Hermione and Leontes, whom Leontes believes is Polixenes’s issue and orders exposed to die. She is beautiful, virtuous, and graceful. Antigonus leaves her on the seacoast of Bohemia where the Shepherd finds her and raises her as his own child. Her name means the lost one, and she is the subject of the Delphic oracle’s prophecy. Until she is found, Leontes will live without an heir. Florizel, the prince of Bohemia, falls in love with her and keeps his love secret from his father. When Polixenes attends the sheep shearing festival in disguise in order to spy on his secretive son, and learns of his son’s love, Polixenes refuses to allow their marriage.

Polixenes Polixenes is the king of Bohemia. He is Leontes’s childhood friend. Leontes becomes jealous of him after Polixenes refuses to extend his visit to Sicilia at Leontes’s request but accedes to Hermione’s request. With Camillo’s help, he escapes from Sicilia. Sixteen years later, in Bohemia, he refuses to grant Camillo permission to return to Sicilia

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THEMES Art and Nature

Illustration of Perdita, by H J Ford (Ó Blue Lantern Studio/Corbis)

and involves him in a plot to discover what his son Florizel, who has been absent from the court, is doing. When Polixenes learns of Florizel’s intended marriage to Perdita, thought to be a shepherd’s daughter, he forbids it. After Florizel and Perdita flee to Sicilia, he follows them, is given evidence of Perdita’s actual identity, and his friendship with Leontes is restored.

Shepherd The Shepherd finds the crib containing the infant Perdita, gold, and several tokens of her identity on the seacoast of Bohemia after Antigonus has abandoned her. He raises her as his own daughter.

Time Time is introduced in the first scene of the fourth act as a choral character who bridges the sixteen years that pass between the end of act 3 and the beginning of act 4.

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Nature and art are shown to be in a complex, interdependent relationship to each other in The Winter’s Tale. Nature, although generative and creative, is guided by the intervention of human activity, but nature guides the actions which guide it. Active human intervention, or art which shapes nature, is itself a part of and a process of nature. This paradox is at the root of the argument between Perdita and Polixenes in act 4, scene 4 regarding what kinds of flowers to plant in her garden. Perdita thinks of nature as a force which proceeds on its own without human intervention: flowers grow. Polixenes represents it as a force which needs mending or human intervention for its improvement: horticulturists graft varieties of flowers together to produce a finer flower. When Perdita recoils from such tampering with nature, Polixenes explains that nature itself provides the means to allow that tampering: art is the expression of a natural process at work in people. Whereas the horticulturist’s art may be deliberate, not all art—or intervention—in The Winter’s Tale, is deliberate. The plot is pushed forward by a number of actions which are not intended to push it towards the conclusion it reaches; nevertheless these actions do move the plot towards the conclusion. That is nature guiding art. The final interaction of art and nature, when the statue of Hermione metamorphoses into the person of Hermione, is a representation of an art so strong that it transforms itself into something essentially human: we are an incomprehensible and inextricably joined union of art and nature.

Innocence and Guilt As Leontes begins to weave fantasies of betrayal and infidelity, Hermione and Polixenes, after she asks him to tell her of his and Leontes’s boyhoods, are discussing innocence and guilt. Polixenes suggests that there is a pre-sexually aware state of boyhood, which he calls a state of innocence. That state allows for a careless exchange of friendship. But with adolescence, Polixenes says, he and Leontes came to know ‘‘the doctrine of ill-doing,’’ suggesting that they became vulnerable to the original sin of sexual lustfulness. Lust is a form of selfishness which raises self-interest over common interest and cooperation. When the old Shepherd enters at the end of the third act, he speaks of the unruly

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sexual acts of adolescents and wishes they could be by-passed. He refers to two boys, although only one ever appears, who have lost two of his sheep. But what the Shepherd is introducing is the paradoxical concept of a sort of innocent guiltiness, of a natural wildness that is not guilty, for the Clown when he appears is not an emblem of guilt, but of simplicity. This sort of natural innocence is carried over in the characters of Perdita and Florizel, and their love, which is intensely passionate yet chaste. They do not live in the fallen world of the court, like Leontes, who goes from guilt to penance, but in the green world of nature, where even a scamp like Autolycus, thief and mischief maker that he is, represents a wild, unrestrained innocence, a self untrammeled, rather than an adult-sized evil.

Jealousy Jealousy is the motive force, the engine of the plot in both the first and second parts of The Winter’s Tale. It is more openly expressed and apparent in the first section. Leontes becomes jealous of Polixenes, thinking he has taken Hermione from him and had sexual relations with her. With its sexual component bracketed off, jealousy can be seen as a variety of selfishness. It is a lust to have, to keep for oneself. In the first conversation in the second part of The Winter’s Tale, in the dialogue between Camillo and Polixenes, Camillo requests his (Polixenes’s) permission to return to Sicilia. Polixenes refuses, arguing how much he needs Camillo, reminding the reader of Leontes’s previous refusal to allow Polixenes to return to Bohemia. Polixenes shows a kind of jealousy of Leontes in this case. When Camillo acquiesces, Polixenes’s next order of business introduces another form of jealousy. It is a jealousy of his son, Florizel. Florizel has grown distant from his father. He has turned his affections, which Polixenes had described to Leontes in the first act with great fatherly pride, away from his father and redirected them towards Perdita.

The Triumph of Time Pandosto, the source for The Winter’s Tale, is subtitled The Triumph of Time. In The Winter’s Tale, time is a process which works to restore unsettled balances and is, thus, a central theme in the play. The importance of time is suggested by the appearance of Time itself as a character in the play. Time appears as the Chorus in The

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TOPICS FOR FURTHER STUDY 

Read ‘‘The Tale of Ill-advised Curiosity (Chapters 33, 34, and 35 of Miguel de Cervantes’s novel Don Quixote). Compare and contrast it to The Winter’s Tale.

Recount in detail a situation in which you became mistakenly jealous or became the victim of someone else’s mistaken jealousy and the consequences of this mistake. Include the things which contributed to the jealousy, considering external events and internal psychological forces. Similarly, when describing the effects, pay attention to psychological responses as well as external occurrences.  Read Leo Tolstoy’s short story, ‘‘God Sees the Truth, but Waits,’’ (1872). Compare and contrast it to The Winter’s Tale.  After reading Shakespeare’s As You Like It, compare and contrast the situations and the characters of Perdita and Rosalind. 



Read Shakespeare’s play, Othello, and write an essay of a thousand words. In this essay, compare and contrast Othello and Leontes, and Desdemona and Hermione. Then imagine and describe how each set of characters would react if placed in the other’s situation.

Winter’s Tale. Time bridges the sixteen year gap between the two sections of the play and speaks directly to the audience. Time also implies patience. After he realizes the evil of his actions, Leontes repents, but repentance does not yield immediate results. It requires patience, especially in light of the oracle, which does promise restoration to Leontes if his daughter is found. And that takes time. Hermione, too, must bear the passage of time patiently as she waits, sequestered by Paulina, for the oracle to be fulfilled. The triumph of time is a function both of the passage of time and of Leontes’s and Hermione’s ability to surrender their wills to time and to wait.

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STYLE Romance The Winter’s Tale, is often called a romance. Romance refers to a kind of literary work which was popular during the Elizabethan period. It involves love between persons who are of noble birth. It mixes elements of idealized beauty and virtue with elements of ugliness and evil. Structurally, romances yoke tragedy and comedy, and conclude with the triumph of the comic. Supernatural events, and events directed by chance, determine the outcome. Romances take place in both a court and in an idealized pastoral setting. The passage of time, as in The Winter’s Tale, plays an important role in the resolution of the plot.

Narration Narrative exposition plays a significant structural role in The Winter’s Tale. The first scene presents a conversation with no dramatic significance but which serves only to convey information. Similarly, most of the second scene of the fifth act is given over to a narration, by unnamed gentlemen, of the reunion of the two kings and the rediscovery of Perdita’s identity. This encounter is not presented dramatically, although it would appear to deserve dramatic presentation because of its climactic power. Paul Goodman has suggested in The Structure of Literature, that it is presented in narrative form in order to reserve climactic privilege to the next scene, in which Hermione’s statue comes to life.

Mirroring Despite its apparent structural disunity, among the many elements which work to make The Winter’s Tale a coherent and unified entity is the way its parts mirror each other. Polixenes’s refusal to part with Camillo in act 4 mirrors Leonte’s earlier refusal to part with Polixenes in act 1. So, too, Polixenes’s tyranny towards Florizel, and especially Perdita, mirrors Leontes’s tyrannical persecution of Perdita’s mother. When Perdita condemns spotted gilyvors as ‘‘nature’s bastards’’ she echoes Leontes’s rejection of her as Polixenes’s bastard. The process of grafting, which she debates with Polixenes, whereby plants of different varieties are united to form a new flower, mirrors the romance between her and Florizel. They are of differing classes. Although Polixenes favors grafting in the realms of horticulture, he opposes it in the human sphere. When Hermione re-appears as

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a statue, that statue is a mirror image of her, and when that statue moves and Hermione returns to the realm of the living, it is as if through the power that art has to mirror nature that she has stepped back into the world through the looking glass.

Sudden Change Sudden change is a repeated element in The Winter’s Tale and seems to suggest the power of a force which helps to determine the shape of lives and destinies. Leontes’s jealousy is sudden. It seems to come upon him independently of himself. His repentance of his folly after he defies the oracle is just as sudden. But that seems to be an act of true recognition on his part. Hermione’s death is sudden. That seems like a natural response to a blow of fortune, but later appears also as a dramatic trick of art. The news of Mamillius’s death is also sudden. But his death appears like the natural result of the grief he suffers when the order of his family breaks down and he loses his mother. The shift from the events of the first part of the play to the second is sudden. Polixenes’s revelation of himself at the sheep-shearing is sudden for the lovers, however the audience is aware of his disguise. Camillo’s and Polixenes’s departure from Sicilia in the first act seems sudden to Leontes, and it is, but the audience understands its necessity, as the king does not. Florizel and Perdita’s flight from Bohemia in the fourth act is a sudden departure that mirrors Camillo’s and Polixenes’s sudden departure earlier in the play. The Shepherd and the Clown experience a sudden change of fortune twice. And Hermione’s transformation is a sudden return of life from the realm of death. All these examples of sudden change contrast with the unrushed pace of time, inside which they occur.

Sheep Imagery Images of sheep and shepherding are pervasive throughout The Winter’s Tale, beginning with Polixenes’s reference to ‘‘the shepherd’s note’’ in the second line of act 1, scene 2, to indicate awareness of the passage of time. Sixty-five lines later, describing to Hermione what his youthful friendship with Leontes was like, Polixenes compares them to ‘‘twinned lambs that did frisk i’ th’ sun, / And bleat the one at th’ other.’’ In the third scene of act 3, at line 58, the turning point of the play, a Shepherd enters, complaining about two young men, one of them his son, who ‘‘have scared away two of my best sheep.’’ The

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Shepherd fears ‘‘the wolf will sooner find [them] than the master.’’ This line causes a resonance for the reader or spectator with the past story of the ‘‘twinned lambs,’’ Leontes and Polixenes, who have strayed away from the shepherd into the wolf’s den. The great pastoral scene of the play, scene 4, of act 4, takes place at a sheepshearing festival where all the characters are being shepherded, although they do not know it, to safety. Autolycus is present to provide a parodic fleecing of the host and the guests, and is fleeced himself when he and Florizel exchange garments under the shepherdly care of Camillo, who has compared himself to a sheep when he tells Perdita at line 109, ‘‘I should leave grazing, were I of your flock, / And only live by gazing.’’

Flower Imagery After the winter—like contractions of the first part of the play, the second half bursts out in act 4, scene 3 with a jolly song whose first words celebrate how daffodils ‘‘begin to peer.’’ And from then on, there is a great deal of flower imagery, suggesting the rich vibrancy of nature and the matter that artists can use imaginatively in the creation of art. Florizel, the prince, whose name suggests flowers, characterizes Perdita as the goddess of flowers. Throughout the scene, she frequently refers to flowers, distributes flowers, refers to the resemblance between the seasons in which certain flowers grow and humans grow old. She discusses the ways to grow flowers, approving of the natural ways and disdaining artifice. She is also compared to Persephone gathering flowers, before Hades ravished her and took her to the underworld. Since Perdita’s absence in Sicilia is the cause of the long winter there, the comparison is particularly apt. Flowers are used to represent seasons of time, aspects of humanity, ways of thinking about class relationships, and the relationship between art and nature.

Manipulating Awareness In The Winter’s Tale, for dramatic purposes, Shakespeare manipulates the awareness of the audience as well as the awareness of the characters in the play. Leontes is deceived about Hermione and Polixenes when he becomes jealous because of an error in perception. Shakespeare deliberately causes the audience to have a mistaken perception about Hermione’s death. Perdita, Florizel and Camillo are not aware who Perdita really is, nor are the Shepherd and the Clown, even though they know she is not whom

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everyone else thinks she is. Perdita and Florizel are not aware that two of their guests at the sheep-shearing festival are the king and Camillo. The audience is aware of Perdita’s true identity and of Polixenes’s and Camillo’s, but the audience is not aware, as Leontes is not aware, that Hermione is not truly dead.

HISTORICAL CONTEXT Bear Baiting While Shakespeare’s famous stage direction, ‘‘Exit, pursued by a bear,’’ recapitulates the very words of an image from King Lear, act 3, scene 4, 9–11, in which Lear says to Kent, ‘‘Thoud’st shun a bear; / But if thy flight lay toward the roaring sea, / Thoud’st meet the bear i’ th’ mouth.’’ The presence of the bear at line 58 of act 3, scene 3 in The Winter’s Tale also reflects the Elizabethan and Jacobean fancy for bear baiting, a gruesome blood sport much favored by Queen Elizabeth herself. A bear was chained to a stake in a pit, above which spectators were seated on grandstands, and dogs were released in the bear pit. The dogs attacked the bear and the ones that survived were the ones able to leap out of the bear’s range, limited by the length of the bear’s chain. The spectators, who reportedly enjoyed the sport immensely and laughed to see it, bet on whether the bear or the dogs would survive the contest. Bear baiting was not banned in England until the nineteenth century.

Outdoor and Indoor Theaters The Winter’s Tale was performed at both the Globe Theater, where Simon Forman saw it, and at the Blackfriars Theater. The Globe was an outdoor theater modeled on the playing spaces set up at inn yards. Performances were lighted by daylight, and the audience was composed of people from all strata of society. The ‘‘penny–public’’ stood while the wealthier might sit in boxes. The stage was an apron that stuck out into the crowd. Spectators could surround it on three sides (as opposed to the more modern proscenium, which can only be viewed from one side). The Blackfriars was an indoor theater owned by Shakespeare’s company. The Winter’s Tale was performed there, too. Indoor playhouses required artificial lighting, lanterns, and consequently, allowed more opportunity for

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COMPARE & CONTRAST 

Today: Whereas most theaters are indoor theaters, especially in the summertime, outdoor theaters, especially outdoor theaters dedicated to presenting Shakespeare’s plays—and which are modeled to a greater or lesser degree on the Globe—flourish. Electric lighting allows nighttime performances at outdoor theaters. Going to the theater, however, has become far more expensive than it was in Shakespeare’s times and people go to the movies and watch cable television for popular entertainment instead.

1600s: Londoners enjoy watching bear baiting spectacles and laugh at the sight of animals attacking and killing each other.

Today: Bear baiting is banned, but secret gatherings of dog fighting and cock fighting still take place. Boxing is also considered by a majority of people to be an acceptable sport despite the number of injuries boxers sustain, as well as the occasional death that occurs. People also find the excitement of seeing others risk injury and death in events like racing cars, racing motorcycles, or other extreme sports competitions.  1600s: Plays are performed in outdoor theaters like the Globe Theater, which is the home theater of Shakespeare’s acting company, the King’s Men. It is modeled on the performing space established at inn yards, where platforms are set up and spectators surround an apron stage on three sides. In theaters like the Globe, members of the various social classes mingle. Poor folk, the penny public, stand. Those who can afford them have seats to sit on. Indoor theaters are frequented by those who can pay to go to them. Rather than relying on daylight for illumination, as the outdoor venues do, they require artificial lighting. The Winter’s Tale is performed at both the Globe Theater and the indoor Blackfriars Theater.

theatrically shaping the performance environment than did outdoor spaces. During Shakespeare’s time, the apron stage was also the stage of the indoor theater. The proscenium stage was introduced in the 1660s after the fall of the Commonwealth and the beginning of the restoration of the monarchy. Because of a more costly admission price, the audiences at indoor theaters were more select and restricted than the ones which gathered outdoors.

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1600s: Scripts are written for the theater in order to be performed. Whereas some scripts are printed, published and sold, that is of secondary concern. In consequence, many scripts have been lost and many of those which have survived are quite imperfect. Today: Scripts written for radio, television, and even the movies are usually regarded as written for performance and are not printed. Some film scripts are published, but those tend to be regarded as having artistic merit in and of themselves. The advent of digital technology, however, has replaced publication. Popular television programs do not vanish after broadcast because they exist on video tape and DVD transfers.

CRITICAL OVERVIEW In his overview of the critical response historically to The Winter’s Tale, in the Arden edition of the play, J. H. P. Pafford cites early rejections. John Dryden wrote, in 1672, in the essay, ‘‘Defense of the Epilogue,’’ that The Winter’s Tale was ‘‘made up of some ridiculous and incoherent story,’’ that it was ‘‘either grounded on impossibilities, or at least so meanly written, that the comedy neither

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caused your mirth, nor the serious part your concernment.’’ In 1753, Charlotte Lennox wrote in Shakespeare Illustrated that ‘‘the paltry Story on which it is founded . . . [is] much less absurd and ridiculous.’’ William Warburton, in a letter to David Garrick, congratulating him on his adaptation of the play, called The Winter’s Tale ‘‘a monstrous composition.’’ By the time Coleridge wrote about it in 1813, critics’ perceptions of The Winter’s Tale had undergone a sea change. Coleridge admired Shakespeare’s presentation of jealousy ‘‘as a vice of the mind,’’ and the psychological penetration that allowed Shakespeare to have Leontes express his jealousy through ‘‘a soliloquy in the mask of dialogue.’’ In 1817, despite his faulting Shakespeare for such ‘‘slips or blemishes’’ as introducing the figure of Time to bridge a sixteen year gap, or having Antigonus land on the seacoast of Bohemia—in actuality, land-locked Bohemia has no seacoast—William Hazlitt praised Shakespeare for the depth and truthfulness of his characters and for how suitable for acting the play is. This is a rare tribute among nineteenth century critics in their consideration of the stageworthiness of Shakespeare’s plays. The plays were generally considered better for reading than for seeing. In 1832, Anna Brownell Jameson, in Characteristics of Women, praised Shakespeare’s ability to embody psychological characteristics in human form in her perceptive analysis of Hermione: The character of Hermione exhibits . . . dignity without pride, love without passion, and tenderness without weakness . . . . [T]o delineate such a character in the poetical form, to develop it through the medium of action and dialogue, without the aid of description to preserve its tranquil, mild and serious beauty, its unimpassioned dignity, and at the same time keep the strongest hold upon our sympathy and our imagination and out of this exterior calm, produce the most profound pathos, the most vivid impression of life and internal power: it is this which renders the character of Hermione one of Shakespeare’s masterpieces.

By the end of the nineteenth century, Earnest Dowden’s view that The Winter’s Tale is a great and serene work of Shakespeare’s mellow last years had become the dominant view of the play, even after it was attacked in 1904 by Lytton Strachey. While twentieth-century critics rejected the sentimental subjectivity in Dowden’s account, or in A. C. Swinburne’s similarly tender-hearted reading, neither did they accept Strachey’s condemnation of the play, as Pafford summarizes it,

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as the grotesque and ugly work of a Shakespeare who had become bored with his art. Twentieth century critics have generally endorsed F. R. Leavis’s judgment, passed in his essay written in 1952, ‘‘The Criticism of Shakespeare’s Late Plays,’’ that The Winter’s Tale is a masterpiece and have attended to varying forms of close analysis offering Christian and secular readings of the play founded on analyses of structure, imagery, verse patterns and language, or character. Roy Battenhouse, for example, in his introduction to a selection of essays on The Winter’s Tale in Shakespeare’s Christian Dimension observes the parodic reflection of Leontes in Autolycus. Just as Leontes called out for help from Hermione, who in stooping to help him got robbed by him of her purse (her good name and her baby), so Autolycus robs the naı¨ ve shepherd. Autolycus goes on to parallel Leontes in many more ways—for instance, by peddling his trumperies to gullible ears as Leontes peddles to courtiers his trumped up nothings, and by singing of tumbling with doxies like a Leontes fantasizing about a ‘‘hobbyhorse’’ wife.

By the end of the twentieth century and at the beginning of the twenty first century, The Winter’s Tale has established its place among Shakespeare’s masterpieces. In pursuit of discovering greater keys to its unity and its complex meanings, its details are being considered, whether through the study of the varied use of the word ‘‘bear,’’ as in Maurice Hunt’s essay, ‘‘Bearing Hence,’’ or by suggesting new emendations of puzzling lines in the First Folio as in Susan Bruce’s reading of the ‘‘Final Exchange’’ between Leontes and Mamillius, or in Martine Van Elk’s study of the models of courtly speech designed for women in the Renaissance, or Mark Fortier’s study of infanticide in early seventeenthcentury England.

CRITICISM Allan Bloom In the excerpt below, Bloom analyzes how the friendship between Leontes and Polixenes is torn apart by the former’s jealousy of the frienship between Polixenes and Hermione, Leontes’s wife. Only the death of his beloved son extinguishes the jealousy that consumes Leontes, but by then the royal household has been devastated—a devastation

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that can only be overcome, contends Bloom, by the healing power of nature. The Winter’s Tale takes place in Sicily and Bohemia at an uncertain date, and its characters seem to partake in equal measure of the religion and life of old Greece and Rome and of Christianity. It begins with the celebration of a classical-style friendship between two kings, Leontes and Polixenes, who have known each other from childhood and have a perfect harmony in their reciprocal admiration of each other’s virtues. This very short beginning conveys the joy of confidence and trust combined with the enthusiasm of friendship. Human association for these two men is natural and a peak of pleasure. They do not use or need each other, at least not in any narrow sense. They understand each other, share views, and simply want to be together, although their kingly responsibilities keep them separate most of the time. This glimpse of perfect friendship in action is immediately disturbed by an inexplicable and unmotivated storm of jealousy that destroys the atmosphere of trust and the friendship. Jealousy means doubt about the sexual fidelity of one to whom a person is attached. Leontes suddenly comes to believe that his friend and his wife have had illicit relations. Leontes is both friend and husband, but there has never before been any tension between the two kinds of attachment. His wife, Hermione, seems to be just like him and to have adopted his friend as her friend. The openness and lack of reserve characteristic of friendship are not usual between a married woman and a man not her husband. But their friendship is apparently part of the old friendship between her husband and his friend. The sudden explosion of angry jealousy brings to light a problem about a married woman’s blameless friendship with a man. The suspicions aroused make it impossible to have that confidence required for men and women to be together without tincture of erotic involvement. Moreover their new condition of marriage also raises doubts about the possibility of friendship between married men. The arousal of jealousy, which is so sudden and seems such a mystery, needs interpretation. Leontes’ jealousy is unlike that experienced by Troilus, whose beloved is guilty, and is akin to that of Othello, whose beloved is not guilty. Leontes’ case, however, is much more extreme than that of Othello, who must be seduced into

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AND THEN IT HAPPENS. SUDDENLY LEONTES LIVES IN A WORLD OF TEMPTATIONS AND BETRAYAL. EVERY DEED AND GESTURE HAS AN EXPLICIT SEXUAL MEANING. LUST IS EVERYWHERE, AND IT CANNOT BE CONTROLLED BY THE RULES OF MORALITY.’’

his passion by a subtle devil. Leontes’ whole vision of the world changes in an instant and without provocation. Shakespeare usually treats this kind of terrible passion as a mistake on the part of the man. Cymbeline gives us another such case. What is so unusual about Leontes in this play is the speed of his change from trust to certitude of disloyalty. As soon as this takes place, the old world of friendship disappear. There is reconciliation and a happy ending, but it does not restore the old world, and it gives a definite primacy to marriage over friendship. Shakespeare seems preoccupied with the distrust in men about the genuineness of women’s attachment and what it leads to. Shakespeare is fully aware of the difficulty of real unity between human beings, even, or especially, in love matters. But it is indicative of his temper that he concentrates so much on the unfoundedness of such suspicion, and hence affirms the possibility of unconstrained connectedness. This inexplicable transformation is almost miraculous since one cannot treat Leontes as a sickly, weak soul, prone to suspicions. In Shakespeare one can almost always get guidance as to the character of a man by the kind of friends he has and how they behave with him. Not only is Leontes’ wife a most remarkable woman, with whom he seems to have had up to now a free and open relationship, unstained by doubts, but he has also evidently been faithful and irreproachable in friendship. There are no villains in Leontes’ entourage. On the contrary, they are all honest and forthright persons who serve loyally because of the character of the man they serve and are used to speaking with him on a level of frank equality. He has no flatterers, which makes it all the more difficult for him to follow the logic of his jealousy, because no one supports him in it. I can clarify the problem of his jealousy only by what

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A Chapel in Paulina’s House, Act V, scene iii (Ó Shakespeare Collection, Special Collections Library, University of Michigan)

immediately precedes it (I.ii 1–108). Leontes has failed to persuade Polixenes to prolong his stay with them in Sicily. He turns the task of persuasion over to Hermione, who succeeds. After she had done so, she starts asking questions about what the two friends were like when they were young. Polixenes tells her of their perfect joy in each other’s company, which was most characterized by innocence. Polixenes makes it clear that he means by innocence sexual innocence and refers, pagan though he is, to the doctrine of original sin. Prior to sexual development they could have answered to heaven, except for the guilt associated with that sin that all men inherit, the Fall. Hermione slyly picks up on this and suggests that he, and perhaps her husband too, have ‘‘tripp’d since’’ that time of innocence. Polixenes rather ambiguously replies that there have been temptations since ‘‘the stronger blood’’ was born in them. She playfully returns to the assault and says that Polixenes’ wife and she will answer for any sins connected with them. She refers to their married sexual relations here as sins, but affirms that there

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will be no punishment for them if there were no other sins committed with others. The formulation of her statement (‘‘that you slipp’d not / With any but with us’’) could be interpreted to mean that it would be all right for Polixenes to have had sexual relations with her, although this is clearly not her intention. But she is playing around with an erotic theme, the difficulty of taming men’s desires. It is not certain that Leontes hears these remarks. He has evidently been walking at some distance in order to allow his wife to persuade Polixenes to stay. He enters the conversation again at the end of this colloquy. When Hermione tells him that Polixenes will stay, he responds that she has never spoken to better purpose. She then plays a coquettish game with him, asking, ‘‘Never?’’ She talks about the nature of women and how they may be ridden more effectively with soft kisses than with spurs. She insists that he repeat what she said at the end of his long and hard courtship, ‘‘I am yours for ever.’’ She thus links her persuasion of Polixenes to her giving herself to Leontes. Her first good speech

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‘‘earn’d a royal husband,’’ the second, a friend. With that, she grasps Polixenes’ hand. And then it happens. Suddenly Leontes lives in a world of temptations and betrayal. Every deed and gesture has an explicit sexual meaning. Lust is everywhere, and it cannot be controlled by the rules of morality. The doubts about sexual attraction, which are always legitimate because thought and the movements of the sexual organs are not simply subject to will, become certitudes, and the whole world must be corrected. The first thoughts are about the legitimacy of one’s children, then the ridicule attracted by a cuckold, a ridicule earned by the prejudice that a real man must be attractive to his wife always and exclusive of all others. Then there are thoughts of revenge, dignified as claims of simple justice. There is the fear that the whole world gives witness to the adultery, but there is also the certainty that those who do not see what he sees must be guilty of blindness and faithlessness. Everything is in the belief of the king, and all the subjects must support the king’s belief or be subjected to the most terrible punishments. What we see is sexual doubt turning gentle and legitimate kingship into a tyranny that resembles the demands of a jealous god, rather than those of natural human attachment. As is always the case with love suspected of betrayal, the principle of noncontradiction is called into question. The belief that something can come from nothing seems to be required. Othello suffers this delusion, as does Troilus. Nothing else can account for such transformations from virtue to sin. Reason no longer rules the world; tyranny is the only way to forestall chaos. There is no solid center, opposites ‘‘co-act,’’ and saint and sinner emerge from the same source. These are the mad affections of the man whose life is founded upon the necessity of another person’s being always attracted to him. The jealousy of Leontes follows its course. He orders his minister Camillo to poison Polixenes. Camillo suffers the conflict of the man who owes loyalty to a tyrant and is commanded to do something immoral. He leaves Leontes to follow Polixenes. When Leontes’ tyrannical passion is deprived of the satisfaction of killing Polixenes, it turns on Hermione, whom he imprisons, and then on the daughter born to Hermione in prison, whom he orders to be abandoned to the elements in a remote spot outside his kingdom. He stages an inquisition

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accusing Hermione not only of adultery, but of conspiracy with Polixenes and Camillo to overthrow him. She has only her own testimony to defend herself against unfeeling and unhearing tyranny. Her sole supporter is the fierce Paulina, who will be her apostle and avenging spirit. Suspicions and unknowable intentions are more important than any deeds. A premise that all human beings, and especially women, are hot and unreliable has been established. This awareness makes trust impossible for those who care. Trials and prisons are the only remedy. Sexual desire, like heresy, an unknowable disposition of the mind, becomes the central object of justice. When, in the midst of Hermione’s trial, Leontes’ ambassadors interrupt the proceedings to announce that the Delphic oracle proclaims her chaste and everyone else innocent, he simply dismisses the news. He has a new source of certitude that replaces his belief in the Delphic god. Immediately he is punished by the announcement of the death of his young prince, Mamillius, the only one of whom he is sure. Hermione faints. The death of the innocent boy causes the extinction of the tyrant’s jealousy as quickly as it came into being. But it is too late. Hermione also dies, and the baby daughter, abandoned at his command, is lost. Now the atmosphere of Sicily is guild and repentance, and Paulina becomes the minister of a cult devoted to the dead queen and her son. Leontes’ tears at their chapel will be his recreation and his exercise. Antigonus, charged by Leontes to get rid of the baby, deposited her on the Bohemian coast, and was himself immediately eaten by a bear. But here in Bohemia in a rustic setting that defies time and the distinctions between ancients and moderns, Shakespeare prepares the healing of the Sicilian wounds with the salubrious aid of nature. The characters here are beyond or beneath the changes of regimes and religions, and the necessary customs of the courts that differentiate them. We have a shepherd and his clownish son and a singing thief who has the same name and habits as Odysseus’ grandfather. Here, innocence and the spirit of comedy provide the seedbed for an overcoming of the tragic darkness of both the Sicilian and the Bohemian courts. Source: Allan Bloom, ‘‘The Winter’s Tale,’’ in Shakespeare on Love and Friendship, University of Chicago Press, 2000, pp. 109–13.

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WHAT DO I READ NEXT? 

Silas Marner was published in 1861 by George Eliot. This short novel follows many conventions of the romance: its two sections are divided by a gap of some dozen years, the setting is pastoral, forces of good win out over forces of evil and chaos, and a beautiful, virtuous maiden’s marriage to her handsome young, virtuous suitor ensures the other aspects of the happy ending.

Othello is one of Shakespeare’s great tragedies. Like Othello, The Winter’s Tale is the story of a man destroyed by jealousy. Unlike Othello, The Winter’s Tale does not make that jealousy the result of a scheming malignant person, and The Winter’s Tale presents natural and supernatural interventions that turn tragic loss into melancholy joy.  Pericles is the penultimate play Shakespeare wrote before The Winter’s Tale. It is not the masterpiece that The Winter’s Tale is, nor is it thought to have been entirely written by Shakespeare. However, the two works do share certain elements, such as a lost and recovered daughter and a father set adrift in his own despair over a span of years.  The Ballad of Jack and Rose (2005) is a film about a father and his daughter who live in a rural setting in which both have a special and intimate relationship with nature and flowers. Through magical naturalism, Rose finds her way into the greater world and Jack finds peace within his own idealism. The film was written and directed by Rebecca Miller, the daughter of Arthur 

Myles Hurd In this essay, Hurd assesses Paulina’s pivotal role in The Winter’s Tale. In participating in the play’s action and commenting on major events, Paulina helps to shape the audience’s response to other characters and to important scenes in the play, Hurd argues. Hurd observes Paulina’s association

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Miller, the American playwright, and the photographer, Inge Morath. 

Charles Chaplin’s classic City Lights (1931) is a film about a blind flower girl and the Little Man, who secretly helps her regain her sight through his own dedication and suffering. He is rewarded by her final sublime recognition of his humanity and her debt.



‘‘The Tale of Ill-advised Curiosity,’’ (Chapters 33, 34, and 35 of Miguel de Cervantes’s novel Don Quixote, 1605), is the story of two good friends. After Anselmo marries Camilla, he persuades his virtuous friend Lothario to attempt to seduce her in order to confirm Anselmo’s faith that she will not yield and is firm in her love and fidelity. Of course, he is looking for trouble, and he finds it.



The essay, ‘‘Of Friendship,’’ (c.1572) from Book, I, Chapter 28, of Michele de Montaigne’s Essays is a graceful discussion of the nature and refinements of friendship. Montaigne defines friendship as a relation in which ‘‘each . . . seek[s] above all things to benefit the other,’’ and that the one who needs something of his friend is the true giver by giving his friend the opportunity to give to him.



The Story of Pygmalion and Galetea, in Book 10 of Metamorphosis, by the Roman poet Ovid, 43 B . C . E .–17 C . E ., is the story of a sculptor who falls in love with a statue he sculpts and causes it to live.

with the stock comic character of the shrew, but maintains that Paulina nevertheless remains a credible character. Although an abundance of scholarly commentary on The Winter’s Tale focuses on characterization, the significance of Shakespeare’s inclusion of Paulina in the drama has elicited

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PAULINA AND LEONTES APPROXIMATE THE ROLES OF STOCK CHARACTERS IN A FAMILIAR SETTING—THAT OF THE HENPECKED HUSBAND WHO MUST ENDURE HIS WIFE’S SEEMINGLY ENDLESS BERATINGS.’’

surprisingly little critical response. Her role, however, is crucially important. Her powerful speeches and prominence on stage remind us that she actually ‘‘carries a great deal of the action of the play on her shoulders and directs its course.’’ A participant in the action as well as a shrewd commentator on major events in the plot, she helps control our responses to other characters and key scenes. In this respect, she functions theatrically as an internal stage director, whose presence sets up scenes of dramatic intensity. Moreover, in this play, which emphasizes the ‘‘divisions created in love and friendship by the passage of time and by the action of ‘blood,’ and the healing of these divisions through penitence and renewed personal devotion,’’ Paulina, the ‘‘voice of moral justice,’’ stands out as an admirable agent of reconciliations. Because Shakespeare offers us through her characterization an important perspective through which we gain major insights into the play, one profitable way of teaching first-year college students to appreciate his craftsmanship is by pointing out the centrality of her role. At the conclusion of their study of The Winter’s Tale these students should recognize that Shakespeare uses Paulina to his full advantage in terms of stagecraft without sacrificing any of her credibility as a character. In addition, they should see that Paulina is the character who, even more than the oracle, makes things work in this play. Paulina makes her initial appearance in Act II, Scene ii. In this scene she visits the jail where Leontes, the king, has banished Hermione, his wife. Paulina speaks with one of the ladies-inwaiting after the Jailer denies her permission to talk with the Queen. The Jailer’s acknowledgement that he knows Paulina to be a ‘‘worthy lady / And one whom I much honor’’ (II.ii.5–6) [The

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Riverside Shakespeare, ed. G. Blakemore Evans (Boston: Houghton Mifflin Co., 1974)] is noteworthy because it establishes a bond of trust between her and the reader. The Jailer’s recognition of her worthiness encourages us to accept her statements as truthful judgements on others. She becomes our ‘‘inside man’’ in the drama, a raisonneur whose opinions we learn to hold highly. Yet, in this scene what she says is just as important as what others say about her. In telling Emilia that she plans to assume the role of Hermione’s ‘‘advocate to th’ loud’st’’ (II.ii.38), Paulina senses the dangerous repercussions of Leontes’ extreme jealousy; she vows to wield her tongue as a powerful instrument to make him aware of his unsupportable assertions: I dare be sworn. These dangerous, unsafe lunes i’ th’ King, beshrew them! He must be told on’t, and he shall; the office Becomes a woman best. I’ll take’t upon me. If I prove honey-mouthed, let my tongue blister, And never to my red-looked anger be The trumpet any more. (II.ii.28–34) Even though the Lord, Camillo, and Antigonus had attempted unsuccessfully to deter Leontes from his dangerous course of action in Act I, we feel that Paulina’s efforts will be triumphant, especially if she does in fact ‘‘use that tongue [she has]’’ (II.ii.51). That she is a skilled disputant is knowledge we learn from the last few lines in the scene, in which she convinces the Jailer that no harm will come to him if he releases Hermione’s newborn daughter to her charge. She makes us eager to gauge the effectiveness of a woman’s tactics to restore order in a chaotic man’s world of power and authority. Students should note that in this brief scene Paulina’s speeches set up an obligatory confrontation with Leontes. Because he has declared the baby the illegitimate child of Polixenes, we are also eager to see what his reaction will be when he examines his daughter for the first time, and we want to find out what punishment he will inflict on Paulina for her good-natured meddlesomeness. When Paulina finally does confront Leontes in Act II, Scene iii, she does so after breaking past the Lord and Antigonus in a spirit of militant defiance. Significantly, she tells the Servant that she offers ‘‘words as medicinal as true’’ (II.iii.36) to cure Leontes of his insomnia and

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to shield Leontes from unpardonable condemnation. Shakespeare must have realized at this stage of composing the play that unless he could mitigate his audience’s dislike for the king, Leontes’ emergence as a changed figure at the conclusion of the work would impress us as being unearned. The playwright’s problem lay in finding a way to control our responses to the jealous king.

A room in Leontes’ palace, with Leontes, Antigonus, Paulina, and the infant Perdita, Act II, scene iii (Ó Shakespeare Collection, Special Collections Library, University of Michigan)

to rid him of his jealousy. Because the imagery of disease predominates throughout the first act, her statement of her mission in terms of curative powers both highlights the extremity of Leontes’ condition and signals to us that she, more than any other character, is capable of making him see the error of his ways. Leontes’ first lines upon seeing her in court indicate that he has already prepared himself for the inevitability of their meeting: Away with that audacious lady! Antigonus, I charged thee that she should not come about me; I knew she would. (II.iii.41–43) In his ‘‘I knew she would’’ we detect an unexpected tone of ironic impatience rather than regal outrage. The subsequent remarks he addresses to Antigonus—questions concerning the secondary character’s ability to bridle his wife—also make us aware of the lightened tone. Here Paulina becomes a vehicle of comic displacement to buffer a serious and potentially violent situation. This displacement is necessary

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Through his presentation of Paulina as a benevolently officious tongue-wagging wife, Shakespeare discovered an effective way of softening our reaction to Leontes. Paulina and Leontes approximate the roles of stock characters in a familiar setting—that of the henpecked husband who must endure his wife’s seemingly endless beratings. The scene works because Shakespeare has invested virtue in a virago [shrew]. When Paulina fires off charges at the king to remind him of the damage he does in falsely accusing Hermione of infidelity, he answers not to her but to Antigonus, whom he accuses of being a weak man unable to take the head of his own household. Paulina sets her tongue loose to castigate Leontes for being an unwise, fault-finding husband; Leontes reacts by castigating Antigonus for not silencing a shrewish wife. We enjoy the scene because we ‘‘see’’ her standing in the middle of a stage and wielding power over the circle of men around her. We are confident that Paulina will outwit Leontes in their verbal battle. In addition, two things about the exchanges catch our attention: (1) the way in which Shakespeare holds a delicate balance in maintaining a serio-comical tone through his presentation of Paulina as a childish speaker of truths; and (2) the way in which she clearly dominates the scene to the extent that all of the other characters play to her strong lead. The following dialogue illustrates both of these points: Leontes: A callat of boundless tongue, who late hath beat her husband, And now baits me! This brat is none of mine; It is the issue of Polixenes. Hence with it, and together with the dam, Commit them to the fire. Paulina: It is yours: And might we lay th’ old proverb to your charge, So like you, ’tis the worse. Behold, my lords,

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Although the print be little, the whole matter And copy of the father: eye, nose, lip, The trick of’s frown, his forehead, nay, the valley, The pretty dimples of his chin and cheek; his smiles; The very mold and frame of hand, nail, finger. And thou, good goddess Nature, which hast made it So like to him that got it, if thou hast The ordering of the mind too, ’mongst all colors No yellow in’t, lest she suspect, as he does Her children not her husband’s. Leontes: A gross hag! And lozel, thou art worthy to be hanged, That wilt not stay her tongue. Antigonus: Hang all the husbands That cannot do that feat, you’ll leave yourself Hardly one subject. (II.iii.89–109) Paulina’s shrewdness in identifying points of similarity between Hermione’s baby and Leontes is a disarming tactic that exposes him to the ridiculousness of his jealousy and causes him to remember that at two earlier points in the drama (I.ii.22 and I.ii.208–09) he takes comfort in acknowledging Mamillius as his look-alike child. Paulina assuredly ‘‘beats’’ and ‘‘baits’’ Leontes in the above passage by out-reasoning him while taking advantage of her license as a bold, honest woman to upbraid a bristling, foolish man. Not lost in the comedy of the situation, however, is the impact of her speech. After she leaves the court, Leontes decides to abandon the child rather than have it killed; he yields to Antigonus’ intercession on the child’s behalf and informs us that Paulina has pleaded with her husband to spare the infant’s life. Throughout this scene students should have no trouble identifying Paulina with a familiar character type in fiction—the good-natured servant who oversteps her authority to restore order in her employer’s household. Students should also be aware that in this scene Shakespeare reverses the master/servant (king/subject) relationship so that Paulina ‘‘masters’’ her king by dictating to him an appropriate mode of behavior to adopt. The important point is that whether she plays the role of a shrew to Leontes’ role as a

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tyrant, or an outspoken servant opposite his role of a corrected master, she remains a completely credible character. At the beginning of Act III, Scene i, Shakespeare temporarily silences Paulina during Hermione’s trial. Along with us she hears a formal accusation against the Queen, listens to Hermione’s defense, and welcomes the oracle’s confirmations of Hermione’s innocence, the child’s parentage, Camillo’s loyalty, and Polixenes’ blamelessness. After she watches the calamitous chain of events that follow Leontes’ rejection of the oracle, she lists all the crimes that have grown out of his jealousy before she falsely reports Hermione’s death. The speech itself is filled with intensity because Paulina deliberately delays the report of this catastrophe. Moreover, the speech hints to us that throughout the remainder of the drama, Shakespeare will assign her the role of reminding Leontes of his sins until he becomes truly penitent. After he admits in this scene that he is to blame for his own remorse, she mentions the deaths of Hermione and Mamillius only seconds after promising him that she would not again burden him with painful memories. Moreover, she extracts from him a promise to visit daily the chapel where his wife and son are to be entombed. Because Shakespeare depicts Paulina as the most truthful character thus far in the play, we have no reason to doubt her when she gives an untruthful report of Hermione’s death. In this scene she tells a noble lie, and her action and motives are similar to those of the good Friar in Much Ado About Nothing. At this point in the play, students who are giving The Winter’s Tale a close reading should detect from the final exchanges between Paulina and Leontes that Shakespeare is preparing us to accept her later role as a confessor for a changed, repentant king. Although Paulina does not appear in Act IV, she is, nevertheless, linked to Perdita, whose life she had been responsible for saving. In addition, Shakespeare associates Paulina thematically with the well-known argument between Perdita and Polixenes over the extent to which man should collaborate art with nature. In the final scene of the play Paulina, in one sense, answers this question by having nature emerge out of art in her chapel. In Act V, Scene i, Paulina appears as a moral historian who, after a gap of sixteen years, still tests Leontes on the sincerity of his repentance.

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Until Florizel and Perdita appear in the court, she clearly dominates the scene. Over the objections of Dion and Cleomenes she makes Leontes promise that he will not remarry—and this despite his kingdom’s anxiety for him to beget an heir. Her justifications for exacting the promise come in a speech that reveals her special interpretation of the oracular decree: There is none worthy, Respecting her that’s gone; besides, the gods Will have fulfilled their secret purposes; For has not the divine Apollo said— Is’t not the tenor of his oracle— That King Leontes shall not have an heir Till his lost child be found? Which that it shall, Is all as monstrous to our human reason As my Antigonus to break his grave, And come again to me; who, on my life, Did perish with the infant. (V.i. 34–44) Her reference to the abandoned baby prepares us for the return of Perdita to Leontes. After concluding the play we recall the speech and note that it actually points out Paulina’s unwillingness to give up all hope that the baby has survived. For Paulina, the oracular decree coincides with her own deepest desires. Hope becomes truth for Paulina in Act V, Scene ii, the scene that reconciles Leontes to his long-lost daughter. Her steward reports to us that she embraces Perdita when the young girl’s identity is confirmed. We assess her concern for Hermione’s child as a significant virtue when we acknowledge that her being told of the circumstances surrounding Antigonus’ death could easily have canceled her happiness. The steward’s recollection that Paulina had ‘‘one eye declined for the loss of her husband, another elevated that the oracle was fulfilled’’ (V.ii.79–81) shows us that she has the capacity for reconciling joy and sorrow in her own life—just as Shakespeare reconciles seemingly discordant elements in this tragicomedy. The final scene reveals Paulina as an agent of reconciliation in other important ways. To dismiss her cleverness in bringing the statue of Hermione to life as a cheap theatrical trick on Shakespeare’s part is to miss the significance of not only the scene itself but the play as a whole. She brings nature out of art in having the statue of Hermione move and creates life out of death in revivifying a wife, believed dead, and returning

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her to a joyful husband. Paulina’s union with Camillo at the conclusion of the play pairs two benevolent middle-aged characters who, with the passage of time, have witnessed summers of joy and winters of discontent in the lives of others. The announcement of forth-coming weddings in her chapel, a place earlier in the play associated with death, alerts us to prospects for new cycles of birth and regeneration. Her centrality in this scene in The Winter’s Tale, a play about the richness and variety of human life experiences, will cause most students to agree that she is the most admirable character in this, one of Shakespeare’s most beautiful plays. For those impercipient students who either fail to recognize its merits or find fault with its theatricality, Shakespeare provides Paulina with lines to inspire appreciation: It is required You do awake your faith. (V.iii.94–95) Once that faith is awakened, students should note that despite the presence of supernatural elements in this drama, it is Paulina who works the real magic, and she does so on a recognizable human level. Healing time does in fact triumph in this play—but not without the help of Paulina. Source: Myles Hurd, ‘‘Shakespeare’s Paulina: Characterization and Craftsmanship in ‘The Winter’s Tale,’’’ in CLA Journal, Vol. XXVI, No. 3, March, 1983, pp. 303–10.

Edward William Tayler In the following essay, Tayler contends that the symbols and patterns used in The Winter’s Tale emphasize Shakespeare’s interest in the philosophical problem of the apparent opposition between nature and art. Tayler demonstrates the way in which the movement of the play flows through cycles of ‘‘harmony and alienation,’’ and ‘‘integration and disruption.’’ As the play progresses, Tayler states, the view that nature is superior to art seems to dominate. Tayler concludes, however, that through the character of Perdita, and scenes such as Perdita’s exchange with Polixenes and the statue scene in which Hermione is ‘‘resurrected,’’ Shakespeare’s emphasis seems to be that ‘‘art itself is nature.’’ . . . [T]he ‘‘symbolic’’ pattern of The Winter’s Tale, turning on images of the seasons, of birth and death, of the sea as destroyer and savior, works together with the conceptual pattern of Nature and Art.

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THIS IS NOT ALLEGORY, OF COURSE, NOR IS THE WINTER’S TALE A COVERT RECAPITULATION OF THE FALL OF MAN.’’

The division between Nature and Art occupied Shakespeare throughout his career. It is implicit in the pastoral episodes of As You Like It, and even as early as Venus and Adonis he is toying with the conventional notion of strife between Nature and Art in painting: Look, when a painter would surpass the life In limning out a well-proportioned steed, His art with nature’s workmanship at strife, As if the dead the living should exceed. (ll. 289–92) And in reference to a painting of the siege of Troy in The Rape of Lucrece: A thousand lamentable objects there, In scorn of nature, art gave liveless life. (ll. 1373–74) The association of ‘‘art’’ with death and ‘‘nature’’ with life persists even so far as the ‘‘dead likeness’’ of Hermione in The Winter’s Tale; and the commonplace pairing of Nature and Art is alluded to in play after play, reappearing at some length in Timon of Athens, shortly before the writing of the last romances. In the opening scene that advertises the main concerns of that play, the Poet and the Painter are discussing an example of the Painter’s work, and the Poet is amiably self-important in traditional terms: I will say of it, It tutors nature. Artificial strife Lives in these touches, livelier than life. (I.i.36–38) Such statements are commonplace, and despite some attempt at variation the similarity of wording implies that Shakespeare produced such literary detritus from his memory on demand, without thought and without effort, as the appropriate occasion presented itself. Although Shakespeare’s use of the division in his allusions to the fine arts is entirely traditional, Nature and Art represented a vital and

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living problem for him in the ethical speculations of the last plays. In Cymbeline the beginnings of what is to be an intense preoccupation may be glimpsed in one of the major ethical contrasts of the play—between the King’s stepson, Cloten, and his real sons, Guiderius and Arviragus. Cloten is the product of the ‘‘art o’ th’ court’’ that Belarius, the guardian of the real sons, continually disparages. Guiderius and Arviragus, having been brought up in savage surroundings apart from the court, represent the triumph of Nature untutored by Art. As Belarius explains it: O thou goddess, Thou divine Nature, how thyself thou blazon’st In these two princely boys! They are as gentle As zephyrs blowing below the violet, Not wagging his sweet head; and yet as rough, (Their royal blood enchaf’d) as the rud’st wind That by the top doth take the mountain pine And make him stoop to th’ vale. ’Tis wonder That an invisible instinct should frame them To royalty unlearn’d, honour untaught, Civility not seen from other, valour That wildly grows in them but yields a crop As if it had been sow’d. (IV.ii.169–81) The opposition between Nature and Art is not absolute for Shakespeare—he allows the Princes to express an awareness that courts may be in many respects superior to caves—but throughout the terms have been manipulated in such a way as to provide a main theme of the romance. As far as the Princes are concerned, Shakespeare agrees with Spenser and the courtesy books in making Nature more powerful than nature; and thus it is appropriate that Nature unaided by Art should figure in the reconciliation scene at the end of the play. Granted the thematic value of the terms, remarks like those of Belarius’ attain in context a force beyond that which may be assigned to a commonplace. In Cymbeline statements about Nature and Art have become part of the dramatic design, so that they function, perhaps a little creakily, as part of the plot and not merely as isolated allusions. By the time of The Tempest the process has been developed and intensified, passing from the relatively derivative use of the division to a more subtle and skillfully articulated study of the

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traditional opposition of Nature to Art. Frank Kermode’s elegant Introduction to The Tempest takes full account of Nature and Art and there is no need to rehearse his arguments here; although one may grow restive at his identification of Caliban as the central figure of the play, against which all the other characters are measured, it nevertheless seems clear that Kermode is right in contending that the ‘‘main opposition is between the worlds of Prospero’s Art, and Caliban’s Nature.’’ Hence there is little to be gained by pursuing this survey: enough has been said to establish Shakespeare’s interest, early and late, in Nature and Art and to provide a context for detailed consideration of The Winter’s Tale, the play that exploits most fully the relationship between the philosophical division and the pastoral genre. Beneath the romance trappings of The Winter’s Tale the critics have seen a pattern that, reduced to its essentials and stated in relatively neutral language, is based on cycles or alternations of harmony and alienation, of integration and disruption. Harmony, symbolized in the friendship of Leontes and Polixenes, receives initial emphasis in the first scene as Camillo remarks, perhaps a little ambiguously: ‘‘They were train’d together in their childhoods; and there rooted betwixt them then such an affection which cannot choose but branch now.’’ In the next scene Polixenes sounds the same note as he recalls for Hermione what it was like to be ‘‘boy eternal’’ with her husband, Leontes. We were as twinn’d lambs that did frisk i’ th’ sun And bleat the one at th’ other. What we chang’d Was innocence for innocence; we knew not The doctrine of ill-doing, nor dream’d That any did. Had we pursu’d that life, And our weak spirits ne’er been higher rear’d With stronger blood, we should have answer’d heaven Boldly, ‘‘Not guilty,’’ the imposition clear’d Hereditary ours. (I.ii.67–75) The idea of carefree harmony and the connotations of spring and birth are in this particular passage subordinated to the theological terms. The harmony recalled by Polixenes is a vision of the integrity of man in Eden, free of the

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taint of original sin—an association reinforced by the wit of the following lines as he and Hermione joke about the boys having ‘‘first sinn’d with’’ the queens, the implication being that the innocence of former days was lost because of woman. This is not allegory, of course, nor is The Winter’s Tale a covert recapitulation of the Fall of Man. But the web of allusion in these lines provides a frame of reference within which the main events of the play can receive meaning: the speech introduces the vision of the green world, the ideal of past harmony, and associates it with birth, innocence, spring, even with the Garden of Eden. To speak technically, this is the ‘‘integrity’’ of Nature before the Fall. The vision of the Garden, however, is brief and not easily sustained. As Shakespeare’s audience was well aware, the harmony of Eden had been lost to man so that his ‘‘stronger blood’’ was no longer free of the hereditary ‘‘imposition.’’ Consequently the Elizabethan audience was better prepared than Shakespeare’s modern critics for Leontes’ sudden and unmotivated jealousy, the towering excess of passion that, appearing in the same scene with Polixenes’ speech of remembered bliss, obliterates the initial mood of harmony and introduces the chaos and death for which Leontes is finally to do penance. Leontes is a man, his Nature impaired by the Fall, so that he is non posse non peccare, not able not to err. The terrible consequences of Leontes’ passion—alienation from Polixenes and Camillo, the death of his son, the death of Antigonus, the apparent deaths of his daughter and wife—form the main burden of the play until the Chorus of Time that introduces Act IV. Meanwhile the members of Shakespeare’s audience have seen the result of an excess of passion and have been able to judge the action in the terms, moral and theological, most meaningful to them. The first phase of the cycle is complete; harmony and integration have been replaced by alienation and disruption. The pivotal point of the play lies where it should, toward the end of Act III; as in Pericles and The Tempest it involves a storm at sea, the archetypal image of birth and death. The young shepherd (the clown) witnesses the destruction of the ship and the death of Antigonus, but at the same time the old shepherd comes across the living babe whose restoration figures in the

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fulfillment of the oracle. The scene thus recalls the disruption and chaos of the earlier action and at the same time anticipates the restoration of harmony in the last act. As the old shepherd puts it, saying more than he understands: ‘‘Now bless thyself! thou met’st with things dying, I with things new-born’’ (III.iii.116–18). Act IV includes the pastoral interlude and, as we have come to expect, the main references to the controversy over Nature and Art. Florizel, the son of Polixenes, has fallen in love with the shepherdess Perdita whom we know to be the daughter of Leontes, marooned by his order during a transport of jealousy. The child has grown up without benefit of Art, and yet her demeanor, like that of the Princes in Cymbeline, reflects the irrefragable excellence of royal blood. Throughout the word ‘‘queen’’ is applied to her, for as Florizel says: Each your doing, So singular in each particular, Crowns what you are doing in the present deed, That all your acts are queens. (IV.iv.143–46) Both royal children are for the moment disguised as shepherds, the difference being that Florizel knows his true birth whereas Perdita does not. And while they masquerade as pastoral figures, Shakespeare takes care to have us associate the children with more than purity of blood. Florizel’s name—it does not appear in Shakespeare’s source—is clearly allegorical, and the association with Flora receives further emphasis in the Prince’s description of Perdita in her role as queen of the sheepshearing: These your unusual weeds to each part of you Do give a life—no shepherdess, but Flora Peering in April’s front! This your sheepshearing Is as a meeting of the petty gods, And you the queen on’t. (IV.iv.1–5) Despite the wide difference in (apparent) birth, Shakespeare makes it clear that there is no intention of exercising droit du seigneur; Florizel’s ‘‘youth’’ and ‘‘blood’’ are as idyllic and pure as his pastoral surroundings, as Perdita herself recognizes even when his praise of her is so extravagant as to seem suspicious:

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Your praises are too large. But that your youth, And the true blood which peeps so fairly through’t, Do plainly give you out an unstain’d shepherd, With wisdom I might fear, my Doricles [i.e., Florizel], You woo’d me the false way. (IV.iv.147–51) Florizel makes it explicit: my desires Run not before mine honour, nor my lusts Burn hotter than my faith. (IV.iv.33–35) In short, Shakespeare has taken care to lend Florizel and Perdita the qualities that his audience associated with pastoral figures—idyllic innocence and artless Nature. The value of Perdita’s artlessness is particularly emphasized. Her intellectual simplicity cleaves directly to the heart of a problem, a quality that leads Camillo to acknowledge that he cannot say ’tis pity She lacks instructions, for she seems a mistress To most that teach. (IV.iv.592–94) And her modest demeanor does not prevent her from making the pastoral comparison between country and court explicit in referring to Polixenes’ rage at discovering his son in love with a ‘‘shepherdess’’: I was not much afeard; for once or twice I was about to speak, and tell him plainly The selfsame sun that shines upon his court Hides not his visage from our cottage, but Looks on alike. (IV.iv.453–57) Even this satiric cut—it is in no sense ‘‘democratic’’—is of the kind common in pastoral. So far in Shakespeare there is no more than what may be expected from the bucolic tradition: spring, youth, innocence, idyllic love, and the assumption that Nature is superior to Art. But when we have understood the exact function of the pastoral episode in relation to the play as a whole, in relation to its dramatic structure and to its underlying alternation of harmony and disintegration, we will be in a better position to see the individual uses to which Shakespeare has put the traditional materials of Nature and Art.

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Alexandra Gilbreath as Hermione and Antony Sher as Leontes in Act II, scene i at the Royal Shakespeare Theatre, 1999 (Ó Donald Cooper/Photostage. Reproduced by permission)

The pastoral episode immediately precedes the last act, the time of reconciliation and reintegration. The court of Sicily—where the action of the play began—is now the scene of an elaborate series of discoveries in which poetic and other justice is rendered all around. A number of exchanges between Paulina and Leontes have assured the audience that the king is truly repentant; the theological note, sounded so persistently and quietly throughout the play, once more assumes a prominent function, as in the words of Cleomenes: Sir, you have done enough, and have perform’d A saint like sorrow. No fault could you make Which you have not redeem’d; indeed, paid down More penitence than done trespass. At the last, Do as the heavens have done: forget your evil; With them, forgive yourself. (V.i.1–6) Redemption is indeed at hand.

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Florizel and Perdita, fleeing Bohemia and the anger of Polixenes, appear at the Sicilian court; and Leontes, in words that recall the pastoral interlude, welcomes the lovers as a change from the winter of his discontent: ‘‘Welcome hither / As is the spring to th’ earth’’ (V.i.151–52). The ‘‘unstain’d’’ youth of Florizel and Perdita, their ‘‘true blood,’’ symbolizes the restoration of harmony, the coming of spring to the wasteland, and the purification of the ‘‘stronger blood’’ of their fathers that is impaired by the stain of original sin. Perdita, she who was lost, is found, and discovered to be the daughter of the King; Leontes and Polixenes are once more united in friendship; the way is cleared for the young lovers; Hermione is restored to Leontes during the famous (or notorious) statue scene; and the extraordinary network of repeated words and phrases—youth and age, spring and winter, Nature and Art, birth and death, innocence and sin, Nature and Grace, blood and infection, and so on—is resolved in a series of brilliant puns, in the paradoxical wit of the last scenes. The second phase of the cycle of alienation and harmony, of disruption and reintegration, has been completed.

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Enough has been said so that the function of the pastoral scenes in this cycle of—to put it theologically—Fall and Redemption is perhaps obvious. Without these scenes the play would be structurally and symbolically defective, for they reflect, at the appropriate point in the action, the harmony with which the play began: the qualities that Leontes and Polixenes were said to have had as boys are those which Shakespeare gives in turn to Perdita and Florizel. And even the imagery of ‘‘twinn’d lambs,’’ together with the assumption of innocence unimpaired by original sin, that Shakespeare uses in describing the young princes accurately reflects pastoral conventions; Shakespeare chose appropriately if not ‘‘originally’’ in this respect. The imaginative force of the paradisiacal intimacy that once existed between Polixenes and Leontes is therefore essentially similar to the pastoral harmony that is now associated with Perdita and Florizel, and it is therefore proper that the two moments in the Garden balance each other structurally, the one preceding disruption and the other preceding integration. Moreover, the two moments serve a similar moral function in the play. In the cycle of disruption and integration the moments of childhood innocence and pastoral integrity provide the audience, in essentially similar ways, with visions of ideal order in terms of which the rest of the action may be meaningfully understood. The pastoral episode is consequently not merely a decorative interlude but the structural and symbolic prelude to the restoration of harmony in the last act. Shakespeare’s use of pastoral as the expression of an ethical ideal, of a simple world by which the more complex one might be judged, is strictly traditional, and yet it is a little more complicated than my statements so far might imply. Shakespeare’s idealization of shepherd life, for example, does not extend much beyond Perdita who is, like Pastorella in The Faerie Queene, of shepherd nurture but not of shepherd nature. And while the old shepherd, that ‘‘weather-bitten conduit of many kings’ reigns’’ (V.ii.61–62), is allowed to display a certain amount of rude dignity, the Mopsas and Dorcases of Shakespeare’s pastoral world are bumpkins, foils for that snapper-up of unconsidered trifles, Autolycus. Perdita’s royal blood manifests itself despite her surroundings and not because of them. For Shakespeare, then, shepherds may serve as exemplars of virtue if they

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are royal shepherds, and Nature may do without the civilizing influence of Art if it is royal Nature. Toward ordinary shepherds Shakespeare’s attitude is realistic and gently satirical; his tolerant humor recalls Theocritus but is a long way from Vergil’s delicate enthusiasms. Shakespeare’s attitude toward the division between Nature and Art is at least as complicated, but analysis begins most conveniently with his knowledge of traditional materials. Certainly he was aware of the long-standing association of pastoral with Nature and Art, for his pastoral episode includes a fairly thorough debate on the subject. Camillo and Polixenes, disguised, appear at the sheepshearing to investigate the truth of the rumored liaison between Florizel and some humble shepherdess. Polixenes and Perdita discuss flowers, but matters of cultural propriety are always near the surface of what is ostensibly a horticultural argument. These speeches are worth quoting at length because of their explicit relevance to my thesis, their complex character, and their importance as conceptual statements of the ethical concerns of the play. Perdita begins by apologizing for presenting these men of ‘‘middle age’’ with winter flowers; she has no fall flowers because she will not grow ‘‘nature’s bastards,’’ and the discussion immediately turns into a highly technical debate on Nature and Art. Per. Sir, the year growing ancient, Not yet on summer’s death nor on the birth Of trembling winter, the fairest flow’rs o’ th’ season Are our carnations and streak’d gillyvors, Which some call nature’s bastards. Of that kind Our rustic garden’s barren, and I care not To get slips of them. Pol. Wherefore, gentle maiden, Do you neglect them? Per. For I have heard it said There is an art which in their piedness shares With great creating nature. Pol. Say there be. Yet nature is made better by no mean But nature makes that mean. So, over that art Which you say adds to nature, is an art That nature makes. You see, sweet maid, we marry A gentler scion to the wildest stock And make conceive a bark of baser kind

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By bud of nobler race. This is an art Which does mend nature—change it rather; but The art itself is nature. Per. So it is. Pol. Then make your garden rich in gillyvors, And do not call them bastards. Per. I’ll not put The dibble in earth to set one slip of them; No more than, were I painted, I would wish This youth should say ’twere well, and only therefore Desire to breed by me. (IV.iv.79–103) The speeches are obviously meant to be significant in relation to the entire action of the play; they are not merely decorative commonplaces, but their function has never been fully explained. There is a possibility that Shakespeare intended the actor portraying Polixenes to speak his lines in such a way that the audience will take the horticultural reasoning as a trap, as a device by which Polixenes hopes to expose Perdita as a scheming wench who is after that ‘‘bud of nobler race,’’ Florizel. But it is Perdita who first commits herself against ‘‘nature’s bastards,’’ and Polixenes’ tone, now deliberative, now authoritative, does not appear to support such an interpretation. The King seems pretty clearly to be reasoning in earnest. Admittedly, the contention that an Art that changes Nature is in fact Nature may seem at first blush sophistical, calculated to make a young girl betray her desires for the ‘‘gentler scion.’’ Yet Polixenes’ stand is perhaps the most dignified and carefully argued in the whole history of possible opposition between Nature and Art. Like Aristotle and Plato, Polixenes points out that the ‘‘art itself is nature.’’ Aristotle had argued in the Physics that when we claim that Art perfects Nature we do in fact mean in the last analysis that Nature perfects herself: ‘‘The best illustration is a doctor doctoring himself: nature is like that.’’ And Plato in the tenth book of the Laws had maintained that the good legislator ‘‘ought to support the law and also art, and acknowledge that both alike exist by nature, and no less than nature.’’ Although Polixenes’ argument may appear sophistical, it is in fact an orthodox statement of the ‘‘real’’ significance of the ancient opposition.

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There is of course nothing new in the mixture of horticultural and social vocabularies either, but the implications of the mixture in Polixenes’ argument are shockingly unorthodox: You see, sweet maid, we marry A gentler scion to the wildest stock And make conceive a bark of baser kind By bud of nobler race. Translated into purely social terms— Shakespeare’s equivocal vocabulary forces the audience to consider the social implications— the argument of Polixenes seems to call for a program of egalitarian eugenics [improvement in the type of offspring produced], a program equally shocking, one suspects, to Polixenes and to the Elizabethan audience. Especially in the given dramatic situation, for the King is at this moment disguised as a shepherd expressly to prevent his ‘‘gentler scion’’ from marrying a ‘‘bark of baser kind.’’ Perdita has throughout revealed a Spenserian appreciation of ‘‘degree,’’ and now her reply to Polixenes rejects his (implied) social radicalism along with his horticultural orthodoxy: I’ll not put The dibble in earth to set one slip of them; No more than, were I painted, I would wish This youth [Florizel] should say ’twere well, and only therefore Desire to breed by me. Perdita’s uneasiness in her ‘‘borrowed flaunts’’ (IV.iv.23), her modest conviction that she is, ‘‘poor lowly maid, / Most goddess-like prank’d up’’ (IV.iv.9–10), has culminated in her final identification of Art with deceit, with false imitation, with ‘‘painted’’ womanhood—a kind of Art morally and otherwise inferior to Nature. Her position is, indeed, as venerable as that of Polixenes, appearing in such diverse places as Plato’s concept of imitation in the fine arts, in Castiglione’s view of cosmetics, and in virtually the whole of the pastoral tradition. Yet neither Polixenes nor Perdita may be taken to represent Shakespeare’s final word on the division between Nature and Art. The two traditions are both philosophically ‘‘respectable’’; dramatic propriety alone requires that Polixenes maintain the court position and Perdita hold to the pastoral belief in the absolute dichotomy between the two terms. If Shakespeare’s ‘‘own’’ position must remain for the moment conjectural, it is at least possible to understand what he is doing with the

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ancient division between Nature and Art. Clearly he is using it dramatically, as an oblique commentary on the action of the play. Less obvious is his use of the conceptual terms of the division to reflect the major ethical concerns of the play, using them to sum up with dramatic irony the ethical and social questions of The Winter’s Tale. With Perdita, for example, the debate becomes a comment on the way Shakespeare has characterized her. She is given to us as the creation of Nature who, despite her lack of Art, is ‘‘mistress / To most that teach’’; she is completely incapable of deceit, and her charming sensuousness is tempered by a clear perception of decorum, of her proper place in the order of things. At the same time her role in the sheepshearing is the creation of Art; her ‘‘unusual weeds’’ make her a ‘‘goddess,’’ a ‘‘queen,’’ but since these ‘‘borrowed flaunts’’ are deceitful, she resolves finally to ‘‘queen it no inch farther’’ (IV.iv.460). Thus Perdita’s stand on the ancient debate accurately reflects her character; it is perfectly consistent with the manner in which she is dramatized. It is this and more. In addition it anticipates ironically the discoveries of the last act, for although Perdita at this point appears to be arguing (in horticultural terms) against a marriage with Florizel, her words describe unwittingly but exactly the final situation of the two lovers: in the last act it will be revealed that Perdita is a ‘‘queen’’ by Nature rather than by Art, that her ‘‘borrowed flaunts’’ are hers by right. At the time when she takes her stand on the question of Nature versus Art, she is by Nature what she conceives herself to be by Art. Her speech to Polixenes is therefore effective in two main ways: on the one hand it accents her pastoral status as a figure of Nature, free of the corruption and taint of Art, suggesting the Nature of Eden; on the other hand the speech anticipates obliquely the last act of the play in which she and the other characters (the spectator is of course already aware of the dramatic irony of her speech) will understand that Florizel’s metaphorical praise—‘‘all your acts are queens’’—represents truth on the literal as well as the figurative level. Polixenes’ argument similarly sets up reverberations far beyond the limits of his speech and the immediate context. Polixenes, like Perdita, seemingly argues against his own best interests, for his resolution of the opposition between

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Nature and Art apparently sanctions the marriage of a noble to a commoner, the ‘‘bud of nobler race’’ to a ‘‘bark of baser kind.’’ Thus, as far as Shakespeare and the audience are concerned, it is still another opportunity for dramatic irony; again the spectator is aware of more in a character’s words than the character himself. Polixenes appears conscious only of the horticultural application of his words while the spectator is in a position to see that, in the case of Perdita, the ‘‘art itself is nature.’’ Thus, Polixenes is also ‘‘right,’’ even in the social sense of his words, though he cannot yet see that the queenliness of Perdita’s ‘‘nature is made better by no mean / But nature makes that mean.’’ It is only in the last act that the disagreement between Perdita and Polixenes is transcended and resolved in the general restoration of harmony. The last act is worth looking at in connection with Nature and Art because Shakespeare returns to the subject, this time in the sphere of the fine arts, in an attempt to resolve the paradoxical contrarieties generated out of the debate between Perdita and Polixenes. That which was lost has been found in the person of Perdita, and the two kings are reunited. All that remains is for the dead to rise as in Pericles: the ‘‘dead’’ Hermione is still lost to Leontes. Her improbable restoration in the statue scene has been condemned as a vulgar concession to popular taste and cited as an example of the triviality of the romance form. Such criticism quite misses the point, for it ignores the ground swell of harmony and alienation that informs the play and, even more pertinently, it neglects Shakespeare’s preoccupation with Nature and Art. Properly assessed, the ‘‘unrealistic’’ quality of the statue scene is beside the point. Here as elsewhere in the last romances Shakespeare’s respect for ‘‘truth’’ lies in the intensity of his verse and in the underlying pattern of the plays. If the statue scene is improbable, it nevertheless conforms with fidelity to the cycle of alienation and harmony, and the verse of this scene possesses a rare imaginative integrity. All the crucial words of the play—summer and winter, ‘‘infancy and grace,’’ Nature and Art, life and death— come together in the last scenes in a series of reckless paradoxes. Paulina speaks to the statue: Bequeath to death your numbness, for from him Dear life redeems you. (V.iii.102–3)

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The time of Hermione’s ‘‘better grace’’ has arrived; her stepping down from the pedestal means harmony, forgiveness, restoration, redemption.

between Perdita and Polixenes, for the opposition between Nature and Art dissolves in the pageantry of the statue’s descent.

The role played by Nature and Art in this larger resolution is perhaps obvious. Clearly a statue represents Art, and in this case the statue represents living Art, or Nature. Such distinctions were equally clear to Shakespeare, and his language shows that he also expected his audience to have in mind the traditional opposition between the terms. We first hear of the statue from the Third Gentleman, whose description is marked by the ancient division and avails itself of the ancient analogy:

The traditional division lies at the center of The Winter’s Tale. It is used conceptually and as an instrument of dramatic irony in the pastoral episode, and it appears symbolically as part of the total resolution of Act V. Nevertheless, Shakespeare does not seem to be as far committed to the division as Spenser. Although both poets take full advantage of the association of the literary genre with the philosophical division and although both use the pastoral as ‘‘an element in the harmonious solution of a longer story’’ about the court, in Shakespeare the division lacks much of the didactic immediacy it possesses in Spenser. The virtue of courtesy must be placed properly in the order of nature, and Spenser uses Nature and Art to achieve this didactic end; he is thinking with the established terms more than he is about them. Perhaps because The Winter’s Tale is less obtrusively didactic, Shakespeare thinks about the terms more than he does with them, finding in Nature and Art opportunities for witty debate and verbal paradox; perhaps because of his lack of absolute commitment he can afford to extract from various and conflicting interpretations the full dramatic value of the philosophical division. In The Winter’s Tale the traditional terms represent, through dramatic irony, a conceptual summation of the ethical and social interests of the play, and in the last act they form a main part of the elaborate series of paradoxes culminating in the statue scene—the pun made flesh.

. . . a piece many years in doing, and now newly perform’d, by that rare Italian master, Julio Romano, who, had he himself eternity and could put breath into his work, would beguile Nature of her custom, so perfectly he is her ape. (V.ii.103–8)

The artist is the ape of Nature, his imitation practiced so perfectly that he almost outdoes Nature, his final aim being naturam vincere. We have already seen the same notion in Venus and Adonis, the Rape of Lucrece, and Timon; it is the cliche´ of iconic poetry of the period, summed up in Cardinal Bembo’s epitaph on Raphael: ‘‘Nature feared that she would be conquered while he lived, and would die when he died.’’ It is in this tradition of friendly contest between Art and Nature that Paulina invites praise of her ‘‘statue’’: Prepare To see the life as lively mock’d as ever Still sleep mock’d death, (V.iii.18–20) and it is in this tradition that Leontes praises it: The fixure of her eye has motion in’t, As we are mock’d with art. (V.iii.67–68) Art has successfully imitated Nature, or so it seems to those who do not know that Paulina has preserved Hermione alive. The symbolic value of the scene is clear: as with Perdita, the imitation or ‘‘mock’’ of Nature turns out finally to be Nature after all. What seems to be Art is in fact Nature, fulfilling Polixenes’ assertion that the ‘‘art itself is nature’’ and confirming Perdita’s belief in the supremacy of ‘‘great creating nature.’’ The statue scene is with all its improbability a dramatic embodiment of Shakespeare’s preoccupation with Nature and Art; it transcends the earlier disagreement

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Source: Edward William Tayler, ‘‘Shakespeare’s ‘The Winter’s Tale,’’’ in Nature and Art in Renaissance Literature, Columbia University Press, 1964, pp. 124–41.

SOURCES Battenhouse, Roy, ed., ‘‘The Winter’s Tale: Comment,’’ in Shakespeare’s Christian Dimension, Indiana University Press, 1994, pp. 233. Bruce, Susan, ‘‘Mamillius and Leontes: Their Final Exchange,’’ ANQ: A Quarterly Journal of Short Articles, Notes, and Reviews, Vol. 16, No. 3, Summer 2003, pp. 9–12. Coleridge, Samuel Taylor, ‘‘Notes on The Winter’s Tale and Othello, in Four Centuries of Shakespearean Criticism, edited by J. Frank Kermode, Discuss Books, 1965, pp. 290–91.

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Evans, Bertrand, ‘‘A Lasting Storm: The Planetary Romances,’’ in Shakespeare’s Comedies, Clarendon Press, 1960, pp. 296. Fortier, Mark, ‘‘Married with Children: The Winter’s Tale and Social History; or Infanticide in Earlier Seventeenth-Century England,’’ Modern Language Quarterly: A Journal of Literary History, Vol. 57, No. 4, Dec. 1996, pp. 579–603. Goodman, Paul, The Structure of Literature, University of Chicago Press, 1962, p. 41. Hazlitt, William, The Winter’s Tale, in Characters in Shakespeare’s Plays, 1817, http://www.library.utoronto. ca/utel/criticism/hazlittw_charsp/charsp_ch24.html Hunt, Maurice, ‘‘‘Bearing Hence’ Shakespeare’s The Winter’s Tale’’ in SEL: Studies in English Literature, 1500–1900, Vol. 44, No. 2, Spring 2004, pp. 333–46. Jameson, Anna Brownell, Characteristics Of Women, 1832, http://www.geocities.com/litpageplus/shakmoulwinterstale.html. Leavis, F. R., ‘‘The Criticism of Shakespeare’s Late Plays,’’ in Shakespeare Criticism, edited by Anne Ridler, Oxford University Press, 1970, p. 139. Montaigne, Michel de, The Complete Essays of Montaigne, translated by Donald M. Frame, Stanford University Press, 1982, p. 141. Pafford, J. H. P., The Winter’s Tale, in The Arden Shakespeare, Methuen & Co., Ltd., 1963. Shakespeare, William, King Lear, 3rd Series, edited by R. A. Foakes, Arden Shakespeare, 1997. ———, The Winter’s Tale, edited by Frank Kermode, Signet Classic, 1963. Van Elk, Martine, ‘‘‘Our Praises Are Our Wages’: Courtly Exchange, Social Mobility, and Female Speech in The Winter’s Tale,’’ in Philological Quarterly, Vol. 79, No. 4, Fall 2000, pp. 429–57.

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FURTHER READING Frye, Northrop, ‘‘The Triumph of Time,’’ in A Natural Perspective, A Harbinger Book/Harcourt, Brace & World, Inc.: NY, 1965. In arguing that The Winter’s Tale is the literary representation of a ritual whose aim is to ‘‘unite the human and the natural worlds,’’ and to provide ‘‘an imaginative model of desire,’’ Frye outlines ‘‘the three elements of comic structure, the grim beginning, the middle period of confusion, carnival, and sexual license, and the final period of festive reordering.’’ Greenblatt, Stephen, Will in the World: How Shakespeare Became Shakespeare, W. W. Norton, 2004. This comprehensive biography of Shakespeare provides insight into the bard’s life and work. Greenblatt also offers readers a detailed view of life in sixteenth- and seventeenth-century England. Heims, Neil, ‘‘Shakespeare’s The Winter’s Tale,’’ in The Explicator, Vol. 46, No. 4, Summer 1988. Heims suggests various similarities between the two sections of The Winter’s Tale which reinforce the structural and thematic unity of the play. McFarland, Thomas, ‘‘We Must Be Gentle: Disintegration and Reunion in The Winter’s Tale,’’ in Shakespeare’s Pastoral Comedy, The University of North Carolina Press: Chapel Hill, 1972. McFarland traces the movement from what he calls the ‘‘anti-comic’’ to the final resolution of the play, achieved through reunion, which results in what he terms ‘‘social happiness.’’

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Glossary Note to the reader: This glossary includes terms commonly encountered in the study of Shakespeare’s work. It is not intended to be comprehensive.

A allegory: an extended metaphor or analogy in which characters in a drama or story and the characters’ actions are equated with religious, historical, moral, political, or satiric meanings outside of the drama or story being told. aside: a dramatic device by which an actor directly addresses the audience but is not heard by the other actors on the stage.

B burlesque: a form of comedy characterized by mockery or exaggeration.

E early modern literature: in England, literature from the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries.

F farce: a humorous play marked by broad satirical comedy and an improbable plot. foil: in literature, a character who, through contrast with another character, highlights or enhances the second character’s distinctive qualities. folio: a piece of paper folded in half or a volume made up of folio sheets. In 1623, Shakespeare’s plays were assembled into a folio edition. The term folio is also used to designate any early collection of Shakespeare’s works.

C comedy: a form of drama in which the primary purpose is to amuse and which ends happily.

D denouement: the final explanation or outcome of the plot. dramatic irony: achieved when the audience understands the real significance of a character’s words or actions but the character or those around him or her do not.

G gender role: behavior that a society expects or accepts from a man or a woman because of his or her sex.

H history play: a drama in which the time setting is in a period earlier than that during which the play was written.

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the character’s thoughts or feelings or to provide information about other characters in the play.

I induction: introductory scene or scenes that precede the main action of a play.

stock character: a conventional character type that belongs to a particular form of literature.

M Machiavellianism: the theory, based on the work and beliefs of Italian political philosopher Niccolo Machiavelli (1469-1527), that the attainment of political power is justified by any means. masque: in medieval England and Europe, a game or party in which participants wore masks. morality play: a medieval drama in which abstract vices and virtues are presented in human form. mystery play: a medieval drama depicting a story from the Bible.

P parody: a composition or work which imitates another, usually a serious, work. pun: a play on words.

S satire: a piece of literature that presents human vices or foolishness in a way that invites ridicule or scorn. soliloquy: a character’s speech within a play delivered while the character is alone. The speech is intended to inform the audience of

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subplot: a plot that is secondary to the main plot of the drama.

T theme: a central idea in a work of literature. tragedy: a drama that recounts the significant events or actions, which, taken together, bring about catastrophe.

U unities: a term referring to the dramatic structures of action, time, and place. Each unity is defined by several characteristics. The unity of action requires that the action of the play have a beginning, a middle, and an end. The unity of time requires that the action of a play take place in one day. The unity of place limits the action of the play to one place. Many plays violate all three unities. In The Tempest, Shakespeare observes all three unities.

V vice or vice figure: a stock character in the morality play, who, as a tempter, possesses both evil and comic qualities.

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Cumulative Index to Major Themes and Characters A Accession to the throne Henry VI, 1: 307–308 Acting and staging Measure for Measure, 2: 484–488 As You Like It, 1: 90–91 Active v. contemplative life Hamlet, 1: 206–207 Actor, ultimate Richard III, 3: 740 Allegiance Henry VI, 1: 308–310 Allegory The Comedy of Errors, 1: 131–132 Alliteration Julius Caesar, 2: 346 Ambiguity Measure for Measure, 2: 484–488 The Merchant of Venice, 2: 525 Ambition Julius Caesar, 2: 339, 344 Macbeth, 2: 442 Richard II, 3: 713–717 Animal imagery Coriolanus, 1: 167 King Lear, 2: 399–402 A Midsummer Night’s Dream, 2: 597–599 Much Ado About Nothing, 2: 627 Othello, 2: 661–662 The Taming of the Shrew, 3: 839–840 Venus and Adonis, 3: 929, 951–952 The Winter’s Tale, 3: 967–968 Animals, symbolic The Comedy of Errors, 1: 135–137

Anti-Semitism The Merchant of Venice, 2: 516 Aphorism All’s Well That Ends Well, 1: 15–16 Appearance v. reality Much Ado About Nothing, 2: 623–624; 637–638 The Taming of the Shrew, 3: 836–838 Argument Julius Caesar, 2: 351 Arrogance Henry V, 1: 275 Art, magic and illusion The Tempest, 3: 872 Art and nature The Winter’s Tale, 3: 965, 978–986 Asides Hamlet, 1: 208 Othello, 2: 662 Audiences, mixed A Midsummer Night’s Dream, 2: 590 Authority Coriolanus, 1: 171 Measure for Measure, 2: 500–501 A Midsummer Night’s Dream, 2: 588 Autobiographical content The Sonnets, 3: 807, 810, 811, 815–816 The Tempest, 3: 873 Awareness The Comedy of Errors, 1: 131 Awareness, manipulation of The Winter’s Tale, 3: 968

B Babies and breast feeding Macbeth, 2: 456–458 Battle of the sexes Much Ado About Nothing, 2: 623 The Taming of the Shrew, 3: 836, 852–854 See also Gender roles Battle wounds Coriolanus, 1: 181–183 Beauty The Sonnets, 3: 824–826 Bed-trick All’s Well That Ends Well, 1: 13, 19, 23–28 Measure for Measure, 2: 505 Bestiality A Midsummer Night’s Dream, 2: 597–599 Betrayal King Lear, 2: 381 Black heroes Othello, 2: 669–674 Blank verse Hamlet, 1: 208 Henry V, 1: 283 Julius Caesar, 2: 345 King Lear, 2: 382–383 The Merry Wives of Windsor, 2: 554 Much Ado About Nothing, 2: 628 The Tempest, 3: 873–874 Blindness King Lear, 2: 382 Blood Macbeth, 2: 459–460

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Boars Venus and Adonis, 3: 929 Body imagery Coriolanus, 1: 167, 180–181 Bondage The Merchant of Venice, 2: 529–533 Buffoonery The Merry Wives of Windsor, 2: 570–577 Business The Comedy of Errors, 1: 140–142 Richard III, 3: 752–754

C Cabala A Midsummer Night’s Dream, 2: 604–605 Castration The Merry Wives of Windsor, 2: 566–570 Celebration and festivity Twelfth Night, 3: 890, 905 Chance A Midsummer Night’s Dream, 2: 588 Chaos King Lear, 2: 394–399; 399–402 Character and imagery Othello, 2: 674–681 Characters and characterization Much Ado About Nothing, 2: 639–640 The Winter’s Tale, 3: 974–978 Chastity The Tempest, 3: 872 Chastity and lewdness Measure for Measure, 2: 480 Choice The Merchant of Venice, 2: 531–533 Chorus Henry V, 1: 278, 283–284, 286 Christ, allusions to Richard II, 3: 700–701 Christian pessimism King Lear, 2: 386–387 Citizen comedies The Merry Wives of Windsor, 2: 542, 554, 571 Clothing imagery Much Ado About Nothing, 2: 637–638 The Taming of the Shrew, 3: 845, 860–861 Clowning The Merry Wives of Windsor, 2: 570–577 Coercion Macbeth, 2: 441, 450 Colors King Lear, 2: 417 Venus and Adonis, 3: 931–932

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Combat and sexuality Coriolanus, 1: 180, 181–183 Comedy All’s Well That Ends Well, 1: 20–22 The Comedy of Errors, 1: 130–131, 135, 137–147 Henry IV, Part One, 1: 260 Measure for Measure, 2: 499–506 The Merry Wives of Windsor, 2: 558 Much Ado About Nothing, 2: 632–634 Richard III, 3: 739–740 Twelfth Night, 3: 904–906 See also Dark comedy; Farce Comedy v. tragedy The Merchant of Venice, 2: 520–521 Comic relief Romeo and Juliet, 3: 778–779 Competition v. cooperation As You Like It, 1: 104–108 Conflict Coriolanus, 1: 165–166; 171–174 Othello, 2: 663 Consonance Julius Caesar, 2: 346 Contemplative life Hamlet, 1: 206–207 Contrast Macbeth, 2: 458–461 Othello, 2: 658 Control As You Like It, 1: 107–108 Corruption Hamlet, 1: 216–217 Couplets The Sonnets, 3: 811–817 Crowds Coriolanus, 1: 167–168; 174–179 Julius Caesar, 2: 362–366 Cuckolds The Merry Wives of Windsor, 2: 551 Cultural stereotypes Henry V, 1: 276–277 Curses and prophesies Richard III, 3: 741

D Dark comedy All’s Well That Ends Well, 1: 1–2 Richard III, 3: 739–740 Death Henry VI, 1: 328–331 Julius Caesar, 2: 344–345 Richard III, 3: 744–745 Death and metamorphosis Venus and Adonis, 3: 941–942

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Death imagery Antony and Cleopatra, 1: 48–49 Deception Much Ado About Nothing, 2: 623–624 Othello, 2: 660–661 Desire Venus and Adonis, 3: 930, 935–943 Dialogue, witty Much Ado About Nothing, 2: 626–627 Dining The Taming of the Shrew, 3: 859–860 Disease imagery Hamlet, 1: 214–216 Disguises All’s Well That Ends Well, 1: 24–25 Measure for Measure, 2: 489–490 Twelfth Night, 3: 890–901, 905 As You Like It, 1: 87, 105–108 Disorderly world Henry IV, Part One, 1: 248–251 Disproportion Antony and Cleopatra, 1: 68–69 Divided nature The Sonnets, 3: 817–821 Divine intervention Henry V, 1: 275 Divine right Richard II, 3: 700–702 Double entendre All’s Well That Ends Well, 1: 15 Double plot King Lear, 2: 383

E Economics The Merchant of Venice, 2: 517, 536–539 Egoism King Lear, 2: 381 Elizabeth I The Merry Wives of Windsor, 2: 563–565 A Midsummer Night’s Dream, 2: 604–605 Embedded author Measure for Measure, 2: 481 Empire and love Antony and Cleopatra, 1: 60–66 Endings All’s Well That Ends Well, 1: 14 King Lear, 2: 391, 427–433 Venus and Adonis, 3: 943–948 Environmentalism As You Like It, 1: 85 Epic elements Henry V, 1: 278

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F Fables The Merchant of Venice, 2: 521 Fact v. fiction Henry IV, Part One, 1: 257–259 Henry V, 1: 282–283 Henry VI, 1: 310, 322–328 Fairies and fairy world A Midsummer Night’s Dream, 2: 599–613 Farce The Comedy of Errors, 1: 130–131, 135, 137–147 The Merry Wives of Windsor, 2: 572, 574 The Taming of the Shrew, 3: 839, 844 Fate Romeo and Juliet, 3: 776–777 Father-daughter relationships The Merchant of Venice, 2: 519–520 The Tempest, 3: 877–880 Father figures Coriolanus, 1: 184–187 As You Like It, 1: 86 Fathers and sons Henry IV, Part One, 1: 238, 251–257 Fickleness Julius Caesar, 2: 343 Flower imagery The Winter’s Tale, 3: 977 Folk tales All’s Well That Ends Well, 1: 2, 19 Fools As You Like It, 1: 87 Foreshadowing Julius Caesar, 2: 347 Forest A Midsummer Night’s Dream, 2: 597–604 Form The Sonnets, 3: 822–826 Fortune v. nature As You Like It, 1: 88–89; 99–104 Freudian perspective The Comedy of Errors, 1: 147–151 Coriolanus, 1: 179–187 Hamlet, 1: 211–214

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G Games and role playing The Taming of the Shrew, 3: 838–839 Garter ceremony The Merry Wives of Windsor, 2: 563–565 Gender roles All’s Well That Ends Well, 1: 2, 12–13, 23–28 Macbeth, 2: 445, 451–456 The Taming of the Shrew, 3: 836, 837–838, 842–844 As You Like It, 1: 94–95 See also Battle of the sexes Gentleness The Merchant of Venice, 2: 534–535 The gods King Lear, 2: 381, 386–390 Good v. evil Macbeth, 2: 458–459 Grief Richard III, 3: 757–758 Guilt King Lear, 2: 415 The Tempest, 3: 879–883

H Harmony and alienation The Winter’s Tale, 3: 980–982 Hate Romeo and Juliet, 3: 774–775 Heavenly bodies Henry IV, Part One, 1: 240 Heroic action in a post-heroic world Antony and Cleopatra, 1: 61–62 History, sense of Henry V, 1: 274–275 History plays Henry VI, 1: 310, 315–316 Richard III, 3: 754–762 Home life The Comedy of Errors, 1: 132–133 Homosexuality The Sonnets, 3: 798–799, 810 Honor Henry IV, Part One, 1: 237–238; 248–251 Much Ado About Nothing, 2: 625, 641 Honor v. loyalty Coriolanus, 1: 165 Horses Venus and Adonis, 3: 929 Hubris A Midsummer Night’s Dream, 2: 588–589 Human depravity King Lear, 2: 391 Human spirit, destruction of Macbeth, 2: 461–467

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Humanity v. brutality The Tempest, 3: 872–873 Humor Henry V, 1: 296 A Midsummer Night’s Dream, 2: 605–613 Hyperbole Twelfth Night, 3: 902–903

I Iambic pentameter Julius Caesar, 2: 345 Identity Antony and Cleopatra, 1: 66–76 The Comedy of Errors, 1: 127–128 Twelfth Night, 3: 900–901, 905 Ideology Measure for Measure, 2: 501 Illusion v. reality Twelfth Night, 3: 906–909 Imagery Antony and Cleopatra, 1: 48–49; 66–76 Hamlet, 1: 214–219 King Lear, 2: 399–402 Macbeth, 2: 446, 456–461 Much Ado About Nothing, 2: 637–638 Othello, 2: 661–662; 674–681 Richard II, 3: 703–704; 719–723 Romeo and Juliet, 3: 780 The Sonnets, 3: 802–803; 822–824 The Taming of the Shrew, 3: 839–840, 845, 857–861 Venus and Adonis, 3: 931–932 The Winter’s Tale, 3: 967–968 Imagination Macbeth, 2: 440 A Midsummer Night’s Dream, 2: 603 The Tempest, 3: 876 Impotence The Merry Wives of Windsor, 2: 566–570 Incest The Tempest, 3: 878 Incompetence Richard II, 3: 717–719 Infidelity The Sonnets, 3: 799–800 Innocence and guilt The Winter’s Tale, 3: 965–967 Insanity King Lear, 2: 402–407 Interpretation, actors’ Measure for Measure, 2: 484–488 Interpretations, modern The Taming of the Shrew, 3: 827–829; 850–852 Irony Richard III, 3: 739–740 Twelfth Night, 3: 901

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Epicureanism Julius Caesar, 2: 351–355 Epilogue The Tempest, 3: 874 Eroticism, ambiguous The Sonnets, 3: 798–799; 809–810 Evil Macbeth, 2: 443, 445, 464–467 Much Ado About Nothing, 2: 646

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Italy, as setting Much Ado About Nothing, 2: 628

J Jealousy The Merry Wives of Windsor, 2: 550–551; 559–562 Othello, 2: 658–659 The Winter’s Tale, 3: 966, 970–973 Judgement Much Ado About Nothing, 2: 635–637 The Tempest, 3: 880–884 Justice King Lear, 2: 392–394 The Merchant of Venice, 2: 534–536 Richard III, 3: 738–739 Justice and mercy Measure for Measure, 2: 480, 492–499

K Kingship Henry V, 1: 274, 286–292 Henry VI, 1: 307–308; 316–319 Macbeth, 2: 442–443 Richard II, 3: 698–702; 708–719 Knight-errant All’s Well That Ends Well, 1: 12–13

L Language, descriptive Antony and Cleopatra, 1: 48–49; 66–76 Language, Shakespearian Henry VI, 1: 311 Julius Caesar, 2: 346 Language, use of The Comedy of Errors, 1: 143–144 Coriolanus, 1: 191 Henry V, 1: 277–278; 293–294 Much Ado About Nothing, 2: 645 Othello, 2: 667 The Sonnets, 3: 801–802 Twelfth Night, 3: 901, 905, 913–919 Venus and Adonis, 3: 935–943 Language and character Othello, 2: 674–675 Language of business Richard III, 3: 752–754 Law Measure for Measure, 2: 500–501 Layering and unlayering As You Like It, 1: 104–108 Leadership Julius Caesar, 2: 343–344 Liberty v. restraint Measure for Measure, 2: 480

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Lightness v. darkness Macbeth, 2: 458–459 Lord of Misrule Henry IV, Part One, 1: 245–246 Love Antony and Cleopatra, 1: 53–57 The Sonnets, 3: 797–798; 809–813 Twelfth Night, 3: 909–913 Love, denial of Much Ado About Nothing, 2: 641–644 Love, inconstancy in A Midsummer Night’s Dream, 2: 594–597 Love, true A Midsummer Night’s Dream, 2: 587–588 Love, varieties of King Lear, 2: 381, 394–399 The Merchant of Venice, 2: 517–518 The Merry Wives of Windsor, 2: 551–552 Romeo and Juliet, 3: 773–774 Venus and Adonis, 3: 947–953 Love and language Venus and Adonis, 3: 935–943 Love and marriage The Comedy of Errors, 1: 128–130 Much Ado About Nothing, 2: 624–625 Love and war Antony and Cleopatra, 1: 57–60; 60–66 Lovers A Midsummer Night’s Dream, 2: 610–613 Loyalty King Lear, 2: 381 Lyrical interludes As You Like It, 1: 92–93

M Madness King Lear, 2: 381 Magic The Tempest, 3: 872 Magical thinking Henry VI, 1: 319–322 Male-female relationships The Comedy of Errors, 1: 145–147 Man and history Julius Caesar, 2: 356–362 Manhood Coriolanus, 1: 166 Manipulation Othello, 2: 659 Richard II, 3: 696 Marriage All’s Well That Ends Well, 1: 12–13 16–17; 20–22

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The Comedy of Errors, 1: 128–130 The Merry Wives of Windsor, 2: 551–552 The Taming of the Shrew, 3: 854–859 Mars and Venus Antony and Cleopatra, 1: 57–60 Masques The Tempest, 3: 874 Maternal love Venus and Adonis, 3: 948–953 Mental disorders Hamlet, 1: 212–214 Mercy and hypocrisy The Merchant of Venice, 2: 519 Metamorphosis Venus and Adonis, 3: 941–942; 945–948 Metaphor Julius Caesar, 2: 346 Romeo and Juliet, 3: 780 Military spectacle Coriolanus, 1: 167–168 Miracles All’s Well That Ends Well, 1: 23–24 Mirroring The Tempest, 3: 874 The Winter’s Tale, 3: 967 Misanthropy As You Like It, 1: 85 Misreport Much Ado About Nothing, 2: 635–637 Mistrust Othello, 2: 658–659 Mixed genre Measure for Measure, 2: 481 Money The Merry Wives of Windsor, 2: 552 Monologue Henry V, 1: 278 Moon A Midsummer Night’s Dream, 2: 600–602 Moral enigma King Lear, 2: 427–433 Moral growth Twelfth Night, 3: 909–913 Morality and transcendence Antony and Cleopatra, 1: 47–48 Morality plays Henry IV, Part One, 1: 241 Mortality The Sonnets, 3: 814–815 Mother-son relationships Coriolanus, 1: 171–174; 179–187 See also Oedipus complex Multiple storylines The Merchant of Venice, 2: 521–522

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N Narcissism The Sonnets, 3: 800, 821–822 Narcissus Twelfth Night, 3: 906–909 Narration The Winter’s Tale, 3: 967 Narrative, absence of The Sonnets, 3: 801 Nationalism Henry V, 1: 274–275 Henry VI, 1: 310 Nature King Lear, 2: 381 See also Pastoral life Nature and art The Winter’s Tale, 3: 965, 978–986 New comedy All’s Well That Ends Well, 1: 14–15 Nihilism King Lear, 2: 391–394 Nurture v. hunger Coriolanus, 1: 165–166

O Oaths Henry IV, Part One, 1: 240–241 Oedipus complex Coriolanus, 1: 179–187 Hamlet, 1: 211–214 Omens Julius Caesar, 2: 346–347 Opposites, conflict between Antony and Cleopatra, 1: 45–47; 57–62 Oppositional thinking Henry VI, 1: 320–321 Oratory Julius Caesar, 2: 351 Order v. chaos King Lear, 2: 394–399 Macbeth, 2: 461 The Merry Wives of Windsor, 2: 576

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The other Othello, 2: 659–660 Oxymoron Macbeth, 2: 445–446 Romeo and Juliet, 3: 779

P Parody Richard III, 3: 739–740 The Sonnets, 3: 803–804, 816 Passion Romeo and Juliet, 3: 775 Passive v. active behavior Twelfth Night, 3: 919–922 Pastoral life As You Like It, 1: 78–79, 88, 91, 100–104, 107–115 Pastoral (poem) As You Like It, 1: 92 Patriarchy King Lear, 2: 415–416 Patriotism Henry V, 1: 264–265, 274, 294 Perceptions Much Ado About Nothing, 2: 635–637 Percy Rebellion Henry IV, Part One, 1: 252–257 Persuasion, power of Julius Caesar, 2: 341–343 Philomela King Lear, 2: 418 Pilgrimages All’s Well That Ends Well, 1: 26 Play within a play A Midsummer Night’s Dream, 2: 603–604; 612–613 The Taming of the Shrew, 3: 839 Plot and subplot King Lear, 2: 383 The Merchant of Venice, 2: 521–522 Much Ado About Nothing, 2: 627–628, 637 As You Like It, 1: 93, 97–98 Plutarch Julius Caesar, 2: 362–366 Poetry The Sonnets, 3: 803 Political facades Richard II, 3: 702–703 Political order Henry IV, Part One, 1: 251–257 Political themes Coriolanus, 1: 170–171; 187–191 Julius Caesar, 2: 334, 341, 351 King Lear, 2: 421–427 Possession The Tempest, 3: 880 Power As You Like It, 1: 99–100

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Power of report Much Ado About Nothing, 2: 635–637 Prejudice The Merchant of Venice, 2: 518–519 Othello, 2: 659–660 The present The Tempest, 3: 885–889 Private v. public personae Julius Caesar, 2: 343, 356–362 Problem plays All’s Well That Ends Well, 1: 1–2; 14–15; 18–20 The Merchant of Venice, 2: 521, 539 Much Ado About Nothing, 2: 614 Prodigal son Henry IV, Part One, 1: 252 Prophesies Richard III, 3: 741 Prose v. poetry Henry IV, Part One, 1: 240, 259–262 Henry V, 1: 283–286 Much Ado About Nothing, 2: 628, 637 Othello, 2: 663–664 Punishment The Merry Wives of Windsor, 2: 570–577 Puns Hamlet, 1: 208–209 The Merry Wives of Windsor, 2: 554 Romeo and Juliet, 3: 778–779

Cumulative Index to Major Themes and Characters

Music A Midsummer Night’s Dream, 2: 602 The Sonnets, 3: 814 The Tempest, 3: 874 Music imagery The Taming of the Shrew, 3: 861 Mythology King Lear, 2: 418 A Midsummer Night’s Dream, 2: 601–602 Twelfth Night, 3: 906–909 Venus and Adonis, 3: 931, 943–948 As You Like It, 1: 98–99

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Q Quest-romance All’s Well That Ends Well, 1: 12–13

R Race and racism Othello, 2: 659–660, 667, 669–674 Rape King Lear, 2: 414–415; 421–427 Reading v. acting Measure for Measure, 2: 484–488 Real v. ideal The Merchant of Venice, 2: 518 Reality, levels of A Midsummer Night’s Dream, 2: 590 Reconciliation The Winter’s Tale, 3: 974–978 Red and white Venus and Adonis, 3: 931–932 Religious prejudice The Merchant of Venice, 2: 518–519

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Repentence The Tempest, 3: 882–884 Responsibility Henry V, 1: 276 Retributive justice Richard III, 3: 738–739 Revenge Hamlet, 1: 209 Measure for Measure, 2: 492–499 The Merry Wives of Windsor, 2: 553 The Tempest, 3: 872 Rhetoric King Lear, 2: 417 Rhetoric, use of Henry VI, 1: 310–311 Ritual Julius Caesar, 2: 343 Rivalry Henry VI, 1: 310 As You Like It, 1: 104–105 Role playing Henry IV, Part One, 1: 238–239 The Taming of the Shrew, 3: 839 Role reversal Macbeth, 2: 451–456 Romance The Winter’s Tale, 3: 967 Rome and Egypt Antony and Cleopatra, 1: 45–47, 53, 69–72 Rumor Much Ado About Nothing, 2: 638–639

S Seasons A Midsummer Night’s Dream, 2: 599 Seeing and blindness King Lear, 2: 382 Self control v. passion Henry V, 1: 286–292 Setting The Comedy of Errors, 1: 135–137 The Merchant of Venice, 2: 521 Sexual aggression Venus and Adonis, 3: 929–930 Sexual jealousy Othello, 2: 681–686 Sexual mores Measure for Measure, 2: 488–492 Sexual reluctance Venus and Adonis, 3: 928–929 Sexual revulsion King Lear, 2: 382 Sexuality All’s Well That Ends Well, 1: 2 Antony and Cleopatra, 1: 60–66

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Sexuality and punishment The Merry Wives of Windsor, 2: 570–577 Sheep and shepherding The Winter’s Tale, 3: 967–968 Sickness and medicine Macbeth, 2: 458 Similes As You Like It, 1: 93–94 Sin Macbeth, 2: 440 Slander Much Ado About Nothing, 2: 632–634 Sleep Macbeth, 2: 460 Small-town life The Merry Wives of Windsor, 2: 558–559 Social class All’s Well That Ends Well, 1: 13, 28–32 Coriolanus, 1: 174–179 Soliloquy Hamlet, 1: 209 Henry IV, Part One, 1: 255 Henry V, 1: 278, 284 King Lear, 2: 383 Songs Much Ado About Nothing, 2: 626, 646–647 Sonnets Romeo and Juliet, 3: 778 The Sonnets, 3: 805–806; 811–817 Sources King Lear, 2: 390–394; 416–417 Venus and Adonis, 3: 943–948 Spectacle King Lear, 2: 383 Spying Hamlet, 1: 207 Stages of life As You Like It, 1: 90–91 Stoicism Julius Caesar, 2: 352–355 Styles, varied A Midsummer Night’s Dream, 2: 593–594 Subplot, lack of Othello, 2: 662 Succession Richard III, 3: 737–738 Sudden change The Winter’s Tale, 3: 967 Symbols and symbolism Hamlet, 1: 214–219 Macbeth, 2: 445 Othello, 2: 662–663 Venus and Adonis, 3: 929 Symphonic imagery Richard II, 3: 703–704

S h a k e s p e a r e

F o r

S t u d e n t s ,

T Temptation and sin Macbeth, 2: 440 Tetralogy, anticipation of Richard II, 3: 704–705 Time Macbeth, 2: 446, 450, 460 Othello, 2: 681–686 Romeo and Juliet, 3: 777, 783 The Tempest, 3: 874 The Winter’s Tale, 3: 966 As You Like It, 1: 89–90; 111–115 Tragedy Othello, 2: 649–650 Richard III, 3: 754–762 Romeo and Juliet, 3: 778, 782–783 Tragic heroes Antony and Cleopatra, 1: 41–42 Hamlet, 1: 219–224 Macbeth, 2: 449, 461–467 Richard II, 3: 704 Tragicomedy Much Ado About Nothing, 2: 627 Transformation Antony and Cleopatra, 1: 53–57 The Comedy of Errors, 1: 135–137 Macbeth, 2: 451–456 Tricksters Measure for Measure, 2: 504–505

U The unities The Tempest, 3: 874, 885–889 Unity Richard II, 3: 719–723 Unity, lack of Henry V, 1: 292–296 Unrealistic idealism, antidote to Henry IV, Part One, 1: 246–247

V Valediction The Tempest, 3: 873 Vengeance Hamlet, 1: 207–208 Vice Henry IV, Part One, 1: 245 Villainy Much Ado About Nothing, 2: 625–626 Othello, 2: 657 Virginity Much Ado About Nothing, 2: 625

W War and violence Hamlet, 1: 217–218 Henry V, 1: 274, 285 Henry VI, 1: 307, 322–331

S e c o n d

E d i t i o n ,

V o l u m e

3

C u m u l a t i v e

S h a k e s p e a r e

F o r

t o

M a j o r

Wittiness Much Ado About Nothing, 2: 626–628 Women, powerlessness of Richard III, 3: 745–752 Women, role of All’s Well That Ends Well, 1: 23–28 The Comedy of Errors, 1: 145–147 Henry VI, 1: 308 The Merchant of Venice, 2: 526–528 Othello, 2: 660

S t u d e n t s ,

S e c o n d

E d i t i o n ,

T h e m e s

a n d

C h a r a c t e r s

The Taming of the Shrew, 3: 828–829; 844–852 See also Gender roles Wordplay Much Ado About Nothing, 2: 628, 631 Twelfth Night, 3: 901, 913–919

Cumulative Index to Major Themes and Characters

Wedding night Coriolanus, 1: 181–183 Wedding plays A Midsummer Night’s Dream, 2: 589–590 Wife beating The Merry Wives of Windsor, 2: 567 Witches and witchcraft The Merry Wives of Windsor, 2: 566–570

I n d e x

Y Youth v. experience All’s Well That Ends Well, 1: 13

V o l u m e

3

x x i x

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