Shakespeare: Three Problem Plays (Analysing Texts)

Shakespeare: Three Problem Plays Nicholas Marsh

Shakespeare: Three Problem Plays

ANALYSING TEXTS General Editor: Nicholas Marsh Published Chaucer: The Canterbury Tales Gail Ashton Webster: The Tragedies Kate Aughterson John Keats John Blades Shakespeare: The Comedies R. P. Draper Charlotte Brontë: The Novels Mike Edwards E. M. Forster: The Novels Mike Edwards Shakespeare: The Tragedies Nicholas Marsh Shakespeare: Three Problem Plays Nicholas Marsh Jane Austen: The Novels Nicholas Marsh Emily Brontë: Wuthering Heights Nicholas Marsh Virginia Woolf: The Novels Nicholas Marsh D. H. Lawrence: The Novels Nicholas Marsh William Blake: The Poems Nicholas Marsh John Donne: The Poems Joe Nutt Thomas Hardy: The Novels Norman Page Marlowe: The Plays Stevie Simkin

Analysing Texts Series Standing Order ISBN 0–333–73260–X (outside North America only) You can receive future titles in this series as they are published by placing a standing order. Please contact your bookseller or, in case of difficulty, write to us at the address below with your name and address, the title of the series and the ISBN quoted above. Customer Services Department, Macmillan Distribution Ltd Houndmills, Basingstoke, Hampshire RG21 6XS, England

Shakespeare: Three Problem Plays NICHOLAS MARSH

© Nicholas Marsh 2003 All rights reserved. No reproduction, copy or transmission of this publication may be made without written permission. No paragraph of this publication may be reproduced, copied or transmitted save with written permission or in accordance with the provisions of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988, or under the terms of any licence permitting limited copying issued by the Copyright Licensing Agency, 90 Tottenham Court Road, London W1T 4LP. Any person who does any unauthorised act in relation to this publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages. The author has asserted his right to be identified as the author of this work in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. First published 2003 by PALGRAVE MACMILLAN Houndmills, Basingstoke, Hampshire RG21 6XS and 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, N.Y. 10010 Companies and representatives throughout the world PALGRAVE MACMILLAN is the global academic imprint of the Palgrave Macmillan division of St. Martin’s Press, LLC and of Palgrave Macmillan Ltd. Macmillan® is a registered trademark in the United States, United Kingdom and other countries. Palgrave is a registered trademark in the European Union and other countries. ISBN 0–333–97367–4 hardback ISBN 0–333–97368–2 paperback This book is printed on paper suitable for recycling and made from fully managed and sustained forest sources. A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library. A catalogue record for this book is available from the Library of Congress 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 12 11 10 09 08 07 06 05 04 03 Printed and bound in Great Britain by Creative Print and Design (Wales), Ebbw Vale

For Jacqueline

Contents General Editor’s Preface

x

A Note on Editions

xi

Introduction: Looking at Plays and Studying Poetry Why These Three Plays? Studying Plays Shakespeare’s Poetry

1 1 3 4

Part 1: Analysing Shakespeare’s Problem Plays 1

Openings Analysis: All’s Well that Ends Well, 1, i, 23–68 Analysis: Measure for Measure, 1, i, 1–52 Analysis: Troilus and Cressida, 1, i, 1–38 Conclusions Methods of Analysis Suggested Work

11 11 22 29 34 36 41

2

Young Men Analysis: All’s Well that Ends Well, 4, ii, 27–66 Analysis: Measure for Measure, 3, i, 94–150 Analysis: Troilus and Cressida, 3, ii, 153–78 Conclusions Methods of Analysis Suggested Work

44 44 51 62 69 79 80

3

Women Analysis: All’s Well that Ends Well, 1, i, 212–25 Analysis: Measure for Measure, 2, ii, 100–43 Analysis: Troilus and Cressida, 1, ii, 249–86 Conclusions Methods of Analysis Suggested Work

82 82 94 103 111 114 114

vii

viii

Contents

4

Politics and Society Analysis: All’s Well that Ends Well, 4, iii, 1–35 Analysis: Measure for Measure, 3, i, 231–70 Analysis: Troilus and Cressida, 1, iii, 312–92 Dissolving or Changing Societies Political Actions in All’s Well that Ends Well Political Actions in Measure for Measure Political Actions in Troilus and Cressida Conclusions Methods of Analysis Suggested Work

116 116 122 126 134 139 141 145 149 152 153

5

Fools and fools Analysis: All’s Well that Ends Well, 4, iii, 319–28 Analysis: Measure for Measure, 3, ii, 89–117 Analysis: Troilus and Cressida, 2, i, 1–48 The fools Dissident Voices Conclusions Methods of Analysis Suggested Work

156 156 158 164 171 175 182 184 185

6

Drama Time and Space A Table Analysing All’s Well that Ends Well A Table Analysing Measure for Measure A Table Analysing Troilus and Cressida, Act 5, scene ii Conclusions Methods of Analysis Suggested Work

187 187 188 192 207 216 218 219

Conclusions to Part 1

220

Part 2: The Context and the Critics

223

7

225 225 226

The Problem Plays in Shakespeare’s Works Texts Classification

Contents

ix

8

The Context Society Religion Ways of Thinking Conclusion

243 243 249 252 254

9

A Sample of Critical Views E. M. W. Tillyard Harold Bloom Kathleen McLuskie Thomas G. West David McCandless

256 257 260 263 266 268

Further Reading

272

Index

277

General Editor’s Preface This series is dedicated to one clear belief: that we can all enjoy, understand and analyse literature for ourselves, provided we know how to do it. How can we build on close understanding of a short passage, and develop our insight into the whole work? What features do we expect to find in a text? Why do we study style in so much detail? In demystifying the study of literature, these are only some of the questions the Analysing Texts series addresses and answers. The books in this series will not do all the work for you, but will provide you with the tools, and show you how to use them. Here, you will find samples of close, detailed analysis, with an explanation of the analytical techniques utilised. At the end of each chapter there are useful suggestions for further work you can do to practise, develop and hone the skills demonstrated and build confidence in your own analytical ability. An author’s individuality shows in the way they write: every work they produce bears the hallmark of that writer’s personal ‘style’. In the main part of each book we concentrate therefore on analysing the particular flavour and concerns of one author’s work, and explain the features of their writing in connection with major themes. In Part 2 there are chapters about the author’s life and work, assessing their contribution to developments in literature; and a sample of critics’ views are summarised and discussed in comparison with each other. Some suggestions for further reading provide a bridge towards further critical research. Analysing Texts is designed to stimulate and encourage your critical and analytic faculty, to develop your personal insight into the author’s work and individual style, and to provide you with the skills and techniques to enjoy at first hand the excitement of discovering the richness of the text. NICHOLAS MARSH

x

A Note on Editions References to act, scene and line numbers in the three plays we study in this volume are to The Arden Edition of the Works of William Shakespeare, now published by Thomas Nelson & Sons Ltd. In the Arden series, All’s Well that Ends Well is edited by G. K. Hunter (1959); Measure for Measure is edited by J. W. Lever (1965); and Troilus and Cressida is edited by David Bevington (1998).

xi

Introduction: Looking at Plays and Studying Poetry Why These Three Plays? Shakespeare’s plays are often classified into ‘groups’ or categories, as ‘Comedies’, ‘Histories’, ‘Tragedies’, ‘The Late Romances’ and ‘Roman Plays’; and critics have made a number of efforts to find a satisfactory label for these three plays, which do not fit snugly into any of the major classifications. They have seemed to be a group because they were probably written within the same three years, and there are some obvious similarities between them, which we will explore in this book; but we will not draw conclusions about Shakespeare himself; nor will we struggle to label them as any particular kind of play. Indeed, one of the questions to have in mind, when beginning to study All’s Well that Ends Well, Measure for Measure and Troilus and Cressida, is: why have critics felt such an earnest desire to classify them? One of the most celebrated efforts at classification was argued in E. M. W. Tillyard’s Shakespeare’s Problem Plays.1 Tillyard set out to write about All’s Well that Ends Well, Measure for Measure and Troilus and Cressida, but began his book with a complaint. First, he did not like the names earlier critics had used for this group of plays (‘dark comedies’, ‘problem comedies’) so he was stuck for a title for his book; and then he decided that Hamlet also belongs with this group. Tillyard reluctantly decided to call them all ‘Problem Plays’. He goes on to say: It is anything but a satisfactory term, and I wish I knew a better. All I can do now is to warn the reader that I use it vaguely and equivocally; as a matter of convenience. (Tillyard, op. cit., p. 9)

Tillyard’s book does, however, seek to look at this group of plays as a classifiable ‘group’ occupying a chronological place within some1

2

Shakespeare: Three Problem Plays

thing called ‘the development of Shakespeare’. What Tillyard assumes, then, is that each time Shakespeare wrote a play, he built upon and moved forward from the ideas, themes and styles he had used in previous plays. So, Tillyard’s ‘Epilogue’ tries to place the ‘Problem Plays’ between the plays that came before them, and the plays that followed them: ‘It remains to ask in what ways these plays look forward to or take their place in Shakespeare’s general progress as a dramatist’ (Tillyard, op. cit., p. 138). The assumption is in the grand phrase ‘Shakespeare’s general progress as a dramatist’. There is some truth in the idea that any writer will ‘progress’, will build on what he or she has done before. However, it seems naïve to draw firm conclusions on such a basis. When he sat down to write a play, Shakespeare’s mind was full of all sorts of demands and concerns, most of them probably much more urgent than his idea of his own ‘progress’: Which actors were in the company, and what did they do best? What spectacles were popular at the time? What was the word at Court? Should he write for a classical, mediaeval or some other fanciful setting? In which theatre would they perform, and from what kind of stage would they act? How much money did Shakespeare have left? When were rehearsals scheduled to begin (so, how fast would he have to write)? These objections to Tillyard’s assumption are strengthened by the notorious uncertainty in dating Shakespeare’s plays; and by the fact that most scholars date Othello within the same period. Measure for Measure is dated in 1604 with some confidence; but there is no mention of All’s Well that Ends Well before the First Folio of 1623, and it may have been written at any time between 1598 and 1608 (although 1603–4 are the most likely years). Troilus and Cressida is supposed to belong to 1602: it definitely existed by 1603, but may have been written as early as 1599. We have to be careful, then, and we must think about what we are doing when we treat these plays as a ‘group’. They have many elements in common, and we will certainly discover concerns, types of character and situations they all share, during our study in Part 1 of this book. On the other hand, we must not spend our time trying to classify them, or even assume that they are a ‘group’ at all. This

Introduction

3

would impose an artificial concept onto what Shakespeare wrote as three different plays. *

*

*

Part 1 of this book focuses on close study of selected extracts from each of the three plays, All’s Well that Ends Well, Measure for Measure and Troilus and Cressida. However, before we become involved in our first detailed analysis, it is worth thinking about the difference between plays and other texts, and the extra dimension this adds when we study. This introduction will also explain some technicalities which help us when analysing Shakespeare’s poetry.

Studying Plays Studying a play is different from studying a poem or novel, because a play is meant to be performed in a theatre. It is only printed on pages in a book for the convenience of actors and directors. The play itself does not exist until it is performed in a theatre, in fact. What we have in a book is merely the script – the dead words that are meant to be spoken, and the dramatist’s instructions that are meant to be acted out. Until they are spoken and acted out, there is no ‘play’. All lecturers and teachers will encourage their students to go and see the play, of course. This is not always possible, yet we are urged to study ‘the play’. Throughout Part 1 of this book, and particularly in Chapter 6, we will use strategies to compensate for not seeing ‘the play’: we will make an imaginative effort each time we focus on a scene: we will draw inferences from the dead words and instructions, so we can construct a reliable idea of what the script would be like in performance. This in turn enables us to have an insight into Shakespeare’s stagecraft and dramatic intentions: the way he sets up and exploits dramatic effects, and the contribution dramatic elements make to the significance of the play. ‘The play’ does not exist in a book, as I have said. Instead, it exists as a performance. So, unlike a novel or poem, which you can read on the train or in bed; and which you can close for a while, leaving

4

Shakespeare: Three Problem Plays

it until the day after next, a play exists within a particular space and time. Typically, it occupies a space some 12 metres square, and lasts about two and a half hours. The relationship between writer and audience is therefore radically different. Nowadays the audience is usually allowed a short interval, but we cannot stand up in our seats and say ‘Hold it! I’ve something else to do at the moment!’ Nor can we say ‘Come back to my place and carry on acting there.’ We will consider Shakespeare’s use of the two dimensions of time and space, also.

Shakespeare’s Poetry I shall avoid technical terms as much as possible; but some metrical analysis, and one or two other terms, are useful. We should have some knowledge of the form of Shakespeare’s poetry before we start. Blank Verse In these plays, most of the text is written in blank verse. Blank verse has no rhyme, and ten-syllable lines. Experts disagree about whether blank verse has a metre – a regular pattern of stresses – or not. Those who say that it is metrical regard many of Shakespeare’s lines as ‘irregular’. Others say that it has no set metre, but that some of the lines have a ‘regular iambic metre’. Yet another group of experts says that the natural or dominant stress-pattern in the English language is ‘iambic’; so there is an ‘iambic’ background whenever English is written or spoken, even where there is no set metre. We will not take sides in this argument. It is useful to notice when the stresses in Shakespeare’s poetry do not form any pattern, and we will often call these rhythms ‘irregular’. It is equally useful to notice when there is a strong ‘iambic’ pattern. The next section explains the few technicalities involved. Iambic Pentameter, Caesurae, Couplets An ‘iamb’ or ‘iambic foot’ is a unit consisting of two syllables with

Introduction

5

the stress on the second syllable. So the word ‘report’ is an iamb because we never put the stress on the first syllable and say ‘report’; we always stress the second syllable and say ‘report’. Five ‘iambs’ in succession make a line of poetry called iambic pentameter. For example, in the opening scene of Measure for Measure, the Duke says: For you must know, we have with special soul Elected him our absence to supply; (Measure for Measure, 1, i, 17–18)

If you say this aloud, you naturally stress ‘you’, ‘know’, ‘have’, ‘spe-’ and ‘soul’ in line 17, and ‘-lect’, ‘him’, ‘ab-’, ‘to’ and ‘-ply’ in line 18. If you forget the words and listen to the rhythm, each line sounds like ‘de-dum de-dum de-dum de-dum de-dum’. That is the sound that a regular line of iambic pentameter makes. When we point out metre in our analyses, we will print the stresses in bold type, so our example would look like this: For you must know, we have with special soul Elected him our absence to supply;

Each iambic unit of two syllables is called a ‘foot’, so there are five ‘feet’ in a pentameter line. We will sometimes comment when one of the feet is ‘reversed’. This means that the first syllable in one of the feet is stressed, instead of the second. For example, a few lines after the above lines from the Duke, Angelo says ‘Always obedient to your Grace’s will’. This sounds like ‘dum-de de-dum de-dum dedum de-dum’ because we say ‘Always’ not ‘Always’. Even our examples of regular lines are not perfect, however. Notice that ‘must’ (line 17) and ‘-sence’ (line 18) are not stressed in the iambic pattern; but when we say the line aloud, these syllables are almost as strong as those around them. There is a heavier, more frequent beat in ‘you must know’, and the whole word ‘absence’ has a little more emphasis than the strict iambic metre would allow. It is partly because the words almost break through the regular metrical pattern, that the Duke’s insistence in ‘you must know’ sounds dog-

6

Shakespeare: Three Problem Plays

matic and powerful; and the word ‘Absence’ seems to hang in our ears – appropriately, since the Duke’s absence is crucial to the insecure atmosphere, and developing catastrophes, of Measure for Measure. Pauses are extremely important when analysing rhythm: and punctuation can be used as a rough guide to help us discuss the ‘phrasing’ of a passage. Pauses often come near the middle of a line. If a pause occurs between the fourth and seventh syllables of the line, it can be called a caesura (plural caesurae). I use this term because the alternative is a clumsy phrase: ‘pause in the middle of the line’. As with everything else in studying poetry, you have to use your judgement to decide whether the feature you have noticed is important or not: some pauses are strong and definite; others are hardly there at all. So, there is a strong caesura after ‘know’ (line 17) and hardly any caesura after ‘him’ (line 18) in our example from Measure for Measure. Another helpful sign of rhythm and phrasing in Shakespeare, is the presence or absence of punctuation at the end of a line. I have chosen to avoid the clumsy phrases ‘line with a punctuation mark at the end of it’ and ‘line with no punctuation mark at the end of it’, as well as the rather pompous term ‘enjambement’. We will use the short, self-evident terms end-stopped line and run-on line to describe these two features. In Shakespeare’s plays much of the text is in blank verse. However, we will come across two other kinds of writing as well. Some scenes or parts of scenes are written in prose. It is often worth noticing when Shakespeare shifts from poetry to prose or back again, because it can indicate a change of tone in the drama. For example, the prose sections usually, but not always, involve characters from the lower ranks of society. On the other hand, as you pursue your Shakespeare studies you will find that some passages are printed as poetry in one edition, and as prose in another. This happens when different editors cannot agree, so we will be careful not to draw too many conclusions from such changes. The other kind of writing we will meet occurs when two adjacent lines rhyme. When this happens, the pair of rhyming lines is called a couplet. Shakespeare sometimes writes a couplet for the final lines of

Introduction

7

a scene, act, or important speech (see, for example, Cressida’s speech at the end of Act 1, scene ii of Troilus and Cressida). His couplets are usually in iambic metre, also. Couplets often produce an effect of balance between the two lines, and they lend themselves to neat double statements, or irony, in the final line or half-line. Shakespeare uses them to express a concluding statement: a condensed summingup of what has been happening. For example, at the end of Act 1 of Troilus and Cressida, Nestor sums up the plan to set Ajax and Achilles in competition, in this couplet: Two curs shall tame each other; pride alone Must tar the mastiffs on, as ’twere their bone. (Troilus and Cressida, 1, iii, 391–2)

Some of Shakespeare’s early plays were written almost entirely in couplets, and even in these later works he occasionally uses couplets for a whole speech, as in Cressida’s speech already mentioned (see the end of Act 1, scene ii, Troilus and Cressida). Many critics have remarked that a peculiarity of All’s Well that Ends Well is the way Shakespeare reverts to couplets, and what appears an earlier, more artificial manner, at certain points in the play (see, for example, 2, i, from about line 130 onward). Another variation on this form happens when four lines rhyme alternately (i.e. the first with the third, the second with the fourth). There are one or two songs in these plays, which differ from the forms we have discussed here, and the Duke’s soliloquy at the end of Act 3 of Measure for Measure is in iambic quatrameter couplets; but this introduction covers all the technicalities you need for virtually all the text of these plays. Imagery We pay close attention to imagery in all of the extracts we analyse, so it is important, at the start, to clarify what ‘imagery’ is. We do not call it ‘imagery’ when the words make a picture in your head. We only call a word or a group of words an ‘image’ if they express a comparison between something in the play (something literal), and

8

Shakespeare: Three Problem Plays

something imaginary which is there for the sake of the comparison (something figurative). For example, in All’s Well that Ends Well, the King says: I, after him, do after him wish too, Since I nor wax nor honey can bring home, I quickly were dissolved from my hive . . . (All’s Well that Ends Well, 1, ii, 64–6)

We know that the King is not really a bee, and the society he lives in and rules is not really a beehive. The King compares himself to a bee. This image helps to emphasise his feeling of uselessness. There are two kinds of image, which have different names. If an image is stated in explicit language (such as ‘No more than a fish loves water’ in line 81 of Act 3, scene vi, where ‘No more than’ expresses the comparison between Parolles’s love of words, and a fish’s love of water) it is called a simile. If we understand the comparison but none of the words explain that a comparison is happening (as in our example in which the King compares himself to a bee: we know that he talks of himself as a bee, but the words do not explain this), the image is called a metaphor.

Note 1 E. M. W. Tillyard, Shakespeare’s Problem Plays (London, 1950). Page-references are to the Peregrine Books edition which appeared in 1965.

PA R T 1

ANALYSING SHAKESPEARE’S PROBLEM PLAYS

1 Openings We will begin by looking at how each play begins. The opening of a play establishes a great deal about the imagined ‘world’ that is presented on stage, so we will repeatedly use the device of imagining that we are in the audience, responding to what is said and what happens on the stage in front of us.

Analysis: All’s Well that Ends Well, 1, i, 23–68 In the first scene of All’s Well that Ends Well, the Countess and Lafew discuss Bertram’s departure and the King’s illness. Our extract begins after 22 lines, when they have introduced the skill of Helena’s father into the conversation: Laf : How call’d you the man you speak of, madam? Count : He was famous, sir, in his profession, and it was his great right to be so: Gerard de Narbon. Laf : He was excellent indeed, madam; the king very lately spoke of him admiringly – and mourningly; he was skilful enough to have liv’d still, if knowledge could be set up against mortality. Ber: What is it, my good lord, the king languishes of? Laf : A fistula, my lord. Ber: I heard not of it before.

11

25

30

12

Analysing Shakespeare’s Problem Plays

Laf : Count :

Laf : Count :

Hel: Laf : Count : Ber: Laf : Count :

I would it were not notorious. Was this gentlewoman the daughter of Gerard de Narbon? His sole child, my lord, and bequeathed to my 35 overlooking. I have those hopes of her good that her education promises her dispositions she inherits – which makes fair gifts fairer; for where an unclean mind carries virtuous qualities, there commendations go with pity; they are virtues and traitors too. 40 In her they are the better for their simpleness: she derives her honesty and achieves her goodness. Your commendations, madam, get from her tears. ’Tis the best brine a maiden can season her praise in. The remembrance of her father never approaches 45 her heart but the tyranny of her sorrows takes all livelihood from her cheek. No more of this, Helena; go to, no more; lest it be rather thought you affect a sorrow than to have – I do affect a sorrow indeed, but I have it too. 50 Moderate lamentation is the right of the dead; excessive grief the enemy to the living. If the living be enemy to the grief, the excess makes it soon mortal. Madam, I desire your holy wishes. 55 How understand we that? Be thou bless’d, Bertram, and succeed thy father In manners as in shape! Thy blood and virtue Contend for empire in thee, and thy goodness Share with thy birthright! Love all, trust a few, 60 Do wrong to none. Be able for thine enemy Rather in power than use, and keep thy friend Under thy own life’s key. Be check’d for silence, But never tax’d for speech. What heaven more will, That thee may furnish and my prayers pluck down, 65 Fall on thy head! Farewell. My lord, ’Tis an unseason’d courtier; good my lord, Advise him. (All’s Well that Ends Well, 1, i, 23–68)

Openings

13

First, what sort of scene is presented to the audience when the play begins? Four people enter: young Bertram and old Lafew, young Helena and the old Countess. They are ‘all in black’, presumably mourning the death of the old Count of Rossillion, the Countess’s husband and Bertram’s father. The idea of a funeral is re-inforced by the Countess’s opening words ‘In delivering my son from me, I bury a second husband’. The characters are all nobles except Helena, a ‘gentlewoman’, and the occasion is one of ceremony and sadness – a funeral and a leave-taking. It is therefore surprising that their conversation begins in prose; but as we will see, this suits the peculiar flavour of their exchanges. For the present, we in the audience see a sombre and formal set of people. They are a symmetrical group (male and female, young and old), the first words introduce the metaphor of death/birth/parting, and we sense an unexpected flatness in the way they talk. At the start of a play, the audience is open and receptive, and our minds are very active. We respond, observe, listen, think and classify moment by moment. Who are these people? What has just happened? What is about to happen? These and many other questions are rapidly asked and some are answered as the play introduces us to its ‘world’. Even before our extract begins, at line 23, the audience has learned a great deal, and is beginning to form expectations about the kind of drama that will unfold. First, the symmetrical group and their black clothes, together with the first line’s hint of a funeral, lead us to expect a sombre tone and formality. Bertram’s response to his mother, echoing her idea of parting as a second experience of bereavement, seems to fulfil these expectations: his reply balances her statement in a neat form of counterpoint. Furthermore, she describes him as ‘my son’ in an impersonal construction, and he addresses her respectfully as ‘madam’. So far, our expectation of sombre formality is satisfied. However, there is already a slightly jarring note. Bertram’s reply to his mother does send the same idea back, but he does not return the idea to the same place: he sends it back to somewhere else – towards the offstage father who we already know is dead. The Countess’s line, although formal, has been a highly personal statement, particularly in her use of the word ‘delivering’ which reminds Bertram that she bore him in her womb. He,

14

Analysing Shakespeare’s Problem Plays

on the other hand, does not express grief at parting from her: indeed, his line could be no more than an expression of regret that his father died, which has the annoying consequence that he has to leave Rossillion. It is as if she said ‘I shall miss you’ and he answered, ‘And I, too, shall miss my father.’ This discordant note in the first exchange of the play alerts us to two elements of the play’s world. First, it is a subtle indication that something is missing in the relationship between mother and son. Secondly, Bertram’s answer completely discounts the Countess: as a woman, she is not important – her feelings and her life are treated as of no consequence, while his father, and the King, are significant to him. Bertram mentions his legal situation as the King’s ‘ward’ now that he has been left orphan, and this enlarges the personal situation, showing how society and its servant the law also ignore women. Both of these indications are developed further in the remainder of the scene. Lafew’s reassurance of the King’s protection as her ‘husband’ and Bertram’s ‘father’ only serves to underline the Countess’s powerlessness. However courteous Lafew’s idea may be, it neatly outlines how society provides for a widowed noblewoman. Having lost her man, she would come under the protection of the general patriarchy; and this avoids the possibility of her having authority over her family and lands. The audience senses these tensions: discontinuity in the relationship between Bertram and his mother, and the overwhelming weight of male power taking charge of the situation, but our expectations of the scene are dashed by the Countess’s next question. She raises the King’s illness, Lafew describes it in despairing terms, and she then introduces the fourth character, the young woman who has not yet spoken, as a famous physician’s daughter. The audience is undermined because we expected formality. Perhaps we expected set speeches from the Countess and Bertram on their grief and their parting. Now, the conversation can only be said to be rambling – moving from subject to subject in a disconcertingly unpredictable manner. Now we can turn to the chosen extract. It can be helpful to look at the extract as a visual shape, looking at the blocks of text that are speeches, and the serrations that are

Openings

15

exchanges of brief lines: this can give an idea of the dramatic nature and structure of the passage. In this passage, there are two speeches of some length, both from the Countess, the first in prose and the second in verse. Before and between them, we see exchanges of shorter speeches, some (see lines 31 and 32) very short indeed. The two longer speeches are about what Helena is like, and what the Countess wishes Bertram to be like, respectively, so the Countess describes a feminine and then a masculine ideal. How do these speeches arise? In both cases, somebody changes the subject. Lafew and Bertram finish their brief discussion of the King’s ailment, and Lafew changes the subject by asking for confirmation that Helena is Gerard de Narbon’s daughter. This gives rise to the Countess’s complimentary speech about Helena’s character. Then, a discussion of Helena’s sorrow is interrupted by Bertram, who asks for his mother’s blessing before he leaves. This gives rise to the Countess’s description of an ideal male character and behaviour, to which he should aspire. Summarising the conversation in this way highlights a peculiar effect – something the audience would sense, but probably not realise, while watching a performance: on neither occasion does the Countess answer the question. When Lafew asks her to confirm Helena’s parentage, she gives a complex answer, effectively telling him what Helena is like rather than who her father was. This answer becomes philosophical in the middle, leading to the conclusion that Helena combines educational achievements (‘virtuous qualities’ in the sense of accomplishments from her training) with natural virtues (in the other, moral sense) inherited from her father. By the end of her speech the Countess seems to have conflated the two ideas (nature and nurture), ascribing ‘honesty’ to nature and ‘goodness’ to nurture, both of which simply emphasise the positive outcome, Helena. When Bertram asks for her blessing, the Countess launches into her speech by giving her blessing (‘Be thou bless’d’), but the remainder of her speech emphasises that such a blessing is not hers to give – he will have to earn it by imitating his father’s ‘manners’. The speech immediately becomes philosophical, again dividing the subject (a human being) into different qualities such as ‘blood’, ‘virtue’ and ‘goodness’, which all need to be in harmony to produce

16

Analysing Shakespeare’s Problem Plays

a good or ‘bless’d’ person. By the end of this speech, the Countess has invoked heaven’s aid in developing Bertram’s qualities, but expresses anxiety by asking Lafew to advise him, saying ‘’Tis an unseason’d courtier’. These are brief summaries of the Countess’s speeches, but they help us to appreciate the peculiar flavour of this opening scene. By now the audience is aware of a strong sense of discontinuity and indirection in the whole of the conversation. Subjects are started, not finished, then returned to. Digressions begin, but are then diverted into something else. Relationships between the characters are also incomplete: Bertram and his mother hardly respond to each other as each wishes the other to; Lafew is twice on the verge of being caustic (‘I would it were not notorious’ is a comment on Bertram’s ignorance, and ‘How understand we that?’ is either a reproof for Bertram’s rude interruption, or a comment on the conundrum the Countess has just made of ‘grief ’, ‘enemy’ and ‘living’); Lafew and the Countess misunderstand Helena’s grief, and give inappropriate advice, while the Countess seems to slip from compliments to rather harsh criticism of Helena (‘lest it be rather thought you affect a sorrow’), very quickly. The effect of the whole is of characters who are cut off from each other by disparate wishes and misunderstandings, and who cannot make clear and continuous sense when they attempt to interpret their experiences. At the same time, four ‘subjects’ have been raised: the dominant power of a patriarchal society; the illness of the king – head of that society; an ideal of female character, and an ideal of male character and behaviour. In short, the audience’s expectations are quickly and repeatedly undermined. We are likely to feel destabilised by this play, which begins by throwing riddles at us, then striking off in a new direction before we have had time to digest, let alone solve, them. One further dramatic element of the scene has not been mentioned: Helena is weeping. After the extract, she remarks on ‘these great tears’ (line 78), and Lafew notices her weeping at line 43. We do not know when she begins to weep. Lafew assumes it to be the result of the Countess’s compliments, the Countess assumes it is grief for her dead father, and Helena later reveals that she weeps

Openings

17

because of parting from Bertram, whom she loves. It would be reasonable for her to be weeping throughout the scene, or from – say – line 5, when Bertram confirms that he must go away. However, she is definitely weeping and unable to stop, from line 43 onwards. So far, we have maintained the audience’s viewpoint, describing the scene and summarising conversations in order to highlight how the subject-matter shifts and turns. Our only departure from this approach was in looking at the shape of the text on the page. Now we can approach the play’s opening from a more literary point of view. First, we have already made a remark on the form – that such a formal scene among high-ranking characters starts in prose, is a surprise. This seems to contribute to the effect of a disorganised, rather meandering conversation that we have noted. However, the Countess’s speech from line 57 is in blank verse. We can look at this speech more technically. There is little evidence of any metre until lines 64 and 65, which are regular if ‘heaven’ is pronounced ‘heav’n’. There are five run-on lines, and strong caesurae in all but line 65. This is a large number of run-on lines, and the caesurae are very definite – six of them are sentence-breaks, marked by exclamation marks or full-stops. Putting these two observations together, it seems that the speech works in a series of units which are the length of a line, but which consist of the second half of one poetic line running on to the first half of the next. So, ‘and succeed thy father / In manners as in shape’ (57–8) is a typical unit of phrasing, with the line-break in the middle. This technique enables the Countess to use balanced and condensed constructions for the advice she gives Bertram. Essentially, she tells him to avoid both extremes (for example, ‘Be check’d for silence, / But never taxed for speech’ [63–4]); and she tells him to bring together his two qualities, inherited and acquired (‘blood and virtue’ [58]). In other words, her advice comes in pairs of concepts that he should either include (blood and virtue) or compromise between (behaviours). So, we find pairs of words depending on one verb, such as ‘succeed in . . . manners as in shape’ and ‘blood and virtue . . . contend’; and there are also antithetical phrases with verbs and terms in antithesis (such as ‘check’d’ and ‘tax’d’ [63–4] and ‘enemy’ and ‘friend’ in the same sentence).

18

Analysing Shakespeare’s Problem Plays

These features of the Countess’s style are formal and rhetorical. They give an impression of neatness in thought and expression, of balance, and condensed thought. The Countess continues her doubled constructions when giving her blessing in line 65, offering something ‘That thee may furnish and my prayers pluck down’. The final lines of her speech, however, are in a completely different, and naturalistic, mode. ‘Farewell’ stands alone, and ‘My lord’ addresses Lafew, so line 66 is broken into three, with the Countess turning or moving in the middle of the line. Her true opinion of Bertram is simple and single; the repetition of her call to Lafew, ‘good my lord’, betrays the anxiety she feels. Shakespeare seems to have emphasised the change in style by giving iambic metre to lines 64 and 65, when she is in full flow and concluding her formal speech. The break into natural, emotional expression is very noticeable indeed. Reading or hearing this extract from the play, we might be tempted to think there are many metaphors: it is very dense, condensed in constructions, and the thought is often intricate, sometimes tortuous, certainly difficult to follow. However, studying the extract reveals that there are very few images – far fewer than in most passages from Shakespeare of comparable length. Here is a list of what there is: 1. Lafew comments that Gerard de Narbon would have been immortal ‘if knowledge could be set up against mortality’. The figurative idea of a battle between knowledge and mortality is present, but really this is more ornamental speculation than an image. 2. Lafew uses the word ‘get’, which may suggest that Helena is ‘fertilised’ by the Countess’s compliments and gives birth to ‘tears’. Again, hardly a significant image. 3. The Countess speaks of Helena using her tears as ‘brine’ to ‘season’ (or preserve) her praise. 4. The Countess describes Helena’s sorrow as a ‘tyranny’ which steals the life from her cheek. 5. The Countess talks of Bertram’s ‘blood’ and ‘virtue’ battling to be the ruler (‘contend for empire’) of his character. 6. The Countess talks of heaven’s blessing that her prayers can

Openings

19

‘pluck down’, which will ‘fall on thy [Bertram’s] head’. 7. The Countess calls her son ‘unseason’d’. This could mean he is simple and plain (without the rich taste of ‘seasoning’) but is much more likely to mean that he is like a newly-cut piece of wood, weak and easily bent or warped, not yet ‘seasoned’. Seasoning was a process of keeping and drying timber in order to harden it before it was used in exposed or crucial structures such as ships or house-frames. It is worth listing imagery in this way, when you are studying an extract in detail. Then you have clear, reliable knowledge of how much imagery there is, and you are able to analyse what kinds of imagery are present in the text you are studying. Our list may look quite substantial, but the more we look at it, the more we see that these ‘images’ are predominantly common figures of speech. Calling an inexperienced young man ‘unseason’d’, or talking of a blessing ‘pluck’d’ from heaven and ‘falling’ on somebody’s head, are not striking images – they are the figures of speech current in everyday language. Numbers 1, 2, 5, 6 and 7 in our list are really common speech of this type. Numbers 3 and 4 are more suggestive ideas. However, the only conclusion to be drawn is that there is surprisingly little imagery in the extract. In passing, we may notice that the two most interesting ideas (tears as preserving ‘brine’, and sorrow as a ‘tyrant’ thief of life) apply to Helena; but these two images are not striking enough to provoke any further deductions. What, then, about our impression of a dense language that is difficult to follow? This is not produced by the common figures of speech we have found by analysing the imagery, so we must look at the language of the extract in a more open and inclusive way. What is the language like, or, what do we notice about it? We have called the language ‘dense’, and, looking at the extract again, we see that there are a large number of abstract terms, many of them describing qualities of character, moral values and emotions. What is more, many of these terms are used in a philosophical manner. So, for example, the Countess’s speech about Helena contains ‘her good’, ‘education’, ‘dispositions’, ‘unclean mind’, ‘virtuous qualities’, ‘commendations’, ‘pity’, ‘virtues’, ‘simpleness’, ‘derives’,

20

Analysing Shakespeare’s Problem Plays

‘honesty’, ‘achieves’ and ‘goodness’, all in the space of seven lines. If we select similar terms from the Countess’s speech to Bertram, and include her exchanges with Lafew on ‘grief ’, ‘lamentation’, ‘mortal’, ‘excess’ and ‘living’, in between, we realise that these characters confront life with a sort of analytical verbal armoury: the Countess in particular seems to be using words to break down people and experience into manageable parts, and she makes a constant effort to analyse and explain the relationships between different elements, both in people and in life. This effort at constructing a philosophy out of words is all-inclusive and very ambitious. So, for example, the first line of the play refers to both ends of life in ‘delivering’ and ‘bury’; and the Countess’s concept of character is underpinned by attributing all, holistically, either to nature or to nurture (remember that she sums up Helena by what she ‘derives’ and ‘achieves’, and talks of Bertram’s ‘blood’ and ‘virtue’). What is the effect of all this philosophical effort? In the extract, we are struck by the density and struggles of the Countess’s thinking. The analysis of Helena is not entirely convincing: having separated nature from nurture, the Countess hypothesises a bad nature with good nurture as an example of how things can go wrong, and then gives up on her idea by calling the whole of Helena – both her nature and nurture – ‘the better for their simpleness’. In other words, nature and nurture are not different in Helena, they are unmixed, the same. We are tempted to ask: so what was the point in all that theorising? The final line, which rather vaguely attempts to distinguish ‘honesty’ and ‘goodness’, highlights the failure of the Countess’s verbal efforts. Yes, Helena is good, and this is a compliment; but the Countess has failed to analyse her goodness in any meaningful way. When she confronts the problem of Bertram, the Countess’s terms are similarly questionable. She urges nature and nurture, at the same time, to ‘contend for empire’ in Bertram, and to ‘share’ him. We are tempted to ask: what does she mean? Should they fight until one dominates, or should they co-operate with each other? Further, she asks him to ‘succeed’ to his father’s manners and shape. Yet, surely, the whole drift of her analysis is that manners are not inherited, but learned and acquired?

Openings

21

In fact, the Countess’s verbal onslaught on life fails; and if we think about her subject, we can see that it is right that it should fail. Good manners and behaviour are the outward expression of a good nature, and the relation between inheritance and upbringing in creating a good nature is ultimately unfathomable. Certainly, human character is more complex and mysterious than the Countess’s ideas can encompass, so her words are not convincing. The analysis of her ideas we have just undertaken focuses on the two main speeches. However, there is an even more obvious example of too many words leading to nonsense, when she and Lafew discuss Helena’s grief. Lafew mentions ‘grief the enemy to the living’, and the Countess rearranges the terms into ‘If the living be enemy to the grief ’. Lafew does not think this makes sense, and asks ‘How understand we that?’ His question is applicable to most of the characters’ linguistic attempts on life, and underlines one of the main effects of this opening scene. Here, we listen to an insistent effort at containing life within words. The words are repeatedly undermined – either by a weakness in the argument, by their inadequacy, or by the over-complexity and futility of the thought they express. The audience receives a strong impression of the impotence of language. People experience life and struggle to perceive and explain; but intellect, analysis and language are not adequate to the task – life cannot be explained, represented, or even properly understood. It keeps escaping from the chains of reason and language within which we try to bind it. Close study of this extract has brought us wide-ranging but inconclusive insights into the ‘world’ of All’s Well that Ends Well, and the dominant impression is one of uncertainty. Our expectations are destabilised, the occasion is repeatedly undercut, and characters fail to penetrate or solve the lives they are experiencing. Onstage are funeral and parting, and unexplained sorrow. Offstage is a dying king. The keynote to all of this is profound uncertainty. We can now turn to Measure for Measure.

22

Analysing Shakespeare’s Problem Plays

Analysis: Measure for Measure, 1, i, 1–52

Duke: Esc: Duke:

Esc:

Enter DUKE, ESCALUS, Lords [and Attendants.] Escalus. My lord. Of government the properties to unfold Would seem in me t’affect speech and discourse, Since I am put to know that your own science 5 Exceeds, in that, the lists of all advice My strength can give you. Then no more remains But that, to your sufficiency, as your worth is able, And let them work. The nature of our people, Our city’s institutions, and the terms 10 For common justice, y’are as pregnant in As art and practice hath enriched any That we remember. There is our commission, From which we would not have you warp. Call hither, I say, bid come before us Angelo. [Exit an Attendant.] What figure of us, think you, he will bear? 16 For you must know, we have with special soul Elected him our absence to supply; Lent him our terror, drest him with our love, And given his deputation all the organs 20 Of our own power. What think you of it? If any in Vienna be of worth To undergo such ample grace and honour, It is Lord Angelo. Enter ANGELO.

Duke: Ang: Duke:

Look where he comes. Always obedient to your Grace’s will, I come to know your pleasure. Angelo: There is a kind of character in thy life That to th’observer doth thy history Fully unfold. Thyself and thy belongings

25

Openings

Ang:

Duke:

23

Are not thine own so proper as to waste 30 Thyself upon thy virtues, they on thee. Heaven doth with us as we with torches do, Not light them for themselves; for if our virtues Did not go forth of us, ’twere all alike As if we had them not. Spirits are not finely touch’d 35 But to fine issues; nor nature never lends The smallest scruple of her excellence But, like a thrifty goddess, she determines Herself the glory of a creditor, Both thanks and use. But I do bend my speech 40 To one that can my part in him advertise: Hold therefore, Angelo. In our remove, be thou at full ourself. Mortality and mercy in Vienna Live in thy tongue, and heart. Old Escalus, 45 Though first in question, is thy secondary. Take thy commission. Now, good my lord, Let there be some more test made of my metal, Before so noble and so great a figure Be stamp’d upon it. No more evasion. 50 We have with a leaven’d and prepared choice Proceeded to you; therefore take your honours. (Measure for Measure, 1, i, 1–52)

We begin as with All’s Well that Ends Well: what are we expecting, and what do we see, as the first characters walk onto the stage and begin to speak? Again, the play begins with noblemen – a Duke and a Lord, Escalus. The stage direction emphasises that the scene is formal. The trappings of the Duke’s power – his ‘Attendants’ – are on stage. Within fifteen lines, the effectiveness of his power is demonstrated: he orders an attendant to fetch Angelo, the attendant goes, and thirty seconds later Angelo comes in. What other general impressions will the audience form? Glancing at the blocks of text on the page, it is clear that the Duke dominates.

24

Analysing Shakespeare’s Problem Plays

He speaks to Escalus, interrupts himself to order the fetching of Angelo, then resumes (21 lines). Escalus’s answer is only 21/2 lines long, followed by Angelo’s two-line greeting. The Duke then addresses Angelo for another 21 lines, and Angelo’s reply is three lines long. Both Escalus and Angelo speak to the Duke in a circumspect and flattering manner. For example, Escalus implies that the Duke has ‘ample grace and honour’, and Angelo calls him ‘so noble and so great a figure’. As befits a Duke and noble characters, they all speak blank verse. This opening appears to be a much more stable and unified beginning than that of All’s Well that Ends Well, then. The present authority of the Duke is stamped upon the stage straight away, in contrast to the absent authority of a dying king. There is a single theme, also – ‘government’ – announced in the Duke’s first full line, and his action in handing authority to his deputies is carried out purposefully. This is visually apparent as he hands a ‘commission’ to each of Escalus and Angelo in turn. The event which sets the play in motion is also different. In All’s Well that Ends Well Rossillion’s death leads to Bertram’s departure: the driving event is a death, giving rise to the sombre mood and funereal costumes of the opening. Here, the ‘event’ is the absence of the Duke for a time; and the measures taken to deal with this event appear energetic and adequate. We do not have the same sense, here, that life and death are beyond human control. Indeed, the Duke’s energy suggests the opposite, that proper measures can be taken and will cope with any eventuality. Now we can look at this extract in closer detail, beginning with a glance at the poetry. There is a large number of run-on lines, twentyfour in these 52 lines. In itself this fact does not indicate much, but it provokes us to look more closely. Unlike the Countess’s speech, the Duke speaks in phrases of widely varying length, ranging from his peremptory commands (‘No more evasion’ and ‘Take thy commission’ are good examples) to phrases lasting two and a half lines without a pause, such as ‘Thyself and thy belongings / Are not thine own so proper as to waste / Thyself upon thy virtues’. Caesurae are also without a set pattern: the Duke uses two pauses within a single line, sometimes a single pause, and sometimes none. The naturalness

Openings

25

and energy of his speech is exemplified by the number of times when a very short phrase or a single word stands alone at one or the other end of the line. See, for example, ‘Exceeds,’ (6), ‘I say,’ (15), ‘Call hither’ (14), ‘Angelo’ (42). The Duke speaks a number of regular iambic lines, so the regular beat and speed of his speech also conveys his energy, as in: What figure of us, think you, he will bear? For you must know, we have with special soul Elected him our absence to supply; (lines 16–18)

At the same time, Shakespeare freely adjusts the metre for emphasis. So, when the Duke continues from the above to stress the amount of power he is transferring to Angelo, the first foot of the line is reversed and a heavy stress lands on the first word: Lent him our terror, drest him with our love, (line 19)

Perhaps there is irony here, since ‘Lent’ is a weak temporary word for such emphasis? There are also a number of feminine line-endings, where Shakespeare seems happy to add an unstressed syllable (or sometimes more) to the end of the line, particularly when the sense naturally runs over to the next line: But, like a thrifty goddess, she deter(mines) Herself the glory of a creditor, (lines 38–9)

Of course, these variations and other irregularities work against monotony, and, together with the variations in phrasing, create a natural and emphatic rhythm as the Duke’s poetic ‘voice’ at the start of the play. The opening of Measure for Measure includes several striking images. Here is a list: 1. Explaining government to Escalus would be to ‘unfold’ its ‘properties’.

26

Analysing Shakespeare’s Problem Plays

2. Escalus is ‘pregnant’ in the sense that he is full of knowledge and experience. 3. To be ‘pregnant’ with knowledge is to be ‘enriched’, and ‘art and practice’ act as the father/giver in these parallel figures. 4. ‘From which we would not have you warp’: this compares placing Escalus in authority with placing a piece of wood in position in a structure. If the wood warps it will bend out of position and weaken the structure. So, if Escalus makes ‘warped’ or wrong judgments (i.e. departs from the straight line of justice the ‘commission’ sets out) he will weaken the whole state. 5. The Duke asks what ‘figure of us’ Angelo will make, which brings to mind the ducal stamp on official seals, and on coins. This introduces the idea of Angelo’s ‘lent’ authority as a false or counterfeit coin. 6. ‘drest him with our love’: the Duke’s authority and the ‘love’ of his citizens is compared to clothing or a robe that Angelo will wear. 7. ‘organs’ carries on the suggestion that the Duke’s power is comparable to a human body. 8. Observing Angelo from outside ‘unfolds’ (reveals) the goodness inside him. 9. People are like torches: Heaven gives us qualities and virtues, but we must light ourselves and shine our light around on everybody else. A person who does not use their gifts to the benefit of the community is like an unlit torch which leaves the world in darkness. 10. Nature lending virtues is compared to lending money. Nature remains the ‘creditor’ – it is her money (virtues) and we owe it to her; and nature also says how the money should be used. 11. ‘use’ alludes to usury also, the lending of money at interest. This suggests that we should pay back nature’s gifts with interest: improve on and enlarge our virtues and then give them back to nature. 12. ‘But I do bend my speech’ contains the suggestion that what the Duke says to Angelo is artificially distorted for Angelo’s consumption. The primary meaning of the line, however, is that the Duke has been speaking pointlessly since Angelo already knows all he has said.

Openings

27

13. ‘my part in him advertise’ brings forward another commercial idea – that Angelo’s virtues will ‘advertise’ or publicise the Duke’s virtues. This again emphasises that Angelo’s image will pretend to be, and either cover or be covered by, the Duke’s. It is ambiguous, but a hint of counterfeiting is here again. 14. Angelo’s ‘tongue’ and ‘heart’ have power over mercy and death in Vienna, so mercy and death are said to ‘live’ in them. 15. Angelo compares his virtues to ‘metal’ which may be true gold or may turn out to be softer, base metal, because he has not been tested. He asks to be tested before ‘so noble and so great a figure’ as the Duke’s head or seal is ‘stamped’ upon him. This is another image of counterfeiting. 16. The Duke compares the way he chose Angelo with baking, in the word ‘leaven’d’. He has waited for the dough to rise (i.e. watched Angelo’s character develop) before deciding that Angelo is a good loaf. Unlike our analysis of imagery from All’s Well that Ends Well, this list is full of riches. As you write a list of images like this, you begin to realise that you can pick out recurrent themes, because you notice links between the figurative ideas of different images. In our list, two insistent ideas recur. First, several of the images raise the issue of appearance and reality: does the outside of any person or thing truly represent what is inside? Or, is the appearance misleading, deceptive, a false covering for an evil or corrupt reality? Secondly, there is a series of images which refer to commerce and finance, and in particular the question of counterfeit coins. So, in the first group, Angelo is ‘drest’ in the love the citizens bear the Duke, his life to ‘th’ observer’ truly shows his ‘history’, but unused virtues don’t show themselves, like unlit ‘torches’, and either Angelo will hide behind the Duke’s image or the Duke will act through Angelo’s image (‘that can my part in him advertise’). Above all, the Duke’s power to deal mercy or death must ‘live’ in Angelo’s ‘tongue’ (what he says, the appearance or outside) and his ‘heart’ (the inner core of his being). Both uses of the word ‘unfold’ suggest a life where the inner reality must be discovered or revealed by those with wisdom and knowledge.

28

Analysing Shakespeare’s Problem Plays

In the second group, Angelo is like the ‘metal’ of a coin that will ‘bear’ a ‘figure’ of the Duke, or be ‘stamped’ with ‘so noble and so great a figure’, and the relation between a person and ‘Heaven’ or ‘nature’ is commercial as we borrow every ‘scruple’ (a small measure of gold) of virtue and must pay it back, as well as ‘use’ it as our ‘thrifty . . . creditor’ nature decides. The Duke’s rights and powers have ‘organs’ but Angelo will somehow be or use his image to ‘advertise’ his ‘parts’. It is now time to think back over the various insights we have gained by looking at this extract in such detail. Our first impression was of a much more unified and positive opening scene than that from All’s Well that Ends Well. The Duke dominates the scene. His power is demonstrated, his speech is energetic, he deals with all problems firmly and achieves his aims. On the other hand, the pace of the scene varies a great deal, sometimes fast and smooth, sometimes broken and peremptory; and the imagery insistently harps on counterfeiting, and appearance/reality doubts. These elements undercut the impression of control given on the surface, creating an undercurrent of uncertainty that partly undermines our belief in the Duke’s provisions. It is as if a salesman speaks to you, apparently full of confidence, yet you notice that every other word is ‘bend’ or ‘warp’, ‘creditor’, ‘figure’ and ‘stamped’, so by the end you do not know whether the salesman is selling something counterfeit, something of no value, or is really persuading you to buy. Because of the undercurrents of deception in imagery and language, we do not quite ‘buy’ this opening scene. Further thought about the scene’s content raises more doubts. In particular, we should by now have noticed three oddities in what the Duke says. First, he makes two long speeches (to Escalus, lines 3–21; to Angelo, lines 26–47). In both speeches he tells the audience that there is no point in him saying anything. Secondly, the Duke asks Escalus his opinion of Angelo: is this anxiety, or probing? Does the Duke suspect Angelo’s character, or already know that he is corrupt? Either way, this suggests that we cannot accept the Duke’s approval of Angelo at face value. Thirdly, the Duke is careful to point out that he has inverted their rank: although Escalus is ranked ‘first in question’, the Duke has chosen to make him ‘secondary’ in power to

Openings

29

Angelo. Since the subject of the scene is ‘government’ and so much of it turns on the Duke’s sovereign and absolute power; and since a Renaissance audience would be sensitive to the issues of social ‘order’, this meddling with their rank, or seniority, hints at potential disorder, or at least some hidden purpose of which we are not yet aware. We cannot draw firm conclusions about the two openings we have studied so far, because they differ from each other so radically in their dramatic form and impact. On the other hand, we have found something that they have in common: they are both to some extent self-undermining scenes, even though they undermine themselves in such different ways, and they both therefore leave the audience in an unstable state, expecting further deceptions or misperceptions from the rest of each play.

Analysis: Troilus and Cressida, 1, i, 1–38 Troilus and Cressida begins with the Prologue’s speech, then the drama starts like this:

Troil:

Pand: Troil:

Pand:

Enter PANDARUS and TROILUS. Call here my varlet, I’ll unarm again. Why should I war without the walls of Troy, That find such cruel battle here within? Each Trojan that is master of his heart Let him to field; Troilus, alas, hath none. Will this gear ne’er be mended? The Greeks are strong, and skilful to their strength, Fierce to their skill, and to their fierceness valiant; But I am weaker than a woman’s tear, Tamer than sleep, fonder than ignorance, Less valiant than the virgin in the night, And skilless as unpractised infancy. Well, I have told you enough of this; for my part, I’ll not meddle nor make no farther. He that will have a cake out of the wheat must tarry the grinding.

5

10

15

30

Analysing Shakespeare’s Problem Plays

Troil: Pand: Troil: Pand: Troil: Pand:

Troil:

Pand: Troil:

Have I not tarried? Ay, the grinding; but you must tarry the bolting. Have I not tarried? Ay, the bolting; but you must tarry the leavening. Still have I tarried. 20 Ay, to the leavening; but here’s yet in the word hereafter the kneading, the making of the cake, the heating of the oven, and the baking. Nay, you must stay the cooling too, or ye may chance burn your lips. Patience herself, what goddess e’er she be, 25 Doth lesser blench at suff’rance than I do. At Priam’s royal table do I sit, And when fair Cressid comes into my thoughts – So, traitor! ‘When she comes’! When is she thence? Well, she looked yesternight fairer than ever I 30 saw her look, or any woman else. I was about to tell thee – when my heart, As wedged with a sigh, would rive in twain, Lest Hector or my father should perceive me, I have, as when the sun doth light a-scorn, 35 Buried this sigh in wrinkle of a smile; But sorrow that is couched in seeming gladness Is like that mirth fate turns to sudden sadness. (Troilus and Cressida, 1, i, 1–38)

The audience comes to this opening of the drama after the Prologue’s introductory speech. The Prologue begins ‘In Troy, there lies the scene’, and emphasises the heroic context. There were ‘sixty and nine’ royal Greeks who vowed to ‘ransack’ Troy, which is ‘sixgated’ and has ‘strong immures’. The Greeks are ‘warlike’ with ‘brave’ tents set against the ‘massy staples’ and ‘bolts’ of Troy’s fortified gates. The Prologue is ‘arm’d’ to suit the argument of the play. The subject-matter is ‘broils’ and good or bad are ‘but the chance of war’. The Prologue’s final word, ‘war’, still reverberates around the theatre as Troilus comes onstage deciding to ‘unarm’, and castigating himself for his effeminate weakness. We quickly learn that he is

Openings

31

taking off his armour before going to battle. The opening of the drama proper, then, is a completely surprising volte-face – quite the opposite of the martial opening we have been led to expect. This symmetry of contradiction extends into ironic details, also. We notice that a personal sexual pursuit has caused two great empires to collide, when the Prologue tells us: The ravish’d Helen, Menelaus’ queen, With wanton Paris sleeps; and that’s the quarrel.

Troilus’s entry is a neat reversal of this. In Troilus’s case, a personal sexual pursuit prevents him from fighting. What do we see? A fine-looking young man in full armour comes onto the stage, accompanied by an older man in civilian clothing. The two men speak in such starkly contrasting tones that we are surprised they can talk to each other at all. Their contrast is elaborated and sustained throughout this opening extract. In the audience, we wonder what the play will be about. We were led to expect a heroic and warlike drama: what is the subject of the opening scene? Not war. If anything, the subject of the scene is Troilus’s courtly love ‘passio’ – his obsessional desire for Cressida. The audience, then, is confused by the opening of the play, and provoked to ask: what is the subject of this drama? The most noticeable feature we are immediately presented with is the stark contrast between Troilus and Pandarus. What is this contrast? Does it relate either to the declared theme of war, or to the perceived theme of an obsessional, idealising love? The most obvious contrast between the two characters is in the form of their speech: Troilus speaks in blank verse, and even uses a couplet to end his speech at lines 39–40. Pandarus answers him in prose. This difference of form implies much more than simply the difference in rank between royal Troilus and commoner Pandarus. Troilus’s blank verse is appropriate to the emotions he expresses; Pandarus’s prose underlines the cynical pragmatism of his attitude. Imagery and diction further emphasise the gulf between these two. Troilus’s images are:

32

Analysing Shakespeare’s Problem Plays

1. His courtship of Cressida, compared to a ‘cruel battle’. 2. Troilus’s weaknesses as a result of his passion, compared to ‘a woman’s tear’, ‘sleep’, ‘ignorance’, ‘the virgin in the night’ and ‘unpractis’d infancy’. 3. Troilus’s behaviour while suffering is more stoical than the Goddess Patience could manage (although Troilus unconsciously, and revealingly, makes a mistake in expressing this and says the opposite, that he does ‘blench’ more than Patience would – clearly not what he intended to say). 4. Troilus forgetting to think about Cressida all the time, compared to a ‘traitor’. 5. Troilus’s sigh compared to a wedge which, when driven into his heart, will split it in two. 6. Troilus covering up his feelings compared to ‘when the sun doth light a-scorn.’ 7. Sorrow is said to be ‘couched’, i.e. lying down asleep, within ‘seeming gladness’. Pandarus uses one image: that Troilus’s courtship of Cressida can be compared to baking a cake, with Troilus the baker and Cressida the cake. He elaborates this comparison, implying various doubleentendres with ‘leavening’, ‘kneading’ and ‘heating of the oven’, as well as his ambiguous warning about ‘cooling’ or you might ‘burn your lips’. Clearly, in Pandarus’s simile, sexual gratification is equivalent to eating. Troilus’s ideas, then, range from battles, to contempt for the behaviours of women, idiots and children, to a Goddess, a heart violently split, and the large natural symbol, the sun. In short, Troilus has large ideas: even when he mentions ‘unpractised infancy’ he thinks in wide-ranging terms of all helpless infants, everywhere. Pandarus, on the contrary, uses an idea from the domestic arena of everyday practical living. Furthermore, Pandarus’s idea comes from the class of people who have at least witnessed a baking, even if they have never done any cooking themselves. Troilus’s references to ‘Patience’ and to himself as ‘traitor’ (allegiance is an unchanging duty), together with all the references to time (‘when is she absent?’, ‘tarry’ (6 times), ‘stay’ and ‘hereafter’)

Openings

33

add the concept of permanence to Troilus’s love. By contrast, Pandarus’s image is of consumption: a cake, once eaten, is used up. Troilus’s two mistakes (the inadvertent admission that he will ‘blench’ before Patience, and catching himself not thinking of Cressida at dinner) already suggest that he cannot match his own ideals. Life is flux and change, which rule Troilus despite his will. In keeping with his prose delivery and his image, Pandarus’s diction is resolutely common and homely. He uses ‘gear’, ‘meddle’, ‘make’ as well as the group of homely words for cake-making. Troilus’s diction contrasts both in vocabulary (words such as ‘unpractised’, ‘valiant’, ‘suff ’rance’, ‘perceive’ and ‘couched’) and in the rhetorical constructions he uses. For example, see the imprecation ‘Each Trojan . . . Let him to field’, and the formal simile ‘as when the sun . . . etc.’ In addition, all but one of Troilus’s poetic lines are end-stopped, and that one (line 4) has a natural pause despite the absence of punctuation. So Shakespeare goes out of his way to emphasise a rhetorical and hyperbolic style for Troilus, in contrast to the homely prose in which Pandarus answers him. In this scene, the style is the content to a large extent, for it is through the style that we perceive two fundamentally opposed attitudes to love. By implication, these two attitudes are also two antithetical approaches to life. To Troilus, Cressida’s importance cannot be exaggerated: she is on a par with the great natural forces of nature, the deciding events of history, goddesses and fate. To Pandarus, courting and possessing a woman is merely equivalent to baking and eating a cake. The argument that is begun so vividly in this opening scene, then, is the age-old dispute between idealism on the one hand, and a cynical, pragmatic materialism on the other hand. The irony is that these two men, so opposite in temperament, are held together by the identity of their object: both of them are intent on the seduction of Cressida by Troilus. We can put this conflict in another way. Troilus apprehends life as a story of large and symbolic forces, and he thinks in abstract concepts. So, even in these first forty lines, he has enlarged on concepts of courage and effeminacy, and mentioned – in one case personified – patience and fate. Pandarus contrasts with him: he perceives the world around him in merely concrete terms, and he relates his expe-

34

Analysing Shakespeare’s Problem Plays

riences to the items around him – such as cakes. The audience is therefore subjected to two very different ways of interpreting the raw material of life. So, as in All’s Well that Ends Well and Measure for Measure, one of the issues raised at the opening of Troilus and Cressida is whether it is possible to understand the thing itself, reality, and what is the role of language in interpreting reality. In All’s Well that Ends Well, the Countess’s failing attempts to analyse, and the discontinuity of conversation, highlight a failure to master what is happening and who we are. In Measure for Measure, the Duke’s confident manner is betrayed by his words, and the ambiguity of the appearance/reality theme. In Troilus and Cressida we quickly recognise that Troilus and Pandarus are looking at the same woman and the same world; but the world and woman Troilus sees are not the same seen by Pandarus. Which one is the ‘real’ Cressida? The play will tease us with this question throughout, and it is helpful at the outset to realise that it is not primarily a question of female morality. It is a matter of being unable to know, because so much of life alters with perception, and language is no sure guide to truth.

Conclusions 1. All three scenes undercut their own discourse, contradicting the audience’s expectations. Alternative discourses which are set up within the scenes are also undercut, leaving us in a state of multiple uncertainty. So, for example, our expectation from the formal, funereal appearance of four characters in All’s Well that Ends Well is undercut by Bertram’s disjointed reply to his mother. Additionally, the Countess’s explanations of character and morality and the apparent cause of Helena’s grief are both exploded. Then, the sombre dramatic style and the significance of words are both undercut by Helena’s wit and Parolles’s absurdity. In Measure for Measure, the Duke’s actions are increasingly mysterious, a fact that is acknowledged by Escalus: ‘it concerns me to look into the bottom of my place’. Meanwhile, the Duke’s discourse on ‘government’ has unravelled, and he undermines his

Openings

35

own account of Angelo. In Troilus and Cressida, the warlike Prologue gives way to a shocking display of dithering weakness, undercut in its turn by Pandarus’s sexual innuendo. Troilus’s courtly discourse of love and suffering is not only pompous and flawed in itself, but is further undermined when he decides to fight after all. 2. Consider these opening scenes from a director’s point of view, also. In All’s Well that Ends Well, should Helena weep noticeably throughout the scene? Should the Countess sound increasingly desperate, as her analytical wisdom falls flat? Is Bertram polite, or downright rude? In Measure for Measure, the Duke could be prolix and short-tempered, or exude confidence. Angelo can choose to be earnest, or blatantly sycophantic. In Troilus and Cressida, you might play the opening scene for laughs: does Troilus have a sense of humour? How far does the director want to make fun of this pompous, self-absorbed adolescent? In each case the director can choose whether splits in the surface should shout for attention; or whether to leave them as subtly indicated by the text. These plays are unusual in offering the director so much flexibility: the openings of Hamlet (on the battlements at night), Macbeth (three witches on a heath), or Twelfth Night (the lovesick Orsino), to choose three plays from the same period, give far less scope for varied interpretations in performance. 3. All three scenes investigate the relationship between terms and values. So, in All’s Well that Ends Well, the Countess’s use of ‘derive’, ‘achieve’, ‘blood and virtue’ and so on, only underlines the inability of language to account for reality. In places (such as the conundrums involving ‘grief ’, ‘enemy’ and ‘living’) words whirl helplessly, unable to mean anything in relation to the values they purport to signify. In Measure for Measure, a questionable use of terms rests on the Duke’s commercial metaphors, which are undercut in their turn by the counterfeiting motif. In Troilus and Cressida, the contrast between Troilus and Pandarus suggests that we create different realities by means of style, thought and speech. Certainly, Pandarus and Troilus have different Cressidas in mind. 4. Consequently, the audience feels destabilised at the start of these

36

Analysing Shakespeare’s Problem Plays

plays: there are no constant values to cling to, yet we are bombarded by competing accounts, each one quickly exploded. The audience also has no idea what kind of a play to expect: dramatic style is self-demolished, and we do not know what will come next. 5. Unsurprisingly, authority and order are left in a state of flux at the end of each scene. All’s Well that Ends Well depicts an ailing patriarchal authority offstage, in despair for its own life, and the Count’s death has left his family without sufficient ‘authority’ to run its own affairs. In Measure for Measure, the Duke’s departure removes true ‘authority’ from Vienna and the stage, and questions about what is ‘drest’ in his robes abound – again, order suffers a vacuum at the top. In Troilus and Cressida, passion is in conflict with manly duty, so ‘authority’ is set aside. The honourable, martial values to which Troilus subscribes (even while resolving to ‘unarm’) are equally undermined by Pandarus’s cynicism. 6. Finally, all three plays open with departures or diversions. In each, a settled progress or situation is breaking apart. There is an emphasis on going away, in Troilus’s case from the battle.

Methods of Analysis Being Methodical In this chapter, we have looked at each extract in a number of different ways. This has led our analysis to seem pedantic at times, and some of the points we have noticed are really self-evident. For example, we did not need to analyse form, imagery and metre in order to notice that Troilus and Pandarus have conflicting attitudes and styles of speech: that is obvious from the first time you read or watch the opening scene. However, it is helpful to begin practising analysis in a methodical way, for several reasons. A methodical approach makes sure that you check your impressions of the scene. So, for example, in the opening scene of All’s Well that Ends Well we might have had the impression that there was

Openings

37

dense language full of imagery. Analysing the imagery corrected that impression: there is dense language and hardly any imagery, almost all of which is of a common conversational kind. Being methodical ensures that you can support your comments and conclusions with solid evidence. So, for example, in Measure for Measure, we might rightly comment that the Duke’s ‘voice’ is emphatic and varied in phrasing and pace. Analysing the rhythm enables us to support this statement with the evidence of long unbroken phrases where his speech seems to rush (lines 27–31, for example), and short peremptory phrases where he is emphatic and brief (such as line 50: ‘No more evasion.’). Finally, being methodical makes sure that you do not miss a significant feature. So, for example, remembering to visualise the opening of All’s Well that Ends Well reminded us that we watch a young girl weeping through most of the scene. She only makes one verbal contribution, which is ambiguous (‘I do affect a sorrow indeed, but I have it too’). Watching her weep makes this unexplained grief much more important dramatically than it is in the text. However, it would become pedantic to continue in this way. As you become more experienced and more confident, you will find that you can omit some approaches with certain passages – because your experience tells you that they are plainly irrelevant or insignificant in that particular passage. Or, you can tackle several aspects of a passage at once – because you have quickly noticed the significant features, and they all contribute to a strong impression you have quickly realised just from looking at the extract for the first time. For example, with experience and confidence, we could have approached the opening scene of Troilus and Cressida in one go, because the contrast between Troilus and Pandarus, and their opposed attitudes of idealism and cynicism, are so obviously the main thrust of all the dramatic, linguistic and poetic features of the scene. We will allow ourselves to become more confident as we continue to study, through the chapters of Part 1 of this book. However, it is important to begin with a secure method such as the one we have followed in this chapter.

38

Analysing Shakespeare’s Problem Plays

The Method 1. Take an overview of the scene, from the point of view of a person sitting in the audience watching and listening to the play. How many characters are there, what are they wearing and what do they look like, what action (if any) takes place, what mood or style is created, are there surprises? All these questions and many more arise from imagining the scene in performance. 2. Part of this overview may involve looking at the text as it is set out on the page. Check whether it is poetry or prose, or where it changes between poetry and prose. Check the ‘blocks’, which are longer speeches, and the ‘serrated’-looking episodes where short lines intercut each other: this gives you clues to the dramatic style and the mood, or the amount of movement there is on stage. 3. Analyse the text, looking at imagery, rhythm (phrasing and the general ‘flow’ or ‘pace’ of the language), diction, and – where appropriate – metre (see ‘Analytical Techniques’, below, for more detailed suggestions). In each case, look for and describe the relation between the subject-matter, and any feature you have noticed. So, for example, we noticed that Pandarus’s one extended image of baking is an everyday domestic image (analysing the text). We commented that this expresses his cynical and pragmatic attitude to love (related to content/ subject-matter). 4. Of course, you think about the characters, what they say, and the subject-matter of the extract, all the time. In other words, the content, what it is about, is inseparable from every stage of analysis. So, analysing the text is not such a dry and mechanical process as it appears to be in (3) above. You will often understand the content straight away, and then analyse features of the text that contribute to the whole effect; or you will notice both at the same time, and all the analysis does is put what you already know into a secure analytical form. However, there will also be times when close analysis reveals ideas and themes you did not immediately pick up. Gradually, as you become more experienced, this whole process will become more natural and simultaneous. You will feel that you know what you are aiming for, and what you are looking for, when you analyse a passage from Shakespeare.

Openings

39

Analytical Techniques 1. Analysing imagery can be done in the stages we have used in this first chapter: 1.1 Make a list of the images, explaining each comparison. 1.2 Look at the list, and think about what the image-ideas contribute to (a) the character who uses them, (b) the scene, or themes. Look for groups of images of the same type (as we noticed several commercial images, and several with the idea of false appearance or counterfeiting, in Measure for Measure), or contrasts between images, which may also contrast different characters (as we noticed grandiose imageideas from Troilus, and homely ones from Pandarus, in Troilus and Cressida). 2. Analysing rhythm may include looking at: 2.1 End-stopped or run-on lines, caesurae, and punctuation in general. The higher the proportion of end-stopped lines, the more likely it is that the poetry sounds formal, and speeches are more static, like set-pieces. The fewer end-stopped lines there are, the more likely it is that the speech will sound natural and informal, or driven by powerful immediate emotion. 2.2 Caesurae are sometimes very regular: a strong caesura in almost every line, may indicate that the poetry is quite formal, even if there are many run-on lines. This point will become clear if you look back to the Countess’s speech to Bertram from All’s Well that Ends Well. 2.3 Looking at punctuation in general can be a very revealing guide. However, you are only looking for noticeable features, so you should pay particular attention to places where there is an unusually long phrase (say, two or more lines unbroken, as twice in lines 27–31 of our Measure for Measure extract); or where there are two, three or more phrase-breaks within a line, what can be called a cluster of punctuation (as, for example, in All’s Well that Ends Well in line 66 of our extract). These unusually long or short phrases are usually indicative. So, we can say that the Duke tends to rush over

40

Analysing Shakespeare’s Problem Plays

his comments on Angelo’s virtues (Measure for Measure), hence the long phrases. And we can say that the Countess’s broken phrasing conveys a change of mood, as she gives up on theories, and reveals her human anxieties. The broken phrases she addresses to Lafew (lines 66–8) seem to make the poetry come down to earth with a bump, just as her mood comes down to earth (All’s Well that Ends Well). 3. Analysing diction means that you describe the kinds of words used, the kinds of constructions used, the social class or style of the expression, or anything else you notice about the language of the passage. 3.1 We noticed the kinds of words used in All’s Well that Ends Well, when we commented that there are a large number of abstract terms for qualities in people, and for moral values (for example, ‘blood’, ‘virtue’, ‘goodness’, ‘honesty’, and many more). 3.2 We noticed that several constructions in the opening of All’s Well that Ends Well, are of the same kind: several times, the Countess uses pairs of terms, both related to one verb (as in ‘succeed thy father in manners as in shape’, lines 57–8), which gives her speech an analytical, even academic effect. We also noticed Troilus’s rhetorical constructions, such as ‘Each Trojan . . . Let him to field’ (lines 4–5), in Troilus and Cressida. 3.3 We noticed expression denoting a social class when commenting that Pandarus speaks common language in the opening scene of Troilus and Cressida. We commented on ‘gear’, ‘meddle’, ‘make’, and his baking terms. We noticed, similarly, that the Duke in Measure for Measure is sometimes rather peremptory and short-tempered in the way he expresses himself, such as ‘No more evasion’ (line 50). 3.4 It is important to be receptive and open-minded when looking at diction, because almost anything you notice may be helpful to understanding how the extract works. So, we might notice, in the opening scene of Troilus and Cressida, that Troilus has mentioned ‘war’, ‘battle’, ‘goddess’, ‘royal’, ‘traitor’, ‘rive’, ‘sun’ and ‘fate’, all within the first forty lines.

Openings

41

His diction is thus filled with grand or absolute words: the way he speaks is rather hyperbolic. 4. Analysing metre, in Shakespeare, is not as central as it can be when studying a lyric poet. However, looking for regular lines or couplets can help, and some other subtle details of metre can be indicative. For an example, we can look at the final two lines of our extract from Troilus and Cressida, where Troilus uses a couplet to round off his speech: But sorrow that is couch’d in seeming gladness Is like that mirth fate turns to sudden sadness.

The fact that Troilus uses a couplet, and that the metre is generally regular, only weighed down by the heavy stresses in the middle of the second line, indicates how formal and serious he intends to be, and hints to us that this young man may be overserious, even pompous. However, metrical analysis also shows us that Troilus’s couplet leads to feminine rhymes (where the final syllable is unstressed). This has a subtly undermining effect, making the couplet sound less successful. It is the merest suggestion that Troilus may be indecisive, or vague-minded, after all. To understand the subtlety of such an effect, compare the couplet from the play with the way it sounds, re-drafted with ‘masculine’ rhymes: But sorrow that is couch’d in seeming joys Is like that mirth fate suddenly destroys.

Much of Shakespeare’s blank verse is simply very irregular, but there are occasional metrical passages, and metrical effects, which are worth noticing.

Suggested Work I shall make two suggestions at this stage, both of which will help you to practise the approaches we are developing.

42

Analysing Shakespeare’s Problem Plays

1. Continue from the analysis that has been demonstrated in this first chapter, to the end of the scene. So, in All’s Well that Ends Well, carry out a full analysis of the rest of Act 1, scene i, in which Helena is briefly alone before being joined by Parolles, then left alone in soliloquy again at the end of the scene. In Measure for Measure, analyse the remainder of Act 1, scene i, in which the Duke leaves, and Angelo and Escalus agree to meet to discuss their powers. In Troilus and Cressida, analyse the remainder of Act 1, scene i, in which Troilus and Pandarus squabble about Cressida, and Pandarus leaves Troilus alone in soliloquy, before Aeneas enters and persuades Troilus to go with him to the battle. Carrying out one or more of these analyses will give you practice at using our methodical approach, and will reveal further insights into the plays, building on the understanding of how each drama opens, that we have developed in this chapter. The scenes vary in length: the remainder of Act 1, scene i in All’s Well that Ends Well, for example, is a very long passage for analysis, including some complex witty speeches between Helena and Parolles; whereas the rest of the scene from Measure for Measure is quite short. 2. As a separate exercise, it is worth practising imagining the play in performance, allowing yourself to explore and describe the drama and action. I suggest that you look at the second scene of each play in this way. This will not only give you experience of this way of ‘reading’ drama, but also you will notice further dramatic features that have not appeared in the openings we have studied. From All’s Well that Ends Well, look at the whole of Act 1, scene ii, imagining it in performance. This scene begins by setting the political scene, with the King and his lords onstage; then, in the second half of the scene, the King welcomes Bertram, and the subject reverts to youth and age, fathers and sons, and the King’s misgivings about the younger generation. It is worth thinking about power and authority in this scene, since the absent authority of Act 1, scene i is now on the stage: where is power in this scene? How would the characters be grouped and positioned? What would Bertram’s entrance look like, and how would it affect the groups of people on stage?

Openings

43

From Measure for Measure, look at the first 77 lines of Act 1, scene ii. In this scene Lucio and two other gentlemen are in ‘a public place’ (in contrast to the confidential interior of the opening scene). They begin discussing politics but soon change the subject, before Mistress Overdone the bawd enters. Imagine how these characters will act and move, up to the point where Lucio and the gentlemen leave, and before the entrance of Pompey. Think about authority again: formal authority is offstage, but mentioned (the first three words are ‘If the Duke . . .’); but who enjoys dominance onstage? Is the position of dominance contested, or does it shift during the extract? How are the characters grouped (a) before and (b) after Mistress Overdone’s entrance? You may also consider the first part of this scene as a parody-by-parallel of the opening scene: Lucio, and two gentlemen, may call to mind the Duke, and two lords (Escalus and Angelo). In Troilus and Cressida, imagine how the first 57 lines of Act 1, scene ii will appear on stage. This scene takes place at some vantage point where Cressida and Alexander, her servant, stand to watch warriors returning from the battle. They discuss Ajax and Hector, before Pandarus joins them in observation and gossip. Soon after, Alexander leaves. There are several dramatic features to consider (think, for example, about Pandarus coming near enough to catch what the others are saying; or Alexander walking out while Pandarus talks). However, it is again worth thinking about where action takes place: these people are a peripheral society, and the war and warriors are offstage. You may also like to consider this scene in relation to the preceding one, in which two of the royal princes (Troilus and Aeneas) were going out to battle. It is intriguing to think that Cressida may well have been watching Act 1, scene i from a distance, as well.

2 Young Men One of the common characteristics of these plays is the weakness of the central young male character. Both Bertram (All’s Well that Ends Well) and Claudio (Measure for Measure) are – in their different ways – thoughtless and selfish young men who learn humiliating lessons during the course of the drama. Troilus (Troilus and Cressida) is a more complex character, but his romantic idealism is regarded as a weakness by more cynical figures such as Pandarus, Diomed, Ulysses and Thersites. Troilus’s romanticism is a stage of young male development he has to discard, and he experiences harsh disillusionment. In this chapter, we begin by looking at a sample from each of these young men. Our aim is to consider any qualities they have in common, and to look at male development in all three plays, in a more general discussion building out from the extracts analysed.

Analysis: All’s Well that Ends Well, 4, ii, 27–66 In this extract Bertram courts Diana: Dia:

This has no holding, To swear by Him whom I protest to love That I will work against Him. Therefore your oaths Are words, and poor conditions but unseal’d – At least in my opinion. 44

30

Young Men

Ber:

Dia: Ber: Dia : Ber:

Dia :

Ber:

Dia:

Change it, change it. Be not so holy-cruel; love is holy; And my integrity ne’er knew the crafts That you do charge men with. Stand no more off, But give thyself unto my sick desires, Who then recovers. Say thou art mine, and ever My love as it begins shall so persever. I see that men make rope’s in such a scarre, That we’ll forsake ourselves. Give me that ring. I’ll lend it thee, my dear, but have no power To give it from me. Will you not, my lord? It is an honour ’longing to our house, Bequeathed down from many ancestors, Which were the greatest obloquy i’th’world In me to lose. Mine honour’s such a ring; My chastity’s the jewel of our house, Bequeathed down from many ancestors, Which were the greatest obloquy i’th’world In me to lose. Thus your own proper wisdom Brings in the champion Honour on my part Against your vain assault. Here, take my ring; My house, mine honour, yea, my life be thine, And I’ll be bid by thee. When midnight comes, knock at my chamber window; I’ll order take my mother shall not hear. Now will I charge you in the band of truth, When you have conquer’d my yet maiden bed, Remain there but an hour, nor speak to me. My reasons are most strong and you shall know them When back again this ring shall be deliver’d; And on your finger in the night I’ll put Another ring, that what in time proceeds May token to the future our past deeds Adieu till then; then, fail not. You have won A wife of me, though there my hope be done.

45

35

40

45

50

55

60

65

46

Analysing Shakespeare’s Problem Plays

Ber:

A heaven on earth I have won by wooing thee. [Exit.] (All’s Well that Ends Well, 4, ii, 27–66)

The stage situation in this scene is simple: Bertram and Diana are the only characters, and they talk to each other confidentially. Bertram’s attitudes and movements may include kneeling, clasping Diana’s hand, or moving towards her. She, on the other hand, seems to be in a more static and commanding position reflecting her dominance of the agenda. In the context of the play this is a short and predictable scene, being only one stage in the implementation of Helena’s plot. We know that Diana is following instructions Helena gave in Act 3, scene vii, and the success of the bed-trick plot is related in Bertram’s passing reference during Act 4, scene iii, and in Act 4, scene iv. One of the strongest impressions this scene will make on the audience, then, is of predictability. Indeed, the whole of this part of the play is taken up by predictable plots: so we follow the inevitable tricking of Bertram in Helena’s plot, which alternates with scenes in which the Lords Dumaine arrange to unmask Parolles. Predictability is emphasised by several elements. When Diana asks for the ring, and Bertram first refuses and then, under the compulsion of his lust, agrees to give it, events confirm Helena’s prediction from Act 3, scene vii: This ring he holds In most rich choice; yet, in his idle fire, To buy his will it would not seem too dear, (All’s Well that Ends Well, 3, vii, 25–7)

Helena describes Bertram’s manner of wooing, and the way in which his ‘important blood’ will carry all before it, promising to ‘direct’ Diana on ‘how ’tis best to bear it’. In this scene we merely witness Helena’s words come true, and at the end of the scene Diana reflects that her mother also predicted Bertram’s behaviour: My mother told me just how he would woo As if she sat in’s heart. She says all men Have the like oaths. (4, ii, 69–71)

Young Men

47

Shakespeare, then, has gone to some lengths to remove any element of surprise or revelation from this scene. The consequence of this is twofold. First, we are strongly impressed by the ease with which Bertram can be manipulated, and the fact that he behaves exactly according to type. As Diana says, ‘all men / Have the like oaths’. Secondly, the absence of dramatic revelation focuses the audience’s attention elsewhere. We know what will happen, so we focus on how it happens: we pay close attention to what the characters say. The dialogue is in blank verse. There are shorter, more rapid exchanges as Diana demands and he denies the ring, and as soon as he has gained his rendezvous, Bertram only speaks one line before rushing away. Otherwise, the speeches are all of some substance and length. Our extract begins half-way through an eleven-line speech of Diana’s, which is a formally-constructed argument to support the initial statement, that ‘’Tis not the many oaths that makes the truth.’ She develops her argument in order to reach the point where our extract begins, where she highlights the error of Bertram’s argument by turning it into an evident self-contradiction: ‘To swear by Him whom I protest to love / That I will work against him.’ Her conclusion is that his oaths are ‘words, and poor conditions but unseal’d’ (where ‘but’ seems to mean ‘merely’, i.e. words which are only words and have no legal – or ‘sealed’ – force). Helena’s speech, then, sets the tone of a formal moral argument, using illustration and logic to support a premise, then applying that principle to reach a conclusion. How does Bertram’s reply deal with this formal logic? His answer is contained in three words: ‘love is holy’. The rest of his speech is not a reply to her opinion at all. Instead, he assures her of his ‘integrity’ twice, and in between, he pleads for her pity in standard courtly love terms: his desire is ‘sick’, and ‘recovers’ only if she will submit. We have noticed that Bertram does not engage in moral debate beyond the assertion that ‘love is holy’. This is assertion, not logic. Not only is it a highly questionable statement in itself, it is also undermined by Bertram’s own ambivalent attitude to the idea of ‘holiness’. When he called Diana ‘holycruel’, this was clearly a criticism – the opposite of what he now means by ‘holy’! However, Bertram’s speech is also a recognisable setpiece – he swears undying love while begging for what he wants. It is

48

Analysing Shakespeare’s Problem Plays

a commonplace of the ardent courtly lover. We cannot miss the selfishness of his motives in ‘give thyself unto my sick desires’, nor the obvious irony. He acknowledges that desire has made him ‘sick’ yet still expects her to believe that he will continue to love when he ‘recovers’. Bertram’s speech comes to a neat finale in a couplet rhyming ‘ever’ and ‘persever’. The aggression that underlies such courtly wooing is emphasised by the number of commands Bertram gives. ‘Change . . . change . . . be not . . . Stand no more off . . . give thyself . . . Say thou art mine’: these are all imperatives, and the four pronouns ‘my . . . my . . . mine . . . my’ within six lines also set up a recurrent note in Bertram’s speech, a regular self-centred chime. The rhythm of the speech supports this emphasis on self-centred urgency. Notice the short commanding phrases ‘Stand no more off ’ and ‘Say thou art mine’. Both are followed by longer, more flowing accounts of the consequences that will follow from her submission. Each time, Bertram issues a short, peremptory order, which hits and holds up the flow of the verse; then, each time, he uses a faster and softer tone for his hope or his promises. The rhythm, then, accentuates what is crucial to Bertram – her sexual surrender – making this interrupt and stand out from the verse. The next formal exchange between Bertram and Diana happens the other way around. Bertram speaks first, describing his ring as an ‘honour’ and saying that for him to part with it would be ‘the greatest obloquy i’th’world’. Diana’s reply repeats Bertram almost word for word. She equates her honour with his ring, and then begins ‘My chastity’s the jewel’ before she repeats Bertram’s sentence exactly. However, Diana’s speech has two more lines (49–51) in which she states the conclusion to be drawn from the equivalence between his ring and her honour. Just as Diana previously turned his love-religion into a neat contradiction to highlight its wrongness, so now she enlists his words against him, equally neatly. If we are logical, there is only one conclusion to be drawn from this exchange – that Bertram should not part with his ring, and Diana should not part with her honour. When Diana parrots Bertram’s own phrases back to him, it is an effective riposte. It also marks their philosophical opposition very

Young Men

49

clearly. He asserts that a lump of precious metal – his ring – is equivalent to an ideal – honour. This is the same as his stance throughout the scene, that material things are raised to the level of metaphysical concepts. So, Bertram asserted that ‘love’ (by which he means sex, physical gratification) is ‘holy’. Diana takes the opposite view, saying that her ‘honour’, a metaphysical concept, is as real as a ‘jewel’, a material thing. So Bertram’s mind typically sanctifies the material, while Diana objectifies the metaphysical. This conflict between two opposed perceptions of truth will be further discussed later in the present chapter. For the second time, Bertram ignores everything they have said. It must be the enormous pressure of desire that drives his speech. Instead of concluding that his idea is immoral, he discards all ‘honour’, family and ancestors, in saying ‘take my ring’. To a renaissance audience, Bertram’s willingness to sacrifice his entire family, birth and forebears would appear much more shocking than it might today. Striking at his clan, Bertram is striking at the foundation of order and the origin of manners. So, Shakespeare emphasises that the young man’s desire carries all before it: ‘My house, mine honour, yea, my life be thine.’ We will look at Diana’s speech of submission separately. For now, we want to conclude our account of Bertram. Once he has gained his victory, he does not waste any more speeches: he says one line and rushes out. However, the one line he speaks shows that he has not heard anything Diana has said. His idea – that adulterous sex is equivalent to ‘heaven’, and that ‘heaven’ can be enjoyed on earth – is blasphemous in the extreme. Diana’s clear paradox from lines 27–9 has had no effect on Bertram whatsoever. What strikes us most about Bertram in this scene? There is a pattern to their exchanges, where logic and morality are self-evidently on Diana’s side, and she wins every exchange with devastating clarity. Then, Bertram ignores his defeat to pursue what he wants. This structure emphasises one simple and over-riding principle in Bertram: his driving need to conquer her, and satisfy his lust. This plainness and single emphasis strikes the audience as a surprise. So, although we are not surprised at what happens, we are surprised at just how blatant, blind and deaf a lustful young man can be.

50

Analysing Shakespeare’s Problem Plays

We now turn to Diana’s speech. She has demonstrated a clear understanding of her honour, morality, and Bertram. Yet she suddenly (and for no reason) declares that she will sleep with him. She does so in her first line, without preamble. We know that she is setting up the bed-trick plot – but her change of heart is so sudden and irrational that we are surprised she can get away with it. The effect is the same again: it highlights Bertram’s blindness. Why is he not suspicious? Why does he believe her sudden capitulation? We can only draw the conclusions, first, that he only has lust in his mind, so he notices nothing else; and secondly, that he is enormously conceited, so it seems natural to him that a girl will succumb to his charms. Both of these conclusions chime with a thoroughly modern feminist contempt for young men. We can imagine using common present-day phrases which describe Bertram aptly: ‘His brain is in his penis.’ The remainder of Diana’s speech spells out her conditions with increasing clarity and in solemn terms. She charges him to obey her conditions ‘in the band of truth’, and her speech is heavy with references to time and the future. She will meet him again ‘When back again this ring shall be deliver’d’, and will give him a ring ‘that what in time proceeds / May token to the future our past deeds’. Diana’s tone is also increasingly portentous: lines 59 and 60 are a single, unbroken phrase, and the final four lines of her speech are rhyming couplets. Shakespeare adds even greater resonance to the idea that human acts carry unforeseen consequences. In both couplets, the rhymes tie time and acts together: proceeds, deeds and won, done. There is a moral lesson both for the audience and for Bertram here, of course; and the serious, warning tone of the speech provokes more surprise – if that were possible – that Bertram still does not suspect a plot. He must have a shocking degree of confidence, or, his brain is completely anaesthetised by lust. Even the evident contradiction of Helena’s final remark (she effectively tells him that he will win a wife, but it will not be her!) does not alert him. He simply returns to his exploded love/religion equation for one line, and then, having gained his victory, rushes away. Shakespeare, then, uses all his craft to highlight one simple point: under the influence of lust, Bertram is astonishingly deaf, blind and

Young Men

51

conceited. That this is true of all men is confirmed in the next few lines, for Diana’s mother had told her ‘just how he would woo’ because ‘all men’ swear the same oaths. We can conclude that Bertram is a stereotype in this scene, and such an obvious one that he is a caricature. The main dramatic interest in the scene lies in seeing how blunt Diana can be, without him noticing. As we have seen, the subject-matter of the scene ranges through several themes. Words and meaning, religious and sexual love, financial and moral values, deeds, time and consequences, have all received some discussion. The very form of the scene presents a further idea, for it is structured as a duel, a battle of words between the sexes. The woman’s weapon is reason, the man’s passion. In a sense, then, Shakespeare sets up the battle of the sexes in the form of a conflict that lies at the heart of our religious culture – that between controlling morality and reason, the forces of virtue and civilisation on the one hand; and natural, base instinct on the other. We will consider the characterisation of Bertram and these related subjects more widely, later in the chapter. First let us turn to an extract from Measure for Measure.

Analysis: Measure for Measure, 3, i, 94–150 In this extract, Isabella tells her brother that he can only be saved by the sacrifice of her honour to Angelo’s lust: Isab:

Cla: Isab:

O, ’tis the cunning livery of hell The damnedst body to invest and cover In precise guards! Dost thou think, Claudio, If I would yield him my virginity Thou mightst be freed? O heavens, it cannot be! Yes, he would give’t thee, from this rank offence, So to offend him still. This night’s the time That I should do what I abhor to name; Or else thou diest tomorrow.

95

100

52

Analysing Shakespeare’s Problem Plays

Cla: Isab:

Cla: Isab: Cla:

Isab: Cla:

Isab: Cla: Isab: Cla:

Isab: Cla:

Isab:

Thou shalt not do’t. O, were it but my life, I’d throw it down for your deliverance As frankly as a pin. Thanks, dear Isabel. Be ready, Claudio, for your death tomorrow. Yes. – Has he affections in him, That thus can make him bite the law by th’nose When he would force it? – Sure, it is no sin; Or of the deadly seven it is the least. Which is the least? If it were damnable, he being so wise, Why would he for the momentary trick Be perdurably fin’d? – O Isabel! What says my brother? Death is a fearful thing. And shamed life a hateful. Ay, but to die, and go we know not where; To lie in cold obstruction, and to rot; This sensible warm motion to become A kneaded clod; and the delighted spirit To bath in fiery floods, or to reside In thrilling region of thick-ribbed ice; To be imprison’d in the viewless winds And blown with restless violence round about The pendent world: or to be worse than worst Of those that lawless and incertain thought Imagine howling, – ’tis too horrible. The weariest and most loathed worldly life That age, ache, penury and imprisonment Can lay on nature, is a paradise To what we fear of death. Alas, alas! Sweet sister, let me live. What sin you do to save a brother’s life, Nature dispenses with the deed so far That it becomes a virtue. O, you beast!

105

110

115

120

125

130

135

Young Men

Cla: Isab:

53

O faithless coward! O dishonest wretch! Wilt thou be made a man out of my vice? Is’t not a kind of incest, to take life From thine own sister’s shame? What should I think? Heaven shield my mother play’d my father fair: 140 For such a warped slip of wilderness Ne’er issued from his blood. Take my defiance, Die, perish! Might but my bending down Reprieve thee from thy fate, it should proceed. I’ll pray a thousand prayers for thy death; 145 No word to save thee. Nay hear me, Isabel. O fie, fie, fie! Thy sin’s not accidental, but a trade; Mercy to thee would prove itself a bawd; 149 ’Tis best that thou diest quickly. [Going.] (Measure for Measure, 3, i, 94–150)

We begin by imagining the scene in performance, and are immediately aware that the situation on stage is complicated. Act 3, scene i, is a scene in four episodes, of which this is the second. It takes place in the prison, a restricted space, and Shakespeare takes care to emphasise the legal power that confines Claudio and rules all comings and goings in the prison. So, Isabella has to state her business (‘a word or two with Claudio’) before being admitted, and the Duke makes formal requests of the Provost in order to eavesdrop, then in order to be alone with Isabella. These devices also provide a set of restricting links to hold the four episodes of the scene together. The sense of enclosure is doubled because the siblings are overheard by the Duke, so we watch a scene with another audience between us and the action. Then, the content of Isabella and Claudio’s argument is reflected back upon itself by both matching and compensating content in the outer episodes of the scene. See, for example, how the Duke’s speech against life (lines 6–41) is matched and contradicted by Claudio’s moving description of the horrors and mysteries of death (lines 117–31); how Claudio’s willingness to die (lines 41–3 and 170–1, expressed to the Duke) frames

54

Analysing Shakespeare’s Problem Plays

his appeal for life; and how the Duke’s dishonesty to Claudio frames Isabella’s honesty, while the Duke’s equivocation with his disguised role in the first episode is doubled by an outright lie (‘I am confessor to Angelo, and I know this to be true’) in the third episode, after the siblings’ argument. These structural elements of the scene are only the larger effects, however, in what is a dense forest of interlocking attitudes and concepts, which are played out through many variations in the different circumstances of each episode. One example will show how intricately each chord of this dramatic music is played. Look at Isabella’s lines to Claudio: Thy sin’s not accidental, but a trade; Mercy to thee would prove itself a bawd; (lines 148–9)

This refers to the sin for which Claudio stands condemned: extramarital intercourse. In mitigation, Claudio might plead that he and Juliet were engaged to marry, and remain firm and mutual in their love for one another. At the end of the scene, Isabella complies with the Duke’s plot, facilitating extra-marital intercourse. Notice that on this occasion, the sin will be committed against Angelo’s will, years after he has repudiated his engagement to Mariana. Isabella declares ‘I have spirit to do anything that appears not foul in the truth of my spirit’ (205–7), and after hearing the plot, ‘The image of it gives me content already’ (260). She rejects Claudio’s argument that the deed will not be a sin because ‘Nature dispenses with the deed so far / That it becomes a virtue’ (134–5), yet she accepts the Duke’s case that ‘the doubleness of the benefit defends the deceit from reproof ’ (258–9). In this mess of double standards, the scene is ironically punctuated by frequent absolutes such as ‘virtue’, ‘die’ and ‘death’, and the Duke’s portentous ‘Be absolute for death’ (5) at the start of the scene. The elaborate structure of the scene, then, provides a context for our extract which questions the crucial concepts to which Isabella and Claudio refer, and the judgments they express. This extract is another verbal duel between male and female, in which the man pleads for what he desires, and the woman occupies

Young Men

55

moral high ground. On the other hand, this is clearly a much more complicated, and revealing, conflict. First, both Claudio’s appeal for life, and Isabella’s fury, are dramatic revelations: we did not know how these characters would react under pressure. In Claudio’s case, his previous words expressed resignation (‘Let it come on’ [43]); while our knowledge of Isabella up to this point has displayed her affection for Claudio. Further, Isabella argued for mercy against condemnation, in her appeals to Angelo (see, for example, Act 2, scene ii, lines 73–9 and 135–42). Claudio’s desperate appeal for life is the first surprise; but the violence of Isabella’s response is perhaps an even greater shock. Secondly, the dense forest of competing values Shakespeare has created in this scene, and the unpredictable changes in all three characters involved, are ultimately only unsettling for the audience. We feel no sense of the predictable: on the contrary, our guesses are repeatedly undermined; and the scene leaves us unable to draw conclusions about either the characters or morality. The entire scene is held within the enclosing dramatic irony of the Duke’s disguise, which is a permanent theatrical element in the play. The moral dilemmas and extreme emotions acted out in front of us have an artificial flavour, since we know that the Duke can, and will, bring the whole performance to a halt at the end. Eventually, all these people will be able to go about their lives undamaged, like actors leaving the theatre after the performance. Clearly this extract and its context present a far more complex dramatic experience than we found in All’s Well that Ends Well. Now we can turn to a detailed examination of the extract itself, looking at Claudio’s role in particular. The poetry moves at pace throughout, largely because of the strength of the underlying iambic beat. Many lines are in regular metre, and this often extends over successive lines, sometimes including changes of speaker. So, for example, Isabella reveals Angelo’s demand, and Claudio answers, in regular metre: Isa: Cla:

If I would yield him my virginity Thou mightst be freed? O heavens, it cannot be!

56

Analysing Shakespeare’s Problem Plays

The two longest speeches of the extract are similarly dominated by an iambic beat. So, all of lines 118 to 127, in Claudio’s description of death’s horrors, are arguably regular (particularly if we say ‘ribbèd’ in line 122); and lines 135 to 142 in Isabella’s furious reply are also quite regular (with the possible emphatic interruption of ‘What should I think?’ in line 139, although even here laying the stress on ‘should’ sounds just as natural). The poetry is punctuated by irregular moments from time to time, but it quickly re-establishes itself on each occasion. These interrupting moments serve to add emphasis to an emotion: they tend to add energy and impetus, rather than slowing the poetry down. So, for example, scanning the vital exchange in which Claudio reveals his changing mind (110–17) presents an irregular pattern suiting the opposition of the siblings’ views; but the slowing of pace by long vowels and doubled stress when Isabella says ‘shamed life’ is only momentary, clipped between the two heavy and irregular stresses with which Claudio twice breaks in (‘Death’ and ‘Ay’). The effect is to express Claudio’s eagerness to take over the conversation: it is as if he cuts his sister short, twice in succession. As soon as he has command of the dialogue, Claudio launches straight into a regular, accented iambic metre (‘to die and go we know not where . . . etc.’) which lasts for the next ten lines. Other breaks in the iambic metre emphasise significant concepts, such as the reversed stress on ‘Nature’ (134) and ‘Mercy’ (149); or are exclamations and imperatives – the stuff of emotionally-charged dialogue – such as ‘Die, perish!’ (143) and ‘O fie, fie, fie!’ (147). Only once is there a significant slowing of the tempo, and this occurs when Claudio evokes the pain and tedium of the worst life he can imagine, and combines asonnance, alliteration, long vowels and spondee (two adjacent stresses) to convey its weariness: The weariest and most loathed worldly l ife That age, ache, penury and imprisonment Can lay on nature, (128–30)

Claudio does this, however, to indicate the infinitely greater horrors

Young Men

57

of death, and this mournful, slow style contrasts with the rapid syllables with which he completes his thought. All this long-drawn-out pain, he says, ‘is a paradise’ compared with death. The extract, then, is carried at an energetic pace by the poetry. Interruptions to the metre are sudden and dramatically emphatic, but brief, before the metre re-asserts itself. Imagery is similarly quick and fluid: both metaphors and similes are quickly expressed and succeed each other naturally, at pace. Typically, concepts become concrete in this extract. So Isabella expresses Angelo’s hypocrisy as ‘livery of hell’ which will ‘invest and cover / In precise guards’ (94–6), a common Shakespearean image in which clothing hides truth; and she says that ‘Mercy’ would become a ‘bawd’, heightening the juxtaposition of moral and immoral. In between, Claudio brings a string of concrete images into play in his attempt to convey the horrors of death. The images in Claudio’s speech on death set up an opposition between ‘cold obstruction’ and ‘sensible warm motion’, and these qualities of death and life are continued in the inert, cold ‘kneaded clod’, the image of imprisonment ‘In thrilling region of thick-ribbed ice’, and being blown by (cold) ‘viewless winds’. Claudio’s imagination is changing, however, developing his idea of death beyond the initial revulsion from cold and stillness. ‘Ice’ is matched by its opposite extreme ‘fiery floods’, and as his mind passes beyond these extremes of sense-experience, Claudio first imagines a lack of physical sense (‘viewless’) and then declares that the idea of death passes beyond even the wildest and worst imaginings. At the end of the speech he twice adds comparative to superlative: death is ‘worse’ than ‘worst’ fantasies, then worse than worst life. The imagery in this speech, then, reflects the progress of Claudio’s horror as he passes through and beyond the attempt to concretise the concept of death. Imagery in Isabella’s speech of denunciation is of a different and contrasting kind. Her image-ideas (of incest, and of Claudio as a weed polluting a garden) are censorious and outraged; but their effect is more complex than she intends. The assumption Isabella makes is that virtue is natural, vice unnatural; but if we look at her ideas they show more disturbance and confusion than coherence. First, Isabella suggests (as an ultimate shock) that she would be com-

58

Analysing Shakespeare’s Problem Plays

parable to the incestuous mother of Claudio, as he would ‘take life’ from her sexual intercourse. There are curious overtones here, for the comparison’s logic likens sleeping with Angelo to sleeping with her father. Next, Isabella simultaneously proposes and denies her mother’s unfaithfulness, which has produced a ‘warped slip of wilderness’ – a weed – in place of the cultivated plant that would have been produced within the cultivated ‘garden’ of marriage. The final problem with this knot of ideas is that she seems to propose something evidently untrue: that the cultivated is natural and the wild is not. What are we to make of this irrational streak in Isabella’s ideas? She herself asks ‘What should I think?’ and the collision between her morality and her affection for her brother is clearly a conflict of which she cannot make sense. However, the violence of her anger indicates, contrary to her apparent doctrine of natural virtues, a horror of nature – a revulsion from the physical, and sex in particular.1 This contrasts with Claudio’s speech, in which his horror and fear grows as he passes beyond ideas he can relate to physical sensations. The man ‘imprison’d in the viewless winds’ who imagines himself at a frightening distance from the ‘pendent world’, has a horror of the non-physical. The contrasting attitudes to the physical and non-physical shown by Claudio and Isabella, here, are suggestive and reminiscent of the opposition between Diana’s metaphysics and Bertram’s worship of sex, in All’s Well that Ends Well. This examination of the way Isabella’s and Claudio’s minds work, and the ideas their thoughts produce, shows a fundamental opposition between them. This time, the characterisation is more complex than we found in All’s Well that Ends Well, where the conflict comes from Bertram’s and Diana’s opposed fixed statements. In this scene both male and female characters begin within convention, but by the end, both have been shaken and reveal something more, something deeper than the attitudes they originally expressed. Shakespeare provides us with clear measures of the change in Isabella. First, she says ‘O, were it but my life, / I’d throw it down for your deliverance . . .’; but when shaken by his appeal, this changes to:

Young Men

59

Die, perish! Might but my bending down Reprieve thee from thy fate, it should proceed.

We are certainly expected to notice the contradiction, and that something has peeled away layers from Isabella. This, and her rage (‘’Tis best thou diest quickly’) are unrestrained and raw. She is so out of control that she will listen to nothing – not her condemned brother’s twice uttered appeal to be heard. The fact that she has been in an ungovernable temper is underlined when the Duke accosts her. His repetition (‘but one word’) indicates how wild she is, and her short answer (‘What is your will?’) is barely courteous. Even her grudging agreement (156–8) is two parts aggressive and only finally, tersely, does she agree to wait. Our present interest, however, is in Claudio. He, too, changes from a conventional attitude, which is peeled away by fear and temptation, to reveal a truer picture of himself. At the beginning of their interview, Claudio is of course desperate to know if there is any ‘remedy’, any chance of escaping death; but he responds to his sister’s imputations with a conventional adherence to honour and stoic heroism: If I must die, I will encounter darkness as a bride And hug it in mine arms. (lines 82–4)

This odd equation of sex and death is part of a dark motif in the play: Claudio’s situation connects them anyway. When Isabella finally tells him of Angelo’s sexual blackmail, his initial reaction sustains the heroic stereotype: first, he exclaims ‘O heavens, it cannot be!’, then ‘Thou shalt not do’t.’ He accepts the offer of her life with an affectionate ‘Thanks, dear Isabel,’ but the mention of death clearly jolts him. Just the one-word reply is brilliantly sufficient to indicate that Claudio is now preoccupied. He says ‘Yes’, but his mind is now on Angelo, manufacturing reasons and excuses for accepting Angelo’s offer. It is deeply disturbing to see Claudio turning to a new equation, that sex could be life: an equation Isabella cannot accept on any terms.

60

Analysing Shakespeare’s Problem Plays

Claudio then puts forward three arguments in a row, each of which is progressively more confident in excusing the sin Isabella must commit in order to save him. The first of these expresses astonishment that Angelo’s lust can overcome his adherence to the law: ‘Has he affections in him, / That thus can make him bite the law by th’nose’. Starting from the premise that Angelo is known to be committed to strict law, Claudio reaches two conclusions in succession: first, that the sexual desire must be of extraordinary power to overcome this commitment; then, that the sin itself cannot be a very serious one (‘of the deadly seven it is the least’). Claudio’s second argument enlarges on this second conclusion. Since all know that Angelo is ‘so wise’, it does not make sense that he would risk eternity for a ‘momentary trick’. This argument also takes the form of astonishment, but with the implication that therefore the sin involved cannot be ‘damnable’. In the third of his arguments, Claudio adds to this equation the mitigating motive: that Isabella would commit the sin in order to ‘save a brother’s life’. This, according to Claudio, tips the balance from evil to good. Such a sin – already only minor because such a person as the wise, strict Angelo can contemplate it – is condoned by ‘nature’ because of the unimpeachable motive. There is an element of self-contradiction in Claudio’s arguments. There cannot be a ‘least’ among ‘deadly’ sins: they are all deadly, so Claudio’s line makes no sense. This element in his thinking can be compared to Bertram’s difficulties with ‘holy love’ and ‘holy-cruel’, as both men seek to sanctify lechery and both get into logical difficulties doing so. However, Claudio uses rationalisation in a much more sophisticated way than Bertram, by adding successive premises to his argument (Angelo’s law-abiding character; Angelo’s wisdom; Isabella’s motive) in order to reach the conclusion he desires. We recognise his sophistry, of course; and we have not forgotten either that he followed desire in the first place, or that it is another, not himself, whom he asks to incur the risk of damnation now. We are not, then, in danger of accepting Claudio’s plea or agreeing with him about sin. On the other hand, the speech about the horrors of death is powerful and moving, and Isabella’s reaction is so violent that our sympathy is partly engaged on Claudio’s behalf. So, Shakespeare achieves

Young Men

61

a complicated effect, dividing our judgment from our hearts. The young man rationalises, abusing logic in the service of his inexcusable desires, and Shakespeare shows us each stage of this process. At the same time, he enhances our sympathy for the young man by caricaturing Isabella’s vicious and vengeful reaction. The scene’s final episode further complicates our response. We have just seen all the stages of rationalisation at work in Claudio, so we are alert to recognise the ease with which Isabella agrees to the Duke’s plan. We actively suspect her motive since the excuse for the bed-trick plot is so thin. We can almost hear her thoughts: I cannot sleep with Angelo, but if someone else will do it for me, that will be all right. Our senses have been alerted by the scene’s previous episodes, and our sympathies are already in play on Claudio’s behalf. We are therefore nudged towards the realisation that Isabella deserves sympathy also. Perhaps the violence of her reaction against her brother was caused by her fear, and a desperate anger at being caught in hopeless circumstances. Isabella wants to be rid of the ghastly situation in which Angelo’s blackmail has her trapped. One way for her to escape would be to deny her feeling for her brother, to deny their relationship. Hence the intemperance of her curse. Shakespeare has achieved this complex effect by means of the dramatic structure of the scene, by setting up the parallels we have noticed. The parallels between Claudio’s and Julia’s sin, and that proposed for Angelo and Mariana; the parallel between Claudio’s rationalisation and Isabella’s; and the parallel between the Duke’s deceptions and their self-deceptions, all provide us with a disturbing education in life’s dilemmas. Our judgments are clear, but our hearts are confused. Weighing virtue against humanity becomes well-nigh impossible. In the middle of this moral forest, the young man has revealed traits which ally him with the stereotype presented by Bertram in All’s Well that Ends Well. His outlook favours the short-term (where Bertram does not think beyond the moment of seduction, Claudio fears to think beyond physical life); he values sensual existence above other values (Bertram sacrifices ‘house . . . honour . . . life’ to sensual satisfaction, and Claudio dreads losing ‘this sensible warm motion’); and he seeks to excuse and sanctify sexual sins (Bertram asserts that ‘love is holy’, and Claudio suggests that the sinful ‘deed’ becomes a

62

Analysing Shakespeare’s Problem Plays

‘virtue’ under the special dispensation of ‘nature’). We can now turn to Troilus and Cressida.

Analysis: Troilus and Cressida, 3, ii, 153–78 Our extract comes when Pandarus has finally arranged the assignation between Troilus and Cressida. Troil:

Cress : Troil:

O, that I thought it could be in a woman – As, if it can, I will presume in you – To feed for aye her lamp and flames of love, 155 To keep her constancy in plight and youth, Outliving beauty’s outward, with a mind That doth renew swifter than blood decays! Or that persuasion could but thus convince me That my integrity and truth to you 160 Might be affronted with the match and weight Of such a winnowed purity in love; How were I then uplifted! But alas, I am as true as truth’s simplicity, And simpler than the infancy of truth. 165 In that I’ll war with you. O virtuous fight, When right with right wars who shall be most right! True swains in love shall in the world to come Approve their truth by Troilus. When their rhymes, Full of protest, of oath and big compare, 170 Wants similes, truth tired with iteration – ‘As true as steel, as plantage to the moon, As sun to day, as turtle to her mate, As iron to adamant, as earth to th’centre’ Yet, after all comparisons of truth, 175 As truth’s authentic author to be cited, ‘As true as Troilus’ shall crown up the verse And sanctify the numbers. (Troilus and Cressida, 3, scene ii, 153–78)

Young Men

63

The structure of this scene appears straightforward: Pandarus and Troilus enter, then Pandarus fetches Cressida; the love scene follows, and they leave to go to the bedchamber. However, this account ignores a host of details. The most important is Pandarus’s restlessness. Even the opening of the scene is complicated. Pandarus meets Troilus’s Man and they say a line each before Troilus’s entry; then the Man is dismissed and goes. Next, Pandarus leaves Troilus alone twice before returning with Cressida. Pandarus then remains with the lovers for a page before he goes out again to ‘get a fire’, and leaves them alone for some three pages. Only then does Pandarus return and remain with them to the end of the scene, when he again instigates the movement of all three, towards the bedchamber (‘Amen. Whereupon I will show you a chamber . . .’). The effect of all this coming and going on stage, is of course to enhance our impression of Pandarus’s busyness, and at the same time set off the opposite in the lovers, who remain static. Many of their speeches are long, and some are formally balanced. For example, Troilus’s speech proposing the future proverb ‘As true as Troilus’, which ends our extract, is balanced by Cressida’s answer, which asks future generations to adopt the proverb ‘As false as Cressid’, should she be false, then virtually parodied by Pandarus’s donation of his name to future pimps). So the scene as a whole gives a curious impression of the lovers’ fixity, with Pandarus restlessly buzzing around them. It is as if his physically evident anxiety and haste undercuts the apparent weight of the lovers’ vows. Our extract is virtually all spoken by Troilus. Metrically, there is nothing consistent in Troilus’s poetry. It passes from the declamatory opening with its emphatic initial stress: O that I thought it could be in a woman –

to the largely regular final two lines of the same speech, enhanced by patterned sounds based on ‘true’, ‘truth’, ‘simpler’, ‘simplicity’ and ‘infancy’: I am as true as truth’s simplicity, And simpler than the infancy of truth.

64

Analysing Shakespeare’s Problem Plays

to irregular lines such as: How were I then uplifted! But alas,

or: As iron to adamant, as earth to th’centre)

Instead of looking for particular metrical features, we can best describe Troilus’s rhythms by looking at the whole, and noticing repeated ‘movements’. So, Troilus frequently begins a topic in a declamatory, emphatic style leading into pacy and regular beat (like ‘To feed for aye her lamp and flames of love’, which follows the emphatic opening cited above). This flow then typically gives way to a more obstructed, lumpier music, where caesurae become more pronounced and there is the odd feminine ending (e.g. ‘me’, line 159; ‘iteration’, line 171), or emphasis reverses metre in the middle of a line (e.g. ‘swifter’, line 158; ‘crown’, line 177). The overall impression is that he is eager to declare his feelings with an emphatic opening statement; but then his words run onto the rocks as his mind becomes blocked by complexity, and the language almost defeats itself. We remember Troilus’s grand imagery and hyperbolic allusions from Act 1, scene i. His images in this extract show the same tendency. They are: 1. Woman’s love compared to a lit lamp, needing fuel. 2. Truth in love compared to a weight of ‘winnow’d’ or purified grain. 3. Truth in love likened to ‘infancy’. 4. Competition in fidelity compared to a battle. 5. Truth personified as one weary from repetition. 6. Truth compared to steel, the inevitable influence of the moon on growing plants, the inseparable relation between day and sun, the proverbially inseparable relation between a turtle [dove] and her mate, the equal hardness of iron and adamant, the necessary relation between earth and its centre (which keeps the globe spinning on a stable axis).

Young Men

65

7. Himself as the ‘author’ of truth. 8. The phrase ‘As true as Troilus’ likened to a ‘crown’ which surmounts all future love poetry. The ‘crown’ (royal) develops holy attributes (like a halo or mitre?) as it will ‘sanctify’ love poems. This list of images has similarities to those we noticed in Chapter 1. Troilus still uses large ideas, such as ‘moon’, ‘sun’, ‘earth to th’centre’, and extremes such as ‘steel’, ‘iron’, ‘adamant’ and ‘infancy’, as well as the royal and heavenly implications of ‘crown’ and ‘sanctify’. What is more, the second speech in this extract is devoted to the idea that Troilus’s ‘truth’ surpasses all superlatives for it ‘crowns’ all ‘big compare’. Indeed, this speech actually discusses hyperbolic imagery and finds it wanting, suggesting that ‘simplicity’ is ultimately a higher quality. On the other hand there is a countercurrent of images more rooted in the ordinary world. These are, particularly, the idea of woman’s love as a ‘lamp’ and ‘flame’ that might go out for lack of fuel; and the harvest image of truth between lovers as two equally heavy sacks of grain. Furthermore, some of the ideas likened to truth are questionable: the moon, for example, may nurture plants; but she is also traditionally associated with feminine inconstancy or chastity; while steel, iron and adamant are two metals and a stone, all hard and cold. So our study of imagery reveals a more disturbed and complex group of ideas than Troilus evinced at the start of the play. What is Troilus saying? The second speech is easier to summarise, because it is structured to make one clear statement – that Troilus’s truth is beyond expression, surpassing all imagery (and is royal and holy). The first speech is more complicated because the line of thought seems to change direction more than once. When faced by an extract like this, where the character’s thoughts seem to evolve and change, it can be helpful to jot down a brief summary of each idea in succession: 1. I wish I could believe a woman capable of sustained love (perhaps you are capable of it). 2. I wish it were possible for a woman to remain loving despite loss of beauty and decay of desire.

66

Analysing Shakespeare’s Problem Plays

3. I wish I could be persuaded that you love me as truly as I love you. 4. Then I would feel better. 5. But I am like a child, true and simple. This summary highlights the way Troilus’s feelings and thoughts progress through the speech, and it is striking in two ways. First, that the speech is dominated by anxiety; and secondly, that the final thought – his own simplicity – is completely disconnected from the rest. The form of the whole speech, then, is bewildering: Troilus begins with ‘O that I thought it [truth, constancy] could be in a woman,’ then says ‘But alas . . .’ and we expect the implied conclusion: that, unfortunately, he cannot believe in woman’s constancy. Instead of this, and to our surprise, Troilus asserts that he is simple. Does he mean that simplicity of mind and love, prevents him from believing in female fidelity? This does not make sense, implying as it does that only a subtle and deceiving mind could have faith in women! Clearly, there is no logic to the conclusion of this speech. Rather than seeking logic, however, we should try to follow the expressed emotion. Here, we find Troilus making more sense. He first expresses his acute anxieties, and bewails the fact that these doubts assail him. Then, he turns to his simplicity and truth. In this view, the speech becomes a confession of vulnerability. It is as if Troilus said: I cannot bear to think about the future because nothing lasts, so I’ll be simple-minded and believe the opposite instead. Both of Troilus’s speeches end with the idea of ‘simplicity’, then. First, all the intricacies of jealousy and doubting despair are set aside by the ‘infancy’ of his simple love. Then, all the intricacies of language, including the most hyperbolic tropes, give way before the simplicity of ‘As true as Troilus’. The irony is that Troilus is far from being a simple-minded young man, and this is shown by three aspects of the current extract. First, we have noticed how his thoughts complicate his ideas, and how his language runs into riddles as the poetic drive breaks down. Secondly, Troilus displays a complex experience of love. He has a fixed distrust and fear of women and time. His first speech sets love within the inevitable

Young Men

67

frame of time the destroyer (‘Outliving beauty’s outward . . . swifter than blood decays’); and he is acutely aware that lust needs fuel, or the flame will go out. The complicated texture of Troilus’s speeches can thus be looked at in several ways. As characterisation first, it reveals a young man acutely aware of the complexities and uncertainties of life, who sets up, and grasps for, simplicity and truth as a rock to cling to, to rescue himself from helpless chaos. He clings the more firmly to ‘infancy’ in his feelings, the more threateningly complex his thoughts become. ‘Infancy’, used in this extract, reminds us that Troilus began the play complaining that love had returned him to ‘unpractised infancy’. A revulsion away from the formless, complex world, and a clinging on to simplicity, is thus related to a regressive wish – the wish to run away back to childhood. We will discuss courtly love aspects of Troilus’s speeches, below. It has often been remarked that the courtly lover seeks a form of maternal comfort; and that his worship of his lady is analogous to the cult of the Virgin in Christian history. Thematically, Troilus’s ideal can imply a universal picture of human needs: ‘simplicity’ is like the philosopher’s stone, or the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow – the answer to everything that humanity perennially but hopelessly seeks. Troilus thus expresses in a powerful form the desire for shape, purpose and mastery of life that drives people to fashion myths and stories, to turn their own lives into narratives, as a response against the disorderly chaos of experience. This theme is intertwined with one of language: Troilus’s words are signs which fail to represent what he feels: he senses a division between language and experience. His solution, when all ‘big compare’ is exhausted, is to renounce the power of words. He seems to experience communication as big words with small meaning, and his dream of ‘simplicity’ is also a linguistic dream: the proverb ‘As true as Troilus’ would be small words with big meaning. Finally, Troilus’s speeches also present an analysis of courtly love. I would highlight four aspects of the courtly love paradigm that are explored in these two speeches. First, Troilus seems to be confused about chastity and sexuality. Courtly love has this paradox at its heart: the woman must be chaste

68

Analysing Shakespeare’s Problem Plays

so that she can become carnal, she must be worshipped so she can be defiled. This confusion runs like a vein of heat and cold, softness and hardness, through Troilus’s speeches. So, he mentions ‘lamp’ and ‘flames of love’, ‘blood decays’, winnowed corn, the ‘sun’ and ‘turtles’; but also ‘moon’, ‘iron’, ‘adamant’ and ‘steel’. This introduces the second point, that Troilus has a deep-seated anxiety about sex. He understands desire, and is driven by it; and he speaks the language of permanent love. However, he is profoundly scared of sexual satisfaction, for he does not know how they can ‘feed’ love. Put simply, the courtly love ‘passio’ is a state of desire, and within that state there is a clear set of relationships which govern the lover’s behaviour. Troilus exhibits many typical traits – a distaste for other activities, brooding on his love; exaggerated humility and despair; awe amounting to fear of the beloved. However, courtly love does not instruct the lover about the relationships that subsist after sexual satisfaction. So Troilus’s sexual anxiety is not about the sex act: it is focused on what he – and particularly she – will do afterwards. We remember Claudio’s astonishment that Angelo would be ‘perdurably fin’d’ for the ‘momentary trick’. Troilus wants permanent love, not a ‘momentary trick’; but courtly love leaves him doubtful that such a thing exists. Thirdly, courtly love’s worship of women masks a deep distrust of all things female. The serving and protective elements in the man’s role emphasise her physical helplessness, and this in turn reinforces the belief that she cannot be constant and may be capricious. In Troilus’s speech this is very evident: he wishes he ‘thought it could be in a woman’ to return his love, but the best he can do is conditionally ‘presume’ that Cressida may be capable of this. Nonetheless, he still feels that ‘persuasion’ could not ‘convince’ him that female constancy exists. Lastly, we should remember the statement of the first of these speeches. In courtly love the man is helpless, he worships and serves the woman. In this state he is utterly at her mercy. She has the choice either to save him (by showing pity) or kill him with rejection. Troilus adheres to this pattern in his confession of vulnerability. He compares his love to ‘infancy’ and places his life in her hands. This, of course, transfers all responsibility to her: if she has all the

Young Men

69

power, she will also have the guilt if things go wrong. It has often been remarked that the male role in courtly love is emotional blackmail. There is a clear element of this in Troilus’s evocation of his anxieties, followed by his declaration of simplicity. Whatever happens, he seems to say, it won’t be my fault. At this point we can discern some common elements between the three young men; but we are probably equally struck by differences between their personalities and between the plays. The next section explores these three youths, ranging more freely through the texts.

Conclusions There are several clear conclusions that can be drawn from our analyses so far. There is no question that all three are examples of a critical analysis of young males. We have seen that all three use an absolute diction, and have frequent recourse to ideal concepts. So, Bertram uses ‘holy’, ‘for ever’, ‘honour’, ‘paradise’ and so on, in his wooing; Claudio also uses ‘paradise’ as well as ‘worse than worst’, and imagines such distance that he can see the ‘pendent world’;2 Troilus talks of ‘infancy’, and passing beyond ‘big compare’ to ‘crown’ and ‘sanctify’, as well as mentioning ‘sun’ and ‘moon’. Their language is peppered with references to absolutes – love, death, life and forever. This diction of high extremes is also grandiose, or hyperbolic. In all three young men, the initial attachment is to the material world rather than any metaphysical ideation. They begin with the flesh and its pleasures – or beauty and its delights – and it is these material goals that are raised to the metaphysical level to become the main pursuit and worship of the intellect. All three young men, then, begin with the actual, and cut their concepts to fit: this is their typical habit of mind. Bertram does so grossly in his assertion that ‘love is holy’ and adultery is ‘paradise’; Claudio fashions sin and virtue to suit his survival, by means of rationalisation; while – as we have seen – Troilus uses absolutes as a means of compulsion. Bertram and Troilus both present a critique of ‘courtly love’ values, that amorous formula which has dogged boys’ gender atti-

70

Analysing Shakespeare’s Problem Plays

tudes in European culture from long before Shakespeare’s time and up to the present day. Bertram declares his ‘passio’ to Diana in terms of ‘sick desires’, an illness he only ‘recovers’ from through her submission. Troilus complains that his love-sickness leaves him ‘less valiant than the virgin in the night’ and ‘skilless as unpractised infancy’. Each new attack of desire is described with imagery of infection or mutilation: her beauties are extra pain poured ‘into the open ulcer of my heart’ (1, i, 50) and with each compliment to her beauty ‘thou [Pandarus] lay’st in every gash that love hath given me / The knife that made it’ instead of ‘oil and balm’ (1, i, 58–60). Troilus associates his love-sickness with effeminacy, complaining about himself as ‘womanish’ (1, i, 103); and declares that he is in despair (‘there my hopes lie drown’d’ [1, i, 46]). Both Troilus and Bertram focus on the physical beauty of the woman. Bertram takes the second Lord Dumaine to ‘go see’ the ‘lass’ he spoke about, saying ‘she’s a fair creature’ and he will ‘show’ her to Dumaine (all from 3, vi, 106 to end); and when they speak he compares her looks to the goddess Diana, complimenting her ‘fine frame’. At the same time, Bertram seems to perceive her character merely as an obstacle: she is ‘wondrous cold’ (3, vi, 109), and if she has no ‘love’ or ‘quick fire of youth’ in her she is nothing but a ‘monument’ (4, ii, 4–6). It is clear that Bertram has no interest in her character at all but only seeks physical possession of the ‘fine frame’ he can ‘see’ and ‘show’. Troilus’s obsession with Cressida’s beauties is developed at greater length. His mind focuses on ‘Her eyes, her hair, her cheek, her gait, her voice’ and the whiteness of her hand ‘to whose soft seizure / The cygnet’s down is harsh’ (1, i, 51–5). Like Bertram, he complains of her coldness for ‘she is stubborn-chaste against all suit’ (1, i, 93). His desire is fired to such a pitch that he fears consummation, and in typical courtly-love-speak, likens the moment of satisfaction to death. Troilus finds that ‘expectation whirls me round’ because ‘th’imaginary relish is so sweet’ (notice the gushing sibilance and eating image!). ‘Imagination’ was a more potent word in Shakespeare’s time than now, denoting an idea encouraged and cultivated by the mind as Troilus has tended and nurtured the idea of Cressida. He fears that consummation will be ‘death’, that his senses

Young Men

71

will be too coarse to appreciate the moment, or that ‘I shall lose distinction in my joys’: that repeated sex with Cressida will make the act seem ordinary and rob him of the anticipated height of pleasure (all from 3, ii, 16–27). Troilus acknowledges to Cressida the paradox he fears: ‘desire is boundless, and the act a slave to limit’ (3, ii, 79–80). Like Bertram with Diana, Troilus remains ignorant of Cressida’s character. The extract analysed in this chapter enlarges on this theme, when Troilus openly expresses his fear that no woman can love as he does. We may find comparisons between Bertram and Troilus hard because the former is a mere seducer while the latter is a sympathetic character in a frenzy of desire; but this should not deflect us from noticing that both pose a simple, stereotyping question to the woman. Bertram asks whether she is a ‘monument’ or has ‘quick fire of youth’. Troilus asks whether she (unlike other women) can love faithfully. These questions typify an attitude towards women in which both young men have been raised, and which determines their behaviour and limits their potential relationship with the opposite sex. Put simply, women are seen as the objects of physical desire; and at the same time their purity is culturally and economically so important, that men perceive them through polarised spectacles. Their ideas of femininity are dominated by two extreme stereotypes, the chaste goddess (who is worshipped) and the whore (who is used). Both Bertram’s and Troilus’s questions reveal the influence of this stereotyping. Roughly, Bertram asks Diana Are you fair game? Troilus asks Cressida for the impossible paradox: Can I have both, in you: the whore and the goddess? The alternative passion for both Bertram and Troilus, is war. In Troilus’s case we have seen that his desire renders him incapable as a warrior. At the end of the play, when disillusioned in love, Troilus expresses a parallel disillusionment with the ideals of martial honour. He roundly tells Hector that the ‘mercy’ he shows to vanquished Greeks and calls ‘fair play’, is a ‘vice’ and ‘Fool’s play’ (5, iii, 37–43); and he throws himself recklessly into a martial frenzy, taking on Diomed and Ajax simultaneously, and crying ‘Fate, hear me what I say, / I reck not, though thou end my life today’ (5, vi, 26–7). Bertram is encouraged to leave Helen in Parolles’s macho terms (see

72

Analysing Shakespeare’s Problem Plays

2, iii, 261–96), which contrast shame and contempt in love and marriage, with ‘honour’ in war. On his arrival in Florence, Bertram declares: Great Mars, I put myself into thy file; Make me but like my thoughts and I shall prove A lover of thy drum, hater of love. (All’s Well that Ends Well, 3, iii, 9–11)

Claudio’s circumstances differ from those of the other two. His conflict with chastity is with his sister, not the woman he loves. However, Claudio does attempt to confront the same paradox of stereotyping that baffles Troilus: how can a woman have sex and remain pure, at the same time? Claudio has less difficulty with this, as we have seen. He rationalises the sin away until it becomes a ‘virtue’. In this, Claudio’s habit of mind is comparable to Bertram’s: the one has only sexual conquest on his mind, and makes everything else subject; the other has only survival in mind, and twists all other values to fit. Claudio does, however, provide us with a miniature of his courtship that raises similarly ambiguous issues. His comment on liberty is also an acknowledgement that lechery needs to be confined, for it is too powerful to be controlled otherwise. Claudio’s image of poisoned rats seeking their own death by craving water (Measure for Measure, 1, ii, 120–2) surprisingly conveys a revulsion from animal sexuality that would suit Isabella’s attitudes rather than his own. It can be argued that the bitterness of this idea comes from his arrest, however. Then, Claudio tells how he ‘got possession of Julietta’s bed’ on the strength of his vow. The difference between his courtship and Bertram’s, then, is that Claudio considered his promise binding. The process of the courtship – promise leading to physical consummation, impatiently indulged before the sacrament of marriage – is the same as that envisaged by Bertram. We now have an increasingly complex understanding of each of these young men, but how do they end? What follows Troilus’s disillusion in Act 5, scene ii? The answer is surprisingly problematic. Troilus only reflects on Cressida in the five lines at the end of Act 5, scene iii, when he deplores the abyss that has opened in his mind,

Young Men

73

between ‘words’ and ‘deeds’; and he consigns words, which are mere ‘wind’, to the ‘wind: there turn and change together’ (5, iii, 109). These lines express the breakdown of Troilus’s trust in perception, language, and reality: they express an outlook where all fact and truth are unreliable, turning and changing like the wind – or like language itself. This outlook can be compared to the breakdown of ordered understanding evoked by Shakespeare’s tragic heroes, where the internal order of the protagonist’s psyche is broken by tragic experience. However, here it occupies only five lines, and the remainder of Troilus’s speeches up to the end of the play are tangential to his personal disillusion. Three elements of Troilus still stand out. First, a new cynicism drives his debates with Hector, then Cassandra. We cannot fail to notice the change from Act 2, when Troilus argued that Helen is ‘a spur to valiant and magnanimous deeds’ and ‘theme of honour’, and therefore they should continue the war. Now, honour is ‘Fool’s play’ and Troilus urges the massacre of Greeks. His two contributions to the debates within Troy are diametrically opposed. They are both typical, however, as both are extreme. Secondly, Troilus is in a frenzy of rage. Nothing will keep him from the battle ‘except by my ruin’ (5, iii, 58) and he shouts his challenge to Diomed repeatedly. This continues the thought Troilus reached in the betrayal scene: As much as I do Cressid love, So much by weight hate I her Diomed. (5, ii, 174–5)

It seems that Troilus’s battle-rage accentuates the second of these thoughts, and as far as there is evidence, it seems emotionally right that Troilus’s noisy bravado helps him, by drowning or blotting out the more painful emotions associated with the idea of Cressida. The more he fixes his hatred on Diomed, the less he dwells on his betrayed love. Troilus’s battle-rage develops and broadens before the end of the play, however, suggesting a further stage in his reconstruction from despair. We notice that his frenzy is initially directed

74

Analysing Shakespeare’s Problem Plays

against Diomed. Then, he attacks Ajax as well, broadening his fury to encompass ‘both you cogging Greeks’ (5, vi, 12). The next time we see Troilus, he directs his desperate recklessness on behalf of Troy as a whole, rushing off to rescue the captured Aeneas. Notice that Troilus’s language is typically extreme in this enterprise as well: ‘No, by the flame of yonder glorious heaven, / He shall not carry him!’ (5, vi, 24–5). So, Troilus’s battle-rage is a psychological means towards first blotting out, and then diverting from, his most painful experiences. Shakespeare shows how the reckless patriotic fervour he expresses at the end of the play has been fuelled by the pain of betrayal. The third point that stands out is the rhetoric of Troilus’s final speech to the Trojan army. The style of his language has not changed at all. In announcing Hector’s death, he pictures the gods: Sit, gods, upon your thrones, and smite at Troy! I say at once: let your brief plagues be mercy, And linger not our sure destructions on. (5, xi, 7–9)

This is a grandiose picture of inevitable failure and despair. However, when Aeneas reminds him that he is damaging morale among the troops, Troilus – astonishingly – claims ‘You understand me not,’ and proceeds to change his tune (although he does devote a further six lines to disaster and fear on the way). With typical grandiloquence, he builds up to a different rhetorical peak where he pictures his revenge: No space of earth shall sunder our two hates. I’ll haunt thee like a wicked conscience still, That mouldeth goblins swift as frenzy’s thoughts. (5, xi, 27–9)

Notice that there is a telling correspondence between the terms in which Troilus pursues Achilles here, and those he used for Diomed before. He said to Diomed that there is no hiding from his revenge, whether through ‘a casque compos’d by Vulcan’s skill’ (5, ii, 177) or ‘shouldst thou take the river Styx / I would swim after’ (5, iv,

Young Men

75

18–19). Here, the same idea pursues Achilles: ‘No space of earth shall sunder our two hates’, while ‘hate’ is the new word applied first to Diomed, and here transferred to Achilles. Significantly, Troilus announces the psychological process he is using: ‘Hope of revenge shall hide our inward woe’ (5, xi, 31). We cannot know whether Troilus is aware of coping with two ‘inward woes’ in the same way. The public application of his words is to grief for Hector’s death; but the audience is well aware that the same process equally hides the pain of Cressida’s betrayal. The Trojan prince’s final act is to jettison Pandarus, consigning him ‘hence’ to an elsewhere occupied by ‘Ignominy and shame’ (5, xl, 33). The psychological story is thus complete. The transformation of Troilus from military liability, ‘skilless as unpractised infancy’, in Act 1, scene i, into a warrior-prince, orator and leader, haughtily removed from the world of Pandarus, is finished. We have discussed Troilus’s final appearances at some length because the play sketches in his rehabilitation from the heart of loss he reached in the betrayal scene. It only remains to point out that this process leads to a cynical conclusion: that the two passions of the play, sexual desire and rage, are interchangeable. We will discuss these issues more fully in Chapter 4. The ends of Bertram and Claudio are very different: Shakespeare seems indifferent to their psychological conclusions. Claudio shows remorse in Measure for Measure, Act 3, scene i (‘Let me ask my sister pardon; I am so out of love with life that I will sue to be rid of it’ [lines 170–1]). His one further contribution to the play, at 4, ii, 64–6, suggests a more settled and reflective mind, but he does not speak in the final scene. Bertram continues to lie, displaying arrogance and contempt, still apparently oblivious to his own glaring faults, until Helena’s appearance, whereupon he suddenly exclaims ‘O pardon!’ His only contribution after that is a rather inappropriate request for proof, and a conditional promise of love, made to the King, not Helena. We can be forgiven for being suspicious of both reformations. Claudio has changed his mind twice already, in the same scene; and we have witnessed the emotional energy he invests in rationalising error. Why should we believe his remorseful mood will last?

76

Analysing Shakespeare’s Problem Plays

Shakespeare does not bother to convince us. Bertram has been a manifest rat: has he, ever the opportunist, just seen the only way out of the hole he has dug for himself? Again, Shakespeare does not bother to answer this question. The extraordinary point about Claudio’s and Bertram’s endings is simply that they are so brief. We are left with the impression that their reform is of no real interest. Somehow, the drama probed and revealed their trials and errors, exploring their behaviour and attitudes; but the dramatist and his play do not care about their reformation. So far, we have discussed the presentation of these three young men as stereotypes, and it would be easy to continue in the same vein. Claudio is the sketchiest characterisation among the three; Troilus and Bertram provide a large amount of further material to analyse. However, we now want to move on from considering them as individual characters, and look more broadly at the role of masculinity. This leads us to think about their three elder mentors (Parolles, Lucio and Pandarus). Each of the young men has an older male ‘mentor’. Bertram trusts and listens to Parolles; when arrested, Claudio asks Lucio to arrange his defence; Troilus uses Pandarus as a confidant, to gain access to Cressida. All three older men act as foils, taking a cynical attitude to romantic adventures. They discount the romance and attribute all to sex, which is the law of nature. Parolles reminds Helena that ‘That you were made of is mettle to make virgins,’ that virginity is ‘against the rule of nature’, and cynically advises her: ‘Off with’t while ’tis vendible’ (all, and more to the same purpose, from All’s Well that Ends Well, 1, i, 127–51). Lucio deplores the idea that ‘a game of ticktack’ should cost Claudio his life (Measure for Measure 1, ii, 180–1) and uses nature-imagery to tell Isabella that Juliet is pregnant (‘As those that feed grow full . . . etc.’ [1, iv, 41–4]) while complaining that Angelo ‘doth rebate and blunt his natural edge’ with study and fasting (1, iv, 60–1). Pandarus’s homely double-entendre about baking was discussed in Chapter 1 above. While bringing the lovers together, he refers to Cressida breathing ‘as short as a new-ta’en sparrow’, and the lovers as ‘the falcon as the tercel, for all the ducks i’th’river’; then they are ‘billing again’ (all from Troilus and Cressida, Act 3, scene ii). Finally, Pandarus leaves us with:

Young Men

77

Full merrily the humble-bee doth sing Till he hath lost his honey and his sting (5, xi, 41–2)

Pandarus teases Troilus and is teased by Cressida, and his earthy view of sex is a comic foil for Troilus, a bathetic device to highlight the youth’s idealism. However, he is not a cynic until the end, when the parting of the young couple and his own venereal disease darken his view: ‘O world, world, world! Thus is the poor agent despised. O traitors and bawds, how earnestly are you set awork, and how ill requited’ (5, xi, 35–8). In Act 4 he shows shock and understanding at the parting of the lovers (‘’twill be his death, ’twill be his bane; he cannot bear it’ [4, ii, 93–4]) and expresses genuine sorrow. Similarly Lucio is earnest in his affection for Claudio, despite his cynical outlook, while Parolles rightly advises Diana in his poem: For count of this, the count’s a fool, I know it, Who pays before, but not when he does owe it. (All’s Well that Ends Well, 4, iii, 221–2)

These mentors, then, are a confusing mixture. On the one hand they are foils for their protégés, full of bawdy humour and earthy remarks; on the other hand, they are somehow personally engaged. They invest in the youths’ ideals, and regret their troubles, as if vicariously involved. This aspect of the mentor’s role is most developed in Pandarus. During our analysis we noted that all three youths share one habit of mind: that they exalt material objects, sanctifying sensual desire as ‘love’ and ‘holy’; and we noted that this way of thinking is opposed to a conventional morality, which works from metaphysical concepts down, rather than from nature up. This intellectual difference is part of a larger exploration that the plays are engaged in. So, for example, much of the debate concerning laws and government in Measure for Measure turns on the question: Should laws regulate and moderate natural behaviour, but be practical in their application? Or, should the law be an absolute founded on pure principles, in defiance of nature? In Troilus and Cressida, Ulysses stands out as the analyst of

78

Analysing Shakespeare’s Problem Plays

society and proponent of ‘degree’, inveighing against the chaos of appetite Thersites sees all around. Which of them is right? Do we dress up base instinct in pompous authority, following greed, pride and envy in all things? Or, will the establishment of order bring virtue? In All’s Well that Ends Well there is a similar wider contest, although in the case of this play there are the seeds of the generational miracle we find more developed in The Tempest and The Winter’s Tale, with Helena’s God-given healing powers, and mission of fruitful love, exerting the pressure of authority over Bertram’s adolescent rebellion. In all three plays, then, the analysis of male attitudes is part of a wider debate about principles and practice. The youths also exemplify the gulf between words and truth that cannot be bridged. We have noted that Troilus yearns for a ‘simplicity’ beyond all ‘big compare’ – for small words with big meaning, as we put it. His final remarks on Cressida return to this theme: Words, words, mere words, no matter from the heart; Th’effect doth operate another way. Go, wind, to wind! there turn and change together. (Troilus and Cressida, 5, iii, 107–9)

If language is mere ‘wind’, and reality is equally treacherous, then we cannot trust our minds and words to master anything, and all speech is empty. Bertram, of course, abuses language dreadfully, being an evident liar even to the King in the final scene; yet, in the same scene, the revelation of truth is accomplished by means of riddle and paradox between Diana and Helena. The same feature is apparent in the final scene of Measure for Measure, where the Duke deliberately misleads. We have already remarked that the Duke’s presence in disguise throughout the play lends a theatricality to the whole proceedings. In the audience, we are uncertain what kind of ‘truth’ we are witnessing while characters make impassioned speeches. It is an odd context for so much emotional language: all these words have sincere drive yet irrelevant aims. Finally, we should look at the three young men within their social order. What is the opposition they face, what is the power they confront, that oppresses them? In Bertram’s case, it is the authority of

Young Men

79

the King. He may be a worthless young man and a terribly unattractive snob, but he is right in asking ‘But follows it, my lord, to bring me down / Must answer for your raising?’ In Measure for Measure, Claudio and Juliet fall foul of the economic value of chastity, and the economics of the marriage-system. The financial power of her relatives is supported by the law, and leads to the lovers’ (almost) downfall. In Troilus and Cressida, the lovers are parted for reasons of state: war and diplomacy are the imperatives that must be obeyed, at the expense of individual happiness. So, the powers against which these young men come to grief are the powers that rule society: kings, money and war. This way of looking at the plays will be further discussed in Chapter 4. It does not mitigate Shakespeare’s devastating critique of male attitudes; but it does suggest that ‘right’ and ‘wrong’ are more difficult to define than a superficial look at – say – Bertram or Claudio might lead us to think.

Methods of Analysis In this chapter, we have used the same approach to analysing extracts from the plays, that is outlined in Chapter 1. Three further elements have been added to our approach in this chapter. 1. In addition to imagining the extract as it is performed, we have looked at the dramatic structure and effect of the whole scene in which the extract occurs. So, we noticed the complex ironical context of Isabella’s and Claudio’s dialogue in Measure for Measure, where the extract is from one of four distinct episodes in the scene; and we noticed the restlessness of Pandarus throughout the scene from Troilus and Cressida. In the case of All’s Well that Ends Well we went further, referring to several scenes on either side of the one analysed. This led us to realise the elaboratelyprepared predictability of the scene in question. 2. This chapter had the avowed purpose of analysing three weak young men, so we had a clear question in mind before we approached the text in detail. We were not beginning with a blank slate and asking: What is the text like, and what is in it?

80

Analysing Shakespeare’s Problem Plays

This time, we asked: What can we reveal about maleness and masculine attitudes from analysing these young men? Having a more precise question to pursue as you study can be very helpful: it gives you a clearer idea of what to look for and what further questions to ask. However, it is important to remember that this can also lead you into a narrow interpretation. You may ignore significant features, just because they are not relevant to your particular question. 3. The third element we have added to our approach is the most difficult to describe. It entails always trying further and different ways of thinking about the text. The best example of this comes in our concluding discussion. We reached a point where we had gained quite a detailed understanding of courtly love and male gender-attitudes as they are presented in the three characters. At that point, we moved on by looking at the men’s roles in a wider context. This led us into a discussion of wider philosophical conflicts in the plays, and issues of language and artificiality. Finally, we moved on again, by asking what the powers are that constrain and oppress these youths. This led us to discuss powers – of authority, King and money – over society and the individual, anticipating the subject of Chapter 4 below. The important point is to alter the angle of your approach to the plays, when you want to move your insight forward. This can often be done by looking at what you are studying in a wider context, or by asking a different leading question.

Suggested Work To fill out your study of the young men in these plays, it is worth analysing further extracts in which they figure. I suggest that you can begin by selecting episodes where the young man is seen in company of an older or more experienced man. In All’s Well that Ends Well, study Act 2, scene iii, lines 105–76. This extract dramatises the conflict when Helena claims Bertram and the King orders their marriage. In Measure for Measure, study Act 1, scene ii, from line 134 to

Young Men

81

the end of the scene. Here, Claudio is being taken to prison and implores Lucio’s help in arranging Isabella’s appeal to Angelo. In Troilus and Cressida, look at Act 2, scene ii, lines 17–96. Here, Troilus argues against Hector’s recommendation that they should return Helen to the Greeks. In this extract Troilus applies his values to a military and political issue. How far do these values suit diplomacy or war, and how far does he speak as a lover rather than as a politician?

Notes 1 Many critics see a connection between Isabella’s hysterical fear of sex and incest, and suggest incest itself as a dark theme of the play. Harold Bloom, for example, in his Shakespeare: The Invention of the Human (London, 1999), says that for Isabella, ‘every act of coition is “a kind of incest” ’ (p. 374). 2 We have been brought up familiar with images of our planet photographed from space. Claudio’s image must have been a great deal more powerful in 1604, invoking a nearly unimaginable sight.

3 Women A moment’s thought about the three plays we are studying tells us that gender values and sexual politics are at the forefront of each. All’s Well that Ends Well reverses Romeo and Juliet (how would we respond if Juliet was eventually forced to accept Paris, and did so willingly?); Measure for Measure focuses on public and private sexual morality, breach of promise, marriage and the law; Troilus and Cressida presents a story of love and war, but with the courtship fable far more central than in any of the histories: among Shakespeare’s works, only Antony and Cleopatra (1606–7) is comparable. In each of this awkward group of plays there is a complex and developed female part: Helena in All’s Well that Ends Well, Isabella in Measure for Measure and Cressida in Troilus and Cressida are among Shakespeare’s most challenging characterisations. Each sets her own problem for the society in which she lives and the action in which she participates, and each problem remains at least paradoxical and at most unresolved at the end of the play. In this chapter, we take an extract featuring each of these female protagonists, hoping that we can highlight the issues of sexual politics that are clearly at the forefront of the drama. We begin with All’s Well that Ends Well.

Analysis: All’s Well that Ends Well, 1, i, 212–25 This speech is Helena’s soliloquy at the end of the first scene. Her 82

Women

83

love of Bertram has been revealed, and he has left Rossillion for the King’s court. Here, she takes her fate into her own hands: Hel:

Our remedies oft in ourselves do lie, Which we ascribe to heaven; the fated sky Gives us free scope; only doth backward pull Our slow designs when we ourselves are dull. 215 What power is it which mounts my love so high, That makes me see, and cannot feed mine eye? The mightiest space in fortune nature brings To join like likes, and kiss like native things. Impossible be strange attempts to those 220 That weigh their pains in sense, and do suppose What hath been cannot be. Who ever strove To show her merit that did miss her love? The king’s disease – my project may deceive me, 224 But my intents are fix’d, and will not leave me. Exit. (All’s Well that Ends Well, 1, i, 212–25)

This is the second time that the audience has heard Helena in soliloquy. The opening episode of the scene concerns the ‘great folks’: Bertram’s departure, the Countess and Lord Lafew, and the King’s illness. They sweep away off the stage, and it is as if Helena is left there to express her private, unimportant grief. The scene’s third episode features Helena and Parolles: both of the inferior class while ‘great’ preparations are taking place elsewhere. This is emphasised by the arrival of the page, who calls Parolles away to Bertram. So Helena is left alone on stage again, again as if stranded and discarded after the departure of her social superiors. Dramatically, then, this scene emphasises her lowly position. It is as if Helena is left highand-dry like driftwood after a wave of nobles has passed. Helena’s subject, powerless status is further emphasised in Parolles’s parting words. Even this follower, who Helena knows to be ‘a notorious liar . . . a great way fool, solely a coward’ (1, i, 98–9), can patronise her and fix the narrow limits of her life as a woman: When thou hast leisure, say thy prayers; when thou hast none, remember thy friends. Get thee a good husband, and use him as he uses thee. (1, i, 208–11)

84

Analysing Shakespeare’s Problem Plays

Helena’s oppression, then, could hardly be more pointedly dramatised at the moment when she begins her soliloquy. Parolles spoke in prose, and Helena’s soliloquy is not only in verse, she speaks in rhyming couplets. The change of form may indicate her actual superiority to Parolles: that she is intellectually and morally more refined than the lying soldier-coward, despite her lowly social status. Helena was also accorded poetic status in her earlier soliloquy, and towards the end of the virginity debate with Parolles; while we should notice that even the Countess, Bertram and Lafew use prose until line 56 of the scene. Helena’s poetry is dominated by iambic metre, with strong rhyme (there are two half-rhymes: pull / dull and strove / love) leading to doubled rhyme in the final couplet (deceive me / leave me). The rhythm of the speech is not monotonous, however: Helena departs from the metre for naturalness and emphasis (see, for example, the emphasis of reversed iambs in ‘oft’ [212] and ‘Gives’ [214]; and the spondees ‘free scope’ [214] and ‘like likes’ [219]). There are five runon lines, and strong caesurae in the majority of the lines. Notice that Helena’s strongest statements and her rhetorical question run easily through one and a half lines: ‘The mightiest space in fortune nature brings / To join like likes’ and ‘Who ever strove / To show her merit that did miss her love?’ allow Helena’s voice to flow over the line-end when her thoughts are rapid and clear. The impression this speech gives is of a strong and natural voice. Helena, then, speaks naturally within the formal pattern of couplets, which she stretches but does not break. There are only two images, but both deserve attention. First, she imagines her love mounting ‘so high’ that she can ‘see’ her prey on the ground beneath, like a falcon. This idea condenses several aspects of her situation together: she ‘mounts . . . high’ in her falcon-like hunting of Bertram. The idea applies throughout the play, as she remains more far-sighted than Bertram who is like a creature on the ground, preoccupied with the nearest and next event and unable to think in the long term (in the last chapter we noticed that he does not consider beyond the seduction of Diana, and ignores all the references to time in her accepting speech). At the same time, Helena’s love ‘mounts . . . high’ in the social sense that she is raising her aspi-

Women

85

ration to a social rank far above her own position. Additionally, the falcon image suggests more about the relationship between individual and fate that Helena strives to explain. The falcon flies high by permission of its master. By implication, it is fate itself (an aspect of God’s power) that removes the hood and enables her love to ‘mount’ and ‘see’. By a further extension of the idea, Helena reasons that God is on her side: it would be nonsense for a hunter to launch his falcon if he did not want her to catch the prey! Helena’s second image is of nature bringing distant things together ‘to kiss like native things’. The primary meaning of this image is clear and fits her purpose; but we should notice two connotations as well. First, the ‘kiss’ idea is sensual and complements the hunting image of the falcon – which will capture and kill. This fills out the emotional drive behind her pursuit and renders her more human. Similarly, when she claims Bertram in Act 2, scene iii, her words enlarge on the coarse context the King sets out by urging her to make ‘frank election’ and ‘Make choice’, and by his emphasis that this is her reward. Helena softens the idea when claiming Bertram, saying ‘I dare not say I take you, but I give / Me and my service’ (2, iii, 102–3); and renounces her right to claim him when he objects: ‘That you are well restor’d, my lord, I’m glad. / Let the rest go’ (2, iii, 147–8). The uneasy combination of the two images – falconry and kissing – in this early speech, already explores the ambivalence of Helena’s pursuit and love. What does Helena say in this speech? Her initial statement is a flat and surprising contradiction of what has gone before: ‘Our remedies oft in ourselves do lie’ challenges the oppressive power of society and gender-conventions. The line is like a clarion-call to action, and its effect on the play is sudden, since it follows the sight of her weeping, sidelined, and finally patronised by Parolles. This line was also significant in the religious conflicts of Shakespeare’s time, and would perhaps have shocked some in his audience. The puritan doctrine of predestination held that everything is already decided and known by God. We may have the free will to act virtuously or to sin, but this makes no difference to the unalterable destiny God has decided before we are born. This doctrine originated with Calvin, and was gaining ground at the time of

86

Analysing Shakespeare’s Problem Plays

All’s Well that Ends Well. Helena’s formulation of the relation between individual action, and fate, is defiant: she stands for the individualistic view, the energetic attitude to life that says you can make your own fate. Those who do not make an effort to get what they want, in her view, are ‘dull’ because they ‘weigh their pains in sense’ (they are put off from enterprises by the amount of trouble and suffering involved); and they fail to notice the history of extraordinary achievements, convincing themselves that ‘what hath been cannot be’. She, on the contrary, believes in doing everything she can to deserve (or ‘merit’) her reward: ‘Who ever strove / To show her merit that did miss her love?’ Helena throws some sops to the superior power of fate and God, during the speech. We already remarked that she as the falcon has a master, the hunter himself. In addition, she acknowledges that it is the ‘fated sky’ that gives her the ‘free scope’ to better herself. In terms of the theological debates that were familiar to Shakespeare’s audience, however, Helena is resolutely equivocal. She acknowledges that she cannot really know what God intends for her (‘my project may deceive me’). This idea, that we cannot know or understand divine purposes, is central to the Calvinist doctrine of predestination. On the other hand, Helena throws down a challenge to both predestination, and the social hierarchy of the time, by invoking the two concepts ‘nature’ and ‘merit’. Although she and Bertram are socially distant, Helena’s assertion is that they are suited in nature: nature will join ‘like likes’, in nature (but not in society) they are ‘native things’. The idea of ‘merit’ asserts a new – and revolutionary – way of ordering the world. Equality will be a matter of natural qualities, and ‘merit’, so people will no longer be ranked where they are born, where society believes that they belong, but will take the position they deserve, through ‘merit’. In short, the attitude Helena announces in this speech is an extraordinarily modern one in the way it takes and trusts individual responsibility: life is there for the taking, not a ‘vale of tears’ in which God places us to try our steadfastness. Echoes of Helena abound in twentieth-century culture, from the American dream – that you can go out of your front door, work hard and become a millionnaire – to the reverse attitude of capitalist individualism: that

Women

87

if you don’t take your opportunities, if you don’t make it, it is your own fault. There are strong echoes of what we now call the ‘Enterprise culture’ in Helena. The speech we have studied certainly carries a challenge to the established orthodoxy of social rank and the weakness of women. However, it needs to be put into context, for Helena is a complex character. First, the audience already knows that she is emotional, and susceptible to moods. Her first soliloquy (1, i, 77–96) expresses her love as an absolute power: she is helplessly in love, unable to resist the strength of her passion. It has obliterated grief for her father’s death. She declares ‘I am undone’ because ‘there is no living, none, / If Bertram be away’ and her heart is ‘too capable / Of every line and trick of his sweet favour’. On the other hand, she shows no sign of aspiring to win him. On the contrary, she compares loving Bertram to loving ‘a bright particular star / And think to wed it, he is so above me’. Her conclusion is that the ‘ambition’ in her love only increases her suffering and she ‘Must die for love’. The despairing mood expressed in her first soliloquy changes during the dialogue with Parolles. At lines 162–73, Helena imagines the love-culture of the court, and in her broken phrase ‘and he is one –’ suggests that she expects the naïve Bertram to be easy meat for the ladies of the court. Helena is clearly suffering from jealousy here. Her satire of courtly manners is also strong, culminating in the absurd oxymorons ‘jarring-concord’, ‘discord-dulcet’ and ‘sweet disaster’ which show her disgust at the artificial manners of the court. Her plaintive wish ‘God send him well!’ perceives Bertram as a victim, the prey of heartless seductions. This speech not only conveys her jealousy, then: she is also outraged by court artificiality, feels a sense of injustice that such worthless women and not she should have access to Bertram, and wishes to protect him. Her next speech regrets that she is ‘shut . . . up in wishes’ because of her base birth, and cannot be effective because she ‘alone must think’ but her thoughts and wishes cannot issue in action to help Bertram. The cruellest aspect of her situation also indicates the beginning of a practical idea. Because she cannot reveal her love, she can never earn Bertram’s gratitude – and this may indicate both the way she dreams of inspiring him to love her; and the idea of gratitude she eventually uses in her bargain with the King.

88

Analysing Shakespeare’s Problem Plays

Helena’s passage through jealousy, and anger at the injustice that gives court coquettes advantage over her, lead to her wish: that her thoughts could issue in actions. Thus, the genesis of her change is laid in these two speeches, and the mood she expresses in our extract is the result. We may also speculate that Helena is also goaded into action by Parolles: his comments on virginity are so dismissive of women’s rights, and such a coarse reminder that her sex is only a commodity, that we can imagine Helena reacting angrily against the pointless and joyless life Parolles tells her to live: ‘Get thee a good husband, and use him as he uses thee’ (1, i, 210–11). We have spent some time looking at the logic of Helena’s feelings in the first scene, because this helps to explain the transformation of her mood from despair to determination. In brief, the oppression to which she is subjected as a woman, and lowly born, provokes her to take on the world. Protective jealousy of Bertram gives her sense of injustice and outrage a helping hand. This is a very important point. Helena’s character has provoked controversy whenever All’s Well that Ends Well has been studied or performed. Coleridge called her Shakespeare’s ‘loveliest creation’; but more recently critics have tended to reduce her to a fairytale or symbolic role, arguing that her inconsistencies as a human character are because she is not meant to be convincing. Is she inconsistent, unconvincing, merely a shallow symbolic figure in a folk tale, rather than naturalistic? Does she overbalance an inadequate play, or does she let down the twin values of chastity and love she is supposed to represent, by cheating? We will not seek a single explanation of Helena in this discussion. Instead, we will concentrate on her stage presence and flexible voice, seeking to make dramatic sense of her mercurial personality. So far, then, we know that she is caught between the oppression of her sex and lowly birth, and the ambition of her intelligence and love. This has already given rise to contradictory moods in Helena – she oscillates between the twin poles of despair and determination. Her next two appearances are both tests: first she must win the Countess’s permission for her journey to Paris; then she must persuade the King into a deal in which he exchanges his cure for Bertram. How does Helena handle these two confrontations?

Women

89

The Countess is the easier of the two. If you re-read the scene (Act 1, scene iii) there are no problems in the way Helena acts and speaks. She suffers a fright when the Countess talks of being her mother, a fright that we know to be visually acted from the Countess’s words ‘God’s mercy, maiden! Does it curd thy blood / To say I am thy mother? What’s the matter . . .’ (Act 1, iii, 144–5). Helena speaks enough riddles about daughter, sister and brother to betray her feelings. We already know that the Countess is sympathetic, and has prior knowledge anyway. She fully appreciates the social disparity between her son and Helena, saying ‘God shield you mean it not!’, but also echoes ideas we have heard before in different contexts: that virginity should be like her mother was when young (lines 123–30), and that nature can bring distant things (‘foreign seeds’) together as if they were ‘native’ (lines 139–41). Helena responds with openness, and the audience has no difficulty in recognising her natural emotions. She confesses her passion, and expresses the paradox of hopelessness and continuing love that throws her moods to opposite extremes (lines 187–204). When asked her motive for going to Paris, she openly acknowledges that the thought of Bertram inspired her idea (lines 227–30). In the midst of her confession, Helena even talks of ‘deserving’ Bertram. Beyond her open confession, Helena has two important speeches to make which help to gain the Countess’s aid. First, she appeals to the Countess’s youth. The love she lays claim to is both chaste and passionate – a claim she emphasises by repetition: ‘Wish chastely and love dearly, that your Dian / Was both herself and love’. This claim resolves the question of ‘virginity’ so fruitlessly discussed with Parolles, and will lead to the conspiracy of Diana (chastity) with Helena (love) in the second half of the play. However, on a human level it is the appeal to the Countess’s empathy that we know to be effective for she has already remembered her own youthful passion aloud. Helena’s second important speech is that which hints at a higher, divine power. This is her reply to the masculine objection – what can she hope to do where men have failed? We will look into this plea more closely when Helena uses the same response to the King. One element that is crucial to Helena’s success in Act 1, scene iii,

90

Analysing Shakespeare’s Problem Plays

is the fact that she and the Countess share a belief in the power of nature. Our extract told us that Helena believes nature capable of marvels, and trusts that her natural passion has the blessing of nature, fate and hence God, if she has the courage to pursue it. Here, the Countess also acknowledges the inevitable and natural rightness of passion in youth: If ever we are nature’s, these are ours; this thorn Doth to our rose of youth rightly belong; Our blood to us, this to our blood is born: It is the show and seal of nature’s truth, Where love’s strong passion is impress’d in youth. (1, iii, 124–8)

This speech gains distinction from its formality. Not only does it consist of regular couplets in between prose and blank verse. It is also formal in the way that the Countess elaborates her statement, re-stating the idea three times. What does Helena confront in her interview with the King? This is a much thornier occasion, for she is assailed with all the disdain of a powerful man for a young woman’s helplessness, reinforced by his fear of losing a masculine reputation for wisdom. Gender-issues dominate this scene from the moment Lafew’s salacious introduction springs the pronoun ‘her’ to titillate the King. How does Helena respond? First, she makes an honest proposition, asking permission to treat the King because she knows a cure (2, i, 102–13). His reply is full of fear – the fear of being laughed at by other men. He would be ‘credulous’, it would ‘stain our judgment’ and divide ‘our great self and our credit’, while the diction he uses for her proposed cure (‘prostitute’, ‘empirics’ and ‘senseless’) drips with disdain. By contrast, the King shows a naïve admiration for ‘most learned doctors’ and ‘the congregated college’ (all from 2, i, 114–23). Helena’s initial reaction is to withdraw. We can choose to read this as either a resurgence of her negative feelings after a rebuff, or a ploy in which she acts out the fearful modesty the King expects from a maiden. Either reading will make sense in the light of what we know of Helena, and what comes next.

Women

91

Helena spends the remainder of the scene acting out the King’s fantasies about women. She begins by accentuating her own weakness: she is ‘the weakest minister’, like ‘babes’ and ‘simple’. The paradoxes she proposes in lines 141 to 143 accept that she is the least likely source of a cure. Helena has prepared her ground well, by suggesting that she is nothing and ‘He that of greatest works is finisher’ is all. This enables her to scold the King roundly in her next speech, calling his attitude ‘presumption’ and accusing him of superficiality (‘us that square our guess by shows’). The final lines of this speech flatly assert that she knows she can cure him, again. In the middle of this harangue, Helena inserts the one line that makes it possible for the King to listen to her: ‘Of heaven, not me, make an experiment.’ The King, no doubt slightly bemused by this stage, asks how long it will take, and Helena’s reply takes eight lines to say ‘one day’. The style is that of a mock-incantation, and the flabbiness of Helena’s style here is in marked contrast to her forthright scolding beforehand. The salacious context set by Lafew, with his reference to ‘Cressid’s uncle’ and leaving them alone together, is revived by this audacious parody. Apart from calling herself a helpless ‘babe’, attributing all to God, and scolding the King like a vexed mother, what other female stereotype is left for Helena to assume? The answer is: that of a seductive witch. In the most fearful hidden depths of each man’s soul, the only power ascribed to women is the power of casting spells; and this Helena hints that she will do. If we accept that the King is by now reeling from this assault, which uses the credulousness of his own gender-prejudices so effectively, Helena’s final two changes are masterstrokes. The first follows the King’s question, what will she ‘venture’ on her success. She answers that she will venture her life; but the majority of her four lines are taken up with ‘impudence’, ‘strumpet’, ‘shame’, ‘odious ballads’ and so forth, so that her offer of death seems to be secondary. This would be deeply satisfying to the King, for two reasons. First, he can imagine no worse experience for a woman than her loss of reputation (a reputation whose terms and economic value were set by men); and secondly, these terms add further sexual titillation to the encounter, since this is a beautiful young woman talking the language of sexual denunciation.

92

Analysing Shakespeare’s Problem Plays

Helena’s final masterstroke is her demand. She has been every variety of female stereotype by turns. She has puffed him up with her weakness, scolded him maternally, used the voice of God, excited him with witchcraft and forbidden sexuality: in short, she has flattered and bamboozled him beyond his knowledge. What can she do to rebuild his confused masculine self-assurance? How can she boost his ego? The answer is, of course, that she asks for the one thing all women are supposed to want: a good husband. We can almost hear the King’s thoughts: Ah! So that’s what she wants. She’s just a woman, after all. At the end of the scene, the King is relieved and restored to his comfortable prejudices. He has been thoroughly conned by a brilliant display of femininity – and he is so glad it is over, that he will make doubly sure of keeping his promise. This reading of the scene may seem untenably modern, but there is no good reason to reject it. In its favour, we should remember that Helena has already shown a clear grasp of how ‘femininity’ can ensnare men (see 1, i, 162–73); and look back to the last chapter. There is no question that Shakespeare well understands and can critically anatomise male attitudes. Then, remind yourself of the King’s speech at lines 114–23, which is both ostentatiously patriarchal, and at the same time lays him open to the manipulation that follows. Finally, consider the persistent motif of bewitching seduction carried on by Lafew’s interjections both at the start of this scene itself, and in the claiming scene (Act 2, scene iii) which shortly follows. If, in addition, we consider Cleopatra, and Antony’s toils, in Antony and Cleopatra; or the overt gender-content of Twelfth Night and Much Ado About Nothing, not to mention the characterisation of Cressida to which we will turn later in this chapter, our reading seems more and more reasonable. The real objection to the reading given above, is that it treats the overtones of magic and miracle so beloved of modern interpreters, as comedy: an act put on to con a simple king. This is not really our intention. Helena does, consistently, claim that there is ‘something in’t more than my father’s skill’ (1, iii, 237–8); and we have seen that she and the Countess share a more serious belief in the redeeming potential of nature/fate. So, it is not our intention to belittle all Helena’s claims to a larger significance. Instead, I shall argue that

Women

93

these plays present competing discourses: both the agent of redemption through nature, and the manipulative actress, are present in the scene we have just discussed. The feature of these plays that has made them so provocative, and stubborn of interpretation, is simply that both discourses remain valid, and their tension is never – not for one moment – resolved. The idea that multiple discourses remain stubbornly in competition in these plays, is one we will return to. For the present, we need only remind ourselves of Helena’s baffling changes: Of heaven, not me, make an experiment. I am not an impostor, that proclaim Myself against the level of mine aim, (2, i, 153–5)

Here, within two lines, she is first nothing but an agent of Divine power, then self-reliant, practical and confident. This is typical of the play’s texture in hopping from register to register without warning. With each hop, we are inclined to perceive the alternative discourse as a shadow of the one we hear. In this case, Helena’s selfconfidence does not suit when she is a symbolic redeemer; and her invocation of Divinity seems satiric, when what she offers is merely the right medicine. We have made quite a thorough study of Helena in the first two acts, and must soon leave her, turning to study an extract from Measure for Measure. Before doing so, we should mention Helena’s third soliloquy, in Act 3, scene ii (lines 99–129). This is an important debate on the competing male pursuits of love and war; and it is noticeable that Helena believes war to be pointless danger, and does not value the honour won thereby. Put simply, war is not worth it: an attitude Shakespeare’s audience heard before from Falstaff. Helena remains by turns practical and anxious throughout the bed-trick plot in the second half of the play. Predominantly, she is occupied by reassuring the Widow and Diana, and reaching the King in time. Following the bed-trick, she does reflect on the pleasure men are able to take in sex they believe is illicit. We have already expanded far beyond our initial extract, however, and must now leave Helena to your further study.

94

Analysing Shakespeare’s Problem Plays

Analysis: Measure for Measure, 2, ii, 100–43 This is an extract from Isabella’s pleading with Angelo, for mercy to Claudio. She is seconded by interjections from Lucio, and the Provost looks on from a greater distance: Isab: Ang:

Yet show some pity. I show it most of all when I show justice; For then I pity those I do not know, Which a dismiss’d offence would after gall, And do him right that, answering one foul wrong, Lives not to act another. Be satisfied; Your brother dies tomorrow; be content. Isab: So you must be the first that gives this sentence, And he, that suffers. O, it is excellent To have a giant’s strength, but it is tyrannous To use it like a giant. Lucio: [to Isab.] That’s well said. Isab: Could great men thunder As Jove himself does, Jove would ne’er be quiet, For every pelting petty officer Would use his heaven for thunder; nothing but thunder. Merciful Heaven, Thou rather with thy sharp and sulphurous bolt Splits the unwedgeable and gnarled oak, Than the soft myrtle. But man, proud man, Dress’d in a little brief authority, Most ignorant of what he’s most assur’d – His glassy essence – like an angry ape Plays such fantastic tricks before high heaven As makes the angels weep; who, with our spleens, Would all themselves laugh mortal. Lucio: [to Isab.] O, to him, to him, wench! He will relent; He’s coming: I perceive’t. Prov: [aside] Pray heaven she win him. Isab: We cannot weigh our brother with ourself. Great men may jest with saints: ’tis wit in them, But in the less, foul profanation.

100

105

110

115

120

125

Women

Lucio: Isab: Lucio: Ang: Isab:

Ang:

95

[to Isab.] Thou’rt i’ th’right, girl; more o’ that. 130 That in the captain’s but a choleric word, Which in the soldier is flat blasphemy. [to Isab.] Art avis’d o’ that? More on ’t. Why do you put these sayings upon me? Because authority, though it err like others, 135 Hath yet a kind of medicine in itself That skins the vice o’th’top. Go to your bosom, Knock there, and ask your heart what it doth know That’s like my brother’s fault. If it confess A natural guiltiness, such as is his, 140 Let it not sound a thought upon your tongue Against my brother’s life. [aside] She speaks, and ’tis such sense That my sense breeds with it. – Fare you well. [Going.] (Measure for Measure, 2, ii, 100–43)

The middle of the play Measure for Measure takes place in the courtroom, its ante-chamber, the prison, and outside the prison. This scene is the second set within the context of judicial punishment, and takes place in the ‘ante-chamber’. The scene is simply constructed: there is a brief introduction as the servant calls Angelo, and he confirms Claudio’s sentence to the Provost, before the servant brings in Isabella and Lucio. At the end of the scene Angelo is left to reflect on his turbulent passions in soliloquy. The bulk of the scene, however, consists of Isabella’s plea, seconded by Lucio’s interjections and answered by Angelo. Angelo is apparently static following his entry, perhaps seated. Certainly his role – hearing and deciding appeals – indicates stillness; and several points in the scene indicate some movement towards and away from Angelo, by Lucio and Isabella. Dramatically, then, Angelo is a fixed point around which others move. This changes, however, as our extract ends when there are two stage directions ‘[Going]’ for Angelo. It is significant that he relinquishes his dominant position before the plaintiffs leave. It is visually apparent that the ‘strict’ Angelo has been moved.

96

Analysing Shakespeare’s Problem Plays

The scene we are studying is in deadly earnest, and passions run high. Before we look at the extract in detail, we should remember that this follows the courtroom scene (Act 2, scene i): a long knockabout farce in which Escalus questions Elbow and Pompey, and one of the funniest scenes in Shakespeare. That scene has already opened out the operation of justice and punishment to subversive scrutiny. Our extract is intense, and dense with metaphor and allusion. The poetry has power and rhythm, but is not metrically regular, and shows the features of Shakespeare’s later verse in half-, short and overlong lines. Angelo’s speech at the start of the extract shows snatches of iambic regularity; but when we come to Isabella, the rhythm and emphasis are so irregular that it would be fruitless to scan the extract. Expression and pace are so complex it would be pedantic to describe their effects at length. Instead, we will take one short sample: Merciful Heaven, Thou rather with thy sharp and sulphurous bolt Splits the unwedgeable and gnarled oak, Than the soft myrtle. But man, proud man, . . . etc.

Here, Isabella is in full spate. The opening line is half-length and irregularly stressed. The last line is missing a syllable, and in the metre it should be a stress: in this way Shakespeare seems to have included a pause where the full-stop falls – like a ‘rest’ in music. The two lines in between also achieve a powerful effect, because of their contrast. The first of them is regular in metre and so builds up pace. Notice that many of the words in this line are also common, short, and easy to say (the exception is ‘sulphurous’), enhancing the rapid rhythmic quality of the line. The next line is the opposite: from the violent, heavy-stressed first sound ‘Splits’, it proceeds in lumpy, obstructed difficulty to the final spondee ‘gnarled oak’. Bunched consonants in ‘splits’, ‘-wedge-’ and ‘gnarled’ make the line difficult to say: try it, you will find that you must mouth it much more than the preceding line. The effect is to convey the free descent of the ‘bolt’ and, suddenly, the violent and hard obstruction put up by the ‘oak’, or proud and powerful sin. Undoubtedly some of the emotional charge in this language comes from Isabella’s own angry wish:

Women

97

she would like violently to ‘split’ the sinful human authorities she so despises. Her language acts out this fury in a most plastic manner. One sample of four lines has provided fulsome analysis, and shows how densely naturalistic and dramatic Isabella’s voice is, in this extract. It also hints at complex and powerful emotions in her, such as the violence of her own desire to ‘split’ unjust authority, which she would not be likely to admit to herself. Some critics suggest that Isabella is a masochist, that she finds torture and suffering exciting: they point out her desire for ‘more strict restraint’ (1, iv, 4) from the sisterhood she was about to join. This would also explain the wild energy of the poetry: either way, the image and rhythm express something Isabella violently desires. Isabella’s imagery is also strong, and tells part of the story of her character in this scene. Here is a list of the comparisons she makes: 1. Angelo’s judicial power, compared to a ‘giant’s strength’. 2. Angelo’s abuse of power, compared to a giant’s (or tyrant’s) behaviour. 3. The power of ‘great men’, compared to Jove’s thunder. 4. The authority and power of ‘petty’ men in official positions, compared to their ‘heaven’. 5. God’s punishments, compared to lightning-bolts. 6. Sinners in power, compared to a ‘gnarled oak’. 7. Humble sinners, compared to ‘soft myrtle’. 8. Authority, compared to clothing. 9. The soul, compared to glass. 10. Men in authority compared to an ‘angry ape’ (both beast and mimic) acting the fool in the sight of heaven, causing angels to weep and us to laugh. 11. Authority, compared to a medicine that can heal the skin above an infection, but which leaves the infection untreated. 12. Angelo’s heart, compared to a closed house where he must knock before it will open. 13. Angelo’s heart, personified answering Angelo’s questions. 14. Angelo’s ‘sense’ (both rational understanding and physical sensations), said to ‘breed’ with, i.e. have fruitful intercourse with, Isabella’s argument.

98

Analysing Shakespeare’s Problem Plays

What motifs stand out from this list of image-ideas? Two significant trains of thought seem to be developing in Isabella’s language. First, appearance or surface is contrasted to reality, or core, internal truth. This is apparent in the ideas of ‘giant’, Jove’s ‘thunder’ and the ‘heaven’ of official authority (because it is man’s, not a god’s, so artificial power and a false ‘heaven’), authority as clothing, the acting of an ‘ape’ (false imitation; tragic/comic performance), and false medicine which ‘skins’ while ‘vice’ remains the inner truth. This vein of imagery has a bitter tone: giant and ape are both ugly and monstrous, ideas of disproportion. Thunder and heaven are sarcasms: Isabella means that judicial power is in fact hellish and of the devil. The appearance–reality motif, then, supports Isabella’s meaning, her devastating condemnation of human ‘authority’. It also expresses powerful emotion: hatred, the ugliness of officialdom and contempt for its absurdity. The medicine image powerfully evokes corruption, and echoes a vein of infection imagery extensively used in Hamlet: It will but skin and film the ulcerous place, Whiles rank corruption, mining all within, Infects unseen. (Hamlet, 3, iv, 147–9)

Hamlet is warning his mother not to cover up her sin, using the same sense of ‘skin’ as Isabella. This image-idea continues in Measure for Measure, so Angelo’s lust ‘smells’, is ‘foul’, is putrefying matter (‘carrion’), and is ‘pollution’. Pompey and Lucio frequently equate sexual sin and disease, also. Here, the disease image intensifies the disgust expressed by Isabella. The second thread in Isabella’s imagery is nature and natural forces. This is apparent in ideas of thunder, oak and myrtle, and apes. This collection of ideas is more problematic to analyse, since Isabella’s emotions seem ambivalent: she seems to approve of natural goodness in the myrtle, and in God’s thunderbolt that destroys the rigid oak; yet, oaks and apes are a part of nature. We may be reading these ideas too closely, but there is a hint of confusion and disturbance here which conveys Isabella’s unresolved feelings about her own nature. In the last chapter, we commented that her condemna-

Women

99

tion of Claudio is vicious and out of control. These image-ideas reveal turbulence within Isabella: is it sin, or her own nature, she finds disgusting? One of Isabella’s images is significant on its own account: ‘His glassy essence’ describes the soul. This implies the soul’s transparency (so the sinful man cannot see it but sees through it unaware), the soul as a mirror reflecting God; and its brittleness, that it can be shattered. These meanings all support Isabella’s argument, and particularly, the soul as a reflection of God is the only idea which indicates how men should wield authority: by imitating God. Isabella’s powerful, volatile poetry and her imagery, then, portray powerful emotions and a deep disturbance within her. This should not deflect us from appreciating her argument as well. Isabella presents a devastatingly negative analysis of the social hierarchy, and of the authority of the state. According to her, the entire social and judicial order is the artificial work of sinful man, and goes against the will of God. That there is an element of gender-rebellion in Isabella’s views, appears from her use of ‘his heaven’, ‘great men’, ‘But man, proud man . . . he’s . . . his’. Positions of authority were, of course, exclusively occupied by men in Shakespeare’s time:1 inevitably, an attack on ‘authority’ was an attack on patriarchal structures. Angelo’s contribution to the image-ideas in our extract comes in his aside at the end. The two meanings of ‘sense’ he exploits underline the duality of reason and passion. His ‘sense’ (both rational understanding and physical sensations) is said to ‘breed’ with Isabella’s argument. This image combined with the pun on ‘sense’ implies two meanings: first, that it is her ‘sense’ (her rationality) that excites him – the paradox he dwells upon at the end of the scene, that her chastity is what inflames his lust – and, second, that her ‘sense’ (her argument that he should look into his own heart) is what has made him ‘sense’ (understand) his own ‘sense’ (sensual response to her). The soul was thought of as an ‘intellectual essence’ and an image of God. The fact that Angelo’s lust is inflamed by his (and Isabella’s) reason rather than controlled by it, shows the truth of her ‘glass’ image: that he does not see the reflection of God in his own soul. Angelo’s reason is looking through the glass of his soul as if it were not there.

100

Analysing Shakespeare’s Problem Plays

Analysing this extract has shown us Isabella at her best. Lucio had to encourage her to throw off her restraint (he twice tells her ‘You are too cold’). Now that she has let go, she is an eloquent advocate for mercy and a telling critic of judicial rigour. She speaks powerfully and passionately, surging emotions of outrage, hatred and disgust boiling through her language, which is dense with meaning and metaphor. Isabella’s first appearance sees her entering a sisterhood, and ‘rather wishing a more strict restraint’ (1, iv, 4) than the nunnery vows and rules will provide. Her reaction to the news about Claudio is unimpeachable, and – as we have seen here – her pleading on his behalf is powerful. There are five further appearances of this character. First, in Act 2, scene iv, she hears Angelo’s proposition and is shocked, furious and revolted. Secondly, she takes part in the long prison scene we discussed in Chapter 2. Her final three appearances are a purely practical scene with Mariana and the Duke (Act 4, scene i), which adds circumstantial detail to the bed-trick plot; a brief appearance in Act 4, scene iii, when she is told that Claudio is dead; and her part in the final scene, accusing Angelo. We have to acknowledge that Isabella fulfils her prescribed role, then. She is a heroine, representing chastity and morality. She is right: the play would not work if she gave in to Angelo, or even if she gave in to Claudio; so, she stands firm in her chastity and thus deserves elevation through marriage to the Duke at the end. What is more, she is a powerful advocate for the values she holds so dear, and the dilemma in which her natural sisterly love is pitted against her abhorrence of sin (as well as her natural abhorrence of Angelo) attracts the audience’s sympathy. Modern readers sometimes respond pruriently to the bed-trick, or find it hard to believe, but we should not for two reasons. First, that it was a stage convention of the time and Shakespeare’s audience would have accepted it easily just as we accept artificial lighting and numerous stage conventions in our modern theatres. We should not be unwilling to suspend disbelief for the bed-trick. Secondly, in Shakespeare’s time, marriage was a less rigid legal ceremony, and a couple who promised marriage to each other could be legally recognised as husband and wife, without any further ceremony.

Women

101

Therefore, Mariana’s claim to Angelo as her ‘husband’ had a legal force we in the twenty-first century no longer accord to a promise. By the same token, however, Claudio and Juliet were also man and wife, so neither of the ‘sins’ Isabella discusses in Act 3, scene i needed to trouble her conscience. Her vengeful wish to ‘pluck out his [Angelo’s] eyes’ is natural in the circumstances, and the remainder of her action in the play simply carries out the Duke’s instructions. Remember our comments above, on Helena from All’s Well that Ends Well: that her figure presents two competing discourses, one as a magician and semi-holy redeemer and the other as a comic realist. In the case of Isabella, then, the play presents a connected discourse in which she figures as a heroine representative of pure morality. She is placed in an excruciatingly painful situation, and she passes the test. We are forced to conclude, then, that the figure of Isabella is ‘satisfactory’ in this plot and morality function. On the other hand, the two extracts we have studied which feature Isabella have raised different and difficult questions. We will summarise rather than go back over the detail now: we have accused her of double standards with regard to Mariana’s and Claudio’s sins; of violent intemperance in viciously cursing her brother, and of being out of control afterwards; of a selfish double standard where Mariana’s sin won’t matter but her own would, and hypocrisy because this shoddy morality ‘appears not foul in the truth of my spirit’ (Act 3, i, 206–7). We have also found her to have turbulent, unresolved and unacknowledged feelings about her own nature. Our suspicion is that she uses purity as an hysterical compensation, to deny her natural passion. Now we can add to these accusations. Why does she want ‘more strict restraint’ from becoming a nun? How can she be so devoted to morality, and so offended by her brother who has, even within the argument she accepts for Mariana, not sinned; and at the same time take part in such a sustained lie throughout the final two acts, when she neatly arranges the duplicitous rendezvous with Angelo, and falsely accuses him in public, with convincing passion? Finally, what has happened to her vocation if she accepts the Duke at the end? Or, what has happened to her independence of mind? Another discourse is dramatically present, then. This second dis-

102

Analysing Shakespeare’s Problem Plays

course raises questions about Isabella’s character, giving strong hints that she is driven by powerful but repressed natural passions, some of which are selfish. However, the second discourse about Isabella also raises the play’s incessant discussion of justice, punishment, virtue, means and ends, onto an extremely complex level. Despite Isabella’s satisfactory role in a simple morality play, this second disturbing discourse will not go away. All the issues it raises are central to the problems Measure for Measure sets before us. Can we lie for good reason? Can we sin in a virtuous cause? If we can, how much can we sin for the sake of virtue? What natural sliding can be excused? What is judicial ‘authority’, and how does its corruption differ from the self-righteousness of puritan denunciation? All these issues of government, morality and nature are essential to the Duke’s role as orchestrator of the play. To put it another way, the whole play is the Duke’s experiment, which is why Lucio calls him ‘the old fantastical duke of dark corners’ (4, iii, 156). The dual discourse we have found in Isabella’s character is, of course, also a dual discourse in terms of gender politics. Her stance as chaste votaress, who rejects natural sin and abhors carnal appetite, is her response to a world of predatory males (her own brother, as well as the evidence of a carnal society given by Lucio, Pompey and Mistress Overdone, give ample evidence of this). Similarly, she is critical of the corrupt patriarchal order in society, as we have seen. The second discourse, on the other hand, suggests flaws in her purity, and motives for her morality, that subvert her female moral superiority. At the very least, this secondary discourse suggests that passion and emotion are at the root of reason and action, just as much for Isabella as for men. Isabella is a battleground for the critics: she is accused of hysteria, masochism, and an obsession with incest centring on her father; or of coldness, a lack of natural feeling, repellent puritanism. It is as if Isabella presents the audience with the goddess/whore dilemma we mentioned in connection with Troilus in the last chapter, in an insoluble form.

Women

103

Analysis: Troilus and Cressida, 1, ii, 249–86 The extract we have chosen to study shows Cressida in two contexts: first in her uncle’s company, then alone. Pand: Cress :

Pand: Cress :

Pand:

You are such another woman! one knows not at what ward you lie. Upon my back to defend my belly, upon my wit, to defend my wiles, upon my secrecy to defend mine honesty, my mask to defend my beauty, and you to defend all these; and at all these wards I lie, at a thousand watches. Say one of your watches. Nay, I’ll watch you for that; and that’s one of the chiefest of them too. If I cannot ward what I would not have hit, I can watch you for telling how I took the blow – unless it swell past hiding, and then it’s past watching. You are such another.

250

255

260

Enter Boy. Boy: Pand: Boy: Pand: Cress : Pand: Cress : Pand: Cress :

Sir, my lord would instantly speak with you. Where? At your own house. There he unarms him. 265 Good boy, tell him I come. [Exit Boy.] I doubt he be hurt. Fare ye well, good niece. Adieu, uncle. I’ll be with you, niece, by and by. To bring, uncle? 270 Ay, a token from Troilus. Exit Pandarus. By the same token, you are a bawd. Words, vows, gifts, tears and love’s full sacrifice He offers in another’s enterprise: But more in Troilus thousandfold I see 275 Than in the glass of Pandar’s praise may be. Yet hold I off. Women are angels, wooing: Things won are done; joy’s soul lies in the doing.

104

Analysing Shakespeare’s Problem Plays

That she belov’d knows naught that knows not this: Men prize the thing ungained more than it is. 280 That she was never yet that ever knew Love got so sweet as when desire did sue. Therefore this maxim out of love I teach: ‘Achievement is command; ungained, beseech.’ Then, though my heart’s contents firm love doth bear, 285 Nothing of that shall from mine eyes appear. Exit. (Troilus and Cressida, 1, ii, 249–86)

This is the final section of a long scene in which Cressida has the role of onlooker, inquiring about and commenting on events that occurred elsewhere, gossip, and public figures who pass across the stage before her. The scene’s first episode shows Cressida and her servant Alexander. She asks for news and Alexander tells her the latest about Hector. Pandarus’s entry sets up the contest of wits between uncle and niece: he praises and Cressida derides Troilus, or she praises others in his stead. Pandarus’s most outrageous claim is that Helen would like to exchange Paris for Troilus; her response is to call Troilus a ‘sneaking fellow’. Alexander leaves soon after Pandarus’s arrival. One by one, Aeneas, Antenor, Hector, Paris, Helenus and Troilus, followed by a group of soldiers, all pass across the stage, battle-weary, without speaking. Pandarus’s ‘boy’ arrives with a message from Troilus, then leaves. Finally, Cressida is left alone to reveal her thoughts to the audience in soliloquy. The scene is rather contrived and theatrical, then: in the central episode, we watch a dumb-show, and listen to the audience (Pandarus, Cressida) giving a witty commentary. The opening of the scene, with its gossip about Hector, harks forward to watching the warriors return; the end of the scene harks back to what they have just seen – Troilus’s return. This is a formal structure which highlights the artificiality of their transparent banter, and highlights the element of spectacle in which we watch great events with watchers. A glance at the text on the page tells us that the first part of our extract is in prose, then it changes to verse for Cressida’s soliloquy.

Women

105

The change is not merely one to the naturalistic rhythm of blank verse, however. Cressida speaks in metrical rhyming couplets and the audience cannot fail to notice the change as soon as Pandarus leaves the stage and she has made her parting comment on him (‘you are a bawd’). Cressida begins with four strong stresses, ‘Words, vows, gifts, tears,’ which give startling emphasis to her oration. Then her speech takes on an iambic regularity that is only mildly broken, for emphasis, twice. First, ‘Women’ in line 277 reverses the foot to emphasise both the change of subject, and the proverbial style of Cressida’s thought – a generalisation about her whole sex. Secondly, ‘Nothing’ reverses the first foot of line 286. Perhaps this conveys her determination to control and hide her real feelings. However, the most noticeable elements in Cressida’s poetry are the initial demand for our attention, with four strong stresses, and the regularity of her couplets for the remainder of the speech. Similarly, the diction is direct and clear, with very little imagery. Cressida describes Pandarus’s praise of Troilus as a ‘glass’ reflecting him, saying she prefers the reality to the image; she expresses the courting lover’s praise by saying ‘women are angels’; and she uses a common figure of speech in which her heart ‘carries’ love as its ‘content’ (with a pun on content as happiness). These, however, are plain and common tropes which do little more than express Cressida’s meaning neatly. Cressida’s language is also plain and clear: ‘won’, ‘done’, ‘joy’, ‘prize’, ‘sweet’ – she constructs her theory of love out of monosyllables in everyday use. We have noticed a surprising lack of features in Cressida’s soliloquy: regular couplets, no remarkable imagery, ordinary language. The question is, what effect does this plainness produce? To answer, we need to look at the prose of her exchanges with Pandarus. Pandarus mentions ‘ward’ (position of guard – a fencing term), and Cressida elaborates on the metaphor. Her list of ways in which she must guard herself is full of sexual innuendo. Cressida jokingly describes herself as subject to constant, multiple attacks on her chastity, emphasising her alertness (‘at a thousand watches’ suggests that she dare not even sleep). At the same time she implies her sexual interest in the secondary meaning of ‘Upon my back’, and the implication that it is desire that keeps her awake. Pandarus enjoys this

106

Analysing Shakespeare’s Problem Plays

witty elaboration and invites more of the same, whereupon she obliges with a further complicated play on ‘ward’ coupled with the newly-introduced pun-word ‘watch’ and ‘watches’. Cressida brings in an archery image, using ‘hit’ ( = arrow into target) for loss of virginity, and makes obvious references to pregnancy which might ‘swell past hiding’. When Pandarus leaves, promising a ‘token’ from Troilus, Cressida continues in the same vein with a pun on ‘token’ in her first line. Clearly, Cressida’s witty, elaborate repartee is dense with metaphor, plays on words and doubled or even trebled connotations. There could hardly be a greater contrast in style between the prose Cressida speaks in her uncle’s presence, and her closing soliloquy. This contrast highlights both sides of a split in Cressida’s tone and behaviour: on the one side, artificiality, trivial levity and lightness of emotion are emphasised in the characters’ witty banter; on the other side, the plainness and rhymed form of the soliloquy emphasise sincerity and seriousness. This scene is Cressida’s first appearance. The audience is encouraged to judge her as a gossip, a witty tease and a coquette. For all that we laugh at scene ii, enjoying Pandarus’s discomfiture and Cressida’s wit and innuendo, we would nonetheless be reaching negative judgments about her as a woman. In other words, we are encouraged to fit Cressida into one of our own, pre-existing stereotypes of feminine behaviour: that of the coquette. In this context, the sudden change of form, and the plain sincerity of her soliloquy, comes as a considerable surprise and revelation. It is typical of Cressida throughout the play, that she unsettles judgments we have been encouraged to form. The soliloquy is a paradox: it both undermines and confirms the stereotype. It both reveals that she loves Troilus (‘my heart’s content firm love doth bear’); and confesses and justifies her teasing behaviour (‘Nothing of that shall from mine eyes appear’). At the same time, Cressida sets out a specific understanding of male and female roles in courtship and sex; and states the duality that, in one form or another, has influenced the problematic characterisations of both Helena from All’s Well that Ends Well and Isabella from Measure for Measure. Cressida says: Women are angels, wooing: Things won are done; joy’s soul lies in the doing.

Women

107

Cressida is not, of course, telling us what women are. She tells us what men think women are, pointing out the two contradictory stereotypes of women that dominate men’s relations with the opposite sex. Cressida contrasts ‘angels’ – with connotations of purity and religious faith – with the monosyllabic, brutal phrase ‘Things won are done’. This coarse phrase treats women (and sex) as ‘things’, and is phrased to imply war and conquest. Remember that one of the first features of this play that drew our attention, was the ironic interplay between love and war.2 Cressida’s response to this stereotyping, is to use the power of her position as thoroughly as she is able by extending the period of ‘wooing’ for as long as possible. During this time, she can ‘hold . . . off ’ and pretend indifference, tease and manipulate. Ironically, however, she is similar to Troilus in that she fears the time after courtship. She, like Troilus, is filled with uncertainty about love: she knows the pattern of courtship, but has no trust in what will follow. Like Troilus, she seems to have no clear concept of a lasting sexual relationship. The values and language of her society have taught her to feel a deep mistrust about this – if she once gives up her sexual power, she expects to be undervalued afterwards because ‘Men prize the thing ungained more than it is.’ Her fears and those of Troilus correspond quite closely. Remember that Troilus feared how ‘blood decays’ and mistrusted any woman’s ability to ‘feed for aye her lamp and flames of love’. Here, Cressida expresses the same fearful belief that sexual pleasure will fade: That she was never yet that ever knew Love got so sweet as when desire did sue.

Cressida tells us, in fact, that she feels love; but she has learned cynicism from her society – and it is this cynicism that conditions her behaviour. In this extract, then, we find that paradox and contrasts in style and mood, in Cressida’s character, first encourage our judgment, then unsettle us. Two further examples confirm that Cressida provokes this process throughout the play. Turning to Act 3, scene ii, we

108

Analysing Shakespeare’s Problem Plays

find Cressida’s confession of love (lines 114–29). She seems embarrassed, anxious and sincere in this speech. Her teasing defences crumble (‘Why have I blabb’d? Who shall be true to us / When we are so unsecret to ourselves?’); she acts out of stereotype – acknowledging her departure from the feminine role (‘I wish’d myself a man, / Or that we women had men’s privilege / Of speaking first’); and acts in every way as if her love is so powerful that it has overcome her restraint. The conflict between desire and self-control is further acted out as Cressida tries to leave, and her language is peppered with terms for wisdom and foolishness, strength and weakness, which express her evident fear of the consequences of submission. The audience is clearly invited to see a passionate, loving girl bashfully overwhelmed. It is an alluring, romantic idea: passionate love sweeps aside the cynical manipulations learned from a corrupt and artful society. Cressida then says: Perchance, my lord, I show more craft than love, And fell so roundly to a large confession To angle for your thoughts. (3, ii, 148–50)

Well, did she show ‘craft’? Was all that pretty speechifying, in which passion swept restraint aside, an act? Here, again, the audience is encouraged to form a value-judgment of Cressida; but she immediately throws our judgment back into confusion. Notice that this example shows the process working in reverse. Our extract shows a negative judgment unsettled by Cressida’s suddenly sincere soliloquy. Here, an attractive, positive judgment is unsettled by her sudden cynicism. What happens at the end of the play? Cressida’s final appearance is in Act 5, scene ii, when Troilus and Ulysses observe her tryst with Diomed. In this scene we witness another pretty performance as Cressida acts out reluctance, but gives Diomed the sleeve as a pledge. We hear her endearments (‘sweet honey Greek’, ‘my sweet guardian’, and so on), and she plays on Diomed’s competitive spirit by building up the importance of the pledge (‘You shall not have it, Diomed . . .’

Women

109

Twas one’s that lov’d me better than you will’). At the same time, on the two occasions when Diomed threatens to leave her, she calls him back. We are encouraged to see Cressida’s behaviour as that of a false coquette and nothing more. Thersites underlines every stage of the process (‘And any man may sing her, if he can take her clef: she’s noted’); Diomed defines her clearly (‘You are forsworn’, ‘Fo, fo, adieu, you palter’ and ‘I do not like this fooling’); and Troilus’s comments show the enormity of her betrayal (‘O beauty, where is thy faith?’). With all this, the audience is ready to condemn Cressida out-of-hand. Following Diomed’s exit Cressida speaks a further six lines, in soliloquy again (although she is unwittingly overheard by Troilus and Ulysses on this occasion). This final speech expresses shame and regret, and tells us that at least some of her reluctance with Diomed was not an act. She bids a sad ‘farewell’ to Troilus and admits that ‘One eye yet looks on thee’. The rest of her speech defines her betrayal clearly. She is in ‘error’ and because this ‘error’ leads she must ‘err’, which is ‘turpitude’. Furthermore, Cressida explains her weakness as the weakness of women: ‘Ah, Poor our sex! this fault in us I find: / The error of our eye directs our mind’ (5, ii, 113–18). This seems to mean that the superficial, physical attraction of Diomed is enough to master her ‘mind’ and force her to betray the better part of herself. Thersites cynically – and correctly – summarises Cressida’s speech: ‘My mind is now turn’d whore’ (5, ii, 120); and Troilus’s subsequent speeches are among the most powerful of this painful play. On the other hand, Cressida’s final lines do complicate our judgment. Yes, she admits her fault, and has no excuse. At the same time, Cressida again reveals a divided self, with ‘one eye’ fighting her ‘other eye’ which sees with her ‘heart’ and overcomes her ‘mind’. She castigates herself for ‘error’ and ‘turpitude’ just as she did for having ‘blabb’d’ and being a ‘fool’, in Act 3, scene ii. Why do we find Cressida’s divided self charming when she submits to Troilus, and reprehensible when she submits to Diomed? Is this the conclusion of the whole of Cressida’s characterisation, that women are, simply, too weak: it’s not her fault because she is only a woman?

110

Analysing Shakespeare’s Problem Plays

To further complicate our judgments, we may remember the soliloquy in our extract: there, Cressida described her situation in terms of her assigned gender-role, and declared her intention of acting up to the self men have allotted to her. She would tease and inflame Troilus’s desires in order to maximise her sexual power – and all in the interests of her true feelings, for she loved Troilus. In Act 5, scene ii, Cressida again follows the role assigned to her. It is the ‘fault’ and weakness of ‘poor our sex’ to be inconstant. We can hear the insistent hammers of male expectation, brutally defining her throughout the scene: Thersites and Ulysses expect no better outcome, as their comments show. Thersites is brutal, while Ulysses simply regards the entire business as predictable. When it is over, he says to Troilus ‘All’s done, my lord’, and asks ‘Why stay we then?’ Cressida’s final lines, then, do not upset the predominantly male judgment on her – she admits her fault in the same terms Ulysses would employ to define her. On the other hand, these lines refuse to lie down and go to sleep: they evoke our sympathy, or our regret, for the tension Cressida’s behaviour and speeches have conveyed throughout the play – that between behaviour, assigned roles, and natural emotion; or between artifice and sincerity. We cannot simply dismiss her as Thersites does: ‘Lechery, lechery, still wars and lechery! Nothing else holds fashion.’ In her way, Cressida is like Helena and Isabella: her characterisation maintains two competing discourses, and these different versions of her reality are not resolved. In one discourse, she is simply a coquette and a betrayer; an inconstant woman who breaks Troilus’s heart. In the other discourse, however, we learn of a split self, always at war with itself and striving for power and control, while caught between assigned gender-roles. Cressida is unable to escape the condemnation of others and herself. A full apology for Cressida would also look at Act 4, scene ii, where her prediction that Troilus will tire of her once she submits, may seem to be coming true; and would take into account the fact that Troilus never considers offering marriage. Our point is simply that the pressures of gender-stereotyping have acted so crushingly upon Cressida, and that this provides an alternative discourse. The audience is therefore denied satisfaction or complacency.

Women

111

Conclusions The dominant gender-discourse in each of these plays is male. In All’s Well that Ends Well, Helena must find a way to use her virginity so that her character and position in society can be preserved. This means that her virginity must be used both lawfully and fruitfully; and her aim is to become the accepted wife of a man in a high social position, an aim she achieves in the end. How much scope for individual action will she have in the future? We already know, from the opening scene, that the widowed Countess is only allowed to hold her social rank under the higher male authority of the King, who takes over the responsibilities of her ‘husband’; and that her son’s upbringing is taken out of her hands. At the end of the play, then, the dominant discourse tells us: it is all over. Helena has achieved what women desire (a good husband) and her individuality is no longer significant. In Measure for Measure, Isabella’s virtue and chastity earn her the Duke’s hand in marriage. This is so obviously a benefit for her, that the play does not even bother to record her assent. In the dominant discourse of the play, this is a fairytale ending for Isabella, who calls herself his ‘vassal’ and acknowledges his ‘sovereignty’ almost with her last words. It is assumed that she can have nothing further to wish for in life. She deserves this high honour because of the faith and chastity she has shown throughout her trials (which, like the rest of her life, were arranged by the Duke!). In Troilus and Cressida, the dominant discourse is male and is carried on by a variety of voices. The main contributors are Troilus himself, who is allotted the most sympathetic role at the end of Act 5, scene ii with his extended speeches of disillusionment and pain; Thersites, Pandarus and Ulysses. Cressida not only receives her condemnation from the male discourse, as ‘noted’ and a ‘whore’; her ‘turpitude’ is also condemned in male terms out of her own mouth. The Greeks discuss her sexuality (‘her wanton spirits look out / At every joint and motive of her body’ [Ulysses, 4, v, 57–8]), and even the apparent sincerity of her love counts against her because of the bitter irony of her vows. See, for example, how she calls down history’s curse ‘as false as Cressid’ on herself, should she betray

112

Analysing Shakespeare’s Problem Plays

Troilus; and repeats the same call when told that they must part: ‘O you gods divine, / Make Cressid’s name the very crown of falsehood / If ever she leave Troilus!’ (4, ii, 100–2). In all three plays, this male discourse about women hinges on the same polarisation of stereotypes. From the male point of view, women are either saints or whores. The economic and social power of virginity is emphasised, as is its use as a sexual weapon. In All’s Well that Ends Well and Measure for Measure, chastity is also associated with a significant theme of religion and faith. In other words, women are pure, perfect and divine, as long as they are chaste. On the other hand, they lose all value and become objects of revulsion and contempt when their purity is called in question. The power and cruelty of the ‘whore’ stereotype is apparent throughout Troilus and Cressida, and Cressida is thoroughly condemned in these terms. To show its power in All’s Well that Ends Well, we have only to remember Bertram’s slighting reference to Diana as one of several ‘parcels of dispatch’, a ‘business’ which he fears ‘to hear of it hereafter’ (see 4, iii, 87–94); and the insulting terms in which he publishes her character before the King: She’s impudent, my lord, And was a common gamester to the camp. (5, iii, 186–7)

In Measure for Measure we should notice that Lucio regards marrying the woman he got with child as ‘pressing to death, / Whipping, and hanging’ (5, i, 520–1), and the Duke clearly regards this as a fit punishment also. However, to see how sanctimoniously male condemnation of impurity can weigh, look at the Duke’s exchanges with Juliet in Act 2, scene iii, where she is obliged to say that she ‘take[s] the shame with joy’ (2, iii, 36), while Angelo has referred to her simply, as ‘the fornicatress’ (2, ii, 23). The women in these plays, then, are forced to steer a course determined by these two, polarised, assigned stereotypes; and they must be seen, and see themselves, as fitting either one or the other, either saint or whore. On the other hand, we have found an alternative discourse in

Women

113

each of the plays. In the case of Helena, we meet a challenging woman who resolves to take her fate into her own hands and, at times, expresses a revolutionary attitude of independence. From then on, we are never allowed to settle on a single ‘truth’ about her character – whether she is practical, resourceful and manipulative (which she certainly is), or pure and divinely aided. In Isabella we have found thornier and darker undercurrents: this chaste maid judges with double standards, and her sexual continence is matched by the incontinence of her puritan wrath and righteousness. In Cressida, there are both: the object of a courtly lover’s devotion who swears faithful love with apparent sincerity, yet at the same time an oversexed whore, too weak to resist damning herself. Neither of these Cressidas is allowed to disappear, and both are perceptions founded on polarised extremes. It is significant that Troilus himself highlights this point when he witnesses her betrayal. Troilus cannot cope with his own stereotypes, and cannot fit his painful experience of Cressida anywhere in his concepts of femininity where it makes sense. This is why he harps on the unresolved question of her identity: This is and is not Cressid. Within my soul there doth conduce a fight Of this strange nature, that a thing inseparate Divides more wider than the sky and earth, And yet the spacious breadth of this division Admits no orifex for a point as subtle As Ariachne’s broken woof to enter. (5, ii, 153–9)

In Chapter 2, we noted how Troilus’s mind sheers away from this puzzle, and focuses on battle-rage and patriotism instead, at the end of the play. It is an important common element in these plays, then, that they exhibit all the signs of an incipient, subversive, alternative version of gender-politics, raising critical questions about courtship, maledominated sexual and marital mores; and that the female characters are coerced by their assigned saint/whore duality, yet all escape its definition. Finally, that all of these issues are left open, in an unhappy, uncertain, unresolved state, in all three plays.

114

Analysing Shakespeare’s Problem Plays

Methods of Analysis In this Chapter we have made use of the same approaches as in Chapters 1 and 2. This chapter had the avowed purpose of analysing three women, however, so we have had a different clear question in mind before we approached the text in detail. This time, we asked: What can we reveal about femaleness and feminine attitudes from analysing these women? In particular, we looked at the way these three characters present themselves, and at the way they see their roles in the action or in the world. This has led us to make distinctions between ‘stereotype’ roles – the parts men expect women to play – and other, less male ideas about female experience and behaviour. We have used some modern terms while analysing these three characters, such as ‘gender-roles’, ‘assigned stereotypes’ and ‘genderpolitics’. However, these terms have been used more as a convenience than as indicating any opinion; and there is plenty of evidence in all three texts that Shakespeare does explore these issues even though he would not have used the same words.

Suggested Work We have looked at short extracts featuring the heroines, and limited our further discussion to a few other references within each play. Your first task is therefore to study another extract in detail. In All’s Well that Ends Well, make a full study of Act 4, scene iv, featuring Helena, the Widow and Diana. This is the scene in which Helena reflects on male enjoyment of forbidden pleasure; but a close study of the relation between these three women, Helena’s reference to male ‘surety’, and the imagery she employs, will suggest links to themes and motifs running through the play as a whole. In Measure for Measure, study Act 5, scene i, lines 20–124, when Isabella pleads for justice and accuses Angelo before the Duke, who dismisses her case and places her under guard. This extract stretches the pervasive irony of the Duke’s knowledge and manipulation to its limits, as even Isabella is unaware of his dual identity. Her impassioned rhetoric can be compared to her earlier pleading with Angelo;

Women

115

and the male response – as well as by-play between the Duke and Lucio – carries the play’s depiction of gender to a further level of complexity. In Troilus and Cressida, study Act 4, scene ii, lines 79–110 (the end of the scene). This extract shows apparently sincere and powerful emotion in Cressida; and the terms in which she declares her intention to remain with Troilus connect with a motif of absolutes and promises running through the whole play. The above tasks will develop and amplify your study of the three heroines. However, it is also instructive to think more widely about women in these plays, and a study of the following extracts which feature other women will begin this process. In All’s Well that Ends Well, look at Act 2, scene ii, as far as line 98, and consider the Countess’s role and her response to the news that her son has deserted his wife. In Measure for Measure, study Act 5, scene i, lines 205–38, when Mariana challenges Angelo. This extract may also be directly contrasted with Isabella’s appeal. In Troilus and Cressida, study Helen’s character in Act 3, scene i, from line 56 to the end of the scene. Helen is the subject of much debate in the councils of war; and in this scene she acts out Paris’s fantasies and, at Paris’s request, Hector’s.

Notes 1 Measure for Measure was written after Queen Elizabeth’s death. 2 See Chapter 1, above, where we remarked on the warlike Prologue which leads directly into Troilus’s ‘unarm’, and his complaints about love-sickness, which has rendered him ‘weaker than a woman’s tear’; and Chapter 2, where Troilus’s two passions – love and war – seem interchangeable.

4 Politics and Society We have been finding that these plays present us with contradictory and competing discourses. They pose questions and give two or more very different answers, and the text does not allow us to make settled judgments. This is particularly true when we come to consider politics and society. In each of the three plays there is a dominant discourse concerning authority and the proper functioning of society, and if we listened to this narrative alone and uncritically we would have to call all three plays politically conservative. On the other hand, alternative voices subvert and undercut the proposed political order, and events leave authority in an ambiguous moral position. In this chapter we will begin by looking at an extract from each play. Each extract focuses on the means society adopts to correct misbehaviour – of Bertram (All’s Well that Ends Well), Angelo (Measure for Measure) and Achilles (Troilus and Cressida) respectively. The second half of the chapter pursues discussion of the complex issues raised, by ranging more widely through the texts. Chapter 5, on ‘Fools and fools’, continues this theme by looking at some of the alternative voices we hear, more closely.

Analysis: All’s Well that Ends Well, 4, iii, 1–35 This extract is a discussion of Bertram’s errors between the First and Second Lords, the two brothers Dumaine: 116

Politics and Society

117

Enter the two French Lords, and some two or three soldiers. First Lord: You have not given him his mother’s letter? Second Lord: I have deliv’red it an hour since; there is something in’t that stings his nature, for on the reading it he chang’d almost into another man. First Lord : He has much worthy blame laid upon him 5 for shaking off so good a wife and so sweet a lady. Second Lord: Especially he hath incurred the everlasting displeasure of the king, who had even tun’d his bounty to sing happiness to him. I will tell you a thing, but you shall let it dwell darkly with you. 10 First Lord: When you have spoken it ’tis dead, and I am the grave of it. Second Lord: He hath perverted a young gentlewoman here in Florence, of a most chaste renown, and this night he fleshes his will in the spoil of her honour; he hath given her his monumental ring, and thinks 15 himself made in the unchaste composition. First Lord: Now, God delay our rebellion! As we are ourselves, what things are we! Second Lord: Merely our own traitors. And as in the common course of all treasons we still see them reveal 20 themselves till they attain to their abhorr’d ends; so he that in this action contrives against his own nobility, in his proper stream o’erflows himself. First Lord: Is it not meant damnable in us to be trumpeters of our unlawful intents? We shall not then 25 have his company tonight? Second Lord: Not till after midnight, for he is dieted to his hour. First Lord: That approaches apace. I would gladly have him see his company anatomiz’d, that he might take 30 a measure of his own judgments wherein so curiously he had set this counterfeit. Second Lord: We will not meddle with him till he come, for his presence must be the whip of the other. (All’s Well that Ends Well, 4, iii, 1–35)

118

Analysing Shakespeare’s Problem Plays

There is nothing exceptional in the dramatic circumstances of this extract, save that soldiers in the background give a military tone to the proceedings. Later in the scene, Parolles is produced from where he has been held in the stocks, offstage, which shows the Dumaine brothers’ power to manipulate events. The Lords’ discussion is in prose, in a naturalistic mode exchanging information, and discussing their plan. The opening question is expressed plainly (‘You have not given him his mother’s letter?’) and indicates that we begin to hear the conversation halfway through. The audience, of course, has no difficulty identifying ‘him’ as Bertram, and picking up on the subject under discussion; but this method of opening a scene treats us informally. Our interest is in the role these Lords play in correcting Bertram’s misbehaviour, however. In this context, we are most interested in the terms and imagery they use when describing his faults. First, there is a problem at the beginning of the scene. The letter from the Countess could be the angry letter mentioned in Act 3, scene ii, sent via the Lords with the message ‘tell him that his sword can never win / The honour that he loses’ (3, ii, 93–4); or it could be news of Helena’s departure, in which ‘every word [weighs] heavy of her worth’ (3, iv, 31). Whichever letter this is, Bertram has already heard of Helena’s supposed death and then reads his mother’s anger. The Second Lord describes how the letter ‘stings his [Bertram’s] nature’ so that he is ‘chang’d almost into another man’. Some editors read this as implying a moral awakening in Bertram; but there is no evidence to support this view. If he is chastened and ‘chang’d’, why do the Lords persist in censuring him, as they do? Why does he appear unchanged when he arrives? When the Lords discuss Helena’s death, the Second Lord observes ‘I am heartily sorry that he’ll be glad of this.’ Meanwhile, Bertram carries out the seduction of Diana, and arranges an immediate return to France. These details show no sign of moral awakening in Bertram, and suggest that we should forget about his conscience, and read the text more plainly. Bertram’s ‘nature’ is his complexion or humour – which we know to be wilful and selfish. His change then becomes a change of mood: his mother’s letter annoys him, and he loses his temper. This reading fits the context – and some other details we will discuss later in this

Politics and Society

119

chapter – much better than fanciful ideas about Bertram undergoing a moral change. Now we can look at the images the Lords use, which are as follows: 1. The King’s favour and generosity compared to an instrument. When ‘tun’d’ it would bring good luck (‘sing happiness’) to the listener, Bertram. 2. Living with a secret is to let information ‘dwell darkly’. 3. Keeping a secret is to kill it and bury it in yourself, its ‘grave’. 4. Bertram, compared to a hunter, his lust, to a hound, Diana’s honour, to the meat of the prey. 5. Making the ‘composition’ of Bertram and Diana (i.e. their becoming one in the act of sex), compared to making Bertram (a man). 6. Sin – specifically the flesh rebelling against chastity – compared to rebellion. 7. Sin, compared to treachery. 8. Treachery and sin, compared to the stream of a man’s true nature overflowing its banks and therefore becoming obvious to others. 9. Bertram’s boasting about the seduction of Diana, compared to him blowing a trumpet. 10. Sex, compared to eating, for Bertram is ‘dieted’ to one hour. 11. Unmasking Parolles, compared to dissection as he is to be ‘anatomiz’d’. 12. Bertram’s friends, compared to jewels, Parolles, to a counterfeit jewel wrongly put in an elaborate setting (‘so curiously . . . set’). 13. Bertram’s presence will ‘whip’ Parolles. This is a surprisingly long list of images for a conversational discussion in prose. There seem to be two groups of image-ideas that refer to order and disorder in people and society: those associated with nature, and those associated with a state. Then, there are two musical references, as well as one to hunting, one to corporal punishment, one to jewellery, and two image-ideas for sex (eating and manufacture).

120

Analysing Shakespeare’s Problem Plays

Nature appears in a secondary place in the hound’s instinct in consuming its quarry, and eating, both of which stand for lust and sex, and in both of which appetite is stimulated by being given limited satisfaction; and in the idea of ‘anatomiz’d’, which suggests that we need to look at nature objectively and enumerate its parts, in order to see the ugly truth of it. The primary image of nature, however, is the idea begun by the First Lord’s reflection that ‘As we are ourselves, what things are we!’ – that is, just our natural and unsophisticated selves. The exchange following this remark elaborates, giving the Lords’ view of ‘ourselves’ both as we should be and as we are. First, our natural selves are clearly sinful, being compared to traitors and deserving of ‘abhorr’d ends’ – the painful and shameful death reserved for traitors. Secondly, our natural selves are without moderation, compared to a stream which will inevitably overflow its banks because it grows too powerful to be restrained. The sense of an uncontrollable stream is emphasised by the apparent paradox ‘o’erflows himself ’. Nature, then, is a sinful energy that comes from within the self but quickly swamps and overwhelms its container. The ideas referring to a state or order form nature’s antithesis, and stand simultaneously for the government of the individual and that of society. The sin of nature destroys good government – it leads to a ‘rebellion’, is a ‘traitor’ and like all ‘treasons’ it tends to grow until it is too gross and shows itself clearly. In the individual, the governing principle is ‘nobility’ and we can infer that the ‘monumental ring’ (both in the sense of a memento and as a ‘monument’) Bertram gave to Diana is a symbol of this. In the state, the king represents order by rewarding well-governed people and treating the ill-governed to his ‘everlasting displeasure’. However, the ultimate guardian of order and government in both individual and state is God. The First Lord calls on God to ‘delay [not in the modern sense, but rather prevent or quench] our rebellion!’, and suggests that when a man’s baser nature overcomes his ‘nobility’, so that his sin becomes public, this is ‘meant damnable’: that God intends this as a sign to others of that man’s damnation. The two musical references merely support these ideas of order and disorder. The king’s bounty is ‘tun’d’ and will ‘sing happiness’ presumably because it flows from this authority and is distributed

Politics and Society

121

wisely to the deserving. The musical image for this proper working of society is of harmony and right pitch. In contrast, sins make the harsh and by implication discordant sound of ‘trumpeters’. How, then, do these two Lords conceive of society and Bertram’s situation? There are two points that stand out: first, that they conceive of people and society as under the government of God. The idea that nature is rapacious, potentially sinful and overwhelming fuels the Lords’ conventional humility: if a man is good, this is because God has seen fit to ‘delay [his] rebellion’. This is a measure of government no man could achieve with his own puny powers of self-control because ‘As we are ourselves, what things are we!’ God’s instrument on earth which helps to control nature is a fixed social hierarchy, represented here by the king (with his quasi-divine attribute of ‘everlasting’ displeasure) and the concept of ‘nobility’. Secondly, we should notice just how seriously they speak of Bertram’s circumstances. He is compared to a traitor and they foresee a similar ‘abhorr’d end’ for him; while his boasts about having ‘perverted’ Diana are discussed as a divine sign of his damnation. The ensuing scene has many comic features as each of the Lords and Bertram in turn react to Parolles’s insults and need to be restrained by the others; and as the Soldier has great fun in his role as interpreter. However, we should not lose sight of the Dumaine brothers’ serious motives. The First Lord in particular, is of a philosophical turn of mind. He concludes their discussion with: The web of our life is of a mingled yarn, good and ill together; our virtues would be proud if our faults whipp’d them not, and our crimes would despair if they were not cherish’d by our virtues. (4, iii, 68–71)

The Dumaine brothers clearly believe that Bertram is in danger of damnation: the ‘ill’ dominates him, and there is not enough good. He needs to be ‘whipp’d’ out of his pride, by his faults. We will return to All’s Well that Ends Well and the fate of Bertram’s ‘rebellion’ in the second half of this chapter. We now look at an extract from Measure for Measure, where the problem is to correct Angelo’s behaviour.

122

Analysing Shakespeare’s Problem Plays

Analysis: Measure for Measure, 3, i, 231–70 The Duke has just told Isabella of Angelo’s breach of promise, and in this extract he proposes his plan to set matters right: Isab:

Duke:

Isab: Duke:

Isab: Duke:

What a merit were it in death to take this poor maid from the world! What corruption in this life, that it will let this man live! But how out of this can she avail? It is a rupture that you may easily heal: and the cure of it not only saves your brother, but keeps you from dishonour in doing it. Show me how, good father. This forenamed maid hath yet in her the continuance of her first affection. His unjust unkindness, that in all reason should have quenched her love, hath, like an impediment in the current, made it more violent and unruly. Go you to Angelo; answer his requiring with a plausible obedience; agree with his demands to the point. Only refer yourself to this advantage: first, that your stay with him may not be long; that the place may have all shadow and silence in it; and the time answer to convenience. This being granted in course, and now follows all. We shall advise this wronged maid to stead up your appointment, go in your place. If the encounter acknowledge itself hereafter, it may compel him to her recompense; and hear, by this is your brother saved, your honour untainted, the poor Mariana advantaged, and the corrupt deputy scaled. The maid will I frame, and make fit for his attempt. If you think well to carry this as you may, the doubleness of the benefit defends the deceit from reproof. What think you of it? The image of it gives me content already, and I trust it will grow to a most prosperous perfection. It lies much in your holding up. Haste you speedily to Angelo; if for this night he entreat you to his

235

240

245

250

255

260

Politics and Society

Isab:

123

bed, give him promise of satisfaction. I will presently to Saint Luke’s; there at the moated grange 265 resides this dejected Mariana; at that place call upon me; and dispatch with Angelo, that it may be quickly. I thank you for this comfort. Fare you well, good father. Exit. (Measure for Measure, 3, i, 231–70)

This is the final episode of the same complex scene we analysed in Chapter 2. Remember that the central portion of the scene, exploring Claudio and Isabella, is held within a framework where Provost and Duke are onlookers, and within other balancing episodes. This episode is balanced by the Duke’s conversation with Claudio, extolling the advantages of death over life, which opens the scene. Isabella’s first speech in our extract recalls that conversation by expressing a preference for death, and revulsion from the ‘corruption’ of life. This is a prose extract, but the tone is more rhetorical, less conversational, than that between the Dumaine brothers from All’s Well that Ends Well. Isabella’s opening speech, for example, consists of a pair of neatly balanced exclamations followed by a question that is near-rhetorical (she does not see any saving possibilities in the sad story of Angelo’s breach of promise). The balance of her exclamations, opposing ‘death’ and ‘life’ in ‘What a merit’ and ‘What corruption’, is formal. Similarly, the Duke structures his persuasion with formal care. The sentence beginning ‘Only refer . . .’ (line 245) leads to the colon after ‘advantage’, then provides three paralell conditions. Again, when enumerating the advantages of his scheme, the Duke employs a zeugma, ‘by this is’ governing in turn ‘your brother saved, your honour untainted, the poor Mariana advantaged, and the corrupt deputy scaled’. Formality remains in Isabella’s thanks: ‘I thank you for this comfort.’ We therefore notice the irony: she thanks the holy friar for showing her how to lie, deceive and temporise with her own and Mariana’s ‘honour’ in a good cause, while earlier in the scene Claudio thanked the holy friar for advising him to value death and reject life (‘I humbly thank you’, 3, i, 41).

124

Analysing Shakespeare’s Problem Plays

Much of our extract is also very practical in content. The Duke gives detailed instructions, tells us where Mariana lives, urges haste, and so on. We want to focus on the terms and imagery used to describe both Angelo’s transgression and the Duke’s plan, as these are the fault in the social fabric and its correction, respectively. Angelo’s transgression causes Isabella to meditate on injustice – that he is alive and unpunished is ‘corruption’. The Duke re-sets the terms of the debate by calling it a ‘rupture’. He implies that life is not wholly corrupt, but society’s body has suffered a ‘rupture’ which Isabella can ‘heal’, which needs a ‘cure’. Further references to Angelo’s fault are his ‘unjust unkindness’ and ‘the corrupt deputy’. ‘Unkindness’ denotes both the cruelty of his treatment of Mariana and Claudio, and unnaturalness. This implies that his cruelty, and his lust for Isabella, go against nature. The plan is referred to as to ‘heal’ society and as ‘the cure of it’. Isabella compliments the ‘image’ (the idea or conception of the plan), and when it is carried out she hopes it will bring ‘prosperous perfection’. The Duke urges ‘the doubleness of the benefit’, which means that there can be no ‘reproof ’ for the deceit involved, so he argues that the end justifies the means. We have pointed out some of the moral double standards this plan entails for Isabella (see Chapter 2), such as that Claudio urged the same argument, saying that ‘Nature dispenses with the deed so far / That it becomes a virtue’ (3, i, 134–5), an argument Isabella violently rejected; that she accepts tricking Angelo into sleeping with a person he does not love, but rejects this in her own case; and that she accepts the ‘married in the sight of heaven’ argument in Mariana’s case but not in Juliet and Claudio’s case. We should add to these doubts, the amount of lying and deception Isabella will have to undertake, in order to carry off the plan successfully. This girl, who we first met when she was about to enter a nunnery demanding stricter piety than the nuns could offer, will now verbally yield her honour to Angelo, and set a sexual rendezvous with him! In the Duke, we find further doubtful morality: he seems to speak with two voices at different times in the play. Here, he is the practical social engineer, controlling events and deceiving all the other characters in order to achieve his ends. This manipulative Duke,

Politics and Society

125

Lucio’s ‘old fantastical duke of dark corners’, is in direct contrast to the holy friar who counsels Claudio ‘be absolute for death’ and sternly warns Juliet that her repentance must be for love of heaven, not the fear of punishment. This extract gives us a measure of how far the Duke is prepared to use natural weaknesses to further his plan. He acknowledges that Angelo’s cruelty should ‘in all reason’ have quenched Mariana’s love. He then uses the natural image of a stream for Mariana’s love, and we may be reminded of Bertram’s lust bursting its banks when he describes the current of her love as ‘more violent and unruly’. It is this uncontrolled, irrational passion the Duke will use; and his terms (‘in all reason’, ‘violent and unruly’) even suggest censure of Mariana’s excessive passion. We may be accused of being too pernickity, foisting our modern moral prejudices onto the play, and we will return to this issue in the second half of the chapter. For the present, remember that the moral contradictions we have highlighted are contradictions and double standards within the play itself. We have not imported moral standards, because they are forcefully expressed particularly by these two characters. The Duke’s crucial speech at the end of Act 3 sets a high standard: He who the sword of heaven will bear Should be as holy as severe: (Measure for Measure, 3, ii, 254–5)

It is this standard, set within the play itself, we have applied to the practicalities of the Duke’s plot; not some standard we have imported from the twenty-first century. Before moving on, we should note a distinction between the values shown by this extract, and those embraced by the brothers Dumaine in All’s Well that Ends Well. Here, it is implied that nature can be orderly and good. Angelo’s cruelties are ‘unkindness’, and the ‘corruption’ can be susceptible to ‘cure’ and ‘heal’. These terms suggest that the social body is ill – and can be returned to natural health. By contrast, the Dumaine brothers assumed that nature itself is sinful, and put their trust in God as the only power that could ‘delay our rebellion’. Is it perhaps this distinction which explains

126

Analysing Shakespeare’s Problem Plays

why the natural progress of Mariana’s love, which should have led to marriage, still deserves to be encouraged even though it is now irrationally ‘violent’ and ‘unruly’? This is a crucial difference, since it implies that nature and the social order are capable of being in harmony – indeed, the implication is that a stable and benevolent social order is the same as a healthy natural society.

Analysis: Troilus and Cressida, 1, iii, 312–92 Aeneas has delivered Hector’s challenge to the assembled Greek generals, then Ulysses and Nestor remain behind to discuss what should be done. The perceived problem is Achilles’s pride and his consequent lack of proper respect for the order of Greek command and society: Ulyss : Nest: Ulyss :

Nest: Ulyss :

Nest:

I have a young conception in my brain: Be you my time to bring it to some shape. What is’t? This ’tis: Blunt wedges rive hard knots; the seeded pride That hath to this maturity blown up In rank Achilles must or now be cropped, Or, shedding, breed a nursery of like evil To overbulk us all. Well, and how? This challenge that the gallant Hector sends, However it is spread in general name, Relates in purpose only to Achilles. The purpose is perspicuous even as substance Whose grossness little characters sum up; And in the publication make no strain But that Achilles, were his brain as barren As banks of Libya – though, Apollo knows, ’Tis dry enough – will with great speed of judgement, Ay, with celerity, find Hector’s purpose Pointing on him.

315

320

325

330

Politics and Society

Ulyss : Nest:

Ulyss :

Nest: Ulyss :

And wake him to the answer, think you? Yes, ’tis most meet. Who may you else oppose, That can from Hector bring his honour off If not Achilles? Though’t be a sportful combat, Yet in this trial much opinion dwells; For here the Trojans taste our dear’st repute With their fin’st palate. And trust to me, Ulysses, Our imputation shall be oddly poised In this wild action; for the success, Although particular, shall give a scantling Of good or bad unto the general, And in such indexes, although small pricks To their subsequent volumes, there is seen The baby figure of the giant mass Of things to come at large. It is supposed He that meets Hector issues from our choice; And choice, being mutual act of all our souls, Makes merit her election and doth boil, As ’twere from forth us all, a man distilled Out of our virtues; who miscarrying, What heart from hence receives the conquering part, To steel a strong opinion to themselves! Which entertained, limbs are his instruments, In no less working than are swords and bows Directive by the limbs. Give pardon to my speech: Therefore ’tis meet Achilles meet not Hector. Let us like merchants show our foulest wares, And think perchance they’ll sell: If not, The lustre of the better yet to show Shall show the better. Do not consent That ever Hector and Achilles meet, For both our honour and our shame in this Are dogged with two strange followers. I see them not with my old eyes. What are they? What glory our Achilles shares from Hector, Were he not proud, we all should wear with him; But he already is too insolent;

127

335

340

345

350

355

360

365

370

128

Nest:

Analysing Shakespeare’s Problem Plays

And we were better parch in Afric sun Than in the pride and salt scorn of his eyes Should he scape Hector fair. If he were foiled, Why then we did our main opinion crush In taint of our best man. No, make a lott’ry, 375 And by device let blockish Ajax draw The sort to fight with Hector; among ourselves Give him allowance as the worthier man, For that will physic the great Myrmidon, Who broils in loud applause, and make him fall 380 His crest that prouder than blue Iris bends. If the dull brainless Ajax come safe off, We’ll dress him up in voices; if he fail, Yet go we under our opinion still That we have better men. But, hit or miss, 385 Our project’s life this shape of sense assumes: Ajax employ’d plucks down Achilles’ plumes. Now, Ulysses, I begin to relish thy advice, And I will give a taste of it forthwith To Agamemnon. Go we to him straight. 390 Two curs shall tame each other: pride alone Must tar the mastiffs on, as ’twere their bone. Exeunt. (Troilus and Cressida, 1, iii, 312–92)

This is the end, and third episode, of a long scene introducing the audience to the Greek camp. The first episode opens with set speeches from Agamemnon and Nestor, then moves into Ulysses’s famous analysis of the Greek army’s malaise, his celebrated speeches on ‘degree’. In Ulysses’s view, the Greeks have allowed Achilles to become proud so that his authority rivals that of Agamemnon. Criticism of the generals, and insubordination, are rife. The scene’s second episode is ushered in with Aeneas who brings a chivalrous challenge from Hector and Troy. There is much mention of ‘love’ and diplomatic talk of ‘courtesy’ and ‘honour’ between Aeneas and Agamemnon. All except Ulysses and Nestor leave to feast Aeneas, and our extract is the final episode.

Politics and Society

129

This tripartite structure emphasises two contrasts. First, Ulysses’s speech on ‘degree’, with Nestor’s added promptings, has described the dissolution of authority in bloodcurdling terms in which ‘appetite, an universal wolf, . . . Must make perforce an universal prey, / And last eat up himself ’ (lines 121–4). They set up a conflict between intellect and physical bravado, arguing against the brute force of ‘the ram that batters down the wall’ and in favour of ‘his hand that made the engine, / Or those that with the fineness of their souls / By reason guide his execution’ (see lines 206–10). Their argument is that wisdom and intellect should guide and hold authority, but in Achilles, stupid brute force does not acknowledge intellect’s superiority. In their speeches war is portrayed as a rational science, won by those who are clever and observant, not by the strong: ‘The still and mental parts, / That do contrive how many hands shall strike . . .’ (lines 200–1) are the victors in war. This argument is expounded eloquently and at length, setting up the contrast with Aeneas. Soon after his entrance, he enumerates the warlike virtues of the Trojans as: ‘galls, / Good arms, strong joints, true swords, and – Jove’s accord – nothing so full of heart’ (lines 237–9); and in his challenge he names ‘honour . . . praise . . . valour . . . loves his mistress’ and calls on one to fight for ‘her beauty and her worth’ (see lines 266–71). Courtesy and chivalry take over the scene, and Agamemnon leads Aeneas away with the couplet: Yourself shall feast with us before you go, And find the welcome of a noble foe. (1, iii, 308–9)

There could hardly be a greater contrast between two views of war. First, the intellectual and practical analysis of how the careful application of force achieves victory – an analysis that owes a great deal to the cynicism of a Machiavelli; then the high-flown terms of courtly love and chivalry: single combat, strength, fame, love and honour. The second contrast we notice is dramatic, and separates the third episode from the rest of the scene. It is simply a contrast between the crowded stage of the full council and Aeneas’s embassy, and the isolation of the two characters remaining.

130

Analysing Shakespeare’s Problem Plays

These structural contrasts have implications for our understanding of the Greeks’ society. Wisdom and intellect have attempted to influence authority, to offer counsel that will identify society’s ills and rectify them by restoring ‘degree’. The second episode, however, sweeps away all intellect’s gains on a tide of honour and courtesy: Agamemnon will take no action, and intellect has failed. The isolation of Ulysses and Nestor in the final episode emphasises this failure. It is in these circumstances that they hatch their ‘machiavellian’ plot to bring Achilles down to size. These two, then, are using any means available to them to repair the ‘rupture’ in the social and political fabric of the Greeks. Their situation is reminiscent of the Duke in Measure for Measure, who takes a secretive and manipulative role in order to repair his society. What is interesting and surprising in this structured scene, is the unexpected attribution of qualities to the different sides of the argument. Here we see the forces of intellect and materialism – Ulysses’s pragmatic cynicism – in the service of the traditional concept of ‘degree’. Ulysses specifically connects his idea of order to an order in the universe (‘The heavens themselves, the planets, and this centre / Observe degree . . .’, lines 85–6) and to ‘the primogenity and due of birth’ (line 106), so that his peroration sounds like a clarion-call for medieval feudalism: Shakespeare’s audience would certainly recognise its likeness to propagandist mantras concerning ‘divine right’ and the ‘chain of being’. How far they would recognise its obsolescence is another, and debatable, question. Astonishingly, the traditional qualities of the feudal knight are then contrasted with ‘degree’. First, the brute strength and imbecility of Achilles are identified as destructive of ‘degree’ in Ulysses’s and Nestor’s speeches; then, the Greek council itself is destroyed by a litany of ‘honour’, ‘praise’, ‘valour’, and ‘love’. The case seems to be: pragmatism supports order, chivalry destroys it. Now to our extract. Ulysses and Nestor speak in blank verse. Poetically, there is a sense of uncompleted thought, of work in progress, given by the half-lines in which several speeches end (see lines 320, 332, 357 and 366). At the end of the scene, each speaks a summary couplet, the poetic form emphasising that the plot is now complete, it is hatched. This impression of progressive and investiga-

Politics and Society

131

tive thought is further reinforced by the distinction between thought and action Ulysses draws at the start and the end of the process. His opening words are about a ‘young conception in my brain’ and he seeks to ‘bring it to some shape’. His final couplet concludes that they have done this: the idea, their ‘project’s life’ now ‘assumes’ a ‘shape of sense’. This progress reinforces the principles Ulysses enunciated earlier in the scene – the primacy of intellect, those ‘still and mental parts’ which fashion and control physical action in the world of sense. There are further poetic and stylistic signs that this extract represents thought in progress. The poetic pause left by a half-line occurs following those we mentioned above, suggesting a character’s pause for thought before replying. Notice also the bitty naturalism of the opening section (for example: ‘What is’t? / This ’tis’, as two full lines). Looking at the metre in such a long passage would consume more space than we have. However, we already have the idea of a progress from ‘young conception’ to increasing assurance, so we will compare samples from near the beginning and end. Look at the first six lines of Nestor’s speech from 334 to 339: Yes, ’tis most meet: who may you else oppose That can from Hector bring his honour off If not Achilles? Though’t be a sportful combat, Yet in this trial much opinion dwells; For here the Trojans taste our dear’st repute With their fin’st palate. And trust to me, Ulysses, . . .

The opening line begins irregularly, then seems to set up an iambic beat that lasts until ‘Achilles’. The metre then becomes very irregular with the exception of the penultimate line, but the final line of our sample is the most irregular of all, with its personal appeal ‘and trust to me, Ulysses’, breaking the form entirely: even with the elision ‘fin’st’ the line has twelve syllables. Now look at a similar sample from near the end of the scene, lines 376 to 381, where Ulysses outlines the plan. There is no need to print and scan these six lines: they are regular virtually throughout, with only two spondees standing out, both emphatic of Achilles’s pride: ‘the great Myrmidon’ and ‘blue Iris’. This is a marked contrast in metrical regularity, and sup-

132

Analysing Shakespeare’s Problem Plays

ports our view that the extract moves towards pattern and assurance, from hesitancy and uncertainty. There is a great deal of imagery in this extract, but we are most interested in the ideas used to denote society itself, and the imageideas for what is wrong and how it can be rectified. Ulysses begins with vivid imagery of carpentry and gardening. His opening proverb – from Erasmus originally – figures Achilles as a ‘hard knot’ in a plank, and suggests the way Ulysses’s mind is working: something coarse and rough will be needed because the ‘knot’ is firmly embedded in the plank. The plank with the knot removed seems to be a figure for society cured of this blemish. Presumably the ‘blunt wedge’ will be Ajax. Ulysses’s next image is developed in detailed stages, like the conceits found in the Metaphysicals’ poetry. Achilles’s pride is a seed which is now a ripe flower (‘blown up’ – the use of ‘blown’ suggests a flower that is past its best, its petals overgrown and about to fall off the stem); this growth must be ‘cropped’, otherwise it will seed the ground and a whole rash of weeds will choke the other healthy plants, ‘a nursery of like evil / To overbulk us all’. Achilles is ‘rank’ (ripe and both smelly and coarse are implied) with this weed. In this figure, society is a garden and Ulysses conceives of himself and Nestor as the gardeners who must weed for the health of the more valuable plants. Nestor’s speech emphasises the unity of society – that small actions can have large significance; and that the actions of individuals affect the whole. He uses the idea of the contrast in size between an ‘index’ and a ‘volume’ (an ‘index’ was then another term for a summary or prologue) to emphasise the importance of small actions, and imagines each side in the war testing the other as eating, for the Trojan challenge is designed to ‘taste’ the best the Greeks can offer with their best ‘palate’ (Hector). The Greek champion carries the reputation and confidence of all the Greeks, and Nestor’s figure is that he will ‘boil’ from them all, ‘a man distilled / Out of our virtues’. Victory would bring strength to all on the victor’s side, which Nestor compares to the strength a sword is given by the arm that holds it and directs it. Here, the image-idea compares society to a single body where all the organs and limbs are necessarily interdependent and dependent on the whole.

Politics and Society

133

Ulysses and Nestor, then, have canvassed a series of analogies for society and government: carpentry, gardening, a book, natural science (distillation is a process which boils away impurities and leaves the essence or pure form), a body, and a warrior wielding his weapons. These ideas have a quality in common: that in each case the aim is to see the best in nature and select it, knocking out, weeding, boiling away or curing the inferior, and training the body to be skilful and strong. The threat to society and order is variously characterised as a knot in a plank, a noisome weed, and Achilles’s pride is likened to the insubstantial but overarching rainbow (‘blue Iris’), his ‘crest’ and ‘plumes’ (which may both compare Achilles to a horse, and be the crest on the top of a classical helmet). Finally, Nestor sees the plotters as throwing the ‘bone’ of pride to ‘two curs’ who will tame each other fighting over it. These image-ideas also express the emotions of the plotters. So ‘rank’ and ‘blown up’ suggest a squeamish revulsion, ‘blunt wedges’ and ‘two curs’ express contempt, and the references to the rainbow, plumes and ‘crest’ ridicule Achilles’s inflated estimation of himself. The content of this extract is clear political policy. The Trojans’ challenge is seen as a tricky situation: it is risky, because losing would be a significant blow, and in any case either victory or defeat for Achilles would harm the Greeks because of his pride. Their plan calls a conspicuously chivalric process into use: they will draw lots for the ‘honour’ of fighting Hector, but the draw will be rigged. Ulysses and Nestor, like the Duke and Isabella in Measure for Measure and the Dumaine brothers in All’s Well that Ends Well, do not hesitate to use subterfuge in order to achieve their ends. In all three plays, we are struck by the plotters’ sense of righteousness. They arrogate to themselves the right to break the rules in a good cause. One other feature seems to be present in all three extracts we have looked at. This is the definition of the problem as the fault of an individual. Bertram is identified by the Dumaine brothers, and his behaviour is seen as offensive to the King and ‘meant damnable’ – offensive to God, so his ‘proud’ virtues need to be ‘whipp’d’. The Duke and Isabella identify Angelo as ‘corruption in this life’ who needs to be ‘scal’d’. Ulysses and Nestor identify the problems of the

134

Analysing Shakespeare’s Problem Plays

Greeks as stemming from Achilles and his pride. He must be ‘cropped’. In the second half of this chapter, we will look more critically at this process whereby a scapegoat is identified, and society is purged in his person, by his punishment.

Dissolving or Changing Societies In the first half of this chapter we have looked at extracts which focus on identified problems, and the plotters who plot to set things right. This has enabled us to analyse the concepts of society held by the engineers – the Dumaine brothers, the Duke, and Ulysses and Nestor. Not surprisingly, these concepts have the principle of order, or ‘degree’, in common. There are differences: in All’s Well that Ends Well, the Dumaine brothers associate their social ideal with piety, and rely on God, whereas the Duke in Measure for Measure focuses on men who occupy a judicial position. Ulysses regards ‘degree’ as the natural foundation of the universe and paints a catastrophic picture of the chaos that will ensue if it is neglected. We have also found differences in the three extracts’s views of nature. In All’s Well that Ends Well nature needs to be kept in check. In Measure for Measure nature is more complex, but ‘corruption’ must be governed. In Troilus and Cressida Ulysses sees that nature provides superior and inferior – intellect and brawn. The inferior must remain so, or ‘appetite, an universal wolf ’ will consume everything. The three extracts we have studied only scratch the surface of this topic, however. They all occur when society’s damage has been identified and they expound plans for the correction of one man. They have not led us to the much wider questions about society and politics that are incessantly canvassed in these plays, or to the alternative voices in each play that undercut the straightforward theme of order. These are the questions we will raise now. First, each play begins with society in a damaged state. We will start by attempting to describe this damage. In All’s Well that Ends Well we hear of the King’s apparently incurable illness. The fatalistic mood of the first Act goes further than

Politics and Society

135

this, however. The King speaks to Helena ‘As one near death’, and his life is summed up as ‘I fill a place, I know’t.’ This is not the only malaise we meet at the start of the play. Lafew, the King and the Countess all represent a generation that looks on the past with nostalgia and sees the younger generation as an inferior, decadent, declining copy incapable of emulating the standards set by their elders. Old Rossillion’s qualities are a pattern the young should follow: Such a man Might be a copy to these younger times; Which, followed well, would demonstrate them now But goers backward. (All’s Well that Ends Well, 1, ii, 45–8)

His complaints remind us of Achilles and Patroclus who mock their elders and betters. The King comments on youths who ‘jest / Till their own scorn return to them unnoted’ and who ‘All but new things disdain’ (1, ii, 33–4 and 61), while Helena criticises the affectations of love in the court: ‘with a world / Of pretty, fond, adoptious christendoms / That blinking cupid gossips’ (1, i, 169–71). The anxieties expressed in the opening acts run far wider and deeper than one naughty Bertram: there is a strong sense of something fading from the world, never to return. The virtues of Rossillion senior are carefully chosen: and his honour, Clock to itself, knew the true minute when Exception bid him speak, and at this time His tongue obey’d his hand. [To those below him he] . . . bow’d his eminent top to their low ranks, Making them proud of his humility (1, ii, 38–44)

The old Count, then, was a man whose behaviour fitted his rank. He was ‘so like a courtier’ in the sense of being affable to all estates. This is a melancholy opening to the play. At the same time, Parolles, a liar and coward, occupies a position of inappropriate

136

Analysing Shakespeare’s Problem Plays

influence. What is to be done for this dying kingdom, falling into affectation, disrespect, scoffing, fashion and hypocrisy? Certainly, the malaise of this society is far deeper than merely the misbehaviour of one headstrong young aristocrat. The opening of the play, then, suggests that the whole social order – not merely Bertram – is going ‘backward’. In Measure for Measure, the opening of the play reveals an absence of authority in another form: the Duke is leaving a deputy to take his place. His own sovereign rights and power will be elsewhere. The question is, why? The Duke supplies two answers. First, that he has allowed the laws to fall into disuse, and has been too permissive. The result is that society is in a disorderly and sinful state: so our decrees, Dead to infliction, to themselves are dead, And Liberty plucks Justice by the nose, The baby beats the nurse, and quite athwart Goes all decorum. (Measure for Measure, 1, iii, 27–31)

The word ‘decorum’ stands for the proper relations between people and things in nature, and his image ‘The baby beats the nurse’ tells of an order turned upside-down. It is Vincentio’s fault things are so lax, and would be his ‘tyranny’ to tighten up. He feels responsible, ‘for we bid this be done, / When evil deeds have their permissive pass’ (lines 37–8). This is the reason he gives to Friar Thomas for hiding away and giving Angelo the task of cleaning up Vienna. Later in the play, however, it appears that he had prior knowledge of Angelo’s perfidious cruelty to Mariana: the purpose of his disappearance is, implicitly, to cut the corrupt deputy down to size by giving him enough rope to hang himself. In this sense, the play provides a very thorough ‘test’, a full examination of judicial authority in society; but what has happened to the other motive? Vincentio seems to forget his worries about the state of society as a whole. The final scene of the play casts the Duke in the judicial role, the role in which Angelo failed his test; and his judgments raise several thorny issues. First, there is his evident enjoyment of ‘stage-man-

Politics and Society

137

aging’ the entire series of revelations (he even delays the revelation of a living Claudio with the unlikely tale from the Provost of another malefactor ‘as like almost to Claudio as himself ’). Secondly, he strings out his victims’ fears even to forcing his future wife to kneel and beg mercy for Angelo, whom he intends to pardon. Thirdly, the Duke’s sentencing is wildly inconsistent. He acts obdurate in condemning Angelo and is determined that Lucio shall be whipped and then hanged, but then seems casual in changing his mind: ‘Thy slanders I forgive, and therewithal / Remit thy other forfeits’ (5, i, 517–18). What are we to make of the judicial role as acted out by this Duke? Certainly, his judgment veers between extremes. Psychologically, we are entitled to see the Duke excited by his power, and still subject to the contradictory impulses that were never resolved in his explanation to Friar Thomas. The question we are left with at the end of the play is, is this ‘justice’ tempered with ‘mercy’? Or is it just a mess? Meanwhile, Measure for Measure has provided plentiful evidence of a Viennese society that needs attention because sexual transgressions and prostitution are rife, and the community elects its idiots to public-order offices. Elbow’s incompetent officialdom is analogous to Parolles’s influential position at the start of All’s Well that Ends Well. We will be looking at these comic scenes more closely in the next chapter. Troilus and Cressida presents two societies in crisis, and we are quickly provided with two lengthy discussions – Greek and Trojan councils (Act 1, scene iii, and Act 2, scene ii). In both cases, absent authority is again an issue: both Agamemnon and Priam are weak. Neither of them controls the decisions made in their name. We have studied the Greek discussion, which disintegrates despite Ulysses’s speech on ‘degree’: reason and intellect are swept away by Aeneas and vacuous chivalry. Act 2, scene ii, the Trojan council of war, suffers the same fate. The terms of debate are set by Priam, who seeks an answer to Nestor’s offer of settlement. During the course of discussion, Troilus and Paris urge the cause of honour, glory and idealism: Troilus is scornful of ‘reason’ and argues ‘What’s aught but as ’tis valued?’ (line 52). Hector argues for reason. His speech at lines 163–93 is the Trojan counterpart to Ulysses’s speech on ‘degree’: he

138

Analysing Shakespeare’s Problem Plays

proposes that the bond between ‘wife and husband’ is a fundamental natural law, and: There is a law in each well-ordered nation To curb those raging appetites that are Most disobedient and refractory. (Troilus and Cressida, 2, ii, 180–2)

The rape of Helen broke this fundamental order, and ‘these moral laws / Of nature and of nations speak aloud / To have her back returned’ (2, ii, 184–6). Suddenly, Hector retreats, seduced from his own ‘reason’ by ‘glory’, ‘honour and renown’, ‘valiant and magnanimous deeds’. Priam says nothing, and is ignored by his sons as they rush away, excited by Hector’s ‘roisting challenge’ to the Greeks. All three of the societies and political structures we are studying, then, are in a complicated state of dissolution, conflict and change. Let us try to summarise the apparent problems: 1. Authority is weak: it is either in terminal decline (All’s Well that Ends Well), absent for confused reasons (Measure for Measure), or indecisive (Troilus and Cressida). 2. Society is in conflict about several value-systems. In particular, there is no resolution of the conflicting demands of honour and glory, and order or ‘degree’, and the values of war and peace are also in debate (All’s Well that Ends Well, Troilus and Cressida); or justice and humanity (Measure for Measure). The demands of nature and piety are also in conflict (All’s Well that Ends Well, Measure for Measure). 3. All three societies are in a decadent state featuring sexual permissiveness, sensual indulgence, disrespect for authority, fashion, vanity and so on. 4. In all three plays, characters occupy unwarranted positions in society: Parolles, Elbow, Angelo, Achilles, and even Troilus and Paris arguably fall into this category. 5. All three plays show a generational conflict, with the young showing disrespect and arrogating the right to make decisions, with disastrous results. This theme is complicated by Pandarus, in Troilus and Cressida; and is muted in Measure for Measure.

Politics and Society

139

6. In all three plays, the institution of marriage is flouted, and sexual immorality is seen as central to the dissolution of society. 7. In all three plays, political action is taken to rectify matters, as we have seen in the first part of this chapter. In All’s Well that Ends Well and Measure for Measure a supposed ‘happy ending’ is reached, while Troilus and Cressida ends negatively. However, political action is more-or-less ineffective, in all three plays. There are a variety of ways to analyse these dissolving societies, and we will discuss some at the end of the chapter. Before we do, however, it will be revealing to look at the nature, purpose and success of the political actions undertaken in each play.

Political Actions in All’s Well that Ends Well There are two: first, Helena’s project in aspiring to become Bertram’s wife, declared in Act 1, scene ii: ‘Who ever strove / To show her merit that did miss her love?’ (lines 222–3). Secondly, the Dumaine brothers’ plot to humble Bertram and unmask Parolles. We call Helena’s project ‘political’ because it runs counter to social conventions of which she is only too well aware. Our analysis in Chapter 3 amply showed how revolutionary this project was, both for the time and in Helena’s own mind; and we have seen how her skill in handling people, and her ‘merit’ as a physician, gain her the name of Bertram’s wife. The second part of her project is to become his wife in deed as well as in name, and this is where she undertakes deception by announcing her own death, conceiving the bed-trick, and stagemanaging the revelations in Act 5. The structure of this political action is legalistic: Bertram’s letter sets the conditions, and the project is achieved when Helena claims to have fulfilled these terms: And, look you, here’s your letter. This it says: When from my finger you can get this ring And is by me with child, &c. This is done; Will you be mine now you are doubly won? (All’s Well that Ends Well, 5, iii, 305–8)

140

Analysing Shakespeare’s Problem Plays

Formally, Helena’s project is successful: she wins her husband by determination and merit. Psychologically her success is less convincing. Although Bertram cries out ‘Both, both. O Pardon!’ when Helena appears, there are no other signs that his character has changed, and he has dug himself into a hole from which she represents the only safe way out. Meanwhile, she has used his promiscuity and blindness against him. Bertram himself has displayed the most unattractive qualities right up to the end. As we pointed out in Chapter 3, it is paradoxical that Helena’s project obtains only a position of subservience to such a man – that of a wife. We cynically expect that Helena will ‘manage’ the foolish Bertram for the remainder of their lives. Morally, then, Bertram is far from redeemed, and we are asked to let the deceptions pass, in the King’s final couplet: All yet seems well, and if it end so meet, The bitter past, more welcome is the sweet. (5, iii, 327–8)

From our point of view, the really interesting element in Helena’s project is her success at breaking the class boundary: she is a commoner who marries an aristocrat. It is ironic that Bertram is tamed by an unholy alliance between young commoner, and old, quasidivine authority. Additionally, the sexual question will not go away: men enjoy forbidden pleasures more than lawful ones. The second political project in All’s Well that Ends Well is undertaken by the Dumaine brothers in order to unmask Parolles and save Bertram from himself. Is Parolles relegated to his proper position in society, and is Bertram chastened? The first of these is achieved, the second not. At the end of Act 4, scene iii, Parolles gives up the inflated position in society that he has filled, and takes his allotted and natural place as a fool: Rust, sword; cool, blushes; and Parolles live Safest in shame; being fool’d, by fool’ry thrive. There’s place and means for every man alive. (All’s Well that Ends Well, 4, iii, 326–8)

Politics and Society

141

This is a political success: no longer is there a soldier who is a coward; now there is a fool who is a fool. Truth and appropriateness in society are restored by this outcome. On the other hand, as we will see in the next chapter, Parolles’s indifference robs success of its triumph and even presents a total subversion of order. Bertram is not chastened: the Dumaine brothers fail in this action. He realises that Parolles is a ‘past-saving slave’, but his fury is only kindled when Parolles’s sonnet to Diana is read out. Ironically, Parolles’s description of Bertram as a ‘dangerous and lascivious boy, who is a whale to virginity’, and the lines in the sonnet ‘the count’s a fool, I know it, / Who pays before, but not when he does owe it’ (4, iii, 212–13, and 221–2) are the truth, unlike the rest of his testimony. There is no sign of self-knowledge in Bertram’s irate reaction; indeed, his anger is merely another way to deny the truth. The Lords’ plot to make Bertram’s faults whip his virtues and so reduce his pride, has utterly failed. Political and social engineering in this play, then, has at best an ambiguous outcome.

Political Actions in Measure for Measure In Measure for Measure we have both Angelo’s and the Duke’s political projects to consider. Angelo’s project is to enforce the law rigorously. He takes a literal and legalistic attitude to the law. He regards it as impersonal, saying ‘It is the law, not I, condemn your brother’ (2, ii, 80), and in acknowledging that a jury may contain those ‘Guiltier than him they try’ (2, i, 21) he accepts that the law may be partly enforced by the corrupt who remain undiscovered. However, to Angelo the law is something enshrined above any judge or jury who operate it: it should remain unchanging and unaffected: We must not make a scarecrow of the law, Setting it up to fear the birds of prey, And let it keep one shape till custom make it Their perch, and not their terror. (Measure for Measure, 2, i, 1–4)

142

Analysing Shakespeare’s Problem Plays

The telling irony is his grandiose claim that his own judgment is as impersonal as the law itself: When I that censure him do so offend, Let mine own judgement pattern out my death. (2, i, 29–30)

Angelo is aware that he has undertaken a political project in reviving legal rigour. Typically personifying his absolute, he says that ‘The law hath not been dead, though it hath slept,’ and warns: ‘Now ’tis awake, / Takes note of what is done, and like a prophet . . .’ (2, ii, 91–5). Here, Angelo’s language suggests a crusade, and this reveals the way he thinks about his political project. Angelo has longed to exercise the law rigorously, and only waited for the opportunity of power to put his ideas into effect. Angelo is, however, a sincere reformer. He and the Duke use the same argument for rigour. Angelo is asked to show pity, and pleads: ‘I show it most of all when I show justice; / For then I pity those I do not know’ (2, ii, 101–2), who would otherwise commit offences in the future. The Duke takes responsibility for misleading the people with his clemency, for ‘’twas my fault to give the people scope’ (1, iii, 35) and it would have been kinder to govern them properly with strict laws. This is a plausible argument, reminiscent of present-day talk of children ‘needing clear boundaries’. What becomes of Angelo’s project, we know: his own lust brings his downfall, and the damage he is doing has to be stopped. However, we should also notice what happens before Angelo’s lust corrupts him. Pompey’s case wears out his patience, and he leaves. Judgment is left to Escalus, who begins to address the problem of incompetent officials. Later, the Provost turns Pompey into an apprentice executioner – a more positive use of his sentence! We should also notice Pompey’s reaction to the crackdown on prostitution. He reassures Mistress Overdone: ‘good counsellors lack no clients: though you change your place, you need not change your trade: I’ll be your tapster still’ (1, ii, 98–100). Prostitution cannot be stamped out: it will simply move around and survive because its ‘clients’ will always be plentiful and rich. Mistress Overdone and

Politics and Society

143

Pompey repeatedly point out that their trade is an industry, an employer and an integral part of the economy. Angelo’s crusade against immorality was doomed from the start. The Duke’s political project is more difficult to define. He distrusts Angelo from the start, as he makes clear to Friar Thomas: Lord Angelo is precise; Stands at a guard with Envy; scarce confesses That his blood flows; or that his appetite Is more to bread than stone. Hence shall we see If power change purpose, what our seemers be. (1, iii, 50–4)

‘Scarce confesses that his blood flows’ shows disbelief. The Duke does not accept that a man can be without ‘blood’ or ‘appetite’. His project is designed to reveal the humanity of a man who poses as superhuman. Partly, also, the Duke wants to discover what really goes on – and his scenes with Lucio develop this idea further. However, the implied conflict between humane and strict legal enforcement is never resolved. We have noticed that the Duke returns to his lax ways in the final scene, and perhaps this represents a return to common sense; but the question of good government, of the law and judicial responsibility, remains without any answer at all. The second part of the Duke’s project is to correct Angelo: to return him to society humbled so he can take his proper place among others. Angelo has offended in two ways: first, he pretends to be superhuman without ‘blood’ or ‘appetite’, which offends Vincentio’s belief in nature: O, what may man within him hide, Though angel on the outward side! (3, ii, 264–5)

The Duke cannot tolerate such purity, and sets out to prove that Angelo is fallible. One trope the Duke employs suggests that he finds puritanism abhorrent and dangerous. To Escalus, he compares it to a disease: ‘there is so great a fever on goodness that the dissolution of it must cure it’ (3, ii, 216–17). Secondly, Angelo has

144

Analysing Shakespeare’s Problem Plays

offended against the sacrament of marriage and marriage-promise. The sanctity of a marriage-promise is emphasised in the Duke’s account. Mariana was ‘affianced to her oath’ and Angelo later ‘swallowed his vows whole’. His inhumanity also appears in this context as he was ‘a marble to her tears’, continuing a motif contrasting hard and soft that has followed Angelo through the play. The first part of the Duke’s project involved espionage, seeking the revelation of truth. The second part is different: it is social engineering. These are the terms in which he sees his enterprise: Craft against vice I must apply. With Angelo tonight shall lie His old betrothed, but despised: So disguise shall by th’disguised Pay with falsehood false exacting, And perform an old contracting. (3, ii, 270–5)

The significance of this speech is pointed up by its form: trochaic metre in many of the lines, the short quatrameters and strongly rhymed couplets singling out this speech for the audience. The language is also full of repetitions set as paradoxes (disguise/disguised, falsehood/false), and antitheses (craft/vice, pay/exacting), which give an intense impression of neatness. There is a great deal of satisfaction in the shape of such plots, which work on what we call ‘poetic justice’, employing the villain’s villainy against himself. The Duke’s idea is attractive, then. It is satisfying to us as well as to the Duke to see Angelo take a fall, and the project is supported by another set of balances, including the play’s title, in the final scene: ‘An Angelo for Claudio; death for death. Haste still pays haste, and leisure answers leisure; Like doth quit like, and Measure still for Measure.’ (5, i, 407–9)

However, the play does not allow us to accept this plot: it is too neat. We are unsettled by the parrot-like regularity of the Duke’s couplets, in a context of dark and violent passions, and in a city where prositution is rife and laws are neglected.

Politics and Society

145

Most of all, Vincentio’s two projects defeat each other. What does he want to do: clean up Vienna, or prove that human nature is base? He cannot have it both ways! So, the more he is proved right about Angelo, the less society will be changed. Vincentio’s own character answers our question, for Angelo’s baseness is published, to the evident glee and triumph of the Duke: Hast thou or word, or wit, or impudence, That yet can do thee office? (5, i, 361–2)

The impulse of these lines tells us what Vincentio always wanted: he wanted Angelo to squirm. Vincentio’s authority, then, is corrupted with elements of sadism, even self-disgust; and darker motives also inform Mariana and Isabella. The Duke’s social engineering, then, is a questionable, unsettling political enterprise which belies the neatness of his argument that ends can justify means. Furthermore, the Duke’s role throughout is disturbing because it implicates the audience. We welcome his manipulations against Angelo because the scenes between Isabella and Angelo, and with Juliet and Claudio, are so shocking and painful. We hate Angelo and cringe from his abuse of power, so we are implicated in Vincentio’s acts. In this way, the play touches our own humanity, but ambiguously: we are both repelled by, and indentify with, Vincentio.

Political Actions in Troilus and Cressida There are several actions in Troilus and Cressida which could be called ‘political’. These include the exchange of Antenor for Cressida; Hector’s challenge and the meeting between the two sides; Achilles’s decision to feast Hector; and even Pandarus’s request to Paris to make Troilus’s excuses on the night when he will stay with Cressida. However, the crucial political enterprise is that undertaken by Ulysses and Nestor, designed to cut Achilles down to size and restore ‘degree’ to the Greek army. We looked at the hatching of this plan earlier in this chapter. We found that Ulysses begins with an all-embracing concept of ‘degree’:

146

Analysing Shakespeare’s Problem Plays

he sees this principle in operation throughout the universe and expresses horror at the alternative: Take but degree away, untune that string, And hark what discord follows. Each thing meets In mere oppugnancy; the bounded waters Should lift their bosoms higher than the shores, And make a sop of all this solid globe; (Troilus and Cressida, 1, iii, 109–13)

Here, Ulysses’s imagery would connect with Genesis in the audience’s mind. His vision of ‘Each thing meets’ brings a picture of the end of distinction between land and sea (‘the bounded waters / Should lift their bosoms higher than the shores’), which undoes God’s creative work1 and would strike fear into the hearts of a Renaissance audience. The image of the ‘universal wolf ’ is also a particularly frightening idea. At the same time, we noticed that Ulysses and Nestor ally pragmatism and intellect with ‘degree’, as the superior qualities that will combat chaos and bring success. The acting out of Ulysses’s plot against Achilles brings a further theoretical contribution into play. Ulysses’s discourse to Achilles in Act 3, scene iii, begins with the principle both acknowledge, that ‘man . . . cannot make boast to have that which he hath . . . but by reflection’ (3, iii, 97–100). Ulysses then develops this principle into two further propositions. First, he states ‘That no man is the lord of anything . . . Till he communicate his parts to others’ (lines 116–18). The word ‘lord’ refers to the traditional, feudal concept of ‘lordship’ and would resonate far more powerfully for the contemporary audience than it does today. Despite Ulysses’s devotion to the traditional ideal of ‘degree’, we have noticed that much of his thinking is modern. The assertion that ‘lordship’ is fleeting and conditional, is a radical departure from convention. However, the other part of Ulysses’s statement is equally important: that man exists, and is known, only by his relation with others. In other words, Ulysses proposes a social model and rejects individualism. Cynically, the words ‘reflection’ and ‘communicates’ show that Ulysses’s society is pure appearance, not essence.

Politics and Society

147

Secondly, Ulysses introduces the concept of time. As his speech develops, time becomes the only constant in his view of human life. All other qualities are subject to time, which has ‘a wallet at his back / Wherein he puts alms for oblivion’ (lines 146–7). Ulysses develops this point with a cynical description of ‘fashion’ and ‘emulation’, saying ‘Time is like a fashionable host’ (line 166) who drops people and takes up with others in the same moment. We again notice the modern and Machiavellian cynicism of Ulysses’s thought. He then takes his analysis one step further: For beauty, wit, High birth, vigour of bone, desert in service, Love, friendship, charity, are subjects all To envious and calumniating Time. One touch of nature makes the whole world kin, (3, iii, 172–6)

Ulysses’s list is reminiscent of lists he himself used in Act 1, scene iii, in support of ‘degree’: The primogenity and due of birth, Prerogative of age, crowns, sceptres, laurels, (1, iii, 106–7) . . . degree, priority, and place, Insisture, course, proportion, season, form, Office, and custom, all in line of order. (1, iii, 86–8)

All of these essential elements in the organisation of the universe, he now says, are subject to ‘envious’ time: they are nothing in themselves, for in ‘nature’ everything is the same: distinction is won by putting yourself in the public eye. This is a flat contradiction of ‘degree’, and proposes a very modern idea. It is a cynical version of a meritocracy, where fame comes to the man who is best at massaging and polishing his public image. Ulysses is radically modern, also, in his statement that ‘nature makes the whole world kin’. Ulysses’s discourse to Achilles is pure cynicism, then. There is just

148

Analysing Shakespeare’s Problem Plays

one mystical element in what he says: he persuades Achilles that the state is divinely omniscient: There is a mystery . . . in the soul of state, Which hath an operation more divine Than breath or pen can give expressure to. (3, iii, 203–6)

Ulysses thus carries out his project with precision. Achilles, whose pride is founded on glory, honour, strength and love, needs bringing down to earth. What he needs is therefore a healthy dose of cynicism about the way things actually work, and a sense of insecurity about his glory. This Ulysses gives him in the form of his arguments about reputation, time and fashion. On the other hand, Achilles also needs to show more respect for authority. This, Ulysses gives him also, in the form of a quasi-religious fear of the ‘state’, which ‘Knows almost every grain of Pluto’s gold’ (line 199). Clearly, Ulysses says whatever will work, to mould Achilles’s mind to his own purpose. We can see that Ulysses shapes his opinions to his purpose, then. Therefore, we cannot trust the sincerity of anything he says. So, turning to the earlier scene, why would he advance the theory of ‘degree’ so powerfully, and paint such a fearsome picture of chaos, when speaking to the assembled generals? The obvious answer is to flatter Agamemnon into being more decisive. So, in both scenes, Ulysses is seen to be using language to mould his listeners’ ideas to his own wishes. In the interests of victory over Troy, he wants to increase Agamemnon’s pride and decrease that of Achilles. He achieves the former with his speech on ‘degree’, and the latter by combining the argument about time and fashion, with a quasireligious respect for the secret service. Does Ulysses’s political action work? The answer is, yes and no. Achilles is roused to a form of action, for he invites Hector to dinner and resolves to fight him the following day. However, a message and token from his love diverts his purpose. We recognise the overblown rhetoric of courtly bombast when Achilles renounces his purposed fight:

Politics and Society

149

Fall, Greeks; fail, fame; honour, or go or stay; My major vow lies here; this I’ll obey. (5, i, 42–3)

This is, of course, exactly the kind of high-worded but woolly thinking which scotched both Greek and Trojan councils, of which Ulysses has attempted to cure him. So in this particular, Ulysses’s project has failed. It is the death of Patroclus that kindles Achilles’s grief and rage in the end, not Ulysses’s machinations. The crucial political intervention is made by Nestor, who orders that Patroclus’s body should be carried to Achilles’s tent. On the other hand, some of Ulysses’s influence has taken root. When he is armed, Achilles initially follows tradition: he rushes about the battlefield calling for Hector, and when he finds him they fight, but indecisively. Later, Achilles finds the more efficient way of doing things when he orders his Myrmidons to slaughter the unarmed Hector. This event shows the influence of Ulysses, who has always stressed the superiority of: The still and mental parts, That do contrive how many hands shall strike When fitness calls them on, and know by measure Of their observant toil the enemy’s weight – (1, iii, 200–3)

It is the true pupil of Ulysses and Machiavelli, who finds Hector unarmed and outnumbered, and strikes when he has advantage. The play ends on a note of significant military advantage to the Greeks. To this extent, we could say that the political project undertaken by Ulysses and Nestor in Act 1 has succeeded. Certainly, cynical opportunism prevails against courage and honour. However, as we have seen, elements of that manipulation have not proved effective, and chance has taken a hand (by the death of Patroclus).

Conclusions There are various ways of looking at the social and political themes in these three plays:

150

Analysing Shakespeare’s Problem Plays

1. True to form, the dominant theme of order or ‘degree’ that provides a thin moral framework in each play turns out, on closer examination, to be unsatisfactory. The malaise within each of these political structures runs much deeper, and has gone too far to be repaired by a mere resort to the ‘authority’ model. These societies are dissolving and changing in fundamental ways. They can never revert to what they once were, and the future is uncharted territory. 2. There is a running debate between honour, glory and chivalry – more traditional and idealistic values – and the facts and pragmatism of the life Shakespeare saw among his contemporaries, in particular the gradual emergence of meritocracy, or (more cynically) a society of opportunism and political manipulation: the kind of society we know today. However, in the different plays, Shakespeare sets this debate in differing forms: Helena begins to mount a feminine attack on the male values of war; the Duke suggests a new kind of pious heroism to Claudio; and Ulysses, as we have seen, employs Machiavellian means to prop up old ‘authority’. All of these conflicts would connect with current anxieties for Shakespeare’s audience, and although all three plays explore the issues, none offers a single solution. 3. We can argue that there are two potential solutions offered in All’s Well that Ends Well and Troilus and Cressida. In All’s Well that Ends Well, a decadent aristocracy, in decline generation on generation, needs to be revived by the energy and ‘merit’ of the commoner Helena, and the success of her bid to become Bertram’s wife can be, arguably, an optimistic sign. This suggests that the future may lie in cross-breeding, which will re-invigorate the rulers’ blood! In Troilus and Cressida Ulysses charts the political way forward: the future will consist of the appearance of a paternal structure, actually sustained by manipulation, propaganda, and an efficient secret service. At the same time, old chivalrous military practices will give way to rational, Machiavellian methods: the calculation of advantage that enables Achilles to kill Hector. 4. In each case, political power and social position are seen to be complex things, dependent on appearance, reputation, and the

Politics and Society

151

control of minds as well as bodies; and subject to irrational forces such as nature (of which there are varied versions in the different plays) and time. 5. In all three plays, the exercise of political power is shown to be dirty. That is, politics uses immoral and deceptive means to secure its ends, and politicians’ motives are mixed at best. 6. In all three plays, political action is more or less ineffective. It achieves a partial re-setting of individuals within the social structure, but in each play we know that the political and social order is dissolving. Political action also achieves some spectacular failures: the Dumaine brothers utterly fail with Bertram; and Ulysses fails to spur Achilles into military action. Achilles’s pride, and Agamemnon’s ineffectual leadership, remain untouched. ‘Scapegoating’ Finally, we should notice that there is a political process all three plays display, which we can call ‘scapegoating’. In each play, the broader social problem gradually comes to be identified with the errors of one individual. Other characters increasingly focus their efforts on correcting that one person. This means that Bertram in All’s Well that Ends Well, Angelo in Measure for Measure and Achilles in the Greek army of Troilus and Cressida are made scapegoats for the broader social malaise: political action focuses on restoring them to their proper relation within society. Scapegoating has two characteristics: first, it is a diversion from problems too thorny to address. It is far easier to punish an individual, than to re-adjust or transform a whole society. Gradually, therefore, the wider problems recede, as one aberrant individual takes the foreground. In All’s Well that Ends Well, for example, we do not hear about the failings of the younger generation in the second half of the play; but we hear a great deal about Bertram’s failings. Similarly, the prominent topic of promiscuity in Measure for Measure is progressively overshadowed by Angelo’s lust. Secondly, scapegoating replaces other action by appearing to deal with the problem. Punishment or reform of an individual, is perceived as victory; but the rottenness of society is then forgotten – it

152

Analysing Shakespeare’s Problem Plays

regards itself as healthy. One of the reasons for the enduring controversy provoked by these three plays is that they portray this process that we call ‘scapegoating’, but leave the audience still vividly aware of continuing dissolution. We have not discussed the social and political issues raised in these plays with any degree of thoroughness: you are urged to continue studying and debating these questions, beginning by making use of the suggestions for further work that appear at the end of this chapter. However, we have gone far enough to suggest just how complicated these topics are. We repeatedly find that each extract or topic we focus on seems to offer two different stories at once, and although one may be more explicit, we are never able to settle on that or forget its alternative.

Methods of Analysis In this chapter we initially made use of the same approaches as in previous chapters, choosing short extracts for detailed study and looking at various features of style and verse, as described in the ‘Methods of Analysis’ section of Chapter 1. However, we again had the advantage of a particular topic: Society and Politics. This has helped to aim our questions towards relevant parts of the text. For example, we chose three roughly equivalent extracts for detailed study at the start, because we noticed in each play, a plot to correct one errant character. Leading questions: the most useful method we have used in this chapter has been to ask ourselves leading questions. When you master this technique, it is an enormous boon in your study of a text; and it is quite easy to do. It is applied common sense, and you will soon find that your mind hatches and pursues useful leading questions without needing to be formally prompted. Look at the common sense of what we did with the Dumaine brothers’ plot to humble Bertram. First, we studied their discussion of the plot. At that point we had gained insight into what they hoped to achieve and how, and how they thought about society and nature. It is at this point that you need to formulate a further question.

Politics and Society

153

What is the obvious question to ask about a plot? The most obvious question of all is, does it succeed? It is also obvious that answering this question yields conclusions about society and politics in the play – the aim of our whole inquiry in this chapter. So, common sense frames a leading question, and common sense will then tell you what to do. Does the Dumaine brothers’ plot succeed? How can we find out? Obviously, look at the rest of the scene. Your question will then become a direct question about the text: the Dumaines’ aim is to humble Bertram and expose Parolles. Is Parolles exposed? Does Bertram act more humbly? Similarly, we asked: What is wrong with society at the beginnings of these plays? We answered that there is a great deal wrong in all three plays, far more than one identified errant individual could embody. So, the vital technique for pursuing a study to further levels of detail and insight, is to use your common sense and frame leading questions. Once you start to do this, you will also find that studying a rich and complex text like Shakespeare will never reach an end. I am at the end of writing this chapter, but there are a number of leading questions in my mind that I would like to pursue further. For example, transgression in two of the plays attacks the institution of marriage and marriage-promise, while in the third play (Troilus and Cressida) the Trojan war was caused by the theft of a wife. I would like to pursue this further: how do these three plays portray love-contracts? In two of the plays there is a debate about war, and I am aware that I have not looked at this issue in detail. Then, surveillance and espionage are central to both Vincentio’s and Ulysses’s activities, and important for Helena and the Dumaines, so I would like to ask leading questions about the role of intelligence-gathering in politics. Generating leading questions, then, is a matter of applying your common sense, and it will become a habit.

Suggested Work Begin by looking at an extract from each play which focuses on an agent of restoration in society.

154

Analysing Shakespeare’s Problem Plays

In All’s Well that Ends Well, study Act 5, scene iii, lines 294–318. This is the revelation of Helena at the end of the play. You will notice that this happens amid a cluster of paradoxes, and reactions from others which suggest something miraculous. In Measure for Measure, look at the moment when Lucio inadvertently reveals the Duke, Act 5, scene i, lines 324–85. Here, the revelation is preceded by knockabout farce, and hinges on a sudden contrast in mood and style when the Duke’s hood is pulled off. Reaction comes in expressions of awe from Angelo and Isabella. In Troilus and Cressida, study Act 1, scene iii, lines 75–137, Ulysses’s speech on ‘degree’. We have made a number of references to this speech in the course of this chapter, but it will repay close study. Look particularly for the rhetorical features, imagery, and for the way Ulysses builds his argument proposition by proposition. Bearing in mind our comments on ‘scapegoating’, you may like to continue your close study of the scene as far as line 210, examining the reasons Ulysses and Nestor put forward for seeing the ‘remedy’ in a focus on Achilles: how well do Achilles’s faults, as described, match the general evils described in the speech on ‘degree’? To further study society you may take any significant aspect and pursue an inquiry into that. So, for example, in All’s Well that Ends Well you may be interested in the relation between older and younger generations, in which case I would suggest that you study Act 2, scene iii, lines 52–110, where the King offers the Lords to Helena, with Lafew’s commentary, and Act 2, scene v, as far as line 53, between Lafew, Bertram and Parolles. In Measure for Measure you may be interested in the theme of justice, and study Act 2, scene i, from line 41 to the end of the scene, where Pompey and Elbow make a mockery of court procedures and evidence. In Troilus and Cressida you may look at the influence of women on the political culture of Troy, and this would lead you to study Act 2, scene ii, lines 97 to 145, where Cassandra interrupts the council; Act 3, scene i, from line 41 onwards, where Pandarus visits Helen and Paris with a simple request; and Act 5, scene iii, where Andromache and Cassandra attempt to dissuade Hector from fighting that day. These are suggestions, but, of course, there are other directions in which your interests and your questions may lead you.

Politics and Society

155

Note 1 In Genesis God did not create the universe, he organised the chaos: ‘God divided the light from the darkness’ (Genesis, 1:iv), ‘Let the waters under the heaven be gathered together unto one place, and let the dry land appear’ (Genesis, 1:ix), and so on. Ulysses’s vision is thus a fearful picture of a return to chaos.

5 Fools and fools In this chapter we look at examples of wit and foolishness in the three plays, and we begin by taking three extracts for detailed study. These focus on Parolles from All’s Well that Ends Well, Lucio from Measure for Measure and Thersites from Troilus and Cressida. These three characters are ‘witty’: they are Fools with a capital ‘F’, not stupid like Constable Elbow, or Ajax. In the second part of the chapter, we will develop this distinction further in a more general discussion of the role of wit and stupidity in each play.

Analysis: All’s Well that Ends Well, 4, iii, 319–28 This is Parolles’s speech after he has been exposed as a coward and liar: Yet am I thankful. If my heart were great ’Twould burst at this. Captain I’ll be no more, 320 But I will eat and drink and sleep as soft As Captain shall. Simply the thing I am Shall make me live. Who knows himself a braggart, Let him fear this; for it will come to pass That every braggart shall be found an ass. 325 Rust, sword; cool, blushes; and Parolles live Safest in shame; being fool’d, by fool’ry thrive. There’s place and means for every man alive. (All’s Well that Ends Well, 4, iii, 319–28) 156

Fools and fools

157

This is the final speech in a lengthy and dramatically complicated scene. Parolles has been blindfolded and interrogated by a soldier while the Lords and Bertram listen and pass comments. At the end of the scene, the noble characters leave first, then the soldiers leave, and Parolles remains in soliloquy. The feeling is ironically similar to Helena’s soliloquy in the play’s opening scene, and it dramatically emphasises that Parolles has been discarded, left to shift for himself. The Lords are sarcastic when they leave Parolles, saying ‘God bless you’ and ‘God save you’ and repeatedly mocking him with his title ‘captain’. The soldiers then take their turn at humiliating Parolles – suggesting that he could only mate with ‘women . . . that had received so much shame’ as Parolles has just received (all from 4, iii, 304–18). So, Parolles is humiliated and discarded by both top and bottom of the social ladder, in succession. This emphasises that he is now outside the hierarchy of society. Parolles speaks in blank verse leading to a couplet (lines 324–5) and a tercet with one off-rhyme (live/thrive/alive, lines 326–8). His phrases bisect the poetic lines for the first six lines, creating strong caesurae in the first, second, fourth, fifth and sixth lines. The two couplets, however, phrase to line-endings, sounding more formal and final. The effect of this rhythmic change half-way through Parolles’s speech is to suggest that he is disturbed and undecided, thinking – as it were – counter to the poetic form, in the first half of the speech. Then, when he sees his way to a viable future and reaches the resolution to adopt ‘fool’ry’, his thoughts fit into structured couplets neatly. The sense of Parolles’s speech is straightforward. He renounces the pose of a soldier, saying ‘Rust, sword’, and determines to make his living as ‘the thing I am’ which is ‘a braggart’: since he has been made a fool, he will be a Fool. This explains his decision and the reasons behind it clearly enough. However, there is a further interesting point. Parolles states ‘If my heart were great / ’Twould burst at this’. He knows that his heart is not ‘great’, and this fact gives him a measure of freedom. Superior people, he implies, are locked into their position and reputation in society, because they feel so much shame if they are exposed. He is immune simply because he does not feel ashamed. Later in the speech he underlines this point, saying

158

Analysing Shakespeare’s Problem Plays

‘cool, blushes’. What Parolles tells us is that the role of a Fool demands this immunity: the Fool must not be sensitive to public shame. The conclusion is, that ‘fool’ry’ is Parolles’s proper and assigned role in the social system: ‘There’s place and means for every man alive’ is, suddenly, a very conservative statement which suggests the hierarchy of order. This conclusion, together with the finality of neat couplets, fosters the impression that something has been corrected in the social fabric. The Lords Dumaine have succeeded to this extent, that Parolles, misplaced as a ‘captain’, has returned to his proper place in the God-given order they consider so important. That this has been achieved is confirmed at the end of the play when Lafew adopts Parolles as his ‘Fool’: ‘Wait on me home, I’ll make sport with thee’ (5, iii, 316–17). The above analysis is satisfactory; but as always in the problem plays, the speech tells another, different story at the same time. The ‘understory’ (if we can call it that) of this speech, is pricelessly funny, and devastating to the entire social fabric. Parolles tells us that there is no need to care, and he does not care. Dramatically, it is hugely bathetic: remember the elaborate build-up, drawing in two lords, a troop of soldiers, the interpreting game, and finally Bertram himself. Now, finally, it has happened: Parolles has been unmasked! And what does the poor victim have to say in the depths of his shame? Never mind, he says. Even more than this, he pities those who do care and is thankful that he is immune.

Analysis: Measure for Measure, 3, ii, 89–117 In this extract Lucio comments on Angelo and the crackdown on lechery, and begins to libel the Duke: Lucio:

Duke:

It was a mad, fantastical trick of him to steal from the state and usurp the beggary he was never born to. Lord Angelo dukes it well in his absence: he puts transgression to’t. He does well in’t.

90

Fools and fools

Lucio: Duke: Lucio:

Duke: Lucio:

Duke: Lucio:

159

A little more lenity to lechery would do no harm in him. Something too crabbed that way, friar. 95 It is too general a vice, and severity must cure it. Yes, in good sooth, the vice is of a great kindred; it is well allied; but it is impossible to extirp it quite, friar, till eating and drinking be put down. – They say this Angelo was not made by man and woman, 100 after this downright way of creation: is it true, think you? How should he be made, then? Some report, a sea-maid spawned him. Some, that he was begot between two stockfishes. But it is 105 certain that when he makes water, his urine is congealed ice; that I know to be true. And he is a motion ungenerative; that’s infallible. You are pleasant, sir, and speak apace. Why, what a ruthless thing is this in him, for the 110 rebellion of a codpiece to take away the life of a man! Would the Duke that is absent have done this? Ere he would have hanged a man for the getting a hundred bastards, he would have paid for the nursing a thousand. He had some feeling of the 115 sport; he knew the service; and that instructed him to mercy. (Measure for Measure, 3, ii, 89–117)

This extract is part of Act 3, the long sequence at the heart of the play set in or in the environs of the prison. The Act began inside the prison with the Duke advising Claudio to be ‘absolute for death’. The second half of the Act, called scene ii, takes place outside the prison; but it is likely that the action was continuous on the open Elizabethan stage. Act 3, scene ii, is another lengthy scene of several episodes. It opens with Elbow escorting Pompey to prison, then comes the discussion between the disguised Duke and Lucio, then Mistress Overdone being brought to prison by Escalus, who also discusses the Duke with the Duke. At the end of the scene, which is also the end of the Act, the Duke speaks in rhyming quatrameter

160

Analysing Shakespeare’s Problem Plays

couplets his reflective soliloquy ‘He who the sword of heaven would bear’, declaring his intention to employ ‘Craft against vice’ in the entrapment of Angelo. There is thus a great deal of movement, of people passing across the stage in groups, lingering to talk on the way. The Duke himself is the contrasting constant, remaining on stage in the role of observer and questioner until they have all left and he is alone. The conversation centres on lechery, Angelo’s new policy of judicial strictness, the character of the ‘absent’ Duke, and Claudio’s sentence. The action graphically shows that Angelo’s clean-up of Vienna is proceeding apace. The scene abounds in a confusing network of parallels: both Lucio and Escalus give their opinions of the Duke; Elbow and Escalus play the role of accusers and jailers; Pompey and Mistress Overdone are both apologists for lechery; Lucio and Claudio are both guilty of getting a woman with child. Then, the dialogue throws up many more ironies and parallels, including the contrasting views of the absent Duke given by Lucio and Escalus. The net result is to leave us very little wiser about the main issues in the play, because they are treated from so many different angles, and each treatment comes within a complex ironic context. The plain irony of our extract is, of course, that Lucio does not know he is talking to the Duke. Our extract is in prose, and the Duke’s role is negligible. He asks questions, but his only contributions are, first, a briefly stated approval for Angelo and the campaign against lechery; and secondly, the comment that Lucio is joking and talks too fast. His approval for the clean-up campaign is succinct: ‘It is too general a vice, and severity must cure it’ (line 96). Earlier in the scene, the Duke expressed apparently genuine revulsion against the trade of prostitution in his speech to Pompey (lines 18–26) and prescribed ‘Correction and instruction’ (line 31). Here, he calls lechery ‘too general a vice’. ‘Cure’ seems to be used in the sense of curing society itself: lechery is a disease, and society needs to become healthy again. However, we notice that the Duke speaks in relative terms, not absolutes: lechery is ‘too general’ a vice, which prompts us to ask what level of lechery would be acceptable? Also, if ‘severity’ must cure lechery, then ‘severity’ is a medicine – a temporary need.

Fools and fools

161

We will focus on Lucio’s contribution to the extract. This is dense with ironic relevance to the situations and issues within the play, and is so mixed and self-contradictory that the audience is provoked into a hopeless attempt to select from and re-fashion Lucio’s statements. The verbal style of paradox and inversion is typical of witty dialogue, and the ideas are radical alternatives to the Duke’s dominant moralising: It was a mad, fantastical trick of him to steal from the state and usurp the beggary he was never born to.

The paradox here is ‘usurp the beggary’, since ‘usurp’ is normally used for illegally seizing, not abdicating, power. The paradox is not merely an inversion, however. As usual, Lucio’s wit has more thoughtful content than its light form would suggest. Here, he rightly points out that a ruler who abandons his state is as guilty of transgression against the natural order of things as a ruler who has illegally seized power. The idea of usurping ‘beggary’ is absurd – which supports Lucio’s view that it was a ‘mad, fantastical trick’ by the Duke. Lucio’s opinion is radically subversive. Later in the scene, Escalus presents the majority view – ‘leave we him to his events, with a prayer they may prove prosperous’ (lines 231–3). Throughout the play, the majority of characters may wish the Duke were there, or hope for his return, but they do not question his reasons for going away. We remember that the Duke had to ask himself for an explanation of his own motives when Friar Thomas showed too much deference to be curious (see 1, iii, 16–18). Lucio’s remark strikes at the heart of this consensus with the charge that the Duke’s absence is both irrational and unnatural. Lucio’s view is also dramatically subversive: the play’s existence depends on the Duke’s manipulations and deceptions. His moral purpose in restoring Vienna and revealing Angelo’s vice, is the dominant discourse of Measure for Measure. Lucio cuts this justification out from under the play. His paradoxical language – ‘usurp the beggary he was not born to’ – is devastating. On lechery, Lucio is equally candid. His view is that lechery is an inevitable attribute of nature and life, and he compares it to ‘eating

162

Analysing Shakespeare’s Problem Plays

and drinking’. This is consistent with Pompey’s view that ‘good counsellors lack no clients’ and makes part of a common-sense opinion, that ‘it is impossible to extirp it quite’, which is implied by Escalus, Claudio and others as well as by the less reputable characters. However, Lucio’s language goes further, for he takes up a pun on ‘general’ and comments: ‘the vice is of a great kindred; it is well allied’. His point is that all ranks of society including the highest are driven by lechery. The phrases ‘great kindred’ and ‘well allied’ suggest that lechery has powerful friends, who will defend it against attack. Lucio is very funny about Angelo, inventing a variety of absurd explanations of his birth, such as ‘that he was begot between two stockfishes’; accounts of his unnaturalness (‘his urine is congealed ice’), and accusing him of impotence (he is ‘a motion ungenerative’). The substance of what he says is that Angelo appears to be an absurd creature, both not human and not credible – like the stories of mermaids and stockfishes Lucio tells. Ironically, the opinion he expresses here is virtually identical to that of the Duke. He – like Lucio – could not believe in Angelo’s purity. He too believes that a man who ‘scarce confesses / That his blood flows; or that his appetite / Is more to bread than stone’ (1, iii, 51–3), cannot exist or is not human. Lucio then comments on the Duke. He makes two observations: first, that the Duke is a gentle judge who hates to take human life, and always prefers to nurture victims rather than execute malefactors. Secondly, that the reason the Duke is a merciful judge, is because he has personal experience of the temptations and sin to which the criminal has succumbed, so he understands. What do we make of these comments? The first statement strikes us as accurate. We have the Duke’s own word for it that he has been lenient (‘my fault to give the people scope’, 1, iii, 35) backed up by Angelo’s comment that the law has ‘slept’ (2, ii, 91). Additionally, the final scene shows that the Duke is loth to use the death penalty: despite his threats, he so arranges it that the principle ‘measure still for measure’ does not demand a life from Angelo. Lucio’s sentence is also quickly commuted. The play also provides evidence that the Duke seeks to support people in living a better life, his impulse being to care for his people rather

Fools and fools

163

than to oppress them. Even the unrepentant Barnardine of whom the Duke says ‘Unfit to live or die! O gravel heart’ (4, iii, 63), is worth more pains; for to execute him in his obdurate frame of mind would be ‘damnable’ (4, iii, 68). So, Lucio is right about this aspect of the Duke’s character. Lucio’s second assertion is crudely expressed, saying that the Duke ‘had some feeling of the sport; he knew the service’. However, the principle – that understanding and mercy have their origin in humility, and humility comes from self-knowledge – is fundamental to the discussions of justice we hear in the play. The Duke himself enunciates this principle only a few minutes after Lucio, saying that an upright judge will measure punishment by knowledge of himself: More nor less to others paying Than by self-offences weighing (3, ii, 258–9)

While Escalus makes this the foundation of his appeal to Angelo for clemency to Claudio (see 2, i, 10–16), and Isabella couches the same argument in the doctrine of original sin: How would you be If He, which is the top of judgement, should But judge you as you are? (2, ii, 75–7)

The principle of Lucio’s comment, then, belongs with the mainstream moral discourse of the play. The manner of its expression, on the other hand, with the coarse allegation of sexual misconduct in the Duke, is exaggerated. What have we found from summarising Lucio’s contribution? We have found that he and the Duke agree about lechery, Angelo, and the administration of justice. The only argument between them concerns the Duke’s action in leaving Vienna, which Lucio considers ‘mad, fantastical’. Lucio, on the other hand, uses language in a different way from others. The features in this extract include sarcasm (‘the vice is of a great kindred’); colloquial or slang terms (‘crabbed’, ‘the sport’, ‘the service’); sudden changes of register which produce humour (‘rebellion of a codpiece’); the use of words in an apparently

164

Analysing Shakespeare’s Problem Plays

inverted context (‘usurp the beggary’); and the use of a noun as a verb (‘Angelo dukes it well’). Additionally, Lucio brings in surprising and vivid imagery (‘sea-maid’, ‘begot between two stockfishes’, urine like ‘congealed ice’); and his diction is decided and florid (‘impossible’, ‘infallible’, ‘a hundred bastards’, ‘a thousand’). Lucio’s language, then, constantly alters the relation between expression and meaning: he moves between irony, caricature (his language describing Angelo’s inhumanity highlights absurdity by exaggeration), overstatement, understatement, and epigrams based on paradox. It is as if he is constantly stretching, and tying knots in, the elastic that connects the signifier (language) with its signified (meaning). Furthermore, Lucio seems to use language as little as possible in a denotative manner. Instead, he seeks, explores and varies the connotative effects he can gain from language. The Duke’s comment, ‘You are pleasant, sir, and speak apace’, is rather a dry assessment of the verbal excitement Lucio’s style generates.

Analysis: Troilus and Cressida, 2, i, 1–48 Our extract from Troilus and Cressida is the first time we meet Thersites. He has been mentioned as Ajax’s fool, ‘A slave whose gall coins slanders like a mint’ (1, iii, 193), and his name is the first word of Act 2: Ajax: Thers: Ajax: Thers: Ajax: Thers: Ajax: Thers:

Thersites! Agamemnon – how if he had boils, full, all over, generally? Thersites! And those boils did run (say so) did not the 5 general run, then? Were not that a botchy core? Dog! Then would come some matter from him: I see none now. Thou bitch-wolf’s son, canst thou not hear? Feel, then. 10 Strikes him. The plague of Greece upon thee, thou

Fools and fools

Ajax: Thers:

Ajax: Thers: Ajax: Thers: Ajax: Thers:

Ajax: Thers:

Ajax: Thers: Ajax: Thers: Ajax: Thers: Ajax: Thers:

165

mongrel beef-witted lord! Speak, then, thou vinewed’st leaven, speak. I will beat thee into handsomeness! I shall sooner rail thee into wit and holiness; 15 but I think thy horse will sooner con an oration than thou learn a prayer without book. Thou canst strike, canst thou? A red murrain o’ thy jade’s tricks! Toadstool! Learn me the proclamation. Dost thou think I have no sense, thou strik’st 20 me thus? The proclamation! Thou art proclaimed a fool, I think. Do not, porcupine, do not. My fingers itch. I would thou didst itch from head to foot. And 25 I had the scratching of thee, I would make thee the loathsomest scab in Greece. When thou art forth in the incursions, thou strikest as slow as another. I say, the proclamation! Thou grumblest and railest every hour on 30 Achilles, and thou art as full of envy at his greatness as Cerberus is at Proserpina’s beauty, ay, that thou bark’st at him. Mistress Thersites! Thou shouldst strike him – 35 Cobloaf! He would pun thee into shivers with his fist, as a sailor breaks a biscuit. You whoreson cur! [Beats him.] Do, do! 40 Thou stool for a witch! Ay, do, do! thou sodden-witted lord, thou hast no more brain than I have in mine elbows; an asinico may tutor thee. Thou scurvy-valiant ass, thou art here but to thrash Trojans, and thou art bought and 45 sold among those of any wit, like a barbarian slave. If thou use to beat me, I will begin at thy heel and tell what thou art by inches, thou thing of no bowels thou! (Troilus and Cressida, 2, i, 1–48)

166

Analysing Shakespeare’s Problem Plays

The scene continues in a similar style: Patroclus and Achilles enter, and Thersites insults and goads them both, while continuing to insult Ajax. At the end of the scene, Achilles explains Hector’s challenge to Ajax. Dramatically, this short and foulmouthed scene is sandwiched between the two councils of war, in each of which there are lengthy orations in support of high principles: Ulysses’s speech on ‘degree’ and Aeneas’s high-flown chivalrous rhetoric in Act 1, scene iii; then Troilus’s impassioned defence of honour and glory, and Hector’s exposition of the marriage-bond as natural law, in Act 2, scene ii. Clearly, this interjection of railing negativity makes a sharp contrast to the preceding and succeeding scenes. Thersites and Ajax talk in prose, unevenly, with Thersites having the lion’s share of the text. He makes four set speeches, all of which insult Ajax. Ajax hurls insults back, but his are single ideas: they are just words used as weapons, like ‘You whoreson cur!’, ‘Toadstool!’ and ‘Cobloaf!’ The scene is twice punctuated by physical violence also, as Ajax ‘strikes’ and then ‘beats’ Thersites. Ajax’s role, then, is mere violence: verbal violence, and when his words are not adequate to express his anger, physical violence. Thersites’s role is much more complex. His insults are complete thoughts with their own internal logic, which develop a gross comparison in the same manner as a conceit is developed in one of Donne’s poems or in a Shakespearean sonnet. Thersites expresses his ideas in dense language, however, so it is helpful to write a summary of each insult: 1. Agamemnon imagined suffering from boils. This idea leads to: a. that the general would ‘run’ because the boils, bursting, would run; b. that some ‘matter’ (i.e. pus) would then come from the general. This enables Thersites to say that no ‘matter’ (wisdom, leadership) comes from Agamemnon at the moment. 2. Ajax is more stupid than his horse. This idea leads to: a. the comic idea of a horse reciting a long speech while his rider is dumb; b. Ajax’s blows are ‘jade’s tricks’ – which suggests that Thersites is riding the stupid horse Ajax.

Fools and fools

167

3. Ajax imagined suffering from venereal disease. This is developed to lead to: a. Ajax would itch and Thersites would scratch him; b. Thersites’s scratching would turn Ajax into a scab. 4. Ajax’s envy of Achilles is compared to Cerberus’s envy of Proserpina’s beauty. This leads to: Ajax, a dog, can only bark. He is inarticulate. 5. Ajax is a barbarian slave. This leads to: a. Ajax is bought and sold by the cleverer Greek lords. b. Ajax’s purpose is to ‘thrash Trojans’, a slave’s stupid labour. What do we notice about these ideas? They have obvious qualities in common in that they are either insulting comparisons or insulting and disgusting imaginings. So Ajax is compared to a horse and to Cerberus, and both Agamemnon and Ajax are imagined covered in disgusting diseases. However, we also notice that each idea provides Thersites with a further opportunity – the opportunity to frame a secondary insult developed from the first. So, he points out: 1. 2. 3. 4. 5.

that Agamemnon lacks wisdom and leadership; that he rides Ajax, who, like a horse, can only kick back; that Ajax is a scab; that Ajax is inarticulate; and that the Greek lords are using Ajax.

It is these, secondary insults which are the most telling and effective. With the exception of (3), they are all destructive truths about the Greeks and about Ajax. We have witnessed Agamemnon as an ineffectual leader, and we know of Ulysses’s and Nestor’s plan to use Ajax, from the preceding scene. The current scene is punctuated by Ajax beating Thersites when his language is inadequate. His insults are no match for his adversary, and in that sense he is inarticulate. This scene also displays Thersites’s intellectual dominance – he ‘rides’ Ajax despite the lord’s social superiority. How does the content of this extract relate to the surrounding scenes? We noticed that its foulness and negativity is a sharp contrast to the formal courtesies of both councils of war. Ironically, however,

168

Analysing Shakespeare’s Problem Plays

this extract is strikingly similar to the lords’ deliberations, in substance and structure. Again, it is helpful to jot down a summary of the situation, and what happens. Here are some examples from the many ways this subversive comic scene echoes the councils of war. 1. The high-ranking character who holds conventional authority is stupid and ineffectual (here, this is Ajax. In Act 1, scene iii, Agamemnon fails to settle the argument, and is diverted by overblown language about courtesy and chivalry. In Act 2, scene ii, Priam asks the question, but is completely ignored by his sons – just as Ajax is ignored by Thersites). 2. The problem is not resolved by the discussion (here, Ajax does not manage to have Thersites read the proclamation to him: he makes no progress. Similarly, the Greek council does not agree what to do, and the Trojan council reaches a contradictory conclusion). So the present extract is, to a great extent, simply a blunt and linguistically violent version of truths that have been revealed by the ‘great’ characters: failure of leadership, a society that is upside-down, the tail wagging the dog; and the stupidity of force. To this mix, Thersites adds the insistent metaphors of men as beasts (horses and dogs), and foul, disgusting diseases (boils, venereal disease and scabs). Both of these strands of imagery are common within the play, and appear frequently in Shakespearean texts. Human beings compared to beasts is an image of disorder that attacks notions of nobility, reason, or a God-given hierarchy of creatures: it attacks the concept Ulysses articulates as ‘degree’, as well as the optimistic vision of a reasonable and ordered nature put forward by Hector (see 2, ii, 173–4). Thersites’s disease-images are of a different kind from those found, say, in Hamlet. There, the emphasis is on a hidden corruption ‘mining all within’ while the outside skin appears smooth. Remember that Hamlet fears his mother’s excuses will ‘skin and film the ulcerous place’. Thersites, on the contrary, visualises diseases that burst out on the surface: Agamemnon with ‘boils, full, all over, generally’ and Ajax as ‘the loathsomest scab in Greece’. The suggestion

Fools and fools

169

in this play, then, is different: that foul corruption is now breaking out. Even appearance is no longer beautiful, for the rot has gone too far to be hidden. The three characters we have looked at are ‘Fools’ with a capital ‘F’, and the extracts we have studied show the characteristics of wordplay, and the abuse of logic and paradox, that are typical of Shakespeare’s comics. However, unlike Feste from Twelfth Night, or Lear’s Fool, none of them makes a living as a Fool except Parolles at the very end of his play. Parolles spends most of his time pretending to be a ‘captain’; Lucio is apparently an independent gentleman, and friend of Claudio; and Thersites is a Greek soldier although he acts the role of Ajax’s ‘Fool’. In all three cases, then, the social position and definition of a Fool is ill-defined, and these figures step in and out of other roles where they partake of the action with other characters. So Parolles is Bertram’s trusted friend, and admonishes Helena about virginity; Lucio seconds Isabella’s appeals on Claudio’s behalf; and Thersites witnesses Cressida’s betrayal of Troilus. Their function and effect seems to be twofold: first, they provide an alternative commentary on the action, expressing views which undermine the dominant ethical framework. So, Parolles cuts to the heart of both social hierarchy and military reputation when he accepts his shame wholesale. The idea that a ‘great’ heart is a disadvantage, radically undermines the nobility and glory sought by young Lords, and nostalgically admired by the King and Lafew. Lucio’s insight similarly cuts away support from under the whole play Measure for Measure: if the Duke is simply playing a ‘mad, fantastical trick’ and is that ‘old fantastical duke of dark corners’ (4, iii, 156), then all the danger and suffering of the play were an unjustifiable whim. Thersites’s insistent harping on chaos and base instinct cuts the ground away from beneath the structures built up by central characters: from Ulysses’s ‘degree’ and Hector’s ‘honour’, to Troilus’s love and Agamemnon’s courtesy. All three, then, propose a society and system that is the opposite of what it pretends to be. Secondly, all three provide a form of language that questions its own ability to denote meaning. The way these characters talk is an issue in each play. The Duke comments that Lucio ‘speaks apace’, and our analysis found that his speech is rich in connotation but

170

Analysing Shakespeare’s Problem Plays

constantly stretches the relation between language and meaning. Indeed, we found him and the Duke in broad agreement – Lucio’s sin, for which he is nearly executed at the end, is little more than overstatement. Thersites is frequently referred to as ‘railing’, and uses language as a weapon or instrument of torture. Notice, for example, how he threatens to ‘begin at thy heel’ and ‘by inches’ ‘tell’ to gain revenge on Ajax. The fact that he talks too much for his own good, is bemoaned by Parolles: I find my tongue is too foolhardy, but my heart hath the fear of Mars before it and of his creatures, not daring the reports of my tongue . . . Tongue, I must put you into a butter-woman’s mouth, and buy myself another of Bajazeth’s mule if you prattle me into these perils. (All’s Well that Ends Well, 4, i, 28–43)

He could be speaking for Lucio and Thersites as well. However, the de-stabilising effect of the fools’ language goes further than their habit of breaking the relation between words and meaning. In our extract from Troilus and Cressida, we found a dense logical structure in Thersites’s ideas; and it is this appearance of a connected chain of language, which is most satirical of the moral constructs of others. It is the very orderliness of Thersites’s ideas, coupled with their absurdity or nihilism, that makes them so effective an antidote to the grand structure of, for example, Ulysses’s concept of ‘degree’. We ask ourselves: What is the relationship between this linguistic structure, and reality? And in that case, when listening to a solemn speech enunciating moral principles, or the primacy of social order and courteous manners, we are equally provoked to ask: What is the relationship between this linguistic structure, and reality? In each of the plays, the ethical uncertainties surrounding reality are sufficient to return a dubious answer. The witty fools, then, are an extreme example of verbal dexterity. We should now look at the opposite end of the linguistic spectrum: there are other fools in these plays, who are verbally clumsy.

Fools and fools

171

The fools There are many witty passages in these plays, that show the characteristics of elaborate language, punning and paradox, and so on. In All’s Well that Ends Well Lafew, the Countess and the Clown have ‘witty’ conversations as well as Parolles; in Measure for Measure, Pompey, and the two Gentlemen of Act 1 scene ii, give Lucio comic support; and in Troilus and Cressida there are witty scenes between Pandarus and Cressida, and between Achilles and Patroclus, and even some elephantine efforts from Helen, as well as Thersites’s railing. At the opposite end of the linguistic spectrum stands Constable Elbow in Measure for Measure. His characteristic is to use the wrong word – a word that has a similar sound to the word he wants, but usually means the opposite. So, when he appears before Escalus, he announces that he brings ‘benefactors’ before him (for malefactors), who are ‘void of all profanation’ (piety?). He ‘detests’ his wife and will ‘detest’ himself also (for protest), and calls Pompey ‘thou honourable man’ (for dishonourable or dishonest?), before going on to rail about the ‘respected’ house, fellow and mistress (for suspected or detested?), and vehemently denying that either he or his wife has ever been ‘respected’ (all quotes are from Act 2, scene i). Elbow’s mistakes are very funny and lead up to his hilarious speeches of outrage and triumph, when he gleefully tells Pompey the sentence that has been passed: ‘Thou art to continue now, thou varlet, thou art to continue’ (2, i, 188–9), having no idea what it means. Elbow, then, is very stupid and very funny. However, his misuse of language serves another purpose as well. Straight after Elbow’s ‘benefactor’ for ‘malefactor’, Escalus comments: ‘This comes off well: here’s a wise officer’ (2, i, 57). He too is talking in opposites, and the proximity of ignorance and sarcasm provokes us to question the difference. How do we know that Elbow is simply wrong, while Escalus is ironic? Certainly not by the meaning of the words they use. Language, then, is not a reliable guide or a strong ‘chain’ in this complex world where meaning and perspective constantly shift. Instead, language is something else. It is a tool to be used by those who can manipulate it against those who cannot. So, Pompey takes delight in simultane-

172

Analysing Shakespeare’s Problem Plays

ously telling the truth and making a fool out of Elbow: ‘By this hand, sir, his wife is a more respected person than any of us all’ (2, i, 162–3). Between these extremes of wit and idiocy lie all the other verbal constructions of the play – arguments about justice and tyranny, persuasions and rationalisations, and so on. If we think about the centrality of Isabella’s appeals to Angelo, and the persuasions heaped upon Claudio in the prison, Measure for Measure can be seen as a play about language as power. At the same time, the reality this language represents seems to shift about in the background, becoming more intangible with every new persuasive speech. In Troilus and Cressida we find a similar effect when Ulysses and the other Greek lords manipulate Ajax. As they encourage him, the poverty of Ajax’s language grows. He utters threats which come in increasingly vulgar language (see ‘pash’ and ‘feeze’), common insults (‘a whoreson dog’), and finally a pathetic subjection which confirms Ulysses’s and Nestor’s verbal victory: ‘Shall I call you father?’ (2, iii, 250). Ajax’s linguistic helplessness is highlighted in contrast to the witty asides of Ulysses and Nestor as they work on him until he is putty in their hands. As in Measure for Measure, the play as a whole places a variety of verbal and conceptual structures in front of us, including Ulysses’s speech on ‘degree’, Hector’s, Paris’s and Troilus’s rhetoric, the courteous speeches of Aeneas and Hector, Cressida’s vows, Cassandra’s prophecies, and many more. These are set between the twin poles of wit and foolishness. The audience is subjected to persuasions from every quarter, but, as in Measure for Measure, the more we try to compare verbal structures with reality, the more shifting and unreliable each rhetorical triumph becomes. In order to be persuaded by any speech, we find ourselves having to suppress part of the reality the drama shows to us. Two examples will make this clear. First, look at Ulysses’s great speech on ‘degree’. There is no doubt that he talks magnificently, calling to his aid great verbal and oratorical skills – the speech is a tour de force. But, at the same time, what is the reality? Do the Greeks revolve around Agamemnon like planets around the sun? No. Why? Because Agamemnon is not superior. Then, look at Troilus’s impassioned speech following Hector’s death:

Fools and fools

173

Hector is gone. Who shall tell Priam so, or Hecuba? Let him that will a screech-owl aye be call’d Go into Troy, and say there Hector’s dead. There is a word will Priam turn to stone, Make wells and Niobes of the maids and wives, Cold statues of the youth, and, in a word, Scare Troy out of itself. (Troilus and Cressida, 5, xi, 14–21)

As we listen to this outpouring of horror and grief, we are nagged by our memories. Who should tell Priam and Hecuba? The answer, of course, is Troilus himself. He seems to have forgotten that it was his impassioned speech (see 5, iii, 44–58) that spurred Hector into the fatal battle. Language, then, is a misleading master. It misleads the speaker and the listener. It is power, and manipulates by selecting or distorting the truth. Our discussions of Parolles and Lucio have pointed out that they talk too fast for their own good – their language brings trouble. Parolles’s boasting forces him to attempt the impossible recovery of the drum, and he regrets his runaway tongue. Lucio is too glib about the Duke, and recognises his danger when the Duke is revealed (‘This may prove worse than hanging’, 5, i, 358). In these cases language is shown to be a trap that catches the speaker. In Troilus and Cressida, similarly, the irony of Cressida’s and Pandarus’s vows is bitter. If she is false, Cressida says, then ‘as false as Cressid’ can become a proverb; and Pandarus adds his own name, promising that if their love does not endure ‘all pitiful goers-between be called to the world’s end after my name: call them all Pandars’ (3, ii, 195–7). Shakespeare’s audience already used these names as a byword for whores and pimps respectively. My dictionary notes the use of the word ‘pander’ to mean a ‘male bawd or procurer’ as early as 1450. In these plays, then, speech and language are powerful, but they are also out of control and dangerous to both speaker and listener. Persuasion and rhetoric seem to take on a demonic life of their own, irresponsible and deceitful. Speech diverts, bamboozles, selects, distorts, misdirects, and shamelessly serves selfish passion.1 Much of the audience’s feeling of instability comes from this: that the relation

174

Analysing Shakespeare’s Problem Plays

between language and meaning has been broken at both ends by the Fools and the fools, so that no one verbal structure, however fine, can convince us. We remain in an uncomfortable state of awareness, suspicious and critical. In All’s Well that Ends Well the biggest fool is Bertram, whose response to Parolles’s sonnet is very close to Ajax’s lines in Act 2, scene i, of Troilus and Cressida. Ajax could only spout senseless insults, his language inadequate to the occasion. Bertram is the same only worse. Where Ajax at least changed his insults (from ‘Cobloaf!’ to ‘You whoreson cur!’, for example), Bertram cannot even do that. His only response is the one word ‘Cat!’, which he applies to Parolles four times. Bertram’s language typically disintegrates under pressure. It is ironic that the same linguistic affliction strikes Bertram at the end of the play, when his so-called reformation is uttered in plaintive repetitions: ‘Both, both,’ ‘dearly, ever, ever dearly’ (5, iii, 303 and 310). In All’s Well that Ends Well, a short lesson about limited language is read to us by the Countess and the Clown in Act 2, scene ii. The Clown tries out his all-purpose answer to any question (‘O Lord, sir!’), and the Countess traps him into asking for a whipping. This is light-hearted fun, and the Countess is only passing time ‘To entertain it so merrily with a fool’ (2, ii, 55); but we notice that the conclusion from this exchange is the same as our conclusions about Elbow and Ajax. The man who lacks language is a victim, and will be vulnerable to manipulation. Pompey makes a fool out of Elbow; Ulysses achieves absolute power over Ajax. In this case, the Clown’s simple answer incriminates him and would let him in for a whipping. Lavatch learns from this that ‘things may serve long, but not serve ever’ (2, ii, 53). Measure for Measure provides a ‘final word’ in this comprehensive debunking of language. The extraordinary and wonderful Barnardine shows us the very end of language, during his brief and triumphant appearance on stage in Act 4, scene iii. It can be argued that his ‘I will not consent to die this day, that’s certain’ (4, iii, 54–5) is the most potent and concrete utterance in the entire play. It is, indeed, the golden phrase which will serve in all situations, the linguistic golden fleece Lavatch seeks. The reason Barnardine is so

Fools and fools

175

effective is the same as Parolles puts forward in the speech we analysed: because he does not care, he is free from all society’s shackles (although imprisoned and condemned!). Vincentio is not free, and mutters helplessly that he will try more words later (‘whiles I / Persuade this rude wretch willingly to die’, 4, iii, 80). Barnardine’s one completely successful utterance is also utterly negative. The fact that it is the end of language, is emphasised by the exchange: Duke: Barnardine:

But hear you – Not a word. (4, iii, 60–1)

and by Barnardine’s silence in Act 5, when he stands on stage with all the others, the victor pardoned because they cannot do anything else with him.

Dissident Voices We have looked at Fools and fools, and been led to the conclusion that the irresponsible power of language is a central subject of these plays. In the final section of this chapter, we will listen to some of the dissident voices we hear, among the many different persuasions we are subjected to. We have remarked that each of the plays presents a dominant moral discourse which favours order, or ‘degree’, and shows the evils that come from disorder. This dominant discourse has a patriarchal and dynastic figurehead in each play: the King in All’s Well that Ends Well, the Duke in Measure for Measure and Agamemnon (or Priam) in Troilus and Cressida. However, this moral frame is exceptionally thin, not strong enough to quell either criticism or alternative discourses. We do not have the space in this chapter to analyse the many dissident views expressed, or the uneasy revelations about patriarchal rule that are spawned. We will have to content ourselves with a few examples of voices speaking out of turn, which help to de-stabilise the accepted wisdom.

176

Analysing Shakespeare’s Problem Plays

In All’s Well that Ends Well, we can listen to Helena on war (3, ii, 100–29) or Bertram and Parolles (5, iii, 203–60), as well as episodes like Helena’s persuasion of the King, her soliloquy in Act 1, scene i, or Bertram’s wooing of Diana, which we have already studied. All of these undermine the dominant social order. Here, however, we will examine Lavatch’s views on matrimony from Act 1, scene iii. He makes a variety of statements about getting married. Here is a selection: ’tis not so well that I am poor, though many of the rich are damn’d. Service is no heritage, and I think I shall never have the blessing of God till I have issue a’ my body. [when asked why he will marry] My poor body, madam, requires it; I am driven on by the flesh, and he must needs go that the devil drives. I have been, madam, a wicked creature, as you and all flesh and blood are, and indeed I do marry that I may repent. I am out a’ friends, madam, and I hope to have friends for my wife’s sake. (1, iii, between lines 14 and 38)

This selection of statements, which plays upon poverty, service and religious doctrines of original sin while undermining the social order (‘many of the rich are damn’d’, ‘a wicked creature, as you and all flesh and blood are’), is followed by the Clown’s analysis of ‘friends’ of his wife: Y’are shallow, madam, in great friends; for the knaves come to do that for me which I am aweary of. He that ears my land spares my team, and gives me leave to in the crop; if I be his cuckold, he’s my drudge. He that comforts my wife is the cherisher of my flesh and blood; he that cherishes my flesh and blood loves my flesh and blood; he that loves my flesh and blood is my friend; ergo, he that kisses my wife is my friend. If men could be contented to be what they are, there were no fear in marriage. (1, iii, 40–9)

Fools and fools

177

The Clown dismisses conventional attitudes completely. Faithfulness in marriage means nothing to him, and he has no time for personal pride, shame, embarrassment, or the conventional attitudes towards legitimacy and illegitimacy. Sexual possessiveness and exclusivity mean nothing either. The Clown regards all of these principles, together with their potential for conflict, as ‘shallow’. In his view people should jettison the lot, because that is the way to gain from society in the form of ‘great friends’. The Clown’s argument is refreshingly free, for it throws away all the ‘givens’ and starts from scratch, looking at the world from a radical new perspective. It is free because it is not burdened with the baggage of social attitudes – limitations which constrain other characters. See how the Clown contrasts with Bertram, whose social snobbery makes him helpless with outrage at the thought of marrying ‘A poor physician’s daughter’ (2, iii, 115). We have met something of this freedom, challenging an arthritic and hidebound social order, in Helena’s early soliloquy; but Helena also struggles against the conventions restricting her thoughts, whereas the Clown is free. We only meet this carefree wildness once elsewhere, in Parolles when he is unmasked. He, too, points out that there is no need to be ruled by the social code. All you get from conventional attitudes is fear and shame, says Parolles, and ‘simply the thing I am / Shall make me live’. The Clown agrees: ‘If men could be contented to be what they are, there were no fear . . .’. It is obvious that the Clown’s argument is cynical, and his abuse of the marriage service’s symbolic phrase ‘one flesh’ is comically specious.2 But there is more, and it is important to recognise the argument he asserts at the same time as we laugh at the conventions he dismantles. What the Clown and later Parolles put forward is pure capitalism. What is the Clown’s aim? To ‘in the crop’ in his land analogy; but as he rightly points out, he does not and cannot have any land because ‘service is no heritage’. Lavatch likens himself to a landowner who employs others to plough the land, while he takes the profit. Because he owns the land, he can exploit others to do the work, ‘do that for me which I am aweary of ’, and save his own energy because a worker ‘spares my team’. In the Clown’s case, he does not own land

178

Analysing Shakespeare’s Problem Plays

but he can own a wife, and she is the means of production in the economy of marriage just as land is the means of production in agriculture. Lavatch says that the others, employed to plough his wife and produce children, are his ‘drudges’. In the classic Marxist analysis, the Clown wants to become a capitalist by ‘owning the means of production’, and he has no illusions, understanding that this is how the economy works: this is how the landowner can live in luxury while the plowman ploughs. The joke is that the only ‘means of production’ this entrepreneur can lay his hands on, is a wife. What is Parolles’s aim? He is selling his labour to make a good living, for ‘I will eat and drink and sleep as soft / As captain shall.’ The speech at the end of Act 4, scene iii, shows a man who has lost his job, deciding to sell his labour in another field – as a Fool. As Parolles says, as long as he has skills to sell, there is no need for him to starve because ‘There’s place and means for every man alive’ (all from 4, iii, 319–29). Both of these speeches radiate a refreshing sense of freedom in sharp contrast to the nostalgia, regret and ill-health surrounding the nobility of the play: the Countess has just been widowed, Lafew repeatedly regrets his age and stiffening joints, and the King seems on a nostalgic path despairing of the younger generation. We can be forgiven for thinking that what this society needs is a sharp economic kick up the backside – administered by the kind of enterprise Lavatch shows in this scene. Above all, the effect of the Clown is to persuade us that all the social, religious and moral conventions that rule other characters are a restricting, unnecessary code. In this way, while the Clown is speaking, the entire moral discourse of the play becomes ridiculous and flimsy. Why bother with convention? All it gives is fear and shame. Measure for Measure also looks at sex as a means of production. Pompey and Mistress Overdone are workers in the sex-economy of Vienna, and make cynical observations about their business and its profit. In this play, however, the outlook is more cynical: here the product of sex is money, while babies and venereal diseases are an unwanted side-effect. The language repeatedly plays on puns and

Fools and fools

179

metaphors in which commerce, sex, manufacture and agriculture are interchangeable. In Act 1, scene ii, for example, Lucio and the First Gentleman play upon valuable and worthless cloth, and the pun on ‘pilled’ (bald – an effect of the mercury treatment then used to cure venereal disease) and ‘piled’ (the thickness of valuable luxury cloth) mixes sex and commerce. Lucio then welcomes Mistress Overdone: Lucio:

2 Gent: Lucio: 2 Gent: 1 Gent: Lucio: 1 Gent: Lucio:

Behold, behold, where Madam Mitigation comes! I have purchased as many diseases under her roof as come to – To what, I pray? Judge. To three thousand dolours a year. Ay, and more. A French crown more. Thou art always figuring diseases in me; but thou art full of error; I am sound. Nay, not, as one would say, healthy: but so sound as things that are hollow; thy bones are hollow; impiety has made a feast of thee. (Measure for Measure, 1, ii, 41–53)

The two puns, on ‘dolour’ (misery, i.e. venereal disease/‘dollar’, i.e. money) and ‘French crown’ (‘French’ = diseased, because of ‘the French disease’ or venereal disease; ‘crown’ = a coin, a woman’s private parts) equate sex and venereal disease with money. The counterfeiting theme is present again in the exchange about ‘sound’ and ‘hollow’, which repeats the idea from their previous exchange about ‘piled’ and ‘pilled’ velvet. On the next page Pompey and Mistress Overdone discuss the proclamation: all the suburban brothels are to be destroyed, but Pompey says those in the city ‘shall stand for seed’ (1, ii, 91) while Mistress Overdone comments that this is a ‘change indeed in the commonwealth’. Pompey reassures her in the language of trade, mentioning ‘clients’, ‘trade’, ‘tapster’, ‘the service’. His expressions are often funny (his nominal employment as a ‘tapster’ while he is really a pimp gives amusing ideas about turning on men’s ‘taps’; he

180

Analysing Shakespeare’s Problem Plays

comments that Mistress Overdone has worn out her ‘eyes’ in her work!); but his speech emphasises that sex is an integral part of the social and economic system. In Troilus and Cressida there are powerful dissident voices. Thersites provides some of the most incisive stabs against all the verbal and ideological structures of the play. His ‘Lechery, lechery, still wars and lechery! Nothing else holds fashion’ (5, ii, 201–2) has often been taken as the final definition of this dark play, which ends with Pandarus’s bequest to the audience: Till then I’ll sweat and seek about for eases, And at that time bequeath you my diseases. (5, xi, 55–6)

There are several of these negative comments, voiced at important moments to undermine pretentiousness, theory, moral or chivalrous principles. So, for example, Thersites’s comments on ‘war and lechery’ come at the end of the betrayal scene (Act 5, scene ii). They deflate not only Ulysses’s policy and the carnality of Diomed and Cressida: they also serve as a comment on Troilus’s most moving speeches – those in which his identity is riven by the agony of being betrayed. On the other hand, it would be a reduction of the play as well as of hypocrisy, to take the diseased imagination of a licensed railer as the final truth of Troilus and Cressida. Instead of reducing it all to Thersites, we are still thrown from perspective to perspective by the sheer variety of disparate, mutually contradictory voices we hear in the play. Before we finish, it is worth noticing a peculiarity of this play: the number of characters who express mutually contradictory attitudes, without seeming to be aware of their own inconsistency. Hector is a very clear example of this in the Trojan council (Act 2, scene ii). He begins by developing a reasoned argument, and urges Priam to end the war by returning Helen: If we have lost so many tenths of ours To guard a thing not ours, nor worth to us (Had it our name) the value of one ten, What merit’s in that reason which denies The yielding of her up? (2, ii, 21–4)

Fools and fools

181

He argues this opinion stoutly against Troilus’s impassioned onslaught, and speaks impressively about the fundamental bond of marriage. At the end of the scene, however, he is suddenly able to hold two opposite views: Hector’s opinion Is this in way of truth: yet ne’ertheless, My sprightly brethren, I propend to you In resolution to keep Helen still . . . (2, ii, 188–91)

and Hector proceeds to out-knight the knightly ‘honour’ Troilus has argued, by issuing his challenge. Hector’s about-turn is so blunt and irrational as to leave us bemused. However, we should also notice that Troilus’s first remark about Helen was to the effect that he could not fight ‘upon this argument; / It is too starv’d a subject for my sword’ (1, i, 88–9), yet he argues the opposite in council. We have commented that Troilus was responsible for Hector joining the battle on the day of his death: whereupon he cries out about Trojan grief, and asks who dare tell Hecuba or Priam of the event. Look also at Achilles, who is cynical about Hector’s challenge: ‘I know not what –’tis trash – farewell’ then almost immediately boasts that Hector would have known his man, had the choice not been put to a lottery. As we saw in Chapter 4, Ulysses contradicts himself. Pandarus is, by turns, lord and courtier and common bawd; and so on. What is striking about these inconsistencies is not so much that they occur at all. It is, rather, that the characters seem to make no effort towards reconciling them – so much so that they seem oblivious of them. This further provokes our sense of language severed from meaning – a sense already enervated by the number and variety of verbal structures so powerfully argued at different points in the play. So, Troilus and Cressida displays splits, oppositions, and gulfs between radically different perceptions of life, the world and all values. These fissures are opened out not only between characters, between groups and in debate: they are opened within many of the characters as well. There is a powerful impression of meaning, ideas,

182

Analysing Shakespeare’s Problem Plays

stability, falling into separate pieces which cannot harmonise with each other; and there is silence about how to put the pieces together.

Conclusions 1. The characteristic style of ‘witty’ characters includes paradox, puns and other forms of verbal trickery. These focus our attention on language itself and its power to create the very ideas it expresses. The witty Fools are expert in the manipulation of language: the audience receives an object-lesson in the ability of words to generate, and reason, an absurd chain of ideas. The link between language and reality is thus broken, and words are seen more as implements of power than expressions of sense. 2. At the other end of the linguistic scale are the fools with a small ‘f ’, who are victims of their linguistic failure and destined to be manipulated by others. In between Fools and fools are numerous other perspectives, conflicting principles, codes for living, arguments about the primacy of this, or that. But Fools and fools are the poles of linguistic dexterity and incompetence respectively, which frame all other discourses. So, the concept of language as power is fostered, and our confidence in words as decodable signs is destroyed. This creates a curious effect: the more linguistic power is deployed, the less we trust anything. 3. In Troilus and Cressida especially, gaps between conflicting ideologies yawn wide, unbridged, and silent: the absence of any language about comparing, weighing or even debating different values, leaves an echoing silence around and between the grand speeches of the play; and this focuses our attention onto gaps, splits, fissures. A strong sense of disintegration results. 4. All three plays foreground issues that are incapable of resolution. Decline, class and renewal, with the added conundrum of unrequited love, bedevil All’s Well that Ends Well; the judicial debate in Measure for Measure goes nowhere because it cannot go anywhere; and the stew of chivalry, policy, romance and carnality served up in Troilus and Cressida will never be sorted out. 5. Our conclusion in Chapter 4 was consistent with what we have

Fools and fools

183

found in the present chapter. Social or political action is as ineffective in these plays as language is misleading and unfounded. All three plays present the model of ‘scapegoating’, where complex problems are confronted by being projected onto an individual, and a social engineering project is undertaken in order to socialise that individual. Wider problems are ignored. In Chapter 4 we found that each of the projects designed to reform the scapegoated individual, is a failure. There is virtually no evidence that Bertram’s character is reformed in All’s Well that Ends Well, and the Dumaine plot teaches him nothing. The cringing Angelo of Measure for Measure’s Act 5 is no more attractive than his canting puritan and lecherous hypocrite predecessors. In Troilus and Cressida Ulysses’s masterful plot fails. Indeed, at the start of the crucial battle his ‘policy’ has made things worse: ‘now is the cur Ajax prouder than the cur Achilles, and will not arm today’ (Thersites, 5, iv, 13–14). a. We can look at the ideological projects in each play in an analogous way. Consider the speeches devoted to a settled social order and traditional loyalties, in All’s Well that Ends Well. We have met those in which the Lords Dumaine portray the King as a fountain of goodness and a spiritual regulator under God, and in which the King himself extols the virtues of old Rossillion. All of this verbiage has characteristics in common with the political projects in the play, for the speakers identify ‘scapegoats’ – they complain of conflicting ideas, opposed intellectual systems. So, for example, the King despairs of the younger generation, while Lafew rails against Parolles (nominally ‘words’) he does not like. But if the future of the aristocracy is to be saved from its own affectation and vapidity, it will be because ‘The mightiest space in fortune nature brings / To join like likes, and kiss like native things’ (Helena, 1, i, 218–19), not because of some moribund theory of feudal grace and fealty. So, the play sets aside the rhetoric of ideology just as it sets aside political projects. b. In Measure for Measure many speeches are devoted to the importance of justice, and the quality of those in authority. There is a tendency in these speeches to identify both

184

Analysing Shakespeare’s Problem Plays

immorality and tyranny in office-holders, and slackness in applying the law, as responsible for the laxity of Viennese society at the time. Both mercy and inhuman rigour are scapegoated by the verbal ideology, led by Isabella, Angelo, Escalus and the Duke. What are all these words worth in the end? Again, the play sidetracks this debate by revealing a variety of shaded motives ranging from the Duke’s ‘fantastical tricks’ to Isabella’s selfish double standards, and Angelo’s vicious hypocrisy; and by leading to a mixed-up final settlement in which the Duke’s nature far outweighs any consistency. c. In Troilus and Cressida, to be brief, numerous lengthy speeches focus on questions of principle and belief. On the Greek side neglect of ‘degree’ and insubordinate ‘pride’ are scapegoated, while the Trojans scapegoat – more or less – chivalry and honour. Despite the many debates, the world goes the same old way. 6. So, Fools and fools show two extremes of a linguistic chain with severed links; and they alert the audience to the absurdity of language.

Methods of Analysis In this chapter we have made use of the various textual approaches demonstrated in previous chapters, but with two particular slants: 1. We have been studying the Fools, and consequently we have paid particular attention to paradoxical and punning patterns of language, the dense, ‘witty’ style which plays upon meaning and mistaken vocabulary, that is typical of Shakespeare’s comic writing. This has led us to hold the issue of language, and how it is used, uppermost in our minds. 2. We have consciously built upon a connection between this chapter and the last. The Fools are dissidents who – with greater or lesser seriousness – express anti-conventional ideas, invert the dominant morality, or render convention absurd by satirising

Fools and fools

185

their social ‘betters’. We could therefore expect that their contribution would bring further insights into the social and political themes of the plays. So, we have carried over much of the understanding we gained in Chapter 4, and used this as a basis when framing leading questions, and developing ideas, about the Fools. Each play is a whole and integrated work, and the topics we study separately are, of course, inextricably interlinked. You will increasingly find that you can bring forward the insights from one branch of study, when you move on to another, closely related topic.

Suggested Work There are a number of ways in which you could build upon the work of this chapter. Here are three suggestions giving a ‘witty’ passage from each play that will repay analysis in relation to a major theme: In All’s Well that Ends Well, look at Act 1, scene i, 104–60, where Parolles and Helena discuss virginity. Here, the problem of the proper use of virginity – a problem Helena confronts in the eventual bed-trick – is discussed in ‘witty’ terms in the exchange with Parolles as well as more seriously by Helena herself. In Measure for Measure, study Act 2, scene i, lines 41–87, where Elbow brings Pompey before the judges. There is much verbal byplay in this extract, as we have remarked in this chapter; but the whole will also repay close scrutiny in relation to the theme of judicial duty in the play. In Troilus and Cressida, look at Act 1, scene iii, lines 232–62, where Pandarus and Cressida pass witty comments about the warriors returning from the field, and fence with each other concerning Troilus’s attractions. War, love and virtue are at issue here.

Notes 1 We have discussed, for example, Isabella’s selfish drive when she curses her brother in Measure for Measure. In the present discus-

186

Analysing Shakespeare’s Problem Plays

sion we commented that Troilus’s passionate speech persuaded Hector into battle. We can add to that comment: Troilus did this in the selfish pursuit of gratification, to assuage his own feelings. Troilus’s responsibility for Hector’s death is, indeed, heavy. 2 As it is when Hamlet abuses the same symbolic idea in order to call Claudius ‘my mother’.

6 Drama This chapter discusses the theatrical features and dramatic form of the three plays we are studying. We have already considered the nature of numerous scenes in performance, as we have studied extracts in the preceding chapters. In this chapter we will therefore show some techniques which help to give a broader overview of a play’s dramatic organisation. It is hoped that the (inevitably) brief treatment in this chapter will provoke ideas for further study of the plays’ dramatic elements. In the Introduction, I pointed out that a play does not really exist on the page: it exists in the dimensions of time and space, in a performance, so we have a duty to use our imagination while we read and study. We have to recreate the play in our minds as we read.

Time and Space Ideally, you want to pick up everything on the page that indicates the nature and style of a performance. So, for example, when in Act 1, scene ii, of All’s Well that Ends Well, the King says ‘Lend me an arm – ’, you will visualise the infirm old man leaning on Bertram, the hopeful young aristocrat, as they leave and the trumpets sound a ‘Flourish’. This in turn may lead you to think about the irony of a tableau which has the feudal lord supported by selfish, lying, immature and lecherous Bertram. Notice that only four words of the text – and a casual, parenthetical remark at that – amounts to something 187

188

Analysing Shakespeare’s Problem Plays

much more significant when visualised. So, reading with close attention and being open to subtle indications of performance in the text, is very important.

A Table Analysing All’s Well that Ends Well When you read a play from the page, however, one of the most difficult things to imagine is the effect of performance-time: what are we watching as the scenes unfold one after another, and how do we watch? It is often very useful to make a simple table. Looking at such a table will usually reveal features of the play’s structure that did not strike you when you were reading through. As you do this, you will find that you can adjust the elements you include in your table. You can include the number of people on stage, entries and exits; or the likely groupings of characters, or centrality of characters. So, you can make your table a sophisticated and complex ‘map’ of the play. We will begin by making a very simple table of All’s Well that Ends Well, only including the settings of scenes and their approximate lengths, as in Table 1. My estimates of time put the whole play at just more than two and a half hours, and I think most of the scenes would in fact be acted a little quicker than I estimate. Now look at the table: what stands out? First, scan down the time-estimates. There are a lot of short scenes – some only one or two minutes long – and three much longer scenes stand out. Act 2, scene iii (set in Paris: the scene in which Helena chooses Bertram to be her husband) and Act 4, scene iii (set in the Florentine camp: the unmasking of Parolles) are much longer at sixteen and seventeen minutes. The final scene, in which everything is revealed, is also long. This suggests that the play is built around these three more settled, or at least, more dramatically extended, occasions: one in Paris, one at Florence, and finally back at Rossillion. The next thing we notice from the table is that the play does not obey any unities. Unspecified amounts of time pass, but there must be gaps of weeks at least, for travel and for news to pass from one place to another. Some months probably pass between scenes iv and

Drama

189

Table 1 Analysis of All’s Well that Ends Well Act/Scene

Setting

Time (minutes)

1, i 1, ii 1, iii

Rossillion – the Count’s palace Paris – the King’s palace Rossillion – the Count’s palace

12 4 13

2, i 2, ii 2, iii 2, iv 2, v

Paris – the King’s palace Rossillion – the Count’s palace Paris – the King’s palace Paris – the King’s palace Paris – the King’s palace

11 4 16 3 5

3, i 3, ii 3, iii 3, iv 3, v 3, vi 3, vii

Florence – the Duke’s palace Rossillion – the Count’s palace Florence Rossillion – the Count’s palace Outside Florence The Florentine camp Florence – the Widow’s house

1 7 1 3 7 6 3

4, i 4, ii 4, iii 4, iv 4, v

Outside the Florentine camp Florence – the Widow’s house The Florentine camp Florence – the Widow’s house Rossillion – the Count’s palace

6 5 17 2 6

5, i 5, ii 5, iii

Marseilles Rossillion – the Count’s palace Rossillion – the Count’s palace

3 4 17 156

190

Analysing Shakespeare’s Problem Plays

v of Act 3, between Helena’s departure for the shrine at Compostella, and her arrival at Florence. The play has four locations in distant parts of France and Italy (I include the one brief scene set in Marseilles). How does Shakespeare organise all this switching and travelling? The play sets up an alternation between Rossillion and Paris which goes on for three-quarters of an hour; then the final three scenes of Act 2 – about twenty minutes – remain in Paris. In Act 3 the play then sets up an alternation between Rossillion and Florence, until from scene v of Act 3 and almost all of Act 4 remain in Florence – a good forty minutes of the play. After a little further alternation involving Marseilles, Act 5 ends in Rossillion. So, the main actions and events take place in Paris in Act 2 (the King’s cure and the wedding of Bertram and Helena), and in Florence in Acts 3 and 4 (the bed-trick and the Parolles-plot). The play begins and ends at Rossillion: Bertram’s departure and Bertram’s return are the ‘framing’ events. We could go into more detail than this – for example, see how the Rossillion scenes become shorter (I estimate them at 12, 13, then 4 minutes) and the Paris scenes longer (4, 11 and 16 minutes) as Paris takes over as the centre of the action in Acts 1 and 2. This happens again between Rossillion and Florence (the initial visits to Florence are very brief ). However, these details are rather mechanical, and it is more revealing to think about the table in relation to what happens in the play and what the organisation of scenes does to the play. First, Rossillion remains intermittently on stage throughout – it is not merely the starting and finishing point. We remain in Florence for some forty minutes, but Rossillion, not Paris, is re-visited twice in Act 3 and again before the end of Act 4. Furthermore, on our return to Rossillion, we find the King there and not at Paris. This has the effect of enhancing the significance of the place of origin: it suggests that the final reckoning must take place there, where Bertram and Helena were born, not in the royal capital. Secondly, Rossillion appears as a place of messages, news and anxiety. Shakespeare fully exploits the delays in news travelling to and from Rossillion, and we see the Countess, in particular, receiving news

Drama

191

late, writing letters which do not arrive for some time, and suffering anxieties about both Bertram and Helena. One further point arises from our table of places: Act 3, scene iii is the first time we find ourselves outside a palace. That is, we have to wait until the play begins to shift to Florence, before we leave the homes of the rich and lordly. Then, suddenly, there are a streetscene, a military camp, the countryside outside the camp, the Widow’s house, and so on. In Florence, then, the play changes its character and relationships are suddenly a great deal more fluid. Think about the table in relation to the content of the scenes: the social relationships between Countess, Bertram and Helena, Lafew and Clown, are all set. Those between King, Bertram, and Lords are also set – and even Helena finds herself a suitable role at court as Saintly healer. Whereas in Florence, Helena, the Widow and Diana enter into a novel relationship – a conspiracy of women for mutual benefit; Bertram and Diana propose an illicit relationship; and the Lords Dumaine set out to cast Parolles loose from his position. Florence is a place of tricks and sudden changes, where nothing is what it seems: Bertram does not understand the language spoken by Diana, and Parolles does not understand his captors either. Noticing the breakdown of formality and variety of settings in Florence, you could add a further column to your table, detailing when flourishes, trumpets, and other ceremonial paraphernalia occur. You would find they are plentiful from the start of Act 1, scene ii, through to Act 3, scene v, when there are ‘A tucket afar off ’ and ‘A march afar ’ leading to ‘Drum and colours ’ when the army enters. The trumpets are silenced then, until the end of Act 5, scene ii, when they announce the King’s arrival at Rossillion. I feel that the change of perspective the play passes through as we arrive in Florence is dramatically indicated by the Widow’s viewpoint: to her, splendour of ceremony is ‘afar off ’, a world she observes from a distance, a world that marches across the stage and out again. Sitting in the audience, we are induced to see the world of great ones from an ordinary citizen’s point of view: we join the Widow, her friends and Helena as onlookers. It is as if they join the audience, and the sudden feeling of community between audience and characters is liberating. We need to make one final remark about our table. Remember

192

Analysing Shakespeare’s Problem Plays

that Shakespeare’s plays are not printed in a consistent or authoritative form: act and scene divisions are often disputed by scholars, and the open nature of a Renaissance performance often meant that scenes ran together into longer units of continuous acting. So, for example, it is likely that the original audience saw scenes iii, iv and v of Act 2 as a single continuous scene.

A Table Analysing Measure for Measure We have gained a number of insights by means of our simple table. Now I want to make a more complex table about Measure for Measure (see Table 2). I have already noticed that Measure for Measure is a sort of ‘play within a play’: that the Duke acts out a problematic role: he is part audience and part playwright in his own play. It is this aspect of theatricality in Measure for Measure I want my table to explore. This time, I shall include more details than the setting and time: I want to include the characters, and likely suggestions about their grouping, their centrality or otherwise on stage, and so on. In addition, I shall make notes about power as I go: whether powerful authority is on stage or off, and where it resides. This is because power, like conflict and tension, is intensely dramatic; and much of the debate in Measure for Measure is about the proper and improper exercise of power. Table 2 provides a great deal of complex information about the play in performance. In some places the table displays dramatic and visual effects very clearly, which show Shakespeare’s stagecraft and illuminate the printed text – sometimes in surprising ways. In many places, the table raises questions about performance: how would you direct this scene? However, the table is useful here as well, for it highlights the choices that face any production, and involves us in deciding how different choices in production and performance will achieve different effects, and reflect the director’s interpretation of the text. We do not have space in the present chapter for a full discussion of what this table reveals. Our discussion will therefore be restricted cont. on p. 205

Table 2 Analysis of Measure for Measure Grouping, centrality, etc.

Act/Sc. Mins

Setting

Characters

1, i

4

Within Vienna

Duke, Escalus and Escalus, Lords and attendants, then Angelo, attendants are around the then exit Duke. Duke, then from about line 55 the Duke vacates centre-stage, and he leaves at line 75. Angelo and Escalus withdraw at the end, so Lords and ‘attendants’ presumably drift away.

The Duke clearly occupies power and would be central on stage. He sends an attendant and summons Angelo (power dramatised). How do the Lords and attendants behave after the Duke’s exit? Who do they ‘attend’? Does Angelo ‘take’ centre-stage?

1, ii

10

Vienna: a public place

Lucio + 2 Gentlemen, then Mistress Overdone then Pompey. Pompey and Mis. O go out as enter Provost, Officers, Claudio, Juliet.

Power is off stage and the milling, walking and meeting characters discuss its impact, until the Provost enters. However, the obvious ‘centre’ in the last episode of the scene is Claudio, not power but its victim.

Drama 193

This is a fluid and increasingly populous scene. Lucio’s group would reach centre-stage, then be joined there by Mis. O and then Pompey. At the end of the scene, Claudio the prisoner will be central, with Provost

Power

Act/Sc. Mins

Setting

Characters

194

Table 2 Analysis of Measure for Measure (continued) Grouping, centrality, etc.

Power

1, iii

3

A Friar’s Cell

Duke, Friar Thomas

Only two on stage, Duke assuming disguise.

The Duke has power – he even tells the Friar what questions he wants to ask, and answers them himself.

1, iv

5

A Nunnery

Isabella and Francisca (a Nun), then Francisca leaves, then Lucio.

It is likely that Isabella occupies centre-stage, as she remains while Francisca and Lucio go and arrive.

Power (i.e. news of Claudio’s arrest) enters and disrupts Isabella’s scene.

Analysing Shakespeare’s Problem Plays

and Officers around and Juliet to the side. Lucio and Claudio will vacate centre, in opposite directions, during the final 10 lines. The crowd leaves, surrounding Claudio; Lucio leaves alone.

A Courtroom

Angelo, Escalus, a Justice, and servants, then Provost enters and leaves, then Elbow, Pompey, Froth and Officers come in, then Angelo leaves, then first Froth, then Pompey, then Elbow leave at different times.

It is natural for Escalus, Angelo and the Justice to sit centrally together, so that others approach, leave and act around them. I imagine Angelo’s seat as central. This emphasises his absence in the second half of the scene.

Power is centrally on stage, both in Angelo himself and in his empty seat after he leaves. This is a potent visual image: a dramatic effect we might miss from reading. The effect is ambiguous, since the most powerful seat, being vacant, also recalls the Duke’s mysterious absence.

2, ii

10

An Ante-room to the Court

Provost and Servant, then Angelo, then Servant enters and leaves, then Provost makes to leave but Angelo orders him to stay, and Lucio and Isabella enter simultaneously, then Isabella makes to leave

This scene is full of movement and fluidity. The ante-room is less formal than the Court, perhaps Angelo stands. For the main dialogue between Angelo and Isabella, imagine Angelo central and Isabella acting around him. Lucio and the Provost are clearly at the edge of the

Angelo’s power is demonstrated: lesser people await him, he gives orders and people come, go, or stay. The crucial pivot occurs around line 140 when Angelo leaves centre-stage to Isabella. At the end Angelo reflects that her virtue ‘subdues me quite’: power shifts in this scene.

195

14

Drama

2, i

Act/Sc. Mins

3

A Prison

Characters

Grouping, centrality, etc.

Power

but Lucio persuades her to stay, then Angelo makes to leave, but Isabella persuades him to stay, then Lucio, Isabella and the Provost leave Angelo alone on stage.

stage – some of their lines assume the principals cannot hear them. ‘Going’ indicates that Angelo leaves centre-stage around line 140, and Isabella will then be more centrally placed until her exit. A strong dramatic effect is achieved as the Provost, Isabella and finally Angelo all try to leave, but stay.

This is ironic: Angelo wields dreadful power, literally and in the text. However, the visual effect is the antithesis: he is displaced by Isabella.

Duke, Provost, then Juliet; finally the Duke leaves, then the other two.

Perhaps the Provost is central at the start of the scene; but this is a fluid scene where characters may exchange positions.

This is the first time we see the Duke – who is absolute power – working from disguise, and a peripheral position. Ultimate power is

Analysing Shakespeare’s Problem Plays

2, iii

Setting

196

Table 2 Analysis of Measure for Measure (continued)

therefore on stage, but not revealed. The Ante-room of the Court

Angelo, then a Servant enters and leaves, then enter Isabella, then Angelo leaves and Isabella is in soliloquy at the end.

For the main part of this scene, I see Angelo more centrally placed; but – at the director’s discretion, he may give place to Isabella towards the end, before his exit. This would echo 2, ii.

Power is ambiguous in this scene – although temporal and judicial power belongs to Angelo. In wielding it, however, he shows himself subject to the power of the flesh and baulked by the power of virtue. Irony sets this morally painful scene in a court ante-room.

3, i

15

The Prison

Duke, Provost, Claudio, then Isabella arrives, then Isabella makes to leave but the Duke persuades her to stay, then Provost and Claudio leave, then Isabella leaves.

The central position is occupied by Claudio for most of the scene until he ‘retires’ at line 172. From then onwards, the Duke appears to adopt the central position and remains at the end of the scene.

Symbols of power abound – the prison setting, the Provost’s control over who comes and goes, and his restraining presence with Claudio. Actual power disguised (the Duke) ironically bows to official power by

197

10

Drama

2, iv

Act/Sc. Mins

Setting

Characters

198

Table 2 Analysis of Measure for Measure (continued) Grouping, centrality, etc.

Power

3, ii

13

Probably the same: no scene division and would have been continuous from 3, i, on Elizabethan stage.

Enter the Duke, Elbow, Pompey and Officers, then Lucio, then Elbow, Pompey and Officers leave, then Lucio leaves, then Escalus, the Provost, Mistress Overdone and more Officers enter, then Mistress Overdone and Officers leave, then

I imagine the Duke remaining at or near to centre-stage throughout this scene, as the stage becomes crowded, then groups of people change, all in movement around him. These groups are on their way to the prison: dramatically, this may emphasise that the prison

The tangential and disguised power of the Duke is present in this scene, but remains ironic. Visually and dramatically, the ‘trappings’ of Angelo’s offstage judicial power are displayed – victims and appellants cross the stage towards prison.

Analysing Shakespeare’s Problem Plays

asking the Provost’s permission for all his manipulations. His central position at the end may dramatically present the actual power he now holds.

Escalus and the Provost leave, and the Duke is in soliloquy until the end of the Act. 4, i

4

Dramatically a curious scene. I imagine the Duke taking over centre-stage when he sends Mariana out. He clearly occupies the main space for the rest of the scene. Grouping is also curious, for Duke/Isabella seem a pair, with Mariana separate, but then the two women are together, the Duke separate.

199

The Duke’s power is evident in this scene, although still manipulative rather than force majeure. Yet the haste and seclusion emphasised at several moments testify to the offstage judicial tyranny of Angelo; and his sexual oppression of both women and eventually Mariana thus looms over the scene. I also feel that the way the Duke relegates the women to functional roles (Mariana is the tool in his plot; Isabella will ironically fulfil another role for him – that of consort)

Drama

A Grange Mariana and a Boy, (outside Vienna) then Duke, then the Boy leaves, then Isabella comes in, then Mariana leaves, then Mariana returns, then Mariana and Isabella leave and the Duke is briefly in soliloquy, then the women return, then all three leave together.

is the central social fact at this time.

200

Table 2 Analysis of Measure for Measure (continued) Act/Sc. Mins

Setting

Characters

Grouping, centrality, etc.

Power

4, ii

9

The Prison

Provost, Pompey, then Abhorson, then Provost leaves, then he returns, then Abhorson and Pompey leave and Claudio enters, then Claudio leaves and the Duke enters, then there is knocking, the Provost goes to the door, returns, then a Messenger comes in, then the Messenger leaves.

The Provost has physical control of this scene, controlling Pompey and Abhorson, the door and Angelo’s letter. However, as he goes about his job it may be that the Duke is again more centrally placed.

A conflict of power is crucial in this scene, for the judicial tyranny of Angelo, although offstage, is a constant menace. The letter is a physical symbol of this power which invades the stage. The Duke’s oblique, disguised power is unable to counter it, and he is forced to reveal some proof of absolute power: his seal becomes a dramatic symbol opposed to Angelo’s letter.

Analysing Shakespeare’s Problem Plays

and makes them ‘walk aside’ while he has nothing to do, is dramatically suggestive, and morally ambiguous.

manipulation and persuasion from disguise is no longer enough. 4, iii

9

Pompey in soliloquy, then Abhorson, then Barnardine, then Duke, then Barnardine leaves and the Provost enters, then Pompey and Abhorson leave, then the Provost leaves, returns briefly and leaves again, then enter Isabella, then Lucio enters then Isabella leaves, then the Duke tries to leave twice and eventually leaves with Lucio.

Power is comprehensively mocked in this scene: first, Barnardine shows that judicial power is helpless against one who simply does not care – either about death or about damnation. Then, Lucio’s talk suggests that even were the Duke to throw off his disguise, he cannot prevent people’s freedom to think and talk, even calumniously. Dramatically, these two challenges are shown by Barnardine’s freedom to enter and leave when he wants, and by the comic device where Lucio chases the Duke off stage.

201

The scene’s opening sequences would give centrestage to a succession – Pompey, then Abhorson, then Barnardine and finally the Duke. The Duke would remain central until he tries to escape Lucio twice in the final half-minute. Much of the latter part of the scene will follow a pattern now familiar, as people come and go and the Duke and his machinations are the fulcrum for all the action. However, there are two extraordinary comic effects in this scene: first, Barnardine enters and

Drama

The Prison: again, it is likely there was no actual division and action was continuous from the last scene.

Act/Sc. Mins

Setting

Characters

202

Table 2 Analysis of Measure for Measure (continued) Grouping, centrality, etc.

Power

4, iv

2

4, v

4, vi

Angelo and Escalus, then Escalus leaves, Angelo is in soliloquy to the end of the scene.

This scene might appropriately be acted as the two characters cross the stage – there seems no clear centre.

Power is confused and undecided. The Duke’s absolute power is off stage, but appears fickle and unpredictable.

30 secs. A Friar’s Cell

Duke, Friar Peter, then Friar Peter leaves and Varrius enters.

The Duke must occupy centre-stage as he gives orders.

Power is present. Visually, the Duke in his own dress reveals his authority.

30 secs. In Vienna

Isabella, Mariana, then enter Friar Peter.

Another scene in which characters are crossing the

Power is off stage, in the Duke’s instructions. Isabella

In Vienna

Analysing Shakespeare’s Problem Plays

leaves when he wants to, a dramatic demonstration of his defiance; then, Lucio virtually chases the Duke off stage.

5, i

25

A public place near the city gate

A long and dramatically complicated scene, with multiple entries and exits. However, the form of the scene is judicial, with appeals heard and judgments given, so centre-stage is crucial. At the start and end of the scene the central position is clearly occupied by the Duke; but in the middle Escalus, rather than Angelo, seems to be the focal judge. After the Duke’s unmasking, we imagine Angelo kneeling to beg death, and Mariana and then Isabella kneel also, to beg

Power is in the Duke’s person. It is deliberately hoodwinked in his first appearance, and Angelo moves closer to the centre. Escalus cannot wield power – he is misled and confused, so the Duke’s absence brings a kind of chaos. After the unmasking, the Duke controls by ordering physical movements and actions. His speeches are laced with frequent commands such as ‘go’, ‘come hither’, ‘Lay hold on him’ and so on. However, even with absolute power occupying centre-stage,

203

feels the weight of these; Friar Peter’s arrival brings the Duke’s power onto the stage.

Drama

Duke (as Duke), Varrius, Angelo, Escalus, Lucio, Lords and Citizens, then enter Friar Peter and Isabella, then Isabella leaves under guard, then enter Mariana, then an attendant leaves and the Duke leaves, then an attendant leaves, then the Provost, the Duke (disguised) and Isabella with guards all enter, then Lucio unmasks the Duke, then Angelo, Mariana, Friar Peter and the

stage. Their destination is off stage, and there is no centre.

Act/Sc. Mins

Setting

204

Table 2 Analysis of Measure for Measure (continued) Grouping, centrality, etc.

Power

Provost all leave, then they all return, then the Provost leaves, then he returns with Barnardine, Claudio (muffled) and Juliet, then Claudio is revealed.

Angelo’s life. Visually, groups of people leave and return and there is constant movement around the central ‘judicial’ position on the stage. Even between entries and exits, there is a great deal of movement indicated in the text, as people stand forward or back, obeying ‘come hither’ or ‘sneak not away’ etc.

Barnardine remains silent and is liberated; and the Duke is unable either to shut Lucio up, or to devise an effective punishment for him. We are therefore dramatically reminded of the ironies of Act 4, scene iii, even with the Duke’s power fully revealed and exercised. Dramatically, also, Isabella and Mariana kneeling may remind us of the ambiguous power of an appellant – previously demonstrated by Isabella’s appeal that displaced Angelo in Act 2, scenes ii and iv.

Analysing Shakespeare’s Problem Plays

Characters

Drama

205

to some observations which tend to ‘summarise’ what we have discovered. This will enable us to draw some provisional conclusions about the dramatic ‘shape’ and overall effect of the way Shakespeare assembled Measure for Measure. Looking at the settings, we find a very different play from All’s Well that Ends Well. Here, the beginning and end of the play are set in Vienna. The first scene is an interior, but scene ii and the whole of Act 5 take place outside in the public street. The most significant point about the settings, however, is that the rest of the play is dominated by religious and judicial surroundings: Friar’s cell, nunnery, court, prison. Except for the short scene i of Act 4, everything from Act 1, scene iii to the final four minutes of Act 4, takes place in these settings. Also, the scenes in religious settings are short: court and prison scenes account for around one and a half hours of the playing time. We could also say that the whole of Act 5 is a court scene, since all that happens is that the judges move outside. The list of settings also emphasises the theatricality of Measure for Measure: the Duke is an actor, who puts on his costume in Act 1, scene iii and takes it off in the final scene. The relation between characters, the Duke and the audience is complex and full of ironies. We can see the other characters as a cast, performing a play generated and manipulated by the Duke; or, they are the real audience, watching the Duke’s performance. Who are we watching? For whom does the Duke perform? How far is this a play about writing a play – because the Duke, like a playwright, assembles a group of characters, places them in a situation, and waits to see what happens. Looking at the table, and our guesses about how characters are disposed around the stage, I am struck by the dramatic position of the Duke. In the first prison scenes he adopts a listener’s and observer’s role at the edge of the stage. As the story unfolds, however, he becomes increasingly central. More and more, the audience will rely on him as the stable continuity on a stage where other characters are in movement, arriving and leaving, passing across the stage, always in motion to or from, visiting, exchanging news, and obeying the Duke’s behests. In this process, Act 4, scenes ii and iii are crucial in complicating the issues of power and manipulation that hang around the Duke.

206

Analysing Shakespeare’s Problem Plays

In Act 4, scene ii, the Duke’s increasing significance and his central position in the action reach a crisis point when he is forced to reveal his seal. This is a visual moment as he shows it to the Provost. In effect, his disguise as Father Lodowick has been punctured. He is no longer a benevolent friar who becomes increasingly involved in trying to help people: from here onwards he is an expression of the Duke’s will. This is a very important change: the Provost has co-operated up to this point, because the Duke has appealed to their common humanity and benevolence. After the showing of the seal, however, it is no longer benevolence but authority that gives the orders. Immediately after this change in the strange friar’s role, in Act 4, scene iii, his authority is comprehensively flouted by Barnardine; and meets its own limitation, unable to silence Lucio. We may deduce from this a sad feeling, that it would be better for the world to be ruled by a benevolent consensus, but that is not possible. In the end, someone must wield authority, with all its attendant flaws of potential tyranny, hypocrisy, the plain defiance of a Barnardine; and the unfortunate fact that authority will never control words and thoughts. Clearly, the development of the Duke’s role, and these two crucial scenes, have multiple implications for the political and social meanings of the play. At the same time, remember that we have discussed the ‘theatricality’ of this play and the Duke’s multiple roles as audience and performer, playwright and empiricist. These two scenes act out a climax in that process. The Duke, as playwright, can no longer allow his material the freedom to develop naturally. What is at risk, from the dramatist’s point of view? The answer is, of course, that the happy ending is at risk – the play will not be a comedy if the playwright allows his characters the freedom to act as they will. Artistic purpose and form will disappear, and instead of a play, we will have chaos. So, the dramatist eventually has to impose his will, his shaping power, onto his raw material; and he has to make his characters obey his will. Many have been unable to bear one of this ‘dramatist’s’ next actions: in the gross pretence that he could not impose his will, he announces Claudio’s death to Isabella! In the audience we feel the strong potential for disintegration and chaos this play

Drama

207

exudes: it is a disturbing, ambiguous, ‘problem’ play. It is arguable that these parallel theatrical and political themes are at the core of the unease Measure for Measure generates. If you look at our table in greater detail, it should add a further dimension to the study of individual scenes, and place parts of the text within fresh contexts: we have put a large amount of suggestive material into the table, and it would take more space than is available in the present chapter, to follow up all the lines of inquiry the table provokes.

A Table Analysing Troilus and Cressida, Act 5, scene ii We now turn to a detailed examination of a single scene, this time drawing our example from Troilus and Cressida. We can begin with a table again (Table 3), but this time dividing the scene itself into a series of episodes. Here is a table which provides commentary of ‘dramatic’ elements in Act 5, scene ii, the scene of Cressida’s tryst with Diomed, watched by Troilus, Ulysses and Thersites. Again, our table points up several revealing features of the way this scene has been dramatically constructed. Thersites’s role as presenter, and the way he becomes excited and involved in the performance he watches; and the paralleled couples ‘trapped’ together and trying to part (Diomed/Cressida; Troilus/Ulysses) enhance and complicate the ironies inherent in any eavesdropping scene. The torch, which divides the stage into two acting spaces, one a visible but quite distant ‘performance’ area, underlines the theatrical nature of the whole scene. However, the effect most difficult to define is that of the empty, forbidden space around which Troilus ranges as he bares his soul and stokes his anger (119–88). We could then begin to relate our table’s insights into dramatic effects and personal dynamics in the scene, to details from the written text. So, for example, we have highlighted the ‘theatricality’ of Diomed’s and Cressida’s scene, which we have described as a ‘dance’ or a ‘game’ and as a ‘performance’ with the eavesdroppers and ourselves as ‘audience’. This dramatic element adds to the poignancy of Troilus’s conceit about Cressida’s identity, and the cont. on p. 216

208

Table 3 Analysis of Troilus and Cressida, Act 5, scene ii Characters

Positioning, movement etc.

Commentary

1–5

Diomed, Calchas off stage

Diomed would be calling to the concealed rooms or the gallery at the rear of an Elizabethan stage – so he is upstage centre.

We know there is a torch because Ulysses mentions it in line 6. Diomed cannot be carrying it because he could not act the rest of the scene thus encumbered. It is unlikely he would bring a servant to this assignation. The torch must therefore be in a cresset at the back of the stage, marking the entrance to Calchas’s ‘tent’.

6–7

Enter Troilus and Ulysses. After them, enter Thersites.

Troilus and Ulysses will be downstage, to one side, in the natural eavesdroppers’ position. Thersites will be the other side of downstage.

Words help set the scene: Ulysses creates the torch’s pool of light, and surrounding darkness, with ‘where the torch may not discover us’; Troilus draws the audience’s attention to Cressida’s entry upstage.

Enter Cressida.

The eavesdroppers are between us and the courtship being acted out upstage in a pool of light. They direct our attention to it, as if they take the role of ‘presenters’. This set-up is very theatrical, so the Diomed/Cressida scene is like a play-within-a-play. Effectively, Shakespeare divides the stage into two areas: upstage is ‘performance’, downstage is ‘reality’.

Analysing Shakespeare’s Problem Plays

Lines

7–8

9–30

Cressida whispers to Diomed.

The two figures upstage lean together for the whispering.

The visual tableau of Diomed’s and Cresssida’s heads together upstage gives rise to Troilus’s ‘Yea, so familiar?’

Diomed and Cressida will be close to each other. The downstage eavesdroppers will stay largely in their places.

Thersites’s pun on ‘sing’, ‘clef’ and ‘noted’ at 12–13 will be delivered directly to the audience, and shows that he can hear Troilus and Ulysses. When Troilus says ‘What shall she remember?’ at 16, there will be some business as Ulysses calms him down and perhaps keeps him from starting forward (‘List!’). Drama

Diomed may attempt to grab Cressida at 22–4, and she move away from him, but not far. These details further define the spaces on the stage, and the relationships between them. Thersites becomes the direct link between audience and play; Troilus is dramatically ‘trapped’ in his downstage corner.

209

Lines 30–5

Characters

Commentary

Diomed makes to go, twice. Cressida calls him back, twice. ‘Hark, a word in your ear’ (35) means their heads are close together again, whispering.

Notice that, although rhetorically, Ulysses and then Troilus actually address Diomed and Cressida in ‘How now, Trojan?’ and ‘Thy better must’. In this section they cease to address each other, they are so rivetted on what is happening in the upstage pool of light. Visually, when Diomed and Cressida whisper again, their two figures so close they are one, we understand Troilus’s explosion.

36–66

Ulysses becomes worried about Troilus giving himself away, and tries to persuade him to leave. This will involve some movement, perhaps taking Troilus’s arm; but their movement is limited within the boundaries of their eavesdroppers’ space.

The dynamics already set up continue to play themselves out: Upstage, Diomed makes to leave again. Cressida persuades him to stay, including ‘come hither once again’, and the action of stroking his cheek. Downstage, Ulysses tries to take Troilus away (‘Come,

Analysing Shakespeare’s Problem Plays

Positioning, movement etc.

210

Table 3 Analysis of Troilus and Cressida, Act 5, scene ii (continued)

Cressida goes out to fetch the ‘pledge’ (63). Re-enter Cressida with the sleeve (66).

come’) and reminds him to keep still and quiet. Troilus progressively separates his observation from his feelings (‘I will not . . . have cognition of what I feel’). The tension of this self-control is visual (‘You shake, my lord’). Ulysses underlines that they are trapped in their area of the stage, with his use of ‘enlarge’ (39), and his warnings about place and time being ‘dangerous’ and ‘deadly’.

Drama

Thersites carries out his commentator’s role with increasing glee. He is now excited as he watches the upstage ‘performance’ (‘Fry, lechery, fry’ and ‘Now, now, Now!’). Visually, we see two couples acting out the same movements: one tries to leave, the other makes them stay. This alternates between the upstage pair and the eavesdroppers. Dramatically, the irony is interesting because it conveys the entrapment of Diomed and Cressida within their scene, just as Troilus and Ulysses have to stay within their boundaries as eavesdroppers.

211

Characters

67–112

Cressida offers the The sleeve introduces movement sleeve to Diomed and business in the upstage scene. Commentary from (68). eavesdroppers is increasingly left She takes it back to Troilus in this section. from him (73).

Positioning, movement etc.

Diomed snatches it back from her (87). Diomed leaves (112).

113–18

Cressida would perhaps move a little distance downstage and speak her apostrophe to Troilus

Commentary The two snatchings of the sleeve are sudden, grasping movements. As soon as this business is over, and the sleeve in Diomed’s possession, the pattern of him making to leave, her persuading him to stay, continues. Eventually, Cressida and Diomed play the same game about the sexual rendezvous they have made for the next day. She is fickle, he makes as if to give up, and she begs him to keep the rendezvous. We have seen them dance this dance some four times already in the scene; then the same game has been played emblematically with the sleeve; now we understand that their sexual dance follows exactly the same pattern. The irony of Cressida’s speech, dramatically speaking, is that she apostrophises Troilus, yet he is there. This is further highlighted, for although she would not deliver

Analysing Shakespeare’s Problem Plays

Lines

212

Table 3 Analysis of Troilus and Cressida, Act 5, scene ii (continued)

directly towards the audience. She exits back into Calchas’s tent, at the back of the stage.

the speech to him, she must speak it in his general direction. To leave the stage, Cressida must turn her back on Troilus and walk away from him – again a dramatic emblem of the betrayal.

Cressida leaves after her speech (118).

Drama

Thersites’ devastating summing-up is again delivered full-on, to the audience. Having become caught up in the excitement of ‘Fry, lechery, fry’ and, like Troilus and Ulysses, addressed Cressida directly at line 79 (‘well said, whetstone’), Thersites returns to the ‘presenter’ role he took at line 10. He therefore marks the beginning and end of the ‘performance’ acted out in an upstage pool of light. Both of them speak in rhyming couplets: a very formal and emblematic interlude suggesting the ‘moral’ of a morality play.

119–88

This is the most moving episode, where Troilus’s character is dredged in powerful speeches. This episode

213

Positioning is set free from the eavesdropping boundaries by

Lines

Characters

Commentary

Cressida’s exit. Troilus and Ulysses would remain downstage, away from Calchas’s tent; but may well move to centre-stage, and move around each other.

includes Troilus’s emotional shift from pain and shock, to anger; and the directing of his anger against Diomed, the beginning of his battle-rage. The play gives actors and director wide freedoms in how this episode is dramatically expressed. Troilus’s rage becomes loud, and Ulysses begs him to keep his voice down or they will be overheard. This indicates that the section must be played intimately rather than bombastically.

189–96

Enter Aeneas Troilus, Ulysses and Aeneas leave.

Troilus quickly turns to go with Aeneas, bidding farewell to Ulysses. Ulysses then joins them on the way out (‘I’ll bring you to the gates’).

In sharp contrast to the previous episode, this short section will be continuous movement as Aeneas shepherds Troilus out and Ulysses follows, clearing the stage quickly.

Analysing Shakespeare’s Problem Plays

Positioning, movement etc.

214

Table 3 Analysis of Troilus and Cressida, Act 5, scene ii (continued)

197–end Exit Thersites

Thersites will now move out from his eavesdropper’s boundary, the downstage corner.

Thersites will certainly take possession of the stage, either by delivering his parting speech while walking across, or by moving to centre downstage to deliver his speech. Certainly from ‘Patroclus will give me anything . . .’ (199) Thersites is speaking directly to the audience.

Drama

What we should remember, at this point, is the emptiness of the pool of light upstage: that stage has been empty since Cressida’s exit, and its emptiness (it is forbidden space to Troilus, Ulysses and Thersites) acts dramatically as a reverberating echo of the ‘performance’ Cressida and Diomed acted out there.

215

216

Analysing Shakespeare’s Problem Plays

difficulty he has in believing the scene he has witnessed. Was she an act? Is she an act? The dramatic ‘set-up’ adds an acting metaphor to the puzzles of Cressida’s character, and an audience role to Troilus. In terms of gender, is this what men do, watch women act until they see them fall?

Conclusions 1. We studied times and places in All’s Well that Ends Well, and

focused on Measure for Measure in more detail, to show how much can be realised by making notes on a play in table form. Finally, we carried out a detailed study of one scene from Troilus and Cressida. Shakespeare clearly structured these plays in very different ways: so, we found the alternations between Rossillion and Paris, then Rossillion and Florence, in All’s Well that Ends Well; but there is nothing like this – only an oppressive continuum of prisons and courtrooms – in Measure for Measure. A moment’s thought about Troilus and Cressida shows that the settings structure of this play is different again, alternating between Greek camp and Troy, but ending on the battlefield with typically Shakespearean treatment of war in a series of very short scenes set in different parts of the battlefield, narrating the progress of the fight and showing ‘clips’ of action. 2. One element the plays do have in common, however, is that they all raise the issue of performance and audiences; and they do so at very important moments. In All’s Well that Ends Well, the unmasking of Parolles is a crucial scene with eavesdropping structure; but also remember that the French lords are on display when Helena chooses a husband; in Measure for Measure, the Duke listens to the interview between Claudio and Isabella; and the scene we have just studied from Troilus and Cressida is another constructed with an audience of eavesdroppers. This characteristic of the plays draws attention to their dramatic form and styles, which, like everything else about them, are problematic. The development of this theme of theatricality, if we can call it that, goes furthest in Measure for Measure, where

Drama

217

the whole play is arguably a ‘performance’ and the Duke plays a dual role as dramatist and audience. 3. We do not wish to draw grandiose conclusions suggesting that this is a group of plays because they are of the same type. Rather, we may be struck by how many different dramatic styles are brought together in each play. So, for example, the recognition scene at the end of All’s Well that Ends Well certainly looks forward to Shakespeare’s late romances, with their atmosphere of miracle like an aura surrounding the accomplishments of time. Perhaps the Duke’s role, so suspect in Measure for Measure, is later reprised in the character of Prospero in The Tempest. Parts of scenes can change tone and style, also: in All’s Well that Ends Well, we have looked at the scene in which Helena persuades the King to accept her cure. We came to the conclusion that this scene sustains a dual discourse, both cynically realistic, and rather symbolic, in characterisation: Helena is both saintly healer, and highly successful manipulator of the King’s attitudes and ego. They both speak in couplets, but notice how Helena’s diction becomes elaborate in her later speeches: ‘In two days’ becomes: Ere twice the horses of the sun shall bring Their fiery coacher his diurnal ring . . . (All’s Well that Ends Well, 2, i, 160–1)

The style of a Miracle Play is evident here, suddenly; whereas the opening of the scene is in naturalistic blank verse. A similar effect occurs in Troilus and Cressida, when each of Cressida, Troilus and Pandarus speaks in turn, leading to the proverbs ‘as true as Troilus’, ‘as false as Cressid’, and the proverbial use of Pandarus’s name for a go-between or pimp. These are formal speeches in the style of a Morality Play, where each character speaks of and enlarges on their symbolic role: faithful lover, brazen woman, gobetween. Cressida’s final six lines pick up the same style: a final word on inconstant woman. However, in each case Shakespeare undercuts the implication of style. With Helena, we remain suspicious that she chooses the style to flatter the King’s prejudices.

218

Analysing Shakespeare’s Problem Plays

With Troilus and Cressida, we may believe the characters sincere, until Pandarus’s speech parodies the other two. And Cressida’s final lines leave questions hanging: does she merely excuse herself for weakness, or is it her tragedy to act out the ‘femininity’ imposed on her by men? 4. Because of the variety of dramatic effects in these plays, we have no conclusions about them as a group. This chapter has been about how we can study dramatic features, and compensate for studying a play on the page, rather than any investigation of significance.

Methods of Analysis In this chapter, we have introduced the idea of making tables in order to analyse dramatic features such as movement and positioning, and other points about visual effects, spatial relationships and the elapse of theatrical ‘time’. This method should be followed by using three steps: First, choose the headings for your table. You may choose any heading that interests you, and you can, of course, make more tables, with different headings, to follow up different ideas you want to study. We chose to add a column about ‘Power’ in our table about Measure for Measure, for example, because we were already convinced that power is an important concept in the play. However, limit the number of headings in one table to about four or five – no more. In this way, you will not lose the benefit of being able to ‘see’ the play’s dominant structure and patterns set out in your table in front of you. Secondly, go through the material (play or scene) making notes in the columns you have decided to use. Finally, look at your table and see what insights it provokes. Then, when you have a good idea of the ‘shape’ of the play you are studying, think about dramatic features in relation to the content of the text, noticing where dramatic elements contribute to the meaning and effect of the lines. Our example was Troilus’s speeches expressing his uncertainty about Cressida’s reality, a doubt dramati-

Drama

219

cally enhanced by the ‘performance’ characteristics added to her rendezvous with Diomed. Remember that dramatic elements can ironically contradict the literal text. Our example is the visual effect of Isabella displacing Angelo (Measure for Measure, Act 2, scene ii), while his absolute power literally remains.

Suggested Work Make a table similar to the one we made on Troilus and Cressida, in order to study All’s Well that Ends Well , Act 2, scene iii, in detail. For Measure for Measure, try to construct a table which tracks the stage positioning, movement and poses of women in the play. This should make a revealing study, when in the third step, you look at female positions and poses, and compare these with what women say. For Troilus and Cressida, make a simple structural table to show where the scenes of the play are set, and how long each lasts, as we did with All’s Well that Ends Well. This will lead you to looking at the alternation of Greek and Trojan scenes, and you can then attempt to make notes on how each scene relates, in setting, tone, style and even content, to its predecessor and successor. Of course, it will also be useful for you to carry out detailed scene-studies, like the one we did on Troilus and Cressida, Act 5, scene ii. In this connection, I would particularly suggest looking at the final scenes of All’s Well that Ends Well and Measure for Measure (Act 5, scene iii, and Act 5, scene i, respectively) as these could then be profitably compared with each other. In Troilus and Cressida, it will be interesting to carry out a detailed study of Act 4, scene iv, when Diomed and various lords appear to collect Cressida, and both Pandarus and Troilus must bid her farewell.

Conclusions to Part 1 1. The first conclusion to come to is that we cannot fashion a con-

clusion about these plays. In the six chapters of Part 1 we have looked at them in a variety of ways, but what we find always emphasises the unresolved. Moral, gender, social, political and character issues remain in a contradictory state at the end of each play. 2. The best we can do, then, is to describe the effect they have in common. The elements we have returned to time and again are those of dual or multiple discourses, and the insufficiency of the conventional moral frames. 3. Dual or multiple discourses are continuous in all three plays. This seems to be because the effect of a ‘version’ of the drama being undercut by a different ‘version’ from within the same text, is multiplied and intensified beyond what is normally found. Shakespeare’s other plays also undercut ‘versions’ of reality. For example, in Henry IV Part 1, Hotspur’s perception of life as a field of honour is subjected to radical criticism from Hal, who sees policy and opportunity, and Falstaff, who sees nothing and so has fun. However, in that play the different versions of life are discussed and compared by the text, and are worked out in the plot in competition with each other. The solution is not simple, but is a solution. In the Problem Plays this does not happen. Different ‘versions’ of reality are fully expressed, but nothing happens between them. The audience is left with no indication of how they relate to each other, and with no drama which shows 220

Drama

221

what the relative force of different discourses is when they are tested against each other. They neither fit together, nor will any of them go away. 4. The insufficiency of the moral frame is a result of having so many different discourses still live at the end of the play. The miracle-restoration theme of All’s Well that Ends Well, the Duke’s justification in Measure for Measure and Ulysses’s ‘degree’ in Troilus and Cressida, seem thin and trite excuses, and cannot survive because the force of contradictory themes remains potent at the end of each play. Put simply, the moral excuse cannot contain the drama itself. 5. This can be seen as presenting a modern outlook. If we think about the world of our twenty-first century, most of us share the divided attitude fostered by these plays. For example, politicians consistently assert that they act in our interest, on our behalf: they have a vocation to care for us or look after us. This is a simple, paternalistic message which is presented to us in a simple form again and again. Most of us listen to this message passively. At the same time, we do not really believe it, because we know a thousand details of shady deals, big business and its profitmotive, and we also assume that politicians have other motives: they seek riches, grandeur or power. We can say that we hold two contradictory opinions at the same time, but we are passive and do not expect to resolve the contradiction. The Problem Plays are like this. They show the inadequate, simple moral frame, which is a necessary public excuse so that society can continue to function. At the same time, they show how society really works, which is different from, and more complex than, what it pretends to be. This is why I suggest that these plays are presenting a modern outlook. 6. One other effect the Problem Plays produce is that different spectators take away different plays. There are various discourses in each play, each one powerful. Which one retains the most impact on you as you leave the theatre? Taking Measure for Measure as an example, in my own case I think that the most vivid impressions I take from the play are two. I remember both Isabella’s devastating attack on official authority (Act 2, scene ii), and Angelo’s

222

Analysing Shakespeare’s Problem Plays

repellent lust (Act 2, scene iv). I leave the theatre hating petty, hypocritical officials, and with a deep impression of a twisted sexuality. Harold Bloom, one of the critics we discuss in Chapter 9, clearly leaves the theatre with Barnardine’s magnificent moment of defiance imprinted on his mind. Both of these responses – and others – are true. 7. Finally, I do not think we have a conclusion on why these plays are ‘problems’, or what we mean by ‘problem’. I would stick with the pragmatic view we took in the Introduction: they do not fit other categories, so ‘Problem Plays’ is a name of convenience. On the other hand, we know a great deal about why these plays cause problems – they provoke debate and deep disagreements. All of the ‘conclusions’ we have reached contribute to this understanding.

PA R T 2

THE CONTEXT AND THE CRITICS

7 The Problem Plays in Shakespeare’s Works Texts Shakespeare’s plays were published together seven years after his death, in the First Folio of 1623 (F). Both All’s Well that Ends Well and Measure for Measure were printed among the Comedies in F for the first time, and editors regard the texts of these plays as not very ‘good’: there are inconsistencies in character-names and stage directions, some oddly-plotted moments (such as the ten seconds allowed for Isabella to explain the bed-trick to Mariana, in Measure for Measure), and a few commonly identified ‘textual problems’ where editors suspect either the hand of another author or a reviser, or simply that the original from which the printers worked was garbled or illegible. Editors argue about the reasons for these textual flaws. The Arden editor of All’s Well that Ends Well 1 argues that the printers probably set the play from a fairly early draft of Shakespeare’s own, that is, what are called the playwright’s ‘foul papers’, not a ‘prompt copy’ which would be the final acted version of the play, used when it was performed. In the case of Measure for Measure there is less controversy: it seems probable that the printers used a copy transcribed by a professional scrivener called Ralph Crane: his work has idiosyncrasies not found elsewhere, but found in Measure for Measure and three other comedies in F. Troilus and Cressida was printed in the 225

226

The Context and the Critics

First Folio, at the last minute (most editors believe that Jaggard, who was in charge of the Folio project, had difficulty obtaining permission from the copyright-holder, to print the play), but there is also an earlier text – the Quarto, which was published in 1609. There is evidence that Troilus and Cressida was meant to appear after Romeo and Juliet, in the group of Tragedies in F. However, as it was only printed and included at the last minute it had to be printed on a separate quire of paper, then bound into the volume. The result is that Troilus and Cressida appears between Henry VIII (the last of the Histories) and Coriolanus (the first of the Tragedies) in the First Folio; and it is not listed in the Catalogue. Both Quarto and Folio texts are regarded by editors as quite good, although there are a number of differences between them and both contain a number of evident errors.

Classification Classifying Shakespeare’s plays brings up a number of controversies and uncertainties. The plays studied in this book have been described as ‘tragi-comedies’, ‘problem comedies’ and ‘problem plays’, but there is no consensus about which plays belong in this group, or even whether there are any good reasons for treating such plays as a ‘group’ at all. In Shakespeare’s Problem Plays, E. M. W. Tillyard innovatively included Hamlet together with the three plays we have studied. He argues that Hamlet does not contain the ‘three types of feeling or situation’ tragedy should contain. It does contain suffering; it can be argued that it contains ‘sacrificial purgation’, although Tillyard thinks this such a minor element in the play that he does not accept it as truly tragic; and Hamlet does not contain ‘renewal consequent on destruction’ since Hamlet’s own outlook does not change radically during the play 2. Other critics have included The Merchant of Venice among the ‘problem plays’, while yet others have argued that All’s Well that Ends Well does not belong with this group at all, but is best understood as an early version of the ‘late romances’ (or ‘tragi-comedies’) such as The Tempest and The Winter’s Tale. So ‘classifying’ these plays is a contentious business. However, it is

The Problem Plays in Shakespeare’s Works

227

probably not worth our while to pursue simple lists of similar and different characteristics, or comparisons with typical histories, comedies and tragedies. We have not made any claim that these plays are three of a kind, anyway; and it is surely more important to understand each one as a whole work. Our conclusions from detailed studies in Part 1 of this book, do suggest that these plays have qualities in common; but these qualities are also shared, to either a greater or lesser extent, with others of Shakespeare’s works. So, for example, an emphasis on performance and manipulation is found plentifully in Hamlet, Othello, and The Tempest, let alone in Henry IV Part 1. The dual moral discourse is clearly present in The Merchant of Venice and, to a lesser extent, in Much Ado About Nothing. Both Hamlet and King Lear question the functions of language and perception. More specific patterns have striking analogues outside these plays, also. So, the Duke’s ‘playwright’ role in Measure for Measure can be closely compared to Prospero’s role in The Tempest; the contrast of political attitudes between Greeks and Trojans in Troilus and Cressida is comparable to the contrasting politics of Rome (Caesar) and Egypt (Cleopatra) in Antony and Cleopatra; and the structure of All’s Well that Ends Well is something like that of the ‘late romances’. It is helpful to have a grasp of the range and development of Shakespeare’s works; then it is easier to build your own understanding of where and how the works studied in this book fit in. It is best to begin with a chronological list of the plays, as far as the literary historians and editors have been able to work out their dates of composition: 1589 1590 1591 1592 1593 1593 1594 1594 1595

Henry VI Part 1 Henry VI Part 2 Henry VI Part 3 Richard III The Comedy of Errors Titus Andronicus The Taming of the Shrew Love’s Labours Lost The Two Gentlemen of Verona

History History History History Comedy Roman Chronicle Comedy Comedy Comedy

228

1595 1595 1596 1596 1597 1597 1598 1598 1598 1599 1599 1599 1600 1601 1602 1603 1604 1604 1604 1605 1606 1607 1608 1609 1609 1610 1611 1612

The Context and the Critics

Romeo and Juliet Richard II A Midsummer Night’s Dream King John The Merchant of Venice Henry IV Part 1 Much Ado About Nothing Henry V Henry IV Part 2 Julius Caesar As You Like It The Merry Wives of Windsor Twelfth Night Hamlet Troilus and Cressida All’s Well that Ends Well Measure for Measure Othello Timon of Athens King Lear Macbeth Antony and Cleopatra Coriolanus Pericles, Prince of Tyre Cymbeline The Winter’s Tale The Tempest Henry VIII

Tragedy History Comedy History Comedy, or Problem Play History Comedy History History Roman Tragedy Comedy Comedy Comedy Tragedy Problem Play Problem Play Problem Play Tragedy Tragedy Tragedy Tragedy Roman Tragedy Roman Chronicle Tragi-comedy Tragi-comedy Tragi-comedy Tragi-comedy History

A forest of scraps of evidence and historical controversies lies behind the supposed dates of composition of Shakespeare’s plays. Experts use internal evidence (references to current events in the text of the play; analysis of Shakespeare’s verse-development; references, in the text, to other publications whose dates we know) and external evidence (records or accounts of performances; entries in the Stationers’ Register; dates on Quarto title-pages in the case of the few plays that were separately published) when they date the plays. For most of the

The Problem Plays in Shakespeare’s Works

229

plays, there is evidence that places them within two or three years; but nothing concrete to help us be more precise than that. The ‘classification’ given in the right-hand column is controversial, as we have said, although the majority of Shakespeare’s plays do belong clearly within one of the classifications or another. The above list will be good enough to serve us, however. We only want to draw general conclusions from it, so many of the detailed arguments between scholars need not worry us. Before trying to draw some conclusions, we should pause to look at the dating of our three plays. All’s Well that Ends Well poses the biggest difficulty in this respect. It is put at after 1599 because the Clown’s part is clearly designed for the actor Robert Armin, who joined Shakespeare’s company in that year. Some editors have dated the play as late as 1608. There is nothing conclusive to help us be more precise, and there is no written evidence of the play before the First Folio (1623). One controversy concerns mention, in 1598, of a Shakespeare comedy called Love’s Labours Won, and some speculate that this was an alternative title for All’s Well that Ends Well, or an earlier version of it. This theory remains speculation. Measure for Measure and Troilus and Cressida are easier to place: the Revels Accounts record a performance of Measure for Measure in December 1604, and internal evidence points to earlier performances in the summer of the same year. Troilus and Cressida was entered in the Stationer’s Register in February 1603, and other evidence suggests 1602 as the probable date of composition. These two dates are helpful, because All’s Well that Ends Well seems to be very much a pair with Measure for Measure, yet it strikes us as an earlier effort at a similar theme and structure. It is only for these reasons that I have dated it in between the other two plays in our table. Certain points about the table are obvious. Of the first 18 plays, the only tragedy is Romeo and Juliet, which sits alone at that time, surrounded by comedies and histories. The final 6 plays are not tragedies: from 1607 until his death, Shakespeare wrote tragicomedy and history. There is comedy almost everywhere, but between 1601 (when we think Hamlet was written) and 1606 (when Macbeth was written), there are only the four ‘Great Tragedies’, an unfinished or ‘sketched’ tragedy (Timon of Athens) and the three

230

The Context and the Critics

‘problem plays’ we are studying in this book. Although two of these plays are (more-or-less) comic in form, their comedy is dark and their morality questionable. In other words, the writing from those five years is filled with trouble. Many critics have asked why a man who regularly wrote delightful comedies up to the turn of the century should have written such dark plays between 1601 and 1606? Some have tried to build inferences about Shakespeare’s lifeexperience, speculating that his son’s death (1596) or his father’s death (1601) was a traumatic experience. The difficulty here is an approach which takes the emotion of the plays as personal expression and therefore fabricates a biography to explain the emotion. Such reasoning is not reliable: it is just as likely that Shakespeare reflected the mood of his audience in his plays. In that case, reasons for a dark mood in plays of the time could include famine and plague, widespread poverty, large numbers of unemployed soldiers blighting the countryside, the Essex rebellion and its failure, the Queen’s final illness and death, an awkward succession, public perceptions of corruption among politicians and decadence at court, the increasing virulence of Puritanism, and the spread of venereal diseases imported from the New World. The truth is that we know hardly anything about Shakespeare’s life. Each minor incident that has come down to us through either documents or rumour, has given rise to far-fetched speculations. For example, the story of a young Shakespeare’s brush with the law for deer-stealing at Stratford, rests on an anecdote from Nicholas Rowe’s Life, dated 1709, which is corroborated by others who must have obtained the story from local gossip. This story has not only been used to explain Shakespeare leaving Stratford to join a London company of players (but there is no evidence that his move was as simple or sudden as this: we know nothing of his life between 1584 and about 1592); it has also been said to have inspired the characterisation and action in several scenes in several plays where local ‘Justices’ are satirised. It is much more likely, of course, that Shakespeare had a healthily sceptical attitude towards the law and had met or heard about quite a number of ignorant ‘Justices’. Any perceptive person will laugh at self-important, pompous ignorance. Meanwhile, the deer-stealing story itself is like most of the other

The Problem Plays in Shakespeare’s Works

231

information we have: it says hardly anything about Shakespeare the individual. It could have happened to anyone. What we know from the records of his life also has this ‘anonymous’ quality. Shakespeare lived nearly fifty-two years. He had a wife and three children. He was probably not always faithful to his wife. He made quite a good living as a playwright and actor, and acquired a reasonable amount of property which he left in a will at his death. Most contemporary reports suggest that he was a pleasant-looking man, and his manner was probably charming. In the five years leading to the darker period in his writing, Shakespeare’s son Hamnet died (1596) and his father died (1601). We do not know how these deaths affected the playwright’s outlook on life, however. This summary could be the biography of many thousands of the men of that time. The only unusual fact is that he worked in the theatre, but we knew that already. So we will not find any explanation of the ‘problem plays’ by studying Shakespeare’s life. If we are to enlarge our understanding of the clouded outlook that troubles the plays of 1601–6, we have to turn to his writings themselves for a hint. In doing this, we recognise that what we are doing is circular: we are looking in his writing to explain something in his writing. So, our aim is necessarily limited: to construct some understanding of issues and concerns in Shakespeare’s writing, so that we have a fuller grasp of where the very disparate elements we find in the ‘problem plays’ might connect with other works. The structure of a play can be thought of as in three parts: exposition, complication and resolution. Exposition introduces the characters and circumstances. Complication – the main middle part of the plot – consists of machinations by a villain, misunderstandings, secrets, quarrels, civil wars and all the other elements which prevent the characters from reaching a solution to their problems. Resolution is the final part of the play. It solves the problems of ‘complication’ either happily or disastrously. In a comedy, the solution is happy and typically brings about marriages between the characters. The dramatic effect – the entertainment of comedy – relies on the audience sharing the characters’ happiness at the end, not troubled by ambiguous thoughts and feelings. It follows that the ‘complications’ of the plot should be ‘comic’, or light-hearted, them-

232

The Context and the Critics

selves. For example, in the comedy Much Ado About Nothing Sir John the Bastard is the villain, but his badness is never allowed to disturb the fun of the play. In Act 1 he declares his character: ‘though I cannot be said to be a flattering honest man, it must not be denied but I am a plain-dealing villain’ (1, iii, 23–5). His dominant characteristics are discontent and envy, throughout the play; and at the end we hear that he has run away as his villainy has been discovered. Benedick ends the play with the assertion that Don John’s villainy cannot distract us from our pleasure in the marriages of two couples: ‘Think not on him till tomorrow. I’ll devise thee brave punishments for him. Strike up, pipers!’ (5, iv, 122–4). Notice that even punishing the evil-doer will be fun: the punishments will be ‘brave’ and we feel no compunction at all for Don John. This tone is typical of the comedies, and underlines the point that the resolution at the end of a comedy cannot afford to be troubled by disturbing complexity, or moral dilemmas. In 1597 Shakespeare wrote The Merchant of Venice. The villain in this comedy is Shylock the Jew. At first glance his wicked plot, to kill Antonio by forcing the law to award Shylock a pound of Antonio’s flesh, makes him a heartless villain. We should feel no regret when he is outsmarted and punished at the end. The happy ending also brings two weddings and liberates Antonio. This should be a delightful comedy; but it is not. Shylock’s persecution at the hands of Venice’s Christians, and his eloquence when he pleads his common humanity, are too powerful to be forgotten at the end of the play. He is not a simple, two-dimensional villain like Don John from Much Ado. Here is a sample of his complaint: Hath not a Jew eyes? Hath not a Jew hands, organs, dimensions, senses, affections, passions? – fed with the same food, hurt with the same weapons, subject to the same diseases, healed by the same means, warmed and cooled by the same winter and summer as a Christian is? If you prick us, do we not bleed? If you tickle us, do we not laugh? If you poison us, do we not die? And if you wrong us, shall we not revenge? If we are like you in the rest, we will resemble you in that. If a Jew wrong a Christian, what is his humility? Revenge! If a Christian wrong a Jew, what should his sufferance be by Christian example? Why revenge! (The Merchant of Venice, 3, i, 52–60)

The Problem Plays in Shakespeare’s Works

233

Shylock’s assertion of human equality rests upon undeniable truths: Jews and Christians are equally subject to wounding, death, the seasons, and so on. He uses the word ‘humility’ with a withering weight of irony. This attack upon Christian hypocrisy has a tone of outraged, exasperated passion beyond anything Don John said or could say. The Christians punish Shylock in the end. They force him to give half his money to Antonio, and the other half to his daughter, who has robbed him and eloped with a Christian; and they force him to become a Christian. He leaves the stage saying ‘I pray you give me leave to go from hence. I am not well’ (4, i, 390–1). The audience does not feel ‘well’ either, because we find the issues of persecution and revenge, and the justice meted out by a Christian court, morally unsettling. It is reasonable to deduce that Shylock’s character has become too serious a ‘complication’ for pure comedy: he has become too complex and affecting, and his point of view is too eloquently dramatised. On the other hand, the ‘resolution’ only re-asserts the dominance of the Christian society: it is a ‘comic’ resolution where the villain is merely damned and punished. The combination of these two elements – a fully-dramatised alternative view, and a shallow resolution – produces the effect we have called a ‘dual moral discourse’: the dominant morality is suspected of suppressing dissent, of silencing issues too complex for its authority to explore. We have recognised this effect in the settlements with which All’s Well that Ends Well and Measure for Measure end. Twelfth Night was apparently written in 1600. In this comedy a similar problem arises in the character of Malvolio, who is tricked and made the butt of a cruel practical joke, although much of the trickery makes us laugh and Malvolio does not possess the power to move us accorded to Shylock. The ‘resolution’ at the end of Twelfth Night, however, does take account of the problem: in the middle of their happiness, speeding to their weddings, the two dominant figures pause to solve the unfinished difficulty of Malvolio. Olivia gives a sympathetic judgment of him, saying ‘He hath been most notoriously abused’; and the Duke raises the prospect of a future reconciliation: ‘Pursue him, and entreat him to a peace’ (5, i, 365 and 366).

234

The Context and the Critics

This discussion suggests that Shakespeare was reaching the limitations of comic form at the turn of the century. This happened particularly in The Merchant of Venice, where serious issues arise out of the persecution of Shylock. I do not suggest that Shakespeare’s comedies were ‘out of control’: after all, the date we have for Much Ado is 1598. We have noticed, however, that there is a kind of subject-matter, and a fluent passion in its expression, which seem to disturb a comedy. We could say that Shylock is a potentially tragic character, living in a world he perceives as unjust, suffering deep emotional pain, and reacting to this with the destructive motive of revenge. This is a brief, simplified discussion. A more thorough study of Shakespeare’s development would also look at his dramatic style (for example, to show that Shylock’s fluency conveys waves of passion, and the writing is in a free form in contrast to the patterned, formal verse we find in most of, say, Love’s Labours Lost); and would examine other elements of other comedies, showing that there are potentially tragic elements in most of the comedies (for example, in Much Ado About Nothing we would examine Claudio, whose vicious self-righteousness in accusing Hero, is shocking). We could say that Shakespeare explored the limits of comedy, in a variety of different ways. The early history plays turn on the characters of the King and his nobles. For example, in Richard III, the audience is fascinated by the King’s cruelty: it is a psychologically convincing and emotionally disturbing spectacle, but it is a one-man spectacle where Richard himself holds our attention throughout the play. Such history plays bring a certain view of ‘history’ to life on stage: that the health of the country depends on the characters of kings and those in power. Richmond puts this view clearly in his description of England in the Wars of the Roses: England hath long been mad, and scarr’d herself: The brother blindly shed the brother’s blood; The father rashly slaughter’d his own son; The son, compell’d, been butcher to the sire. All this divided York and Lancaster – Divided, in their dire division. (Richard III, 5, v, 23–8)

The Problem Plays in Shakespeare’s Works

235

The sense of this is: when two noble families fight, their battle has direct and disastrous consequences for the whole of the country. So, in this simple view, famous people make history happen. In about 1597 Shakespeare wrote the first part of Henry IV. In this play the reigning King does not have the dominant part. His son Hal, a cynical Prince of Wales, has drinking, whoring and thieving companions. They occupy quite a large amount of the play’s time. In particular there is Sir John Falstaff, a clever but gluttonous drunkard who expresses cynical views about politics and war. To show how much Shakespeare’s view of history in this play differs from that dramatised in Richard III, we only have to look at the scene where Falstaff recruits soldiers for the King’s army. The King has given Falstaff a licence to recruit. Falstaff abuses this, corruptly accepting bribes from those who can afford to buy themselves out of the army, and recruiting instead beggars, cripples, the mad, and homeless wanderers. When challenged for having recruited such pitiful specimens, Falstaff replies: ‘food for powder, food for powder, they’ll fill a pit as well as better’ (4, ii, 63–4). This remark – and many others from Falstaff – shows a different view of history. He implies that a soldier’s only purpose is to be killed; and his actions make a mockery of the King’s supposed power. In this play, then, history becomes more complicated, involving ordinary people, and the play enters into a debate which questions the reality of honour, politics or power. The themes raised in Henry IV put a debate on stage about the nature of society, and about the complicated processes that make ‘historic’ or ‘political’ events happen. It is clear that an unresolved debate about war, honour, authority and politics is rife in both Measure for Measure and Troilus and Cressida. So, in both the comedies and histories of the late 1590s, we find disturbing subjectmatter in tension with the conventional dramatic form. It seems reasonable to suppose that Shakespeare would continue to experiment, exploring the kind of subject-matter he could contain or embody in dramatic form. If there is any value in charting the chronology of a writer’s works, we can say that the ‘problem plays’ became more and more likely to happen, during the late 1590s. We must still beware of inventing a biography for Shakespeare: we

236

The Context and the Critics

do not know why he experimented in this way. However, we can discern that he did; and we can see that the growth of new perspectives and new subject-matter in his writings – wherever it came from – was creating new kinds of dramatic experience, which would alter his favourite dramatic patterns of comedy and history. Before we leave this discussion, it is worth thinking about the late tragi-comedies in comparison to All’s Well that Ends Well and Measure for Measure, and about Hamlet in comparison with Troilus and Cressida. In The Winter’s Tale, Shakespeare wrote a play of two halves: to the end of Act 3, scene ii, we watch a full-blown tragedy. Leontes’s jealousy is intense, destructive and frightening like that of Othello. He apparently kills both wife and son, and sends his baby daughter to be abandoned in the wild. In Leontes’s final speech in Act 3, scene ii, the future will bring only mourning and regret: One grave shall be for both: upon them shall The causes of their death appear, unto Our shame perpetual. Once a day I’ll visit The chapel where they lie, and tears shed there Shall be my recreation. So long as nature Will bear up with this exercise, so long I daily vow to use it. Come, and lead me To these sorrows. (The Winter’s Tale, III, ii, 236–43)

In the next scene, the old lord who left Leontes’s infant daughter upon a barren shore, to be devoured by wild beasts, is himself eaten by a bear; but the baby is rescued by shepherds. To mark this turning-point, one of the shepherds remarks to the other: ‘Now bless thyself: thou met’st with things dying, I with things new-born’ (3, iii, 112–13). The second half of the play is in the form of a pastoral romance where a prince falls in love with a beautiful shepherdess. Here are clowns and fools, blooming nature and young love. Eventually we return to Leontes. The shepherdess is revealed to be the daughter he thought dead, his wife (who has secretly been kept alive) seems to come to life again in front of Leontes’s eyes, and all are reconciled. In The Winter’s Tale, Time is an important figure who

The Problem Plays in Shakespeare’s Works

237

both destroys and heals. The play expresses lasting loss, and miraculous rebirth. Clearly, Shakespeare has incorporated elements of both tragedy and comedy in The Winter’s Tale. How? As I already remarked, The Winter’s Tale is a play of two halves, and there is a gap of sixteen years between. This enables Shakespeare to approach the intense and naturalistic manner of his tragedies in the first half, where Leontes is driven by an obsessional and violent passion; while in the second half there is a cynical clown, Autolycus, comic shepherds, and pastoral songs and dances reminiscent of such plays as A Midsummer Night’s Dream or As You Like It. We have remarked that the plays we are studying display a bewildering array of different dramatic and poetic styles (see, for example, Cressida’s final speech, or Helena’s elaborate couplets persuading the King to accept her cure). In The Winter’s Tale, contrasting styles are identified with the different halves of the play. Furthermore, Shakespeare uses additional ‘machinery’ of a quasi-magical kind, to emphasise his theme of Time. The sixteen-year gap gives a sufficient impression of Leontes’s repentance and penance; Time himself speaks as a ‘chorus’ at the pivot of the play; an Oracle sends an ambiguous prophecy which comes true at the end; and the language of the final scene is heavy with allusions to wonder and miracles. All’s Well that Ends Well among the ‘problem plays’ comes closest to anticipating the kind of drama presented by The Winter’s Tale. The language of miracles is present in Helena’s appeal to the King: But most it is presumption in us when The help of heaven we count the act of men. Dear sir, to my endeavours give consent; Of heaven, not me, make an experiment. (All’s Well that Ends Well, 2, i, 150–3)

The King recognises some divine inspiration in her when he remarks ‘Methinks in thee some blessed spirit doth speak’ (line 174), and Lafew discusses miracles versus disbelief, with Parolles, in Act 2, scene iii. The King’s expression of wonder when Helena is revealed in Act 5, also pre-figures the wondrous joy of recognition scenes in the late tragi-comedies:

238

The Context and the Critics

Is there no exorcist Beguiles the truer office of mine eyes? Is’t real that I see? (5, iii, 298–300)

and the play’s final line reflects upon tragi-comic experience: ‘The bitter past, more welcome is the sweet’ (5, iii, 328). However, in All’s Well that Ends Well these touches are countermanded by contrary elements in the dramatic context. So, Helena’s appeal to divine assistance in healing the King comes within the context of her pragmatism: the ambitious soliloquy that we analysed in Chapter 3, her admission to the Countess that she would not have thought of healing the King had Bertram not been the motive, and the fact that she is making a deal with the King at the same time as she invokes God’s aid. Lafew’s discussion of miracles is a joke, as he attempts to expound his theory in the face of interruptions and idiocies from Parolles. Finally, the wonder of the recognition scene is barely expressed, and follows hard upon Bertram’s most unpleasant lies. Additionally, the audience knows that Helena is not dead, whereas we only have veiled hints of Hermione’s survival, in The Winter’s Tale. So any sense of wonder in All’s Well that Ends Well is embryonic compared with the extended joyous suspense the audience experiences as Hermione’s ‘statue’ comes gradually to life, in The Winter’s Tale. In The Tempest, supernatural machinery incorporated into the play is even more prominent than in The Winter’s Tale. Prospero is a magician with spirits and illusions at his command. There are many similarities between Prospero, and the Duke in Measure for Measure. Prospero manipulates all the other characters, humbling the villains in the same way as the Duke cuts Angelo down to size; and in the end, although grudgingly, he forgives his wicked brother as the Duke reprieves Angelo. Prospero arranges the courtship between his daughter Miranda and Ferdinand, Prince of Naples. He prompts their love, but then pretends to be angry, just in order to make their courtship more difficult, saying: [Aside] They are both in either’s pow’rs: but this swift business I must uneasy make, lest too light winning Make the prize light. (The Tempest, 1, ii, 452–4)

The Problem Plays in Shakespeare’s Works

239

This may bring to mind the apparently unnecessary cruelty of Vincentio, when he announces Claudio’s supposed death to Isabella. Both Prospero and the Duke also face a crisis that threatens their plans. Prospero almost leaves himself vulnerable to attack by forgetting one of the plots against him, and this corresponds to the moment when the Duke is faced by the Provost’s refusal to carry out his instructions, and is forced to reveal his authority by showing the seal. The Tempest explores a number of themes we also recognise in Measure for Measure. The issues of judgment and mercy are prominent in many of Prospero’s speeches; and in the savage Caliban, all the moral issues about how a sinful population should be governed, are very fully explored. Prospero is, also, a dramatist in the same sense that the Duke is: he designs the circumstances in which the other characters find themselves, provides them with testing experiences, and controls the outcome. On the other hand, The Tempest differs from Measure for Measure in being less naturalistic in its setting and in the magic (including a magical storm, spirits, a disappearing banquet, an imaginary pack of hounds, a pageant of goddesses, songs, spells and charms). Furthermore, as in The Winter’s Tale, the play presents a symbolic power in Time and Fate, which are paradoxically allied to both loss and destruction, and healing and finding. Prospero himself is much more than human: he is a ‘god of power’, an agent of Fate. In this he differs radically from the Duke of Measure for Measure, who can justly be accused by Lucio of perpetrating ‘a mad fantastical trick’. So, the late tragi-comedies develop symbolic and supernatural ‘machinery’: in particular, time and fate are seen to be actively working towards restitution in both The Winter’s Tale and The Tempest. As a result of this, dramatic style and form are more consistent, and the resolutions at the ends of these plays are more positive and satisfying. It is therefore tempting to think of All’s Well that Ends Well and Measure for Measure as early experiments, flawed plays because Shakespeare had not yet developed the dramatic form for which he was striving. Many critics have taken this view, and regard the ‘problem plays’ as workshop failures, unfinished development-inprogress. However, this is not reasonable. Yes, the late plays are a delightful

240

The Context and the Critics

experience, mingling melancholy and wonder in equal measure; but all this means is that they present a different experience from the ‘problem plays’. The late plays are permeated by the symbolism of time, fate, providence and mutability. These symbols provide what we can call a belief-system in which everything will pass through change, leading to eventual rebirth and new growth. In other words, the late plays convey an optimistic world-view. What is more, the late plays’ dramatic style emphasises the ‘shape’ of fate’s justice so they are structurally pleasing. On the other hand, the presence of oracles, miraculous wonder, and magic are also a part of this dramatic style. The late plays are, quite simply, more like fantasies or fairy-tales. The ‘problem plays’ do not attempt such a dramatic experience. Instead, they incorporate similar actions and issues into a naturalistic world, an awkward world whose elements conflict and will not lie down or go away. Suggestions of fate or divinity are rare, light, or satirically undercut by a different context, so that we search in vain for a pattern of belief in which we can trust. The late plays are certainly more beguiling; but this does not mean that they are ‘better’ or ‘more true’. We have no justification for believing that when Shakespeare wrote All’s Well that Ends Well and Measure for Measure, he failed to write The Tempest. He did not try to write it: what we know is that he wrote two different plays; awkward, problematic plays that will not lie down, or go away. Turning to Troilus and Cressida, scholars have long been struck by the similarities between this play and Hamlet. Both tell the story of an idealistic young man whose illusions are shattered by the traumatic experience of being sexually betrayed by a woman. Both question their own identity and lose faith in womanhood. Both are led to question the evidence of their senses, expressing a fundamental distrust in their ability to perceive reality. In both plays, ‘degree’ versus chaos is a prominent theme, and in both there is also a radical exploration of words, and their validity as signs of reality. Hamlet and Thersites vie with each other in expressing disgust at beastly lechery. Yes, the two plays have a great deal in common. However, this is only to say that Troilus and Cressida shares a number of concerns and features with a tragedy written at about the

The Problem Plays in Shakespeare’s Works

241

same time. It does not prevent us from noticing the significant differences which make Troilus and Cressida itself, not a mere shadow of Hamlet. These are many, and I shall mention only one. Troilus and Cressida attempts a great deal more as a ‘chronicle’, than does Hamlet. The ‘rotten’ state of Denmark is densely created by repeated imagery of disease, infection and corruption, as the backdrop to Hamlet; whereas Troilus and Cressida attempts an analytical overview of two cultures with different and competing values – the Greek and the Trojan – as they confront and meet each other. Therefore, there is nothing in Hamlet comparable to the two councils of war, Act 1, scene iii, and Act 2, scene ii, in Troilus and Cressida. Also, the political plotting in Hamlet has a personal motive: Hamlet plots to avenge his own father’s murder, and Claudius’s counterplots are for his own survival. In Troilus and Cressida, by contrast, Ulysses’s plot is truly political: it is for the good of the Greeks; while the Trojan arguments over Helen are also about the survival or honour of Troy, and not primarily driven by an individual’s personal motives. This difference gives Troilus and Cressida one of its peculiar characteristics, for Troilus’s passion and despair are set within a philosophical essay on history, so that the audience is struck by how indifferent the greater world is to Troilus’s personal agony. In Hamlet the opposite is true: the corruption of Denmark is intimately integrated with Hamlet’s personal sense of corruption: the world around him contributes to and reflects his personal tragedy. There is a great deal of fascinating study to be done in comparing the ‘problem plays’ with Shakespeare’s other works, then; and we could speculate endlessly about the experiences that drove Shakespeare to highlight different themes in his plays. However, all such investigations are ultimately doomed because we cannot reconstruct a writer’s biography from his work. What is more important to learn and keep in mind, is what distinguishes one play from another. We must not dismiss any play, simply because it is not another play. The very point we should glory in, is that Troilus and Cressida is not Hamlet; Measure for Measure is not The Tempest; and All’s Well that Ends Well is not The Winter’s Tale. The three plays we are studying in this book all – in their different ways – leave a very uneasy feeling, filled with unanswered

242

The Context and the Critics

questions and unresolved conflicts. It is as if these awkward dramas are still sticking their elbows in our ribs as we leave the theatre. We must remember that they are themselves, and value them for that.

Notes 1 All’s Well that Ends Well, ed. G. K. Hunter (London: Methuen, 1959). 2 Quotations are from E. M. W. Tillyard, Shakespeare’s Problem Plays (London, 1950), pp. 19–21.

8 The Context This chapter comes with a warning: it is made up of generalisations, and is a simplified view of conflicting world-views that were competing with each other in Shakespeare’s time. I advise readers to follow up at least some of the suggestions in ‘Further Reading’ (at the end of this book), in order to achieve a more sophisticated understanding of the early-modern background than this short chapter can provide. Shakespeare lived at a time when social attitudes, political theories, and religious beliefs were in a state of conflict and turmoil. We sometimes assume that, because it was a long time ago, life must have been simpler, less bewildering than it is in our twenty-first century. This chapter argues that Shakespeare lived at the centre of a vast change which affected every aspect of life and thought: the change from what can be called a ‘medieval’ outlook, to a ‘modern’ outlook. We will dip our toes into this vast subject-matter under three headings: society, religion, and ways of thinking.

Society Medieval society was founded on hierarchy: people were placed at certain levels in what we call a ‘feudal’ system. At the top of society was the monarch and at the bottom were beggars and vagrants (who were considered little better than beasts), or villeins and serfs. The life of a serf was similar to that of a slave: the serf had to work on the 243

244

The Context and the Critics

lord’s land, for the lord. He was tied to the place of his birth, could not move to a different village; and he had to do military service for his lord when that was needed. To all intents and purposes, the lord ‘owned’ his serfs. Almost everything about medieval society depended on birth – there was virtually no provision in the feudal structure for people to move from one class to another. If you were born the child of a serf, you would be a serf. If, on the other hand, you were born the son of a knight, you would become a squire and eventually a knight yourself. So the feudal system was rigid and static – it took no account of change. It is common to think of this system using the metaphors of a ladder or a chain: people occupied lower or higher rungs on a ladder, or people were fixed in place in a chain, their position determined by the links on either side. Society was held together by ideas that could not be challenged because they came, ultimately, from God. The concept of ‘lordship’ applied throughout the system – a knight had ‘lordship’ over his serfs, a lord had ‘lordship’ over his knights, and a king had ‘lordship’ over his lords. The words ‘fealty’, ‘allegiance’ or ‘vassal’ expressed the submission of the lower to the higher: you owed absolute obedience to the will of your master. ‘Lordship’, then, conferred ‘authority’, and the idea was that each level would look up to the level above for ‘authority’, until eventually the ‘authority’ of a king would guide the whole population. Crucially, it was believed that the king himself took his ‘authority’ from God through a theory called the divine right of kings. In some shadowy past time, kings had been ‘anointed’ by God to rule over others, and this ‘divine right’ was then passed down in their blood through generations. The concept of ‘divine right’ was still being promulgated in Shakespeare’s time. Here is an extract from James I’s ‘Speech to the Lords and Commons of the Parliament at Whitehall’ delivered in March 1610: The state of monarchy is the supremest thing upon earth. For kings are not only God’s lieutenants upon earth, and sit upon God’s throne, but even by God himself they are called gods. There be three principal similitudes that illustrates the state of monarchy. One taken out of the word

The Context

245

of God, and the two other out of the grounds of policy and philosophy. In the Scriptures kings are called gods, and so their power after a certain relation compared to the divine power. Kings are also compared to the fathers of families, for a king is truly parens patriae, the politic father of his people. And lastly, kings are compared to the head of this microcosm of the body of man.1

These few paragraphs have sketched the theory of how a ‘feudal’ society worked: based on birth, supported by the concepts of ‘lordship’ and ‘authority’, and ultimately ordered by the unchallengeable ‘authority’ of God. So far we have only mentioned human society. The medieval outlook on the world included everything in Creation, however: the beasts of the field, plants and trees, the fish in the sea, and the planets themselves, everything had its assigned place in a complete and inclusive ‘chain of being’. For a more detailed exposition of these concepts it is worth looking at E. M. W. Tillyard’s influential book The Elizabethan World Picture, first published in 1943, although this recommendation comes with a warning. Tillyard explains many of the theories which contributed to a rigid concept of ‘order’, but his implication that Elizabethans generally believed in such a ‘chain of being’ without question, is now regarded as a simplistic distortion. As I have pointed out, the rigidity of a ‘feudal’ outlook belongs more properly to the medieval world than to earlymodern times. Our quotation from James I above simply shows that the king still tried to use ‘divine right’ to shore up his authority – it does not show that his audience in Parliament, or people in general, believed in it! Historians will tell us that James’s speech was one shot in the growing battle between Parliament and monarch, which reached a crisis some thirty years later in the Civil War. Even in medieval times, feudal social concepts were only a theory. We have only to look at the conflicts between kings and barons, the regular rebellions, and the pattern of usurpation and civil war established in England from the late fourteenth-century onwards, to see that – then as now – power was often determined by force rather than divinely-ordained ‘lordship’. Society in practice was complicated, human, and constantly changing, then as now.

246

The Context and the Critics

What is a ‘modern’ outlook on society? We are brought up to believe that our society gives equal opportunities. There is social mobility because nobody’s position is determined by their birth. We are ‘individualists’ because it is assumed that we can make our own way and work towards our desired social position in life – and along with this assumption is the other one, that we will end up where we deserve to be by some natural law of hard work, ambition, native ability and merit. In theory, then, we live in open societies that can be called ‘meritocracies’. In theory, those who deserve to be at the top arrive at the top. The word ‘deserve’ seems to spring up everywhere: if we live in a democracy this means that we choose and vote for our politicians. So, we should not complain, because we get the politicians we ‘deserve’. This is a brief sketch of the theory of a modern developed society, and our rulers tell us that our society resembles this theory. The truth, of course, is very different and much more complicated. Opportunities are not really equal, and it is far from easy to move from one social class to the one above. A great deal about an individual’s social destination can still depend on their parents’ ability – and willingness – to buy a superior education, support their children through professional training, or fund the investment in a business. We also know that our accents, manners and clothes as well as the positions occupied by our relatives or our parents’ acquaintances, can all contribute to our own eventual social position. Yes, there is considerable social mobility; and yes, it is possible to move within society. But for the majority of people it is overwhelmingly likely that the social position into which they are born will be the social position they occupy throughout their lives. There are still considerable barriers to overcome, before a climb up the social or financial ‘ladder’ (notice that we still commonly use this metaphor) can be accomplished. When we look back in an effort to understand medieval and early-modern societies, then, it is very important to question our own outlook at the same time. What the last two paragraphs point out is that we are brought up to believe in concepts of merit and equality which are, in practice, a sort of cock-and-bull story: they are simple concepts, and life in practice is much more varied, problem-

The Context

247

atic and complicated. So we should approach medieval concepts such as the ‘chain of being’ with scepticism, and humility; and we should examine our own comfortable cynicism honestly. Now, what happened to change the dominant social outlook so radically, from a rigid belief in a ‘feudal’ hierarchy, to the modern mish-mash of merit, democracy and equality? The answer is that, over hundreds of years, the change occurred in every aspect of life and society, and no one change can be pointed to as the trigger or ‘cause’. When we study history it is very tempting to say that one event caused another; but the chain-like idea of cause and effect is often a distortion of the complex processes which must have occurred. Instead, here are a few suggestions about changes which were part of the vast alteration we are discussing. Enormous economic changes took place. The ‘feudal’ system suited an economy based on the ownership of land, with agriculture as the main industry. People worked in fields, the fields were owned by the lord, the lord therefore ruled the people on his land, and in such a society nearly all the money was where the land was. Then, trade between countries grew more and more important, crafts and manufactured goods became increasingly varied and valuable, the towns grew in the process called urbanisation, and the economy became increasingly based on commerce rather than agriculture. By Shakespeare’s time, a significant proportion of the population lived in towns and were engaged in commerce, and towns began to be richer than the countryside: that was where the money was. Where did these town-dwellers and commerce-workers fit in on the feudal ‘ladder’? Quite simply, they did not belong anywhere. They were not serfs, knights or lords: they were a new class, or new classes (because servants and workers in the expanding towns were not rich enough to be called ‘bourgeois’ – that word is used for the successful ones). A new class, not under the ‘lordship’ of a feudal superior, was, inevitably, a challenge to the entire social structure. At the same time there were changes in all branches of knowledge and in all attitudes, so that the assumptions medieval theories made about the cosmos came into question. Galileo changed astronomy. The age of discovery changed the map – even the shape – of the world. Experience changed the attitude towards ‘authority’, and new

248

The Context and the Critics

ideas about the way politics and power really work, began to be put forward. In this connection we are lucky, because one political book which was hugely influential happens to be both short and readable. It is highly recommended that readers look at The Prince, by Niccolò Machiavelli (1513), one of the most influential books of the sixteenth century. Machiavelli did not believe in the theory of ‘divine right’. He showed that princes hold their power by practical means: through lying, manipulation, brutality, betrayal and the exploitation of fear. The book takes the form of a handbook, giving advice to young princes on how they should behave in order to be successful. The Prince was a shocking work, regarded as subversive by Tudor authorities in England. Machiavelli’s name became notorious in government propaganda, and he was often compared to the devil for his wicked ideas; but the ideas themselves would not go away, because they chimed with actual cynical experience of politics and power. Shakespeare and other dramatists of the time put many ‘machiavellian’ characters on stage: Edmund, from King Lear, and Iago, from Othello, are both ruthless political schemers of this kind, as is Hamlet’s uncle Claudius; Webster’s Daniel de Bosola, from The Duchess of Malfi, is another. In the plays we are studying, Ulysses from Troilus and Cressida shows the exploitation of others’ weakness, and manipulation of language, typical of the ‘machiavel’; the Duke in Measure for Measure uses manipulative techniques although his motives are supposedly benevolent; and it is possible to argue that Helena’s single-minded pursuit of Bertram shows ‘machiavellian’ abilities and characteristics. At the same time as a new pragmatic attitude undermined medieval certainties, there was a rash of newly idealistic proposals, marking the growth of concepts such as freedom and equality. Here is an extract from the speech of the benevolent old lord Gonzalo, from The Tempest, where he puts forward his ideal of a free and equal society: . . . no kind of traffic Would I admit; no name of magistrate; Letters should not be known; riches, poverty, And use of service, none; contract, succession,

The Context

249

Bourn, bound of land, tilth, vineyard, none; No use of metal, corn, or wine, or oil; No occupation; all men idle, all; And women too, but innocent and pure: No sovereignty; – (The Tempest, 2, i, 144–52)

Gonzalo’s ideal, which he calls ‘the commonwealth’, shows a belief that nature is plentiful and will provide; and a desire to dismantle the social hierarchy in favour of freedom and equality for all. The cynical ‘machiavel’ of The Tempest, Antonio, believes human nature to be base. His comment on Gonzalo’s ideals is succinct: ‘all idle; whores and knaves’ (2, i, 162). This extract simply shows that debate about the proper structure of society, and about what society is really like, was wide open and in turmoil at the time. Society, then, did not have a single, dominant belief-system in Shakespeare’s time. Instead, it must have felt as if there was a running battle going on between ‘old’ and ‘new’ social and political outlooks. Shakespeare exploits, explores and investigates this open debate in his plays, time after time. It is clear that the nature and governance of society is a major theme in all three of the ‘Problem Plays’.

Religion Medieval Europe was dominated by the Roman Catholic Church. We do not have to look far for evidence that the Church in the fourteenth century had become corrupt, and was a byword for greed and extortion. Chaucer’s clerical characters in The Canterbury Tales, the Prioress, the Monk and the Friar, give an overview of a church in decadent condition. The Prioress, with her vanity and luxury habits, is perhaps not an evil person; but she does seem to give her lap-dogs a better standard of life than that of the poor. The Monk is full of vitality and fun, but he loves hunting and neglects his spiritual vocation. The Friar, lecher and blackmailer, is a thoroughly nasty piece of work. Chaucer adds the Pardoner and the Summoner – employees

250

The Context and the Critics

of the Church, the former tricking simple congregations out of their money with false relics and mumbo-jumbo, and selling ‘pardons’ – tickets to Heaven – for money; the latter, of unsavoury looks and habits, accepting bribes for allowing the clergy to break church law. The medieval Catholic Church was structured along the same lines as ‘feudal’ society: as a hierarchy with the Pope, God’s vicar on earth, at the top. Any theological question you might ask, would be answered by ‘authority’, and the final answer on all questions of doctrine was that of the Pope, who was infallible since his wisdom came directly from God. However, as the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries unfolded there was a growing movement for the Church to reform. This is apparent already in the characters delineated in Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales, and in Langland’s poem Piers Plowman. One of the earliest reformers in the Church was John Wyclif, a priest who translated the Bible into English, and led a group of followers, called ‘Lollards’, priests who practised poverty, humility and truth. The reformers initially objected to corrupt practices such as the selling of indulgences or ‘pardons’, absentee priests holding several benefices at once, and so forth. However, as the church authorities reacted to this challenge with violent oppressive measures (which came to be known as the ‘Inquisition’, famous for torturing and burning heretics), the reforming movement developed more positive aims and, gradually, began to seek the power to set up alternative churches with different priesthoods and different doctrines. These new organisations, which began to spring up as the reform movement spread throughout Europe, are known as Protestant churches. The new Protestant churches were persecuted, except where the local state provided support. In particular, a number of the states in what is now Germany, and in the Netherlands, turned Protestant; and as a result of Henry VIII’s quarrel with the Pope, England set up its own Protestant church, separate from the Roman Catholic Church. Among the most influential reformers, who changed theological beliefs and practices, were Martin Luther and John Calvin. The whole of the process I have been describing has come to be known as ‘the Reformation’; but it is important to remember that the conflict between the Catholic Church and movements for

The Context

251

reform continued for hundreds of years, and this active struggle was then followed by more hundreds of years of hostility between Protestants and Catholics. It is salutary to remember that the ‘troubles’ in Northern Ireland in the present day, continue a Protestant/Catholic conflict; and that many of the fans of the two Glasgow football teams Celtic and Rangers still divide along religious lines. In Shakespeare’s time, Europe was divided. The war between England and Spain which continued from 1585 until 1604, fully nineteen years, including the years when our three plays are said to have been written, was part of a long-drawn-out struggle between Catholic and Protestant powers in Europe. During Shakespeare’s life, Catholic priests were both executed and expelled for practising their religion in England, and Catholics were persecuted. The relatively new Church of England was maintained as a moderate organisation, gradually gaining some popular ground and becoming more established, and nationalism and religion joined hands during the war with Spain, with much propaganda reviling ‘papists’. However, at the same time more extreme Protestant sects commonly called Puritans made headway, and during the final years of Elizabeth’s reign and at the start of James’s (in other words, at the time when these plays were written), Puritans were preaching against plays and campaigning to have the London theatres closed, as places of sin. Certainly, Shakespeare’s audience would have recognised the portrait of Angelo in Measure for Measure, who ‘scarce confesses that his blood flows’ (1, iv, 51–2), as that of a Puritan. We have said that the Catholic Church was structured as an hierarchical system, comparable to the ‘feudal’ system of lordship and authority; and that all religious questions were referred to ‘authority’ – ultimately the infallible authority of the Pope. Just as in society there was a change to what we call a ‘modern’ outlook, a more pragmatic and individualistic outlook, so in religion, the Reformation led to new churches which emphasised the individual, and were organised more democratically. In a Protestant country, it became an individual’s duty to distinguish right from wrong, good from evil; and religion came to be centred around an individual’s relationship with God, rather than the people taking direction from a priest, or

252

The Context and the Critics

superior ‘authority’. This meant that questions which had been a matter for theologians and nobody else in medieval times, were thrown open for debate and questioning. Religious doctrines on freewill, sin, damnation and salvation in the afterlife, Providence and fate, were all a matter for debate between different sects; and in practice, competing Protestant ‘sects’ led individuals to consider these issues and make up their minds. I am not saying that the various churches invited debates about doctrine; but that the variety of doctrines on offer inevitably highlighted their differences. As with society, then, Shakespeare’s was a time of religious turmoil, conflict and debate; and there was no one dominant creed, although by the time of these plays England was increasingly settled as a Protestant country.

Ways of Thinking It is pointless to seek a cause for all these changes. The purpose of this chapter is merely to point out that Shakespeare lived right in the middle of them, when there was continuous conflict and nothing settled, either about society or in religion. However, it is worth thinking about what the various changes may have in common, as a development in ways of thinking about the world. The medieval outlook encouraged you to accept answers provided by ‘authority’. This did not only mean the authority of a lord or a priest: it also extended to attempts to understand the world. If you want to know about medicine, look in Galen; if you want to know about astronomy, look in Ptolemy; if you want to know God’s opinion, ask your priest; and so on. The point about such a system is that it depends on authority, not observation. People were not encouraged to draw conclusions by observing life around them, or by recording how things work. Instead, they were encouraged to seek and then accept a wisdom handed down from above – even if that wisdom contradicted the evidence of their eyes or other senses. It is easy for us to take a patronising attitude towards medieval society, but we should also take into account its advantages. Can we imagine living in a universe where we have only to ask our questions

The Context

253

and they will be answered? Even if we never ask, we feel assured that there are answers, and good ones in which we can trust. That terror of infinity, of an indifferent universe or a purposeless existence, which is a common modern experience, was absent from the medieval system. We should make the effort to imagine how reassuring such ‘authority’ must have been. Some, at least, of this sense of proper and reassuring order, is present in Ulysses’s speech on ‘degree’ in Troilus and Cressida, Act 1, scene iii. He also expresses the powerful fear attendant on order’s overthrow: Force should be right – or rather, right and wrong, Between whose endless jar justice resides, Should lose their names, and so should justice too. Then everything includes itself in power, Power into will, will into appetite, And appetite, an universal wolf, So doubly seconded with will and power, Must make perforce an universal prey, And last eat up himself. (Troilus and Cressida, 1, iii, 116–24)

This fear of disorder is frequently and widely expressed in Shakespeare’s plays, often using powerful imagery drawn from Genesis, depicting the creation of the world in reverse.2 A ‘modern’ view of the world is based on observation, and experiment: this is the way of thinking upon which all of our science and technology is built. The change to this way of looking at the world was, like all the changes we have been discussing in this chapter, a long-drawn-out and multi-faceted affair spanning centuries. The urge to think about the world empirically, by looking to see what it is like and then defining what you see, grew increasingly influential as the religious and social changes we have discussed progressed. So Galileo did not ask ‘authority’ about the stars: he looked through his own telescope and drew his conclusions from what he saw. Columbus did not accept that the world is flat: he looked at the horizon, and developed the hypothesis that the earth’s surface is curved. Then, Columbus carried out a great experiment to test his hypothesis: he sailed west. Leonardo da Vinci did not ask his master-

254

The Context and the Critics

painter what the human body looks like, and copy the traditional way of representing a person in paint. Instead, he borrowed bodies, dissected them and found out what muscles, tendons, organs and bones are inside; and he drew from life, not from tradition. Similarly, Machiavelli did not ask an authority to give him a pious version of how divinely monarchs behave. Instead, he observed the realities of politics and power, using the Borgia family as his model, and drew his conclusions from what he witnessed. The ‘empirical’ approach, then, represented a new way of thinking which challenged the old structures of ‘authority’. Notice that Ulysses’s approach to the problem of Achilles is modelled on this way of thinking. He observes Achilles’s pride, and devises a plot on the hypothesis that he can predict how that pride will behave. The brothers Dumaine in All’s Well that Ends Well take a similar approach, devising an experiment to prove their hypothesis that Parolles will reveal his cowardice if captured. The Duke, in Measure for Measure, is similarly empirical. He has an hypothesis that Angelo’s virtue cannot really be true; and the play is really the Duke’s experiment designed to test this hypothesis.

Conclusion This chapter has only been a brief foray into a vast area of knowledge and inquiry. The reader is strongly recommended to undertake some further reading, to become familiar with the nature of Shakespeare’s time in greater detail, and to seek a more sophisticated understanding of the vast development of west European cultures, over hundreds of years, from medieval and into modern times. Meanwhile, we should be drawing two prominent conclusions from what has been discussed. First, the importance of humility: we should not patronise or make unwarranted assumptions about the past, and we should examine our own outlook both critically and honestly. Secondly, this chapter has said enough to help us recognise that Shakespeare lived and wrote ‘in the eye of the storm’: in the middle and most conflictual period of the change from medieval to

The Context

255

modern outlooks, when conflicts between ‘old’ and ‘new’ patterns were at their height in every aspect and branch of life.

Notes 1 Quoted in The Bedford Companion to Shakespeare: An Introduction with Documents (second edition), by Russ McDonald (Boston and New York, 2001), p. 329. 2 See, for example, the description of the storm in Othello, particularly at 2, i, 11–17, where imagery seems to undo God’s original division of waters from sky and firmament.

9 A Sample of Critical Views Thousands of books and articles have been written about Shakespeare, by academic critics. Several hundred are published each year. They are often written in a complicated style, and a few of them are pretentious: academics are just as fond of showing off as anybody else. It is important to remember, then, that studying the plays for yourself qualifies you to have ideas. You are not under an obligation to agree with the professional critics, and you are entitled to agree with some of what they write but not all. On the other hand, your mind can be stimulated by discussing your text with your teacher, or in a class. Treat the critics in the same way: it can be stimulating to debate the text, challenging your ideas and theirs. This is the spirit in which you should read ‘the critics’. There are also different critical approaches: there are Feminist critics, Marxist critics, Structuralist critics, Psychoanalytical critics, and so on; and each ‘school’ of criticism takes its particular angle or focus on the work being analysed. It is helpful to read at least some variety of criticism on the texts you study, because doing so will enable you to become familiar with the way each critical ‘school’ thinks. This in turn will fill out your own approach when you study, and you will pick up angles and critical techniques from the different ‘schools’, that you can apply. Five critical views of Shakespeare’s ‘problem plays’ are presented in this chapter. They differ considerably. Each extract exemplifies the critic’s approach to the plays; and all five contribute to describing what kind of plays these are. Naturally, this chapter cannot represent 256

A Sample of Critical Views

257

the many different schools of criticism that exist, or the vast range of approaches that have been tried. Our aim is to provide enough as a sample: enough to provoke further thought about different approaches and opinions. If you are interested in exploring more critical views, find a good library, and begin by using the suggestions in Further Reading at the end of this book.

E. M. W. Tillyard We mentioned E. M. W. Tillyard’s Shakespeare’s Problem Plays 1 in the Introduction. Tillyard was very influential, whether subsequent critics built on his work or disagreed with him, so his ideas make a useful starting-place. Tillyard begins by discussing his own title, finding it ‘anything but a satisfactory term’ (9), but explains his meaning by referring to the phrase ‘problem child’. There are two kinds of problem child, the first an abnormal child who will never be anything else, and the second an ‘interesting and complex’ child who will pose many problems for others, but has the potential to become a fulfilled adult: Now All’s Well and Measure for Measure are like the first problem child: there is something radically schizophrenic about them. Hamlet and Troilus and Cressida are like the second problem child, full of interest and complexity but divided within themselves only in the eyes of those who have misjudged them. To put the difference in another way, Hamlet and Troilus and Cressida are problem plays because they deal with and display interesting problems; All’s Well and Measure for Measure because they are problems. (10)

Tillyard dismisses theories which suppose some sorrow in Shakespeare’s life, to account for the plays; but he believes that ‘he was especially interested in certain matters’ which ‘make a genuine group of the four plays’ (11). These common elements are, first, a concern ‘with either religious dogma or abstract speculation or both’ (11); secondly, ‘an acute interest in observing and recording the details of human nature’. Tillyard is aware that this could be said of

258

The Context and the Critics

all Shakespeare’s works, and goes on to be more precise: ‘It is as if at that time he was freshly struck by the fascination of the human spectacle as a spectacle and that he was more content than at other times merely to record his observation without subordinating it to a great overriding theme’ (13). These are the concerns the problem plays have in common, but they also share three characteristics: in each play ‘a young man gets a shock’ (14), in each play ‘the business that most promotes this process of growth is transacted at night’ (15), and there is a particular interest in ‘old and new generations and in old and new habits of thought’ (16) in both Troilus and Cressida and All’s Well that Ends Well. This is how Tillyard introduces his grouping and naming of ‘problem plays’; he then goes on to devote a chapter to each play. We will look at what he says about Troilus and Cressida. Tillyard regards Ulysses and Troilus as the dominant characters of the play, pointing out that they recognise each other’s qualities and so go together to Calchas’s tent, where they are together for the extraordinary and climactic scene, Act 5, scene ii. Furthermore, they are polar characters: they are more than their sole selves, standing for certain sides of life. Troilus, crudely, stands for Honour, and Ulysses for Policy; and as such they represent Trojans and Greeks. Further, the Trojans are antique, the Greek modern. . . . The Trojans are the older chivalric aristocrats and they lack cunning. The Greeks are the new men; and though they are not very efficient and quarrel, at least Ulysses and Achilles have an eye to the main chance. They are not shackled by chivalric scruples; and Time, to which they are better attuned, is on their side. (86)

Tillyard takes this idea further, suggesting that there is an allegory in the play about the ‘waning aristocracy’ and ‘the new commercial classes’; but he ‘dislikes’ this kind of conjecture and is ambivalent about its validity (all from 87). Of the play as a whole, Tillyard classes it as ‘a drama of display’ (85), an idea that seems to refer back to his point about Shakespeare’s interest in showing human nature, without subjecting the display to an overriding theme. He explains that ‘Ulysses’s masterly machinations for rousing Achilles are of no account, and what

A Sample of Critical Views

259

all this protraction of effort has failed to do, the unexpected news of Patroclus’s death achieves in a moment. The picture then is one in which human plans count for little and the sheer gestation of time and what it reveals count for much’ (84). Plays from which we learn lessons are different: they need ‘characters who force the pace, who make time run’ whereas ‘if display is required, no matter if designs cancel out or come to nothing and characters are either weak or stopped from doing’. So, Troilus’s love fails ‘because its object was unworthy; yet the sheer display of its striving and of its betrayal is sufficiently exciting and instructive’ (all from 85). Tillyard attempts to sum up the effect of the play as: Exploiting a range of feelings more critical and sophisticated than elemental and unfeignedly passionate, he can play with language, spring surprises on us, mingle pathos and satire, play with the fire of tragedy without getting burnt and end by leaving us guessing. If we accept it that he meant to leave us guessing, and if we allow that the material and the tradition he inherited forced him to accept a slightly bigger burden than he could bear, we can make all necessary allowances . . . (87–8)

The chapters on All’s Well that Ends Well and Measure for Measure are a mixture of admiration and complaint. Tillyard finds wide variation in the quality of writing, in All’s Well that Ends Well; and he objects to the laboured trickery of the final scene. In Measure for Measure he suggests that Shakespeare allowed his genius to get him into trouble: the first half of the play is a passionate, poetic success of great intensity; the second half is contrived and quickly written simply to engineer a laboured ending. In his Epilogue, Tillyard makes his attempt to fit the ‘problem plays’ into ‘Shakespeare’s general progress as a dramatist’. He suggests that the success of Hamlet, a ‘tragedy only on a limited scale’ (both from 138), may have prompted Shakespeare to try something similar on a larger scale (i.e. Troilus and Cressida). The implication is that the play is a cul-de-sac in Shakespeare’s works, and if we are looking for development forward from Hamlet, that development took a different direction towards the later tragedies. All’s Well that Ends Well and Measure for Measure, however, were attempts to treat the theme of forgiveness; they were ‘early artistic failures’ (139).

260

The Context and the Critics

Shakespeare made another attempt (Cymbeline) before achieving success with The Winter’s Tale. Tillyard’s criticism is personal, assertive, and often both arrogant and patronising. He is quick to condemn some passages as bad writing, and talks easily about ‘artistic failure’. However, Shakespeare’s Problem Plays also contains some sharp insights and some strong analysis (such as the analysis of Troilus’s emotional crisis in the betrayal scene, pp. 79–82). Tillyard also sets in motion some critical issues that figure more prominently in recent studies, such as the suggestion of social allegory in Troilus and Cressida, or the role of the Duke in the second half of Measure for Measure. He also asks how to respond to plays which are full of variety but not organised into a single whole – a question Tillyard raises with his idea of drama of display, but then often answers by damning the parts he dislikes.

Harold Bloom Harold Bloom’s recent book Shakespeare: The Invention of the Human 2 is a huge work, the culmination of a lifetime’s study and scholarship from a critic who has been prominent for more than forty years. Bloom writes a chapter about each play, and we sample the one on Measure for Measure. Bloom is like Tillyard in being an outspoken and personal writer, and he starts the chapter by observing that Measure for Measure and Macbeth, are his two favourite Shakespeare plays because they are ‘unsurpassable visions of human disease, of sexual malaise in Measure for Measure, and of the imagination’s horror of itself in Macbeth’ (359). Bloom finds the play as a whole ‘mad’, ‘absurd’, and is scathing about ‘Christianizing critics’ who see an allegory of Atonement. In Bloom’s view, there is ‘simultaneous invocation and evasion of Christian belief and Christian morals. The evasion decidedly is more to the point than the invocation, and I scarcely see how the play, in regard to its Christian allusiveness, can be regarded as other than blasphemous.’ The effect of the final scene is that ‘Shakespeare, piling outrage upon outrage, leaves us morally breathless and imagi-

A Sample of Critical Views

261

natively bewildered, rather as if he would end comedy itself ’ (all from 359). Bloom’s comments on the various events and characters of the play are worth reading in full. In this chapter we will focus on his ideas about Barnardine’s role, but some thread of his argument will help take us there. Bloom points out the empty, nihilistic core of the Duke’s speech to Claudio ‘Be absolute for death’ (Act 3, scene i); and suggests that Lucio’s slanders are perhaps not slanders at all: that if not in act, at least in motive, the Duke is ‘a better woodsman than thou tak’st him for’ (4, iii, 161). Bloom sees the Duke in ‘a desperate drive away from libertinism, from the sexual malaise that he amply shares with his seething city of bawds and whores. His flight from the city’s stew of sexual corruption is manifestly a flight from himself, and his cure, as he sees it, is the innocent temptress Isabella, whose passion for chastity is perhaps reversible, or so he hopes’ (370). In his manipulations, the Duke prefigures Iago, but he lacks the later villain’s diabolical will. Vincentio is, instead, ‘the ultimate parody of the comic play-botcher, bringing order to a Vienna that cannot endure order’ (374). Bloom then turns his attention to Barnardine: The superb Barnardine will not play by the rules of Vincentio’s Vienna, and is equally unaffected both by its mortality and its mercy. For Barnardine, nine years have gone by in a drunken slumber, from which he wakes only to refuse escape and execution alike. Perhaps nothing is more dreadfully funny in Measure for Measure than the Duke-Friar’s perturbed ‘He wants advice,’ meaning more ghostly comfort of the ‘Be absolute for death’ variety. With marvelous dramatic cunning, Shakespeare prepares us for the hilarity of Barnardine’s great scene, by letting Vincentio delude himself as to his power over Barnardine: ‘Call your executioner, and off with Barnardine’s head. I will give him a present shrift, and advise him for a better place.’ But we could as well be in Alice in Wonderland or Through the Looking Glass when we hear ‘off with Barnardine’s head.’ Vincentio invariably speaks nonsense, as the audience comes to understand. Part of Barnardine’s function is to expose this nonsense; the convicted murderer’s other use is to represent, with memorable starkness, the unregenerate human nature that is Vienna or the world, invulnerable to all the oppressions of order. (376)

262

The Context and the Critics

Bloom makes it abundantly clear that he regards the whole play’s effect as nihilistic and subversive: he treats the representative of order, the Duke, as a figure of fun whose ineffectual efforts and madness are exposed by Lucio and Barnardine. When Vincentio finds himself unable to kill Barnardine in cold blood, because without a confession it would be ‘damnable’ to do so, Bloom comments: That bland idiocy, so expressive of Vincentio, is light-years away from Pompey’s exposure of our societal madness: ‘Pray, Master Barnardine, awake till you are executed, and sleep afterwards.’ Barnardine never will be fitted for his execution, and his eloquence illuminates everything that is wonderfully wrong about the world of Measure for Measure: ‘I will not consent to die this day, that’s certain.’ Only that is certain in this play, where Vincentio makes no sense whether as Duke or Friar, where Isabella’s passionate chastity is an irresistible goad to lust, and where the bed trick is sanctified well beyond Helena’s venture in All’s Well that Ends Well. For me, the best moment in the play is the interchange when the Duke says, ‘But hear you – ’ and Barnardine responds: ‘Not a word.’ (378–9)

Bloom then highlights Isabella’s final speech, in which she distinguishes between Angelo’s motives (vicious and wicked) and the events (he failed to seduce Isabella, he failed to execute Claudio), and therefore argues that mercy should be shown to him. Bloom picks up the death imagery of Isabella’s ‘buried’ and ‘perish’d’, finding in this evidence that ‘nothing is alive in Isabella’ (379–80), and pointing out that Shakespeare gives us no explanation of how she has reached such a negative, empty state of soul. He is firm, however, that the effect is deliberate: ‘Isabella, being crazed, must be serious; Shakespeare cannot be’ (379). Bloom then concludes: I do not know any other eminent work of Western literature that is nearly as nihilistic as Measure for Measure, a comedy that destroys comedy. All that remains is the marvelous image of the dissolute murderer Barnardine, who gives us a minimal hope for the human as against the state, by being unwilling to die for any man’s persuasion. (380)

Bloom’s analysis has pointed out the dark and corrupted sexual

A Sample of Critical Views

263

atmosphere of the play. Not only is Angelo a sexual sadist, but also Isabella equates all sex with incest and has pain and punishment on the brain, and Vincentio’s lust (and his voyeurism) is as foul as Angelo’s if more vicarious. Bloom’s conclusion is that Shakespeare never intends us to accept the ridiculous overt moral framework of the play, and Shakespeare intends us to reject the so-called settlement or ‘judgment’ meted out in the final scene. Both politically and sexually, Bloom regards Measure for Measure as an anarchic and subversive play. With regard to the ‘problem play’ question, Bloom regards Measure for Measure as an anti-comedy: it is in a ‘comedic’ form, but destroys comedy from the inside.

Kathleen McLuskie Our third critic is avowedly feminist. We present the discussion of Measure for Measure from her article ‘The Patriarchal Bard: Feminist Criticism and Shakespeare: King Lear and Measure for Measure’, which appears as Chapter 5 of Political Shakespeare: Essays in Cultural Materialism.3 McLuskie begins by commenting on the general critical dilemma over Measure for Measure, which has attempted to solve problems created by a tension between the imposed order of the resolution, and both liberal sensitivities and the powerful passions evoked during the play. This conflict is also between ‘narrative strategies’ such as the bed-trick and the disguised Duke, and the realism of other scenes which show corruption to be rife. According to McLuskie, the play invites discussion of sexuality and social control; but she complains that the critics have merely attempted to close off the play’s meaning by ‘invoking Jacobean marriage law or Christian theology in order to determine the rightness or wrongness of Angelo’s judgements, the reason or lack of it in Isabella’s defence of her chastity’ (93). McLuskie highlights the tensions and contradictions of the play, pointing out how ‘platitudinous’ moral absolutes, and particularly the Duke’s soliloquy in Act 3, scene ii, are, but she finds that the ending supports his resolution:

264

The Context and the Critics

Both the coup de théâtre of the Duke’s reappearance and the language which accords his merciful authority the status of ‘power divine’ provide theatrical satisfaction for the finale which endorses the social implications of the Duke’s judgement. (94)

McLuskie acknowledges that a ‘liberal humanist’ interpretation might see the play’s social message as recognising ‘the ineffectiveness of attempts at the control of such private, individual matters’ (94) as sexuality and sexual relations, but she goes on to point out that although there can be different interpretations, and these can be enhanced according to the way in which the text is performed, the text itself does impose limitations particularly on radical feminist interpretations. The different interpretations, as McLuskie puts it, are not ‘competing equals in the struggle for meaning’ because ‘the theatrical strategies which present the action to be judged resist feminist manipulation by denying an autonomous position for the female viewer of the action’ (both from 95). McLuskie’s point is that there are unalterable elements in the text, which ensure that the women on stage are only seen as men see them. Therefore, a woman in the audience is denied any freedom to see women as a woman: instead, she has to look through male eyes. This structure is so much a part of the text, that no director, however much he or she may wish to, can liberate women in the audience from these male blinkers: the text much more frequently denies . . . free play of character, defining women as sexualised, seen vis-à-vis men. (95)

McLuskie points out the ‘sexualised’ roles taken by Mistress Overdone, the pregnant Juliet and Mariana, and goes on to focus on Act 2, scene ii, the first scene in which Isabella pleads with Angelo: Isabella, for all her importance in the play, is similarly defined theatrically by the men around her for the men in the audience. In the scene of her first plea to Angelo, for example, she is physically framed by Angelo, the object of her demand, and Lucio the initiator of her plea. When she gives up after Angelo’s first refusal, Lucio urges her back with instructions on appropriate behaviour:

A Sample of Critical Views

265

Give’t not o’er so. To him again! entreat him, Kneel down before him, hang upon his gown! You are too cold. (2, ii, 43–5) As her rhetoric becomes more impassioned, her speeches longer, our view of her action is still dramatically mediated through Lucio whose approving remarks and comic asides act as a filter both for her action and for the audience’s view of it. (96)

The ‘framing’ of Isabella by Angelo and Lucio generates the erotic atmosphere that ensures ‘we understand, if we do not morally approve of, his [Angelo’s] reaction to it’ (96). Angelo reminds Isabella that he offers her only two choices: to be ‘more’ than a woman or ‘less’ than a woman, and this sets the terms of Isabella’s dilemma in the text: Any criticism which argues whether Isabella is a vixen or a saint places itself comfortably in the limited opening that the text allows for it; it takes up the argument about whether Isabella is to be more than a woman in giving up her brother or less than one in submitting to Angelo’s lust. The text allows her no other role. (97)

Therefore, ‘Feminist criticism of this play is restricted to exposing its own exclusion from the text’ (97). McLuskie concludes, then, that the play – and therefore Shakespeare – disenfranchises women in the audience and enforces a male perspective on the women in the play. McLuskie has some views in common with Harold Bloom, for example both notice the ‘platitudinous’ morality and the gratuitous and morally questionable manipulations of Vincentio. But whereas Bloom reads it as Shakespeare’s intention to subvert the Duke’s efforts and his morality of ‘order’, McLuskie concludes that we cannot set aside the theatrical finality of the play: Shakespeare intended (even forced) the audience to accept Act 5’s resolution and its attendant male view of the female characters. Bloom’s and McLuskie’s views focus our attention on the question towards which these self-contradictory and self-complicating ‘problem plays’ force our minds: the question of Shakespeare’s intentions. The variety of critics’ responses gives a variety of answers.

266

The Context and the Critics

Thomas G. West Our next critic looks at the politics of Troilus and Cressida in terms of ‘Greek’, ‘Trojan’ and finally ‘Shakespeare’s’ truths. Thomas G. West’s article ‘The Two Truths of Troilus and Cressida’ appears in an anthology of articles entitled Shakespeare as Political Thinker.4 West begins by tentatively suggesting that ‘Trojan truth’ can be called faith and ‘Greek truth’ reason. His article then expounds these two ideas in some detail, paying attention to both of the council-ofwar scenes, Act 1, scene iii and Act 2, scene ii, as well as analysing Troilus’s love-ideal in some detail. Clearly, Ulysses’s speeches in council employ covert means to adopt and wield the nominal power of Agamemnon; and Ulysses’s aim is to achieve a situation where ‘the still and mental parts’ properly direct ‘the ram that batters down the wall’ (1, iii, 200 and 206). However, West points out that ‘Greek truth’ is pragmatic and focuses on the means to achieve victory, but does not consider the ends: what is victory for, and therefore, what are they fighting for? ‘Trojan truth’, by contrast, focuses on ends. In the Trojan council, ‘the only subject of discussion is the purpose of the war and whether it is worth fighting to keep Helen’ (153). In expounding his concept of ‘Trojan truth’, West shows how Troilus’s love is conceived in terms of commerce and of Cressida as a perishable commodity, although unconsciously. Troilus ‘believes . . . that the lover’s pledge of truth to his beloved can transfigure and eternalize the merely sensual appetites that first aroused his passion. He hopes to exempt their love from worldly decay’ (145–6). In this way his passion becomes ‘a quasi-religious devotion to an ideal construct’ (146–7). However, Troilus never suggests marriage to Cressida; and his behaviour the morning after their assignation suggests that Cressida’s fear – that possession has reduced her value to him – has come true. West then points out the parallel between Trojan love and war themes, where Troilus’s impassioned rhetoric carries Hector’s attempted reason away. Both in love and war, Troilus’s ‘ideal construct’ depends on an act of will, a choice. Once a choice is made, honor requires a commitment to its execution even to death. This dedication is both honorable and yields honor. Whatever Helen’s intrinsic worth may be, says Troilus,

A Sample of Critical Views

She is a theme of honor and renown . . . etc.

267

(149)

However, West’s argument shows how the hidden inner workings of both of these ‘truths’ are revealed by the play, while both remain politically necessary. In the case of Greek truth, he says: Ulysses understands that a public fiction of beauty and ‘degree’ is a necessary part of the political imitation of nature. Just as nature enlists our admiration by its manifest ordered beauty and not by the hidden mechanisms and principles that sustain that beauty, so too man’s political regime cannot dispense with its outward look of kosmos, although the ugly designs of prudence may uphold the fabric. (152)

West’s thesis is that Troilus and Cressida is the beginning of Shakespeare’s ‘multi-play epic of Western civilization’ (143), and it exposes what he calls Eastern or Oriental (Trojan) and Western (Greek) values to trenchant analysis: Self-knowledge calls for clear-headed insight into the heart of things, but the good life also relies on a public order whose appearance belies its inner truth. Shakespeare points to this double truth by allowing us only a single look, in this play about the origins, into the inward motions within the souls of Western men. (159)

Troilus and Cressida is often taken to be a modern, ruthless and negative play, but West argues that ‘it would be more accurate to call it philosophic than modern, for its intention is not so much to dethrone the high as to show its inner workings’ (160). West’s thesis could be applied to the other two ‘problem plays’ we have studied, at least to an extent. In All’s Well that Ends Well we have noticed that the play presents a ‘high’ of Helena’s divine miracle in curing the King, while the text reveals the ‘inner workings’ of this process in her putative pragmatic manipulation of the King’s male ego. In Measure for Measure, both Isabella’s pious purity and Vincentio’s paternal ‘order’ for society are debunked by the play’s revelations of their malaise and shadowy hints about sexuality, the ‘inner workings’ of such virtuous ends. Certainly West’s thesis supports the idea that the ultimate effect of Troilus and Cressida is dual, not settled,

268

The Context and the Critics

‘that these unsettling difficulties are meant to dispel any comfort one might be tempted to take in familiar appearances, so that one’s comprehension of the play may be a product of thought’ (159).

David McCandless The final criticism summarised in this chapter looks at All’s Well that Ends Well, and comes from David McCandless’s book Gender and Performance in Shakespeare’s Problem Comedies.5 McCandless begins his analysis from the insight that ‘lurking’ under the fairy-tale are ‘the unrepresentable spectres of female sexual desire and male sexual dread’ (37): Helena has been such a puzzle and provocation to critics because she occupies the ‘masculine’ position of desiring subject, even as she apologizes fulsomely for her unfeminine forwardness and works desperately to situate herself within the ‘feminine’ position of desired object. At the same time, Bertram poses problems because he occupies the ‘feminine’ space of the objectified Other, even as he struggles to define himself as a man by becoming a military and sexual conqueror. (38)

McCandless looks at Helena’s badinage with Parolles, and her soliloquies, in Act 1, scene i, in detail. He points out that she steps outside acceptable ‘feminine’ roles in various ways, first by expressing a desire to mate and objectifying Bertram, but at the same time her image of a ‘hind’ desiring to mate with a ‘lion’ suggests that her desire is impossible. In her second soliloquy: The language Helena employs is characteristically elliptical, stemming from her guarded, coded, sexually charged dialogue with Parolles. The obscurity of her discourse perhaps reflects the unspeakability of her desire. (39)

Meanwhile, in the exchange with Parolles, Helena has taken on the role of comic straight man, participating in the discourse of ‘male bawdy, seeking a kind of release through the sublimated pleasures of naughty talk’ (40). McCandless highlights the tensions between

A Sample of Critical Views

269

Helena’s gender and sexuality, and both language and form in the play: Her need to speak cryptically and elliptically not only betrays a compulsion to conceal her sexual passion but also reflects the difficulty of representing female sexuality within an oedipal plot that typically idealizes or erases it. (41)

McCandless pursues Helena’s difficulties with gender-identity in considerable detail to which the present chapter could not do justice. He then turns his attention to Bertram’s situation at the start of the play, saying that the young hero’s problem is a quest for ‘normative masculinity’. The Countess’s words in Act 1, scene i, about burying a ‘second husband’ in parting from her son, evoke perhaps only a metaphorical idea of incest, but ‘within the oedipal plot enveloping Bertram’s development, it raises the specter of maternal engulfment threatening to his masculinity’ (49). There are two principal obstructions standing in Bertram’s way: first, an absence of men able to help him, and secondly the threat posed by Helena in league with his mother: from Bertram’s perspective, this is a threat to return him to being dominated by a mother. His own father is dead, Lafew (who offers to advise him) seems rather scornful and hostile to the youth, and the King only shames him by ordering his marriage to Helena, and prevents him from going to the wars. McCandless suggests an illuminating reading of the King’s speech to Bertram about his father (Act 1, scene ii). If we read this from the point of view of the ‘unseason’d’ youth searching for a father-figure, the King’s performance of a dramatic celebration of an intensely idealised Count, while he is apparently on his deathbed; his use of direct speech (‘“Let me not live”, quoth he . . . etc.’), and his ‘Methinks I hear him now’ mean that he ‘functions as the ghost of Bertram’s father’, but: Despite exhorting Bertram to emulate his father, the King denies him the opportunity to do so by forbidding his soldiership, rendering him unable to prove himself. (51)

McCandless finds the imagery Bertram uses in saying farewell to the

270

The Context and the Critics

other lords (‘our parting is a tortur’d body’) and in his complaint that he is ‘forehorse to a smock’ highly suggestive of the state of emasculation and the enduring fear of castration in which Bertram finds himself. The argument is that he is left little choice, but is driven into accepting the only apparently masculine role-model on offer: Parolles. McCandless pursues his analysis of Bertram from this point, and discusses the bed-trick at length. When he comes to consider the final scene of Helena’s reappearance and Bertram’s submission, he finds that both of them have only partially achieved their quest for a normative sexual identity. This goes a long way to explaining the sense of incompleteness and underlying doubt with which an audience leaves the theatre: The play’s refusal to dissipate its tensions or substantiate its tentative resolutions leaves its drama of sexual difference suspended, arrested in an unresolved but provocative, even poignant, tension. Helena remains a mystery to be solved by the reader and spectator as well. So, too, does Bertram. Both characters aim to ground themselves in genders that the play suggests are groundless – or at least unstable, fluid, performative. Neither manages to forge a stable identity or secure a clear destiny. (77)

We are not able to do full justice to the intricacy of McCandless’s analysis of psycho-sexual development in Bertram and Helena nor to his suggestions about the tensions between them, the play, and a dominant patriarchal culture: we do not have the space to represent his commentary. However, the conclusion he reaches from applying a predominantly psychoanalytical approach to the couple seems to chime with many of the other conclusions we have found: the play leaves a dual effect. We notice that this is very similar to Thomas G. West’s description of the effect of Troilus and Cressida, and underlies the debate about Shakespeare’s intentions in Measure for Measure between Kathleen McLuskie and Harold Bloom. McCandless says: ‘The play gestures toward comic closure while refusing to harmonize its anti-comic discordances’ (77). *

*

*

A Sample of Critical Views

271

The five critics whose views are summarised in this chapter represent a wide variety of approaches ranging from a fairly traditional approach in E. M. W. Tillyard, to the modern theoretical and specialised approaches we have found in Kathleen McLuskie and David McCandless in particular. This sample is not – I reiterate – intended to be any kind of survey of critical views (there are numerous others for students to find and read), but merely to provoke thought about and interest in the variety, and the potential, of differing approaches and divergent interpretations. Our critics do, however, seem to be in agreement about one thing: that the ‘problem plays’ cause problems. Whether they highlight a tension between content and form, or between disparate elements of content, they reflect an experience of plays which are not solved: not susceptible to, or provided with, a unified and stable resolution. Readers who are spurred to find out more about the critical debates constantly surrounding these plays, will find a number of suggestions which will help to begin their researches in ‘Further Reading’ below. These should enable you to find a good foothold in the criticism, and you can then use bibliographies, a good library, and other suggestions for ‘further reading’ in the critical works themselves, to help you follow up your particular inquiries.

Notes 1 London, 1950. Page-references to the Peregrine Books edition of 1965 appear in brackets after quotations. 2 (1998), London, 1999. Page-references to the Fourth Estate paperback edition are given in brackets after quotations. 3 Manchester, 1985. Page-references to the enlarged Second Edition (1994) are given in brackets after quotations. 4 Alvis, John E., and West, Thomas G. (eds), Second Edition (Wilmington, Delaware: 2000). Page-references appear in brackets after quotations. 5 Bloomington and Indianapolis, 1997. Page-references appear in brackets after quotations.

Further Reading Your first job is to study the text. There is no substitute for the work of detailed analysis: that is how you gain the close familiarity with the text, and the fully developed understanding of its content, which make the essays you write both personal and convincing. For this reason I recommend that you take it as a rule not to read any other books around or about the text you are studying, until you have finished studying it for yourself. Once you are familiar with the text, you may wish to read around and about it. This brief chapter is only intended to set you off: there are hundreds of relevant books and we can only mention a few. However, most good editions, and critical works, have suggestions for further reading, or a bibliography of their own. Once you have begun to read beyond your text, you can use these and a good library to follow up your particular interests. This chapter is divided into Reading around the text, which lists some other works by Shakespeare, and some by other contemporary writers; The historical and social background; and Criticism, which will introduce you to the varieties of opinion among professional critics.

Reading Around the Text Shakespeare’s ‘problem plays’ were written in between Hamlet (1601) and the other three great tragedies, Othello (1604), King Lear (1605) and Macbeth (1606). The closest connection is probably that 272

Further Reading

273

between Troilus and Cressida and Hamlet. However, as these are plays which share elements of form with both Comedies and Histories, it is worthwhile to read Twelfth Night (1600), the last of the festive comedies; and our discussion in Chapter 7 pointed out the problematic resolution of The Merchant of Venice (1597), which also shares an explicit theme of judgment and mercy with All’s Well that Ends Well and Measure for Measure. Among the Histories, our discussion in Chapter 7 mentions Henry IV Part 1 (1597) because of the character of Falstaff. I suggest looking at this play on that account, and also because of the opposition between a scheming political Prince of Wales, and hot-headed Harry Percy (or ‘Hotspur’), devoted to military honour. Their antithesis is analogous to the Trojan/Greek ‘truths’ (as Thomas G. West calls them) in Troilus and Cressida. For any student of All’s Well that Ends Well and Measure for Measure, it will be important to read at least one of the late tragi-comedies. Following our discussion in Chapter 7, you should read one or both of The Tempest (1611) or The Winter’s Tale (1610). With regard to contemporary plays by other playwrights, it is sometimes suggested that the Prologue speaker ‘armed’ in Troilus and Cressida is a reference to Ben Jonson’s play The Poetaster (1601), which was a shot in the Poets’ War; and another of his comedies – say The Alchemist (1610) – offers a comparison with Shakespeare’s. Thomas Heywood’s A Woman Killed with Kindness (1603) is another comedy which was successful in London at the same time as the ‘problem plays’. Webster’s two tragedies The White Devil (1612) and The Duchess of Malfi (probably also written around or before 1612) are often thought to be among the darkest, rankest and most cynical theatrical experiences available – like Troilus and Cressida, perhaps – while the character of Daniel de Bosola shows the continuing fascination with political ‘intelligencers’ like Ulysses. It is also worth looking at what was known as ‘citizen comedy’ in connection with the low-life scenes of Measure for Measure: Middleton’s A Mad World, My Masters (1604) and A Chaste Maid in Cheapside (1611) are both relevant and fun. However, once you have started to read the extraordinary variety of comedies, tragedies and many other kinds of plays from that richest of all periods in the drama, you will find it hard to resist reading more of them.

274

Further Reading

The Historical and Social Background The Elizabethan World Picture, by E. M. W. Tillyard (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1963), is regarded as naïve by many recent critics who believe that Tillyard took Elizabethan propaganda at face value, and that people of the time held conflicting views about the world. It is worth reading nonetheless, as it is a thorough explanation of one side of the ‘order’ question. The development of ideas and society in the Renaissance is, however, such a vast field that we will only mention a few other works. Interest in the theatre of Shakespeare’s time can be followed up in A. Gurr’s Playgoing in Shakespeare’s London (Cambridge, 1996) or D. Bruster’s Drama and the Market in the Age of Shakespeare (Cambridge, 1992). Historical background can be found in The Reign of Elizabeth, 1558–1603, by J. B. Black (Oxford, 1959) and Muriel St. Clare Byrne’s Elizabethan Life in Town and Country (Boston, 1961); and M. M. Badawi, Background to Shakespeare (Basingstoke: Macmillan, 1981), is also very informative. There is also an increasing number of books which provide elements of historical, cultural and theatrical background. Shakespeare: Texts and Contexts, ed. Kiernan Ryan (London, 2000), and The Bedford Companion to Shakespeare: An Introduction with Documents, by Russ McDonald, 2nd edn (Boston and New York, 2001), are two very useful examples.

Criticism The critical works sampled in Chapter 9 are: E. M. W. Tillyard, Shakespeare’s Problem Plays (London, 1950); Harold Bloom, Shakespeare: The Invention of the Human (1998; London: Fourth Estate, 1999); Kathleen McLuskie, ‘The Patriarchal Bard: Feminist Criticism and Shakespeare: King Lear and Measure for Measure’, from Political Shakespeare: Essays in Cultural Materialism, Jonathan Dollimore and Alan Sinfield (eds) 2nd edn (Manchester, 1994), pp. 88–108; Thomas G. West, ‘The Two Truths of Troilus and Cressida’, from Shakespeare as Political Thinker, John E. Alvis and Thomas G.

Further Reading

275

West (eds), 2nd edn (Wilmington, Delaware, 2000), pp. 143–62; and David McCandless, Gender and Performance in Shakespeare’s Problem Comedies (Bloomington and Indianapolis, 1997). Anthologies of critical essays and articles are a good way to sample the critics. You can then go on to read the full-length books written by those critics whose articles you have found stimulating. We referred to two critical anthologies in Chapter 9. Political Shakespeare, edited by Jonathan Dollimore and Alan Sinfield (2nd edn 1994), is a collection of criticism with the accent on cultural materialism and feminism. Jonathan Dollimore’s article ‘Transgression and Surveillance in Measure for Measure’ appears in this anthology. Shakespeare as a Political Thinker, edited by John E. Alvis and Thomas G. West (2000), contains a further article on Troilus and Cressida, another on Measure for Measure, and yet others on Shakespeare in general in relation to political thought. Another anthology in which some of the dominant more traditional critics, such as G. Wilson Knight, M. C. Bradbrook and Clifford Leech, write about the ‘problem plays’, is Shakespeare, The Comedies: A Collection of Critical Essays, ed. Kenneth Muir (New Jersey, 1965). There are critical introductions to all three of the plays studied in this volume, in the ‘Harvester New Critical Introductions to Shakespeare’ series: on Measure for Measure by Harriet Hawkins (Brighton, 1987); on All’s Well that Ends Well by Sheldon P. Zitner (New York and London, 1989); and on Troilus and Cressida by Jane Adamson (Brighton, 1987). There are also anthologies devoted to the individual plays. C. K. Stead’s Macmillan Casebook on Measure for Measure contains most of the articles also found in Kenneth Muir’s anthology as well as some others, and a useful selection of comments from Shakespeare’s time through to the twentieth century. Another is William Shakespeare’s ‘Measure for Measure’, ed. Harold Bloom, in the ‘Modern Critical Interpretations’ series (New York, 1987). The following full-length critical works include some which are about Shakespeare in general, and some which focus on either the ‘problem plays’ or one play. Shakespeare and the Nature of Women, by Juliet Dusinberre (London and New York, 1975); Caroline Spurgeon, Shakespeare’s Imagery, and What it Tells Us (Cambridge,

276

Further Reading

1935); Anthony Brennan, Onstage and Offstage Worlds in Shakespeare’s Plays (London and New York, 1989); Penny Gay, As She Likes It: Shakespeare’s Unruly Women (London and New York, 1994); Terry Eagleton, William Shakespeare (Oxford and New York, 1986); Richard P. Wheeler, Shakespeare’s Development and the Problem Comedies: Turn and Counter-Turn (Los Angeles and London, 1981); Marilyn L. Williamson, The Patriarchy of Shakespeare’s Comedies (Detroit, 1986); Marc Shell, The End of Kinship: ‘Measure for Measure’, Incest, and the Ideal of Universal Siblinghood (Stanford, Cal., 1988); Lawrence J. Ross, On ‘Measure for Measure’: An Essay in Criticism of Shakespeare’s Drama (Newark and London, 1997); Barbara E. Bowen, Gender in the Theater of War: Shakespeare’s ‘Troilus and Cressida’ (New York and London, 1993); W. R. Elton, Shakespeare’s ‘Troilus and Cressida’ and the Inns of Court Revels (Aldershot and Vermont, 2000). Some of the most influential criticisms of Shakespeare have appeared within critical works with a wider scope than the one author; or as articles in anthologies or periodicals on more general subjects, such as ‘Renaissance Drama’ or ‘Fairy-Tales in Literature’. In this connection, it is worthwhile to use the subject-index in a library, and references and bibliographies which appear in the critical works you try first, both of which will point you towards many valuable contributions to the critical debate, and the many different critical approaches such as Marxism, Feminism, Psychoanalysis, Structuralism, Post-Structuralism, and so on. If you pursue your own thoughts and interests through reading, you will find that there is eventually a heterogeneous list of books that have influenced your thinking, or developed your responses to Shakespeare’s plays. These will include a number which are not directly relevant to Shakespeare at all (in my own reading, for example, R. H. Tawney’s Religion and the Rise of Capitalism has been influential) or which, like Aristotle’s Poetics and Machiavelli’s The Prince, are relevant, but not about Shakespeare. So, it is important to allow your reading to grow through your interests, and to be openminded about where you may find the stimulation you are looking for, rather than sticking too rigidly within the Lit. Crit. path.

Index All’s Well that Ends Well analysis, 1, i, 23–68, 11–12 analysis, 4, ii, 27–66, 44–51 analysis, 1, i, 212–25, 82–94 analysis, 4, iii, 1–35, 116–21 analysis, 4, iii, 319–28, 156–8 Bertram as a caricature, 49–51 Bertram as a scapegoat, 133–4 Bertram, compared to Claudio, 61–2 Bertram, linguistic poverty compared to Ajax, 174 damaged society, 134–6 date, 229 degree or ‘order’, 120–1, 134 dissident voices, 175–8 dramatic organisation, analysed, 188–92 female reason vs. male passion, 51 Florence a contrasting setting, 190–1 Helena, modern attitude, 85–7 ideology set aside, 183 Lavatch, free from conventions, 177 the Lords Dumaine, 116–21 Parolles, reaction to being unmasked, 156–8 Parolles, outside the social order, 156–8, 177–8 Parolles, compared to Barnardine, 174–5 political actions, 139–41 text, 225 277

Alvis, John E., and West, Thomas G. (eds), Shakespeare as Political Thinker, 266, 274–5 Analysis, methods of, 36–41, 79–80, 114, 152–3, 184–5, 218–19 analysing dramatic organisation using tables, 187–8, 218–19 changing your angle of view, 80 formulating leading questions, 152–3 summarising a train of ideas, 65–6 Antony and Cleopatra, 82, 92, 227 As You Like It, 237 authority in feudal society, 244–5 in the medieval Church, 250 Bible, the Genesis, 146n blank verse, 4 Bloom, Harold, Shakespeare: The Invention of the Human, 58n, 260–3, 274 caesura, definition, 6 Calvin, John, 250 Calvinism, 85–6 ‘Chain of being’, the, 245 Chaucer, Geoffrey, The Canterbury Tales, 249–50 Church of England, 250, 251 Coleridge, Samuel Taylor comment on Helena, 88

278

Index

Columbus, Christopher, 253 context, the, 243–55 religion, 249–52 society, 243–9 ways of thinking, 252–4 Coriolanus, 226 Crane, Ralph (scrivener), 225 Da Vinci, Leonardo, 253–4 degree and order as the dominant moral discourse, 175 attacked by Thersites, 168 God and King controlling, in All’s Well that Ends Well, 120–1, 134 in feudal society, 243–5 insufficiency as the dominant discourse, 220–1 Ulysses’s speech, 129, 134, 147, 253 diction, analysis of, 40–1 divine right, 244–5 Dollimore, Jonathan and Sinfield, Alan (eds), Political Shakespeare: Essays in Cultural Materialism, 263, 274

iambic metre, iambic pentameter, 4–6 imagery analysed by making a list, 18–19, 25–8, 31–3, 39, 64–5, 97–9, 119–21 definitions, similes and metaphors, 7–8 of disease, in Measure for Measure, 98 of disease, in Troilus and Cressida and Hamlet, 168–9 Jaggard, Isaac, 226 James I, King, Speech to the Lords and Commons etc., 244–5 Jonson, Ben The Alchemist, 273 The Poetaster, 273 King Lear, 227, 248 Langland, William, Piers the Plowman, 250 lordship, 244 Love’s Labours Lost, 234 Luther, Martin, 250

Elizabeth I, Queen, 99n, 230 Further Reading, 272–6 criticism, 274–6 historical and social background, 274 reading around the text, 272–3 Galileo, 253 Hamlet, 1, 177n, 226, 227 compared to Troilus and Cressida, 240–1 disease imagery compared to Measure for Measure, 98 disease images different from Thersites’, 168–9 Henry IV Parts 1 and 2, 220, 227 Falstaff, 93, 220, 235 Henry VIII, 226 Heywood, Thomas, A Woman Killed with Kindness, 273 Hunter, G. K. (ed.), All’s Well that Ends Well, xi, 225

Macbeth, 260 Machiavelli, Niccolò, 147, 150, 254 The Prince, 248, 276 McCandless, David, Gender and Performance in Shakespeare’s Problem Comedies, 268–70, 275 McDonald, Russ, The Bedford Companion to Shakespeare: An Introduction with Documents, 245n, 274 McLuskie, Kathleen, ‘The Patriarchal Bard: Feminist Criticism and Shakespeare: King Lear and Measure for Measure’, 263–5, 274 Measure for Measure analysis, 1, i, 1–52, 22–9 analysis, 3, i, 94–150, 51–62 analysis, 2, ii, 100–43, 94–102 analysis, 3, i, 231–70, 122–6 analysis, 3, ii, 89–117, 158–64 Angelo as a scapegoat, 133–4

Index

279

Measure for Measure – continued Barnardine, compared to Parolles, 174–5 Barnardine debunking language, 174–5 Claudio, male horror of nonphysical, 57–8 Claudio, compared to Bertram, 61–2 damaged society, 136–7 date, 229 degree or ‘order’, 134 dissident voices, 178–80 dramatic organisation, analysed, 192–207 elaborate structure of Act 3, scene i, 53–4, 61 Elbow, misuse of language, 171 justice debate sidetracked, 183–4 Isabella’s fury, 58–9 Isabella, problems in her character discussed, 100–2 Lucio, verbal style analysed, 161–4 political actions, 141–5 sex and the economy, 179–80 text, 225 the play as a performance, Vincentio as dramatist, 55, 78, 192, 205–7, 216–7, 227, 238–9 Vincentio, compared to Prospero, 238–9 Merchant of Venice, The, 226, 227, 234 dual moral discourse, 233 Shylock, 232–3 Middleton, Thomas A Chaste Maid in Cheapside, 273 A Mad World, My Masters, 273 Midsummer Night’s Dream, A, 237 Miracle play, 217 Morality play, 213, 217 Much Ado about Nothing, 92, 227, 232, 234 Sir John the Bastard, 232

poetry, analysis of, 4–7, 41 couplets, 6–7 end-stopped and run-on lines, 6, 39 predestination, 85–6 ‘problem plays’, the, 1, 222, 271 competing discourses, 92–3, 101–2, 112–13, 116, 152, 175, 220–2 damaged societies, 134–9, 150 dark mood, historical explanations for, 230 dates, 2, 229 degree as dominant moral discourse, 175 dissident voices, 175–82 dominant male gender-discourse, 111–12 drama, 187–219 empiricism, 254 feminine stereotyping, 112 fools’ language, 169–70, 182, 184 in Shakespeare’s works, 225–42 insoluble issues, 182, 241–2, 271 insufficiency of dominant discourse, 220–1 language as power and danger, 171–5, 182 modern outlook, 221 nature, 134 older men as ‘mentors’, 76–7 openings, 11–43 political actions, 139–49 politics and society, 116–55 previous labels, 1 righteousness of plotters, 133 scapegoats, 133–4, 151–2 uncertainty about meanings, 173–4, 182 uncertainty in opening scenes, 34–6 women, 82–115 young men, 44–81 Puritans, 251

nature and society in All’s Well that Ends Well, 119–21 in Measure for Measure, 125–6

Reformation, the, 250–1 Richard III, 234–5 Romeo and Juliet, 82, 226 Rowe, Nicholas, Some Account of the Life of William Shakespear, 230

Othello, 227, 248, 253n

280

Index

Scapegoating, 151–2 Shakespeare, William chronological list of plays, 227–8 classification of plays, 1–2, 226–9 dating plays, 228–9 deaths of son and father, 230 First Folio, 225 late romances, 217, 236–40 life, 230–1 studying a play, 3–4 analysing drama by using tables, 187–219 imagining a performance, 35, 38 Tempest, The, 217, 226, 227, 238–9 Gonzalo’s ‘commonwealth’, 248–9 Prospero, compared to Vincentio, 238–9 Tillyard, E. M. W. The Elizabethan World Picture, 245, 274 Shakespeare’s Problem Plays, 1–2, 226, 257–60, 274 Troilus and Cressida Achilles as a scapegoat, 133–4 alliance between order and cynicism, 130 analysis, 1, i, 1–38, 29–34 analysis, 3, ii, 153–78, 62–9 analysis, 1, ii, 249–86, 103–10 analysis, 1, iii, 312–92, 126–34 analysis, 2, i, 1–48, 164–9 compared to Hamlet, 240–1 contrast between Troilus and Pandarus, 33–4 Cressida, dual discourse in her character, 106–10

damaged society, 137–8 date, 229 degree, Ulysses’s speech, 129, 134, 147 degree, Hector’s version, 137–8 dissident voices, 180–2 dramatic organisation of Act 5, scene ii, analysed, 207–16 love and war, relation between, 72–5, 107 parallels between 1, iii; 2, i; and 2, ii, 166–8 political actions, 145–9 Quarto of 1609, 226 self-contradictions, 180–2 structure of Act 1, scene iii analysed, 128–30 Thersites, 166–9 time as a theme, 147 Troilus and courtly love, 67–9 Troilus at the end of the play, 72–5 Troilus’s imagery, 32, 64–5 Ulysses as machiavellian, 147–9 Twelfth Night, 92, 233 Malvolio, 233 war with Spain, 251 Webster, John The Duchess of Malfi, 248, 273 The White Devil, 273 West, Thomas G., ‘The Two Truths of Troilus and Cressida’, 266–8 Winter’s Tale, The, 226 compared to All’s Well that Ends Well, 236–8 Wyclif, John, 250