Culture-blind Shakespeare : Multiculturalism and Diversity [1 ed.] 9781443886321, 9781443885324

Citation preview

Culture-blind Shakespeare

Culture-blind Shakespeare: Multiculturalism and Diversity Edited by

Maryam Beyad and Ali Salami

Culture-blind Shakespeare: Multiculturalism and Diversity Edited by Maryam Beyad and Ali Salami This book first published 2016 Cambridge Scholars Publishing Lady Stephenson Library, Newcastle upon Tyne, NE6 2PA, UK British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library Copyright © 2016 by Maryam Beyad, Ali Salami and contributors All rights for this book reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior permission of the copyright owner. ISBN (10): 1-4438-8532-0 ISBN (13): 978-1-4438-8532-4

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Introduction: Relocating the East and the West in Shakespeare .................. 1 Maryam Beyad and Ali Salami Part I: Shakespeare and Diversity The Once and Future Bard: Shakespeare and King Arthur ......................... 9 Gabriel Schenk King Lear: Tragedy of a Dubious Post- Reformation Epistemology ........ 21 Maryam Beyad and Bamshad Hekmatshoar Tabari The Failure of Faith in Hamlet .................................................................. 29 Maryam Beyad and Hossein Torkamannejad “Crushed with a Plot”: On the Uses of Witchcraft in Shakespeare’s Dramatic Structures ................................................................................... 39 William Badger Vision of the Ideal Marriage in Much Ado about Nothing ........................ 49 Masoud Ghafoori and Mina Ghafoori Language Functions in The Tempest ......................................................... 63 Hossein Pirnajmuddin and Omid Amani Part II: Shakespeare and Popular Culture Temptation and Love in Shakespeare’s Romances ................................... 73 Narges Bayat The Fantastic in A Midsummer Night's Dream .......................................... 85 Hossein Fathi and Mohsen Rezaeian

vi

Table of Contents

Part III: Shakespeare and Multiculturalism Ambivalence and Mimicry in The Tempest ............................................... 95 Ali Salami and Amir Riahi The New Woman and the Oriental Tropes as Portrayed in the Iranian Film Tardid based on Hamlet .................................................................. 107 Shekufeh Owlia The Bard Goes to the East: Shakespeare in Iran ...................................... 119 S. Habib Mousavi and Babak Rajabi Persian Hamlet: Cultural Elements in Reza Goran’s Adaptation ............ 137 Zakarya Bezdoode Gender Differences in Teaching Hamlet to Iranian EFL Students .......... 147 Amir Ghajarieh and Zuraidah Mohd Don

INTRODUCTION: RELOCATING THE EAST AND THE WEST IN SHAKESPEARE MARYAM BEYAD AND ALI SALAMI

“All the world’s a stage” is one of the most speculative and thoughtprovoking lines from Shakespeare. The ambiguity of this phrase has puzzled critics and readers over the ages. Is the stage what the superficial eye sees? Do all activities take place backstage? Are we all merely enacting a role, and gradually “strut out, and heard of no more?” Are we doing and speaking what is demanded of us, not “speaking the language of the heart?” Are we puppets in the hands of the governing class? Such queries, obscurities, and enigmas surround the plays of Shakespeare, and this is exactly what has enchanted readers for generations, and in different parts of the world. Shakespeare’s plays have survived and surpassed historical times, and broken geographical boundaries and cultural walls. The themes, characters, and plots appeal to all, hypnotizing readers both in the East and the West. He is one of the very rare writers—perhaps we would dare to say the only writer—who is “not of an age, but for all ages.” We often ask ourselves: Who was Shakespeare? Is he merely a writer who has created scores of characters, none overlapping, each unique and lifelike? Is he a sage, a philosopher, a historian, or has he deconstructed history and presented his monarchs with diverse passions, stripping them of their monarchical clothes, presenting them within the ordinary realm of everyday life? In his plays, we are neither reading the story of a king nor of a queen; rather, we are encountering an ordinary person with the mask of a monarch; behind the mask is a person like us, full of passions, weaknesses, and drawbacks; inconsistent, indecisive, and arrogant. Reading and rereading his plays are like the rotations of prisms, a work we handmade as little children with cardboard and broken glass, every rotation giving a new spectrum. So is the case with Shakespeare. Every reading and analysis offers diverse views to individual readers; critics in all the

2

Introduction: Relocating the East and the West in Shakespeare

different ages have presented new glimpses of his plays. Even though the plays were written with critical attitudes to the Tudor and Stuart dynasties, despite alterations he made to the historical records, they were tailored to fit perfectly within the framework of the renaissance, producing a chain of responses of “pity and fear,” engaging the attention of readers, involving them emotionally to the extent that a play like King Lear appeals more as the story of a broken-hearted father than a failed king, a play in which the leading theme of “ingratitude” strikes a deep chord in its readers when a father raises his hands to the sky and exclaims: You heavens, give me that patience, patience I need. You see me here (you gods) a poor old man, As full of grief as age, wretched in both! If it be you that stir these daughters’ hearts Against their father, fool me not so much To bear it tamely. (2.4)

We need, however, to acknowledge and appreciate the role of the translators since they are largely responsible for globalising the plays of Shakespeare, thus enabling non-English speakers to know and understand them. To quote the German writer Goethe, “I am more and more convinced that poetry is the universal possession of mankind, revealing itself everywhere and at all times in hundreds and hundreds of men … I therefore like to look about me in foreign nations … national literature is now a rather unmeaning term, the epoch of world literature is now a rather unmeaning term, the epoch of world literature is at hand, and everywhere must strive to hasten its approach” (Damrosch 1-2). However the popularity of Shakespeare cannot and should not be attributed only to translations or film adaptations. The dialogue, the soliloquies, and the philosophical meanings behind them are undoubtedly thought-provoking and in most instances a mirror held up to reality. We often see ourselves in these lines, since Shakespeare is addressing humanity, not any particular individual; his concern is the human and their predicament, and what they make out of their own life. Without being didactic or instructive, without being critical and offensive, he is able to bring to our attention those flaws and weaknesses that otherwise may go unnoticed, even by ourselves. How did he manage all this? His panoramic and acute world vision—sometimes cynical—and “his comprehensive soul” (in Rawson 2004, 165) perhaps made all this possible. Rather than distancing himself from his work and his characters, he actually stepped into each life like a phantom hovering around them and like an artist

Maryam Beyad and Ali Salami

3

putting colour and vitality and breath into the otherwise dull human portraits. What amazes and has amazed readers through the centuries is the writer's academic background and the product of his works. Many have strived to prove that the works were not written by Shakespeare but fortunately were all proved wrong. “Whilst other dramatists can only gain attention by hyperbolical or aggravated characters … Shakespeare approximates the remote, and familiarizes the wonderful; the event which he represents will not happen, but if it were possible, its effects would probably be such as he has assigned … he has not only shown human nature as it acts in real exegeses, but as it would be found in trials, to which it cannot be exposed” (qtd. in Tomarken 1991, 116). This collection of essays is a tribute to the writer, poet, philosopher, and political analyst who remains alive for his readers, a living writer speaking to us, constantly warning us against the pitfalls of human folly, hypocrisy, and obsession with power. With absolute surety we can vouch that he is the messenger of peace and love, who strove towards a world devoid of war, hatred, and animosity. Divided into three parts, this volume deals with a diversity of issues on culture and multiculturalism. In part one, titled “Shakespeare and Diversity,” the contributors discuss diverse approaches to Shakespeare. For instance, in “The Once and Future Bard: Shakespeare and King Arthur,” Gabriel Schenk argues that Shakespeare and Arthur are linked partly because they are natural companions—kingship, brotherhood, and power dynamics are important aspects of both the Arthurian legend and Shakespeare’s works and both have important places in the British national consciousness. In addition, he argues that although Shakespeare did not write about Arthur, Victorian Arthurian writers in particular were influenced by the works of Shakespeare, using his style of language to convey a sense of “high” art and archaism, whilst retaining popular appeal. In “The Failure of Faith in Hamlet,” Maryam Beyad and Hossein Torkamannejad combine the reading strategies of New Critics and the philosophies of St. Augustine and Martin Luther, i.e. theologians who, in the writers’ opinion, deeply affected Shakespeare’s Christian mentality. They argue that Hamlet appears initially in the play as a relatively faithful and conventionally pious Christian figure, whose benign Christianity gives way to his relentless tendency to depression and cynicism. This failure of faith has largely been attributed to the malign influence of the late King's ghost. By reference to overt clues in the text, they further argue that the ghost—contrary to his own claims—has in fact returned from hell rather than purgatory. Hamlet's eventual disintegration of faith finally reaches a

4

Introduction: Relocating the East and the West in Shakespeare

climax when, at a critical moment, he chooses to spare Claudius's life while he is praying, not out of pity or Christian compassion, but out of an uncannily Mephistophelian turn of his religious beliefs. In “Crushed with a Plot: On the Uses of Witchcraft in Shakespeare’s Dramatic Structures,” William Badger pays particular attention to the structural implications of witchcraft and cursing in Richard III. As though the eponymous Richard is himself responsible for shaping and giving form to the drama, “prologue-like” he tells the audience of his planned treason: “Plots have I laid, inductions dangerous / … To set my brother Clarence and the King / In deadly hate, the one against the other” (1.1.32–35). This speech sets the trajectory of the play and conditions the audience’s expectations for its unfolding at least until its climactic moment. For Richard, the sphere of the supernatural, of malign prophecies and witchcraft, productively connects to and overlaps with the sphere of treason. The writer demonstrates that both spheres were useful to Shakespeare for the production of plot and the proleptic anticipation of dramatic structure. In “Much Ado in the Subplot: Vision of Ideal Marriage in Much Ado About Nothing,” Masoud Ghafoori and Mina Ghafoori argue that the energetic interaction between Beatrice and Benedick in Much Ado About Nothing is often more than not relegated to the status of a subplot and is interpreted as a sign of love between the two from the beginning of their encounter. But, if their quarrels and repartees are taken seriously, we would come to the realisation that there is no solid ground for the commonplace belief that they love each other at the beginning as well as at the end. Nevertheless, things change through the play and bring these two disdainful enemies so close together that they agree to marry at the end. The authors argue that, for Shakespeare, marriage is not just a stage in life, or the result of blind passion and love at first sight, as is the case with Hero and Claudio. In “Language Functions in The Tempest,” Hossein Pirnajmuddin and Omid Amani examine language functions as theorised by Roman Jakobson in The Tempest in order to cast light on the process of identity fashioning of the characters, particularly Prospero, in terms of the modality of operation and the relative significance of different language functions—referential, phatic, emotive, poetic, metalingual, conative—in the text of the play. For instance, the authors discuss the significance of the dominance of the phatic function in the opening scene of the play. Also, central to their analysis is the relevance of the Jakobsonian model of linguistic communication to issues of theatricality and rhetoric as strategies of identity fashioning.

Maryam Beyad and Ali Salami

5

In “The Fantastic in A Midsummer Night's Dream,” Hossein Fathi and Mohsen Rezaeian argue that, in the play, Athens and the world of fairies are separate; however, they merge and influence each other in certain ways. Addressing the play in terms of Tzvetan Todorov’s concept of “the fantastic,” they argue that Todorov proposes that the fantastic, a subjective term, stands between the two literary genres of the uncanny and the marvellous, and that in this play the realm of fairies, being essentially a dream world, imprints its influence on the world of reality. Through the portrayals of contrasts between the two worlds, Shakespeare tries to present the dream state, where dreams are regarded as a dependable source of vision. In “Ambivalence and Mimicry in The Tempest,” Ali Salami and Amir Riahi discuss what is possibly the last play written by the Bard, seeking to delve into the manifold binary colonial representations of Caliban produced by the white colonists. Then, by using Homi K. Bhabha's theories of “ambivalence” and “mimicry,” they indicate how the ideology of colonialism cannot successfully achieve its aim to marginalise and otherise Caliban, explicating the ambivalence embedded in colonial discourses. In “Gender Differences in Teaching Hamlet to Iranian EFL Students,” Amir Ghajarieh and Zuraidah Mohd Don discuss the challenging task of teaching Hamlet to Iranian students and focus on its cultural elements by selecting a group of 16 English-majors, with which they discuss a list of extracts from the play. In “The New Woman and the Oriental Tropes as Portrayed in the Iranian Film Tardid Based on Hamlet,” Shekufeh Owlia shows how Iranian director Varuzh Karim Masihi wrote and directed his version of Hamlet in 2009, winning the Crystal Simorgh in the category of best adapted screenplay of the year at the Fajr Film Festival. In adapting the play, he depicts contemporary Iran in transition, from traditional values to a modern society. The plot focuses on Siavash Ruzbehan, whose father is said to have committed suicide as a result of which his mother intends to marry his uncle. The protagonist, who realises how similar the recent events in his life are to Shakespeare’s tragedy Hamlet, feigns madness and desperately attempts to escape his doomed fate with the help of his Armenian friend Garo and his cousin Mahtab, with whom he is in love. The contributor highlights the existing similarities and differences between this Persian adaptation and the original play, laying particular stress on the fact that some of Karim Masihi’s attempts at integrating folkloric elements into the plot’s structure render a distorted image of contemporary Persian society.

6

Introduction: Relocating the East and the West in Shakespeare

“The Bard Goes to the East: Shakespeare in Iran” is an essay by S. Habib Mousavi and Babak Rajabi, who take a trip down through history to see exactly when Shakespeare found his way into Iran. Hence, they leaf through some pages of the history of the Qajar Era, the period when the translation movement bloomed, in order to locate the persons who presented Shakespeare to the Iranians. The writers mostly focus on Naser al-Mulk, Hovannes Khan MosƗ’ed and the Russian influence. In “Iranian Hamlet: Cultural Elements in Mohammad Charmsheer's Adaptation,” Zakarya Bezdoode shows how Iranian director Mohammad Charmsheer, in his extreme adaptation of Hamlet, endeavoured to include so many Iranian cultural elements that it is difficult to say the play is not Iranian. It is preferably called extreme, in that it has lost its Western and English background and turned into an Iranian work of art. These elements create a spectrum from language through music to some technical devices like costume, light and sound effects. The author seeks to delineate how Charmsheer brought changes to the play, thereby arguing that he Persianised Hamlet in two ways: emphasizing those aspects and motifs of the play that overlap Iranian culture, and projecting Iranian culture onto it. The panoramic plethora of responses to Shakespeare by Western and Eastern critics is strongly indicative of the fact that the Bard crosses all nationalities and deserves to be called a global writer. That is why he is easily appreciated, manipulated, translated, adapted, and interpreted by everyone, everywhere.

Bibliography Damrosch, David. 2003. What Is World Literature? Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. Rawson, Claude Julien., and Aaron Santesso. 2004. John Dryden (1631– 1700): His Politics, His Plays, and His Poets. Newark: University of Delaware Press. Smallwood, Philip J., and Samuel Johnson. 1985. Johnson's Preface to Shakespeare: A Facs. of the 1778 Ed. Bristol: Bristol Classical Press. Tomarken, Edward. 1991. Samuel Johnson on Shakespeare: The Discipline of Criticism. Athens: University of Georgia Press.

PART I SHAKESPEARE AND DIVERSITY

THE ONCE AND FUTURE BARD: SHAKESPEARE AND KING ARTHUR GABRIEL SCHENK1

Shakespeare is, arguably, England’s greatest writer, but he does not belong to England alone; he crosses national and temporal boundaries. Another figure who crosses national and temporal boundaries is King Arthur. Like Shakespeare, Arthur has a long-lasting appeal and is a national icon of England and Britain, but has also become popular and well known in other countries. The two figures share a level of indistinctness and mystery. Shakespeare’s historicity is far more certain than Arthur’s, who is a legendary figure with very little historical basis, but there is still uncertainty about many aspects of Shakespeare’s life, including key facts such as his exact birth date and what he looked like. Besides, the authorship of his plays has famously been questioned and debated. As Bill Bryson writes, Shakespeare “is at once the best known and least known of figures” (2008, 7). Shakespeare, like Arthur, is an unstable identity. Arthur has been rewritten and reinterpreted by every author who has tackled his story. Similarly, Shakespeare and his work are constantly being reinterpreted with every new critical analysis or dramatic performance. In Reinventing Shakespeare (1990), Gary Taylor argues that Shakespeare does not have a single unified identity, but instead the idea of who Shakespeare is has been reinvented multiple times throughout history, according to cultural and literary tastes. Some writers have related Arthur and the associated characters such as Merlin, or more broadly the canon of Arthurian literature, to Shakespeare. There are four ways that this has been done. Firstly, by treating Shakespeare as a contributor to the Arthurian legend, drawing on the scant references to Arthur and related characters found in his canonical works. Secondly, by arguing that Shakespeare was influenced by Arthurian texts even in works that seem to have no connection to the legend. Thirdly, by attributing the Arthurian play The Birth of Merlin to him, and fourthly, by using fiction to make Shakespeare the writer of an 1

Oxford University.

10

The Once and Future Bard: Shakespeare and King Arthur

Arthurian play. This last approach has been attempted honestly—through the medium of a novel—as well as dishonestly, as forgery. This essay will outline and analyse these inter-literary approaches in order to demonstrate how far-reaching Shakespeare’s influence is—felt even in a subject matter he barely wrote about. Shakespeare crosses literary traditions as much as times and national boundaries. The first category in which writers draw on Shakespeare’s contribution to the Arthurian legend is limited when only the canonical works are included, as they contain only two references to Arthur and two to Merlin, the magician of Arthur’s court. In I King Henry IV (3.1), Hotspur describes how angry Glendower makes him when he speaks at tedious length about the supernatural and of “the dreamer Merlin and his prophecies.” Here, Merlin exemplifies what Hotspur dislikes about Glendower—they are comparable because both are prophetic Welsh magicians. Merlin’s inclusion suggests that he was a reasonably wellknown example for Shakespeare and his audience. Merlin is also referenced in King Lear (3.2) when the Fool makes a prophecy about Britain descending into chaos, partly based on similar lines from “Merlin's Prophecy” in George Puttenham’s Arte of English Poesie.1 The fool ends his soliloquy by saying, “[t]his prophecy Merlin shall make, for I live before his time.” Again, Merlin is only used as an example of a prophesier, and Shakespeare does not explore the character or any element from the legend in his reference, besides stating that Merlin gives prophecies. These two mentions of Merlin are still enough to warrant Shakespeare an entry in The New Arthurian Encyclopedia (1996), however, in which J. Paul McRoberts cites the lines as evidence for an “Arthurian influence on Shakespeare” (416). McRoberts does not cite Shakespeare’s reference to Arthur. The first of these references is found in Henry IV (2.4.32–3), when Falstaff sings two lines, “[w]hen Arthur first in court … And was a worthy king,” quoted from a ballad about Arthur and Lancelot, composed shortly before Shakespeare’s play was written in 1595. The lines are comically interrupted by an instruction to empty a pot of urine and this context suggests that Arthur, or at least the ballad’s lines about him, is at best trivial, and at worst only fit for the toilet. The second reference to Arthur is given in a more elevated context. In Henry V (2.3), a hostess remarks that the recently deceased Falstaff is “not in hell: he's in Arthur's / Bosom, if ever man went to Arthur's bosom.” The hostess is either misquoting or deliberately altering the image of the Bosom of Abraham, referring to a 1

This was first noted by the English philologist Walter Skeat (1896).

Gabriel Schenk

11

place of comfort in the afterlife from Judeo-Christian scripture.1 Arthur’s Bosom suggests an earthly resting place for Falstaff that is in contrast to the overtly religious Abraham’s, and this difference makes the location appropriate for the vain, fat character. The Hostess’s remark—like so many other lines from Shakespeare’s works—has a long afterlife. In David Jones’s modernist poem In Parenthesis (1937), a Welsh character killed in the trenches of the First World War is said to sleep “in Arthur’s lap,” and Jones’s note cites Shakespeare as the source (Jones 2010, 155, 220). One of Jones’s aims in In Parenthesis was to combine different literary sources in one complex narrative. Used here, Shakespeare’s words bring Welsh and English literary strands together—Jones primarily draws on Welsh sources for his depictions of Arthur, but by using Shakespeare, Jones combines an English playwright with a figure from Welsh legend comforting a Welsh soldier in death. Another writer, T.H. White, uses the line to bring Shakespeare into the Arthurian literary tradition. In White’s The Book of Merlyn (1941, published 1977), the line is quoted in an overview of Arthur’s long-lasting cultural fame. Shakespeare is included in a list of “reliable witnesses” who write about Arthur’s final resting place, along with Chaucer, Spenser, Milton, Wordsworth, and Tennyson (White 1996, 810). Falstaff going to Arthur’s rather than Abraham’s bosom is, for White, Shakespeare’s “contribution” to the legend (811). The company White puts Shakespeare in is revealing. Whilst Spenser and Tennyson both wrote long Arthurian works, Chaucer, Milton, and Wordsworth barely wrote about Arthur at all, although the last two poets had intended to write epic treatments of the legend.2 In citing writers like Shakespeare who are the cornerstones of the English literary canon, White makes the Arthurian legend seem more important and integral to English culture than it might otherwise if he had only cited Spenser and Tennyson. The fact that Shakespeare and other writers only mention Arthur briefly does not matter. White is essentially “name dropping” Shakespeare in order to elevate his subject. The second category consists of writers who connect Shakespeare and Arthur together by arguing that Shakespeare was influenced by Arthurian writings in his work. The earliest example of such a writer is, probably, the folklorist Alfred Nutt, who in 1900 argued that Shakespeare is indebted to Arthurian romances in A Midsummer Night’s Dream. “It is evident,” writes Nutt, “that Shakespeare derived both the idea of a fairy 1 2

See Luke (XVI, 22–3). See Taylor (1996, 36).

12

The Once and Future Bard: Shakespeare and King Arthur

realm reproducing the external aspect of a medieval court, and also the name of his fairy king from medieval romance, that is, from the Arthurian cycle” (1990, 11). The link to Arthur is tenuously based on the association between Arthur and the fairy world of medieval romance, rather than on anything unique to the Arthurian legend that is used in Midsummer. A later academic, A. Kent Hieatt, argues that Shakespeare was influenced by Arthurian literature in a more direct way; specifically, by the account of Arthur’s military victories against the Roman empire, and subsequent rejection of Roman rule in Malory’s Morte Darthur (1485), which Hieatt believes Shakespeare “may have been reacting against” when he wrote Cymbeline, in which King Cymbeline achieves military victories against Rome but chooses to accept Roman rule (1988, 176). In addition, Hieatt argues that Spenser unfavourably compares Cymbeline’s subservience to Rome with Arthur’s conquering of it, and supposes that Shakespeare may have wanted to reverse this preference so that Cymbeline’s approach is favoured over Arthur’s. The last bit of evidence Hieatt uses is that both Arthur and Cymbeline deal with Roman authorities called Lucius (Emperor Lucius for Arthur; General Lucius for Cymbeline), and that this name is not mentioned in Shakespeare’s recognised sources is either a coincidence or suggests that he took it from Malory. Hieatt admits that his argument “needs further confirmation,” and there is no evidence that Shakespeare had even read Malory (189). But his theory is nevertheless valuable for attempting to link Shakespeare to the Arthurian legend in a more substantial way than other writers such as Nutt and White have managed. Shakespeare’s contribution to the Arthurian legend would be dramatically increased if he wrote or co-wrote The Birth of Merlin, an Arthurian play from the seventeenth century, and those who argue to that end belong to this essay’s third category of approaches to Arthur and Shakespeare. The plot of Merlin follows three separate strands: matters at court, involving a war between the Britons and the Saxons; concerns about marriage for a nobleman’s two daughters; and a clown’s comedic quest to find the father of his sister’s baby. The play’s link to the Arthurian legend emerges towards the end when Merlin is born as a fully formed, bearded adult. Arthur himself enters the stage for Merlin’s concluding speech as an apparition from the future, and Merlin prophecies that Arthur will be a famously glorious king. When the play was published in 1662, it had Shakespeare’s and William Rowley’s names on the title page, but it was only performed for the first time in 1622, when Rowley was still alive but six years after Shakespeare had died. By the time it was attributed to Shakespeare, he had

Gabriel Schenk

13

been dead for forty-eight years. This fact alone makes it doubtful that Shakespeare did collaborate with Rowley on the play, unlike the product of another possible collaboration, The Two Noble Kinsmen, which was performed during Shakespeare’s life and is generally considered to be written in part by him. In the case of Merlin, his name may have been added to the title page for commercial reasons only, but this is only one possible theory—early theatrical historians did not question Shakespeare’s authorship of the play, and a small number of recent critics argue that the title page attribution is genuine. Mark Dominik’s 1991 study of the play argues that it is probably “about four parts Shakespeare diluted with five or six parts Rowley,” and the “internal evidence” of the play—plot, language, and style—points to a collaboration, albeit a collaboration in which “the two writers are merged together in a hybrid form” (9). Dominik is almost alone in arguing for Shakespeare’s involvement in the play, however, and his argument, whilst detailed, is flawed. As Joanna Udall writes, Dominik “falls into the trap of assuming that insignificant parallels of theme and expression, when collected together, amount to proof of common authorship,” and “he does not apply the negative test by checking his findings against those from other plays” (Udall 1991, 29). Even if we do not think that Shakespeare was one of the authors of Merlin, the existence of the play at least demonstrates an interest in dramatizing the Arthurian legend in a period close to Shakespeare’s life. In fact, at least five Arthurian plays were performed in Shakespeare’s time along with nearly sixty other Arthurian texts, some republished but most completely new (Nastali and Boardman 2004, 19–31). The figure of Arthur had, therefore, cultural relevance in this period. The figure also had political weight during James’s reign—the king referred to himself as a new Arthur, intending to unite the whole of Britain like Arthur in some versions of the legend, and this symbolic comparison between James and Arthur was made by other as well (Udall 1991, 90–7). Arthur was not as popular a figure as he would become in the nineteenth century, but he was far from obscure. There were, furthermore, many available texts to base an Arthurian play on, including Shakespeare’s primary source for his historical plays, Holinshed’s Chronicles, which contains a section on Arthur’s reign. Although there is controversy regarding Shakespeare’s involvement in Merlin, the possibility that Shakespeare could have written an Arthurian play is not controversial at all. In 1795, William Ireland attempted to take advantage of the possibility that Shakespeare could have written about the Arthurian legend by producing a play, Vortigern and Rowena, claiming it was a newly discovered Shakespearian work. The play is not about Arthur

14

The Once and Future Bard: Shakespeare and King Arthur

or his court, but it does feature Arthur’s predecessors, as well as his father Uther Pendragon, drawn from Holinshed and Geoffrey of Monmouth. Ireland’s claims were met with early scepticism, and the play was quickly exposed as a forgery, but the idea of Shakespeare writing an Arthurian play did not fade away, and more recent writers have explored this idea in fiction. These writers belong to the fourth category analysed in this essay. Philip R. Craig’s The Woman Who Walked into the Sea (1991) features two academics who have discovered a new Shakespeare play about King Arthur. The play is incidental to the main plot of the novel, which is about the murder of one of the scholars, and the protagonist’s quest to find the killer, but there is some discussion about the significance of such a play early in the novel. As one character remarks, the discovery of such a play makes sense, as “for the last thousand years everybody and his dog, except Shakespeare, has written about King Arthur. Shakespeare wrote about Romans and Italians and about Scotsmen and Lear and the War of the Roses and about this and that, but never about Arthur. I’ve always wondered why not” (10). The protagonist searches for other links between Shakespeare and Arthur, finding the two references to Merlin from Henry IV and King Lear, as well as a reference to The Birth of Merlin. He leaves doubting “whether Shakespeare wrote about anyone in Arthur’s court but Merlin” (42). Strangely, he does not come across the references to Arthur in Henry IV and Henry V; it is likely that the author did not know about them. The decision to make the lost Shakespearian play specifically about Arthur may, therefore, simply be motivated by a feeling that Shakespeare should have written about Arthur, considering how important he is in British legend. Craig does not explore the idea of a Shakespearian play about Arthur in detail. But in the same year the novel was published, Westmont College in Montecito staged a play about Arthur with dialogue constructed entirely from quotations from Shakespeare’s plays. For the writer John W. Sider, the Arthurian legend was “the biggest single omission of traditional materials in Shakespeare,” and by re-cutting old dialogue he could fix this apparent omission as authentically as possible, in a sense collaborating with Shakespeare to produce something new.1 Arthur Phillips is another writer who created an Arthurian play by Shakespeare. Unlike Sider, Phillips did not use lines from Shakespeare’s previous work, but instead tried to imitate the playwright’s style as accurately as possible. The play is called The Tragedy of Arthur and was published at the end of the 2011 meta-fictional novel of the same name. 1

See Brandes (1991).

Gabriel Schenk

15

The novel takes the form of a fake memoir about the author’s relationship to his father and twin-sister Dana, given as an introduction to the play. In the memoir, Phillips believes that the play was forged by his father, although Dana insists that it really is by Shakespeare, and that the novel is inconclusive regarding the play’s authenticity. The reality outside the novel is that the play, like the memoir, is entirely fictional, although convincingly written by Phillips in the style of one of Shakespeare’s early historical plays. Phillips may have based his fake Shakespearian play on Arthur because, like Craig, he identified a gap in Shakespeare’s list of subjects. Phillips draws from the account of Arthur in Holinshed’s Chronicles, and his Tragedy of Arthur fits naturally alongside Lear and Cymbeline as a pseudo-historical account of an ancient British king. He may also have been thinking of Ireland’s Vortigern forgery, as well as the controversy surrounding The Birth of Merlin, when choosing a suitable theme for a play with an uncertain link to Shakespeare. Claire M. Busse speculates that Phillips chose Arthur simply because Arthur and Shakespeare fit together as fellow cultural icons, each with uncertain historicity, but she concludes that Shakespeare is “the real interest” in the novel (2012, 109). It is certainly true that Phillips is primarily focused on dissecting Shakespeare’s mythical status as the greatest writer in the English language, but that does not mean that he is uninterested in the figure of Arthur, and how both Arthur and Shakespeare are not just figures to be written about, but can be written through in order to understand ourselves and our concepts of humanity. One of the ideas that Phillips explores is the notion that art can imitate life, and vice versa. In every draft of the novel, Phillips says, the play always came first, so that he could write the book chronologically— as the memoir is about finding the lost play, it makes sense to have written the play first.1 Starting with the play also meant that Phillips could explore some of the same ideas raised by his version of Shakespeare in the play, so that the lives of the characters in the supposedly real memoir could mirror the lives of the fictional characters in the play. The similarities within the two forms are highlighted by Phillips early in the memoir in a section where he outlines a section of the play which mirrors plot points in the memoir: If my father did not distort our family life to forge this play, I am left with the uncomfortable possibility that we have lived a distorted version of

1

See Law (2011).

16

The Once and Future Bard: Shakespeare and King Arthur Shakespeare’s imagination, which, ridiculously enough, is what one Shakespearologist claims: we are all the Bard’s inventions. (60)

This “Shakespearologist” is Harold Bloom, who argues in Shakespeare: The Invention of the Human (1998) that many of Shakespeare’s characters have inward, psychologically complex personalities that have formed our modern conception of what it is to be human. Later on, Phillips calls Bloom’s thesis “maximalist and insane” (2011, 117), but the reception of Arthur’s character in the memoir does suggest at least some level of support for Bloom’s idea. For Phillips, Shakespeare may not have invented us, but his characters, including (in this case) Arthur, enable us to think about ourselves. As Phillips tells Dana in the memoir, “Shakespeare was the greatest creator of Rorschach tests in history,” because our interpretations of his characters tell us more about ourselves than they do about the writer’s intentions (94). Phillips’s interpretation of Arthur’s character is that he has “bipolar disorder,” a modern diagnosis that, another character points out, would not have occurred to Shakespeare or his contemporaries: “they would have called him excessively humorous,” and contemporary audiences would probably have focused on how Arthur was a “failed king” instead (190–1). Both readings emphasise Arthur’s personal characteristics over his actions—whether a psychological evaluation or a comment on his ability to fulfil his role as king—as if Arthur were a real person who could exemplify human conditions for us. Arthur also encourages Phillips to think about human behaviour in a way that closely relates to his own situation. The memoir spans a version of Phillips’s life from childhood to the time of publication, and in one early section, Phillips, who is fifteen, is beaten up by school bullies. His sister, Dana, consoles him by conflating Arthur’s difficulties in the play with Arthur Phillips’s own difficulties in his life. “You don’t know war,” she says. “Here’s what you know: girls, school, [and] getting into trouble” (27). This description is supposed to explain the character of Shakespeare’s Arthur, but could of course apply to either Arthur, suggesting that the King Arthur of Shakespeare’s play is fundamentally the same as the Arthur Phillips of the memoir. In addition, Dana believes that Shakespeare’s Arthur can model the behaviour of her own Arthur: she recites Arthur’s rallying war speech from the play and tells her brother, “You could do that … You could figure out how to be a hero when you have to” (28). Arthur is, furthermore, an ideal figure to think through ideas about personality and wider human conditions with. Some medieval writers of French romances and Welsh hagiographies used Arthur as the example of a flawed king and petty human, only to be subdued by a saint’s power,

Gabriel Schenk

17

thereby reinforcing ecclesiastical authority over secular rule. Writers from the mid nineteenth century onwards have used Arthur to think about an increasingly rich array of topics related to the human condition. For Victorian poets Alfred Lord Tennyson and Edward Bulwer-Lytton, Arthur could exemplify ideal manhood and heroism, whilst the early twentiethcentury poet E. A. Robinson used Arthur to explore the nature of human madness and bad leadership, while the later twentieth-century novelist T. H. White used Arthur to think through ideas about why humans go to war. The idea of Shakespeare writing about Arthur makes sense, therefore; not only because Arthur is an important part of British legend whose absence is notable in Shakespeare’s body of historical plays, but also because Arthur has so often been used to think through other ideas, and (as Phillips’s novel illustrates) this makes Arthur a natural addition to Shakespeare’s cast of characters, who are also often used to think through ideas about human identity. Phillips’s Tragedy of Arthur synthesises Arthur and Shakespeare by exploring what an Arthurian play by Shakespeare would look like, as well as how it might be read, rather than simply mentioning the possibility of such a play, or trying to make Shakespeare a contributor to the Arthurian legend through tenuous links to his canonical works. The other writers discussed in this essay have not engaged with the idea of a link between Shakespeare and the Arthurian legend as fully as Phillips, but they nevertheless provide some insight into the two figures. Some writers, such as T.H. White and David Jones, use Shakespeare to incorporate Arthur into wider literary and cultural traditions. Academics such as Dominik, Nutt, and Hieatt argue that Shakespeare was to some extent influenced by Arthurian literature, and although their claims are debatable, their work demonstrates at least the genuine possibility that Shakespeare did refer to elements of the Arthurian legend in his writing. The influence has certainly worked the other way, particularly in Arthurian stage plays. The archaic diction of an Arthurian pantomime from 1863, for example, is closer to Shakespeare’s language than Malory’s, and in the script Merlin almost exactly repeats the line of the Second Witch in Macbeth.1 Henry Irving’s production of King Arthur from 1895 also draws on Shakespeare in its dialogue; the speech in which Guinevere urges a knight to “put up thy sword” recalls Othello as well as the King James Bible, and the villainous Mordred is partly modelled on Shakespeare’s Iago. He implies that Guinevere knew of Lancelot’s secret 1

“[T]he pricking of my thumbs / Informs me something human this way comes”: Bough (1.1., 6). In Macbeth the line is “[b]y the pricking of my thumbs, / Something wicked this way comes” (4.1).

18

The Once and Future Bard: Shakespeare and King Arthur

love, but, when asked by Arthur to elaborate, he replies evasively “I’ll not answer that,” giving a similar answer to Iago after implying that Desdemona has been unfaithful.1 The Shakespeare-style language effectively conveys a sense of antiquity, but it is not so old or so alien to the stage that it is hard to follow for most audiences, as Malory’s language may have been. We are in danger of making too much from too little if we speculate about why Shakespeare did not write more extensively on the Arthurian legend, assuming that The Birth of Merlin is falsely attributed to him. It may be that he felt the subject had been comprehensively written about by Malory and other writers and that he had nothing more to add. It may be that he did not feel he needed to write about Arthur; the main themes of most versions of the legend—kingship, betrayal, brotherhood, family bonds—are, after all, explored in detail in his other plays. From his references to Arthur in Henry IV and Henry V, we may even surmise that Shakespeare thought the Arthurian legend was trivial and unworthy of serious attention. We might also guess that he was more interested in Merlin than Arthur. These are only guesses and possibilities, however. What is clearer is that writers have returned to the idea that Shakespeare and the Arthurian legend are, or should be, or could be, linked together— not only because they are two British icons that make an appealing couple for nationalistic and cultural reasons, but also because, as Arthur Phillips’s work demonstrates, they both have the potential to teach us about ourselves.

Bibliography Bloom, Harold. 1998. Shakespeare: The Invention of the Human. New York: Riverhead. Bough, William. 1863. King Arthur: Or, the Days and Knights of the Round Table. A New and Original Christmas Extravaganza in One Act. London: Lacy. Brandes, Philip. 1991. “Backstage ‘The Marriage of King Arthur’: Bard in Camelot: But Dialogue in this Retelling of the Arthur Tale is 1 Carr (III. 1, 48). Compare to Shakespeare, Othello, when Iago implies that Desdemona has been unfaithful: “OTHELLO: By heaven, I'll know thy thoughts. / IAGO: You cannot … (3.3.ll. 183–4). Carr, (IV. 3, 63): Othello: “keep up your bright swords” (1.2.l. 60): “[t]hen said Jesus unto him, Put up again thy sword” (Matthew 26:52).

Gabriel Schenk

19

Constructed Entirely of Quotes from Shakespeare's Works.” Los Angeles Times, October 31, 1991. Bryson, Bill. 2008. Shakespeare: The World as a Stage. London: Harper Perennial-HarperCollins,. Busse, Claire M. 2012. “The Tragedy of Arthur.” Arthuriana 22 (2): 108– 9. Carr, J. Comyns. 1895. King Arthur: A Drama in a Prologue and Four Acts. London and New York: Macmillan. Craig, Philip R. 1991. The Woman Who Walked Into the Sea. New York; Don Mills, Ont.: Macmillan. Dominik, Mark. 1991. William Shakespeare and The Birth of Merlin. Beaverton, Or: Alioth. Hieatt, A. Kent. 1988. “The Passing of Arthur in Malory, Spenser, and Shakespeare: The Avoidance of Closure.” In The Passing of Arthur: New Essays in Arthurian Tradition, edited by Christopher Baswell and William Sharpe, 173–92. New York and London: Garland. Jones, David. 2010. In Parenthesis: Seinnyessit e Gledyf ym Penn Mameu. London: Faber. Lacy, Norris J. (ed.) 1996. The New Arthurian Encyclopaedia. New York; London: Garland. Law, Sally. 2011. “The Exchange: Arthur Phillips.” The New Yorker, June 10, 2011. Nastali, Daniel P., and Philip C. Boardman. 2004. The Arthurian Annals: The Tradition in English from 1250 to 2000. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Nutt, Alfred. 1900. The Fairy Mythology of Shakespeare. Popular Studies in Mythology Romance & Folklore 6. London: Nutt. Phillips, Arthur. 2011. The Tragedy of Arthur. London: Duckworth Overlook. Skeat, Walter W. 1896. “Merlin’s Prophecy.” Athenæum 3608: 874. Taylor, Beverly, and Elisabeth Brewer. 1983. The Return of King Arthur. Cambridge: Brewer; Barnes and Noble. Taylor, Garry. 1990. Reinventing Shakespeare: A Cultural History from the Restoration to the Present. London: Hogarth. Udall, Joanna. 1991. A Critical, Old-Spelling Edition of The Birth of Merlin. London: MHRA. White, T. H. 1996. “The Book of Merlyn.” The Once and Future King: The Complete Edition. London: Voyager-HarperCollins.

KING LEAR: TRAGEDY OF A DUBIOUS POSTREFORMATION EPISTEMOLOGY MARYAM BEYAD1 AND BAMSHAD HEKMATSHOAR TABARI2

Introduction In answer, the news of the Gospel is that extraordinary things happen … Lear goes berserk on a heath but comes out of it for a few brief hours every inch a king. —Frederick Buechner

The above quotation is from a book titled Telling the Truth: The Gospel as Tragedy, Comedy, and Fairy Tale by Frederick Buechner published in 1977. As it may reflect, it is a struggle to give a new reading of the Gospel by analysing it on the basis of literary criteria and generic divisions. It may be said that it draws attention to new issues about the nature of the Gospel and how a the fundamental ethical Christian notion of redemption through life and death and the resurrection of Jesus Christ can be expanded or, in a broader sense, can be applied to that found in the so-called secular works of literature produced at the time of Renaissance. This illuminates one's struggle to reach truth through the occurrence of something miraculous, or better to say an epiphany, that happens to them only after adopting a new epistemological viewpoint. In that sense, one like King Lear, as the quotation asserts, can be interpreted as a figure who is successful in surpassing misconceptions and doubts and finally in becoming a true king, or in religious terms the emblem of divine truth; a figure whose inwardness of character, scepticism and improper cognitive criteria at early stages in the play

1 2

Faculty of Foreign Languages and Literatures, University of Tehran. Alborz Campus, University of Tehran.

22

King Lear: Tragedy of a Dubious Post- Reformation Epistemology

represent in the best way the age of Shakespeare and the conflicts he had in bringing Gospel and Law into reconciliation. This also reflects on the uncertainty of the degree to which one could be successful in adopting the proper epistemological tools that would aid them in coming up with the existing paradoxes in the reconciliation of the two. But what were those conflicts mentioned above? How could such a sudden shift take place in case of the epistemological concerns of the age? And why can a tragedy like King Lear be considered as grounds for dealing with such conflicts and their consequences? The answer to all these questions seems to lie in the fact that Shakespeare was born in the age of religious controversies; and the debates revolve around the religious issues coming into being as a result of the conflict between Catholicism and Protestantism at that time. The way they affected all aspects of the lives of English people by questioning fundamental things can help to provide a comprehensive answer. In fact, the age was so obsessed with the Reformist movements that, at many points, radical deviations from traditional Christianity resulted in the formation of unbridgeable phenomenological and ethical gaps, which doubled the feeling of confusion and impasse. It was under such conditions that Shakespeare was brought up and, according to The Cambridge Companion to Shakespeare (86), his non-conformist parents and their sympathy toward Catholic values, and the way they were treated by the new majority, must have affected him and his new system of belief. This can be felt in his tragedies, especially King Lear, in an oblique manner when the audience will find a sense of uncertainty in approaching matters (88) and also greater tolerance in dealing with the so-called treachery of the old Faith. Yet, what Shakespeare does in King Lear is much more complicated than it may appear at first glance, and it needs much study to reveal the artistic and theatrical hidden aspects that are only significant when pondered historically and read in relation to the conflicts mentioned above. To be more specific, Shakespeare is able to manipulate the available historical materials in a quite innovative manner so as to represent the complexity of the new post-Reformation world and also to fulfil the demand for depicting how, in their present lives, the English people were to reshape their epistemology to enable themselves to deal successfully with "nature," which seems to have been reborn because of the ethical and religious matters in transition, the strange new world and the "opacity of the other" people (Curran and Kearney 2012, 362). But how does Shakespeare manipulate his historical materials so as to provide his audience with a panoramic view? Undoubtedly, to do so he needs to put aside pre-assumptions, or better to say any religious bias, and also find

Maryam Beyad and Bamshad Hekmatshoar Tabari

23

new theatrical techniques and strategies that would in the best way represent the success or the tragic failure of his characters in grasping the true epistemological tool. The most important thing Shakespeare does to fulfil this is adding a subplot to the story of the pagan King Lear of England, who reigned some eight centuries before Christ, which he took from Holinshed's Chronicle and the play The True Chronicle History of King Leir and his Three Daughters, Gonerill, Ragan, and Cordella, produced by an anonymous Catholic playwright in 1595. The subplot, very close to what Sidney records in his Arcadia, is the story of Gloucester and his two sons Edgar and Edmund. Linked to the main plot, this subplot enhances the tragic effect of the whole play and is in fact a device in the hands of Shakespeare to deal with the contemporary concerns of his society in a more effective manner. As a matter of fact, such a complex plot blends the pagan context of the main historical story with the Catholic and Protestant references provided in the different points of the play by Shakespeare, and makes for a synthesis that results in the formation of the totality of King Lear as a tragedy depicting the dubious post-Reformation epistemology prevalent in English society. In order to focus on the totality of this tragedy with such a target, it seems necessary to focus on the way the pagans, Catholics and Protestants are blended, and Shakespeare's genius in taking advantage of them. It can be said that the pre-Christian context of the play serves as the basis through which Shakespeare succeeds in creating a theatrical past, in which the present time for his contemporary audience is the future for the characters (Munro 2011, 104). This temporal distance is what helps Shakespeare in the first instance to record everything in a rather objective manner and to suspend every assumption that the audience may have about the ethical motifs or the logic of the characters in dealing with the tragic things they face. In this context, no Christian issue or belief, whether Catholic or Protestant, can be taken as what controls the characters and their actions. So, through this strategy, Shakespeare reduces the probability of hasty judgments by the audience about the characters' motifs, and this will consequently renew their sense of perception as they find it necessary to look for a new and more valid epistemology to justify the way the characters think and act, and what brings about their tragic downfalls. Yet, when the audience starts analysing the characters during the play, it will be revealed that they must go beyond the pagan basis—or, better to say, the theatrical appearance—crafted by Shakespeare, as the whole thing on the stage comments indirectly on both the Catholic and Protestant systems of belief in an objective manner. They must also be

24

King Lear: Tragedy of a Dubious Post- Reformation Epistemology

approached in a new light so as to avoid any tragic flaw in the present day—the context of post-Reformation England—to grasp a more panoramic view of the truth. How some of the most important pagan references in the play are manipulated by the playwright to comment on the Catholic and Protestant beliefs, so as to create the necessary synthesis in the mind of the audience, will be discussed. The issue of “nature” has been discussed by many critics in the case of the pagan context in King Lear and the way Shakespeare reads it in relation to Christianity. There are many references to this notion in the play. For example, at the beginning, Edmund addresses "goddess Nature" and asks for help (1.2.1), and there is also much emphasis on the natural order of the universe and how the unnatural weather that beats Lear and his madness is the outcome of the unnatural things done by Goneril and Regan. According to Peter R. Moore, in order to understand the meaning of “nature” in this play, one should have in mind that it signifies two different things: "both humanity’s sinful state of nature after the Fall, and also God’s law of nature," which Edmund's “goddess nature” with its pagan connotations seems to have opposed (2006, 175). Based on this quotation, a kind of paradox emerges—why does Shakespeare speak about the pagan “goddess nature” that stands in opposition to Christian God's law of nature and order in the play and put no distance between the pagan and the Christian? It is because he wants to emphasise the how one, whether a Catholic or Protestant, and their unnatural or immoral behaviour in life and adoption of a wrong conduct according to an imperfect ethical and epistemological tool, can lead to misinterpretation as well as misconception. In this sense, it is Edmund's mistaken understanding of the universal or cosmic order and laws that forces him to behave in that manner. In the same way, Lear's misunderstanding of the natural order and mechanism of the divine truth and his improper criteria for judging his three daughters, opposing God's justice, benevolence and wisdom, bring about all the chaos and his madness. As a matter of fact, his madness as well as the storm at the climax of the play are quite symbolic and, by highlighting them, Shakespeare says that when a person's cognitive tools are not powerful enough to give them true knowledge of both the inside and the outside world all orders will be shattered in their eyes and they enter a state of psychic imbalance or madness. Based on what was discussed above, it seems necessary to elaborate more on the issue of madness and the way Shakespeare relates it to the issue of religion and epistemology, so as to construct a cluster of meanings that portray what he had in mind. In fact, what makes Lear mad is the "ingratitude of his daughters," which is "heightened to cosmic proportions" in

Maryam Beyad and Bamshad Hekmatshoar Tabari

25

the storm scene; a scene which cannot be studied without performing a full analysis of Tom o’ Bedlam as the "person who seems to be an escaped lunatic, possessed by devils" (Yates 1979, 183). The issue of demonology and exorcism was in fact not something unknown to the Protestant English people of the age of Shakespeare, and the way Jesuits were often criticised by books like Samuel Harsnett's Declaration of Egregious Popish Impostures for their fake activity of exorcism should be put in the centre when reading King Lear from this point of view (184). To be more precise, Shakespeare is here criticising the common beliefs in demons, the idea of being possessed and the necessity of exorcism. Actually, when the audience knows that this mad Tom is none other than Edgar disguised, and it is Gloucester's failure in judging him truly that has forced him to do so, it is revealed to them that a person's failure in cognising or justifying things by logic is what leads them to rely on the occult. Lear's madness can also be viewed from this angle: it is the failure of other characters to make sense of the factors bringing about such a state of mind that labels him as mad. As a matter of fact, after the climax of the play in the storm scene, and after the act of disrobing in sympathy with Tom, Lear enters a true state of wisdom by being in possession of a new cognitive tool. This is achieved by the synthesis between him and other characters, especially Regan, Goneril and Tom, and he can now be called a true tragic hero according to the assumptions of the classical tragedy. In the same manner, Gloucester's blindness, which gives him a Tiresias-like appearance, can be interpreted as having the same meaning as Lear's madness. In this sense, now in his blindness—again with the help of Edgar in disguise— Gloucester becomes aware of the truth through the eyes of his heart, which is his new worldview that has revealed new cognitive realms to him; his short-sightedness in the early stages of the play would not permit him to grasp this. Relying on what was analyzed in detail above, it is not then hard to infer the fact that the transition occurring in the mentalities of both Lear and Gloucester is a major issue that Shakespeare intended to portray in this play. More precisely, he structured everything to happen in such a perfect system of causality that the audience dealing with these two characters by following the occurring syntheses can easily monitor the way these two tragic heroes undergo a change, come up with the existing cognitive or epistemological doubts, and enter a state of mind that can be metaphorically described as rebirth. In fact, there are many relevant references or rebirth images of both pagan and Christian origins in the play that can be considered as what Shakespeare used to reflect such a theme. For example, when Cordelia meets Lear in Dover in the fourth act, he is

26

King Lear: Tragedy of a Dubious Post- Reformation Epistemology

wearing a king's garment and a garland of weeds and greens on his head as his crown. Joy Kennedy believes that this is an indirect reference to the "Green Man," which is "one of the most incontestably pre-Christian images of British history"; the mythological figure who represents "fertility, copulation, and rebirth; and also the endless cycle of nature, including mortality” (2002, 60). Relying on such a reference, it can then be concluded that Shakespeare here artistically uses a pagan reference that, in the first instance, matches the pre-Christian context of the play, and on the second level conveys that idea to the audience that there can be a correspondence between the Green Man and Lear. Lear has in fact undergone a mental transition or a kind of regeneration and has been blessed with a new perception criterion, something which comes to him only after facing his tragic flaw and his limited means of perception and epistemological tools. In this sense, Lear can be considered a man who has escaped human limitations partially and temporarily, experiencing the feeling of the death of human limitations and the sense of rebirth before his real physical death; in Shakespeare's play this very much credits him as the Green Man. Besides the pre-Christian reference to the Green Man, there is also a much more important Christian theme in the play that, when read in relation to the assumptions of the classical tragedy in the case of catharsis and the way the audience must be purified, reveals how Shakespeare has been able to go beyond religious doubts and limitations as a result of the contemporary debates between Catholicism and Protestantism in order to provide the audience a true religious catharsis. This is the similarity between Lear and Jesus Christ. As said earlier, Lear disrobes in sympathy with Tom. His declaration before taking off his clothes is very revealing: Thou owest the worm no silk, the beast no hide, The sheep no wool, the cat no perfume. Ha! Here’s Three on ’s are sophisticated. Thou art the thing itself. Unaccommodated man is no more but such a poor, Bare, forked animal as thou art.— Off, off, you lendings! Come. (4.3.103–108)

Hearing such words from Lear, the audience would soon find the similarity between them and the religious texts because of their precision, spontaneity and revelatory qualities. What Lear states in sympathy with Tom and his nearly naked body is a sign that he has come to a kind of new understanding—he is now quite sure that in this world there are many things like rank, wealth and power that can stop one from starting a quest for the truth. Those things can then be metaphorically considered as

Maryam Beyad and Bamshad Hekmatshoar Tabari

27

comprising a mask that veils reality and gives one illusions. Gaining knowledge of this fact, Lear then understands the importance of “being the thing itself,” like Tom, that is frees him from illusions. In the eyes of Lear, Tom in the storm is as revelatory as the sight of Jesus on cross and his last sayings. Yet, one can go further and consider the naked Lear in the storm as being the same as the naked Jesus on cross, as this act of disrobing is for Lear the starting point of his metaphorical act of resurrection or the resolution of his tragic story.

Conclusion This essay is an attempt to focus on the issue of the dubious postReformation epistemology in English society and the way in which Shakespeare dealt with it in King Lear. Based on what has been discussed up to now, it can be concluded that Shakespeare succeeded in focusing on ethical religious matters in a quite artistic manner in King Lear. As a tragedy, it can be said to be an attempt to go beyond the religious controversies of the age by providing his audience with a kind of catharsis, which is the natural consequence of blending the pagan, Catholic and Protestant themes. In other words, Shakespeare creates a secular “miracle play” through the tragedy of King Lear in a context where the protestant radical deviations from the strong Catholic belief in revelation and miracle had resulted in a feeling of the human living in a world devoid of any miracles (Tiffany 2012, 2); a world in which the helpless people like the blind Gloucester would feel like flies in the hands of wanton boys, to be killed by gods for their sport (4.1.26–27). What makes Shakespeare different from any other playwright of the age in a tragedy like King Lear is in fact his ability to create a figure like Edgar or Tom, who can be the source of epiphany for Lear who suffers from much conflict as a result of many epistemological doubts, and also a savoir for the helpless Gloucester by reminding him through his firm philosophical terms that: "Men must endure their going hence even as their coming hither. Ripeness is all" (5.2.8–11).

Bibliography Buechner, Fredrick. 1977. Telling the Truth: Gospel as Tragedy, Comedy and Fairy Tale. New York: Harper & Row. Curran, Kevin, and James Kearney. 2012. "Introduction." Criticism: 54 (3): 353–64.

28

King Lear: Tragedy of a Dubious Post- Reformation Epistemology

Diehl, Huston. 2002. "Religion and Shakespearean Tragedy." In The Cambridge Companion to Shakespearean Tragedy, edited by Claire MacEachern. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Kennedy, Joy. 2002. "Shakespeare's King Lear." The Explicator, 60 (2): 60–2. Moore, Peter R. 2006. "The Nature of King Lear." English Studies 87 (2): 169–90. Munro, Lucy. 2011. "Shakespeare and the Uses of the Past: Critical Approaches and Current Debates." Shakespeare 7 (1): 102–25. Tiffany, Grace. 2012. "Shakespeare's Miracle Plays." English Studies 93 (1): 1–13. Shakespeare, William. 2009. King Lear. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Yates, France. 1979. The Occult Philosophy in the Elizabethan Age. London: Routledge.

THE FAILURE OF FAITH IN HAMLET MARYAM BEYAD1 AND HOSSEIN TORKAMANNEJAD2

Introduction It takes an unsurpassed measure of insight, genius, and intellectual creativity for an author to transcend the binding limits of their time and aspire to build themselves “a live-long monument.” Indeed, it is an exceptionally rare feat accomplished by very few authors in the entire literary tradition of a nation. For, the all-encompassing power of ideology is such that, for those who breathe in its atmosphere, it appears to be all too natural and indubitably universal. Hence, many, if not most, artistic creations—however insightful and ardent they may have been at the time of composition—tend to lose their interest for future generations or even contemporaneous foreign nations simply because the moral and social mores of societies transform over the course of consecutive eras and the yardsticks for the evaluation and judgment of truth (let alone aesthetics) largely differ from one community to another. This fact, acknowledged and appreciated, brings the unrivalled genius of Shakespeare all the more fully to light; for, astonishing though it may seem, his unparalleled works of dramatic art seem to be more relevant to the moral and existential preoccupations of the modern human even more than the most profound contemporary works. It is, nevertheless, essential to recognise that this transcendence from the ephemeral does not preclude Shakespeare from being the true progeny of the social and cultural milieu of the early modern period. At the turn of the seventeenth century, Europe was the scene of extremely challenging upheavals that forever altered the cultural and intellectual texture of every Western country, and no less in England. Shakespeare's panoramic and consummate portrayal of the human condition should not blind us to the 1 2

Department of English, University of Tehran. Department of English, University of Tehran.

30

The Failure of Faith in Hamlet

fact that he was, perhaps more than any other writer of his age, thoroughly immersed in both the material and spiritual conflicts typical of this era. Throughout the Medieval period, theology reigned as the focal centre of all cerebral endeavours. This prominence of theology largely persisted in the early modern period, although it was tempered with the Humanistic reverence for the Classics—works that often explicitly opposed any literal reading of the Scriptures. Humanist scholars, notwithstanding, especially in northern Europe, did not fail to reconcile these two widely divergent worldviews; one Semitic in origin, the other Hellenistic. Sir Thomas More is the quintessential representative of this attitude. He was a man of supreme learning in all the exoteric and esoteric secular fields of the Renaissance, but his ardent Catholicism was hardly any less enthusiastic, a claim attested by the fact that he chose to be beheaded rather than renounce his faith. In the early sixteenth century, the challenge directed toward the spiritual and material monopoly of the Catholic Church in Western Europe, long preceded by earlier "heretical" movements (led by reformers like John Wycliffe and John Huss), found official support and unprecedented momentum after Martin Luther nailed his historic NinetyFive Theses to the door of All Saints' Church in Wittenberg in 1517. This international movement, known as the Reformation, led to such profound transformations that any cultural history of early modern Europe would be drastically incomplete without an exhaustive examination of this phenomenon. The aforementioned dominance of theological concerns in Medieval Europe thus found a new impetus with the advent of the Catholic-Protestant controversy, which on many occasions became lethal and resulted in brutal bloodshed on both sides.

Shakespeare's Religion By the time Shakespeare was born, an uneven compromise had partly been achieved between the two conflicting Christianities by the prudence of Queen Elizabeth I. Indeed, although the official religion of the country was Protestantism, Elizabeth largely resisted the radical reformations espoused by many hard-line Protestant sects, and on more than one occasion proved (to the dismay of her Puritan subjects) that her religious inclinations leant more to Rome than to Geneva. This profound religious strife, which affected every single aspect of the life of the nation, was only more tangibly omnipresent for a person like Shakespeare who, in addition to his sincere fascination with every facet of the human condition, was

Maryam Beyad and Hossein Torkamannejad

31

born a Catholic in a country where Catholics were officially persecuted on charges of treason or heresy. Shakespeare is renowned for developing multiple (and sometimes contradictory) viewpoints throughout his oeuvre. This peculiar Shakespearean love for metaphor and ambiguity is a hallmark of his greatest achievements in drama and lends his plays to widely divergent (and often equally convincing) interpretations. Therefore, it is hardly surprising that all attempts in the past four centuries to draw out a single and unequivocal religious attitude from his plays have inevitably been thwarted. Not only have many Catholics and Protestants each claimed to demonstrate his allegiance to their own denomination, some of the most ardent political radicals, as widely irreconcilable as Marxists and liberals, have cited parts of his works as precursors to their beliefs. Despite all these ambiguities in the Shakespearean canon, this essay attempts to shed new light on his religious preferences.

Hamlet as the Image of Luther Many scholars have already demonstrated the close ties between Hamlet and Martin Luther. Indeed, Shakespeare has incorporated such conclusive clues in his play that one can hardly fail to notice the obvious links between these figures. First and foremost, the fact that Hamlet is a former student of the University of Wittenberg is telling. In Shakespeare's days, it was common knowledge that Luther had attended this university and that his fatal Theses were nailed to the door of All Saints' Church in Wittenberg. Steve Sohmer, in his fascinating essay Certain Speculations on Hamlet, the Calendar, and Martin Luther, discusses at length the links between the events in Hamlet and particular holy days. The next two paragraphs are a summary of some of his arguments that are particularly relevant to the purpose of this essay. In the beginning of the play, Shakespeare provides many clues to indicate the time and date of the action. Barnardo says, "'Tis now struck twelve," and according to Franciso "'Tis bitter cold." Later on, Marcellus contemplates the fact that in the season "Wherein our saviour's birth is celebrated / The bird of dawning singeth all night long; / And then, they say, no spirit can walk abroad." Scene one, therefore, takes place on a wintry night that is either before the holy days of Advent or after them. Further, Barnardo's remark about "yon same star that's westward from the pole" can be shown to be a reference to Deneb, which is positioned exactly "westward from the pole" around midnight during the period between October 30 and November 10.

32

The Failure of Faith in Hamlet

The conversations between the characters in the opening scene further inform us that the ghost has appeared on earth on four successive nights, and on the fourth Hamlet manages to discourse with him. It may be reasonably presumed that these successive nights coincide with four consecutive holy days beginning with the feast of Marcellus (October 30), All Hallows' Eve (October 31), All Saints' Day (November 1), and All Souls' Day (November 2). These days are in complete accord with the previous clues about the date of the ghost's appearance in the play and fall in the time period previously hypothesised. Furthermore, they have the additional privilege that all of them are associated with the link between the living and the dead. Thus, it can be plausibly assumed that Hamlet encounters his father's ghost on All Souls' Day, November 2. We know that Luther nailed his Theses on October 31, 1517, the day before All Saints' Day. But a look at some biographies of Luther available in Shakespeare's time shows that many of them (most significantly, Foxe's Acts and Monuments) recorded the date wrong and mistakenly declared that the event occurred on the day after All Saints' Day, that is November 2. So, Hamlet interviewed his father's ghost on the same day (as far as Shakespeare knew) that Luther launched the Protestant movement. It is now quite safe to presume that Shakespeare intended the character of Hamlet to be a Protestant, if not an image of Martin Luther himself.

The Purgatory Debate Now armed with the theory expounded above, it is fascinating to explore the possible associations that arise. King Hamlet claims to have returned from Purgatory: I am thy father's spirit, Doom'd for a certain term to walk the night, And for the day confin'd to fast in fires, Till the foul crimes done in my days of nature Are burnt and purg'd away. (1.5.9-13)

The existence of Purgatory was one of the most controversial debates in the early modern period. In fact, the main issues disputed by Luther in his Theses were the sale of indulgences and the existence of Purgatory. In other words, the schism that rent Western Christianity apart forever and antagonised entire nations against each other was partly initiated by the quarrel over Purgatory. It is of particular interest that Hamlet is educated in the University of Wittenberg, the birthplace of Protestantism. Can it be a coincidence that Shakespeare has put all of these striking associations

Maryam Beyad and Hossein Torkamannejad

33

with Protestantism in his tragedy? Can they have no purpose at all? It seems very unlikely. Catholics believe that the final destiny of every individual is determined immediately after death. While the righteous achieve eternal unity with the Divine, the wicked are destined to suffer perpetual separation from God and endure the endless torments of Hell. There is a third state called Purgatory reserved for those Christians in communion with the universal church of Christ in their lives but, due to some venial sins (as opposed to mortal sins which cause the soul to be permanently damned), have not achieved the necessary holiness to enter Heaven. These will be purged of their sins in a state of existence after death called Purgatory. Indeed, those who wait in Purgatory will all enter Heaven eventually and none will remain there forever or go to Hell. Martin Luther was especially critical of the concept of Purgatory. His revolutionary theology can be summarised in the famous tenets of sola scriptura [by scripture alone] and sola fide [by faith alone]. The former dictates that only doctrines based directly on the Bible are valid. Thus, with the exclusion of the deuterocanonical books from the Bible, Luther denounced Purgatory as unbiblical. The belief in sola fide states that a person's faith is enough to achieve salvation and good works are not a requisite for entering the Kingdom of God. Therefore, a person achieves salvation once and for all and the saved will enter Heaven while the damned will face torment in Hell. Shakespeare chose Denmark as the setting of his play, a country which had strong associations with Luther and Protestantism. The protagonist of the play, who has been educated in Wittenberg, visits his father's ghost on the same day that Luther made his dissent public and declared his opposition to the Catholic doctrine of Purgatory, the very place that the ghost has allegedly come from. What is at stake here?

Hamlet's Procrastination One of the most mysterious and perplexing characteristics of Hamlet is his dilatory nature. In his encounter with the ghost, Hamlet assures him that as soon as he knows his father's murderer he will hasten to take revenge: "Haste me to know ’t, that I, with wings as swift / As meditation or the thoughts of love, / May sweep to my revenge" (1.5.29–31). Nevertheless, throughout the play he continues to postpone the burden. Many theories have been proposed to explain the motives behind this delay. Some have attributed it to Hamlet's Christian piety and the fact that vengeance is against the explicit command of the Bible: "Dearly beloved, avenge not

34

The Failure of Faith in Hamlet

yourselves, but rather give place unto wrath: for it is written, Vengeance is mine; I will repay, saith the Lord" (Romans 12:19). Others have ascribed his doubt and obsession to an Oedipal Complex—Hamlet, like all other men, has an unconscious incestuous desire to possess his mother. According to this theory, Claudius, by killing King Hamlet and uniting with Gertrude, has done the very same thing that his nephew had always desired to do on an unconscious level; therefore, Hamlet strongly identifies with him. If he killed Claudius, it would be no different than suicide for him. This theory is especially compelling because it is supported by many passages in the play. His constant obsession with the details of his mother's relationship with Claudius is telling (in Act 3, Scene 4, for example, Hamlet urges his mother in disturbingly explicit language to avoid her husband), as is the fact that he has almost the same ambiguous feelings about suicide and killing his uncle—the two deeds, it seems, are two sides of the same coin for him. The theory explaining Hamlet's constant procrastination discussed in this essay is closely related to the relationship between him and Luther established before. It became clear that there are uncanny associations between these two figures. As noted above, one of the key disputes that led to the split of Western Christianity was the debate concerning the existence of Purgatory. Following the claim made earlier concerning Hamlet's Protestant faith, it may be logically concluded that he most certainly did not believe in Purgatory. Simply put, he cannot believe the ghost because deep down his faith dictates to him that Purgatory is nonexistent and the ghost has probably returned from Hell. Indeed, the distrust he nurtures in his heart is evident from the beginning when he says: "Be thou a spirit of health or goblin damned, / Bring with thee airs from heaven or blasts from hell, / Be thy intents wicked or charitable" (1.4.43– 45). This gnawing doubt is even more pronounced when he contemplates the veracity of the ghost's claims and decides to have actors perform a play that contains a scene similar to his father's murder in front of his uncle. He unequivocally discloses his scepticism: The spirit that I have seen May be the devil, and the devil hath power T'assume a pleasing shape. Yea, and perhaps Out of my weakness and my melancholy, As he is very potent with such spirits, Abuses me to damn me. (2.2.561-566)

Maryam Beyad and Hossein Torkamannejad

35

King Hamlet's Ghost: An Inmate of Hell There are clues in the text itself that link King Hamlet's ghost to Hell rather than to Purgatory. Marcellus calls him a "dreaded sight," suggesting that his appearance is eerie and horrifying. In addition, he cannot endure the light of day and can only appear on earth during the dead of night. Any reference to atonement or mercy is absent from his declarations; rather, he asks for vengeance and endorses murder—prescriptions that are obviously anti-Christian. Another revealing clue is the "crowing of the cock." The cock was believed to have crowed at both the birth and death of Christ and was held in high esteem by believers. The fact that it is a harbinger of dawn plays a significant role in this symbolisation. Night was usually associated with demons and evil whereas day was linked to salvation and redemption. Following this line of thinking, the crow was deemed to be a signal of the final triumph of good over evil and the eventual eradication of all unholy and wicked beings. It is, therefore, absolutely essential to note that, according to Marcellus, the ghost "faded on the crowing of the cock." Therefore, there seems to be overwhelming evidence to suggest that the ghost is an inmate of Hell. We are now faced with a fundamental question. Why does Hamlet, whose Protestant education in Wittenberg has taught him that there is no truth in the beliefs surrounding Purgatory and the whole dogma is unfounded and invalid, succumb to the allurement of the ghost and believe his words as truthful? Shouldn't he know better that, according to his Protestant indoctrination, the spirit must be damned and therefore his instructions must be inspired by the devil? The outcome of Hamlet's encounter with the ghost is that he agrees to murder his uncle in revenge of his father's murder, whose soul is confined to suffer in Purgatory. This agreement indicates that Hamlet accepts this Catholic doctrine. It will be demonstrated that this acceptance and its subsequent implications lead Hamlet through a crisis of faith and a failure of his whole system of Christian beliefs.

Hamlet's Collapse of Faith In the beginning of the play, Hamlet's remarks indicate that his religious beliefs are quite close to the prevalent Christian beliefs of his society. In the first act, lamenting the futility of life and the ubiquity of evil, he expresses a deep yearning to take his own life and asserts that the only thing that restrains him from committing suicide is the divine prohibition that condemns it:

36

The Failure of Faith in Hamlet Oh, that this too, too sullied flesh would melt, Thaw, and resolve itself into a dew, Or that the Everlasting had not fixed His canon 'gainst self-slaughter! (1.2.129–132)

A comparison with another famous contemplation of suicide later in the play will show how drastically Hamlet's attitude towards self-slaughter has changed from a thoroughly Christian approach to a purely secular one. Hamlet begins his deliberations with these everlasting words: To be, or not to be? That is the question— Whether ’tis nobler in the mind to suffer The slings and arrows of outrageous fortune, Or to take arms against a sea of troubles, And, by opposing, end them? (3.1.57–61)

In this most renowned of all literary quotations, Hamlet broods over a timeless existential question and muses on the possibility of a life after death. Here, he resembles a secular philosopher who meditates on the unfathomable mysteriousness of death regardless of any particular religious tradition. On this occasion, in sharp contrast to his previous declarations, he seems to see no objection to suicide other than the fact that no one knows "in that sleep of death what dreams may come," since it is an "undiscovered country from whose bourn / No traveller returns." So, this time it is not a fear of the divine wrath that prevents him from taking his own life; it is, rather, a wholly non-religious fear concerning the destiny of the deceased. Hamlet, speaking from a totally secular perspective and characteristically generalising his musings to encompass the entirety of humanity, asserts that no one would bear the miseries of life if it were not because of "the dread of something after death." He could not have drifted any further from his earlier, earnestly pious pronouncements. A brief look at the encounter between Hamlet and Ophelia that occurs right after the soliloquy can shed more light on the worldview that he develops in the course of the play. He manifests such an outrageously alarming misanthropy that it is hard to sympathise with his feelings. He castigates Ophelia and instructs her to take up asceticism, as marriage would only produce sinful offspring: Get thee to a nunnery, go. Farewell. Or, if thou wilt needs marry, marry a fool, for wise men know well enough what monsters you make of them. To a nunnery, go, and quickly too. Farewell. (3.1.138–140)

Maryam Beyad and Hossein Torkamannejad

37

Even St. Augustine, who formulated the concept of Original Sin and believed that we can be deservedly punished for another person's wrongdoing, could not bear to hear such extreme misanthropic comments. Indeed, Hamlet's assertions unambiguously demonstrate his total disbelief in any possible redemption for mankind and rule out all virtuous and honest motives for human action as inconceivable. Do not these viewpoints plainly contradict the very fundamentals of Christianity and its overall optimistic map of the universe? As we get closer to the tragic denouement of the play, the distortion of Hamlet's previously orthodox faith seems more evident. The most revealing incident is the scene where he delays the murder of his uncle when he's praying: Now might I do it pat. Now he is a-praying. And now I’ll do ’t. And so he goes to heaven. And so am I revenged.—That would be scanned. A villain kills my father, and, for that, I, his sole son, do this same villain send To heaven. Oh, this is hire and salary, not revenge. (3.3.74-80)

Hamlet's professed motivations for this behaviour have seemed ghastly to many people. His reasoning seems perturbing, too: if he kills Claudius while he is praying, his soul will achieve salvation and will go to Heaven. Will it actually be a revenge? Further, he believes that this act of vengeance will be the antithesis of his father's murder. King Hamlet was killed in the midst of his sinful life, without any opportunity for confession or receiving the Last Rites of the Roman Church. Should he now kill Claudius while he's engaged in humble prayer and unwittingly redeem his sinful spirit, relieving him from the punishment that he most certainly deserves? He has a better plan. He will kill his uncle while he is busy doing some immoral and ungodly act; when he's consumed by the fire of anger, lust, or wine. It was previously demonstrated that Hamlet displayed a wholly nonreligious attitude towards suicide, but this time we are here faced with a perversion of his religious beliefs and their flagrantly exploitative manipulation. Hamlet goes so far as to presume that he can actually determine the fate of Claudius's soul in the afterlife. He clearly assumes that the divine judgment can be misled by certain circumstances. His thirst for absolute revenge blinds him to the fact that, according to Christian beliefs, all matters concerning the afterlife are decided by God and that God's decree in regard to the final destiny of the souls is unquestionably

38

The Failure of Faith in Hamlet

just and unaffected by worldly affairs. It goes without saying that if Hamlet had not been hindered by his false notions of judgment and afterlife and had killed Claudius when he had the chance, there would have been no poisoned sword and wine at the end of the play to bring about the tragic deaths that seal its resolution and finalise its cataclysmic conclusion. In the end, it should be noted that because Hamlet's disintegration of faith is largely realised by his acknowledgement of the ghost's truthfulness and his consequent acceptance (although implicit) of the Catholic doctrine of Purgatory, the play can be read as a coded denunciation of Catholicism.

Conclusion Although any reading of Shakespeare's plays would inevitably lead to a reductionist interpretation, there is no other choice but to focus on only a few aspects of his plays and conduct the research based on those criteria. As Harold Bloom has aptly put it in his The Western Canon, "you cannot illuminate him with a new doctrine … Instead, he will illuminate the doctrine … all of Freud that matters most is there in Shakespeare already, with a persuasive critique of Freud besides" (1995, 25). Therefore, this essay does not claim that it has solved the religious issues at stake in Hamlet, one of the most profound of all tragedies. Rather, it maintains that in light of the Protestant/Catholic controversy in Shakespeare's time, Prince Hamlet may be plausibly read as a shadow of Martin Luther, and the overall development of the plot can be interpreted as a critique of Catholic doctrine. Another contention of this essay, closely related to the former claim, is that the root of Hamlet's tragic flaw and his eventual ruin is the collapse of his faith.

Bibliography Bloom, Harold. 1990. Hamlet. New York: Chelsea House. —. 1998. Shakespeare: The Invention of the Human. New York: Riverhead. —. 1995. The Western Canon: The Books and School of the Ages. New York: Riverhead Trade. Luther, Martin. 2011. Luther's Ninety-Five Theses. Watchmaker. Shakespeare, William. 1992. Hamlet. Wordsworth Editions. Sohmer, Steve. 1996. "Certain Speculations on Hamlet, the Calendar, and Martin Luther." Early Modern Literary Studies. http://extra.shu.ac.uk/emls/02-1/sohmshak.html.

“CRUSHED WITH A PLOT”: ON THE USES OF WITCHCRAFT IN SHAKESPEARE’S DRAMATIC STRUCTURES WILLIAM BADGER1

Who cannot be crushed with a plot? —Parolles, All’s Well that Ends Well (IV. 3)

Following dicta of Aristotle and Horace, early modern dramatists tended to eschew the deus ex machina as a stage device.2 But whilst the classical deus ex machina was (usually) avoided, dramatists including Shakespeare made heavy use of witchcraft as a principle of dramaturgic flexibility, enabling themselves to develop increasingly sophisticated plots by calling on the “soft” deus ex machina of supernatural phenomena to help structure their plays. Witchcraft figures in all but a handful of Shakespeare’s plays, whether as part of a simple imprecation or a complex plot element (Greenblatt 1993, 120), but this essay pays particular attention to the structural implications of witchcraft and cursing in Richard III. As we shall see, in this play the supernatural is connected to a sort of plotting as plotting—that is to say it has to do with plotting—potentially treasonous planning—as the impetus for the unfolding of the play’s plot. Evanthius’ dictum that tragedies begin at rest was widely circulated during the Middle Ages and continued to resonate in the English early modern theatre (Dewar-Watson 2007, 18). Heywood stipulated and 1

Oxford University. ‘[N]ec deus intersit, nisi dignus uindice nodus inciderit’ (“Neither let a god interfere, unless a difficulty worthy of a god’s unravelling should happen”) (Horace, ln. 191–2); “It is obvious that the solutions of plots too should come about as a result of the plot itself, and not from a contrivance, as in the Medea and in the passage about sailing home in the Iliad. A contrivance must be used for matters outside the drama—either previous events which are beyond human knowledge, or later ones that need to be foretold or announced. For we grant that the gods can see everything’ (Aristotle, ln. 1454a33–1454b9). 2

40

On the Uses of Witchcraft in Shakespeare’s Dramatic Structures

glossed the point in 1612: “In Comedies, turbulenta prima, tranquilla ultima, In Tragedyes, tranquilla prima, turbulenta ultima, Comedies begin in trouble, and end in peace; Tragedies begin in calmes, and end in tempest” (F1v). Shakespeare plays explicitly with this tradition in the soliloquy that opens Richard III, in which the eponymous Richard declares himself unfitted to the “weak piping time of peace” following the (temporarily) successfully concluded wars against the Lancastrian party: And therefore, since I cannot prove a lover To entertain these fair well-spoken days, I am determined to prove a villain And hate the idle pleasures of these days. (1.1.24; 28–31)

Found in this formulation are all the elements of the tragedy to follow, including the peace from which it grows and the villain who will ripen and fall in its courses. But Richard goes further. As though he himself is responsible for shaping and giving form to the drama, “prologue-like” he tells the audience of his planned treason: “Plots have I laid, inductions dangerous / … / To set my brother Clarence and the King / In deadly hate, the one against the other” (1.1.32–35). This speech sets the trajectory of the play and conditions the audience’s expectations for its unfolding at least until its climactic moment. Worth noting about this opening is the two ways in which it connects witchcraft and associated supernatural phenomena (cursing in this case) to plot: first dynastically, where witchcraft accusations are often metonymically linked to treason, to plotting against the king; and second theatrically, for witchcraft can both drive plots and help to resolve them. In the first sense, witchcraft accusations could be productive as a means of shoring up power or acquiring it. Rival claimants to the throne were often vilified by regnant monarchs; for courtiers vying for influence, dark mutterings about competitors’ witchcraft lay just alongside and were imbricated with rumours of treason. For example, in 1591, the registers of the Scottish Privy Council record that Francis Stewart, Earl Bothwell, was indicted for conspiring in the death of James VI, having “consultatioun with Nygromanceris, Witcheis and vtheris wickit and vngodlie personis” (Pitcairn, vol. I, pt. 3, 259). A full twenty-five indictments and proclamations against Bothwell and his associates and family members appear in the registers from 1591 to 1593, tracking the ebb and flow of Bothwell’s fortunes in the field and at the Scottish court. Most of the indictments conflate Bothwell’s status as a traitor and as an employer of witchcraft (Pitcairn, vol. I, pt. 3, 258–307). In 1594 when Bothwell was

William Badger

41

forcibly reconciled with the king, he was rapidly acquitted of all charges following what J.D. Davies calls “a shambolic farce in court” (132). Nevertheless, within the year, Bothwell was forced to flee to England when charges of witchcraft once again surfaced in the Privy Council registers, intertwined with new accusations of treason and papistry (Pitcairn, vol. I, pt. 3, 340–57).1 Bothwell, apparently, was only a witch out of royal favour. Half a century earlier in England, Anne Boleyn was put aside by Henry VIII, attainted, and executed on a string of unlikely charges. She was indicted for high treason, incest, and witchcraft; what connected the indictments was their monstrosity and their invisibility. Being monstrous, they were also approximate, gross—the unnatural of unbridled sexuality shaded into and merged with disloyalty, as well as with the malign supernatural. The very instability and overlap in the terms and associated legal categories made the crimes useful in tainting those against whom they were levelled as much as attainting them; the purpose and the effect was to “otherise” the accused. Though one man, musician Mark Smeaton, confessed to adulterous encounters with Boleyn, the accusations were not generally believed (Warnicke 1989, 220). Nevertheless, the protean nature of the charges rendered Anne’s position all but indefensible. Her uncle, Thomas Howard, and Henry Percy, a former suitor, were both empanelled in the jury of peers that found her guilty. Because it is, in a sense, an anti-phenomenon, ineffable and unobservable, witchcraft as a concept is always already plural and transferable. The application of witchcraft and witchcraft accusations to political contexts is not properly creation ex nihilo, but creatio ex materia, a reorganisation and adaption of competing and overlapping anxieties, fears, and fever dreams. Henry VIII and his confederates employed accusations of witchcraft, coupled with other monstrous crimes, as a means of giving birth to a dynasty via the instrumental death of the woman they perceived as an obstacle to that goal. And the accusation and manoeuvre succeeded, of course, at least in the short term. Henry’s next wife, Jane Seymour, gave birth to future king Edward VI (though ironically the longest-reigning Tudor monarch was to be Elizabeth, the child of executed Anne). 1

Scotland was jurisprudentially distinct from England, and Scottish witch trials have rightly been considered as separate from English ones. Nevertheless the dynastic struggles of neighbouring Scotland, especially those purportedly involving witchcraft, would have been well known to Elizabeth, particularly in light of the late anxieties in England.

42

On the Uses of Witchcraft in Shakespeare’s Dramatic Structures

Shakespeare’s Richard III—and as we shall see, the Richard of certain chronicle histories—also uses the supernatural as a method of crafting (or grasping) power. The manner of Richard’s plotting is significant—he lays a trap for his brothers using “drunken prophecies, libels and dreams,” and in fact his opening soliloquy constitutes a moment of dramatic irony with regards to its nested prophecies (1.1.33). In the speech, Richard predicts the outcome of his planted oracle, authentically prophesying (in a sense) that his brother Clarence will be “mewed up” over a contrived prophecy that names “G”—which could stand for the Christian name of George, Duke of Clarence—as a would-be regicide (1.1.38–40). For Richard, the sphere of the supernatural, of malign prophecies and witchcraft, productively connects with and overlaps the sphere of treason. The “G” prophecy was not a Shakespearean invention, though the sources that record it do not explicitly connect it with Richard. For example, of George, Duke of Clarence, Holinshed writes, “Some haue reported, that the cause of this noble mans death rose of a foolish prophesie, which was, that after K. Edward one should reigne, whose first letter of his name should be a G” (vol. VI, 703). Halle’s Chronicle notes that despite Clarence’s untimely death to avert it, this prophecy was nevertheless fulfilled when Richard, Duke of Gloucester, came to the throne as Richard III, a connection that may have suggested to Shakespeare motive for Richard’s involvement in an anti-Clarence plot: The effect of which was, after king Edward should reigne, one whose first letter of hys name shoulde be a G. and because the deuel is wot with such wytchcraftes, to wrappe and illaqueat the myndes of men, which delyte in such deuelyshe fantasyes they sayd afterward that that Prophesie lost not hys effect, when after kyng Edward, Glocester vsurpcd his kyngdome. (326)

Henry Howard came to the same conclusion before Shakespeare, connecting Richard to the “G” prophecy in his 1583 work Defensatiue against the poyson of supposed prophesies (Hh3v–Hh4r). But Halle offers an alternative, suggesting that, thanks to a longstanding grudge between Edward IV and the Duke of Clarence, one of Clarence’s men was: sodainly accused … of poysonyng, sorcery, or inchauntment, & therof condempned, and put to taste the paynes of death. The duke, whiche myght not suffer the wrongfull condemnacion of his man … dayly dyd oppugne, and wyth yll woordes murmur at the doyng thereof. The king much greued and troubled with hys brothers dayly querimonye, and contynuall exclamacion, caused hym to be apprehended, and cast into the Towre,

William Badger

43

where he beyng taken and adjudged for a Traytor, was priuely drouned in a But of Maluesey. (326)

Consistent across the accounts is the conjunction of witchcraft and treason, a connection that appears again and again in treason proceedings in the period. Both crimes (in various forms) participate in the unnatural, and they are therefore contiguous both in legal contexts and the social imagination. In Shakespeare’s day, for example, the powerful Cecil family was dogged by allegations of witchcraft and prophesying, including in an anonymous 1592 letter that accused Lord Burghley, Elizabeth’s chief advisor and Lord High Treasurer, of prophesying the initials of the individual who would cause the destruction of England (Siemon 2009, 36– 9). This episode may also have found its way into Shakespeare’s portrayal of Richard. In their invisibility and unknowability, witchcraft and treason share many ontological and epistemological features. Katherine Eisaman Maus points out that witchcraft and treason are “two kinds of felony [which] complicate the usual, rather straightforward relationship between act and mens rea,” the self-knowledge of culpability, or “guilty mind,” with which a potentially criminal act must usually be committed to rise to the level of criminality (110). Because of this inaccessibility of witchcraft and treason, particularly in the evidentiary sphere, in both cases investigation and criminal proceedings must attempt to get at, to “discover,” inward truths (Langbein 2006, 7). This impulse to uncover, to disclose, was not only generative for evidence theory in the early modern period, but also had an impact on the theatre due to the large-scale professional and cultural intersection between courts and the stage. Enacted on the stage, witchcraft and treason also perform similar dramatic functions, “discovering” or making plain the inward truths of the characters and thereby providing a frame upon which the drama may be constructed. So Richard III does not begin with the death of Clarence or with Gloucester’s conversation with the murderers who perform the deed in the fourth scene. Indeed, the murderers’ speeches seem almost metatheatrically to mock this beginning with plot, as though plotting is mere plodding: “Tut, tut, my lord, we will not stand to prate,” says the first murderer, “Talkers are no good doers,” a speech which also implicates the speaker of Shakespeare’s most famous soliloquy, Hamlet (1.3.349–350). Instead, the play begins with a soliloquy, with Richard’s discovery of his inward truth and the structure that his author imposes thereby on what follows. Indeed, Richard almost speaks for his author with his plots and inductions (1.1.32). Later in the play, Queen Margaret, whose prophecies

44

On the Uses of Witchcraft in Shakespeare’s Dramatic Structures

and curses have worked with Richard’s plotting to frame the action, bookends Richard’s opening, catching even some of the same diction: “A dire induction am I witness to, / And will to France, hoping the consequence / Will prove as bitter, black and tragical” (4.4.5–7). In its intersection with the monstrous supernatural, Richard’s plotting forms a bridge to Margaret’s cursing, and both elements work to structure the play, like a bridge built from either bank to meet in the centre of a river. Eventually it is Margaret’s magical cursing that carries the day, overthrowing Richard’s prophesying and plotting; the structure of the play reverting from Richard’s plot, “I shall become king,” to Margaret’s vengeful conceit, “the king must die.” Unlike a Senecan prologue ghost, or the ghost of Polydorus in Euripides’ Hecuba, a cursing character has the advantage of being able to participate fully in the action of the drama and cast the pall of supernatural discontent over what follows. This is true of both Richard at the play’s outset, and of Margaret as it unfolds. This is just one way that the flexibility of witchcraft as a structural device reveals itself. It both is and is not, so a character can both be fully mimetically realised and also intersect with the surreal world of dreams and nightmares. Like the characters in Pirandello’s proto-absurdist Six Characters in Search of an Author, who haunt the staging of their own reality, endlessly recurring as though to challenge their own ontological status, cursing characters and witchcraftinflected characters are both of their dramas and also transcend them as catalysers of action and stage fates (including, sometimes, their own). In this role of almost-meeting-themselves, as the demiurges of their playwrights, it is as though cursing characters participate against their will in a mise en abyme, giving form to the play in a way that sweeps them up in its unfolding. One way to highlight the structural role of witchcraft and contiguous supernatural phenomena is to compare the use made of them in the other extant plays about Richard III from the period. Critics since at least Boswell the Younger have generally agreed that Shakespeare had some exposure to the anonymous True Tragedie of Richard the Third, published in 1594 (Furness ix).1 Shakespeare’s adaption of the line “A horse, a horse, a fresh horse,” for example, has proven more durable than the presumed original.2

1

One exception to the critical consensus is John Payne Collier, but his legacy is somewhat tarnished by his career as a forger. 2 For a discussion of the line as Shakespearean source, see Barron Field (1844, vii, 64).

William Badger

45

But this line is not the only bit of True Tragedie that is dramatically less artful than Shakespeare’s Richard III play. The anonymous author of True Tragedie was apparently the lesser dramatist (or at least the more bound to Senecan antecedents). The play starts in the wrong place, and points of great narrative interest, culled from Holinshed—scenes dramatized to great effect by Shakespeare’s use of the same source—are often merely summarised by a messenger in Senecan fashion (Norland 2009, 139). One example is the encounter between Richmond and King Richard, which in True Tragedie is given in stage direction and then digested post-facto in a dialogue between a page and personified Report: Report. How may I know the certain true report of this victorious battell fought to day, my friend what ere thou beest, tel vnto mee the true report, which part hath wonne the victorie, whether the King or no? Page. A no the King is slaine and he hath lost the day, and Richmond he hathe wonne the field and tryumphs like a valiant conquerer. (65)

Compare this to Shakespeare’s version, where the stage directions are roughly the same but Richmond stays onstage himself, bloody sword in hand, to discuss the battle with Stanley (5.5). The duller dramatic sense of the True Tragedie playwright is also evident in his structural use of the supernatural. Whereas Shakespeare begins with Richard’s plotting, a skein that intertwines with Margaret’s cursing to carry the plot forward, True Tragedie begins with a standard Senecan supernatural prologue. The “Ghoast of George, Duke of Clarence” enters first to demand blood and revenge in somewhat mangled Latin. Poetrie and Truth succeed the ghost to discuss the status quo ante action of the play (True Tragedy 3–5). Rather than foreshadowing the action, the prologue is primarily concerned with the grounding of the play’s generic claims. “And here begins Truthes Pageant,” declares Truth at the close of the prologue, retrenching the claim in the play’s title to offer facts about King Richard. The word “pageant” also connects the purported historical truth of this early history play to the transcendent truths of medieval mystery and miracle play traditions. Such plays featured cycles of biblical or Christian historical tableaux, with each scene centred on a moveable stage often atop a cart (also called “pagin” in Anglo-Norman), which could trundle from place to place in a city for viewing by audiences. This appeal to authority and tradition, however subtle, exemplifies True Tragedie’s position in a transitional drama, wherein personified virtues and supernatural figures could still act as theatrical psychopomps—as they often did in morality

46

On the Uses of Witchcraft in Shakespeare’s Dramatic Structures

plays—within plays recovering and adapting the generic possibilities of classical Rome, including Senecan models. Thomas Legge’s Richardus Tertius, which, although in Latin, has been regarded as the first English history play, abjures the overtly supernatural (Lordi 1989, 2). However, the argument of the first act does look to plotting as inciting incident, if not narrative propulsion, for the play. Specifically, the argument addresses Richard’s designs on the crown as a “homo nimia ambitione elatus,” a “man lifted up by great ambition,” and his plotting against Lords Rivers and Grey (76).1 The play’s triumphalist tone also points to divine justice for the tyrannical Richard and divine favour upon the establishment of the Tudor dynasty, as one might expect from a play (actually a trilogy) written for the visit of Elizabeth to Cambridge. In these three Richard III plays, then, we see a variety of employments for supernatural elements, but it is in Shakespeare’s that the dramaturgic possibilities thereof are relatively most exploited. In Legge’s play, the supernatural is minimally present and is continuous with the spiritual; choric elements are political and expository. However, the play does get something right dramaturgically in beginning with the plot, in this case Richard’s gambit against Rivers and Gray. Meanwhile, in the anonymous True Tragedie, supernatural figures participate in the chorus and call for revenge and political restitution, but they exist mostly beyond and apart from the action of the play. Both of these plays closely follow Senecan models. Only in Shakespeare’s Richard III do the supernatural elements not only intrude in (and help to resolve) the plot, but they also frame—in the character of cursing and monstrous plotting—the drama and its unfolding. Dramaturgic innovation by Shakespeare and his contemporaries is not necessarily, therefore, reflected in an increase in supernatural elements, as some late Victorian and Edwardian scholarship had it, but rather the adaption of supernatural elements into a more integral structural role, from a choric position to a more participatory one. The point is not to posit a supersessive developmental paradigm according to which Shakespeare and his contemporaries began to use the supernatural exclusively as a structural principle; rather, the supernatural could be employed in a variety of modes: as a source of crowd-pleasing spectacle (as in Faustus and Friar Bacon and Friar Bungay, inter alia), as atmospherics, that is as background texture included to flesh out magical or liminal settings,2 and 1

The translation is my own. These modes can be polyvalent, as in the case of the supernatural elements of Macbeth, which are in places structural par excellence, and elsewhere merely decorative.

2

William Badger

47

as plot device—which is to say, in the case of Richard III, a plot-enabling device.

Bibliography Aristotle. 1996. Poetics. Ed. Joe Sachs. London, New York: Penguin. Collier, J.P. 1835. New Facts Regarding the Life of Shakespeare. London. Davies, J.R. 2010. Blood of Kings: The Stuarts, the Ruthvens and the “Gowrie Conspiracy.” Hersham: Ian Allan. Dewar-Watson, Sarah. 2007. “Aristotle and Tragicomedy.” In Early Modern Tragicomedy, edited by Subha Mukherji and Raphael Lyne, 15–27. Woodbridge: D.S. Brewer. Euripides. 2002. Medea and Other Plays. Ed. Philip Vellacott. London, New York: Penguin. Field, Barron. 1844. “Introduction.” The True Tragedy of Richard the Third to which is appended the Latin Play of Richardus Tertius, by Dr. Thomas Legge. The Shakespeare Society, Furness, Horace Howard Jr. 1908. “Introduction.” The Tragedy of Richard the Third with the Landing of the Earle Richmond and the Battell at Bosworth Field, vol. 16, The New Variorum Shakespeare. J.B. Lippincott Company. Greenblatt, Stephen. 1993. “Shakespeare Bewitched.” In New Historical Literary Study, edited by Jeffrey N. Cox and Larry J. Reynolds, 108– 35. Princeton: Princeton University Press. Halle, Edward. 1809. Hall's Chronicle, Containing the History of England During the Reign of Henry IV and the Succeeding Monarchs to the End of the Reign of Henry VIII. Ed. Henry Ellis. London. Heywood, Thomas. 2014. An Apology for Actors. London, 1612. EEBO. Horace. 2005. Satires and Epistles. Ed. Niall Rudd. London, New York: Penguin. Holinshed, Raphael. 1587. The Chronicles of England, Scotland, and Ireland. London. english.ox.ac.uk/Holinshed. Howard, Henry. 1583. Defensatiue against the poyson of supposed prophesies. London. EEBO. Langbein, John H. 2006. Torture and the Law of Proof. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press. Lordi, Robert J. 1989. “Introduction.” Thomas Legge, Richardus Tertius, Prepared with an Introduction. Renaissance Latin Drama in England, Second Series, 8. Hildesheim: Georg Olms Verlag. Maus, Katherine Eisaman. 1995. Inwardness and Theater in the English Renaissance. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press.

48

On the Uses of Witchcraft in Shakespeare’s Dramatic Structures

Norland, Howard B. 2009. Neoclassical Tragedy in Elizabethan England. New Jersey: Rosemont Publishing. Pirandello, Luigi. 1995. “Six Characters in Search of An Author,” trans. by Mark Musa. London, New York: Penguin. Pitcairn, Robert. 1833. Ancient Criminal Trials in Scotland, 3 vols in 7 pts. Edinburgh. Shakespeare, William. 1987. Hamlet. Ed. G.R. Hibbard. Oxford. —. 1951. Macbeth. Ed. Kenneth Muir. London: Methuen & Co. —. 2009. Richard III. Ed. James R. Siemon. London: Arden. Siemon, James R. 2009. “Introduction.” Richard III. 1–123. London: Arden. The Tragedy of Richard the Third with the Landing of the Earle Richmond and the Battell at Bosworth Field. 1908. Ed. Horace Howard Furness, Jr. Vol. 16, The New Variorum Shakespeare. Philadelphia: J.B. Lippincott Company. The True Tragedy of Richard the Third to which is appended the Latin Play of Richardus Tertius, by Dr. Thomas Legge. 1844. Ed. Barron Field. The Shakespeare Society. Warnicke, Retha M. 1989. The Rise and Fall of Anne Boleyn. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

A VISION OF THE IDEAL MARRIAGE IN MUCH ADO ABOUT NOTHING MASOUD GHAFOORI1 AND MINA GHAFOORI2

Introduction Much Ado About Nothing ends happily with no less than two surprise marriages—those between Claudio and Hero as the main focus of the plot, and between Benedick and Beatrice, the two characters in the subplot. It is generally believed that when the villainy of Don John is revealed and the obstacle in the marriage of Claudio and Hero removed, the relationship between the two major characters is cleansed of any doubt and ugliness and harmony is restored to the main plot. It is also believed that the skirmish between Benedick and Beatrice having taken its course, culminating in the rather anticipated marriage between them, the subplot is also furnished with a reassuring note. The two characters in the subplot, then, along with the two characters of the main plot, give a nod to the theme of the play, which is the failure of enmity and the victory of love with the help of wit and virtue. But this reading seems problematic and an inevitable question looms over the final scene of the play—is this a “happy ending?” This is another way of asking whether the two marriages at the end of the play are really “happy.” And do they signify any “ending” to the problematic relationship between the partners? One can hardly imagine that Hero and Claudio would easily forget the heartbreak and the humiliation they inflicted upon each other or that Beatrice and Benedick would leave aside all their idiosyncrasies and fit into a conventional marriage. Moreover, to think of the energetic story of Benedick and Beatrice only as a nod to the rather conventional story of Hero and Claudio seems a little unfair. What if we take the subplot as ironically refuting the outcome of the main plot? What if we take Shakespeare as presenting an 1 2

Department of English, University of Tehran. Department of English, University of Tehran.

50

Vision of the Ideal Marriage in Much Ado about Nothing

alternative, a subversive reading, to the traditional idea of marriage in his time? For as Levin notes as early as 1975, “Over the past decade the number of ironic endings in Shakespeare has been increasing at a remarkable rate … the endings are ironical because they were intended to mean something quite different from—often the opposite—of what they seem to mean” (337). On the whole, it is always rewarding to ask new questions about Shakespeare’s plays, for, in trying to answer them, we get a more comprehensive and more nuanced understanding of his plays and his world.

Hero and Claudio: A Happy Ending? In Shakespeare and Marriage: An Open Question, Dolan outlines recent studies on the history of marriage that have unsettled many assumptions about early modern marriage and its representation on the stage: “Many scholars have located dramatic changes in the motives for and meanings of marriage in the 16th and 17th centuries. It has been variously argued that marriage moved from a sacrament to a contract, from a practical arrangement to regulate sexuality and to provide for children to a loving bond between companions, from a second-class alternative to clerical celibacy … to an honourable, indeed, preferable way of life” (621). Shakespeare seems to be outlining some of these changes in the idea of marriage in his comedies. Since every text should be studied in its context and since Shakespeare is not an exception, it is convenient to put the focus first on the process and formation of the marriage by law in Shakespeare's time, referring to what B. J. Sokol and Mary Sokol have argued in their Shakespeare, Law, and Marriage: [A] contract of marriage could be made in two ways: by verba de praesenti or verba de futuro. The former, words of present consent, immediately created a valid marriage. Nothing more was needed. So an unconsummated contract using words of present consent would take priority over any subsequent marriage, whether or not consummated. However, a contract formed by words of future consent could be dissolved by mutual agreement unless it had been followed by consummation, and if unconsummated would not take priority over a subsequent consummated contract. A contract formed by words of present consent could not be dissolved either unilaterally or by agreement. (17)

Besides, a “mutual consent” was all that was needed for the “parties” to be legally married to one another. As it was previously stated, this “mutual consent” was expressed in either verba de praesenti (I take you as my

Masoud Ghafoori and Mina Ghafoori

51

wife/husband) or in verba de future (I will take you …). Yet, this kind of marriage, though common among people, was not approved by church and, to a lesser degree, by the society. To have an affordable wedding ceremony and the presence of at least two witnesses at the time of “spousal” were the conditions set by church court for the matrimony to be considered as both legal and licit. What is mostly to the point here is that “in Shakespeare’s plays, words of consent to marriage are sometimes replaced by gestures indicating consent.” Thus, following Claudio’s marriage-contracting words, “Lady, as you are mine, I am yours. I give away myself for you, and dote upon the exchange,” bashful Hero of Much Ado About Nothing speaks with no lines audible to the assembled witnesses or the theatre audience. She only whispers in Claudio’s ear and probably also makes her intent outwardly known by taking Beatrice’s “merry advice” (19), which is: “Speak, cousin. Or, if you cannot, stop his mouth with a kiss, and let not him speak, neither” (2.1.271–2); and the moment Hero too reveals her consent by her happily whispering in Claudio's ear, the marriage “precontract” is sealed and they are now officially husband and wife. Ironically, though the marriage formation is not taking place in the church under the supervision of the judge, lawyers and clergies, everything proceeds according to what the church demands of newly-weds to be solemnised: “the mutual consent,” Leonato's declaration of his consent, “Count, take of me my daughter, and with her my fortunes: his Grace hath made the match, and all grace say Amen to it!” (2.1.263–6), and the very presence of witnesses, all of which help to substantiate this wedlock even before it goes through religious ceremony. Ranald (1979), commenting on the conventionality of the marriages in Much Ado, asserts: Claudio is espoused twice in the play, and in both cases the contracts are de praesenti, notable largely because of the matter-of-fact and businesslike tone of the consents … In the first instance the spousal takes place in the home of the bride with her father performing the ritual. No actual financial bargaining is shown … but apparently since Don Pedro has “broke with her father and his goodwill obtained” (2.1.260–1), the financial arrangements are satisfactory. (74)

As a man who initially has been attracted to the physical beauty of his lady and with the least knowledge of her true personality, Claudio is most vulnerable now to any wrongdoing on the side of Hero and is easily fooled in to a conspiratorial plan by Don John. “The strongest evidence that Claudio is propelled chiefly by desire,” Lewalski suggests, “is the answer he immediately blurts forth to Don Pedro's question as to when the

52

Vision of the Ideal Marriage in Much Ado about Nothing

marriage shall take place” (1968, 274). Exited as he is, Claudio answers: “Tomorrow, my lord. Time goes on crutches till Love has all his rites” (2.1.310–11). Psychologically speaking, this kind of enthusiastic love, based not on one's rationality and reason but solely on passion and hastiness, without even having fully the first condition of getting married, which is to be ready to step into it, is said to be always accompanied by an anxiety of being cuckolded in many of Shakespeare’s plays. Then, the slightest apparent sign of disloyalty from his lady, with no further investigations into the accuracy of the news, is enough for him to destroy their relationship. The case of Claudio makes a good example. Shattered by his immediate judgment of Hero's infidelity to him, Claudio sees the ideal picture of her beauty break to pieces in front of his eyes and his ardent love is quickly substituted by resentment and contempt. Harbouring an unconscious wish to get rid of the lady, which in turn helps him to become free of his anxiety, Claudio willingly accepts the slander against Hero while making up his mind to evade and cancel their marriage—a marriage for which he has not been prepared from the very beginning. “It is to an extent possible to excuse Claudio for his mistaken belief that Hero is not loyal to him, for he is, of course, misled by a deceitful theatrical performance,” Daalder comments. “Even so, most of us today find his judgment deficient, and resent the way he treats Hero … We feel that psychologically he had not committed himself to Hero fully enough, and that as a result he is far too willing to withdraw from a relationship for which he is not ready” (2004, 522). When Claudio and his friends accuse Hero of being an “approved wanton” and a “common stale,” Leonato, by suggesting that the only one who could have had sexual intercourse with her daughter is Claudio himself, awakens the curiosity of the audience of what might have happened between Claudio and Hero in private. Of course, Claudio immediately refutes this conjecture, claiming that: “I know what you would say: if I have known her / You'll say she did embrace me as a husband, / And so extenuate the forehand sin: No, Leonato, / I never tempted her with word too large; / But, as a brother to his sister, show'd / Bashful sincerity and comely love” (4.1.46–52). However, his self-defence does not obliterate the suspicions of the audiences totally, and it remains an un-answered question for good. Claudio's alert rejection of the idea of having an affair with Hero has a reason behind it that is only understandable in its historical context of Shakespeare's time, although it is not so different from our contemporary times. According to Sokol and Sokol (2003), in that time, “no scandal will attach to a pregnancy (losing virginity in the case of Hero) out of wedlock .

Masoud Ghafoori and Mina Ghafoori

53

if a ‘pre-contract’ is believed to have been previously ‘exactly done’” (27). On the contrary, if any sexual intercourse between a man and a woman who have already given their “mutual consent” to wed could be proved, not only would the woman be clean of any accusation of unchastity, but their “pre-contracted” wedlock would also become inevitable and irrecoverable. Also, since getting a divorce was so difficult, almost impossible, in Shakespeare's England, a man could by no means avoid the “spousal” and was forced by the law and the church into an undesirable marriage. There were only a few conditions upon which “party” could call off the matrimony, inter alia, infidelity. Claudio, like his contemporaries, is conscious of these conditions and unconsciously strives to “belie” Hero to escape from the marriage. He is no longer the naïve sentimental worshiper of his lady's ideal beauty as he was before. Confused at the news of Hero's innocence, he nonetheless has become mature enough during the recent tribulations to be able to control his apparent renewing love toward her, if it can be called love at all. It rather seems that Claudio and Hero, after all the pains they have inflicted upon each other, have lost their childish enthusiastic and lascivious yearning for getting married, and even if they are no longer willing to do that, religious institutions and social laws do not provide the opportunity for them to reconsider their decision. Acquiescence to external obligations is the only choice left to them. Thus, they marry, and the play ends allegedly happily. Here, the second unanswerable question arises, with the first question being mentioned above about the possibility of sexual affairs between Claudio and Hero: Does the play end “happily?” Is it really a comedy? Are the couples going to lead a delightful and blessed life? As Dolan argues, “[w]hen, at the end of the play, Hero emphasizes that a part of her has died—‘One Hero died defiled’—she acknowledges that something is irreparably lost even as the lovers are reunited. It is another Hero if not another Claudio who marry now” (2011, 629). Berger also believes that the last words of Hero in her second marriage ceremony can be regarded as a symptom of a problematic ending: “Her emphatic assertion of virginity pronounces Claudio guilty … Hero makes it clear that the new Hero is simply the old with a vengeance” (1982, 313).

Beatrice and Benedick: A Happy “Ending?” The energetic interaction between Beatrice and Benedick in Much Ado is more often than not relegated to the status of a subplot and is interpreted as a sign of love between the two from the beginning of their encounter.

54

Vision of the Ideal Marriage in Much Ado about Nothing

“Benedict and Beatrice’s conversation may be hostile, the interpretation goes, but in their hearts they are, and have long been, deeply in love” (Greenblatt 1997, 526). But Greenblatt suggests a refuting series of questions: “[W]hat if we do not dismiss their own words? What if we take the conspiracy against them seriously? Beatrice and Benedict would not in that case ‘love’ each other from the start; it would not at all be clear that they love each other at the close” (526), and he concludes that: “[T]hey are tricked into marriage against their hearts; without the pressures that move them to professions of love, they would have remained unmarried. Beatrice and Benedick constantly tantalize us with the possibility of an identity quite different from that of Claudio and Hero, an identity deliberately fashioned to resist the constant pressure of society. But that pressure finally prevails. Marriage is a social conspiracy” (526). To say that the two partners are outwitted and overcome by the pressures of the society and marry against their hearts is to say that their marriage is an “ending” to their originality and freedom, which is not “happy” at all. But, from a different point of view, one can see the whole irony in another light—their marriage is “happy” but does not imply any “ending.” It can be argued that there has developed between them a mutual understanding and sympathy—if only to avoid the term “love”—with a reassuring element of continuity and open-endedness. In other words, Beatrice and Benedick may have changed into careful, reasonable, and still bargaining lovers. This is a different kind of love from that of Claudio and Hero, and needs to be discussed further. Claudio’s love, as is evident in his own words, is akin to love at first sight, though he was not aware of this from the first encounter: “But now I am return'd and that war-thoughts / Have left their places vacant, in their rooms / Come thronging soft and delicate desires, / All prompting me how fair young Hero is, / Saying, I liked her ere I went to wars” (1.1.244–53). Claudio speaks of “thronging desires” and “prompting,” which shows that his love is passionate but also mindless. That he is young and naïve is emphasized in different parts of the play, for example from the very beginning when the messenger speaks about him in the war: “he hath borne himself beyond the promise of his age, doing, in the figure of a lamb, the feats of a lion” (1.1.11–12). The other party, Hero, is also too passive and subservient to infuse any rationality into the relationship. It is this mindless quality, this love of appearances that makes it susceptible to doubt and deception. Whereas this love breaks apart by deception, the love between Beatrice and Benedick starts off with the help of deception. There are abundant cues in the play to show that both Benedick and Beatrice are aware of each other’s virtues. Benedick compares Hero and

Masoud Ghafoori and Mina Ghafoori

55

Beatrice in these words: “there's her cousin, an she were not possessed with a fury, exceeds her as much in beauty as the first of May doth the last of December” (1.1.154–6); and there is a possibility that Beatrice has fallen in love with Benedick somewhere in the past: “Indeed, my lord, he lent it me awhile; and I gave him use for it, a double heart for his single one: marry, once before he won it of me with false dice, therefore your grace may well say I have lost it” (2.1.242–5). They praise each other for displaying wit, although it hurts them sometimes. And they are a match, ironically, in their fear of marriage. Benedick sees the married man as one who “wilt needs thrust [his] neck into a yoke, wear the print of it and sigh away Sundays” (1.1.162–4), and he concludes: “I will live a bachelor” (1.1.201). Beatrice is also wary of marriage: “Would it not grieve a woman to be overmastered with a pierce of valiant dust? To make an account of her life to a clod of wayward marl? No, uncle, I'll none: Adam's sons are my brethren; and, truly, I hold it a sin to match in my kindred” (2.1.51–4). It is only with regards to this background that Don Pedro’s device works. The beguiling scenes for Benedick and Beatrice do not infuse them suddenly with a new sentimentality; they set into motion an already existing mechanism. “[I]t might be argued that both lovers are tamed not by one another but by the possibility of love imposed on or revealed to them by their mischievous friends” (Dolan 2011, 631). The revelation of this possibility marks the development of a new kind of harmony that feeds upon both sense and sentiment. Lewalski compares this harmony with Bembo’s Neo-Platonic idea of love in these terms: “Benedick and Beatrice have thus acted out the pattern of Bembo's rational lovers, attracted by physical beauty but regarding the inner qualities of the soul more highly, basing love on genuine knowledge, and accepting it not in terms of mad passion but by conscious choice. This higher love immediately results, as Bembo declared it would, in a new mode of knowledge, a heightened perception of reality” (1968, 243). This “rational love” is clearly different from the blind love between Claudio and Hero, since, as Lewalski points out, it effects at least two changes in the perception of the characters: First of all the lovers display an expanded and humanized self-knowledge and knowledge of human nature: though they strive with delightful comic effect to uphold the old raillery and rational standard, and though even at their wedding each declares that he loves the other “no more than reason” (5.6.74–8), the bad sonnets that they have tried to write to each other testify that they do indeed love on another plane than that of reason. Convicted, Benedick explicitly renounces foolish consistency, and his

56

Vision of the Ideal Marriage in Much Ado about Nothing observation that “man is a giddy thing” (5.4.104) signals the lovers' new affirmation of the whole range of human life and activity. Love also enables them to gain a heightened understanding of the confusions of appearance and reality in their world. (243–4)

This awareness of appearance and reality is highly significant in the world of Much Ado; a world dominated by disguise, deception and misunderstanding. All the characters, friends or foes, with good intentions or bad, have a hand in the “fashioning” of this world. As Greenblatt states, “‘Nothing’ in Shakespeare’s time was pronounced ‘noting’: this is a play obsessed with characters noting other characters” (1997, 523). Hockey also bases his whole argument on this Elizabethan pun, and asserts: “Much Ado is a comedy of mis-noting in this common sense” (1967, 354). It is with this new awareness that, at the end of the play, though they become aware of their being deceived into thinking they love each other, both Benedick and Beatrice agree to marry. And it is no less an “agreement” between a man and a woman than between two competing parties. They know that they are jeopardising their individuality and freedom, and they “have rational arguments, grounded in the gender politics of their world, for remaining single. Benedick knows that a married man must put his honour at risk by entrusting it to a woman, while Beatrice knows that a married woman must put her integrity at risk by submitting herself to a man” (Greenblatt 1997, 526). Yet they are willing to do so in order to step into another interesting, and no less jousting, relationship. In other words, they are relying upon the hope that marriage does not take their energy and freedom away; and not only that, but also that it breathes a fresh energy into their lives and creates new forms of freedom for them. Arguably, had it not been a life-affirming promise, none of them would have submitted their weapons. The play brings them to a “happy” conclusion, but it is in no way an “ending” to their bargaining. While Claudio and Hero leave the settlement of their marriage to their elders—the patriarchal society—Benedick and Beatrice create their own norms and settle the matters themselves, albeit with a push from the same patriarchal society. Marriage is a social conspiracy; but they show that an assertive individual will have his/her say in it.

Shakespeare’s Vision of Successful Marriages “Shakespeare lived in an age devoted to the maintenance of order through hierarchy, an age in which the creation of Eve from Adam's rib was both historical fact and article of faith,” states Kahn, “[b]ut he is never an advocate of order for order's sake; he never fails to question the moral

Masoud Ghafoori and Mina Ghafoori

57

grounds and practical effect of hierarchy. While endorsing the principle, he is sceptical of the practice” (1975, 88). That Shakespeare makes his heroines, especially the romantic heroines of his comedies, in charge of or at least partly responsible for the settlement of a successful marriage has been the focus of many feminist readings of his plays. As You Like It, The Comedy of Errors, The Taming of the Shrew and a number of other comedies portray a host of “romantic shrews” who voice their minds and act out their wills, and each one, to some degree, defies the patriarchal hierarchy of her time. Beatrice in Much Ado About Nothing belongs to the same group. Rosalind, in As You like It, disguises herself as a masculine figure in order to achieve the freedom in speech, behaviour and action that the society gives to men. In a society where transgressing feminine sexuality by one brings about severe judgment and contempt of others, she is not courageous and fearless enough to assume male conducts without a mask. Beatrice, on the other hand, approaches this issue in a different manner. Her bold speech and wayward spirit do not ask permission from society to flourish. She feels so self-confident in her right to elude conventionality and fight for freedom that there is no need for her to make a disguise in order to attain her goal. Yet, both Rosalind and Beatrice, for all their defiance and unruliness, willingly or unwillingly preserve the delicacy and the dignity commonly associated to women. Rosalind confronts the handkerchief awash with blood with disgust; and Beatrice, shocked by the slanders heaped upon her beloved cousin, suffers and cries much more than she is expected to. Both fit properly in the new roles they have chosen to take, though. Shakespeare presents these strong feminist characters juxtaposed with the male characters of infirm and wimpy natures to highlight how the former does sometimes exceed in intellect, patience, wit and rationale, and how they manage to set about “educating” the latter. Rosalind, noticing the lack of competence and social decorum in her lover Orlando, endeavours to teach him how, for example, he is supposed to woo a young lady or what the conditions of providing a happy and good life for his future wife are. She teaches Orlando whatever she wants him to learn, and finally, already being successful in having made an ideal husband out of him, consents to marry him. Beatrice, likewise, in her “battle of wit” with Senior Benedick, deliberately shows her equality in humour and intelligence. In this way, she strives to teach him that women, in contrast to what he thinks, are not and ought not to be always “fair” and “mild”; to be “wise”, “virtuous” and “noble” is not impossible for and not far-fetched to a woman who does not possesses the first two features. As Bevington reports in his review entitled

58

Vision of the Ideal Marriage in Much Ado about Nothing

The Difficult Ideal of Companionate Marriage, “Hagstrum saves his best praise for Rosalind and Orlando in As You Like It, ‘the most hymeneal of the comedies,’ and for Beatrice and Benedick in Much Ado About Nothing, noting that both plays make much of the heroine's assertive sexuality and the male's acceptance of that quality in her” (1994, 376). This reading is in line with, “[m]ost studies of Much Ado,” as Friedman states, that “assume that Beatrice will remain indomitable in marriage, finally achieving a truce with Benedick without relinquishing her self-determination” (350). Kate, in The Taming of the Shrew, is a perfect companion for Rosalind and Beatrice in this regard. “It is not surprising that women as sharp as Adriana [in The Comedy of Errors] and Kate cannot easily be submissive—they trust their own minds, and when they think they are right they follow their own wills” (Brooks 1960, 352). Kate cannot bear to be treated like a commodity in the “marriage market” by her father and husband. Later on, when she is being “managed” by a patriarchal husband, she learns quickly, as Kahn suggests, that she can overturn the cruel unreasonable expectations of this social order not by fighting, but by mocking them; and Petruchio understands that he should “take that mockery as the cue for compromise. It reassures him that she will give him obedience if that is what he must have, but it also warns him that she, in turn, must retain her intellectual freedom” (1975, 96). It is with these strategies of “subversive mimesis” and of “bargaining,” much the same as Beatrice’s strategies, that Kate is able to “subvert her husband's power without attempting to challenge it, and she does so in a gamesome spirit, without hostility or bitterness” (88). Brooks reasserts this notion when he claims: “Shakespeare's romantic heroines have to make men of their lovers as well as women of themselves” (1960, 355). Rosalind, Kate and Beatrice are examples of assertive heroines in Shakespeare’s works, and the frequency with which one encounters such characters is certainly meaningful, especially if their fates are contrasted with their more submissive counterparts, namely Celia, Bianca and Hero. In the case of Much Ado, the difference is most telling: whereas Beatrice treats matters concerning her with the constant employment of her own power of will and choice rather than waiting to be led to specific conduct or action, Hero's subservient personality impedes her subjectivity to act out. Ordered by her father to accept the wooing of Prince, who is mistakenly believed to be her real suitor, Hero finds herself incapable of showing any action, even a single expression of her feeling toward her future husband. She only carries out his patriarchal father's wish. Subsequent events are likewise out of her control; it is Claudio and Leonato who appoint the date of matrimony. Later on, when Hero is

Masoud Ghafoori and Mina Ghafoori

59

publicly accused of unchasteness, the Friar is the one who decides what she should do: “Let her awhile be secretly kept in / And publish it that she is dead indeed” (4.1.202–5); and until the end of the play, the time when she marries a man who has previously made her suffer so much, Hero keeps her peripheral or, better to say, neutral role in making plans for her life. As Berger suggests, “She seems easily to reconcile herself both to the match and to the role of commodity” (1982, 304). Subsequently, the play comes to a close for Beatrice and Hero in two different modes: Hero finds herself in a marriage which is an end to her role as a maiden and the beginning of her role as a conventional wife; a marriage which is hard to imagine as a happy one. But Beatrice finds herself in a marriage which is not meant to be an end to her individuality and freedom, and most probably results in a happy life. Shakespeare’s vision of the ideal marriage can be deduced from this comparison. It is true that he sees marriage as a social institution, but he also sees in it a place for the genuine, a room for individual influence. Claudio and Hero succumb to the norms of this institution with total submission and they are gloomy from the beginning to the end, and perhaps even afterwards. But Benedick and Beatrice play games with the institution, and although they at last give into it, they retain their individuality and come to a more promising conclusion. At the same time, Shakespeare seems to be emphasising the never-ending process of married life. People should develop their readiness for marriage and learn how to become ideal husbands and wives. And it is not that it stops when marriage takes place. The development and the learning are never-ending processes. Hero and Claudio must still learn how to become trusting and trustworthy; and Beatrice and Benedick must still fight for new spaces and new opportunities for the expression of their exuberant, nonconformist personalities.

Conclusion Beatrice and Benedick present an alternative answer to the eternal question, “what is the defining element of a successful marriage?” Instead of answering “love” they set forth “the possibility of love.” This is the reason why this essay foregrounds them, and not the two characters in the main plot. This essay seeks to trace the intersections in which this possibility takes root, takes shape, and then dominates the relationship of the two characters. Beatrice and Benedick are seen in the beginning as disdainful toward each other, or maybe toward the opposite sex as a whole, until they see the possibility of love in the staged fictions directed

60

Vision of the Ideal Marriage in Much Ado about Nothing

by Don Pedro. When the action in the main plot heats up, the two characters absorb the heat. They still fight and tease, but also court and go to excesses until their sharp edges are rounded by the friction. This helps them to see the other side of the wall of prejudice and to become more receptive of the idea that a successful marriage is a possibility. Shakespeare stops short of patting Beatrice and Benedick on the back, and leaves the whole stage rejoicing in their dance. For he regards marriage not as just a stage in a man’s or a woman’s life, or the result of blind passion and love at first sight. He regards it as a social institution with ample space for self-assertion, as an ongoing process of mutual understanding, self-correction and empathy. But one last question before the end: Why all this “ado” in the subplot? Why does Shakespeare here voice his vision of ideal marriage, with all its ups and downs? Shakespeare gives a panoramic, multi-vocal picture of the society, especially in his comedies. He paints every aspect of the social spectrum, and gives voice to every individual and group in different corners of that cultural environment. Though he often seems in compliance with the dominant culture, his presentation of nonconformist and marginal characters and their ironic and subversive voices refutes any reductive framing of his own ideological viewpoints. Beatrice is one such nonconformist character whose voice subverts the expectations of the dominant ideology, which is fully represented in the character of Hero. Shakespeare complies with the dominant ideology by bringing Hero’s fate to an acceptable conclusion, but he voices his own vision in the happier conclusion of Beatrice’s fate.

Bibliography Bevington, David. 1994. “The Difficult Ideal of Companionate Marriage: Esteem Enlivened by Desire: The Couple from Homer to Shakespeare by Jean H. Hagstrum.” The Journal of Religion 74 (3): 372–8. Berger, Harry Jr. 1982. “Against the Sink-a-Pace: Sexual and Family Politics in Much Ado About Nothing.” Shakespeare Quarterly 33 (3): 302–13. Brooks, Charles. 1960. “Shakespeare's Romantic Shrews.” Shakespeare Quarterly 11 (3): 351–6. Daalder, Joost. 2004. “The Pre-history of Beatrice and Benedick in Much Ado About Nothing.” English Studies 85 (6): 520–7. Dolan, Frances E. 2011. “Shakespeare and Marriage: An Open Question.” Literature Compass 8 (9): 620–34.

Masoud Ghafoori and Mina Ghafoori

61

Friedman, Michael D. 1990. “‘Hush'd on Purpose to Grace Harmony’: Wives and Silence in Much Ado About Nothing.” Theatre Journal 42 (3) Women and/in Drama: 350–63. Greenblatt, Stephen. 1997. The Norton Shakespeare: Comedies. New York: W. W. Norton and Company. Hockey, Dorothy C. 1957. “Notes Notes, Forsooth …” Shakespeare Quarterly 8 (3): 353–8. Kahn, Coppélia. 1975. “The Taming of the Shrew: Shakespeare's Mirror of Marriage.” Modern Language Studies 5 (1): 88–102. Levin, Richard. 1975. “Refuting Shakespeare's Endings.” Modern Philology 72 (4): 337–49. Lewalski, B. K. 1968. “Love, Appearance and Reality: Much Ado about Something.” Studies in English Literature, 1500–1900 8 (2): Elizabethan and Jacobean Drama, 235–51. Ranald, Margaret Loftus. 1979. “‘As Marriage Binds, and Blood Breaks’: English Marriage and Shakespeare.” Shakespeare Quarterly 30 (1): 68–81. Sokol, B. J., and Mary Sokol. 2003. Shakespeare, Law and Marriage. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

LANGUAGE FUNCTIONS IN THE TEMPEST HOSSEIN PIRNAJMUDDIN1 AND OMID AMANI2

Introduction This essay seeks to cast light on the process of identity fashioning of The Tempest’s characters, particularly Prospero, in terms of the modality of operation and the relative significance of different language functions— referential, phatic, emotive, poetic, metalingual, and conative—in the text of the play. For instance, the significance of the dominance of the phatic function in the opening scene of the play will be discussed. Also central to the analysis is the relevance of the Jakobsonian model of linguistic communication to issues of theatricality and rhetoric as strategies of identity fashioning. Among Shakespeare’s characters, Prospero is an uncanny example of the above statement since he is the only one within the play whose ability is analogous with its creator and can command his own staged “play” in a masterly manner. To use Roman Jakobson’s analysis of language functions, Prospero does this by using or manipulating language deftly, by emphasising/deemphasising language functions at the right moment whereby he fashions his own identity and other characters’ identities. Roman Jakobson's groundbreaking article Linguistics and Poetics (1960) proposes that: "there is a close correspondence, much closer than critics believe, between the question of linguistic phenomena expanding in space and time and the spatial and temporal spread of literary models" (in Lodge and Wood 2000, 32). The core argument in Jakobson is that there is no separation between linguistics and literature. Jakobson believes that there exist six factors involved in any instance of linguistic communication. According to him, in every speech act: The addresser sends a message to the addressee. To be operative, the message requires a context referred to (referent in another, somewhat 1 2

Department of English, University of Isfahan. Alborz Campus, University of Tehran.

64

Language Functions in The Tempest ambiguous, nomenclature), sizeable by the addressee, and either verbal or capable of being verbalized; a code fully, or at least partially, common to the addressee (or in other words, to the encoder and decoder of the message); and finally, a contact, a physical channel and psychological connection between the addressee, enabling both of them to enter and stay in communication. (in Lodge and Wood 2000, 34)

Jakobson assigns a function to each of the above-mentioned elements as explained below. Referential Function Jakobson begins with the element of context (referent) and lays emphasis on the dominance of the “referential,” denotative or cognitive function that attempts to convey concrete, objective information about the content of the message (context); that is, by and large, “what the message is about.” Emotive Function The next factor is the addresser, which could be a "speaker, encoder, emitter, poet, author, and narrator" (Waugh 1980, 57); the “set” that is dominant is an emotive or expressive function that, according to Jakobson, "aims at a direct expression of the speaker's attitude toward what he is speaking about. It tends to produce an impression of a certain emotion" (2000, 34). Conative Function If the communication angles towards the addressee, then the conative function is dominant. It accords with the imperative sentences, the ones well illustrated by the language of political speech, advertisement (or, generally, the language of control). Phatic Function The phatic function inclines towards the contact; as Jakobson explains, it is "primarily serving to establish, to prolong, or to discontinue communication, to check, whether the channel works ('Hello, do you hear me?'), to attract the attention of the interlocutor" (2000, 35). According to Richard Bradford, "the phatic-contact function enables the addresser effectively to suspend the information-carrying elements of the circuit (context, message and code), and speak directly to the addressee" (1994, 57).

Hossein Pirnajmuddin and Omid Amani

65

Poetic Function The poetic function as the “aesthetic” function orients the communication towards the message "for its own sake" (Jakobson 2000, 36). Jakobson asserts that: The poetic function is not the sole function of verbal art but only its dominant, determining function, whereas in all other verbal activities it acts as a subsidiary, accessory constituent. This function, by promoting the palpability of signs, deepens the fundamental dichotomy of signs and objects. Hence, when dealing with poetic function, linguistics cannot limit itself to the field of poetry. (36)

Sheila Steinberg proposes that this function is "intended to draw our attention to the sound patterns, diction, syntax and so on, of the language used in the message. Rhyme, alliteration, punning, ambiguity and even grammatical rule-breaking are examples of poetic function" (2007, 120). Metalingual Function Last but not least is the metalingual function, whose main focus is on the code in an utterance or a speech act. Jakobson recommends that: "whenever the addresser and/or the addressee need to check up whether they use the same code, speech is focused on the code" (2000, 36). Defining, rephrasing, or clarifying are key examples of this function. In this section of the essay an attempt is made to shed some light on the significance of the role of different language functions in The Tempest (1611). The Tempest is one of Shakespeare's last plays; along with Cymbeline and The Winter's Tale, it is regarded to be Shakespeare’s “farewell to theatre" (Charry 2013, 3). Moreover, as Charry notes regarding the language of the play, The Tempest is imbued with "a marked self-consciousness on the part of the author regarding the meaning and function of poetic language." Likewise, Shakespeare, as the author of the play, is somewhat identifiable with Prospero, the protagonist whose selfconscious authority, in Laurie Maguire's and Emma Smith's words, would stand "as a kind of allegory for Shakespeare as playwright" (2013, 130); the epilogue, for instance, presents to a degree a self-portrait of Shakespeare saying farewell to the stage. In Act 1.2, after the storm, there is a dialogue between Prospero and his daughter Miranda. Prospero attempts to assure Miranda that no harm has come to the passengers on the ship and it was only "in the care of thee" (1.2.16). Prospero then starts telling the story of how Antonio, his brother, usurped his throne and exiled them to the island. In the course of their conversation, he frequently draws Miranda’s attention to his narration and

66

Language Functions in The Tempest

wants to make sure that she is attending or understanding what he says. Prospero says sentences such as, "The very minute bids thee ope thin ear; obey and be attentive" (1.2.37-38), "I pray thee, mark me" (1.2.67 & 1.2. 88), "Dost thou attend me?" (1.2. 77), "Thou attend'st not?" (1.2.86), and "Dost thou hear" (1.2.105). In Jakobsonian formulation, these frequent utterances are oriented towards the phatic as well as the conative functions, which are rather dominant throughout the play. In other words, Prospero wants to make sure that the channel of communication operates properly, that his daughter listens to him attentively, and also that his narrative has a most powerful effect on her. This is of course true in the case of other characters who are dependent on and subject to him, including Ariel and Caliban. The dominance of these language functions becomes an index of Prospero’s patriarchal, domineering and authoritative character. It reflects his attempt to “authorise” himself, to establish and validate his authority and the “legitimacy” of his “rights” over others. We should keep in mind that the whole play is about authority and legitimacy. It is about a former ruler who has lost his “legitimate” authority through betrayal and his own flaw of being too trusting. Thus, Prospero is keen on establishing or re-establishing his authority through language. Stephen Greenblatt, in the introduction to his groundbreaking book Renaissance Self-Fashioning: From More to Shakespeare, notes that selffashioning “is always, though not exclusively, in language” (1980, 9). The significance of the two language functions discussed—phatic and conative—is also related to the crucial issue of theatricality, intimately linked with rhetoric, as an essential part of the Renaissance culture. After all, the theatre is the supreme art in which an attempt is made to attract and maintain the attention of the audience to affect them through identification and distancing, hence the importance of illusion, of which Prospero is a true master. Prospero commands and controls all dramaturgical effects and performances. In this sense, he is a playwright and stage-manager. The first theatrical illusion is a storm, which opens the play in medias res. Prospero, not present in the opening scene, has created the storm through his art so as to bring the characters, particularly his brother, aboard a ship to the island. The fake banquet set by "Prospero on the top (Invisible)" and "several strange shapes" (3.3.18–19) before Alonso and his companions is another instance. In Act 4, Prospero wants to reveal to Miranda and Ferdinand his magical doings: “for I must / Bestow upon the eyes of this young couple / Some vanity of mine Art;” (4.1.36–4). He seeks to prepare the stage for the play within the play or masque that is supposed to be performed as a reward for Miranda and Ferdinand's marriage. He begins his performance with a command: "No tongue! All

Hossein Pirnajmuddin and Omid Amani

67

eyes! Be silent" (4.1.59). The imperatives, frequent in Prospero’ speech, here again indicate the dominance of phatic-conative functions; that is, full attention is demanded so that the desired effect on the audience is achieved. As Eleonora Oggiano notes, "theatricality and power, in fact, converge most strongly and reach their apotheosis in the masque wherein Prospero subtly makes use of his theatrical art as an instrument of control" (2014, 203). The “play” staged by Prospero is also reminiscent of the court masque that draws profoundly on Classical myths; it hinges on spectacle, music and rhetoric. The performance reaches its finale in Act 5 in which Prospero “plays god” and gathers all in his “cell,” which he aptly calls his “court” with “few attendants” (5.1.164), to see that justice is done. Furthermore, if by the theatricality is meant a philosophy of life as a stage on which each man has to play his own part, or the idea that at different “stages” of one’s life, in relation to different people and situations, one has to play different “roles,” then Prospero is its very embodiment. As Paul Brown notes, Prospero assumes a certain role for everyone surrounding him. “For Miranda he is a strong father who educates and protects her; for Ariel he is a rescuer and taskmaster; for Caliban he is a coloniser whose refused offer of civilization forces him to strict discipline; for the Shipwreck he is a surrogate providence who corrects errant aristocrats and punishes plebeian revolt. Each of these subject positions confirms Prospero as master" (1994, 59). As mentioned, rhetoric is directly related to theatricality in The Tempest. Prospero’s power and authority are directly related to his mastery of this art, which was part and parcel of the Renaissance humanistic education—he is a "failed humanist" in the eyes of Jonathan Bate (1993, 12). Paul Brown notes that in "his powerful narrative, Prospero interpolates the various listeners—calls to them, as it were, and invites them to recognize themselves as subjects of his discourse" (1994, 59). An ultimate master of rhetoric—the art of persuasive or effective speech— Prospero handles his narratives of the past and the present so as to maintain his control over characters. This is well evident right from the beginning of the play when he tells the story of his brother's usurpation: My brother, and thy uncle, call'd Antonio,— I pray thee, mark me, that a brother should Be so perfidious!—he whom next thyself Of all the world I lov'd, and to him put The manager of my state; as at that time Through all the signories, it was the first, And Prospero the prime duke, being so reputed In dignity, and for the liberal Arts

68

Language Functions in The Tempest Without a parallel; those being all my study, The government I cast upon my brother, And to my state grew stranger, being transported And rapt in secret studies. (1.1.66–77)

The point is that along with the different rhetorical devices used here, Prospero is keen on bringing to the fore the right language functions. That is, he first makes sure that the communication channel is functioning (“mark me,” the phatic function), and then tries to tap all the resources of rhetoric to make his speech as persuasive as possible. Also, it could be argued that the frequent resort to this function indicates a sense of anxiety on the part of Prospero. Once a failure, one whose authority is defied and taken away from him, he is anxious to assert and maintain his authority, hence the frequent use or even overuse of the said function. As for other language functions with regard to characters, the dominant function associated with Miranda in the play is the emotive one, which suits her gentle, docile and innocent/naïve character. This is again established right at the beginning of the play in the opening scene after the storm when she identifies with the shipwrecked: "I have suffered with those that I saw suffer!" (1.1.5–6). On seeing Ferdinand for the first time, her emotion-laden language is again evident: "What is 't? a spirit? / Lord, how it looks about! Believe me, sir, / it carries a brave form. But 'ts a spirit" (1.2.412–14). This reaches a new height in the famous scene of her encounter in Act V, with all the shipwrecked people on the island: O, Wonder! How many goodly creatures are there here! How beauteous mankind is! O brave new World, That has such people in't! (5.1.181–4)

Moreover, in the case of the two unwilling servants/slaves, Caliban and Ariel, the dominant function is once more emotive. Caliban famously gives vent to his anger and frustration in his curses and Ariel’s tone is often pitiful and beseeching. This brief analysis of the applicability of Roman Jakobson’s theory of language functions and the model of communication to The Tempest once more indicates the much-discussed notion of Shakespeare’s uncanny awareness of the subtleties of language—his language consciousness.

Hossein Pirnajmuddin and Omid Amani

69

Bibliography Bate, Jonathan. 1993. “The Humanist Tempest.” In Shakespeare: La Tempête: Etudes critiques, edited by Claude Peltrault, 5–20. Besançon: University of Besançon Press. Bradford, Richard. 1994. Roman Jakobson: Life, Language, Art. New York: Routledge. Shakespeare, William. 2002. The Tempest. Ed. David Lindley. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Brown, Paul. 1994. "'This Thing of Darkness I acknowledge Mine:' The Tempest and the Discourse of Colonialism." In Political Shakespeare: New Essays in Cultural Materialism, edited by Jonathan Dollimore and Alan Sinfeld. Manchester: Manchester University Press. Charry, Brinda. 2013. The Tempest: Language and Writing. London: Bloomsbury Publishing Plc.. Culler, Jonathan. 2002. Structuralist Poetics: Structuralism, Linguistics, and The Study of Literature. New York: Routledge. Greenblatt, Stephen. 1980. Renaissance Self-Fashioning: From More to Shakespeare. Chicago and London: The University of Chicago Press. —. 2010. Shakespeare's Freedom. Chicago and London: The University of Chicago Press. Jakobson, Roman. 2000. "Linguistics and Poetics." In Modern Criticism and Theory: A Reader, edited by David Lodge and Nigel Wood. New York: Pearson Education, Inc. Maguire, Laurie, and Emma Smith. 2013. Thirty Great Myths About Shakespeare. London: John Wiley and Sons Ltd. Oggiano, Eleonora. 2014. "‘This is a Most Majestic Vision’: Performing Prospero's Masque on Screen." In Revisiting The Tempest; The Capacity to Signify, edited by Silvia Bigliazzi and Lisanna Calvi. Hampshire: Palgrave Macmillan. Steinberg, Sheila. 2007. An Introduction to Communications Studies. Cape Town: Juta & Co. Waugh, Linda, R. 1980. "The Poetic Function in the Theory of Roman Jakobson." Poetic Today 5.1a Roman Jakobson: Language and Poetry: 57–82.

PART II SHAKESPEARE AND POPULAR CULTURE

TEMPTATION AND LOVE IN SHAKESPEARE’S ROMANCES NARGES BAYAT1

Introduction Shakespeare’s romances are the four plays written towards the close of his theatrical career; Pericles (1608–9), Cymbeline (1609–10), The Winter’s Tale (1610–11), and The Tempest (1611–12). These plays, in different and separate ways, engage the issues that are explored in the tragedies, especially in Othello, King Lear and Macbeth. Romance stands for transformations enacted within the characters that enable an emergence from the tragic path. In the beginning, romance was not recognised as a dramatic category by Shakespeare or the compilers of the first folio who categorised Cymbeline among the tragedies and The Winter’s Tale among the comedies (Fuller 2008, 160). Throughout his career, Shakespeare was interested in the romance story. There are two kinds of romances inherited by the Elizabethan England; the Greek or Hellenic Romance and the Arthurian or Courtly Romance. The Greek Romance tells the stories of “family separations, storms at sea, apparent deaths and eventual reunions, all under the control of Diana or Fortune.” On the other hand, the Arthurian or Courtly Romances recount “knightly quests for love and honour in a primarily Christian world” (Mowat 2009, 236). Shakespeare was specially drawn to Greek Romance. Based on this categorisation, it can be said that The Winter’s Tale and Cymbeline belong to the group of the Greek Romances. Among the four romances, Cymbeline and The Winter’s Tale are similar to each other. Both begin with a tragic plot that is not based on romance but uses romance structures to complicate events and turn tragedy to comedy. The plays are also alike in centring their tragic plots on male jealousy, which is “a husband’s unfounded jealousy of his virtuous wife” (O’Connell 2001, 222). However, the two plays are different in their ways of using romance. Cymbeline is more complicated than The Winter’s Tale 1

University of Tehran.

74

Temptation and Love in Shakespeare’s Romances

since it combines three separate stories to create a complex plot. The three stories are the tragic story of Iachimo’s trickery of Posthumus, the story of the stolen royal children brought up in the wilderness, and a quasihistorical plot that frames the other two and is about the revolt of Britain against Rome. In both plays, romance does not enter the play until Act 3, scene 3. While Cymbeline is about the romance plot of lost royal children, The Winter’s Tale relies on the romance motifs like a storm, a wild bear and discovery of the foundling by shepherds (Ibid., 219–24).

The Shakespearean Pattern John Vyvyan represents a principle of construction in Shakespeare’s tragedies. He believes that Shakespeare is faithful to it throughout his career. Vyvyan’s principle is summarised here: x There is a noble soul with a fatal flaw which lays it open to a special temptation. x The voices of the temptation are characterized; thus it is certain that they will persuade to evil. x There is a temptation scene in which the weakness of the hero’s soul is explored and the temptation is yielded to. x In an inner conflict, usually in the form of a soliloquy, the nobility of the hero’s soul opposes the temptation but fails. x The hero yields to the second temptation and the second inner conflict and loses the nobility of his soul. x This leads to the tragic act and the death of the hero. (2011, 13) Therefore, throughout this process the tragic hero inverts his values unconsciously. The voices of the temptation incite to evil, though temptation is resisted when the proper self is in command. In each of his tragedies, Shakespeare analyses in detail each stage of the hero’s tragic path. For example, while Macbeth is a deep study of the aftermath of the deed of darkness and is mostly concerned with inner conflict, Othello examines temptation. That is why the tragic act comes early in Macbeth and near the end in Othello. Cymbeline and The Winter’s Tale are similar to Othello since these plays centre on male jealousy and examine temptation. In Shakespeare and the Rose of Love (1960), the second book in Vyvyan’s Shakespeare Trilogy, he refers to the Terentian pattern that Shakespeare follows in his comedies. He mentions that later commentators reduced this pattern to three parts; protasis, epitasis and catastrophe:

Narges Bayat

75

The protasis is the content of the first two acts; that is, everything up to the decisive struggle. The epitasis is the third and fourth acts; that is, the whole decisive engagement, attack and counterattack. And the catastrophe is the happy ending. (2013, 7)

Comparing this triple division with Vyvyan’s principle of Shakespeare’s tragedies, it can be concluded that in the romances the protasis is about the temptation, the epitasis focuses on the presumed justice or the tragic wound and the beginning of its healing through love, and the catastrophe is the establishment of harmony through love. Cymbeline and The Winter’s Tale will be analyzed based on this categorisation.

Cymbeline In Cymbeline, the protasis or the process of temptation covers the first two acts. The temptation begins with the banishment of Posthumus from the British court. The first instance of temptation begins when he is in Rome, far away from Imogen, his love. The voice of temptation is characterised through Iachimo when he tells Posthumus: You may wear her in title yours; but you know strange fowl light upon neighbouring ponds. Your ring may bestol’n too, so your brace of unprizable estimations, the one is but frail and the other casual; a cunning thief, or a that way accomplished courtier, would hazard the winning both of first and last. (1.4.87–92)

When Posthumus responds that “Your Italy contains none so accomplish’d/a courtier to convince the honour of my mistress” (1.4.93– 4), Iachimo acts as the tempter and says that he can seduce Imogen, to which Posthumus disagrees. However, when Iachimo says, “I make my wager rather against your confidence than her reputation” (1.4.109), it becomes clear that he is in fact trying to detect the flaw within Posthumus’s soul. The temptation leads to the wager that Iachimo can seduce any woman in the world, including Imogen. Iachimo arrives in Britain and tries to seduce Imogen. He does this by trying to convince her that Posthumus is in fact enjoying his time in Rome and has forgotten her. His plan is to make Imogen jealous and thus provoke her to take revenge by submitting to him, to which she replies, “If thou wert honourable, / Thou wouldst have told this tale for virtue, not / For such an end thou seek’st, as base, as strange” (1.6.141–3). Thus, his plan to tempt Imogen to be

76

Temptation and Love in Shakespeare’s Romances

unfaithful to Posthumus fails. When Iachimo perceives that he cannot seduce Imogen, he finds a way to make it appear to Posthumous that he has. In other words, he plans to again tempt Posthumous into believing that Imogen is unfaithful. He does this by gathering enough clues from Imogen’s room, including Imogen’s bracelet and the mole on her left breast. Thus, by the end of the first act it becomes clear that the flaw in Posthumus’s soul is his lack of faith in his wife. While Imogen, as the representation of love, passed the temptation test, the first act ends with hints that the voices of temptation will lead him to an evil act. The second act begins with another attempt by Cloten to woo Imogen. Here, Imogen, who symbolises love, dismisses Cloten and resists temptation for the second time. However, Posthumous is not as successful as Imogen and eventually succumbs to temptation. The voice of the temptation is Iachimo, who succeeds in persuading Posthumous that his love is unfaithful. While the temptation of Posthumus begins in the fourth scene of the first act, it is resumed in the fourth scene of the second act. Two points should be noted in the second temptation scene. First, how quickly Posthumus is willing to believe that Imogen has been seduced. The ease with which Iachimo convinces him suggests that Posthumus does not have great faith in his love. The second flaw in his character is that he believes that Imogen can be unfaithful; “Let there be no honour / Where there is beauty; truth where semblance; love / Where there’s another man” (2.4.108–10). Posthumus vows to seek revenge on Imogen. Thus, the protasis, or the first two acts, centres on the temptation. In Shakespearean Ethic, Vyvyan states that Shakespeare represents justice as tyranny, and honour is deliberately shown as hindering reconciliation and leading to an excessive death. He further states that the inversion of values takes place in every tragic hero, but he is generally unconscious of it. In Shakespeare’s tragedies, temptation is resisted when the “proper self” is in command, but when it is not madness overcomes and the temptation is yielded to (2011, 15). In the third act of Cymbeline, the beginning of the epitasis, Posthumus plans on killing Imogen as an act of justice. Pisanio, the wise servant of Posthumus, proposes a plan to, “pervert the present wrath / He [Posthumus] hath against himself” (2.4.151–2). Pisanio clearly sees that, “[his] master is abus’d” and that “some villain … hath done … this cursed injury” (3.4.121–3). In order to save his master, he will send word to Posthumus that Imogen is dead along with a bloodied cloth as proof. Thus, the feigned death of Imogen is planned. Apart from Posthumus, Cloten also seeks revenge. Cloten’s attitude towards Imogen is made clear in his

Narges Bayat

77

soliloquy, in which he admits that she is beautiful and full of good qualities: I love and hate her; for she’s fair and royal, … Disdaining me and throwing favours on The low Posthumus slanders so her judgment That what’s else rare is chok’d; and in that point I will conclude to hate her, nay, indeed, To be reveng’d upon her. (3.5.71, 76–80)

The fact that Imogen prefers Posthumus makes Cloten hate her, and he vows revenge for the injury she has done him. It is his later attempt to carry out this revenge that indirectly leads to his death. Act three centres mostly on the course of justice by condemning Imogen to death, and it ends with a similar demand for revenge by Cloten for being unjustly wronged. Thus both forces of justice and revenge are seeking to destroy love. The next act begins with Cloten’s second soliloquy in which he outlines his plan to kill Posthumus and rape Imogen. Similarly, the fourth act begins with Cloten’s declaration of revenge in a soliloquy. However, in this act the events gradually begin to turn towards reconciliation. This improvement is represented when Imogen meets her long-lost brothers in the wilderness. Though both groups are in disguise and their appearances are hidden, it is the power of love that reunites Imogen with her brothers and that challenges and defeats the aggressor. In other words, it is Imogen’s brother, the representative of familial love, who challenges Cloten and kills him. This shows that love will overcome all injustice. The significance of the case of mistaken identity (4.2) is that at this point Imogen confuses Cloten with Posthumus, whose actions were similarly cruel towards her. But unlike Cloten, Posthumus’s character will improve. Act five, the catastrophe, begins with Posthumus’s remorse. This is an important step in the establishment of harmony. The hero is stricken with remorse and regrets his conduct. Posthumus wishes that he had died rather than she; “Gods … had you saved / The noble Imogen … and struck / Me …” (5.1.7–11). It is important that Posthumus forgive Imogen even though he believes her guilty of infidelity. This forgiveness helps make his happy reunion with Imogen more plausible. His repentance at his order for her death is the first step towards his reformation that must occur before he can discover that she is innocent (Boyce 2005, 98). Posthumus’s repentance is to such a degree that he decides to fight for the British until he is killed, which shows that he is ready to die for his love; “so I’ll die / For thee, O Imogen, even for whom my life / Is every

78

Temptation and Love in Shakespeare’s Romances

breath a death” (5.1.25–7). Later, when he is taken prisoner, he expresses his feeling of repentance for the second time: “My conscience, thou art fetter’d / More than my shanks and wrists; you good gods, give me / The penitent instrument [i.e. death] to pick that bolt …” (5.4.8–10). At this point, Jupiter appears to Posthumus in his sleep and lets him know that all will be well; however, Posthumus has to suffer much in order to appreciate what he had: His comforts thrive, his trials well are spent … He shall be lord of Lady Imogen, And happier much by his affliction made. (5.4.104, 108–9)

After his vision, he finds a booklet lying nearby whose message confirms the happy ending. In the complicated final scene of the play, the evil character of the queen is revealed with her deathbed confession. Nevertheless, the most prominent feature of this scene is the demonstration of mercy and forgiveness rather than justice as the final step in the redemption of the hero (Vyvyan 2011, 56). Cymbeline pardons Belarius, Posthumus forgives Iachimo, and Posthumus is forgiven by Imogen. Vyvyan suggests that the fatal flaw of the tragic hero is that he has more faith in the power of death than the power of love, and Shakespeare’s tragedies follow the relationship between love and the self. All Shakespeare’s tragedies stem from a temptation. When the temptation comes, it will lead to evil and the downwards path towards the tragic act. Thus, in his tragedies Shakespeare shows that temptation probes the hero’s weakest spot. Vyvyan goes on to explain that the rejection of love is the symptom of the sickness of the soul, and when the hero yields to temptation his true self is no longer in command (Ibid., 21–35). In Cymbeline, similar to the tragedies, the tragic act is the result of a temptation; nevertheless, the hero has a chance to be saved through reconciliation with his love, which is also the representation of his noble soul. The Winter’s Tale follows the same pattern of redemption of the hero, but with a more unified structure.

The Winter’s Tale The Winter’s Tale falls neatly into two halves. The first half is a tragedy that centres on the madness of Leontes, whose jealousy resembles Othello’s and appears to have the same result—the death of his wife. The second half is a traditional romantic comedy of the triumph of young love and the restoration of old love. The two halves of the play present a

Narges Bayat

79

striking opposition between the sins of the powerful elderly characters and the natural goodness of youth (Boyce 2005, 642). Unlike Cymbeline, in The Winter’s Tale the tempter’s voice is implicit. Those words are heard in Leontes’s thoughts as clearly as if Iachimo had uttered them: “Too hot, too hot! / To mingle friendship far is mingling bloods” (1.2.108–9). The revealing outbursts of the inner conflict of Posthumus are paralleled with those of Leontes to his son in a bitter irony: “Go, play, boy, play: thy mother plays, and I / Play too; but so disgraced a part, whose issue / Will hiss me to my grave” (1.2.186–8). Similar to Othello, the first temptation reaches a climax when the hero orders the murder of his best friend. The murder or the will to murder friendship is the principle that Shakespeare follows in the downfall of the tragic hero (Vyvyan 2011, 96). Leontes’s second temptation is in Act 2, Scene 1, when he learns of the flight of Camillo and Polixenes. This temptation is his wife’s pregnancy, as he says in an rage: “let her sport herself / With that she’s big with; for ‘tis Polixenes / Has made thee swell thus” (2.1.60–2). Thus, in both plays the second temptation scenes follow the acts of justice. While Posthumus vows revenge on Imogen, Leontes sends Hermione to prison. However, unlike Cymbeline, in this play the first temptation ends with a command to murder and the second with a demand for justice. Vyvyan mentions that, like Plato, Shakespeare is preoccupied with the nature of justice; however, he pursues it with more subtlety. Unlike Plato, he comes to a clear conclusion that there is no true justice without love. Justice becomes tyranny when love is cast out. Posthumus and Leontes are all tyrannous in action because they rejected love. The most important concept in many of Shakespeare’s plays is that barbarity leads to tragedy and its resolution relies on creative mercy. It is by acceptance or rejection of love that the soul determines its fate (2011, 100,103). In the trial scene (3.2), Leontes demonstrates his justice. Shakespeare is showing that by passing the sentences of death, Leontes is unconsciously condemning himself as he ironically says to his wife: Your actions are my dreams; You had a bastard by Polixenes, And I but dream’d it! As you were past all shame, Those of your fact are so, so past all truth …. (3.2.83–6)

These words are, in a way, true of him rather than his wife, as he comes to realise it later. Shakespeare is implying that a moral inversion always precedes the tragic act. In other words, all the protagonists first induce madness in themselves since it is part of their tragedy to be self-deceived.

80

Temptation and Love in Shakespeare’s Romances

At this point, the messengers who had been sent to the oracle of Apollo return with the sealed scroll that affirms Hermione’s innocence. At once, a servant enters and announces that his son is dead. This sudden shock brings Leontes to face the truth, which is essentially the truth about himself. The queen faints and is carried out, and later word is brought that she is dead. She is not really dead, but she wants her husband to suppose her so. This double death shock completes the spiritual awakening of Leontes. He sees his true self at last and this is the first step towards redeeming his soul. The third act ends with the abandoning of Perdita on the coast of Bohemia. The storm that accompanies its close represents the extreme point of the tragic act. However, its last words suggest the process of the healing of the tragic wound and a new beginning, as the old shepherd who takes up the baby says to his son: “Tis a lucky day, boy, and we’ll do good deeds on’t” (3.3.131). The fourth act takes place in Bohemia. Sixteen years have passed. Perdita has been brought up as the Shepherd’s daughter and Prince Florizel, son of King Polixenes, falls in love with her. While in the tragedies there is a fatal flaw in the hero’s soul that makes it impossible to resist temptation, in romances there is a principle of strength in the soul that enables the hero to triumph (Vyvyan 2011, 109). Similar to the fourth act in Cymbeline, here the triumph of true love against tyranny is represented in the first scene between Florizel and Perdita. She expresses her fear that King Polixenes will never allow him to marry a shepherd’s daughter: Even now I tremble To think your father, by some accident, Should pass this way as you did. O, the Fates! How would he look …. (4.4.18–21)

The king stands for tyranny that must be transcended. Florizel, who has already made Perdita a promise of true love, answers: “my desires / Run not before mine honour, nor my lusts / Burn hotter than my faith” (4.4.33– 5). The King’s power is against fidelity to love and Florizel wins this battle by proving to be true to his love. He answers: Or I’ll be thine, my fair, Or not my father’s. For I cannot be Mine own, nor anything to any, if I be not thine. To this I am most constant, Though destiny say no. (4.4.42–6)

Narges Bayat

81

His answer is more than a love speech. Like Imogen, Perdita is dual; she is herself and she is love. And Florizel, like Posthumus, is affirming the ethic that Shakespeare has established in the tragedies. The soul that rejects love is rejecting itself, is the principle that the tragic heroes were unaware of (Vyvyan 2013, 111). Therefore, Florizel, who is presented as the opposite of the tragic hero, knows that to fail love is to fail himself, and it is to Perdita that Florizel replies: “I am but sorry, not afeared; delay’d / But nothing alter’d. What I was, I am” (4.4.460–1). He stands against tyranny by confirming his love to Perdita, which is a principle of his soul. In the fifth act, the young couple, who symbolise true love, visit Leontes who, by sympathising with their spirit of love, begins to take steps to heal most of his past destruction of the spiritual and natural order (Carey 1999, 54). All the major characters are reconciled and while all the emotional scenes occur offstage, reconciliation is established through the recognition of Perdita’s royal rank. The reason that the scene of the general reunion is reported rather than acted is that the hero and the heroine, that is, Leontes and Hemione, are not reconciled yet. In other words, everything is sacrificed to the resolution of their tragedy. Even the representation of the young lovers seems to have a hint of identification, as if the young lovers were incorporated in the hero and heroine (Gay 2008, 122). Leontes has now reversed the tragic sequence since a new birth is taking place within him. The repentant Leontes, after 16 years of “saintlike sorrow” (5.1.2), learns that both Perdita and Hermione have survived. Thus, the love which was lost, of which Perdita is the symbol, is received again. Because of the general repentance, reconciliation and rewards, and the specific reunion of family and friends, the ending is more clearly an element of the romance than in the genre of comedy or tragedy. In conclusion, the concept of renewal is added to the themes of prosperity and destruction that are more typical of Shakespearean tragedies. Thus, after Leontes has passed through sufficient years of repentance, he and all other major parties are poised for reconciliation, rewards and, above all, renewal of their families (McLellan 1984, 72). Shakespeare was much influenced by the allegorical tradition elaborated in the poetry of the Middle Ages. In other words, he used allegory frequently and as a result many of his characters are dual. They are human beings and allegorical figures at the same time. There are three types of dual characters that seem to be outstanding in Shakespeare’s plays; first is the beautiful young woman who symbolises love, second is the aged counsellor symbolising fidelity and third is the personified fault in the hero’s soul. For example, the ancient counsellors are all dual

82

Temptation and Love in Shakespeare’s Romances

characters who are faithful and represent the fidelity that goes with love. A tragic hero like Hamlet kills fidelity and discards love. However, in the romances, fidelity exists and shows that the hero’s soul is amendable through regaining love. Thus, the acceptance or rejection of love is synonymous with the health or sickness of the soul. Rejection of love leads to tragedy and following it leads to redemption. (Vyvyan 2011, 36– 43,116,143).

Conclusion In Cymbeline and The Winter’s Tale, Iachimo and Leontes fail to resist temptation. Shakespeare shows that they make the same mistake as the other tragic heroes. The temptation is the result of their lack of faith in the power of love, which allegorically stands for a quality within their soul. Their tragic crime is the rejection of love and from that moment their lives gradually lead to death unless they realize their mistakes and make their actions right. According to Shakespearean allegory, the heroine is a love symbol and must match the quality within the hero. The hero must be constant to love since it represents a standard in his own soul. In other words, the principle of love and the principle that betrays love are both in the soul. Love is a redeeming principle and a condition of the existence of the soul. Love, in Shakespeare’s plays, is the highest law and the exterior law must eventually conform to it (Vyvyan 2013, 5, 38). In Cymbeline and The Winter’s Tale, Imogen and Hermione are the allegory of love and, more than anything, stand for a quality within the heroes’ souls. Similarly, Pisanio and Camillo are not just counsellors, they are the allegorical figures who represent fidelity to the higher self, and to follow their advice means maintaining a means to redemption. In the plays, marriage is a symbol of the permanence of love, as depicted in the final reunion of family and friends in Cymbeline and The Winter’s Tale.

Bibliography Boyce, Charles. 2005. Critical Companion to William Shakespeare: A Literary Reference to His Life and Work. New York: Facts On File. Carey, G. K. 1999. Shakespeare's Comedies Notes. Lincoln, Neb.: Cliffs Notes. Fuller, David. 2008. “Shakespeare’s Romances.” In A Companion to Romance: From Classical to Contemporary, edited by Corinne Saunders. Oxford: Wiley.

Narges Bayat

83

Gay, Penny. 2008. The Cambridge Introduction to Shakespeare’s Comedies. New York: Cambridge University Press. McLellan, Evelyn. 1984. The Winter's Tale Notes, including Life of the Author, Source and Background, Brief Synopsis, List of Characters, Summaries and Commentaries, Review Questions, Selected Bibliography. Lincoln. Neb.: Cliff Notes. Mowat, Barbara A. 2009. “Afterword: Shakespeare and Romance.” In Staging Early Modern Romance: Prose Fiction, Dramatic Romance, and Shakespeare, edited by Mary E. Lamb and Valerie Wayne. New York: Taylor & Francis. O’Connell, Michael. 2001. “The Experiment of Romance.” In The Cambridge Companion to Shakespearean Comedy, edited by Alexander Leggatt. New York: Cambridge University Press. Shakespeare, William. 2009. Cymbeline: The Cambridge Dover Wilson Shakespeare, edited by John D. Wilson. New York: Cambridge UP. —. 2009. The Winter’s Tale: The Cambridge Dover Wilson Shakespeare, edited by John D. Wilson. New York: Cambridge University Press. Vyvyan, John. 2013. Shakespeare and Platonic Beauty. London: Shepheard-Walwyn. —. 2013 Shakespeare and the Rose of Love: A Study of the Early Plays in Relation to the Medieval Philosophy of Love. London: ShepheardWalwyn. —. 2011. The Shakespearean Ethic. London: Shepheard-Walwyn.

THE FANTASTIC IN A MIDSUMMER NIGHT'S DREAM HOSSEIN FATHI1 AND MOHSEN REZAEIAN

Introduction The fantastic, defined by Hungarian critic Tzvetan Todorov (1975) as a “name given to a kind of literature, a literary genre” based on certain operations of reading (3), plays a significant role in Shakespearean comedy. A remarkable example emerges in A Midsummer Night’s Dream. The complex and subtle intellectuality of the playwright’s comic art is manifested in his addressing the world of fairies in the play. The fairies, with their haunting effects on readers, pose open-ended questions about the nature of the real and the fantastic. This study addresses the play in terms of Todorov’s theory of the fantastic. Drawing on the realm of the supernatural, in particular the fairy world, and that of the real, it investigates the imaginative dimension of Shakespeare’s comic art.

The Fantastic According to Tzvetan Todorov in The Fantastic: a Structural Approach to a Literary Genre (1975), in order to consider a text an example of the fantastic, the fulfilment of three conditions is necessary. He claims that the reader’s hesitation between a natural and supernatural explanation of events is the first condition of the fantastic (31)—the text must oblige the reader to “consider the world of the characters as a world of living persons and to hesitate between a natural and a supernatural explanation of the events described” (33). Second, “this hesitation may also be experienced by a character; thus the reader’s role is so to speak entrusted to a character, and at the same time the hesitation is represented, it becomes one of the themes of the work” (ibid.). Therefore, for Todorov, the fantastic implies “an integration of the reader into the world of the characters,” and that this 1

Valie-Asr University of Rafsanjan.

86

The Fantastic in A Midsummer Night's Dream

“world is defined by the reader’s own ambiguous perception of the events narrated” (31). Third, the reader must adopt a certain attitude regarding the text: “He will reject allegorical as well as ‘poetic’ interpretations. These three requirements do not have an equal value. The first and the third actually constitute the genre; the second may not be fulfilled. Nonetheless, most examples satisfy all three conditions” (33). For Todorov, the fantastic is a sort of “hesitation experienced by a person who knows only the laws of nature, confronting an apparently supernatural event” (25). Concerning this hesitation, if in the end the work leads the reader into a natural or rational explanation it falls into the class of the “uncanny,” and if a supernatural explanation is offered the work falls into the class of the “marvellous” (44). In the fantastic-uncanny, the event that happens is actually an illusion of some sort; “the laws of reality remain intact” (42) and “events that seem supernatural throughout a story receive a rational explanation at its end” (44). Todorov gives examples of dreams, the influence of drugs, tricks and prearranged apparitions, illusions of the senses and madness as cases that can explain a fantastic / supernatural event (45). In the fantastic-marvellous, the supernatural event that occurs has actually taken place and therefore the “laws of nature must be entertained to account for the phenomena” (41). It is only the reader’s hesitation regarding either possibility that makes the text purely fantastic. The fairies in A Midsummer Night’s Dream evoke the sense of the fantastic very deeply.

The Fairies in A Midsummer Night’s Dream According to Miller (1975), the complex and subtle intellectuality of Shakespeare’s comic art was never better depicted than by A Midsummer Night's Dream and, “in particular, by Shakespeare’s employment of the fairies in that play.” He believes that not only are they obviously “the most striking feature of the comedy,” but “intellectually they are the most provocative, too” (254). With the opening of Act II of the play, one is introduced to the fairy world, through which a high level of imaginative experience is glimpsed. The extraordinary range and significance of the fairies are highlighted by the fairy whom Puck questions in his first encounter: PUCK. How now, spirit! whither wander you? Fairy. Over hill, over dale, Thorough bush, thorough brier, Over park, over pale, Thorough flood, thorough fire,

Hossein Fathi and Mohsen Rezaeian

87

I do wander everywhere, Swifter than the moon’s sphere; And I serve the fairy queen …. (2.1.1–8)

The fairies’ realm of wandering is everywhere; hence the significance of their role in the play and strong impact on the lives of the characters. In fact, it is not surprising that the whole universe feels the impact of the dissension arising between Oberon and Titania, the king and queen of the fairy world, respectively. Their object of contention is a “changeling boy,” now possessed by Titania, but desired by Oberon who wishes to make him one of his knights. Their dissention has led to climate change, bad weather, and a “progeny of evils”: Therefore the winds, piping to us in vain, As in revenge, have sucked up from the sea Contagious fogs, which falling in the land Have every pelting river made so proud That they have overborne their continents … The spring, the summer, The childing autumn, angry winter, change Their wonted liveries; and the mazed world, By their increase, now knows not which is which. And this same progeny of evils comes From our debate, from our dissension; We are their parents and original. (2.1.111–17)

Apart from the historical allusion to the period of bad weather in England and its “topical reference” referred to by such critics as Sidney Thomas (319), the famous bad-weather speech of Titania suggests the significance of the cosmic dominance of the fairies and the sort of chaos arising as a result of their dissention. However, the fairies in the wood are not just the source of chaos and discord; they also contribute to the dreamlike atmosphere of the play. Dreams are, in fact, of great structural and thematic significance in A Midsummer Night’s Dream. As vividly highlighted by the title, the entire play is presented as a dream to the readers; it is a midsummer night’s dream, a time ripe for supernatural experiences. Francois Laroque refers to the symbolic and strange overtones of a midsummer night’s experiences: In popular memories, Midsummer was still linked to the London parades. The famous Midsummer Watch, suppressed in 1539, was replaced by the Lord Mayor’s Show on St. Simon and St. Jude’s Day on 28 October, usually staged at nightfall with torches, with the presence of St. George and the dragon (popularly referred to as “Old Snap”), of giants and of Wild

88

The Fantastic in A Midsummer Night's Dream Men (“woodwoses”), all equipped with candles, lanterns, or “cressets.” These gures created a very special tinge of delight and fear, analogous to the ambivalent reactions prompted on contemporary English stages by fairies’ magic as well as by demonic or ghostly apparitions. (71)

The fairies of the wood also contribute to the harmony that is finally affected in the relationship between the pair of Athenian lovers. In his quarrel with Titania, to possess the changeling boy, Oberon, assisted by his servant Puck, gains a “flower of the purple dye” once hit with one of Cupid’s arrows (2.1.155–68). He squeezes its magic love juice into Titania’s eyes and as a result she falls in love with the ass-headed Bottom. Meanwhile, overhearing the argument between Helena and Demetrius, Oberon orders Puck to apply the flower to end their quarrel. The flower, wrongly applied by Puck on Lysander’s eyes, leads to the confusion that then follows among the pair of lovers. However, the confusion that besets the Athenian lovers is finally resolved, and order and harmony are restored: Jacke shall have Jill; Nought shall goe ill The man shall have his mare again, And all shall be well. (3.2.461–4)

The magic flower administrated here by Puck, in Mebane’s words “supernatural machinery” (1982, 260), is thus one of the major components of the fairy world and is integral to the dreamy ambience of the play.

The Fantastic: An Analysis Regarding the nature of the real and the fantastic, for many critics, “the choice offered by the play is either between the rational and the irrational or between reason and the imagination” (Hutton 1985, 290). From this perspective, an investigation into the realm of the fantastic and in particular the realm of the fairies is important in understanding the place and significance Shakespeare glimpses in the play regarding the faculty of imagination. This is best reflected in Duke Theseus’ speech on wideranging poets’ powers of imagination: The Poet’s eye, in a fine frenzy rolling, Doth glance from heaven to earth, from earth to heaven; And, as imagination bodies forth The forms of things unknown, the poet’s pen

Hossein Fathi and Mohsen Rezaeian

89

Turns them to shapes and gives to airy nothing A local habitation and a name. (5.1.12–I7)

The creatures of the fairy world, things unknown, through the poet’s imagination are given a shape, a habitation, and a name; hence, the play is referred to by Miller as a “study in the epistemology of imagination” (1975, 254). The poet’s pen introduces the readers into the fairy world. The fairies, through their intervention in human affairs, pose open-ended questions for readers regarding the nature of reality and dreams. The reader’s hesitation and that of those who are “willing to press beyond the older interpretation of the play as a charming theatrical fantasy or a comic medley or a burlesque” regarding “illusion and reality, existence and art” (ibid.) contributes to the fantastic atmosphere. This hesitation is also experienced by characters within the play. Bottom the weaver’s comment on his “rare vision” in the woods is significant in this respect: I have had a most rare vision. I have had a dream, past the wit of man to say what dream it was. Man is but an ass, if he go about to expound this dream … The eye of man hath not heard, the ear of man hath not seen, man’s hand is not able to taste, his tongue to conceive, nor his heart to report, what my dream was. (4.1.207–10, 214–17)

He wishes to have a ballad written of his dream called Bottom’s dream. In this way, the woods and fairies contribute to the dreamlike atmosphere of the play. Mebane regards Bottom’s “rare vision” of Titania and the fairies as “a playful symbol of a genuine encounter with life’s spiritual dimension” (1982, 263). As with Athenian lovers, the link between the fairies of the play and human beings is here suggested when Titania falls instantly in love with Bottom, one of the Athenian craftsmen rehearsing their play in the wood. Bottom’s dream seems incomprehensible to him. It is also past the wit of man’s, including the readers’, understanding. Such puzzles have also occupied the mind of Theseus and Hippolyta, the king and queen of Athens, respectively. When the pair of Athenian lovers relate their experiences in the woods regarding their encounter with the fairies, Hippolyta finds their story strange and Theseus remains sceptical in this regard: Hippolyta: ’Tis strange, my Theseus, that these lovers speak of. Theseus: More strange than true. I never may believe These antique fables, nor these fair toys. Lovers and madmen have such seething brains, Such shaping fantasies, that apprehend

90

The Fantastic in A Midsummer Night's Dream More than cool reason ever comprehends. The lunatic, the lover, and the poet, Are of imagination all compact …. (5.1.1–8)

Although Theseus does not believe in what Athenian lovers have told him, he claims there are elements and entities that go beyond what “cool reason” can grasp; these elements, in other words, are comprehensible through imaginative flights of the mind of each person. As Mebane mentions: A Midsummer Night's Dream suggests that awareness of life’s beauty and value is derived not from reason, which is a limited faculty, but from imagination and intuition. The play conveys a sense of wonder and astonishment at the blessings of life, and it is this emphasis, at least as much as the themes of imagination or appearance and reality, which associates the play’s vision of love and harmony with dreams. (1982, 256– 7)

The fairies also dominate the final scene of the play. When night falls the lovers go to bed, and the fairies come to bless the sleeping couples with a fairy song. Here, in his final address to the audience, Puck states that if the play has not satisfied the taste of the audience and offended them, they may consider it just a dream: If we shadows have offended, Think but this, and all is mended, That you have but slumb’red here While these visions did appear. (5.1.430–3)

In this way, the reader’s integration into the world of the play is highlighted. The readers, depending on the extent of their imaginative and artistic competence, may believe or not believe in the metaphysical status of the fairies. This is because “Shakespeare lets us have our fairies and doubt them too” (Miller 1975, 255). In the same way, Dent comments that the play “asks us to enter imaginatively into a world dominated by fairies, and to accept them as the ultimate source of dis- harmony and of harmony, while at the same time not asking us to ‘believe’ in them at all” (1964, 126).

Conclusion Regarding the title and the epilogue of A Midsummer Night’s Dream, one of the main motifs of the play is the significance of dreams as they relate

Hossein Fathi and Mohsen Rezaeian

91

to the realm of the fantastic and the real. An investigation into the realm of the fairies becomes crucial in this respect. The realm of the fairies has a close connection with that of the real, since the fairies, through their intervention in human affairs, imprint their dreamlike impact on the lives of Athenian citizens. Although they are at first a source of confusion and chaos in the lives of Athenian citizens, they finally restore harmony and order to their lives. As mentioned, Todorov regards dreams and fairy tales as examples of the fantastic-uncanny, for which there is a rational explanation, and the laws of reality remain intact. However, as specified by Theseus, there are entities which go beyond what “cool reason” can grasp. These spiritual realities enjoy a sort of metaphysical existence that may be addressed and known through the faculty of imagination. Shakespeare’s play in this respect becomes a study in the functioning of the imagination. In other words, the readers may address Shakespeare’s treatment of the dreams within the play in terms of their own creative imagination. This is vividly highlighted by Puck’s involvement of the audience in the interpretation of the play.

Bibliography Dent, R. W. 1964. “Imagination in A Midsummer Night's Dream.” Shakespeare Quarterly 15 (2): 115–29. Hutton, Virgil. 1985. “A Midsummer Night's Dream: Tragedy in Comic Disguise.” Studies in English Literature, 1500–1900 25 (2): 289–305. Laroque, Francois. 2004. “Popular Festivity.” In The Cambridge Companion to Shakespearean Comedy, edited by Alexander Leggatt, 64–78. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Mebane, John S. 1982. “Structure, Source, and Meaning in A Midsummer Night's Dream.” Texas Studies in Literature and Language 24 (3): 255–70. Miller, Ronald F. 1975. “A Midsummer Night's Dream: The Fairies, Bottom, and the Mystery of Things.” Shakespeare Quarterly 26 (3): 254–68. Shakespeare, William. 1966. “A Midsummer Night’s Dream.” In Shakespeare’s Complete Works, edited by W. J. Creig. London: Oxford University Press. Thomas, Sidney. 1949. “The Bad Weather in a Midsummer-Night's Dream.” Modern Language Notes 64 (5): 319–22.

92

The Fantastic in A Midsummer Night's Dream

Todorov, Tzvetan. 1975. The Fantastic: a Structural Approach to a Literary Genre, trans. Richard Howard. Ithaca, New York: Cornell University Press.

PART III SHAKESPEARE AND MULTICULTURALISM

AMBIVALENCE AND MIMICRY IN THE TEMPEST ALI SALAMI1 AND AMIR RIAHI2

Introduction The Tempest, which is deemed as written in 1610–11, has caught the attention of a plethora of writers and literary scholars. There are a host of readings and rewritings of the play by postcolonial critics and writers, including Aimé Césaire's The Tempest (1969), Marina Warner's Indigo (1992), and Derek Walcott's Dream of Monkey Mountain (1970). As an illustration, it is absolutely remarkable how "the writers of the Caribbean often see themselves as the progeny of Caliban, using the colonizing Prospero’s language to express a self that is beset by hatred and selfloathing" (Patke 2006, 95). The play has also been widely read with regard to colonial and postcolonial contexts. Indeed, "it is rare now to see productions of the play which do not relate it to a colonial and political context" (Innes 2007, 41). Many critics are inclined to read the play in the light of the colonial discourses it contains. Shakespeare is claimed to implicitly endorse the ideology of colonialism manifest in Prospero’s discourse, “because people like Caliban deprived of full humanity can be regarded as people without history, culture and they have therefore no logical claim to sovereignty” (Didea 2009, 1). Cartelli goes further and in an acrimonious tone reprimands the play on the grounds that, “it is no doubt true that The Tempest has long functioned in the service of ideologies that repress what they cannot accommodate and exploit what they can” (1987, 112). Some other studies have focused on Caliban, the malformed black slave who is believed to be the sole local inhabitant of the island. Arguably, Caliban is to provide Prospero and Miranda with basic knowledge about the island and equip them with the power they need to exercise it. However, Prospero betrays him, calls him "hag-seed" (1.2), and never acknowledges his humanity. However, it might be inappropriate to be remiss in the fact that Caliban is, “biologically capable of 1 2

Faculty of Foreign Languages and Literatures, University of Tehran. Alborz Campus, University of Tehran.

96

Ambivalence and Mimicry in The Tempest

impregnating Miranda, and hence [is] probably human” (Vaughan and Vaughan 1993, 12). It should also be noted that colonialism has a penchant to justify colonial settlement and the concomitant asymmetrical and discriminatory power relations. The ideology of colonialism corroborates the colonising nation's colonial expansion by validating the coloniser's superiority and the inferiority of the colonised. This essay therefore strives to elucidate the colonial discourses manifest in The Tempest and reveal how the discourse of colonialism sets out to internalise the paramountcy of white Europeans and the inadequacy of indigenous peoples. In so doing, it tends to examine defamatory stereotypical representations of Caliban, the misshapen black native inhabitant of the island, generated by Prospero and other European settlers as an essential part of their Orientalist project. Nonetheless, the essay is not content with directing full attention to the colonial reading of The Tempest and instead has the propensity to concentrate particularly on postcolonial qualities of the play in the light of Homi K. Bhabha's theories of “ambivalence” and “mimicry.” In this regard, the present essay seeks to divulge how the attempts made by colonialists to “otherise” Caliban are deterred by the ambivalence resident in colonial discourse. Furthermore, we shall shed light on how Caliban as a mimic man has the potential to subvert the ideology of colonialism and unmask the ambivalence that colonial stereotypical representations struggle to cover.

Colonial Discourses It is particularly noteworthy how colonialism justifies colonial domination and internalises colonial discourses in both the colonising and colonised nation. Samuel Selvon, for instance, addresses a critical point and poses a fundamental question that, “this gut feeling I had as a child, that the Indian was just a piece of cane trash while the white man was to be honoured and respected—where had it come from? I don’t consciously remember being brainwashed to hold this view either at home or at school” (1989, 211). Franz Fanon also recalls manifold occasions in which he was called “a Negro” by the white people in France. To illustrate this, he refers to the time when a child cried, “Mama, see the Negro! I’m frightened!” (2008, 84). Hence, being called a “dirty” “frightening” nigger by a myriad of people culminates in “an external stimulus that flicked over [him]” (Ibid.) and made him take himself “far off from [his] own presence far indeed, and made [himself] an object (85). As can clearly be seen in The Tempest, the discourse of colonialism corroborates Prospero’s colonial dominion by substantiating his

Ali Salami and Amir Riahi

97

superiority and the indigenous peoples’ inferiority. Prospero, who deems his sovereignty beneficial to the islanders, enunciates that he is the one who has released Ariel from the torment he was in, and therefore justifies capturing and exploiting him. PROSPERO. Dull thing, I say so; he, that Caliban, Whom now I keep in service. Thou best know'st What torment I did find thee in; thy groans Did make wolves howl, and penetrate the breasts Of ever-angry bears: it was a torment To lay upon the damn'd, which Sycorax Could not again undo; it was mine art, When I arriv'd and heard thee, that made gape The pine, and let thee out. ARIEL. I thank thee, master. (1.2)

Not only does colonialism justify colonial discourses for the coloniser (Prospero) and make them feel privileged, but it gives explanation for the lowly status of the colonised (Caliban) and, in Louis Althusser's term, “interpellates” that they are far inferior to the coloniser. In other words, the ideology of colonialism interpellates Caliban as inferior and slave and considers Prospero superior and master. Caliban, who has acknowledged and internalised his inadequacy and identifies himself as an object, cannot envisage a position better than a slave and is in dire need of a white god to serve. To be more precise, his mind has been colonised in such a way that he presupposes his inferiority to the white colonisers. Being oppressed by tyrannical Prospero, he seeks servitude to other white colonisers even if his god is a drunken butler. CALIBAN. I'll show thee every fertile inch o' the island; And I will kiss thy foot. I prithee, be my god. (2.2)

However, it is fallacious to claim that the ideology of colonialism has emerged from a completely irrational basis. Contrarily, the Orientalist project consolidates its chimerical binary assumptions about the Orient through scientific approaches. Orientalism makes "subtle use of reason, and recruit[s] science and history to serve its ends" (Kabbani 1994, 6). The Orient is, thus:

98

Ambivalence and Mimicry in The Tempest suitable for study in academy, for display in the museum, for reconstruction in the colonial office, for theoretical illustration in anthropological, biological, linguistic, racial, and historical theses about mankind and the universe, for instances economic and sociological theories of development, revolution, cultural personality, national religious character. (Said 1995, 7–8)

From this vantage point, Caliban is alleged to be an "anagram for cannibal" (Patke 2006, 95) that can be associated with the historical records—alluded to by Bassnett (2010)—according to which the Tupinamba (a tribe in Brazil) murdered and ate Father Sardinha, a Portuguese priest. Bassnett states that the homicide galvanized sixteenthcentury European imagination into such sheer terror of cannibalism that "the name Caliban [had] conscious associations with the word cannibal" (85). Nonetheless, this seemingly historical record, argues Bassnett, is quite different in its deep structure on the grounds that Father Sardinha, "preached a doctrine of ritual sacrifice, in which the body and blood of Christ were devoured by His worshippers" (Ibid.).

Ambivalence In a not very stark difference with Edward Said, Homi K. Bhabha argues that the discourse of colonialism requires logical jurisdiction in order to produce and reinforce stereotypes about the individuals indigenous to sites different from that of the colonising nation. This authorisation is granted to the ideology of colonialism through the establishment of ostensibly scientific and objective structures of knowledge. In so doing, the discourse of colonialism endeavours to propagate antithetical stereotypical assumptions about both the colonising and colonised subjects. Bhabha proceeds to specify that the aim of colonialism is, "to construe the colonized as a population of degenerate types on the basis of racial origin, in order to justify conquest and to establish systems of administration and instruction" (1994, 70). Notwithstanding the attempt, colonial discourse, declares Bhabha, cannot completely succeed in fulfilling this major objective, not least because colonialism, "is always pulling in two contrary directions at once" (McLeod 2000, 52). On the one hand, the colonised subject is stereotyped as unusual and peculiar, and thus excluded from the Western framework of understanding. These stereotypical representations therefore create a widening gap between the coloniser and the colonised. On the other hand, colonial discourse inevitably locates the colonised subject inside Western understanding by building knowledge and categorising them in the

Ali Salami and Amir Riahi

99

Western system of knowledge. As a consequence, the colonial text at once widens and lessens the gap between the coloniser and the colonised, or "produces the colonized as a social reality which is at once an 'other' and yet entirely knowable and visible" (Bhabha 1994, 70–1). In other words, the Orientalist project is, "split by the contradictory positioning of the colonized simultaneously inside and outside Western knowledge" (McLeod 2000, 53). Bhabha further touches upon Edward Said's analysis of Orientalist “realism,” enunciating that European assumptions and narratives of the Orient arise from anxiety. In this vein, the project of Orientalism ventures to fix the colonised subject in place and make them static by perpetuating, "terrifying stereotypes of savagery, cannibalism, lust, and anarchy" (Bhabha 1994, 72). Despite all its efforts to silence and immobilise the colonised subject, impede their progress and underline their otherness, colonial discourse cannot successfully achieve its goal. Accordingly, the fixation and exclusion of the coloniser is required to be reinforced through the fantasies and horrors of the coloniser. Bhabha spots, "points of identification and alienation, scenes of fear and desire in colonial texts" (Ibid.) that attenuate their colonial ideology. To be more precise, the colonial text is a site of ambivalence where the colonised subject floats ambivalently between the extremes of motion and fixation. Colonial discourses at once fix the colonised subject in place and give them motion. Colonial discourse, in turn, is obliged to, "arrest the ambivalence of the colonized subject" (McLeod 2000, 53) through its binary stereotypical representations. However, "like the mirror phase 'the fullness' of the stereotype—its image as identity—is always threatened by 'lack'" (Bhabha 1994, 77). For this reason, colonialism ought to repeat anxiously its antithetical assumptions so as to conceal this lack and ambivalence and give signification to its stereotypical representations. For instance, "the same old stories of the Negro's animality, the Coolie's inscrutability or the stupidity of the Irish must be told (compulsively) again and afresh, and are differently gratifying and terrifying each time" (Ibid., 77). Nonetheless, colonial discourse admits its failure and incapability of fixing the colonised subject in place every single time it has to repeat a particular stereotype. These disparaging stereotypical representations of individuals who are indigenous to locations outside the borders of the Occident are legion in The Tempest, in which Prospero and other Western colonists set out to marginalise and stereotype the black deformed native inhabitant of the island. Prospero, for instance, calls Caliban “tortoise,” “poisonous slave,” “most lying slave,” “hag-seed” (2.2), and “mis-shapen knave” (5.1).

100

Ambivalence and Mimicry in The Tempest

Additionally, Prospero complains that Caliban, “is as disproportioned in his manners / As in his shape …” (5.1). In a stentorian voice, Prospero pronounces his superior position and Caliban's subservient role by insisting on addressing Caliban as “the slave”: PROSPERO. Thou poisonous slave, got by the devil himself Upon thy wicked dam, come forth! (2.2)

Not surprisingly, Prospero is not the only white settler who seeks to marginalise Caliban and lay emphasis on his “otherness.” Similarly, other white colonisers endeavour to underscore Caliban’s eccentricity and depravity. Miranda calls Caliban “strange” and “abhorred slave” (2.2), and Trinculo calls him “ridiculous monster” (2.2.) and “most ignorant monster” (3.2). Alonso also thinks of Caliban “as strange a thing as e'er I look'd on” (5.1). Stephano’s first encounter with Caliban is the apotheosis of colonial representation, and therefore merits quotation in full: STEPHANO. Four legs and two voices; a most delicate monster! His forward voice now is to speak well of his friend; his backward voice is to utter foul speeches, and to detract. If all the wine in my bottle will recover him, I will help his ague. Come. Amen! I will pour some in thy other mouth. (2.2)

The abovementioned stereotypical assumptions are made to draw our attention to Caliban’s debauchery and inadequacy. Indeed, he is delineated in such a way that we deem him a bizarre and degenerate object. Notwithstanding the attempt, the discourse of colonialism can never thrive, and all its efforts to marginalise the colonised subject prove ultimately futile. As previously mentioned, the ideology of colonialism strives to create a dichotomy between the white colonisers and the native inhabitants of the island. Whereas Prospero epitomises humanity, normality, and superiority, Caliban tends to be cannibalism, eccentricity, and inferiority par excellence. Furthermore, colonial discourses undertake to widen the gap between slave and master and place Caliban outside Western understanding. Consequently, the project of colonialism has a propensity to exclude Caliban as peculiar and different. Nonetheless, by adding such usual adjectives as “lying,” and “abhorred” (1.2), “weak” and “drunken” (2.2), and “ignorant” and “poor” (3.2) to the unusual epithets “slave” or “monster,” the discourse of colonialism is ambivalently obliged to position Caliban inside the received Western system of comprehension. Caliban is

Ali Salami and Amir Riahi

101

unknown and bizarre as a “monster” and is at once knowable as a “lying,” “poor,” and “drunken” creature. Therefore, Caliban is simultaneously different from and similar to Prospero and other Western settlers. That is to say, Caliban is ambivalently both included in and excluded from normality by the colonising nation. From this viewpoint, this ambivalence in colonial discourse concurrently widens and narrows the gap between Caliban and other Western colonisers. To conceal this ambivalence, the white colonisers ought to anxiously repeat their stereotypical assumptions. Nonetheless, they are remiss in the fact that these anxious repetitions mechanically acknowledge the lack and vanity of their fantasies.

Mimicry As Bhabha elucidates, mimicry “emerges as one of the most elusive and effective strategies of colonial power and knowledge” (1994, 85). Mimic men are indigenous individuals of the colonised nation who have acquired the English language in order to serve the British colonisers. Bhabha alludes to Macaulay's “Minutes” (1835) in which Macaulay demanded the construction of a class of “interpreters” between the English colonisers and a myriad of peoples over whom they ruled. By this, he meant, “a class of Indians in blood and colour, but English in tastes, in opinions, in morals and intellect—in other words—a mimic man raised through [an] English school” (Ibid., 87). Hence, mimic men are taught to speak and behave like the English, yet they do not belong to the colonising nation. Nor are they accepted or welcomed by the colonisers in their nationalist discourse. In a stark contrast with Said, Bhabha points out that mimic men are not such toothless, immobilised, and docile subjects that the dominant discourse prescribes. Conversely, they are equipped with the power to, “marginalize the monumentality of history” (87–8) and deride its jurisdiction as a paragon on the grounds that mimicry does not represent; rather, it repeats. As a consequence, the mimic man has the great potential to divulge the ambivalence that the ideology of colonialism ventures to secrete through the anxious repetition of stereotypes. Thus, in Bhabha's words, "mimicry is at once resemblance and menace" (86). Mimicry is not a mask that conceals a presence and an identity. Contrarily, it is the “double vision” of mimicry that undermines colonial authority and discloses its ambivalence. Uttering the language of the coloniser, the colonised subject subverts the propriety and authority of colonial discourse, for it produces a resemblance between the coloniser and the colonised. Therefore, the

102

Ambivalence and Mimicry in The Tempest

schism, maintained by the discourse of colonialism between the colonising and colonised subject, begins to evaporate corollary to mimicry. What is more, mimicry makes nonsense of the Western system of understanding, which creates and perpetuates a boundary between the Orient and the Occident. It can be claimed that Caliban has been deprived of his own language and is, therefore, incapable of defying his master. Thus, "There is clearly no trust between master and slave, colonizer and colonized, and language reinforces the abyss that divides them" (Bassnett 2010, 85). It can also be argued that Prospero and Miranda teach Caliban the English language so as to make him do their everyday chores. PROSPERO. But as 'tis, We cannot miss him: he does make our fire, Fetch in our wood; and serves in offices That profit us.—What ho! slave! Caliban! Thou earth, thou! Speak. (1.2)

However, being an ambivalent subject, Caliban has the opportunity to use the coloniser's language as an instrument to resist the colonising subject. He can use Prospero’s language to unveil the ambivalence that Prospero’s colonial representations struggle to cover. He is, therefore, empowered by acquiring the language of the coloniser to remind him and the reader that he is the rightful heir to the island, and that the island is a legacy from his mother. With recourse to language, Caliban can promulgate that he welcomed Prospero warmly, “And show'd [him] all the qualities o' th' isle, / The fresh springs, brine-pits, barren place, and fertile” (1.2), and provided him with the essentials he needed to rule over the island. Nonetheless, Prospero betrayed Caliban and confined him “in this hard rock” (Ibid.). What is more, hearing his/her language from Caliban threatens the colonising subject to unmask the ambivalence they strive to conceal. Learning the language of the coloniser provides Caliban with the opportunity to divulge the cracks in the coloniser’s project of otherising, not least because Caliban is capable of narrowing the rift between the colonising and colonised subjects by showing resemblance as soon as he articulates the coloniser’s language. Stephano, for example, becomes flabbergasted when he sees—in his fantasies—that a “monster” or an “other” is capable of uttering his language. He feels absolutely appalled and fretful since the colonised subject, whom they struggle to silence, has

Ali Salami and Amir Riahi

103

been equipped with the medium through which he can shatter the silence and scoff at the colonising subject’s supremacy. STEPHANO. This is some monster of the isle with four legs, who hath got, as I take it, an ague. Where the devil should he learn our language? (2.2)

“Being almost the same, but not quite” (Bhabha 1994, 89) flouts the colonisers’ repetitive stereotypical representations of Caliban, evinces the inevitable suppressed anxiety in their discourse, and eventually subverts their colonial authority. Caliban sets out to bear a resemblance to Prospero and other Western colonists of the island as soon as he starts to acquire the English language. Caliban uses the oppressor’s language to anathematise colonialism and the coloniser. CALIBAN. You taught me language, and my profit on't Is, I know how to curse: the red plague rid you, For learning me your language! (2.2)

Newell argues that, “[Many] Cosmopolitan young writers demonstrated the powerful truth of Caliban’s words in The Tempest” (2006, 25). Hence, Caliban is split and located between two contrasting poles. On the one hand, he is an ignoble slave who is different from whites and should be deemed an “other.” On the other hand, he bears a striking resemblance to the Western colonisers, not least because he speaks their language. Thus, Prospero’s Orientalist project to marginalise and label Caliban as an “other” can never be completely achieved. Besides, the aforementioned similarity gives Caliban the courage to defy the coloniser and even attempt to violate its nationalist icon, namely his daughter Miranda.

Conclusion In conclusion, although Prospero and other white colonisers undoubtedly try to suppress and marginalise Caliban and lay special emphasis on his “otherness,” their effort to spotlight his difference is neutralised by the ambivalence embedded in their colonial ideology. On the one hand, the discourse of colonialism seeks to oust Caliban from Western understanding by foregrounding his anomaly and eccentricity. On the other, colonial discourse is obliged to include Caliban inside European understanding by establishing knowledge about him as a part of the Orientalist project. Consequently, Caliban is ambivalently located both

104

Ambivalence and Mimicry in The Tempest

inside and outside the European realm of propriety. In other words, he is at once different from and similar to Prospero and other white colonisers. Thus, the ideology of colonialism can never completely succeed in fixing Caliban in place, and hence the gap it struggles to widen between the coloniser and the colonised is inevitably narrowed. Additionally, Caliban is taught to speak the colonisers' language so as to serve Prospero and his daughter Miranda. His mimicry might be evocative of his disempowerment and immobility. Nevertheless, Caliban is not as feeble and hapless as the discourse of colonialism desires. Conversely, mimicry can function as a powerful tool that allows him to disclose the ambivalence that colonial ideology seeks to conceal. Prospero's language provides Caliban with the possibility to declaim that his island ought to be an independent nation and he is its legitimate hereditary ruler. Being capable of articulating Prospero's language, Caliban can express his abhorrence of the ideology of colonialism and the coloniser. Furthermore, Caliban eventuates in resembling the colonising nation as result of mimicry. Hence, mimicry can culminate with a resistance to the discrimination against the colonised corollary in the resemblance that is created between the colonising and colonised subjects.

Bibliography Bhabha, Homi K. 1994. The Location of Culture. London: Routledge. Bassnett, Susan. 2010. "Post Colonial Translations." In A Concise Companion to Postcolonial Literature, edited by Shirley Chew. Chichester: Wiley-Blackwell. Cartelli, Thomas. 1987. "Prospero in Africa: The Tempest as Colonialist Text and Pretext." In Shakespeare Reproduced: The Text in History and Ideology, edited by Jean E. Howard and Marion F. O' Conner. New York: Methuen. Didea, Gerlinde. 2009. Postcolonial Theory in William Shakespeare's The Tempest. München: GRIN Verlag GmbH. Fanon, Frantz, and Charles Lam Markmann. 2008. Black Skin, White Masks. London: Pluto. Innes, Catherine Lynette. 2007. The Cambridge Introduction to Postcolonial Literatures in English. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Kabbani, Rana. 1994. Imperial Fictions: Europe's Myths of Orient. London: Pandora. McLeod, John. 2000. Beginning Postcolonialism. Manchester: Manchester University Press.

Ali Salami and Amir Riahi

105

Newell, Stephanie. 2006. West African Literatures: Ways of Reading. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Patke, Rajeev S. 2006. Postcolonial Poetry in English. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Said, Edward W. 1995. Orientalism. Stockholm: Ordfront. Selvon, Samuel, and Kenneth Ramchand. 1989. Foreday Morning: Selected Prose 1946–1986. London: Longman. Shakespeare, William, and Peter Holland. 1999. The Tempest. New York: Penguin. Vaughan, Alden T., and Virginia Mason Vaughan. 1993. Shakespeare's Caliban: A Cultural History. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

THE NEW WOMAN AND THE ORIENTAL TROPES AS PORTRAYED IN THE IRANIAN FILM TARDID BASED ON HAMLET SHEKUFEH OWLIA1

Shakespeare would have made a great movie writer —Orson Welles

Introduction In Iran, Hamlet is Shakespeare’s most acclaimed play, and has been adapted for the stage and screen many times. Iranian director Varuzh Karim Masihi adapted and directed his version of the tragedy in 2009 as Tardid [Doubt], winning a Crystal Simorgh in the category of best adapted screenplay at the Fajr Film Festival. In his dissertation on Hamlet, Abbas Horri wrote: Unlike countries of equal sublime literary traditions, Iran has not explored Shakespeare to a degree commensurate with the richness of its cultural heritage. (2003, 68)

Had he written his dissertation only ten years later, he would have had the opportunity not only to watch Tardid but also to see the plot of the tragedy narrated from Ophelia’s viewpoint in a 2013 play entitled Hamlet that was staged in Tamashakhaneh Iranshahr by Mohammad Charmsheer. It would be fair to say that these last ten years bear witness to the emergence of Hamlet in the collective consciousness of the Iranian nation, which has led to the unprecedented popularity of the drama. One cannot help but agree with Ben Johnson, who praised Shakespeare saying, “Triumph, my Britain, thou hast one to show, / To whom all scenes of Europe homage owe. / He was not of an age, but for all time” (in Schmidt 1847). Samuel Crowl justly labelled the period following the 1

Faculty of Foreign Languages and Literatures, University of Tehran.

108

The New Woman and the Oriental Tropes as Portrayed in Tardid

Second World War as Shakespeare’s “great international phase” (in Burnett 2007, 7). Directed eighteen years after his debut film The Last Act, Karim Masihi’s second film Tardid casts Bahram Radan as Hamlet (Siavash Ruzbehan), Taraneh Ali-Doosti as Ophelia (Mahtab), Ali-Reza Shoja Noori as Claudius (Siavash’s uncle), Atash Garakani as Gertrude (Mahtalat), Mohammad Moti as Polonius (Anvari), Yahya Tavassoli as Laertes (Daniel), Hamed Komeili as Horatio (Garo) and Mahtab Keramati as Guildenstern (Mrs Afrasiabi). This essay seeks to highlight the similarities and differences between this Persian adaptation and Shakespeare’s tragedy, laying particular stress on the fact that some of the director’s attempts at integrating Oriental tropes into the plot’s structure render a distorted image of contemporary Persian society. This essay will also endeavour to address the women’s question in Iran by analysing Mahtab’s behaviour.

Bahram Radan Cast in the Role of the Mythical Siavash Siavash is a well-known figure of Ferdowsi’s The Shahnameh [The Book of Kings], his name literally meaning “the rider of the black stallion.” When he grows up and pays a visit to the court, his stepmother Sudabeh, the Queen of Iran, falls instantly in love with him and makes advances on him, which Siavash repels. Frustrated, she rushes to the King, accusing his son of having raped her. Siavash is given an ordeal—he has to ride through fire to prove his innocence, which he does, emerging unscathed and victorious. However, his father’s cold behaviour towards him forces him to go into exile in TnjrƗn where he is eventually beheaded by the king’s henchmen (Chamanara 2009, 59–68). In naming the protagonist Siavash, with connotations of innocence in Persian literature, KarimMasihi lends the film mythical overtones. Nonetheless, Siavash differs fundamentally from his mythical forefather in that his concern is not only to prove his own innocence, but also that of his father. In the film under discussion, Mahtab, who had initially planned to avenge her father’s murder after the funeral, softens when she hears Siavash’s plea of innocence and finds out about the conspiracy against him. In other words, after realising how innocent he is, all hatred disappears and she decides to back him up, joining forces with him and his best friend Garo. Siavash’s passion for photography seems to represent an attempt on his part to seize the truth of events occurring around him. In a world where everyone is engaged in the process of controlling other people’s perception of reality, the camera and photographs he takes become devices with

Shekufeh Owlia

109

which he tries to immortalise the reality. In Shakespeare’s tragedy, the wavering Hamlet eventually decides to stage a play in which the newly crowned king will see his crime re-enacted on stage. He cries, “the play’s the thing / Wherein I’ll catch the conscience of the king” (2.2.602–3), reflecting that “I’ll observe his looks. / I’ll tent him to the quick. If ’a do blench, / I know my course (2.2.594–6).” In Karim-Masihi’s adaptation, Garo gives Siavash the idea of re-enacting the sin on stage to uncover his uncle’s conscience. As the play begins, Siavash plans to take photos of Ruzbehan as he watches the tragedy, in order to immortalise his reaction to it. Moreover, according to director Bahram Beyzai, Karim-Masihi’s long-life friend and colleague, the screenwriter is by nature a very frank and outspoken person, who never refrains from telling the truth of things as they are.1 In Persian literature, water is commonly associated with purity and innocence. Therefore, the transparent water that supplies the background for the opening credits foreshadows what will emerge as a major theme in the film—innocence. Standing near the bleeding Siavash, the last shot shows Mahtab near a pond with her reflection in the water below her. The translucent water highlights all the more the innocence of Mahtab and her fiancé, suggesting that though both figures were unable to wholly seize the truth, they managed nonetheless to see through some of the schemes that ensnared them. Due primarily to her initiative, Mahtab was able to change the outcome of the story to some extent. The final shot shows her clearly emerging as the most successful character of Karim-Masihi’s adaptation as she neither goes insane nor commits suicide by drowning herself in a pond like the one she stands triumphantly next to.

The New Woman as Portrayed in Tardid From the very beginning of the play, the reader cannot help but sense how deeply submissive Ophelia is, relying as she does on male relatives to dictate to her how to behave when she comes upon hard times. For instance, she tells her father everything about her love relationship with Hamlet and even shows him the love letters he has given her. Polonius tells the king and queen, “I have a daughter—have while she is mine—/ Who in her duty and obedience, mark, / Hath given me this” 1

http://www.paymanonline.com/article.aspx?id=C21F381A-C110-4E22-9DB5B36F02DC3802.

110

The New Woman and the Oriental Tropes as Portrayed in Tardid

(2.2. 106–8, emphasis added), after which he reads out the love letter she has handed over to him. Being of noble birth, however, Polonius advises his daughter to resist Hamlet’s advances since he is out of her league: And then I prescripts gave her, That she should lock herself from his resort, Admit no messengers, receive no tokens. Which done, she took the fruits of my advice. (2.2.142–5, emphasis added)

In this regard, it is revealing that, in the film under discussion, Anvari asks Siavash: Are you two on talking terms again? Then why is she [Mahtab] being so stubborn about all this? She says she won’t come to the funeral and the wedding! She’s such a stubborn goose. There’s nothing new about that … Why don’t you call her and try to talk her into changing her mind? She’d never listen to my advice. (emphasis added)

He makes it clear that his daughter would never take a piece of advice from him. Mahtab, assertive as she is, sets about reversing the Renaissance and traditional Persian practice of submissiveness to one’s male relatives. It is important to note that portrayals of rebellious female characters have become commonplace in Iranian films and popular television series for many years now. Tahmineh Milani’s feminist films are a case in point. Ophelia, who relies on her father to bestow a sense of identity upon her, goes mad when he is killed. She claims that she “cannot choose but weep to think they would lay him i' th' cold ground” (4.5.69–70). Having turned into a raving lunatic, she sings: They bore him barefaced on the bier, Hey, non nony, nonny, hey, nonny, And in his grave rained many a tearFare you well, my dove! (4.5.166–8)

She is robbed of her senses and her mind is fixated on the idea that her father, “will ’a not come again? / And will ’a not come again? / No, no, he is dead. / Go to thy deathbed” (4.5.190–3). The dilemma of gender relations in contemporary Iranian society is one that clearly obsessed Karim-Masihi. Thus, the contrast between Ophelia’s and Mahtab’s reactions upon the deaths of their fathers is very marked. When Mahtab first encounters Siavash after her father’s suspicious death, she takes a pile of papers and suddenly starts hitting him

Shekufeh Owlia

111

on the head, crying, “You killed him, you killed him! Oh! Why did you kill him? … You’re driving me crazy!” Then, she falls to the ground and starts sobbing. Desperate, Siavash throws a gun at her and suggests she kill him in order to vent her rage: “Go ahead and kill me! Maybe you could kill your father’s murderer, I couldn’t bring myself to do that.” She quickly takes the gun he hands her and points it at him. In attempting to swiftly seek revenge, Mahtab takes on the role of Laertes who serves as a foil to Hamlet in Shakespeare’s tragedy. Unlike Siavash who is passive and mostly lost in daydreaming, Mahtab is portrayed as a woman of action who is rational. At this point in the film, insisting that she postpone her plans for revenge, Garo invites her to listen to the bloody story of how Siavash’s father was killed by Mahtab’s uncle. All this is more than the young woman can bear, and she throws the board on which all the characters of Hamlet’s play are written to the floor and stamps her feet on it, repeatedly yelling, “I won’t let it happen!” It is clear from this scene that, from this point onward, Mahtab becomes the enabler of a new narrative that takes a different course from the Bard’s plotline. Mahtab’s first reaction is to leave the cinema; after second thoughts, though, she comes back only to hear the two friends reading the following passage from Shakespeare’s drama where Hamlet says: Not a whit. We defy augury. There’s a special providence in the fall of a sparrow. If it be now, ’tis not to come. If it be not to come, it will be now. If it, be not now, yet it will come. The readiness is all. Since no man knows of aught he leaves, what is’t to leave betimes? Let be. (5.2.213–18)

Here Siavash and Garo share with Hamlet a belief in predestination that Mahtab will be seen fighting against in different scenes of the film. Trying to bring them back to their senses, she cries, “You guys are good for nothing. Death is lurking everywhere and you speak of fate and destiny?” Throughout the screenplay, Karim-Masihi confers on Mahtab an independent voice and allows her not only to make choices that shape her own destiny, but also those of two male characters, namely Siavash and Garo. Mahtab’s aim is to prevent the tragedy of Hamlet from occurring a second time. History, she is determined, must not repeat itself. Unlike Siavash and Garo, who believe that their fate cannot be altered, Mahtab declares, “I will change the play’s ending.” Perhaps, the passage in the screenplay that best demonstrates how gender roles have been changing in recent years in the country is the one where Garo asks, perplexed, “Since when do women carry swords?” to which Mahtab responds, “since the day you men placed yours in the sheaths.”

112

The New Woman and the Oriental Tropes as Portrayed in Tardid

In traditional Iranian society, as in Renaissance England, women were typically portrayed as being more docile and compromising than men. Attempting to change the course of events, Mahtab pulls herself out of the traditional pattern of the submissive woman and emerges as a confidant heroine. Mahtab is a young woman who does not shun making use of her beauty and womanly attire to achieve her aims (Marufi & Samini 2004, 92). On the day Siavash visits his late father’s corporation, now managed by his uncle, he asks Mahtab if she knows, “why this place has been plundered.” Mahtab’s response is: ’Cause it has no owner. ’Cause the one who is supposed to be sitting behind this desk to take things in hand has no sense of responsibility. You keep finding excuses all the time … You’re just good at hanging around and talking about your big ideas. You keep daydreaming and think God has appointed you to bring about change in this evil world.

In a fashion reminiscent of Hamlet, this young man endeavours to remove himself from events that are central to his life (in Charnes 2000, 190). As he is unable to comprehend the nature of the murky business enterprise his late father owned, he has trouble coming to terms with the present and is at a loss over what to do. Only after some of the mysteries surrounding his father’s death are unravelled towards the end of the film does Siavash arrive at a better understanding of himself, promising Mahtab that he will assume his responsibilities as a man from that moment on and take command of his future. As Charnes puts it, in Shakespeare’s play Ophelia’s, “desires are sacrificed to the agendas of father, brother and king; even Gertrude wants everyone just to get along” (Ibid., 190), whereas Karim-Masihi sets about reversing the Renaissance practice of denying women an independent voice. Mahtab acts as a mouthpiece for the whole generations of Iranian women who, in the course of recent decades, have come to participate increasingly in every major sphere of life, including politics, the market place and higher education. According to certain studies, Iranian women have, in recent years, earned more university degrees than men in many academic fields. Akbari and Haghighi have subtly examined the motifs behind Iranian women’s increased interest in seeking higher education between the years 1984 and 2003 (2006, 69–101), noting that women have enrolled in higher educational institutions at a higher rate than men. In his interesting article Higher Education of Women in Iran: Progress or Problem? Moinifar writes that women’s “admission into the universities in Iran … [amounts to] 60% of the total enrolments in recent years” (2012,

Shekufeh Owlia

113

58). Furthermore, Iranian women, like women elsewhere in the world, are increasingly eager to gain economic independence. In contrast with Gertrude, who is completely passive in the original play, Mahtalat is imbued with power of significant import in the initial shots of the film (Marufi & Samini 2004, 92). She displays a certain measure of authority when she threatens her son that, “I will count up to five. If you don’t get up, I’ll pour the water in the vase on your head.” As the events in the plot unfold, however, she gradually slips back into the customary role of the oppressed woman and abdicates the little control she has. As Bamber convincingly argues, this is because Gertrude is a, “psychologically and morally neutral character … who takes on the coloration of the play's moods” (1982, 77). Mahtalat is effaced to the point of being erased after her confrontation with her son in her chamber, where Siavash tells her that her father was murdered by his own brother, who is now planning to kill him too. Having lost her sanity in the last minutes of the film, she seems to be obsessed with the idea of cleaning the furniture with a handkerchief in an attempt to remove the pangs of guilt she feels. In doing so, she becomes an amalgam of Lady Macbeth and Gertrude. In the film under consideration, the actress associated with Guildenstern is a woman of ill repute named Mrs Afrasiabi. She is a most mysterious figure who conspires with Siavash’s uncle against the lives of many people (Marufi & Samini 2004, 92–3) and does not refrain from using her body and charms to climb the social ladder. Unlike Guildenstern, who dies in the original play, Mrs Afrasiabi’s survival in this rewriting stresses the fact that, the root of evil having not been eradicated, the likes of such women will go on enticing men to commit the worst crimes imaginable to forward their ends.

Magic and the Occult: the Reiteration of Oriental Tropes The film’s opening shot shows Siavash witnessing the rituals associated with the Zar practice in the southern regions of Iran and taking photos of them. Such scenes depicting the cult of Zar occur with frequency throughout Karim-Masihi’s adaptation and are replete with Oriental tropes and imagery. In this section, the essay will not place as much emphasis on the aesthetic dimension of such rituals as on the ways in which these scenes, steeped as they are with oriental imagery, render a distorted image of contemporary Iranian society. However, it is important to bear in mind that the Zar is not a native Persian custom. According to Modaressi (1986), this cult was introduced to Iran by Africans in the sixteenth century (150) and is based on a belief

114

The New Woman and the Oriental Tropes as Portrayed in Tardid

in the existence of “harmful winds … called Gowat” that affect the wellbeing of those who come under their influence. During these ceremonies, a cult leader attempts to alleviate the symptoms of those thought to be possessed by demons through music, dance and incense. The sudden shifts between the shots taken of the modern capital city of Tehran and the south of the country where the Zar ceremonies are still performed among the Baluch ethnic tribes are somewhat confusing for viewers, a fact that leads to their sense of disorientation. Arguably, this may explain why so many people actually left the cinema when the film was first screened. Despite its many merits, this film did not achieve worldwide recognition. One cannot help but agree with Chaudhuri, who notes: Middle Eastern films co-produced with European partners often obtain international video or repertory distribution, while mainstream local productions often remain unseen by foreign audiences. Film studies has yet to address properly the extent to which current critical coverage manifests the inequalities of global film distribution. (in Gow 2011, 5)

It is a well-known fact that directors often rely for their local success on government-funded subsidies; yet, to reach out to an international audience in hopes of achieving global fame, Eastern screenwriters have increasingly resorted to the use of oriental symbols in recent years. Sardar defines the Orient as a constructed object that reflects the fears and desires of the Occident about its Other. Orientalism, he believes, is a form of constructed ignorance that is based on stereotypes and consists in studying the East with Western ideas (1999, 1–53). Similarly, Said writes: Orientalism can be discussed and analyzed as the corporate institution for dealing with the Orient—dealing with it by making statements about it, authorizing views of it, describing it, by teaching it, settling it, ruling over it: in short, Orientalism as a Western style for dominating, restructuring, and having authority over the Orient (in Sardar 1999, 3).

The trope of the oppressive Muslim woman wearing the veil is one amongst many others. In the mourning ceremony commemorating Anvari’s death towards the end of the film, Mahtalat, fully veiled from head to foot, is seen in a state of utter depression. Without uttering a word, she is seen wiping the furniture with a handkerchief and a couple of minutes later she commits suicide. As Bullock puts it: When did the veil become a symbol of oppression in the West? Although I have not been able to pinpoint the origins of the idea, it is evident that by

Shekufeh Owlia

115

the eighteenth century, the veil was already taken by Europeans to be an oppressive custom amongst Muslims … However, the notion of the veil as oppressive assumed a new and important focus in the nineteenth century because that was the era of European colonization of the Middle East. As Ahmad demonstrates in her book, colonialists utilized that new focus on the status of women in part to justify invasion and colonization of the Middle East. During the colonial era, Europeans … were of one mind that Muslim women were oppressed by their culture. (2002, 1)

Armenians, an ethnic minority in Iran, are typically portrayed as being kind-hearted people who are highly skilled and great lovers of art. In the Iranian television series Day of Departure [Ruz-e Raftan], for instance, the Armenian character “Monsieur” is a violinist whom all the neighbours deeply love and respect. Naturally, Karim-Masihi, an Armenian by birth, portrays the two Armenian figures of Tardid, the pianist Anna and engineer Garo, in a very positive light. In the original play, Hamlet describes Horatio as being the best man he has ever encountered: “Horatio, thou art e'en as just a man / As e'er my conversation coped withal” (3.2.64–5). A few lines later, Hamlet praises him, saying: And blest are those Whose blood and judgment are so well commeddled, That they are not a pipe for Fortune’s finger To sound what stop she please. Give me that man That is not passion’s slave, and I will wear him In my heart’s core, ay, in my heart of heart, As I do thee. (3.2.81–4)

In other words, the Prince praises Horatio for his ability to mingle reason and emotion and for not being a slave to his passions. In his rewrite of the play, Karim-Masihi imbues Garo with rational faculties that enable him to think clearly, which is something Siavash lacks. When Siavash tells his best friend about the similarities between his life and Hamlet’s, he replies, “All the things you mention are nothing but illusions and phantasms.” The director deliberately decided on featuring this reliable, rational man who stands by Siavash in hard times so that he may share his own ethnic background. In another scene, Mahtab calls her fiancé a lunatic and advises him not to feign madness since he has always been insane. In an insightful article entitled How Superstitious are People in Tehran?, Forughi and Asgari Moghaddam note that literate people born in the big cities of Iran are less liable to become superstitious than those born in rural areas. They conclude, moreover, that the inhabitants of district

116

The New Woman and the Oriental Tropes as Portrayed in Tardid

number one of the capital city are the least superstitious of all (2001, 161– 91). It is important to stress that Karim-Masihi locates the mansion inhabited by the Ruzbehan family in the well-to-do district number one of Tehran, where the most affluent families of the country live. It therefore seems somewhat odd that Mahtalat, who belongs to the upper classes of society, should be so steeped in superstition. Convinced that her husband is bewitched at the beginning of the film, she places a blanket on his head, making him drink a magic potion that she believes will break the spell that is upon him. In such scenes one cannot help but think that Karim-Masihi shares with the Orientalists a fascination with depicting Easterners as being irrational and superstitious.

Conclusion In adapting Shakespeare’s play to the screen, this essay analyses how Karim-Masihi depicts contemporary Iran in transition from traditional values to more modern ones. He is particularly successful in depicting the emergence of the New Woman who, far from being oppressed, is very assertive. In other words, Tardid can be read as a means of coming to terms with modernity and redefining gender roles in contemporary Iranian society. It was argued, however, that in rewriting Shakespeare’s tragedy for a modern audience, Karim-Masihi, who also wished to draw the attention of international viewers, has recourse to the use of Oriental tropes that render a distorted image of what life in Iran at the dawn of the twenty-first century is really like. Some suggestions for further study would include an analysis of Siavash’s madness, the significance of the title Tardid [Doubt] and the many implications it has, the significance of the verses by Khayyam that are recited by the Calife, an inquiry into the role of art throughout the film, and an analysis of the capitalist forces at work both nationally and internationally that have a direct bearing on the events of the film. It would also be interesting to see how the Islamic notions of the Eddeh [ϩΪϋ] and predetermination are reflected in Karim-Masihi’s adaptation. The gap generation and the effeminacy of a whole new generation of Iranian men are notions that are subtly embedded in the film as well, and deserve to be examined.

Shekufeh Owlia

117

Bibliography Akbari, Nematollah, and Hassan Karnameh Haghighi. 2006. “Women Demand Higher Education in Iran” [Taghazaye zanan baraye amoozeshe aali dar Iran]. Pajoohesh Zanan Journal 3 (1): 69–101. Bamber, Linda. 1982. Comic Women, Tragic Men: A Study of Gender and Genre in Shakespeare. Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press. Beyzai, Bahram. 2007. "In Praise of Tardid [Doubt]." Faslnameh Farhangi Payman 49. http://www.paymanonline.com/article.aspx?id=C21F381A-C1104E22-9DB5-B36F02DC3802. Bullock, Katherine. 2002. Rethinking Muslim Women and the Veil: Challenging Historical & Modern Stereotypes. Herndon, VA: International Institute of Islamic Thought. Burnett, Mark Thornton. 2007. Filming Shakespeare in the Global Marketplace. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan. Chamanara, Sohrab. 2009. Summary of Shahnameh in Persian Prose. Xlibris. Charnes, Linda. 2000. "The Hamlet Formerly Known as Prince." In Shakespeare and Modernity, edited by Hugh Gandy, 189–210. New York: Routledge. Encyclopædia Iranica (RSS) http://www.iranicaonline.org/articles/zar. Forughi, Ali, and Reza Asgari Moghaddam. 2001. "How Superstitious Are People in Tehran?" Faslnameh Rahbord 53: 161–91. Gow, Christopher. 2011. From Iran to Hollywood and Some Places Inbetween: Reframing Post-revolutionary Iranian Cinema. London: I.B. Tauris. Horri, Abbas. 2003. The Influence of Translation on Shakespeare’s Reception in Iran: Three Farsi Hamlets and Suggestions for a Fourth. Dissertation, Middlesex University. Jörgens, Jack J. 1977. Shakespeare on Film. Bloomington: Indiana University Press. Marufi, Ali, and Naghmeh Samini. 2004. "How to Transfer Cultural Components When a Play Is Adapted for the Screen: A Case Study of Varuzh Karim-Masihi's Tardid." Faslnameh Takhasosi Theatre 54–55: 78–96. Modarressi, Taghi. 1986. “The Zar Cult in South Iran,” in R. Prince, ed., Trance and Possession States, Montreal, pp. 149-55. Moinifar, Heshmat Sadat. 2012. "Higher Education of Women in Iran: Progress or Problem?" International Journal of Women's Research 1 (1): 43–60.

118

The New Woman and the Oriental Tropes as Portrayed in Tardid

Sardar, Ziauddin. 1999. Orientalism. Philadelphia, PA: Open University Press. Schmidt, Alexander. 1847. Essay on the Life and Dramatic Writings of Ben Jonson. Shakespeare, William, and T. J. B. Spencer. 1980. Hamlet. Harmondsworth: Penguin. Modarressi, Taghi. 2009. "The Zar Cult in South Iran." Trance and Possession States (1968): 149–55. TardƯd. 2009. TaৢvƯr-i DunyƗ-yi Hunar. Film.

THE BARD GOES TO THE EAST: SHAKESPEARE IN IRAN S. HABIB MOUSAVI1 AND BABAK RAJABI

Introduction Shakespeare is a creator, and a marvellous one, a deity who fashioned a wholly new world. He is a world himself—a world of enduring wisdom, originality and beauty, a universe that will never wane. He is not a lily to fade, a glass to break, or a sweet fragrance to be lost in a little while. Shakespeare is eternal and absorbed into our imaginations. William Shakespeare might have shaken off his mortal coil long ago; however, he is still alive and with us in our academic course books, on our theatre stages, and in our daily conversations. But it is very significant to realise that this amazing man is not the exclusive property of any single national or linguistic tradition. Cultures all over the world sustain his legacy. The great interest in this outstanding literary figure made the world start translating him into local languages: Harana Chandra Rakskit translated Shakespeare in India; the translation of some passages of Shakespeare by Destouches and Abbe Leblanc was conducive to the popularity of the playwright in France, which developed into a “wave of anglomania” (Heylen 1993, 26) and paved the way for the subsequent translators, such as Pierre Le Tourneur and La Place; August Wilhelm Schlegel laid the cornerstone of the business in Germany, Mohamed Iffat for the Arab world, Jozef Ignacy Kraszewski in Poland, Michele Leoni, Carlo Rusconi, and Guilio Carcani in Italy, and scores of other individuals who smoothed the path of Shakespeare’s fame worldwide, slowly but surely. Notwithstanding that Shakespeare is immensely popular among Iranians, now as of before, international academic arenas rarely touch upon the Bard’s presence in Iran and when he first crossed the borders of this territory. Shakespeare himself had heard of Iran centuries ago, and manifestly alludes to Iran five times within his plays. The second merchant 1

Faculty of Foreign Languages and Literatures, University of Tehran.

120

The Bard Goes to the East: Shakespeare in Iran

in The Comedy of Errors, as of our first instance, says to Angelo, “But that I am bound / To Persia, and want guilders for my voyage” (4.1.177–8). Within the precincts of literature, nonetheless, Shakespeare wouldn’t be castigated for employing the currency of the Netherlands, the guilder, for Persia. Once more, in The Merchant of Venice, Morocco swears on the scimitar that butchered Sophy, the Shah of Iran, and a Persian Prince who defeated Sultan Soleyman in three battles, “By this scimitar / That slew the Sophy, and a Persian Prince / That won three elds of Sultan Solyman” (2.1.25–6). While the murder of Sophy is unquestionably not an historical event in Shakespeare’s era, the second postulation points to the battles between Iran and the Ottoman Empire that dragged on from 1494 to 1556. Some years elapsed before Shakespeare acquired a more in-depth knowledge of Iran. In Twelfth Night (1600), Shakespeare hints at Sophy two times: “I will not give my part of this sport for a pension of thousands to be paid from the Sophy” (2.1.180). Here, Fabian’s utterance as he watches Malvolio being beguiled by Maria’s forged letter refers to Sir Anthony Shirley, who claimed the Shah granted him a pension of 30,000 crowns. Such an ironic remark calls for at least a succinct grasp of what comes off in Iran in relation to the English agents. In another instance in Twelfth Night, Sir Tobie reflects that, “… They say he has been fencer to the Sophie” (3.4.283). Sir Tobie’s endeavour to strike terror in Sir Andrew by showing Cesario as a swordsman to be scared of alludes to Sir Robert Shirley, who was the Shah’s military adviser (Dawkins 2004, 138). In the final years, Shakespeare, once again and for the last time, touches on Iran: “… only I do not like the fashion of your garments. You will say / they are Persian, but let them be changed” (3.4.40–1). Lear thinks that he recognises Tom as one of his hundred knights, and imagines Edgar now in his blanket not as a robed justicer but as one dressed in Persian clothing. The allusion is to gorgeous Persian clothes; however, it might also refer to the barrenness of Edgar’s clothing which approaches a Herodotean sense of Persians, stripped of images and presenting the unadorned truth (McDonald 2004, 129). Nonetheless, further discussions on the concepts of such references are beyond the scope of this essay. Such a compendious account established evidence that Shakespeare was at least conscious of Iran centuries ago. With this prelude, we come to the main question behind the current study—when did Iranians become conscious of Shakespeare and his masterpieces? In order to answer this question, a concise survey of the introduction of European drama to Iran would be required.

S. Habib Mousavi and Babak Rajabi

121

European Drama in Iran Iranians had their own drama for centuries before Christ (Beiza’i 2013, 27–47), and European drama did not find its way into Iran all of a sudden. Certain events had to unfold to get the project off the ground. It was, literally, subsequent to the early stupefying and vague encounters and observations, and the first translations and practical experiences, which proceeded for a whole century, that European drama effected an entrance into Iran (Malekpour 1983, 27). There is no documented proof to vouch for a longer history of European drama in Iran earlier than the late eighteenth century when Iranians first got in touch with the European theatres directly. In a general sense, two factors contributed to the introduction of European drama in Iran: unmediated observations and essays and translations. Iranians first became familiar with the European drama through visiting playhouses and theatres and not through poring over the original texts of the plays. Regarding this, the Qajar dynasty was the dawn of a drastic change. Throughout this epoch, Iranians travelled to European territories such as France, Russia and Belgium and got acquainted with the West, and necessarily its culture and art. Though, from the very beginning, Iranians went to Europe to attend universities and join scientific academies, such journeys resulted in an awareness of the art of European drama. Those who visited the European playhouses offered their descriptions and perceptions to the literati through travelogues, newspapers and especially through sharing the experiences with circles of friends. Owing to these encounters and observations, “Tekyeye Dolat” Theatre, Dar ul-Funun Theatre Hall, and Dar ul-Tarjomeh were founded, and all played impressive roles in the introduction of European drama to Iran. Direct observations, in a broader classification, were also of two types: the observations were not always from the individuals who had crossed the threshold of European borders; sometimes, political expeditions contributed to the first-hand observation of European drama. One momentous episode during Agha Mohammad Khan Qajar’s reign was the military campaign launched against Georgia and fall of Tbilisi in April, 1795. During this expedition, the royal personage finished off scores of people, pillaged the city, and decapitated the eminent and remarkable elders of the city, among whom were droves of actors of the city theatre (Backtash 1978). Drama in Tbilisi before the conquest was affected by European drama, which went to rack and ruin with the atrocious battle. Nonetheless, this coincidence was not conducive to the introduction of

122

The Bard Goes to the East: Shakespeare in Iran

European drama in Iran. A second instance of such encounters, albeit far more pivotal, occurred during the reign of Fath Ali Shah, Persian Qajar Crown. One of Russia’s Minister Plenipotentiaries during this epoch was Alexander S. Griboyedov. He was dispatched to Iran several months subsequent to his wedding to Nino, the daughter of his best friend Prince Chavchavadze. Griboyedov was arrested by an angry mob and consigned to public execution on the spur of moment on January 30, 1829 for abusing two Georgian women who were then set free. Despite the fact that this account of Griboyedov’s death is fully rejected by many historians such as Fereydoun Adamiat (1981, 11), to compensate for the murder the Shah consigned his grandson Khosrow Mirza to St. Petersburg to apologise to Tsar Nicholas I (Hopkirk 2006, 113). St. Petersburg was at the time the greatest centre of arts and culture in Russia. Khosrow Mirza’s attendants observed the Russian theatres and recounted the details back to Iran. Mirza Mostafa Afshar was one of the attendants who visited the theatres there and documented his observations. In addition to politicians on diplomatic missions, there were some other passengers and globetrotters as well as students who crossed European borders and recorded their observations from those realms and cultures embraced there. Reports of such nature were circulated from the late eighteenth century and far into the nineteenth century. One of the early such travel writers was Mirza Abu Taleb Khan, who published an account of his travels in 1804. Mirza, on his account of Ireland, embarked on describing the glorious edifices of the country, among which were The Play House and Astley Amphi Theatre (Abu Taleb Khan 1973, 18). Mirza Saleh Shirazi was another person who published reports of his excursions. He was one of the early Iranian students who, on the orders of Abbas Mirza, was sent to England to learn the English language. Though his travelogue was never published in his time, his reports of the wonders of Europe, such as its theatre, became instrumental due to his friendship and familiarity with senior governors and commissioners of the country (Malekpour 1983, 69). What gives importance to Mirza Saleh’s observations of the European theatre is his subsequent election as a minister. Mirza’s obsession with Western theatre and drama wielded tremendous influence upon the literary society of the time and paved the way for establishing Dar ul-Funun and translating European dramatic works. Probably the first to employ the word “theatre” was Mirza Mostafa Afshar, who translated the word as “Tamasha-khane.” European theatre blossomed in Iran at the end of the reign of Naser al-Din Shah Qajar. One of the factors that fortified the establishment of European theatre at the

S. Habib Mousavi and Babak Rajabi

123

time was the Shah’s fascination with this sort of theatre. Naser al-Din Shah got familiar with the Western theatre throughout his tours to Russia and Europe in 1873, 1878 and 1889. The Shah recorded his memories in a simple and mellifluous language, and they were then collected and published by Mirza Mohammad Ali Shirazi as The Daily Journal of Memoirs of Naser al-Din Shah. Subsequent to his last excursion to Europe, Naser al-Din Shah expressed his desire to establish a theatre hall in Dar al-Funun and assigned Mirza Ali Akbar Khan to the project, who constructed the building based on a French plan. The first translated European play performed in this hall was Moliere’s The Misanthrope. Regarding this play, Edward Brown writes: Le Misanthrope, printed at Constantinople in the Taswiru’l-Afkar Press in 1286/1869–70. The title is rendered as Guzarish-i-Mardum-guriz (“the Adventure of him who fled from mankind”), the characters are Persianized, and the text is in verse and follows the original very closely, though occasionally Persian idioms or proverbs are substituted for French. (1959, 459)

Dar al-Funun Theatre Hall provoked many translators to render droves of European plays into the Persian language, and this movement carried many masterpieces of the world theatre into Iran. Dar al-Funun Theatre Hall pursued performing European plays, though after a while, due to certain reasons, experienced a decline.

Shakespeare Sets Foot in Iran Generally, the gateway to the introduction of drama to Iranians was France. Subsequent to various trips to Europe and the unwritten consciousness of people from European drama, Iranian translators first took it on themselves to translate French dramas into Persian during the Qajar dynasty. Many of the literary figures of the age believed that behavioural and cultural commonalities between Iran and France made the translation and the performance of French plays perfectly plausible in the country. A tendency towards French people and culture, along with a sort of disillusionment with English and Russian people owing to political reasons, triggered a wave of translation of French plays. From about 1870, when Mirza Habib Esfahani rendered The Misanthrope into Persian, up to the first constitutionalist steps around 1902, it was just Moliere’s works which were translated and published. Nonetheless, Iranian command of an interest in French literature did not culminate in a neglect of other European authors, especially Shakespeare. From the Constitution Revolution of

124

The Bard Goes to the East: Shakespeare in Iran

1905–7 onwards, more attention was accorded to Shakespeare than any French author, including Moliere. Notwithstanding, prior to the first translations of Shakespeare, Moliere’s plays were being performed in Dar al-Funun Theatre Hall in 1889 by Esmaeel Bazzaz’s group, and his Le Médecin Malgré Lui was translated and published in the same year by Mohammad Hassan Khan Etemad al-Saltaneh in the Dar al-Tarjomeh department of Dar al-Funun. Hence, the Age of Constitution could also be called the “Age of Shakespeare,” and the reign of Naser al-Din Shah the “Age of Moliere.” Hitherto we offered accounts of the visitors who roamed through Europe and documented their findings and observations in their memoirs. The flourishing rapprochement between the Iranian court and the West was a key factor in the upsurge of such excursions to Europe. Probably the first Iranian who mentioned Shakespeare amidst the pages of his memoir was Mirza Saleh Shirazi. Yet, Shakespeare here is considered an aweinspiring poet rather than a magnificent dramatist, “Shakespeare, one of the poets of the age, became extremely prominent at the time” (Mirza Saleh Shirazi 1968, 316). Mirza’s account of Shakespeare introduced the celebrated English author to the people of Persia. Generally, one of the ways which made the introduction of Shakespeare possible was the trips and travels to Europe, as a result of which the educated Iranians could hear Shakespeare’s name and watch some of his outstanding plays (Akbarloo 2009, 99), and eventually share the experience with friends and people back in Iran. Another channel that contributed to the fame of Shakespeare in Iran was tsarist Russia. In Russia, and especially St. Petersburg, Moscow, and southern parts of the country, Shakespearean plays were being performed abundantly, and each and every class of society attended theatre halls to watch them. Since Russia was the one and only land that connected Iran to the European territories, all those who fancied travelling to France, England, Austria or Germany had to get to Russia through Bandar Anzali. During their trips through Russia, some of the passengers watched Shakespearean drama and offered accounts of them in their travelogues and memoirs. Hence, prior to the Constitution Revolution, most of the accounts of Shakespeare had an oral and visual identity, though definitely not all of them. However, from the outset of the Constitutional Revolution, Shakespeare stepped into the spotlight and many essays and articles were written and published about him. Many journals allocated pages to this marvellous dramatist. Later, owing to such early essays and translations, Shakespeare became extremely famous to the degree that his plays were performed even in small towns. For example, in Tabriz, the Tashchyan

S. Habib Mousavi and Babak Rajabi

125

Actoral team performed many of Shakespeare’s plays in Armani and Azari Turkish languages (Arianpour 1976, 290). During the Qajar Dynasty, Iranians knew Shakespeare and many essays were published in different magazines and journals, such as Bahar [Spring], Ra’d [Thunder] and Majalle Adabi [Literary Magazine], respecting the extraordinary literary figure. What stands as a milestone concerning Iranian’s widespread awareness of Shakespeare is the publication of the literary journal Bahar by Yusuf Etesami, nicknamed E’tesam al-Mulk. Etesami translated some selected parts by Shakespeare and published them in Bahar. In 1909, probably the first Iranian encyclopaedic and all-embracing essay on Shakespeare was published in Bahar, which opened with a brief description of the history of drama and definitions of its different genres, presented a biography of Shakespeare and finally gave some parts of A Midsummer Night’s Dream and Macbeth translated into Farsi. Though a literal translation of this early essay would not do justice to the literary and flowery language of the author, some parts of the essay, as one of the first Iranian essays on Shakespeare, are quoted here: William Shakespeare, the greatest of English poets, was born in Stratford in 22 April 1564. His father was an average businessman who enrolled his son in a free school. After a while, due to a failure in business, he sent his son to do business with a merchant. At the age of 18, William Shakespeare had a girl and two sons. Being unable to meet both ends, he fled to London in 1853, and there he joined the acting groups. Not a long time passed before he formed his own acting group and managed it himself … Shakespeare’s first work combined the customs of London’s social classes and contemporary events with literary goals and moral points so brilliantly that everybody expressed admiration for him. From that time on, the star of Shakespeare’s fame started shining in the sky of literature … In 1611, it seems that the fire of Shakespeare’s thought died out. He wrote no more and needed to rest. Shakespeare went back to Stratford and on 3 May 1616 departed his life. (in Malekpour 1983, 256–7)

Etesami, who was also well versed in French and Arabic, rendered certain sections from Shakespearean plays and some of his poems into Persian, and also offered a complete list of his plays. From that time on, Shakespeare became a venerable and pivotal playwright and poet in the literary communities in Iran. Throughout the Period of Constitutional Revolution, Shakespeare was so popular, respected and at the centre of attention that the news of his birthday party and the performance of one of his plays (Much Ado About Nothing) in Stratford were published in the Ra’d newspaper (Ibid., 259).

126

The Bard Goes to the East: Shakespeare in Iran

Another classic essay on Shakespeare was published by Sultan Salim in the first volume of Majalleh Adabi [Literary Magazine] in 1917. Subsequent to presenting a life history of Shakespeare, Salim asserts: Of course Shakespeare himself did not originate drama. Before him many other poets of that realm had composed … comedies and tragedies, and even though Shakespeare imitated them, there is a sort of elegance and eloquence in his words and content that could be seen in none of the predecessors. Shakespeare’s phrases compared to the predecessors’ phrases and his contents weighed upon the predecessors’ contents are just like a breathing man compared with a lifeless one. Since the contents and subject matters are like the body, and imagery and what makes the text eloquent are the soul of it. Such comedies and tragedies started in Greece and the prominent authors of that land such as Sophocles, Aeschylus and Aristophanes wrote such dramas. However, Shakespearean drama is poles apart from the Greek drama. Shakespeare does not sacrifice the meaning for the rhyme and fills his pages unpretentiously. Europeans call his language verse and rhyme is not considered as a necessary component of poetry; rhyme and meter suffice. This style of poetry which can be called “prose verse” has not emerged in Iranian literature.

Sepideh-dam [The Dawn] was another journal that, in line with many other journals after Bahar, despite political commotions after the Constitutional Revolution, published the poems of Shakespeare. Lotf-Ali Sooratgar, who was a professor of English and Persian Literatures at the University of Tehran, and whose doctoral thesis was on the influence of Persian Literature on English Literature during the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, launched this journal and printed his own translation of Venus and Adonis in 1925. Nonetheless, it is fallacious to hold Sooratgar as the first person to introduce Iranians to Shakespeare. As alluded to earlier, Iranians at the time of the Qajar Dynasty were familiar with Shakespeare, and many journals undertook to publish certain essays on Shakespeare before Sepideh-dam. Furthermore, his translation of Venus and Adonis is not the first full translation of a Shakespearean play in Iran—those will be touched upon below. One certain point is particularly noteworthy—despite Shakespeare’s fame and prominence among educated and literary figures, none of his plays were fully translated until many years after the Constitutional Revolution. This is not to claim that the Persian language was incapable of offering a magnificent translation of Shakespearean masterpieces, as some people such as Akbarloo (2009, 100) implicitly strives to impart. Dariush Ashnjri’s translation of Macbeth in recent years repudiates such an illadvised and hasty claim. The English language has altered and transformed

S. Habib Mousavi and Babak Rajabi

127

radically within the last 450 years since the time of Shakespeare, and, beyond the shadow of a doubt, cries out for a distinctive study. Words and expressions that have either changed meaning or have passed out of use through history, along with the scores of classical and biblical allusions employed by Shakespeare, exacerbate the sorry condition of the translator. Frank Kermode, on the language of Shakespeare, states: It is true that now and again Shakespeare uses a word neither the original nor the modern audience had ever heard before, which yet remains intelligible to both, as when Goneril (1.4.249) advises her father “A little to disquantity” his train. The dictionary records no earlier use of this word, and it did not catch on, but to the modern ear it has a disturbingly bureaucratic ring, rather like the euphemisms produced by government departments, and it must have surely struck the first audience also as a cold and official-sounding word for a daughter to use in conversation with her father. (2000, 5)

Regarding what Kermode states, if Shakespeare’s verbal expressions are knotty and abstruse for English speakers, they are certainly far more arcane and puzzling for an Iranian translator with a language poles apart from Shakespeare’s. The barriers against Shakespearean translation do not stop at this level. Subsequent to overcoming the meaning beyond Shakespearean language, the mission calls for a poetic language that is as close as possible to the original. Of course, unquestionably, an exact replica of the source text is out of the question. Consequently, only an extraordinarily profound mastery of both Persian and Shakespearean languages results in an accepted translation. Granted that the lost pages of the book of the literature and culture of Iran might have contained some lesser translators who rendered bits and pieces of Shakespearean masterpieces, some figures stand conspicuous in the realm of their first translators. Early translators were chiefly Qajar and Pahlavi statesmen and governors, and more recent ones have been acclaimed and pre-eminent Iranian authors and translators. Scanning through the history of the Shakespearean translation, one will spot the names of Emad al-Saltaneh and Naser al-Mulk as the first translators who rendered certain works of Shakespeare into Farsi. Emad al-Saltaneh, or Hossein-Qoli Mirza Salnjr, was the eldest son of Ezz al-Doleh, the ruler of Hamadan. During Mozaffar al-Din Shah’s reign, he travelled to Europe. Emad al-Saltaneh’s wife deceased in the prime of her life; he then lived with Maryam Ameed for a while before he divorced her. Salnjr was then assigned as the ruler of both Hamadan and Malayer. Rather than being a prominent politician, Hossein-Qoli was a broadly educated intellectual.

128

The Bard Goes to the East: Shakespeare in Iran

Salnjr translated The Taming of the Shrew (as Majliseh Tamashakhane: Be Tarbiat Avardaneh Dokhtareh Tondkhnjy) and published it in 1900. The publisher’s note to the second edition of the translation (1985) states nothing on why Salnjr came down in favour of comedy, and more specifically why this comedy, and the time span in which he worked on the job to bring it to a close. While considering the first translators of Shakespeare, some sources and essays cite Salnjr and some others do not. The reason behind this is that he did not render the work into Persian from Shakespeare’s text, but, ipso facto, from a French version. Notwithstanding, of necessity, he is the first translator of Shakespeare in Persian. Salnjr’s successors state that their ancestor was also a dramatist himself (Gholipour). Be that as it may, his The Taming of the Shrew is the sole surviving contribution to the literary community. The next prominent figure to make a huge contribution to the growing fame of Shakespeare in Iran was Abolqasem Khan Gharagozlou, or Naser al-Mulk, considered as the first translator of Shakespeare who rendered two Shakespearean masterpieces from the original texts. Naser al-Mulk was born in Sheverin near Hamadan in July 1856. During childhood he was passionately fond of acquiring knowledge, and devoted his early life to learning all that could be learned in that time, such as mathematics, philosophy, syntax, Arabic, and Islamic jurisprudence, and of course a little French and English. Later, Naser al-Mulk went to Tehran where he could gain an advantage from the eminent professors of the day, such as Mirza Jelveh, a prominent philosopher, and Mirza Seyyed Mohammad Ali Qaeni, a leading and acclaimed mathematician. Naser al-Mulk’s father, Ahmad Khan Sartip died rather young and, as a consequence, was fostered and reared by his grandfather Mahmoud Khan Naser al-Mulk. Mahmoud Khan marked Abolqasem’s verve and ardour for gaining knowledge and hence implored Naser al-Din Shah to grant him permission to accompany them on their tour to Europe, so that he could learn English and translate foreign newspapers for the Shah in the future. Express permission was gained. When he arrived in England, Abolqasem was too old (22) to attend a public school and thus was entrusted to a private tutor who supplied him a room and reached terms on receiving £1 per a day. Abolqasem received an annual pension of £300 and, as he was £65 short per annum, he had to lead a frugal life. Abolqasem was obliged to become an expert in English, Greek and Latin so as to gain a pass in the entrance examinations for Oxford University. He toiled arduously for 16 hours a day to succeed in the examinations and attended the university in 1879. Abolqasem knew that he had to capitalise on his every minute in Balliol College, which was at the height of its fame

S. Habib Mousavi and Babak Rajabi

129

at the time, with professors such as Benjamin Jowett. He was actually the first Iranian (or, in point of fact, the first Moslem) to attend Oxford University. His towering intellect and personal charm made the Master like him and guide him with his studies. Abolqasem Khan’s nickname, Abol Curs’im Can, was a sardonic homage to his academic triumphs and great mental stamina by his fellow undergraduates, who said, “There is nothing Abol, curse ‘im, can’t” (Ala 2008, 291–302). While in London with friends one evening, Shakespeare was mentioned. One of the present comrades stated that translating the masterpieces of Shakespeare into Persian was beyond the bounds of possibility due to the structural and apparent contrasts between the two languages and cultures. Abolqasem Khan refuted the claim and to prove otherwise he commenced on translating some lines of Othello, a play he picked up totally at random. Therefore, it was an evening conversation with good friends that prompted Abolqasem Khan to translate the whole play in his retirement (Ibid., 302). The manuscript form of the translation was ready in 1914. While in Europe, Naser al-Mulk edited and revised the translation many times, and it was finally published in the wake of World War I in Paris in 1917, and in Mirza Isa Khan’s handwriting. Subsequent to translating Othello, over the course of a few years he rendered the whole of The Merchant of Venice into Persian and copied it out in his handwriting after several revisions in 1917. The ultimate version was masterfully bound and illustrated with watercolour vignettes by his daughter, Fatemeh Ala. It was finally published in 2008 for the first time by Niloufar publishing house in Iran. Naser al-Mulk’s translation of Shakespeare corroborates that translation itself is a sort of creative writing. Naser al-Mulk has employed an archaic prose language so as to get close to Shakespeare’s style and at the same time be lucid, simple, flowing, and flowery. His poetic and faithful translation of Othello is still considered the best version of the play in Iran. Naser al-Mulk passed away in 1927. Five years later, Vahram Papazian, a Soviet actor who is reputed to have played Othello 3,000 times in Armenian, Russian and French languages (Rubin 2001, 203), came to Tehran and performed Naser al-Mulk’s version of Othello. However, since he did not know the Persian language, he spoke his dialogues in French and other actors spoke in Persian. Subsequent to this performance, many translators who became aware of Naser al-Mulk’s translation used it as a guide for their own translations (Akbarloo 2009, 101). Avans Khan Mashian is a contemporary of Naser al-Mulk who was born on February 28, 1864. He was appointed to many political offices, and similar to many other senior politicians of the day he was also a great

130

The Bard Goes to the East: Shakespeare in Iran

literary figure, a prodigious one, and was deeply influenced by Shakespeare. Avans Khan, who was also nicknamed Mosaed al-Saltaneh, made his way to London in the spring of 1916 to participate in a conference organised on the three-hundredth anniversary of the death of Shakespeare. The organising committee had requested Avans Khan’s company at the session, and he had replied in the affirmative (Hooyan 1989, 104). Avans Khan was so tremendously influenced by Shakespeare that he devoted 40 years of his life to translating him (Ibid., 111). However, most of his translations are in Armani, which are not our care and concern here, and his Persian translations did not survive. From Naser al-Mulk onwards, a horde of Persian translations of Shakespearean works emerged in Iran. Lotf Ali Sooratgar translated Venus and Adonis in 1925 and published it in his Sepideh-dam. Hamid Amir Soleimani rendered some Shakespearean plays into Farsi and published them as Shakespearean Masterpieces: Hamlet, Romeo and Juliet, and Macbeth in the Khavaran publication office in 1928 (Shahriari 1977, 178). Ahmad Bahmanyar translated The Merchant of Venice from an Arabic version and published it in 1937. In 1938, Aziz al-Allah Saman translated Romeo and Juliet [Leili va Majnooneh Gharb] and published it in Moravvej publication centre. Two years later, Abdolhossein Nooshin rendered Othello into Persian in 1940. In the same year, the literary community saw Masood Farzad’s Hamlet published in “Music” Magazine. Farzad, who had turned into a professional translator, rendered A Midsummer Night’s Dream into Persian a year later. Ali Asghar Hekmat published Five Tales from Shakespeare in 1947. Three years later, Abdohossein Nooshin, who had hitherto translated Othello, translated Much Ado About Nothing (Shahriari 1977, 179). Over the next decade (the 1330s/1951–60), the industry of Shakespearean translation prospered. Nozar edited and retranslated Hekmat’s Five Tales from Shakespeare, though Hekmat’s version was published once more in 1954. A year later, in 1955, Farangis Shademan rendered Julius Caesar [Tragedie Gheisar] into Farsi and had it printed by the Book Publication Agency [Bongaheh Chap va Nashreh Ketab] (Ibid., 179). Abdorrahim Ahmadi published his translation of Macbeth through the Nashreh Andisheh publication office in 1957. Since Macbeth is endowed with a highly metaphorical language, Ahmadi was beset with a profusion of problems in finding accurate and precise words and expressions. So as to work out the problem, Ahmadi resorted to the precious treasure of classical Persian literature to translate that highly metaphorical text (Maeterlinck 2001, 11). Ahmadi’s version was translated from a French copy of Macbeth, and though the prose was lucid and clear, better translations could be called for. Mohsen Farsi’s

S. Habib Mousavi and Babak Rajabi

131

Othello was also printed in 1957. After a year, Mahmood Etemadzadeh (AKA Behazin) translated Othello, and published it in Nashreh Andisheh in 1958. He also faced problems while putting the metaphorical and amphibological language of the play into Farsi (Behazin 2002, 11). Farideh Gharacheh Daghi also translated and published seven tales by Shakespeare in the same year (Shahriari 1977, 177). During this decade, many of the previous translations were republished. Throughout the next decade (the 1340s/1961–70), Shakespearean translation became even more prosperous, and many translators embarked on translating some works for the second or third time. Javad Peyman, as an example, translated King Lear in 1961, and Macbeth was translated and published by Farangis Shademan in the same year. Masood Farzad’s Macbeth was published again in 1963. Richard III was translated by Reza Baraheni in 1964 and published by Amir Kabir; Javad Peyman’s Romeo and Juliet was translated in the next year. In 1965, Darish Shahin’s Othello was published by Mehregan; in the same year, Alaeddin Pazargadi’s Anthony and Cleopatra was published. Fakhreh Razi publishing house published Dariush Shahin’s Hamlet, and Nashreh Andisheh published the same work translated by Mahmood Etemadzadeh. The year 1965 saw five Shakespearean translations that evince his growing popularity among Iranians. It should also be mentioned that Hamlet was dispatched to the literary community through two distinct translations in this year. Over the course of three years, Masood Farzad’s version of Hamlet was republished. In 1968, Naser al-Mulk’s Othello was once more published by his son Hossein-ali by Zaman Press. Pazargadi’s Coriolanus was published in the same year by the Book Publication Agency. This publisher, in this and the coming year, published Javad Peyman’s King Lear and also Farzad’s Hamlet, as mentioned earlier. Etemadzadeh’s Othello was republished by Nashreh Andisheh in 1970. Throughout the 1350s, (1971–80), the previous Shakespearean translations were republished, and at the same time new ones came out. Pazargadi’s The Merchant of Venice was printed by the Book Publication Agency in 1971; Ebrahim Yoonesi’s The Tempest was published by Nashreh Andisheh in 1972; Pazargadi’s Romeo and Juliet and Razi Moazzemi’s Timon of Athens were published in the same year. Afzal Vosooghi’s version of Twelfth Night and Pazargadi’s translation of the same work were both published in 1975. Hedayat Kazemi’s Romeo and Juliet was printed by Honar Press in 1977; Pazargadi’s Much Ado About Nothing was also published in the same year. Sooratgar’s Othello and Hasan Shahbaz’s As You Like It were both published at the beginning of 1978. After the Islamic Revolution of 1978, a short period of stagnation intervened before Shakespearean translation got on the road once more.

132

The Bard Goes to the East: Shakespeare in Iran

Khosrow Homayoon-poor’s Julius Caesar was published in 1989; Dariush Ashoori’s Macbeth was published by Negah Press in 1992; and Mostafa Rahimi’s Hamlet was published in the same year. Soroosh Press published the complete tragedies and comedies translated by Pazargadi over the course of previous decades in 1996. This two-volume version of 27 plays by Shakespeare was republished in 2009, 2012, and 2014. Esmaeel Dowlatshahi and Abdollah Dastgheib co-translated The Tempest in 1995. The Tir Publication Institute published many translations by Farideh Mahdavi Damghani over the course of two years (1997–8) of Much Ado About Nothing, The Taming of the Shrew, Love’s Lost Labour, All’s Well That Ends Well, As You Like It, and Two Gentlemen of Verona. Taghi Tafazzoli’s translations of the sonnets were published by Nashreh Vida, and the collection was chosen as the selected book of the year. Two years later, Shakespeare’s sonnets were translated by Behnam Moghaddam in a Persian poetic form. Since 2000, Shakespeare has been permanently in print, and it is difficult to give a full account of all the works printed since then; however, we can briefly mention some of them. Recently, Mahmood Mazinani’s Hamlet was published by Monadieh Tarbiat in 2005; Nooshin’s Much Ado About Nothing was published by Qatreh Press in the same year; in 2006, Ajand Press published A Selection of Shakespearean Sonnets translated by Nematollah Shomoosi; Dadar Press also printed Kazem Firoozmand’s Julius Caesar in the same year; Mohammad Sadegh Shari’ati’s Macbeth was published by Gooyesh Naw in 2008; Mehr Rayan published Amir Abbas Heidari’s version of Richard III in the same year; Agah Press republished Dariush Ashoori’s outstanding version of Macbeth in 2009, and again in 2014. Farzad’s Hamlet was republished by Elmi & Farhangi publishing house in 2009. Farangis Shademan’s Julius Caesar was republished by Elmi & Farhangi by the same publishing house in the same year. In May 2010, the same publisher printed Farideh Gharacheh Daghi’s Seven Tales from Shakespeare. Amir Kabir Press published Adib Soltani’s Richard III in 2011. Hamid Elyasi’s Twelfth Night was published by the Intellectuals and Women Studies Press in the same year. Arash Kheir Abadi’s Hamlet was published by Namayesh Press a year later in 2012. In 2013, Qatreh publications republished Ahmadi’s Macbeth, Nooshin’s Othello, and also printed Ahmad Khazaee’s Henry V. Dot Press also printed Etemadzadeh’s Othello and King Lear in 2013. Maryam Rasouli’s Romeo and Juliet was published by Ordibehesht Press in the same year. SƗleth also published Foad Naziri’s Timon of Athens that year. Javad Peyman’s King Lear was republished in 2013 by the Elmi & Farhangi publishing house. Zekr Publication Office also published Javad Sabet’s Twelfth Night and Richard III in 2013 and 2014, respectively.

S. Habib Mousavi and Babak Rajabi

133

Mohsen Eghtedar Shahidi’s Some Tales by Shakespeare was also published by Shamloo in May 2014. Not only have Shakespearean masterpieces long been translated and in print in Iran, so have books on his life and style. Hooshang Rahnama’s translation of Frank Ernest Halliday’s William Shakespeare in 2011, Abolfazl Ahmadi Dramatic Aspects in Shakespeare, published by Asim in 2005, and Soudabeh Fazayeli’s translation of Martin Ling’s The Secret of Shakespeare in 2003 are three examples out of many. Shakespeare did not remain in the stage of translation. Many of his plays have been performed since the early times. For example, The Merchant of Venice was translated in 1929 in Dar al-Funun; The Winter’s Tale [Taje Eftekhar] was staged in 1932 in Nekuee Hall; and Othello was directed by Ghestasian in 1937. The Anahita Theatre Group, established on March 18, 1959, directed by Mostafa Oskooee, performed both Othello and Much Ado About Nothing. A radio version of Othello was also broadcast on December 29, 1973 at 10:05 PM (Fanaeyan 2007, 223). A brief account of Shakespearean translation as given here would gainsay Abbas Horri’s comment when regarding Shakespeare scholarship and his reception and familiarity in Iran: “These attempts are but sporadic engagements which, in comparison with the playwright’s global popularity, can hardly measure up to more than a drop in a bucket” (2003, 68). The prosperous Shakespearean translation industry undeniably bears witness to the booming market of reading these works. A long time has elapsed since Shakespeare first set foot in Iran owing to the early, unmediated observations and essays and translations. Since then, Shakespeare has been discussed, written about, printed and performed constantly.

Bibliography Abu Taleb Khan, Mirza. 1973. Masire Talebi. Tehran: Jibi. Adamiat, Fereidoon. 1981. Confusion in the History of Thought. Tehran: World of Thought (Jahane Andishe). Akbarloo, Manuchehr. 2009. "A Study of the Rise of Drama Translation in Iran." Scene 69: 97–102. Ala, Fereydoun. 2008. "Introduction." In The Taming of the Shrew, Trans. Abolghasem Gharagozlou, 291–301. Tehran: Niloufar. Arianpour, Yahya. 1976. From Saba to Nima. Vol. II. Tehran: Jibi, 1976. Backtash, Mayel. 1978. "The Strange Rising of Theater in the Horizon of Iran." Theater Quarterly 3: 11. Behazin, M. A. 2002. "Introduction." Othello, 11. Tehran: Atieh.

134

The Bard Goes to the East: Shakespeare in Iran

Beiza'i, Bahram. 2013. Drama in Iran. Tehran: Intellectuals and Women Studies. Brown, Edward. 1959. A Literary History of Persia. Vol. IV. New York: Cambridge University Press. Dawkins, Peter. 2004. The Shakespeare Enigma. London: Polair Publishing. Fanaeyan, Tajbakhsh. 2007. The Art of Drama in Iran. Tehran: University of Tehran Press. Gholipour, Ali. 2012. "Were We or Not? A Survey of the First Translations of Shakespeare." Tajrobe 8. Greenblatt, Stephen. 2011. The Swerve: How the World Became Modern. New York: W. W. Norton & Company. Heylen, R. 1993. Translation, Poetics, and the Stage: Six French Hamlets. London: Routledge. Hooyan, Andranic. 1989. "The First Contact With Shakespeare." Theater: 104–16. Hopkirk, Peter. 2006. The Great Game. London: John Murray. Horri, Abbas. 2003. The Influence of Translation on Shakespeare's Reception in Iran: Three Farsi Hamlets and Suggestion for a Fourth. London: Middlesex University. Kermode, Frank. 2000. Shakespeare's Language. New York: Farrar. Maeterlinck, Maurice. 2001. "Introduction." Macbeth. Trans. Abdorrahim Ahmadi, 11. Tehran: Pajoohesh Dadar Journal. Maleki, Naser, and Maryam Navidi. 2007. "A History of the Translation of the Works of Shakespeare into Persian." On Translation: 14–18. Malekpour, Jamshid. 1983. Dramatic Literature in Iran. Vol. I. Tehran: Toos Publishers. —. 1983. Dramatic Literature in Iran. Vol. II. Tehran: Toos Publishers. McDonald, Mark A. 2004. Shakespeare's King Lear with The Tempest: The Discovery of Nature and the Recovery of Classical Natural Right. Maryland: University Press of America. Mirza Saleh Shirazi. 1968. Travelogue. Tehran: Rozan. Nasser al-Din Shah. 2011. Daily Journal of Memoirs of Nasir al-Din Shah. Tehran: The Organization of Documents. Rubin, Don. 2001. The World Encyclopedia of Contemporary Theatre: Asia/Pacific. New York: Taylor & Francis. Salim, Soltan. 1917. "William Shakespeare." Majalle Adabi (Literary Magazine) 1. Shahriari, Khosrow. 1977. The Book of Drama. Tehran: Amir Kabir. Shakespeare, William. 2009. The Comedy of Errors. New York: Cambridge University Press.

S. Habib Mousavi and Babak Rajabi

135

—. 2007. King Lear. Ed. Burton Ruffel. London: Yale University Press. —. 2007. Macbeth. Trans. Dariush Ashoori. Tehran: Agah. —. 1985. The Taming of the Shrew. Trans. Hossein-gholi Saloor. Tehran: Noghre. —. 2009. Twelfth Night. New York: Cambridge University Press.

PERSIAN HAMLET: CULTURAL ELEMENTS IN REZA GORAN’S ADAPTATION ZAKARYA BEZDOODE1

Introduction One cannot deny the predominance of universalist elements in Shakespeare’s Hamlet as a Renaissance play, a fact that has made it timeless. However, the play has been the subject of adaptation around the world, thus implementing the cultural features of different nations. This is a significant indication of the play’s competency to be meaningful in different cultural contexts. In the last three centuries, it has been manipulated in numerous ways depending on the objective of the artist who has worked on the play and the social, moral and ideological context where it has been reproduced and represented. Reza Goran’s extreme performance of Hamlet adapted by Mohammad Charmsheer endeavoured to include several Iranian cultural elements, so much so that it is difficult to say that the play is not Iranian. It is preferably called extreme in that it lost its Western background and turned into an Iranian work of art. These elements make a spectrum from language through music to some technical devices like costume and sound effects. This essay seeks to delineate how Charmsheer, as the writer of the screenplay in the first place, and Goran, as the director, brought changes to the play in order to argue that they have Iranised Hamlet in two ways: emphasising those aspects and motifs of the play that overlap Iranian culture, and projecting Iranian culture onto the play. A review of the adaptations of Shakespeare in general and Hamlet in particular provides us with a long list of outstanding and sometimes spectacular works of art in theatre and cinema. In fact, Shakespeare has created several artists with his rich world. A significant reason for so much interest in the Bard’s works for adaptation is quite sophisticatedly 1

Faculty of Letters and Foreign Languages, University of Kurdistan.

138

Persian Hamlet: Cultural Elements in Reza Goran’s Adaptation

expressed by Linda Hutcheon: “adaptations of Shakespeare, in particular, may be intended as tributes or as a way to supplant canonical cultural authority” (2006, 93). This is indicative of the cultural richness of Shakespeare. The works of Shakespeare are an arena for the questions of power to work upon each other. Further, and more significantly, one can point to Marjorie Garber’s comment on Shakespeare in the sense that, for many adapters, “Shakespeare is a monument to be toppled” (1987, 7). Although this is an ambiguous remark on Shakespeare, it is illuminating in the sense that Shakespeare in general is regarded by artists as a convenient dough to be shaped based on the cultural and artistic elements they have in mind. A look at the spectrum of Hamlet adaptations from the classic example by Zeffirelli to the extreme example by Almereyda indicates the flexibility of the play and its competency for different sorts of adaptation and appropriation. We need to differentiate between Charmsheer’s and Goran’s texts. Charmsheer wrote a screenplay based on Hamlet while Goran directed the play. As the present study is concentrating on the work performed on the stage as a collective art comprised of different theatrical elements, it is entitled Goran’s adaptation of Hamlet rather than Charmsheer’s. In this study, thus, we shall analyze Goran’s adaptation to argue that the director tried to add new Iranian cultural aspects to the already culturally loaded screenplay written by Charmsheer to conclude that, since Hamlet is basically a culturally loaded work, it provides the context for two Iranian artists to aggrandise its common cultural aspects with Iranian art and culture and add further social and cultural facets, thereby making it a work suitable for an Iranian audience already interested in philosophical questions.

Theoretical Considerations The text, which is called the adapted text in this study, is regarded as an interpretation of the main text. Hutcheon believes that the adapted text, “is not something to be reproduced, but rather something to be interpreted and recreated, often in a new medium” (2006, 84). The adapted text is, accordingly, a new text that provides the adapter with a new reading of the text. Gardies believes that the adapted text can be a bunch of “instructions,” including “diegetic,” “narrative,” and “axiological,” that the adapter can manipulate (1998, 68–71). The key term here is manipulation, which exhibits the amount of novelty and change the adapter brings to the text. This change is applied on a spectrum from the technical axis to that of the thematic, even, in a sense, ideological, as the

Zakarya Bezdoode

139

term “axiology” indicates. Consequently, through the process of adaptation, the adapter as a combination of a follower and a creator substitutes their own ideology and worldview for that of the author of the text or, to be more technical, that of the text itself. As an illuminating example, one can refer to Francis Ford Coppola’s adaptation of Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness as Apocalypse Now, where he substitutes European Colonialism with American Imperialism. Thus, one can talk about adaptation as a mode of production of the text in which, to use Sanders’s terminology, the, “authority of the original author and text is destabilized for the sake of the present author or text in order to create multiple and/or biased meanings or to aggrandize or introduce new facets to its meaning” (2006, 2–3). Deborah Cartmell differentiates between three forms of adaptation: “transposition,” “commentary,” and “analogue” (2000, 24). According to Cartmell, the first category is used to indicate that, in adaptation, the work is transposed or developed into a new and different context. A revealing example is Michael Almereyda’s Hamlet (2000), in which the second category, which is of use to this study, shows a case in which the Castle of Elsinore is transposed to a contemporary New York setting, and where an art student has replaced the philosophical Hamlet of Shakespeare’s play. The second category refers to that group of adaptations in which “the process of adaptation starts to move away from simple proximation towards something more culturally loaded.” Such adaptations usually “comment on the politics of the source text, or those of the new mise-enscène, or both, usually by means of alteration or addition” (Cartmell 2000, 21). As the title commentary indicates, the works of this group are culturally loaded in the sense that they endeavour to be interpretive in particular ways. In the third category, we deal with a group of works that pretend to be self-sufficient and have the potential to be distinct in that the context and the names have to a large extent changed. Cartmell refers to such works as “stand-alone” in the sense that they pretend to be independent works; they have distanced themselves from their intertexts to such an extent that it is possible to consider them distinct works of art. It is sometimes difficult to maintain the boundaries between these categories because a particular adaptation can usurp the domains of all these kinds. Although one can relate a specific adaptation to each of these groups, the fact is that it is impossible to ascertain to which group a particular adaptation belongs. In what follows we will try to analyze Goran’s adaptation of Hamlet based on this categorisation and discuss its special cultural aspects.

140

Persian Hamlet: Cultural Elements in Reza Goran’s Adaptation

Charmsheer and Goran’s Hamlet Goran’s Hamlet has been performed more than 35 times and attracted more than 6,000 spectators. Goran believes that he directed Hamlet from the viewpoint of an Iranian; he believes that it would have been quite strange if his work had not been coloured with Iranian culture since he, as an Iranian director, is inevitably affected by Iranian culture and hence includes several aspects of Iranian art and culture in his performance. He asserts that the stage design is miniaturist; moreover, costume, colours and the selection of some stage sets, like mirrors, are very Iranian signs. However, he thinks that he did not Iranise the play. Goran asserts that one of the significant changes he brought was the changing of the point of view, i.e. the centre of the play has been given to Ophelia rather than Hamlet; we therefore look at the events from the viewpoint of Ophelia (Yavarmanesh n.d.). Goran’s Hamlet, according to Nasiri (2005), “is a gloomy and melancholic Romance (a Romance that is narrated in Ophelia’s nightmarish wanderings) although it repeats the theme of disparity and death in the magical context of the performance.” Javad Mojabi believes that Goran’s version is one of the most modernist performances of Hamlet in Iran. For a better analysis of the play’s performance we will discuss it in the following categories: (1) Structure (1.1) Manipulations in plot (1.2) Character shifts (2) Motifs and symbols (2.1) Language (3) Performance (3.1) Costume (3.2) Music (3.3) Stage design

Structure When we talk about plot and the changes in it, we get quite close to the screenplay and Mohammad Charmsheer's share of the work. We see that Charmsheer has brought about drastic changes in the structure of the play. He has ignored almost all the details of the plot. In fact, all that remains is a number of intellectual and philosophical dialogues between the characters. Even the pillars of the play—its exemplary soliloquies—have been ignored. He has included and magnified symbols like fish and more

Zakarya Bezdoode

141

apparently absurd ones like a meat grinder. There is no appearance of the Ghost to start the enigma at the very beginning of the play. There is nothing about the plot developers like Laertes or Fortinbras; there is no sign of the spectacular friendship between Hamlet and Horatio; there is no play within a play as a plot developer. All that has remained is a tedious and boring bunch of dialogue between characters as they come to life in Ophelia’s nightmare. As T.S. Eliot in The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock very poetically indicates: Let us go then, you and I, When the evening is spread out against the sky, Like a patient etherized upon a table; Let us go, through certain half-deserted streets, The muttering retreats Of restless nights in one-night cheap hotels And sawdust restaurants with oyster-shells: Streets that follow like a tedious argument Of insidious intent To lead you to an overwhelming question … Oh, do not ask, “What is it?” Let us go and make our visit.

It is somehow the atmosphere that Charmsheer has reconstructed in this adaptation. Instead of streets we have some lines on the stage, and the onenight and sawdust restaurants have been replaced by simple beds on the stage. What is more indicative are the tedious, boring and sometimes pointless arguments between characters that make up the core of what goes on onstage. “Let us go, through certain half-deserted streets,” in order to lead to “a tedious argument / Of insidious intent / To lead you to an overwhelming question.” In fact, the dialogues on the stage have been designed not to reach a resolution but to lead the spectator to an overwhelming question. We do not know what that question is, but we can understand that it is of a philosophical type, unlike that of Eliot which is a social one. In terms of character, we see that it is Ophelia rather than Hamlet who is dominant, and hence the centre of the play. It is Ophelia who is the focaliser, the point through which the spectator is allowed to experience the events both psychologically and ideologically. We know that there are three aspects of focalisation, the perceptual, the psychological and the ideological, which altogether provide the opportunity for the reader or the spectator to experience the story (Rimmon-Kenan 1994, 75). In Shakespeare's Hamlet, it is clearly Hamlet through whom we are allowed to view the story. Ophelia is an oppressed voice all the way through;

142

Persian Hamlet: Cultural Elements in Reza Goran’s Adaptation

however, in Charmsheer's adaptation we see Ophelia at the centre. In fact, this is a deconstruction in terms of the play's structure in general. The play has turned into Ophelia's nightmare. Ophelia talks about her mother and the shawls she has been making for Polonius, Laertes, Hamlet the Great, and Gertrude. She is in fact defined in terms of her act of making shawls for other characters. Although the question of woman in Hamlet and her being at the margins is noteworthy in Shakespeare’s play, it is quite clear that Charmsheer was interested in using this to point to the status and marginality of the Iranian woman. Charmsheer and Goran have found Gertrude, Hamlet’s mother, particularly more interesting in following the question of women. She is defined by Ophelia in terms of her services to the men; her identity is shaped by what she has done for men, and the number of shawls she has made for them in the court. On the other hand we see that, as the plot develops, she loses the ability to remember. She has developed a form of amnesia. At the end of Goran’s performance, the dominant characters each have a short monologue which is indicative of their personality and identity. Gertrude’s is: “I was to say something but I do not remember what it was.” This sense of amnesia indicates the status of Iranian woman at the onset of the twenty-first century. The dominant symbols in this adaptation are a fish, a mouse and a meat grinder. It appears that it is Ophelia who designs and talks of the mouse trap. In the first dialogue between her and Claudius, as he appears onstage carrying a meat grinder, we see that they talk about what Ophelia uses to feed the fish. She asserts that she uses the mice of the court to feed the fish. The meat grinder is used to stand in for the fish, which is a symbol of Hamlet and the way he tries to catch the mouse, or the way he wants to “catch the conscious of the king” (Hamlet 2.2.610). Shakespeare's play is a combination of several entertaining elements from plot to character that suited the taste of Elizabethans. However, Charmsheer's is a somehow boring, monotonous and tedious philosophical dialogue reminiscent of the Theatre of the Absurd. The dialogues are aimless and tend to reach no goal. In fact, Charmsheer was interested in turning the play into one that suits the Iranian intellectuals who are interested in the philosophical aspects of literature. For typical Iranian readers and spectators, the philosophical and moral issues rather than the aesthetic ones are of more significance, as historically the formation of intellectualism is synchronic with the occurrence of the constitutional revolution and later the formation of the Tnjdeh Party at the beginning of the twentieth century, which endeavoured to shape the tastes of Iranian intellectuals and readers.

Zakarya Bezdoode

143

Performance The stage design is an abstract one. It is relatively barren with a few setpieces, including four beds upon which the actors quite absurdly lie and wait for their turn. Apart from the beds and their mostly red decorations, there is the use of tiles on the floor. The dominant colours of the stage are red and, to a lesser extent, black. The gloomy and dark atmosphere of the original play is therefore maintained. We know that Shakespeare’s Hamlet starts late at night and most of the action takes place indoors in a mostly dark and gloomy late medieval Danish castle. By the same token, the Iranian play takes place in a more or less similar atmosphere with one dominant difference—the concrete and realistic stage of the Shakespearean play has turned into an abstract and more or less absurdist one. The costume is one of those aspects showing the similar cultural elements between present Iran and twelfth-century Denmark. An inspection of the history of costume in northwestern states of Europe including Norway and Denmark delineates that what women used to wear was close to what women are invited to wear in Islam, and more particularly in Iran. Except for what we call the headscarf, the rest is quite similar. Of course, we should not forget that the director has some limitations in the choice of costume in that it should be proportionate with the Islamic dress code. The costumes are worth reflecting on because they are mostly black and red and very close to the Iranian models of clothing. Music in itself is not a dominant principle in this performance. However, the scarce use of it is thought-provoking since it is dominated by the Iranian tuning system, particularly HomƗynjn and its significant subcategor IsphahƗn, and to a lesser extent NavƗ and Shnjshtari. Although there is sporadic use of non-Iranian music, one cannot ignore the dominance of Iranian music throughout the performance. A detailed analysis of music delineates that, in the beginning, is a piece in IsphahƗn played in KamƗncheh, which is originally an Iranian instrument. Since the act and scene structure is deconstructed in this performance, we refer to the parts in terms of minutes. After half an hour from the beginning, we can hear another piece in IsphahƗn and Shnjshtari played in KamƗncheh. Roughly at the middle of the performance, we can hear pieces in IsphahƗn and near the end again IsphahƗn and Shnjshtari, with NavƗ in the background. IsphahƗn and Shnjshtari are dominant in this performance, both of which are subcategories of the HomƗynjn tuning system. Rnjhollah KhƗleqi, a dominant figure in the field of Iranian music, in A Look at Music analyzes and discusses the significance, overtones and effects of different

144

Persian Hamlet: Cultural Elements in Reza Goran’s Adaptation

Iranian or Persian tuning systems. Subcategorising IsphahƗn and Shnjshtari under HomƗynjn, he asserts that IsphahƗn is, “one of the old and original Iranian songs that have been introduced in Old Iranian sources on music.” He continues that IsphahƗn, also referred to as BayƗt-e IsphahƗn, is sometimes happy and sometimes sad and depressing, but all in all it is interesting and charming. Listening to IsphahƗn makes the spectator neither too happy nor too sad, but somewhere between them (2008, 320). Yet, for Iranian audience the sadness of IsphahƗn is reminiscent of Gholamhossein BanƗn’s1 performance of the song, The Pleasant Spring, which constitutes part of the collective unconscious of Iranian spectators. Therefore, the overall atmosphere of the performance is very well shaped by the tastes of Iranian spectators—a sad and gloomy atmosphere dominated by philosophical questions. One cannot deny the fact that Shakespeare’s Hamlet is philosophically oriented because in each of the five dominant soliloquies, some highly philosophical questions about man and his state of existence are posed, some of which have been left with clear answers. This feature is now aggrandised through music, to some extent. A technical device deconstructed in the performance is the use of a musical device in the ZnjrkhƗnei or PahlevƗni ritual4 for separating the scenes. Moreover, we can see Claudius exercising with one of the dominant ZnjrkhƗnei devices called KabbƗdeh. It is in the same scene that he talks to Hamlet about the importance of family and the way all of them can govern. He talks about the preservation of power within the family. It is ironic how he carries a KabbƗdeh and at the same time talks about retaining family and relative ties. The ritual indicates Iranian conventional and traditional sport and culture. The ZnjrkhƗnei ritual dates back to the ancient rich Iranian culture, which has been designed to prepare warriors for combat as it includes some exercises and sports movements ending in what is called Iranian wrestling. This is a point where sport, cultural rituals and music come together. A highly thought-provoking element in Charmsheer’s adaptation is the language. The actors on the stage speak a conversational Persian as people in Tehran do today. Ophelia starts the dialogue: The sky is azure blue; A piece of cloud is stuck to it; The wind is blowing the branches of winnowing willow; 1

The well-known contemporary Iranian singer. An ancient Iranian ritual comprised of dance-like body movements, music and singing.

4

Zakarya Bezdoode

145

The branches are rubbing themselves against the cloud, Rubbing themselves against the azure blue sky.

This is quite similar to the language we hear from TV soap operas on Iranian TV. There is no sign of using an elaborate and ornate Persian once used in Ferdowsi’s Shahnameh1 and which is used as a stereotype for translation of texts belonging to the Renaissance and before. Charmsheer has not only almost completely replaced the dialogue in content, he has also changed the language to a contemporary colloquial Persian. In fact, the language suits the new Iranian audience.

Conclusion Bringing some extreme changes to the structure of Shakespeare's play in terms of plot, character and theme, Charmsheer has prepared a screenplay that is highly convenient and interesting for Iranian intellectual spectators. Iranian intellectuals in the past century have proved that they are highly interested in the philosophical and moral facets of literary works. The reason for this shift of tastes among Iranian readers and spectators should be inspected within the intellectual movements of the country throughout the past century from the Constitutional Revolution to the present. Charmsheer’s manipulations in terms of the structure of the play have prepared material for Goran to work on and develop into a distinct and indicative adaptation through implementing some technical devices like music, costume and stage design. Charmsheer has worked on the plot to bring about some extreme changes, such as omitting several aspects, shifting the roles and changing the focalisation from Hamlet to Ophelia. In this way, Charmsheer has tried to ignore most details of the plot and character in order to help the reader concentrate on some elements which are more appealing to an Iranian audience. He has aggrandised two aspects of the play: the philosophical question, and the question of women. Structural changes have turned Shakespeare’s play into convenient material for an Iranian director to implement some theatrical techniques in order to make it appealing to the Iranian spectators, particularly intellectuals. The philosophical questions of the play, i.e. the question of being and the question of women as a significant social issue, are those elements in the original that appear to appeal to an Iranian ear. On the other hand, we see the use of a number of technical devices like music, costume and language among those Iranian cultural elements that have 1

The well-known Iranian epic

146

Persian Hamlet: Cultural Elements in Reza Goran’s Adaptation

been added by the director. Accordingly, Shakespeare’s play has turned into a relatively genuine work of art representing the issues and questions of Iranians at the beginning of the twenty-first century.

Bibliography Cartmell, Deborah. 2000. Interpreting Shakespeare on Screen. London: Macmillan Press LTD. —. 1999. “Introduction.” In Adaptations: From Text to Screen, Screen to Text, edited by Deborah Cartmel, and Imelda Whelehan, 23–29. London: Routledge. Cartmel, Deborah, and Imelda Whelehan. 1999. Adaptations: From Text to Screen, Screen to Text. London: Routledge. Eliot, T. S. 2006. “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock.” In The Norton Anthology of English Literature V. II, edited by Stephen Greenblatt, 23–64. New York: W.W. Norton and Company. Garber, Marjorie. 1987. Shakespeare’s Ghost Writers. London: Methuen. Gardies, André. 1998. “Le narrateur sonne toujours deux fois.” In Groensteen 1998a, 65–80 . Greenblatt, Stephen. 2006. The Norton Anthology of English Literature V. II. New York: W.W. Norton and Company. Hutcheon, Linda. 2006. A Theory of Adaptation. London: Routledge. Jackson, Russell (ed.) 2000. The Cambridge Companion to Shakespeare on Film. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. KhƗleqi, Rnjhollah. 2008. A Look at Music. Tehran: Mehvar Publications. Mojabi, Javad. Etemad Newspaper. From: http://khabaronline.ir/detail/266087/culture/4069 Nasiri, Mehdi. 2005. “A Gloomy Nightmare and Romance: A Review of Hamlet Written by Charmsheer and Directed by Goran.” From: http://theater.farhang.gov.ir/fa/news/22288. Rimmon-Kenan, Shlomith. 1994. Narrative Fiction: Contemporary Poetics. London: Routledge. Sanders, Julie. 2006. Adaptation and Appropriation. London: Routledge. Shakespeare, William. 1989. Hamlet. Ed. Bernard Lott. London: Longman. Yavarmanesh, Mehdi. n.d. “An Interview with Reza Goran.” From: http://www.khabaronline.ir/detail/276436/culture/theater

GENDER DIFFERENCES IN TEACHING HAMLET TO IRANIAN EFL STUDENTS AMIR GHAJARIEH1 AND ZURAIDAH MOHD DON2

Teaching language through literature has played an important role in promoting the idea of bringing literary works into the classroom. In the 1980s, increasing attention was paid to the teaching of literature to EFL students (Duff & Maley 1990), and since then a number of research projects have dealt with the teaching of literary works to EFL students in several different countries (Mate 2005; Yen 2010). Great literary works such as Hamlet and Othello have been largely overlooked in the foreign language learning environment; nevertheless, they potentially have much to offer. Not much research has been done to investigate the reaction of EFL students to literary works of this kind, a deficit the present study seeks to remedy by examining the reaction of EFL students at college level to Hamlet. The reason for choosing college students majoring in literature is that literary works tend to be too difficult for students at lower levels with corresponding levels of proficiency in English. As Carter and Long (1991) note, the teaching of literature needs to be linked to the proficiency of the learners. Hamlet is regarded as such a complex text that it requires the proficiency level of English majors to appreciate it at an appropriate depth. Iranian college students are considered to have the necessary proficiency and understanding. While there are many diverse approaches to the teaching of literature, the most suitable approach for the present research is literature as culture (Carter & Long 1991), since the focus is on the reaction of college students to the cultural elements of Hamlet as a literary work. The main reason for choosing Hamlet is that students are already familiar with the plot, and are in a position to move on smoothly to discuss cultural points 1 2

Faculty of Language and Linguistics, University of Malaya. Faculty of Language and Linguistics, University of Malaya.

148

Gender Differences in Teaching Hamlet to Iranian EFL Students

in the classroom. In order to focus more on the cultural elements of Hamlet, a group of 16 Iranian English-majors taking part in this case study discussed the play, and were then given a list of extracts.

Hamlet and Culture Hamlet recounts “the revenge tragedy,” amalgamating “some stock attributes of the hero of Elizabethan revenge tragedies with those of the Elizabethan melancholic man” (Abrams and Harpham 2009, 344). However, owing to the importance of the play and the rigorous scrutiny undertaken by scholars and academicians, it is clear that Shakespeare’s work has evolved and mutated in the course of time. Hamlet’s timelessness and individuality no doubt account for the fact that it has proved possible to adapt the play to many different cultural contexts. A wide range of cultures have embraced Hamlet and represented and interpreted it in their own terms rather than according to the norms prevalent in Shakespeare’s own time. Numerous adaptations in popular culture, including art and film, attest to the fact that the play is compatible with many cultures. For instance, Hamlet is featured in Alexandria Again and Forever (1990), directed by Egyptian director Youssef Chahine as a movie within the movie. Hamlet was described by T.S. Eliot as the Mona Lisa of literature, and it has been adapted to many cultures and contexts. Adaptation as a subcategory of “intersexuality” has recently gained currency in academic debates. Various adaptations of literary works relate to the reader response theory in literary criticism. This theory places the audience of a work and their experiences of a given piece at the forefront. This school of thought is unlike its predecessors in that it pays far less attention to the content and the author. Norman Holland is one of the most influential figures in the area of reader response, and his seminal work in literary criticism (Holland 1964; 1966) put forward the idea of a psychoanalytical dimension in this type of criticism. Proponents of reader-response criticism believe that the reader’s reactions to a text take precedence over the text per se. In contrast to textbased approaches that assert that objective meaning in a text should be securitised, reader-response theory argues that literary pieces are devoid of meaning prior to the reader’s response. In accordance with this theory, the reader’s reactions are analysed by paying attention to personal or cultural approaches to a reading. In other words, the way the text affects the reader is of greater significance than the work itself.

Amir Ghajarieh and Zuraidah Mohd Don

149

Since the reader’s responses to a text vary with the passage of time, one can conclude that the reader’s reactions may vary and the basis for the variation can be analysed through, “interpretative communities … groups of people who share a set of beliefs and interests and who interpret art in terms of that framework” (Ryken 1989, 262). This theoretical framework adopted for this study is based on the reader’s response, given that the understanding of English major students regarding Hamlet can shape the discourses produced in the narrative of each participant.

Methodology The participants in the present study were a group of 16 Iranian students, 8 male and 8 female, who were also English literature majors. They were between 18 to 23 years of age and had already passed some literature courses. For the purpose of the present study, a number of extracts were taken from Hamlet, and participants were interviewed to find out their responses. To detect produced discourses in the reaction to the extracts, the interviews were recorded and transcribed verbatim. Here are the extracts from Hamlet discussed in the interviews: 1 O that this too too solid flesh would melt, Thaw, and resolve itself into a dew! Or that the Everlasting had not fix’d His canon ’gainst self-slaughter! O God! O God! How weary, stale, flat, and unprofitable Seem to me all the uses of this world! Fie on’t! O fie! ’tis an unweeded garden, That grows to seed; things rank and gross in nature Possess it merely. That it should come to this! But two months dead!—nay, not so much, not two: So excellent a king; that was, to this, Hyperion to a satyr; so loving to my mother, That he might not beteem the winds of heaven Visit her face too roughly. Heaven and earth! Must I remember? Why, she would hang on him As if increase of appetite had grown By what it fed on: and yet, within a month,— Let me not think on’t,—Frailty, thy name is woman! (1.2) 2 Give thy thoughts no tongue, Nor any unproportion’d thought his act.

150

Gender Differences in Teaching Hamlet to Iranian EFL Students Be thou familiar, but by no means vulgar. Those friends thou hast, and their adoption tried, Grapple them unto thy soul with hoops of steel; But do not dull thy palm with entertainment Of each new-hatch’d, unfledg’d comrade. Beware Of entrance to a quarrel; but, being in, Bear’t that the opposed may beware of thee. Give every man thine ear, but few thy voice: Take each man’s censure, but reserve thy judgment. Costly thy habit as thy purse can buy, But not express’d in fancy; rich, not gaudy: For the apparel oft proclaims the man; And they in France of the best rank and station Are most select and generous chief in that. Neither a borrower nor a lender be: For loan oft loses both itself and friend; And borrowing dulls the edge of husbandry. This above all,—to thine own self be true; And it must follow, as the night the day, Thou canst not then be false to any man. (1.3.59–80)

3 To be, or not to be: that is the question: Whether ’tis nobler in the mind to suffer The slings and arrows of outrageous fortune Or to take arms against a sea of troubles, And by opposing end them?—To die,—to sleep,— No more; and by a sleep to say we end The heartache, and the thousand natural shocks That flesh is heir to,—’tis a consummation Devoutly to be wish’d. To die,—to sleep;— To sleep: perchance to dream:—ay, there’s the rub; For in that sleep of death what dreams may come, When we have shuffled off this mortal coil, Must give us pause: there’s the respect That makes calamity of so long life; For who would bear the whips and scorns of time, The oppressor’s wrong, the proud man’s contumely, The pangs of despis’d love, the law’s delay, The insolence of office, and the spurns That patient merit of the unworthy takes, When he himself might his quietus make With a bare bodkin? who would these fardels bear, To grunt and sweat under a weary life, But that the dread of something after death,— The undiscover’d country, from whose bourn

Amir Ghajarieh and Zuraidah Mohd Don

151

No traveller returns,—puzzles the will, And makes us rather bear those ills we have Than fly to others that we know not of? Thus conscience does make cowards of us all; And thus the native hue of resolution Is sicklied o’er with the pale cast of thought; And enterprises of great pith and moment, With this regard, their currents turn awry, And lose the name of action. (3.1.58–90)

Motif of Betrayal in Hamlet The interview participants reproduced the theme of betrayal in their reactions to the pieces shown to each interviewee. While the infidelity depicted was totally rejected by the male participants, their female counterparts to some extent empathised with Hamlet’s mother. For example, Ali says: I can’t believe a woman can do such a cruel act to her spouse. If I were Hamlet, I would have killed her no matter what people say.

In contrast, Mary says: We don’t know about the real motives of Hamlet’s mother as she might have suffered a lot in her relationship with her man.

This clearly reflects the masculine culture which is dominant in Iranian society and according to which a male as the head of the family cannot tolerate any kind of female infidelity whatsoever.

Motif of Fatherly Advice in Hamlet When the extract including the fatherly advice of Polonius to Laertes was shown to participants, their responses in the interview indicated that they found such pieces of advice commonplace in Iranian culture as they had heard rhetoric of this kind on a daily basis. While the male participants compared this extract with the instructions their own fathers had given them on how to behave, the female participants recalled similar advice being given by their fathers to their brothers. In addition, all the participants found the advice rather hackneyed and not really applicable to real life in Iranian society.

152

Gender Differences in Teaching Hamlet to Iranian EFL Students

Motif of “Mankind is merely dust” On the theme of death, the participants had mixed reactions, as some analysed the motif according to Islamic beliefs concerning life after death, while others agreed with Hamlet’s view of the physicality of death. For instance, Ali says: I fail to understand why Hamlet is so concerned about what would happen after death as I guess based on religious teachings, there is definitely life after death.

However, Mary says: I am always in doubt about the idea of resurrection and life after death. I totally understand Hamlet’s qualms regarding this matter.

Masculine gaze: Hamlet is just me The male participants of the study totally understood what Hamlet felt throughout his journey for revenge. They all confessed to the fact that they tended to empathise with the main character in the play. Ali says: Hamlet is me and I really understand the way he reacts towards his father’s death. I would have done the same if I were him. Hamlet talks about his melancholy that has afflicted him since his father passed on. I also felt the same when I lost my father.

Feminine gaze: Hamlet is Just Me While the male participants found Hamlet an appealing character whose behaviour they aspired to emulate in real life, this was not true of their female counterparts, for they were not able to relate to Hamlet with regard to his feelings about his mother’s betrayal. This clearly reflects the maledominated Iranian society in which women and men are entangled with gender stereotypical norms supported by the traditional mores prevalent in Iranian culture. For instance, Mary says: I fail to understand why Hamlet is so spiteful as his mother made a mistake. At last, she is his mother. He could have forgiven her and let her be. When I compare Hamlet with me it is not me … maybe it is like my brother who is overprotective of my mother and me.

Amir Ghajarieh and Zuraidah Mohd Don

153

Mary produced an intriguing discourse in which she compared Hamlet to her brother. An instance of masculinity in Iran is called Gheyrat, which means, “the concept of male honour which has deep cultural roots in Iran” (Naghibi 2000, 135). This ideological practice is widespread in Iran, where men sometimes regard females as property and compel them to behave in accordance with gender ideologies in order to gain a good reputation and face, especially among other men. Men’s control over women could be due to females’ economic insecurity or their sexuality. They decide who a female member of the family marries, and whether it is proper for a woman to find a job outside the home. This trend is endorsed by socio-cultural norms of gendered practice. Gender roles are defined within a patriarchal family, with males placed as the ones having power and being dominant, and females depicted as weak and subordinate. Fratriarchy (rule of the brotherhoods) (Remy 1990, 43) is still alive in Iran.

Motif of Moral Legitimacy of Suicide Hamlet’s speech in act III, scene i (58–90) must be the most famous speech in English literature. Hamlet touches on one of the most important conflicts faced by human beings; i.e., the question of the legitimacy of taking one’s own life in a world full of hassle and pain. Hamlet asks the fundamental question of whether it, “would it be logical to commit suicide,” or “To be, or not to be.” He subsequently examines the living and dying in the light of morality. When the participants were asked about this, they rejected the idea of killing oneself on account of pain as this is forbidden in Islamic teaching. However, one of the participants who constructed himself as a non-religious individual said: I am always in doubt about life and death. I cannot make a balance between these two and therefore I go with Hamlet and cannot say committing suicide is utterly unacceptable.

The religious ideology of Shakespeare’s time could clearly show why the participants with a religious background failed to agree with Hamlet on the matter of suicide. The less religious the stance one adopts, the more easily one can identify with Hamlet’s beliefs regarding death and suicide. In other words, since religion is a fundamental component of Iranian society, those who subscribed to the religious ideologies prevalent in Iran were more likely to reproduce discourses endorsing the dominant contemporary norms in Shakespeare’s time.

154

Gender Differences in Teaching Hamlet to Iranian EFL Students

Conclusion This study has sought to highlight the cultural complexities involved in teaching Shakespeare to Iranian students in an EFL (English as a Foreign Language) situation. A case study was undertaken with a group of 16 Iranian college students at the BA level, who were interviewed to ascertain their responses to extracts from Shakespeare’s Hamlet. Samples of the data were analysed using narrative analysis and reader-response theory. Subsequently, the discourses produced were identified as grounded on Iranian cultural norms and notions. After determining discourses, the researchers examined whether such produced discourse supports or resists the dominate ideologies in the Iranian context. The findings indicate that Hamlet can be interpreted differently within the context of Iranian culture, and that the readings are not devoid of cultural elements of the target language. This clearly shows that Shakespeare’s culture-blind works should be contextualised based on various localities.

Bibliography Abrams, M. H., and Geoffrey Galt Harpham. 2009. A Glossary of Literary Terms. 9th ed. Boston: Wadsworth Cengage Learning. Duff, A, and A. Maley. 1990. Literature. Oxford: Oxford University Press: Oxford University Press. Abrams, M. H. 2009. A Glossary of Literary Terms. 9th ed. Fort Worth: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich College. Carter, Ronald, and Michael N. Long. 1991. Teaching Literature. Harlow: Longman. Fowler, Robert M. 1991. Let the Reader Understand: Reader-response Criticism and the Gospel of Mark. Minneapolis: Fortress. Holland, Norman Norwood. 1964. The Shakespearean Imagination. New York: Macmillan. —. 1966. Psychoanalysis and Shakespeare. New York: McGraw-Hill. Mate, V. 2005. “Teaching Shakespeare in the EFL Classroom” (MA thesis). EötvösL or ánd Universit. Naghibi, N. 2000. “Five Minutes of Silence: Voices of Women Feminists in the Post-revolutionary Age.” In Postcolonizing the Commonwealth Studies in Literature and Culture, edited by R. Smith, 113–45. Waterloo, Ont.: Wilfrid Laurier University Press. Remy, J. 1990. “Patriarchy and Fratriarchy as Forms of Androcracy.” In Men, Masculinities and Social Theory, edited by J. Hearn and D. Morgan, 43–54. London: Unwin Hyman.

Amir Ghajarieh and Zuraidah Mohd Don

155

Ryken, Leland. 1989. The Liberated Imagination: Thinking Christianly about the Arts. Wheaton, Ill.: H. Shaw. Smith, Rowland. 2000. "Five Minutes of Silence: Voices of Women Feminists in the Post-revolutionary Age." In Postcolonizing the Commonwealth Studies in Literature and Culture, edited by R. Smith, Waterloo, Ont.: Wilfrid Laurier University Press. Yen, A. 2010. “Our Languages Clicked: Shakespeare in EFL Classes.” Asian EFL Journal 12 (4).