The Antic Hamlet and Richard III 9780231891912

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THE ANTIC HAMLET and RICHARD III

THE ANTIC HAMLET

and RICHARD III By Sidney Thomas

New York : Morningside

Heights

KING'S C R O W N PRESS 1

943

COPYRIGHT

SIDNEY

1943

BY

THOMAS

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To My Wife

P R E F A C E

THIS ESSAY is an attempt to throw new light upon two of Shakespeare's greatest creations, Richard III and Hamlet, by studying them in relationship to earlier dramatic types and to each other. It is, in many respects, a tentative and incomplete work; but I hope it will be of some value to those who are interested in the development of Shakespeare's art. I owe much to those members of the Columbia University faculty who have helped, by their criticism and guidance, to increase the usefulness and limit the faults of this work. Professors E. H . Wright, Marjorie H . Nicolson and E. V. K. Dobbie, and Dr. H . W . Wells have been particularly generous with their suggestions for the improvement of the manuscript. I wish to thank also Professors H . M . Ayres, Robert H . Fife, Roger S. Loomis, and Ralph L. Rusk, who read this essay and offered many helpful comments.

Like all those who have had the privilege of studying with Professor O. J. Campbell, I find it difficult to acknowledge sufficiently the debt I owe to his scholarship and friendship. His wise advice and constant encouragement have aided in shaping this work from the very beginning. I am grateful to my fellow students in Professor Campbell's seminar for the patience with which they have listened to my reports on work in progress and for the stimulating criticism which they have constantly offered. The staff of the Columbia University library has given me every assistance in my work. It will be apparent to everyone who reads this essay that it would have been impossible without the achievements of hundreds of Shakespearean scholars, both of the past and the present. My principal debt I acknowledge in my dedication. SIDNEY

THOMAS

CONTENTS I. II.

H A M L E T ' S ANTIC DISPOSITION

I

RICHARD I I I AND T H E VICE DISSIMULATION

11

III.

H A M L E T AS A CHARACTER OF CONTRADICTIONS

33

IV.

T H E TWO TRADITIONS I N T H E WORK OF S H A K E S P E A R E

53

APPENDICES 1 . A NOTE ON 2 HENRY VI.—2.

69 ON THE SOURCES OF RICHARD III

AND

HAMLET.—

3 . ELIZABETHAN SPEECH AND THE DRAMATIC POETRY OF SHAKESPEARE

NOTES

77

BIBLIOGRAPHY

87

INDEX

91

Chapter

One

HAMLET'S ANTIC DISPOSITION

N

o ONE ever really reads Hamlet for the first time. It is so central a part of our cultural tradition that the very language of the play is familiar to us long before we see it on the printed page or hear it spoken in the theatre. And Hamlet himself we have known, it seems, as far back as we can remember; the sound of his name stirs vague memories even in the minds of those for whom his history is a blank. As Kittredge said in his celebrated memorial lecture, "We are the unconscious inheritors of a vast array of preconceived ideas—good and bad, clever and stupid, judicious and enthusiastic." 1

Only by a great effort of concentration, therefore, can we approach Hamlet anew, and forget all the interpretations of the play that we have learned. Drastic as this procedure may be, it is necessary if we are to contribute anything to the understanding of the play. So great is the accumulated mass of Hamlet criticism that the modern scholar is almost helpless in the face of it; and he limits his function, most of the time, to that of a mediator, a referee between opposing theories. Thus, criticism produces criticism: we write, not so much about Hamlet itself as about what other people have said concerning Hamlet. Though much of it has been brilliant and suggestive, the Shakespearean criticism of the past has, to a large extent, acted as a restraining force upon us; in our admiration at the genius with which writers of previous generations have expressed their opinions about Shakespeare, we have forgotten that they suffered from the limitations of their own times, and that each age needs to reinterpret the past for itself. Hamlet has unfortunately attracted the attention of more great creative imaginations than any other literary work; its central figure has provided, as a number of critics have remarked, an incomparable opportunity for those who have written about him to indulge in self-confession. T h e misdirected energies of poets have produced many fascinating essays on Hamlet as philosopher, Hamlet as a weary intellectual, Hamlet as anything but what Shakespeare intended him to be: a character in a play.

2

T H E ANTIC

HAMLET

Several scholars have already made a noteworthy beginning in the task of redirecting critical attention to Hamlet the play rather than Hamlet the man. Only such an approach can enable us to rid ourselves of what Professor J. Dover Wilson has called "the fundamental misconception of treating Hamlet as if he were a living man or a historic character, instead of being a single figure, if the central figure, in a dramatic composition." The starting point for an investigation of Hamlet's character must be the play in which he moves and has his being. In a certain sense, Hamlet is one of those literary games at chess of which the Elizabethans were so fond: it is a struggle of wits between two "mighty opposites," with the initiative continually passing from one side to the other. Criticism has tended to concentrate upon the character of Hamlet and to wonder at his evasions and delays; but we must remember that if Hamlet is determined to destroy Claudius, then Claudius is also determined to destroy Hamlet. The lines of force which bind Hamlet to the other characters in the play do not flow only in one direction; he acts upon others, and is acted upon himself. He dominates the drama in which he appears, but he cannot be isolated from it.3 If this is true, we cannot understand Hamlet without studying the character of Claudius. In the great duel between them each uses the same weapons; one accepts the gambit which the other offers. For example, Claudius attempts, through Ophelia and Rosencrantz-Guildenstern, to sound Hamlet out and trap him into betraying his intentions; Hamlet counters with the stratagem of the Mouse-Trap, intended to "try the conscience of the king." Similarly, through the plot of the voyage to England, Claudius tries to have Hamlet murdered; but Hamlet so parries the stroke that Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, the king's instruments, go to their deaths instead. And in the final treachery of all, Claudius achieves his purpose, the killing of Hamlet, only at the price of his own life and those of Laertes and Gertrude as well. Throughout this continued struggle, Claudius, as most critics have realized, plays the part of a conscious Machiavellian. Except for a brief moment of repentance in the prayer scene, he is the perfect incarnation of the type so familiar to the Elizabethan theatrical audience. He is instantly identified for the spectators when the Ghost describes him as a secret poisoner; but even more important in enabling us to understand Claudius is Hamlet's exclamation:

HAMLET'S

ANTIC

DISPOSITION

3

O villain, villain, smiling, damned villain! My tables,—meet it is I set it down, T h a t one may smile, and smile, and be a villain . . .* These lines have puzzled many critics who have been unable to understand why Hamlet, after his first encounter with the Ghost, should wish to note down only one thing—the existence of smiling villainy, the possibility of dissimulation. It is not enough to say that Hamlet is here underlining for the audience the principal element of Claudius' character; that element of deceitfulness and guile is sufficiently exposed by Claudius himself, not only in his actions but in his words: T h e harlot's cheek, beautied with plastering art, Is not more ugly to the thing that helps it T h a n is my deed to my most painted word. 5 Moreover, Hamlet's outcry is too deliberately emphatic to be intended merely as a reference to Claudius. T h a t the emphasis is not accidental is shown by its repetition in the 'wonderful news' which Hamlet imparts to Horatio and Marcellus: There's ne'er a villain dwelling in all Denmark, But he's an arrant knave. 6 This statement, taken by itself, seems to be meaningless; but there is no doubt that it is intended to reecho Hamlet's earlier exclamation. In stressing the theme of dissimulation, Hamlet is not so much explaining Claudius as he is explaining the basis for his own future conduct. H e is preparing the way for his warning to the two witnesses of his meeting with the Ghost: Here, as before, never, so help you mercy, H o w strange or odd soe'er I bear myself, As I perchance hereafter shall think meet T o put an antic disposition on . . . to note T h a t you know aught of me . . . 7 Upon our interpretation of these vitally important lines depends, to a great extent, our understanding of Hamlet's behavior. T h e crux of the speech is, of course, the phrase "antic disposition," a definition of which would therefore seem to be a necessary prelude to any discussion of the

4

THE ANTIC

HAMLET

meaning of Hamlet's actions. Strangely enough, however, scholars have generally neglected so obvious a task; they have assumed that when Hamlet speaks of putting on an antic disposition, he is announcing his intention to counterfeit madness. For most critics, therefore, the problem of Hamlet reduces itself to the simple question: is his madness real or feigned ? Such a question avoids much more than it includes. Hamlet's behavior is far too complex to be covered by any easy formula; and madness, real or feigned, is certainiy the least satisfactory of all explanations. There is undoubtedly something strange and forced about Hamlet's speech; but it is unfailingly brilliant and alive with the sanity of wit. It is at the furthest extreme from the Tom o' Bedlam gibberish of Edgar which Shakespeare used to represent feigned madness in King Lear. Like Polonius, we are all uncomfortably aware that there is method in Hamlet's airy mockery and fantastic actions; to discover that method, we must first know what Hamlet, which is to say Shakespeare, means by the phrase "antic disposition". That he does not mean madness is certain. Rarely in Elizabethan literature is the word "antic" used in the sense of unbalanced or insane; 8 on the contrary, it is generally used to signify deliberate masking carried on in a comic spirit. Moreover, the connotation of the word is definitely theatrical: it seems to refer to a traditional clownish type associated with masked revels. In his desire to expose what he considers the upstart pretensions of actors, Robert Greene can find no more biting phrases than "those Puppets (I meane) that spake from our mouths, those Anticks garnisht in our colours;" 9 and Cyril Tourneur uses the word in the same way in his Revenger's Tragedy when he makes Vindice say of his mistress' skull that . . . sure twould fright the sinner And make him a good coward, put a Reveller Out off his Antick amble . . . 1 0 Even more significant is a remark by Robert Armin, himself a famous comic actor: At last, our comes William with his wit, as the foole of the play doth with an antick looke, to please the beholders. 11 Most interesting and important of all, however, are Shakespeare's own uses of the word. The earliest example in the plays seems to be that in Love's Labour's Lost, when Armado announces to Holofernes:

HAMLET'S ANTIC DISPOSITION

5

The very all of all is, but, sweet heart, I do implore secrecy, that the king would have me present the princess, sweet chuck, with some delightful ostentation, or show, or pageant, or antick, or fire-work.12 The meaning of the word is not entirely clear in this context. Kittredge defines it here as "a fantastic dance," 1 3 and he is probably correct; for there is no doubt that the word was used in this sense even before it came to signify a comic disguise. As early as 1549, for example, we find the following passage: Than cometh Silenus that horeheadded lover, treadyng the hornepipe, with Poliphemus boisteously stampyng, & the Nymphes trippyng barefooted, the Satyres halfe gotes dauncyng the Antikes, And Pan with his oten flute singyng some rurall song . . . 1 4 Whatever the exact meaning of the word may be in Love's Labour's Lost, however, it is definitely used in a comic sense in another early play, The Taming of the Shrew. In the Induction to this work, the Lord warns the players not to laugh at the strange actions of Sly: There is a lord will hear you play to-night; But I am doubtful of your modesties, Lest, over-eyeing of his odd behaviour,— For yet his honour never heard a play,— You break into some merry passion And so offend him; for I tell you, sirs, If you should smile he grows impatient. And a player replies: Fear not, my lord: we can contain ourselves Were he the veriest antick in the world. 1 5 This is not an isolated instance; time after time, in the plays of Shakespeare, the word "antic" is used to signify a clownish character or a comic disguise. In 1 Henry IV, Falstaff contemptuously refers to "old father antick the law." 1 6 In Henry V, the servant of Nym, Pistol, and Bardolph, declares that "three such antiques do not amount to a man." 1 7 And in Much Ado About Nothing, Hero, discussing the mocking humor of Beatrice, says: . . . I never yet saw man, How wise, how noble, young, how rarely featur'd

6

T H E ANTIC

HAMLET

But she would spell him backward: if fair-fac'd, She would swear the gentleman should be her sister; If black, why, Nature, drawing of an antick, Made a foul blot . . , 18 The word occurs also, in the same sense, in one of the best-known passages in Shakespeare, Richard II's description of the vanity of kingly power: . . . within the hollow crown That rounds the mortal temples of a king Keeps Death his court and there the antick sits, Scoffing his state and grinning at his pomp . . . 1 9 These examples would certainly be enough, by themselves, to indicate the meaning which Shakespeare attached to the word "antic"; 2 0 but there are two other passages in the plays which also demand quotation, for they reveal a coupling of the concepts of disguise and comedy in connection with the term. During the masque at the home of Capulet, in Romeo and Juliet, Tybalt recognizes Romeo despite his visor and declares: This, by his voice, should be a Montague. Fetch me my rapier, boy. What! dares the slave Come hither, cover'd with an antick face, To fleer and scorn at our solemnity? 2 1 Finally, in Antony and Cleopatra, Octavius Caesar thus rebukes himself and the rest of the participants in the wild drinking party aboard Pompey's galley: . . . Gentle lords, let's part; You see we have burnt our cheeks; strong Enobarb Is weaker than the wine, and mine own tongue Splits what it speaks; the wild disguise hath almost Antick'd us all . . . 2 2 All these references imply the existence of a traditional comic figure, a masked buffoon, a virtuoso of disguises; it is this figure which Hamlet means to imitate when he puts on his antic disposition. His actions throughout the play involve not the disintegration of personality which is madness, but ambiguity of personality, the conscious assumption of different roles. He jokes in dead earnest; he attacks by irony. "Have you heard the argu-

HAMLET'S

ANTIC DISPOSITION

7

mcnt? Is there no offence in't?" asks the King. "No, no," says Hamlet, "they do but jest, poison in jest; no offence i' the world." 2 3 T h e decisive evidence concerning the meaning of the term "antic disposition" is to be found in Hamlet's own behavior; and this bears out everything we have said concerning the significance of the phrase. T h e comic element in Hamlet's character is so strong that it is difficult to understand why critics have so generally ignored it. 2 4 Even so perceptive a writer as Professor Mark Van Doren, who does full justice to the histrionic nature of Hamlet, declares that he is an actor "supreme in tragedy as Falstaff was supreme in comedy."

25

Such a distinction ignores the essential fact that

Hamlet is a fundamentally tragic figure who often wears the mask of comedy. T h e melancholy, black-robed prince is also the Wittenberg sophist; and John-a-dreams is also the incurable punster, the sardonic wit who knows a hawk from a handsaw. O f all the Shakespearean critics of the present day, Professor J. Dover Wilson has come closest to recognizing this fact. In a brilliant paragraph, he declares: T h e second act of Hamlet

is comedy; a comedy of masks. But the comedy

does not stop there; it runs right on into the act that follows . . . In the play scene the comedy of masks reaches at once its climax and finale. After Lucianus has poured the mock-poison into the Player-King's ears, both Hamlet and Claudius know each other for what they are; and masks are henceforth useless. 26 Unfortunately, however, this paragraph is an isolated statement, the full implications of which Professor Wilson fails to realize. For the conception of Hamlet's character which dominates Professor Wilson's work is still the old one which assumes that to put on an antic disposition is "to act the madman;"

27

and which solves the complex problem of Hamlet by stating

that "Shakespeare wishes us to feel that Hamlet assumes madness because he cannot help it." 2 9 T o What Happens

in Hamlet,

add the doleful subtitle, Hamlet

again.

is mad

therefore, we must

Of course, Hamlet is more than merely a comic masker, a conscious actor. He would not be the most affecting and resplendent character in the English drama if we did not feel, underneath everything, his bitter sincerity. As T . S. Eliot has said, Hamlet's behavior is "less than madness and more than feigned."

29

T h e very first line Hamlet speaks (even before he has

assumed his role) is a savage pun; and his last line (after he has put off his

8

THE ANTIC

HAMLET

mask) is a verbal conceit, though an infinitely subtle and moving one. His callous treatment of Ophelia, his mocking attitude toward the dead Polonius—all those aspects of his character which have shocked many critics— cannot be explained only as play-acting. The approach to these more profound aspects of Hamlet's character, however, is through an understanding of his antic disposition. If there was, in the drama before Shakespeare, a traditional antic character, then the analysis of its development is of primary importance for the study of Hamlet. W e can no longer regard him as an exceptional problem; he must be seen as an integral part of Elizabethan literature, the climax of a long tradition. W e shall find that the most distinctive features of Hamlet's character, those which we have been accustomed to regard as most peculiar to him, arc common to a whole group of figures in the English drama.

II Attempts have been made, it is true, to study Hamlet in the light of other dramatic characters. He has often been compared with two of Shakespeare's earlier creations, Brutus and Richard II, who also reveal indecision and hesitation. Such comparisons, however, have done little to clarify our understanding of Hamlet. There is only the faintest resemblance between the volatile, sardonic Hamlet and the dignified, humorless Brutus; both are "indecisive"—but for entirely different reasons and in unrelated contexts. Richard II is somewhat closer to the Hamlet type: he has at least the histrionic tendency, the fondness for playing a part. Basically, though, this musical mourner bears little likeness to the virile and energetic Hamlet. It is clear that in attempting comparisons of this kind, critics have been misled by their preoccupation with Hamlet as a tragic figure. If, however, we go outside the ranks of the heroes of tragedy, we discover two figures in the plays of Shakespeare who strikingly resemble Hamlet: Mercutio of Romeo and Juliet, and Berowne of Love's Labour's Lost. T h e first of these is more familiar to most readers and needs relatively little discussion. It may seem strange to couple his name with Hamlet's, but the kinship between the two is so close that we may wonder why it has not been more often remarked. Both are brilliant young intellectuals, desperate jesters whose wit is more often sardonic and obscene than gay. They are both poets in love with the possibility of language; and neither can resist the temptation to be witty even in death. When Mercutio goes out of the play, the whole tone of

HAMLET'S ANTIC DISPOSITION

9

Romeo and Juliet changcs; for like Hamlet, Mercutio has that incandescence of personality which can light up an entire scene. Berowne, however, not only resembles Hamlet; he is almost a preliminary sketch for him. He has all the qualities we have pointed out in Mercutio; but in addition he is a masker and dissembler like Hamlet. In fact, Love's Labour's Lost is an extended revel which reaches its climax in a mask in which the dissemblers are themselves deceived. It is possible to recognize Hamlet in Rosaline's description of Berowne: Oft have I heard of you, my Lord Berowne, Before I saw you, and the world's large tongue Proclaims you for a man replete with mocks; Full of comparisons and wounding flouts, Which you on all estates will execute That lie within the mercy of your wit: To weed this wormwood from your fruitful brain, And therewithal to win me, if you please,— Without the which I am not to be won,— You shall this twelvemonth term, from day to day, Visit the speechless sick, and still converse With groaning wretches; and your task shall be, With all the fierce endeavour of your wit To enforce the pained impotent to smile.30 And the wonderful passage in which Berowne questioningly replies to her is, in itself, an almost perfect summary of Hamlet, both the man and the play: T o move wild laughter in the throat of death? It cannot be; it is impossible: Mirth cannot move a soul in agony.31 Reading these lines, we recall Hamlet's feverish buffoonery after his interview with the Ghost; and we hear the wondering remark of Horatio: These are but wild and whirling words, my lord.32 It is clear, then, that Mercutio and Berowne have many features in common with Hamlet; all three are "antics," conscious humorists and comic maskers. The fact that Mercutio and Berowne resemble Hamlet is, how- • ever, no proof that Shakespeare based his treatment of Hamlet upon a traditional dramatic type. At most, we can assert only that Shakespeare

THE ANTIC

HAMLET

anticipated, in his own work, a number of the most striking characteristics of Hamlet, and that he particularly liked to represent a certain kind of hero. T o demonstrate a Hamlet tradition, we must show that he is representative of a definitely recognized and recurrent type in the Elizabethan drama; we must also trace the existence and development of such a type in pre-Shakespearean literature. It is possible to do both; but first, it is necessary to return to Claudius. W e were led to our discussion of Hamlet's antic disposition by the hypothesis that it was his response to his discovery ot Claudius' dissimulation; and we have found that Hamlet himself assumes a mask, that, in other words, he apes Claudius. It is not surprising, therefore, that Claudius, after having eavesdropped on Hamlet, knows that "what he spake, though it lack'd form a little, W a s not like madness." ™ Every commentator on the play has remarked that Hamlet's behavior does not lull the suspicions of Claudius, but rather intensifies them. This is not strange; for Hamlet's technique of disguise is a parody of Claudius' Machiavellianism, and a counter-stroke to it, and Hamlet himself is a kind of contre-Machiavel who plays the dangerous game of his opponent. It is worth considering, therefore, whether Hamlet may not belong in the ranks of the Elizabethan Machiavellians. Off-hand, no suggestion seems more far-fetched or more lacking in a true appreciation of Hamlet's character. Certainly, if we were to accept the conventional picture of the Machiavellian villains, we would have to regard as ridiculous any attempt to number Hamlet among them. H e is neither brutal nor bloodthirsty nor impossibly vile; he is almost none of the things the Machiavellian villain is popularly supposed to be. But it is also true that the Machiavellian villain himself is almost none of the things he is supposed to be. N o Elizabethan dramatic type is more clearly fixed in our minds; yet none needs reexamination more. In order to demonstrate the tradition in which the Machiavellian villain belongs and to show its importance for the study of Hamlet, it is necessary to choose an example of the type which is recognized as representative by all critics. Of all the characters in the Elizabethan drama, Shakespeare's Richard III best fits this requirement. N o t only does he hold the center of the stage in his own play, in which he is developed in considerable detail, but he also bulks large in 3 Henry VI, where his chief characteristics are already revealed. It is to the study of Richard III and his antecedents, then, that we must now turn our attention.

Chapter Two RICHARD

III A N D

THE

VICE

DISSIMULATION

I

IKE HAMLET, Richard III is a character of amazing vitality; and it is not j surprising that most actors who have portrayed the one have also at-

tempted the other. However, it would seem impossible to find, in the entire range of Shakespeare's work, two figures more dissimilar than Prince Hamlet and Richard Crookback. T h e physical disparity between the "unmatch'd form and feature of blown youth" and the "indigest deformed lump" is great enough; but the difference between their characters appears, at first thought, to be even greater. Hamlet is so complex a person that the very definition of his problems is difficult; Richard, on the other hand, has long since been classified and conveniently filed away under Machiavellian

vil-

lain. In the words of the most influential of American Shakespearean scholars: Richard, then, may be termed Shakespeare's dramatic interpretation of the Machiavellian villain—a type whose general features were already well settled in the Elizabethan mind. 1 There is general agreement not only on the type to which Richard belongs, but also on the supposed characteristics of the type; and it is therefore important to quote a representative description of Richard, so that we may know what the term Machiavellian

villain means to those who use it:

[Richard I I I ] is charged to the muzzle with Machiavellian principles of egoism, promptitude and resolution, violence and fraud. Like other Machiavels he boasts and gloats, fawns upon and fondles the minions of his villainy, and he plays the hypocrite as egregiously as Barabas. 2 All this is certainly true enough; for Richard himself, in a famous soliloquy, reveals all the qualities listed by Professor Stoll, and challenges comparison with Machiavelli: . . . Why, I can smile, and murder while I smile, And cry, 'Content,' to that which grieves my heart, And wet my cheeks with artificial tears,

THE ANTIC

HAMLET

And frame my face to all occasions. I'll drown more sailors than the mermaid shall; I'll slay more gazers than the basilisk; I'll play the orator as well as Nestor, Deceive more slily than Ulysses could, And, like a Sinon, take another Troy. I can add colours to the chameleon, Change shapes with Proteus for advantages, And set the murd'rous Machiavel to school.3 The last line of the soliloquy is Richard's only reference to Machiavelli. It is significant, therefore, that the name of "the murd'rous Machiavel" should be coupled with symbols o£ deceit such as Ulysses, Sinon, the chameleon and Proteus. In this context (and we have no other reference to him by Richard), Machiavelli represents dissimulation. We can assert this even more positively if we study the version of the above soliloquy which appears in The True Tragedie of Richarde Duke of Yorke, a play which is now believed to be a pirated version of j Henry VI.* T h e last line of the soliloquy in The True Tragedie reads: "And set the aspyring Catalin to schoole." 5 Cataline, of course, is an obvious symbol of treachery and underhanded intrigue; and the fact that his name could be used interchangeably with that of Machiavelli strengthens our hypothesis concerning the principal connotation of the latter's name. More important, however, is the indication which the passage from The True Tragedie gives that the concept of a certain dramatic type may have existed before the name of Machiavelli was attached to it. T o call Richard a Machiavellian villain is not to solve the problem of his character. W e have only named the type which he represents; we are not in a position to understand it or even to describe it adequately. Before we can do either, we must know the kind of audience reaction which Shakespeare expected Richard to provoke; we must discover the traditional significance of the Machiavellian villain for the Elizabethan playgoer. Such a task is more difficult than it appears to be; for the obvious theory, that the Machiavellian villain is a personification of the ideas of Machiavelli himself, is completely untenable. T h e Elizabethans had only the most limited acquaintance with those ideas in their true form; only a handful of university students were familiar with The Prince in the original. Most people of the time, however, knew this work only through the distorted and sensational

R I C H A R D III A N D T H E V I C E

13

Contre-Machiavel of Gentillet, which established the sinister conception of Machiavelli that was current in late sixteenth-century England. 8 It would be wrong, though, to assume that the Machiavellian villain owed his vogue in the Elizabethan drama solely to the work of Gentillet. If this were so, we should expect the influence of the Contre-Machiavel to be just as apparent in other popular literature of the period, such as broadsides, prose narratives, and satirical poems. But, as Professor Mario Praz has pointed out, Elizabethan popular literature, outside of the drama, makes surprisingly little use of the Machiavellian legend. 7 There are scattered references here and there, but nothing like the abundance or intensity of treatment that the theme received in the drama. It is probably true, then, that the playwrights were predisposed to accept and exploit the Gentillet version of Machiavelli's ideas because there already existed in the theatrical tradition a figure to whom these ideas could be attached; and, in the virtually unanimous opinion of scholars, this figure was the Senecan tyrant. Let us again turn to Professor Stoll for the expression of majority opinion: [The Machiavellian villain] is but old wine in a new bottle; for out of Seneca, along with much else, came into Elizabethan tragedy a character such as Atreus who likewise practices villainy wholesale, lies and dissembles, gloats, blasphemes, and pays homage to the powers infernal.8 Undoubtedly, the identification of Senecan tyrant and Machiavellian villain is a very plausible one; otherwise, it would not have been so universally and uncritically accepted. The general characteristics of Richard III appear to match those of Atreus; and certain of Richard's utterances, such as the following, have an unquestionably Senecan ring: Then, since the heavens have shap'd my body so, Let hell make crook'd my mind to answer it. I have no brother, I am like no brother; And this word 'love,' which greybeards call divine, Be resident in men like one another And not in mc: I am myself alone.9 Despite these factors, however, there are serious difficulties in the way of accepting the theory of Senecan origins. In the first place, the tyrant as a type does not even exist in the works of Seneca. Such is the conclusion reached by the most recent and exhaustive study of Seneca's writings:

i

T H E ANTIC

4

HAMLET

In view of the general belief that the tyrant is a favorite role of Senecan tragedy and that Seneca gave to it its conventional characteristics, this [i. e., Atreus, Medea, Clytemnestra, Deianeira, and Lycus] is a very small crop of tyrants. T h e curious fact is that there is one tyrant only drawn at all in full and he, Atreus, is not primarily

a tyrant, but a villain seeking

revenge . . . T h e fact is that the accepted feeling that Seneca developed the stock melodramatic tyrant rests in part on the casual references to the tyrant throughout the plays and only in part on the actual character as presented. 10 T h e task of demonstrating the Senecan origins of Richard III reduces itself, therefore, to a specific comparison between Richard and Atreus. If we cannot prove a distinct relationship between the two, then we must look outside of Seneca for the traditional origins of Richard's character. But a relationship between Richard and Atreus is precisely what we cannot prove: this is the real difficulty of the Senecan approach. T h e two characters resemble each other only in the most superficial sense. It is not only a matter of dramatic technique, of excellence in writing; Richard is fundamentally different from Atreus. T h e Senecan villain is above all a crudely bloodthirsty person who revels in physical horrors. Nothing better illustrates his character than the exultant speech he makes when Thyestes has finished his notorious meal of human flesh: T h e blood yet warme even from the wound I should in sight of thee Even in thy jawes have shed, that thou the bloud of them mightst drinke That lyved yet: but whyle to much to hast my hate I thinke My wrath beguyled is my selfe with sword the woundes them gave I strake them downe, the sacred fyres with slaughter vowde I have Wei pleasd, the carcase cutting then, and liveles lymmes on grounde I have in litle parcels chopt, and some of them I drounde In boyling cauderns, some to fyres that burnte ful slow I put, And made to droppes their synewes all, and limmes a two I cut Even yet alyve and on the spitte, that thrust was through the same I harde the liver wayle and crye, and with my hand the flame I oft kept in: but every whit the father might of this Have better done, but now my wrath so lightly ended is. He rent his sonnes with wicked gumme, himself yet wotting naught, Nor they therof. 11

R I C H A R D III A N D T H E V I C E

15

This emphasis upon the details of butchery is alien to the character of Richard, strange as it may seem to those who have accepted the conventional picture of him as "a thick-skinned brute." 1 2 When, for example, Tyrell reports the murder of the princes, Richard is interested only in learning the fact, not the manner of the deed. As for the details of the crime: Come to me, Tyrrell, soon at after supper When thou shalt tell the process of their death. 13 Atreus is purely a creature of melodrama: a figure of unrelieved villainy, capable of the blackest crimes, but essentially unconvincing. Richard, on the other hand, is a subtle intellectual. Long ago, William Hazlitt referred to him as "adroit and high-spirited;" 1 4 and, speaking of the famous wooing scene, he declared: Richard should woo less as a lover than as an actor—to shew his mental superiority, and power of making others the playthings of his purposes. 15 Even the most superficial study of Richard III will demonstrate the correctness of Hazlitt's criticism. In many respects, Richard is a figure of high comedy; he is, above all, the conscious actor who delights in his own wit and virtuosity, and his gaiety of spirits is real and constant. His most characteristic mood is that of admiring wonder at his own genius for playing a part. No sooner is Lady Anne out of his hearing than he exclaims: Was ever woman in this humour woo'd? Was ever woman in this humour won? I'll have her; but I will not keep her long. What! I, that kill'd her husband, and his father, T o take her in her heart's extremest hate; With curses in her mouth, tears in her eyes, The bleeding witness of her hatred by; Having God, her conscience, and these bars against me, And nothing I to back my suit withal But the plain devil and dissembling looks, And yet to win her, all the world to nothing! 1 0 Richard has what no Senecan villain possesses: the power of self-ridicule, the habit of ironic detachment: My dukedom to a beggarly denier I do mistake my person all this while:

16

THE ANTIC

HAMLET

Upon my life, she finds, although I cannot, Myself to be a marvelous proper man! I'll be at charges for a looking-glass And entertain a score or two of tailors, T o study fashions to adorn my body: Since I am crept in favour with myself, I will maintain it with some little cost. 17 In the last act, when troubles begin to crowd upon Richard and he becomes a conventionally tragic figure, the change in his character is principally manifest in his loss of gaiety; and he confesses to Ratcliff: I have not that alacrity of spirit, N o r cheer of mind that I was wont to have. 1 8 W h e n he has said that, we know Richard is finished; it is almost unnecessary to wait for the denouement. Everything which Richard has achieved has been won by his supreme audacity and alacrity. Lacking these qualities, he is no longer Richard of Gloucester, but a cornered scoundrel, desperate and afraid. While he is still dominant, however, we see him as does the unsuspecting Hastings: His Grace looks cheerfully and smooth this m o r n i n g : There's some conceit or other likes him well, W h e n that he bids good morrow with such spirit. 19 It is clear, then, that in Richard we have a character far removed from the usual hero of melodrama. W h a t we have, rather, is a strange combination of villain and comedian, a jesting and intellectually adroit rogue. T h e effect is a peculiarly complex one; if we try to approach Richard as a realistic character portrayal, we shall miss completely the intention of Shakespeare. Richard is a study in disguises, a set of variations on the theme of deception. H i s most willing pupil, Buckingham, imitates his master when he boasts: T u t ! I can counterfeit the deep tragedian, Speak and look back, and pry on every side, Tremble and start at wagging of a straw, Intending deep suspicion: ghastly looks Are at my service, like enforced smiles; And both are ready in their offices, At any time, to grace my stratagems. 2 0

R I C H A R D III A N D T H E V I C E

17

It is unfortunate that scholars have limited their investigation of Elizabethan disguise-plots to those involving obvious changes of costume or sex; 2 1 for Richard III is more truly a disguise play than As You Like It or Twelfth Night. Rosalind and Viola are still themselves after they have put on male attire; but Richard can be at will a gallant lover, a religious zealot, a loyal protector, without any outward change of appearance. It is significant that Richard's mother should use the imagery of physical disguise to describe her son: Ah! that deceit should steal such gentle shape, And with a virtuous vizard hide deep vice. 22 If our analysis of Richard's character is correct, then it is obvious that his antecedents are not to be found in Seneca. Nowhere in the works of the Latin dramatist do we find dissimulation as a norm, or villainy carried on in the spirit of high comedy. In fact, the question inevitably arises whether the conception of Richard is not entirely original with Shakespeare— whether there is any traditional basis for the character at all. Fortunately, Shakespeare himself has given us a clue to the answer. During his conversation with the young Prince of Wales, Richard says, in a significant aside: Thus, like the formal Vice, Iniquity, I moralize two meanings in one word. 23 It may be useful to follow the clue given in these lines and turn to an investigation of the Vice in the interludes and morality plays of the early Tudor period. There we shall find the figure of the conscious dissimulator, the virtuoso of disguises, the comic villain; and we shall find also a solution to the problem of Richard's character; though he is infinitely more subtle, more resourceful, more human, Richard is still, at bottom, the Vice of the popular drama that continued to flourish even after Shakespeare had grown to manhood. Unfortunately, our understanding of the relationship between the Vice and Richard has been hampered by a general misconception of the origin and nature of the Vice. Thus, in what is still the most exhaustive and valuable work on the subject, Dr. Cushman defines the Vice as follows: The Vice . . . is an ethical person, he is an allegorical representation of human weaknesses and vices, in short the summation of the Deadly Sins: he is the antithesis of piety and morality and is the friend of an unre-

18

THE ANTIC

HAMLET

strained worldly life. As a dramatic figure, he possesses in consequence of his composite origin, great versatility: he can, at pleasure, assume the role of a tempter or of a particular phase of vice or of vice in general. 2 4 This definition determines Dr. Cushman's attitude toward the influence of the Vice on later dramatic figures. If the Vice is an incarnation of the Deadly Sins, then we must look for his descendants only among thoroughgoing villains. In a very revealing paragraph, Dr. Cushman says: As examples of the Vice-role in later times, the black Ithimor and Mephistopheles in Marlowe, and Aaron and Iago in Shakespeare, have already in a general way been pointed out by Professor Brandl,

Quellen,

X C I V , but why not also add to these Edmund in hear, Richard III, Don John in Much Ado About Nothing,

and Antonio in the Tempest?

These

characters are all typical villains as well as those mentioned above. But until the Shakespearean villains have been satisfactorily investigated and classified, it seems idle to say whether these types are historically connected with the Vice or not. 2 5 A wrong interpretation of the Vice and a wrong interpretation of Richard III have here coincided to produce a correct statement: that Richard and the Vice are related figures. In no sense, as D r . Cushman's own data show, can the Vice be considered a typical villain (whatever that may be). H e is, in almost every play in which he appears, predominantly a comic character. 20 Moreover, he is a type associated with rapid transformations of character, an expert in the arts of disguise; and he is such from the very beginning. T h e figure of Dissimulation already existed in medieval allegorical poetry, long before the period of the morality plays. As only one example, let us take the following speech of Fals-Semblant, in one of the most famous of medieval poems, the Romaunt

of the Rose (in the translation attributed to

Chaucer): Thourgh me hath many oon deth ressevved, That my treget nevere aperceyved; And yit resseyveth, and shal resseyve, T h a t my falsnesse shal nevere aperceyve . . . For Protheus, that cowde hym chaunge In every shap, homly and straunge, Cowde nevere sich gile ne tresoun

R I C H A R D III A N D T H E

VICE

19

As I; for I com never in toun There as I myghte knowen be, Though men me bothe myght here and see. Ful wel I can my clothis chaunge, Take oon, and make another straunge . . . Ryght as me lyst, I me disgise. Wel can I wre me undir wede; Unlyk is my word to my dede . . . For thou shalt never, for nothing Kon knowen aright by her clothing T h e traitours fulle of trecherie But thou her werkis can aspie.27 In this one speech, we have already most of the basic features of the Vice's character: the boastful self-revelation, the emphasis on sudden changes of personality, the intellectual pride. They are also the principal elements of Richard's character; even the image of Proteus is the same as that used by Richard in the famous soliloquy from 3 Henry VI quoted above. Most important of all, however, in the speech of Fals-Semblant, is his catalogue of disguises: Now am I knyght, now chasteleyn, Now prelat, and now chapeleyn, N o w prest, now clerk, and now forster; Now am I maister, now scoler, Now monk, now chanoun, now baily; Whatever myster man am I. Now am I prince, now am I page, And kan by herte every langage. Som tyme am I hor and old; Now am I yong, stout, and bold; Now am I Robert, now Robyn . . . 2S This is precisely the kind of list of character changes that we find in the speeches of the morality Vices. Compare, for example, the mocking doggerel of the Vice Haphazard in the "tragical comedy" of Apitts and Virginia: Yea but what am I, a Scholer, or a scholemaister, or els some youth. A Lawier, a studicnt or els a countrie cloune

THE

20

ANTIC

HAMLET

A Brumman, a Baskitmakcr, or a Baker of Pics, A flesh or a Fishmonger, or a sower of lies: A Louse or a louser, a Leeke or a Larke: A Dreamer a Drommell, a fire or a sparke: A Caitife, a Cutthrote, a criper in corners, A herbraine, a hangman, or a grafter of homers: By the Gods, I know not how best to devise, My name or my property, well to disguise: A Marchaunte, a Maypoole, a man or a mackrell: A Crab or Crevise, a Crane or a cockerell . . , 2 9 T h e striking similarity between these two speeches indicates two stages in the development of the same tradition, and strengthens the assumption that the medieval figure of Dissimulation developed into the dramatic Vice. It is not surprising that the concept of a personified dissimulation should have been seized upon by the writers of the morality plays and given a central place in their work; for it offered wonderful and obvious theatrical possibilities, even to the most incompetent of fledgling playwrights and actors. As a result, Dissimulation, under one name or another, parades through the majority of extant morality plays. Rarely did the dramatist let slip the opportunity to introduce a character able to disguise himself and reappear in a new role. By this means, he was in a position to secure complication of plot despite the fact that he was handicapped by having to work with a limited number of actors; he could revive the interest of his audience when it threatened to flag; and he could give an especially capable actor a chance to display his talents. There was, however, a more fundamental reason why the early Tudor dramatists made so much of the theme of dissimulation. They lived in a period of rapid change, when old forms of life and behavior were being replaced by new ones; when the old allegorical concepts of static personalities were giving way to a new faith in the infinite variety of individual character; and when fortune's wheel was beginning to revolve at a dizzy pace. T h e medieval speculations on shadow and substance took on new meaning. When a man can assume so many different guises, how is one to know which is real and which is merely transitory? Or must all be considered equally feigned? Nothing can more convincingly demonstrate the importance of these questions for the men of the Renaissance than an impressive passage from Erasmus' Praise of Folly, which must be quoted in full:

R I C H A R D III A N D T H E

VICE

. . . It is not unknowen, how all humaine thyngs lyke the Silencs or duble image of Alcibiades, have two faces muche unlyke and dissemblable, that what outwardly seemed death, yet lokyng within ye shulde fynde it lyfe: and on the other side what seemed life, to be death: what fay re, to be foule: what riche, beggerly: what cunnyng, rude: what strong, feable: what noble, vile: what gladsome, sadde: what happie, unlucky: what friendly, unfriendly: what healthsome, noysome. Briefely the Silene ones beyng undone and disclosed, ye shall fynde all thyngs tourned into a new semblance . . . N o w it maie be, ye muse what I meane hereby, but geve me leave yet a little further. If one at a solemne stage plaie, woulde take upon hym to plucke of the plaiers garmentes, whiles they were saiyng theyr partes, & so disciphre unto the lokers on, the true and native faces of eche of the plaiers, shoulde he not (trow ye) marre all the mattier? A n d well deserve for a m a d m a n to be pelted out of the place with stones P Ye shoulde see yet straightwaies a new transmutación in thyngs: that whobefore plaied the woman, shoulde than appeare to be a m a n : who seemed youth, should shew his hore heares: w h o counterfaited the kynge, shulde tourne to a rascall, and w h o plaied god almightie, shulde become a cobler as he was before. Yet take awaie this errour, and as soone take awaie all togethers, in as muche as the feignyng and counterfeityng is it, that so delighteth the beholders. So lykewise, all this life of mortall men, what is it els, but a certaine kynde of stage plaie ? Wheras men come foorthe disguised one in one arraie, and an other in an other, eche plaiyng his parte, till at last the maker of the plaie or bokebearer causeth theim to avoyde the skaffolde, and yet sometyme maketh one m a n come in, two or three tymes, with sundrie partes and apparaile, as w h o before represented a kynge, beyng clothed all in purpre, havyng no more but shyfted hym selfe a little should shew h y m selfe againe lyke a woobegon myser. A n d all this is dooen under a certaine veile or shadow, whiche taken awaie ones, the plaie can no more be plaied. 30 This passage, of course, deals mainly with changes of costume, but, nonetheless, it reveals that in the early T u d o r period the idea of character disguise, of what, in a learned phrase, we may call ambivalence of personality, was fully developed in connection with the popular drama. 3 1 "Feigning and counterfeiting" delighted the theatrical audience of the time, in perhaps a

22

THE ANTIC

HAMLET

deeper sense than Erasmus intended. Not only did actors assume parts at variance with their real situations in life; within the framework of the play itself, an actor could doubly transform his character, so that the relationship between the real and the feigned took on complexity and depth. As a result, we discover that in many of the moralities and interludes the narrative revolves around a series of disguisings. In Sir David Lindsay's Ane Satyre of the Thrie Estaitis, for example, the characters Flatterie, Dissait, and Falset disguise themselves as Devotioun, Discretioun, and Sapience. 32 In Lusty Juventus, Hypocrisy, the son of the Devil, disguises himself as Friendship. 33 In New Custom, Perverse Doctrine and Ignorance change to Sound Doctrine and Simplicity; and Cruelty and Avarice are transformed to Justice-with-Severity and Frugality. 3 4 Finally, in the Catholic morality, Respublica, Avarice, Insolence, Oppression, and Adulation become, respectively, Policy, Authority, Reformation, and Honesty. 3 5 And these are only a few of many examples which might be given. Some of the disguisings evidently involve no change of costume at all; the actor merely announces to the audience that he is going to become someone else. Thus, in New Custom, Perverse Doctrine declares: Hearken to me, Ignorance, for the matter is this: For the better accomplishing our subtlety pretended, It were expedient that both our names were amended; Ignorance shall be simplicity, for that comes very nigh; And for Perverse Doctrine I will be called Sound Doctrine, I. 3 6 This is character disguising on its lowest level; a change in name, with no indicated change in appearance, or more important still, in ways of acting. In the better moralities, however, we find the transformations accomplished with much more imagination and realistic detail. Flatterie, for example, in Ane Satyre of the Thrie Estaitis, announces his change into Devotioun in the following lines: Marie I sail finde ane thousand wyles: W e man turne our claithis, & change our stiles, And disagyse us, that na men ken us. Hes na man Clarkis cleathing to len us? And let us keep grave countenance, As wee war new cum out of France. 3 7 Such a speech is already close to the essential spirit of Richard's character. In fact, one is reminded of Buckingham's advice to Richard:

R I C H A R D III A N D T H E

VICE

23

The mayor is here at hand. Intend some fear; Be not you spoke with but by mighty suit: And look you get a prayer-book in your hand, And stand between two churchmen, good my lord: For on that ground I'll make a holy descant . . . 3 8 The figures of dissimulation in the moralities resemble Richard most, however, in their boastful, self-explanatory speeches. They can never resist the temptation to expatiate upon their own cunning and ability to deceive; especially do they do this in the long, elaborate speeches which most of them make upon their first entrances. Again, though many instances of such monologues could be given, it will be sufficient to quote only a few to show the striking resemblance which they bear to similar utterances by Richard. Skelton's Magnyfycence contains a trio of rogues, Counterfet Countenance, Cloked Colusyon, and Courtly Abusyon, each of whom represents a different phase of dissimulation. Of the three, Cloked Colusyon delivers the most interesting self-analysis: Double delynge and I be all one; Craftynge and haftynge contryved is by me; I can dyssemble, I can bothe laughe and grone; Playne Delynge and I can never agre; But Dyvysyon, Dyssencyon, Dyryson,—these thre, And I, am counterfet of one mynde and thought, By the menys of Myschyef to bryng all thynges to nought . . . Two faces in a hode covertly I bere; Water in the one hande and fyre in the other: I can fede forth a fole and lede hym by the eyre; Falshode-in-felowshyp is my sworne brother. By Cloked Colusyon, I say, and none other, Comberaunce and trouble in Englande fyrst I began . . . 3 0 In The Conflict of Conscience, Hypocrisy explains himself in these terms: We Mercurialists, I mean hypocrites, cannot long endure In one condition, but do alter our mind T o theirs that talk with us thereby friendship to find, The little cameleon, by nature, can change Herself to that colour to which she behold:

24

THE ANTIC HAMLET Why should it then to any seem strange, That we do thus alter: why are we controll'd, Sith only the rule of nature we hold?

40

Finally, for a truly Machiavellian passage, let us look at Bale's King

Johan

(written long before the English had any knowledge, however distorted, of The

Prince): [acyon] Sir, thys is my mynde, I wyll gyve kynge Johan thys poyson So makynge hym sure, that he shall never have foyson And thys must thu saye, to colour with the thynge That a peny lofe, he wolde have brought it to a shyllynge

DISSYMUL

SEDICYON

Naye, that is suche a lye, as easely wyll be felte DISSYMUL [acyon] Tush man, amonge fooles, it never wyll be out smelte Though it be a foule great lye: Set upon it a good face And that wyll cause men, beleve it in every place. 41 Year after year, in one play after another, the Tudor theatrical audience heard, or read speeches of this kind. As a result, the dramatic type of Dissimulation became part of their literary consciousness; they knew exactly what to expect when a person like Richard of Gloucester compared himself to Proteus or a chameleon. As early as the first quarter of the sixteenth century, Sir Thomas More, in recounting Richard's deception of his young nephew, had been unable to refrain from setting down the heartfelt marginal comment: "Oh, Dissimulation!" 4 - One can hear the spectators of Shakespeare's play echoing that comment, and in a less general sense than More had meant; for between More and Shakespeare there had been a long development of Dissimulation as a specific dramatic type. Not only, therefore, is the traditional figure of Dissimulation much closer to Shakespeare's treatment of Richard than is the Senecan tyrant; it was also much more familiar to the Elizabethan audience. In this connection, it is revealing to quote a section of Thomas Newton's prefatory remarks to his 1581 edition of Seneca's tragedies in English translations: . . . I doubt whether there bee any amonge all the Catalogue of Heathen wryters . . . that more sensibly, pithily, and bytingly layeth doune the gue[r]don of filthy lust, cloaked dissimulation and odious treachery:

R I C H A R D III A N D T H E V I C E

25

which is the dryft, whereunto he leveleth the whole yssue of ech one of his Tragedies. 43 That is to say: do not look upon this ancient writer Seneca as strange and heretical; his plays are moral plays, like those with which you are familiar, and cloaked dissimulation is to be found in them just as in the popular drama. Newton's whole dedication to Heneage (from which the above quotation is taken) is an unconscious tribute to the strength of the morality tradition. T o prove a continuity of development between the Vice of the popular drama and the character of Richard, however, we must do more than demonstrate that both are figures of deceit. The most subtle feature of Richard's personality, we have seen, is his attitude toward villainy as a game to be played in high spirits with a full appreciation of its possibilities for virtuoso display. The wooing scene is an obvious example; hundreds of commentators have tried to explain this scene on the basis of "realistic" psychology—and have failed completely. From the standpoint of realism, both Richard and Anne are mad—Richard for wooing her and Anne for accepting him. Only if we regard Richard as the brilliant actor and Anne as his necessary foil (as Hazlitt suggested) can we understand this scene. We must consider, therefore, whether we have, in the Vice, any approach to the conception of the witty villain. It is not enough to show that the Vice is a character of disguises; we must prove that he disguises himself for comic effect, that his attitude toward life is sardonic rather than naively villainous. The Vice, if we are to relate him to Richard, must at least foreshadow the urbanity and intellectual sophistication of Shakespeare's character. There is ample evidence to prove that the Vice was treated primarily as a comic figure.44 The first stage-direction in Life Will to Life, for example, reads as follows: Here entereth Nichol Newfangle the Vice, laughing, and hath a knave of clubs in his hand which, as soon as he speaketh, he offereth unto one of the men or boys standing by. 45 Even more significant is the appearance of the Vice Ambidexter in

Cambyses: Enter the Vice with an old capcase on his head, an old pail about his hips for harness, a scummer and a potlid by his side, and a rake on his shoulder.46

26

THE

ANTIC

HAMLET

T h a t there may be no mistake about his character, Ambidexter introduces himself in a laughing speech: . . . T o conquest these fellows the man I will play, H a , ha, ha, now ye will make me to smile, T o see if I can all men beguile. H a , my name? my name would ye so fain know? Y e a , i-wis, shall ye, and that with all speed: I have forgot it, therefore I cannot show; H a , ha, now I have it, I have it indeed. M y name is Ambidexter: I signify one That with both hands finely can play; N o w with king Cambyses, and by and by gone. 47 It is, of course, true that Nichol Newfangle and Ambidexter are crudely comic, farcical characters, far removed from the high comedy of Richard. But nonetheless, in their laughing villainy they are creatures of the same kind as Richard, though they are raucous where he is subtle and poised. Moreover, though the attire and actions of the Vice are generally those of a clown, his speech is often surprisingly intellectual in its complex wit. W e are fortunate in possessing a pair of plays in which the development of the Vice from a farcical country bumpkin to a sophisticated rhetorician is unmistakable. T h e y are Robert Wilson's The

Three

Ladies

of

London

(first published in 1584), and The Three Lords and Three Ladies of

Lon-

don (first published in 1590). A m o n g the latest of the moralities, they are also among the most significant, particularly for our purpose. T h e first of these two plays introduces Dissimulation in the usual clownish costume: Enter Dissimulation, having on a farmer's long coat and a cap, and his poll and beard painted motley.'" 5 T h i s was evidently the conventional attire of the Vice, for Dissimulation observes: N a y , no less than a farmer, a right honest man, But my tongue cannot stay me to tell what I a m : N a y , w h o is it that knows me not by my party-colour'd head? T h e y may well think, that see me, my honesty is fled.49

RICHARD

III A N D

THE

VICE

27

Such a motley fool, with his clown's getup, would seem to be at the furthest remove from Richard of Gloucester; but as this play and its sequel unfold, he reveals a confident impudence and gaiety in hypocrisy that inevitably remind us of Richard. There is, for example, a scene in which, together with his fellows Fraud, Usury, and Simony, he courts Conscience and L o v e in a manner very reminiscent of Richard's wooing of Anne. T h e scene must be given at length: Fraud. But which of us all shall first break the matter? Dissimulation. Marry, let Simony do it, for he finely can flatter. Usury. N a y , sirs, because none of us shall have preheminence above other W e will sing in fellowship together, like brother and brother . . .

The Song. Good Ladies, take pity and grant our desire. Conscience's Reply. Speak boldly and tell me what is't you require. Their Reply. Y o u r service, good ladies, is what we do crave. H e r Reply. W e like not, nor list not such servants to have. Their Reply. If you entertain us, we trusty will be; But if you refrain us, then most unhappy. W e will come, w e will run, we will bend at your beck, W e will ply, we will hie, for fear of your check. H e r Reply. Y o u do feign, you do flatter: you do lie, you do prate: Y o u will steal, you will rob: you will kill in your hate. I deny you, I defy you; then cease of your talking: I refrain you, I disdain you; therefore, get you walking. Conscience. What, Fraud, Dissimulation, Usury, and Simony, H o w dare you for shame presume so boldly, A s once to show yourselves before L o v e and Conscience,

28

THE

ANTIC

HAMLET

N o t yielding your lewd lives first to repentance? T h i n k you not that G o d will plague you for your wicked practices, If you intend not to amend your vild lives so amiss? T h i n k you not, G o d knows your thoughts, words, and works, A n d what secret mischiefs in the hearts of you lurks? T h e n h o w dare you offend his heavenly majesty W i t h your dissembling deceit, your flattery, and your usury ? Fraud. T u t , sirs, seeing Lady Conscience is so scripolous, Let us not speak to her, for I see it is frivolous. But what say you, Lady L o v e ? W i l l you grant us favour? Love. I'll no such servants, so ill of behaviour, Servants more fitter for Lucre than Love, A n d happy are they which refrain for to prove, Shameless, pitiless, graceless, and quite past honesty; T h e n w h o of good conscience but will hate your company? Usury. H e r e is scripolous conscience and nice Love indeed. T u s h ! if they will not, others will: I know ye shall speed. 5 0 T h e deliberate artificiality of the scene is underlined by the fact that its central portion has been put in the form of a song. It is, in essence, a medieval love-debate which does not pretend to psychological truth; the emphasis is on the conscious wit, the verbal skill of the participants. N o n e of the characters takes seriously the pretence of love; the spirit of the courtiers is one of self-assured mockery. It makes no difference to them w h o m they w o o ; the g a m e of wooing is all that matters. W e are now in a position to understand better the scene between Richard and A n n e in Richard I I I : the V i c e Dissimulation and the Lady L o v e engage in a formal debate whose end is the display of wit; and the m o c k i n g abasement of R i c h a r d and the frenzied vituperation of A n n e are both part of the g a m e , as can be seen if we turn to the following passage from

The Three Lords and Three Ladies of

London:

Dissimulation. . . . G o o d L a d y Love, thou little knowest the grief T h a t I, thy friend, sustain for thy distress,

RICHARD

III A N D T H E

VICE

29

A n d less believest what care I have of thee. L o o k up, good Love, and to supply thy wants A s k what thou wilt, and thou shalt have of me, Of me, that joy more in thy liberty T h a n in this life of light that comforts me. Love. O gall in honey, serpent in the grass! O bifold fountain of two bitter streams, Dissimulation fed with viper's flesh, Whose words are oil, whose deeds, the darts of death! T h y tongue, I know, that tongue that me beguil'd, Thyself a devil mad'st me a monster vild. F r o m the well known well may I bless myself: Dear-bought repentance bids me shun thy snare. 5 1 These are the very accents of Richard and Anne. W e hear them even more clearly in the following wit-combat between Dissimulation and Love: Dissimulation. Love, look on me, and I will give thee clothes. Love. I will no more by thee be so disguised . . . Dissimulation. In thy affections I had once a place. Love. T h y fond affections wrought me foul disgrace. Dissimulation. I'll make amends if aught amiss were done. Love. W h o once are burn'd the fire will ever shun. Dissimulation. A n d yet once burn'd to warm again may prove. Love. N o t at thy fire; I will be perfect L o v e . 5 2 N o wonder that Simplicity comments: " I promise you, the wenches have learn'd to answer wittily." r'3 Compare with the above dialogue, this passage between Richard and A n n e :

30

THE ANTIC ANNE.

CLO. ANNE.

GLO. ANNE.

GLO. ANNE.

GLO. ANNE.

CLO. ANNE.

HAMLET

I would I knew thy heart. 'Tis figur'd in my tongue. I fear me both are false. Then never man was true. Well, well, put up your sword. Say, then, my peace is made. That shalt thou know hereafter. But shall I live in hope? All men, I hope, live so. Vouchsafe to wear this ring. 54 T O take is not to give.

Despite the obvious resemblances between Wilson's two plays and Richard III, it would be incorrect to argue that Wilson's works were sources for Shakespeare's play. T o do so would be to miss the point of the similarity between the two writers. Shakespeare's work resembles Wilson's, not because it is copied from his, but because it is in the same tradition, that of the popular drama. It may even be doubted whether Shakespeare consciously patterned Richard upon the Vice Dissimulation. Only dead traditions are deliberately imitated; when a writer is working within a vital tradition, he does so almost unawares. It is to the popular drama as a whole, and not to any one author, that Shakespeare owes his conception of Richard: a conception which we can fully comprehend only when we have put it in its proper frame of reference. We can now definitely reject any interpretation of Richard as a crudely melodramatic villain. In its place, we can put the idea of a character rich in overtones of irony and sardonic wit, a person of great intellectual force perverted to the ends of villainy. This is the nature of the Machiavellian villain, if Richard is typical of that category. But is he? Is it not possible that only Shakespeare, of all the Elizabethan dramatists, was capable of uniting the Vice Dissimulation with the villain of melodrama and producing a character like Richard? In order to answer this question, we must examine a representative example of the Machiavellian type outside of Shakespeare's plays. The logical choice for such a comparison with Richard is, of course, Marlowe's Barabas, who shares with Richard the distinction of being one of the first completely developed Machiavellians in the Elizabethan drama. T o understand the nature of Shakespeare's achievement in the creation of Richard, it is necessary, therefore, to glance briefly at Barabas.

R I C H A R D III AND T H E V I C E

31

Unquestionably, Barabas is much closer to the commonly accepted idea of the Machiavellian than is Richard. T h e delight in physical torture, the revolting brutality, the absence of subtlety, which are all characteristic of Atreus, are to be found in large measure in Barabas. A s a figure of tragedy, he is absurdly improbable, a complete failure; and one is tempted to say that in him we have a striking example of the bad effects of the Senecan influence, of the learned tradition as opposed to the popular one. However, it is also possible to consider Barabas as a clownish

figure,

conceived by Marlowe in deliberately comic terms. In a well-known passage, T . S. Eliot declares: I say [that the Jew of Malta is a ] farce, but with the enfeebled humour of our times the word is a misnomer; it is the farce of the old English humour, the terribly serious, even savage comic humour, the humour which spent its last breath in the decadent genius of Dickens . . . 5 5 Very few critical opinions expressed in our time have been more ridiculed than this statement of Eliot's; and the most that has been said in its defense is that Eliot was merely attempting to be paradoxical and witty. But with the Vice character fresh in our minds, we can see that there is a good deal to be said for the interpretation of Barabas as a comic figure. H e is not villainy, but a burlesque of villainy; and he was meant to arouse in the audience not terror but laughter. T h i s becomes very clear if we consider two important scenes in the play. One is that (Act I V , sc. vi, 11. 30-71) in which Barabas, disguised as a French musician, comments sardonically on the remarks of Ithamore and Pilia-Borza. H e takes up each of their statements and gives to it a new meaning which contradicts the intentions of the speaker. Barabas uses the same technique in an even more revealing scene in which he parries the accusations of the two friars Barnadine and J a c o m o : FRIAR BARN. FRIAR J A C .

T h y daughter—

Ay, thy daughter.

BARA. Oh, speak not of her, then I die with grief. FRIAR BARN. FRIAR J A C .

Remember that—

Ay, remember that—

BARA. I must needs say that I have been a great usurer. FRIAR BARN.

T h o u hast committed—

BARA. Fornication: but that was in another country; and besides, the wench is dead/' 0

32

THE ANTIC

HAMLET

Both scenes are undoubtedly in the tradition of the Vice; it would, as a matter of fact, be possible to insert in either of them the stage-direction which appears in a typical late morality: Here the vyce shal turne the proclamation to some contrarie sence at everie time all for money hath read it, and here foloweth the proclamation. 57 T h e most interesting part of the above stage-direction is that it permits the Vice to improvise his remarks. This would seem to indicate that the turning of statements to a contrary sense was a familiar feature of the Vice's part, which could therefore be trusted to the clown who played the role. There are, in surviving interludes and moralities, numerous passages of repartee which are similar in kind to the one quoted from Marlowe. 5 8 T h e case for identification of Barabas as a Vice is, therefore, a strong one. Richard and Barabas are in essential respects, the same kind of character; but whereas Marlowe has merely taken over the old tradition, Shakespeare has deepened it and created a figure of real human significance. Whether we regard him as a tragic or a farcical figure, Barabas is no more than a caricature, a parody of a human being. Richard, however, despite his deliberately histrionic nature, is a living person, who captures our attention if not our sympathy. Already, in this character, the tradition of dissimulation has produced a great dramatic figure. Only in Hamlet, however, did Shakespeare fully realize the possibilities of character disguise. Only in him does the popular tradition fuse with the personal vision to produce a character who has been accepted for over a hundred years as the symbol of modern man.

Chapter

Three

H A M L E T AS A C H A R A C T E R OF CONTRADICTIONS HERE CAN BE little doubt that in the V i c e Dissimulation we have the antic character w h o m H a m l e t means to imitate in his comic maski n g ; for all the salient features of the type which we have just analyzed are to be found in H a m l e t . M o r e than Richard 111, more than any other character in the mature Elizabethan drama, H a m l e t is the Vice Dissimulation, the conscious dissembler, the sardonic masker. In h i m all the dramatic and psychological possibilities of the V i c e tradition are fully

realized:

the development of the figure of Dissimulation comes to a climax in the character of H a m l e t . T h i s is not to say, of course, that H a m l e t is merely a new embodiment of the masked buffoon of the popular d r a m a ; he is obviously much more than another Ambidexter or Haphazard or Deceit. Just as Richard III is not a repetition of the V i c e type but a development of it, so H a m l e t represents a great increase in subtlety and profundity over Richard himself. Compared with the Vices of the morality plays and interludes or with such a character as Barabas, Richard is a brilliant and living creation: but seen in relation to Hamlet, he appears wooden and obvious. H i s changes of mood, his quick disguises, which so impress us when we study them in the light of earlier dramatic figures, seem almost superficial

when placed against Hamlet's dazzling metamorphoses. In

one

scene alone, H a m l e t can display more facets than R i c h a r d shows in a whole play. T h e second scene of Act II strikingly illustrates this point. In no other scene of the play does Shakespeare so thoroughly and brilliantly develop Hamlet's antic disposition; in no other is H a m l e t more completely in the V i c e tradition. T h e better to point up his sudden shifts of mood, his quick and agile wit, H a m l e t is here provided with a group of admirable foils in Polonius and Rosencrantz and Guildenstern. T h e first is the more obviously dull-witted; and Hamlet runs h i m breathless within a few

34

THE

ANTIC

HAMLET

lines. W h i l e Polonius is still pondering on one r e m a r k , H a m l e t is off in another direction. T h e speed and dexterity with which H a m l e t veers f r o m one subject, f r o m one attitude to another, hopelessly confuse the soon outdistanced Polonius. A n d the jest is made more enjoyable by the fact that Polonius mistakes the barbed insults and sardonic mockery of H a m l e t for signs of insanity: Still harping on m y daughter: yet he k n e w me not at first; he said I was a

fishmonger:

he is far gone, far g o n e : a n d truly in m y youth I

suffered m u c h extremity for love; very near this. 1 N o w o n d e r that H a m l e t exclaims w h e n Polonius has left h i m : T h e s e tedious old fools!

2

W i t h the entrance of Rosencrantz and G u i l d e n s t e r n , H a m l e t adopts a somewhat different mask. H i s intent is first to sound them out, and then, w h e n he has guessed their purpose, to confuse them. T h e r e f o r e , he begins on a note of good-natured raillery, which q u i c k l y changes to sharp distrust and probing suspicion. T h e n comes the f a m o u s prose speech on the nature of m a n , which begins in melancholy, rises to a splendid exaltation, and ends on a jest. Finally, after R o s e n c r a n t z has turned the conversation on to the subject of the players' arrival, H a m l e t his m o c k i n g

delivers

warning:

Y o u are w e l c o m e ; but my uncle-father and aunt-mother are deceived . . . I a m but m a d north-northwest: w h e n the w i n d is southerly know a hawk from a handsaw.

I

3

Only the major changes which Hamlet's personality undergoes d u r i n g the course of this scene can be described; the more subtle transformations can only be acted. N o character in literature is more Protean, more chameleon-like than H a m l e t : it is impossible for h i m to maintain the same mood f o r more than a f e w minutes. T h i s is true, not only f o r the second scene of Act II, but for every sccne in w h i c h H a m l e t

appears.

I n the churchyard scene, f o r example, toward the very end of the play, H a m l e t again rings the changes on his o w n character, and is by turns quietly reflective, m o c k i n g , and wildly

impassioned:

A n d thus a while the fit will w o r k on h i m ; A n o n , as patient as the female dove,

THE

CHARACTER

OF C O N T R A D I C T I O N S

35

W h e n that her golden couplets are disclos'd, His silence will sit drooping. 4 Clearly, then, Hamlet's antic disposition is developed with far more subtlety and variety than those of Richard and the morality Vices. But there is a much more fundamental difference between Hamlet

and

Richard than mere effectiveness of dramatic treatment. Richard is always the conscious actor w h o plays for definite stakes; though he enjoys the game of disguising, he engages in it for a purpose. All his actions are meant to further his ambition, to disarm and destroy his opponents, to gain and hold the kingdom. Moreover, the distinction between the real Richard and the feigned Richard is always evident: at bottom he is the ruthless opportunist, and we know exactly when he puts on and when he discards each of his masks. T h e same holds true for the earlier Vices. They are almost always representations of evil or mischief

who disguise themselves in order

to trick man and lead him into difficulties; their wit and buffoonery serve a definite end. A s w e have seen, it was customary for the Vice to announce to the audience the nature of the disguise he was about to assume; and in some cases an actual physical transformation was effected. N o matter how many different faces he might present to them, the Vice never permitted the spectators to doubt either his purpose or his real identity. Of Hamlet's purpose, however, w e cannot be sure. If, as we assumed at the beginning of this study, he puts on his antic disposition in order to sound out and deceive Claudius, why does he maintain it after his objects have been achieved ? Surely, once the mouse-trap has been sprung, neither Hamlet nor Claudius can doubt each other's intentions. Yet the game of disguises continues to the very end of the play and is halted only by the strict arrest of "that fell sergeant, death." Hundreds of commentators have testified to the fact that no logical motivation can be discovered for much of Hamlet's behavior; his actions seem to be based, not on any ulterior motives, but on an inner necessity. Each of his masks is different, yet each is Hamlet. Shakespeare has not merely taken over the Vice tradition; he has fundamentally transformed it. It is futile, of course, in the absence of first-hand

evidence, to speculate on any writer's method of composi-

tion, or to attempt to retrace the stages in the development of a finished

36

THE ANTIC

HAMLET

character. But one is tempted to assert that Shakespeare first conceived Hamlet as a revenge hero who assumes an antic character in order to counter the Machiavellianism of Claudius; and that in the process of working out the play, the more profound implications of the antic type seized hold of Shakespeare's imagination and changed his attitude toward the character of Hamlet. 5 Whatever may have been the creative history of the play, however, one thing is obvious: the tradition of dissimulation is not something which is extraneous to Hamlet; it lies at the heart of Shakespeare's finished conception. Richard III is a mingling of melodrama and high comedy because, in his adoption of character disguises, Richard is playing a game which he can give up whenever he pleases. Hamlet, on the other hand, is great tragedy precisely because ambiguity of character is, for its central figure, not an aid to action but an inhibition of action: Hamlet is torn apart by his own contradictions. He is not merely volatile, different things at different times; he is opposite things at the same time. The internal tension, the feeling of unbearable strain and excitement which is produced by this conflict within Hamlet, is what gives the play its individual and deeply moving quality. That way madness lies, but Hamlet is not mad: the taut string has not yet snapped, it has not yet become slack and inert. The relationship between Hamlet and the Vice Dissimulation is therefore a complex one; the differences between the two figures as well as the similarities must be perceived if we are to understand the greatness of Shakespeare's achievement. Particularly must we realize the connection between the language of the Vice and that of Hamlet, whose dualism is apparent, above all, in the tone of his speech. Very few of Shakespeare's plays are more crowded with incident and external action than the play of Hamlet; yet none depends more, for its interest and significance, upon the drama of words. Hamlet reveals himself to us, not so much in what he does or leaves undone, as in what he says. He speaks a distinctive language which is peculiar to him, so that one cannot describe him without quoting his remarks. The conflict, the inner tension of which we have spoken, can be discussed, therefore, only in terms of Hamlet's language of wit. Like the formal Vice Iniquity, Hamlet moralizes two meanings in one word: he is a past master in the use of the pun, the double entendre, the two-edged phrase, which were the Vice's stock-in-trade. Whereas the Vice used them simply as comic devices, they are for Hamlet the intimate ex-

T H E C H A R A C T E R OF C O N T R A D I C T I O N S

37

pressions of his mind, poised in a perilous equilibrium. Hamlet's speech, like his character, has almost always a double quality: both serious and jesting, sincere and playful, savage and suave. Long ago, Dr. Johnson, in a famous passage of his essay on Cowley, admirably described the characteristic wit of Hamlet: . . . Wit, abstracted from its effects upon the hearer, may be more rigorously and philosophically considered as a kind of discordia concors; a combination of dissimilar images, or discovery of occult resemblances in things apparently unlike. Of wit, thus defined, [the metaphysical poets] have more than enough. The most heterogeneous ideas are yoked by violence together; nature and art are ransacked for illustrations, comparisons and allusions; their learning instructs, and their subtlety surprises . . . 8 Though written without reference to Shakespeare, Johnson's words are brilliantly applicable to Hamlet. For his speech, like the work of the metaphysical poets, is a discordia concors, a combination of discords that forms an individual harmony of its own; with its heterogeneous ideas yoked by violence together, it is the perfect expression of a character that cannot integrate itself. Just as Hamlet, the character of contradictions, represents an infinite advance in psychological understanding over the Vice Dissimulation, the character of disguises, so Hamlet's language represents a profound deepening of the merely fantastic and quibbling speech of the Vice. This is manifest from the very beginning of the play; for the first three lines that Hamlet speaks are built upon puns that are much more than displays of intellectual sleight-of-hand. To the king's salutation ("But now, my cousin Hamlet, and my son—"), he mutters, " A little more than kin, and less than kind." T o the king's question ("How is it that the clouds still hang on you?"), he replies, "Not so, my lord; I am too much i* the sun." And to his mother's remark ("Thou know'st 'tis common; all that live must die, Passing through nature to eternity."), he quietly answers, "Ay, madam, it is common." 7 In each of these lines, the polite and deprecating tone contains the brutal comment, the reference to his uncle's usurpation and his mother's frailty; the dexterity of the jest points up the violent anger and hatred that lie beneath it. What is true of these lines is true, to a greater or lesser extent, of most of Hamlet's public utterances during the course of the play. The scale of his

38

THE ANTIC

HAMLET

wit is almost infinitely varied; and in many of his remarks to such people as Polonius, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern and Osric, for whom he has only contempt, his wit loses much of its metaphysical quality: it plays more on the surface, it is less violent, less tense, more urbane and controlled. T h e vivacity of his language conveys his distaste for the stupidity of his hearers. H e is sure of himself and of his attitude toward those he is addressing; as a result his wit is brilliant and gaily malicious: the episode of the recorder (III, ii, 367-396) is pure comedy, as is the cloud conversation between Hamlet and Polonius (III, ii, 401-409) which is later duplicated by the dialogue between Hamlet and Osric ( V , ii, 82-90). There is no conflict in Hamlet's feelings toward the hangers-on of the court. When he has unknowingly killed Polonius, Hamlet speaks an ironically casual valedictory: T h o u wretched, rash, intruding fool, farewell! I took thee for thy better; take thy fortune; T h o u find'st to be too busy is some danger. 8 Similarly, when Horatio seems to express concern over the fate of Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, Hamlet impatiently rejects any thought of remorse: W h y , man, they did make love to this employment; T h e y are not near my conscience; their defeat Does by their own insinuation grow. 9 E v e n in his conversations with Polonius and Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, however, Hamlet often reveals that profound incongruity which is the essence of metaphysical wit. " F o r you yourself, sir," says the young Hamlet to the old Polonius, "should be old as I am, if, like a crab, you could go backward."

10

A n d when Rosencrantz says, " M y lord, you once did

love me," Hamlet replies, "So I do still, by these pickers and stealers."

11

It is hardly necessary to multiply examples of Hamlet's wit; for the whole play abounds in them, and the perceptive reader can discover innumerable instances himself. T h e sometimes civilized and urbane wit of Hamlet's jousts with Polonius and with Rosencrantz and Guildenstern—even the more barbed and sardonic wit of his initial scene with the king and queen —presents no problem for the critic. It is obviously sane and controlled, a brilliantly sophisticated and deliberately adopted mode of spcech. Such wit, however, is not the most characteristic and moving expression of

THE CHARACTER

OF C O N T R A D I C T I O N S

39

Hamlet's personality. In his moments of greatest intensity, he expresses himself either in a wild and uncontrolled outburst of "whirling words" or in a direct and savage brutality of speech: these are his most individual and striking moods, and have most puzzled the critics. Yet both are distinctly in the Vice tradition and are in complete accord with the rest of Hamlet's behavior and language. Long before Shakespeare, the writers of the popular drama had developed the technique of using fantastic and "nonsensical" speech to represent intense excitement. It was part of the Vice's antic disposition to use an acrobatic speech in which the words came tumbling out one after the other in seemingly confused order. Almost always, though, the fantastic language had real meaning and definite continuity of thought. Perhaps the best example of this kind of speech is the passage in Apius and Virginia in which Haphazard the Vice prophetically reports the hanging of Apius, Claudius, and himself: Haphazard. I came from Caleco even the same houre, And H a p was hyred to hackney in hempstrid, In hazard he was of riding on beamestrid, Then crow crop on tree top hoist up the sayle, Then groned their neckes, by the weight of their tayle, Then dyd Carnifex, put these three together, Payd them their pasporte for clustring thither. Apius. Why how now, Haphazard, of what doest thou spake? Me thinks in mad sort, thy talke thou doest breake . . , 1 2 We are reminded of Hamlet's outburst after his encounter with the Ghost: . . . Without more circumstance at all, I hold it fit that we shake hands and part; You, as your business and desire shall point you,— For every man hath business and desire, Such as it is,—and, for mine own poor part, Look you, I'll go pray. And Horatio's comment echoes Apius': These are but wild and whirling words, my lord. 13

40

THE ANTIC

HAMLET

Even more closely in the Vice tradition of fantastic and irrelevant speech are the snatches of verse with which Hamlet gives vent to his excitement at the end of the play-scene. Three of these passages follow in rapid succession, one seemingly more meaningless than the other. Immediately after the hurried exit of the king, Hamlet exclaims: Why, let the stricken deer go weep, The hart ungalled play; For some must watch, while some must sleep: So runs the world away. 14 Then, a little later: For thou dost know, O Damon dear, This realm dismantled was Of Jove himself; and now reigns here A very, very-pajock. 15 And finally: For if the king like not the comedy, Why then, belike he likes it not, perdy. 16 These three outbursts, as well as the "whirling words" quoted before, are not, like many mad speeches in Elizabethan plays, mere disordered ravings, though they have often been misinterpreted as such. Rather, like Haphazard's remarks, they are shrewd and meaningful; and the very incongruity of tone shocks the reader into awareness of their significance. The sudden descent from Jove to a "pajock" communicates, better than anything else could, Hamlet's contempt and hatred for the king; and the careless flippancy of the last-quoted couplet intensifies our awareness that the conflict between Hamlet and Claudius has at last been joined. It is no accident that Hamlet uses the word "comedy," a term which seems completely inappropriate to the story of the murder of Gonzago. By that word Hamlet creates a complex series of references; to the dissimulation within the play of The Mouse-Trap, to the purpose for which the play was acted, to the whole duel of wits between himself and Claudius. The "whirling words" of Hamlet are, then, like his more controlled utterances, part of the language of wit which is his natural speech. They are more high-pitched, more intense, more subtle than most of his other remarks, but essentially they are of the same kind. In fact, it would be

THE

CHARACTER

OF C O N T R A D I C T I O N S

41

difficult to fix a dividing line between wit and fantasy in Hamlet's speech; the two are often intermingled, as in the following dialogue: ROS. M y lord, you must tell us where the body is, and go with us to the king. HAM. T h e body is with the king, but the k i n g is not with the body. T h e king is a thing— GUIL. A thing, my lord! HAM. Of nothing: bring me to him. Hide fox, and all after. 1 7 T h e same combination of surface incoherence with essential congruity and profundity is also to be found in many other passages, such as this conversation between Hamlet and Ophelia: HAM. . . . What should a man do but be merry? for, look you, how cheerfully my mother looks, and my father died within's two hours. OPH. N a y , 'tis twice two months, my lord. HAM. So long? N a y , then, let the devil wear black, for I'll have a suit of sables. O heavens! die two months ago, and not forgotten yet? T h e n there's hope a great man's memory may outlive his life half a year; but, by'r lady, he must build churches then, or else shall he suffer not thinking on, with the hobby-horse, whose epitaph is, 'For, O! for, O! the hobbyhorse is f o r g o t . ' 1 8 This is Hamlet's wit at its most metaphysical and expresssive level. T h e purposeful confusion of times and categories in this speech movingly conveys Hamlet's own intense conflict of emotions. T h e violent yoking together of the ideas of kingly father and hobby-horse, the flat banality and childishness of the hobby-horse's epitaph, magnificently reveal Hamlet's indescribable bitterness. T h e fantastic Vice has become the metaphysical poet. T h e traditional link between Hamlet and the Vice, as well as the tremendous qualitative difference between the two, can best be seen if we examine that aspect of Hamlet's character and language which has most perturbed the critics: his callous brutality, his disturbing savagery. It is something which no study of Hamlet can afford to neglect or underestimate, for it is not confined to a f e w occasional phrases, but shows itself in scene after scene. T h e element of savagery is one of the major discords that go to make up the strange harmony of Hamlet's character. Nowhere is this aspect of Hamlet more apparent than in his scenes with

42

THE

ANTIC

HAMLET

Ophelia and Gertrude. In the famous nunnery scene, for example, the note of brutal irony sounds f r o m beginning to end. F r o m Hamlet's first question, " H a , ha! A r e you honest?" to his frenzied exit, his speech is one whiplash after another. A n d there are few passages, even in this play, which surpass in concentrated savagery the closing paragraphs which Hamlet speaks in this scene: If thou dost marry, I'll give thee this plague for thy dowry: be thou chaste as ice, as pure as snow, thou shalt not escape calumny. 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. T o a nunnery, go; and quickly too. Farewell . . . I have heard of your paintings too, well enough; G o d hath given you one face, and you make yourselves another: you jig, you amble, and you lisp, and nickname God's creatures, and make your wantonness your ignorance. G o to, I'll no more on't; it hath made me mad. I say, we will have no more marriages; those that are married already, all but one, shall live; the rest shall keep as they are. T o a nunnery, go. 1 9 This is so stunning in its brutality, so difficult to fit into the accepted interpretations of Hamlet's character, that various attempts have been made to explain it away and to argue that its callous inhumanity does not reflect Hamlet's "true" character. T h e romantic critics of the early nineteenth century seem to have been the first to put forward the theory that Hamlet behaves brutally to Ophelia in this scene because he realizes that she is being used as a decoy to trap him into damaging admissions;

20

and in

our own time this theory has been ingeniously presented by Professor Wilson, 2 1 w h o has correctly pointed out that Hamlet's savage attitude toward Ophelia is evident long before the nunnery scene. It is difficult to mistake the significance of the following passage of dialogue between Hamlet and Polonius in Act II, sc. ii: HAM. F o r if the sun breed maggots in a dead dog, being a god kissing carrion,—Have you a daughter ? POL. I have, my lord. HAM. Let her not walk i' the sun: conception is a blessing; but not as your daughter may conceive. Friend, look t o ' t . 2 2 T h e brutality of the implied comparison between Hamlet's love for Ophelia and the sun breeding maggots in a dead dog, "being a god kissing

THE

CHARACTER

OF C O N T R A D I C T I O N S

43

carrion," certainly equals anything in the nunnery scene; but it cannot be explained away by any ingenious theories. N o t only is there no justification in the text of the play for Professor Wilson's assumption that Hamlet has overheard Polonius' plan to loose Ophelia to him and thereby test his madness; but to find it necessary to make such an assumption is to reveal a fundamental misunderstanding of Hamlet's character. A savage contempt and hatred is an essential part of Hamlet's attitude toward Ophelia; it is neither accidental nor superficial, but reveals itself again and again. It is evident, not only in the nunnery scene and in the conversation with Polonius, but also in the play scene, where it shows itself in the deliberately coarse and obscene tone of Hamlet's remarks to Ophelia. " Y o u are keen, my lord, you are keen," says Ophelia. A n d Hamlet replies, "It would cost you a groaning to take of! my edge." Such a pun merits Ophelia's comment: "Still better and worse."

23

Ophelia, however, is not the only one against w h o m Hamlet's savagery is directed. Surely, no critic would dare question Hamlet's sincerity or intensity of emotion in the closet scene with his mother; yet his language here is, if possible, even more brutal than that which he uses toward Ophelia. One could compile a whole anthology of cruel and sadistic phrases from this scene: . . . W h a t devil w a s ' t That thus hath cozen'd you at hoodman-blind ? Eyes without feeling, feeling without sight, Ears without hands or eyes, smelling sans all, Or but a sickly part of one true sense Could not so mope . . . N a y , but to live In the rank sweat of an enseamed bed, Stew'd in corruption, honeying and making love Over the nasty sty . . . . . . Mother, for love of grace, L a y not that flattering unction to your soul, That not your trespass but my madness speaks; It will but skin and film the ulcerous place, Whiles rank corruption, mining all within, Infects unseen . . .

44

THE ANTIC

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Not this, by no means, that I bid you do: Let the bloat king tempt you again to bed; Pinch wanton on your cheek; call you his mouse; And let him, for a pair of reechy kisses, Or paddling in your neck with his damn'd fingers, Make you to ravel all this matter out . . . 24 The language of physical revulsion can hardly be carried further than it is in the above passages. It is important to observe, however, that the most intense effects are gained, in this scene as throughout the play, not by direct invective but by Hamlet's characteristic metaphysical wit, his coupling of opposites in such a phrase as "honeying and making love Over the nasty sty." Ophelia and Gertrude are not the only characters in the play toward whom Hamlet is wounding and insulting; nor is the imagery of sexual disgust, prominent as it is in the nunnery scene and the closet scene, the only medium through which his hostility to others is communicated. There is more to Hamlet's savagery than a malcontent railing against women: for almost every other character feels the edge of his hatred. A striking illustration of this fact is Hamlet's first interview with the Ghost. On the surface, Hamlet professes only veneration and pity for his father's spirit, and devotion to the task of revenge. As he listens to the Ghost's story, he cannot restrain his expressions of horror and sympathy. Yet, later in the scene, he can speak of the Ghost in terms of callous brutality: Ah, ha, boy! sayst thou so? art thou there, true-penny? Come on,—you hear this fellow in the cellarage . . . Well said, old mole! canst work i' the earth so fast? A worthy pioner! 2 5 The Hamlet of these lines is hardly the noble and gracious philosopher pictured by the romantic critics. Yet there is nothing exceptional about Hamlet's references to the Ghost; he uses the same tone of inhumane mockery many times throughout the play. His meditation on the skull of Yorick, once his friend and companion, culminates in the most unfeeling pun in literature: . . . Here hung those lips that I have kissed I know not how oft. Where be your gibes now? your gambols? your songs? your flashes of merriment,

THE CHARACTER

OF C O N T R A D I C T I O N S

45

that were wont to set the table on a roar ? Not one now, to mock your own grinning? quite chapfallen? 2 6 Similarly, when the King asks, " N o w , Hamlet, where's Polonius?" Hamlet replies: At supper . . . Not where he eats, but where he is eaten: a certain convocation of politic worms are e'en at him. And he adds later: But, indeed, if you find him not within this month, you shall nose him as you go up the stairs into the lobby. 27 The language of savage brutality, however it may conflict with the conventional notions of Hamlet's character, is what we should expect to find if Hamlet is really in the Vice tradition. Such language was an essential part of the Vice's equipment, just as much so as his motley costume and fantastic actions. It was the Vice's function, as the tempter of mankind, to scoff at virtue and good deeds in a tone of coarse raillery. More than that, it was part of his character as Dissimulation to hate man while pretending to befriend him. Like Ambidexter in Cambyses, like Dissimulacyon and Sedicyon in King ]ohan, he stirs up discord almost for the joy of the game itself, and despises man for being so easily fooled. As a result, the speech of the Vice is full of scornful and brutal epithets, directed against man and his ideas of morality, against women and marriage, against all the other participants in the drama. The wit of the Vice, like Hamlet's, is rarely good-natured; its characteristic tone is one of bitter mockery. 28 Hamlet's savagery of language, then, is part of his traditional inheritance; and here again, Shakespeare has tremendously enriched what he has taken over. The scoffing brutality of Hamlet's speech is the most profound expression of his inner conflict; it is his revenge upon others for his own feeling of weakness, insecurity and fear. In his behavior toward Ophelia, Gertrude, and the Ghost, Hamlet clearly reveals the contradictions of his character, the struggle within him between love and hatred. Thus, Hamlet's brutality does not destroy our intense sympathy for him, but rather deepens it; for his savagery is the sign of the terrible tension that destroys him. All this would not be true if Hamlet did not soliloquize, if he did not occasionally turn aside from others and speak only to himself. It is in

46

THE ANTIC

HAMLET

such moments, when he has temporarily abandoned the sardonic, twisted and inhumane wit which is his public speech, that we feel its true significance; we first understand the purpose of the mask when it has been laid aside. In the private speech of the soliloquies, we see the essential Hamlet: self-tortured, anxious, cut off from the world around him ("The time is out of joint; O cursed spite, That ever I was born to set it right!"). Hamlet's savagery to others would repel us if he were not also savage to himself; as it is, in jeering at others, he shows his hatred of himself. "What should such fellows as I do crawling between heaven and earth?" he asks, and does not stay for an answer. And the tragedy is made even more poignant by the continual reminder that Hamlet is no ordinary man; that he is a person of brilliant mind and deeply humane instincts. He is the quondam "expectancy and rose of the fair state," gifted with a "noble and most sovereign reason." Always, as he plays out his tragedy, he is accompanied by the shadow of his potential self. He is the Vice Dissimulation, but he is also the hero Mankind. II To argue that the Vice tradition greatly influenced Shakespeare's conception of Hamlet is not, of course, to assume that it was the only one which entered into the creation of the character. Many traditions went into the making of Hamlet; and a complete interpretation, which this study does not pretend to be, would have to take all of them into account. So rich and complex a figure as Hamlet may be discussed in many ways; he is proof against critics as against actors, for almost anything that can be said about him is true. In recent years, for example, it has become fashionable to regard Hamlet as an embodiment of Elizabethan ideas of melancholy. The sixteenthcentury "science" of psychology has been rediscovered; and in the work of such a writer as Dr. Timothy Bright, scholars seem to have found the very pattern of Hamlet's behavior. As a result, Miss Lily B. Campbell can say: If my analysis is correct, then, Hamlet becomes a study in the passion of grief. In Hamlet himself it is passion which is not moderated by reason, a passion which will not yield to the consolations of philosophy. And being intemperate and excessive grief, Hamlet's grief is, therefore, the

THE CHARACTER

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47

grief that makes memory fade, that makes reason fail in directing the will, that makes him guilty of sloth.29 It is quite possible that Shakespeare may have been influenced by Bright, though many of the technical terms of Bright's Treatise are nowhere present in Hamlet. There is, however, a fundamental objection to Miss Campbell's treatment of Hamlet. T o call it a "study in the passion of grief" is to neglect the fact that Hamlet is a drama and not a psychological dissertation; it is a tragedy and not a soliloquy. All other things being equal, an interpretation of Hamlet in dramatic terms is more satisfactory than any other kind of approach. It is for this reason that we have found it useful to study Hamlet in the light of the Vice tradition. There is, moreover, another great advantage to be gained in treating Hamlet as a figure of dissimulation; we are enabled thereby to do full justice to those aspects of his character which have been generally ignored or hurriedly dismissed by critics. We no longer find it necessary to reason away supposedly contradictory elements for the sake of establishing a false consistency. A knowledge of the Vice tradition prepares us to accept all the features of Hamlet's personality, the unpleasant as well as the pleasant, the terrible as well as the pitiful; above all, it prevents us from building up a picture of Hamlet based upon a few selected traits which gratify our own notions of what a tragic hero should be. This has always been the great difficulty of Hamlet criticism: that writers have been tempted to squeeze him into a preconceived mold, to limit his character in accordance with their own prejudices. Particularly was this true of the romantic critics, whose works have so greatly influenced modern Shakespearean scholarship. In their enthusiasm at finding what they thought to be their own image reflected in the character of Hamlet, they treated him as an ideal figure whose outward blemishes were only the signs of an inner perfection. Hamlet became with them a kind of Elizabethan Coleridge, who suffered and was destroyed because he was too good for the world. He was transformed into a weary and enervated intellectual, a minor poet who somehow speaks major poetry. No longer was he the complex hero-villain and tragic comedian created by Shakespeare. What we have attempted in this essay has been an understanding of the real nature of Shakespeare's achievement. Only when we know the

48

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HAMLET

form which Shakespeare inherited can we fully appreciate the content with which he enriched it. Nothing is further from the intent of this work than a mechanical identification of the Vice and Hamlet; rather, we have shown how Shakespeare deepened and changed the Vice tradition, how, in effect, by pouring a new content into the old form he changed the form itself and created a figure of a different kind. It is not sufficient, however, for the proper realization of Shakespeare's genius, to set Hamlet against the background of his dramatic forerunners; we must also see him in relationship to his dramatic successors, to later embodiments of the Vice type. For Hamlet, though he sums up and climaxes a long development, does not end it. Jacobean tragedy is full of characters who have been loosely classified as Machiavellian villains but who definitely belong in the Hamlet tradition. A study of several such figures will not only demonstrate the truth of this statement, but will cast a good deal of light on Hamlet himself. There is,-for example, no figure in the entire range of the English drama who more closely resembles Hamlet than Vindice of Tourneur's Revenger's Tragedy. In fact, so unmistakable is the likeness that it is difficult to escape the conclusion that one is patterned upon the other, that, as Professor Nicoll says, "Vindice is the lineal descendant of Hamlet." 3 0 Incident after incident in the Revenger's Tragedy reminds us of the earlier play. There is a scene in which Vindice passionately berates his mother for her supposed looseness and sensuality that is obviously based upon the closet scene in Hamlet; and Vindice's macabre meditations on his mistress' skull are distinctly reminiscent of Hamlet's graveyard reflections. But the greatest similarity between the two characters is in their speech. Like Hamlet's, Vindice's language has an intense savagery, a wild wit, a continual and violent yoking together of opposite ideas. All these qualities are present, for example, in Vindice's famous address to his mistress' skull: . . . Here's an eye Able to tempt a greatman—to serve God, A prety hanging lip, that has forgot now to dissemble; Me thinkes this mouth should make a swearer tremble, A drunkard claspe his teeth, and not undo e'm, To suffer wet damnation to run through e'm, Here's a cheeke keepes her colour; let the winde go whistle,

T H E C H A R A C T E R OF C O N T R A D I C T I O N S

49

Spout Raine, we feare thee not, be hot or cold Alls one with us . . . Do's the Silke-worme expend her yellow labours For thee ? for thee dos she undoe herselfe ? Are Lord-ships sold to maintaine Lady-ships For the poore benefit of a bewitching minute ? Why dos yon fellow falsify hie-waies A n d put his life betweene the Judges lippes, T o refine such a thing, keepes horse and men T o beate their valours for her? Surely we're all mad people, and they Whome we thinke are, are not; we mistake those Tis we are mad in scence, they but in clothes. 31 In their elliptical brilliance, their striking discords, and their furious drive, these lines can stand comparison with almost any of Hamlet's speeches. At times, also, Tourneur, like Shakespeare, can transmute the tradition of Dissimulation into a profound symbol of life. The Revenger's Tragedy is full of disguisings, of masked revels which turn into scenes of murder and horror. A hundred changes are rung upon the theme of disguise; the skull of a once-beautiful girl is dressed up to seem alive and attractive, and becomes an instrument of destruction when the Duke kisses its poisoned lips (III, 5). Even the imagery of the play draws continually upon the concept of disguise. Thus, Vindice, after having described the secret midnight revelry of the court, continues: ... In the morning When they are up and drest, and their maske on, Who can perceive this? save that eternall eye That see's through flesh and all . . . 3 2 Yet, despite these points of resemblance, despite an identity of tradition, Hamlet and Vindice differ widely in many respects. Where the first is torn continually between opposite emotions, the other is merely cynical and disillusioned; where the first is a living and palpable figure, the other is at best a vehicle for splendid poetry. Vindice is a Hamlet without humanity; he has all Hamlet's hatred of the world and self-disgust without Hamlet's faith in moral values and without his capacity for love. The gap between the two characters is that which separates the "wit" of

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Hamlet's last words, " T h e rest is silence," from the wit of Vindice's valedictory: This murder might have slept in tonglesse brasse, But for our selues, and the world dyed an Asse. N o w I remember too, here was Piato Brought forth a knavish sentence once—no doubt (said he) but time Will make the murderer bring forth himselfe. T i s well he died, he was a witch. A n d now my Lord, since we are in for ever: This worke was ours which else might have beene slipt, A n d if we list, we could have Nobles dipt, A n d go for lesse then beggers, but w e hate T o bleed so cowardly; we have ynough. :!;1 These lines have much that is brilliant and subtle; but placed against the desperate mockery of Hamlet, they seem mannered and affected. T h o u g h Tourneur almost certainly based Vindice upon Hamlet, much of the complexity of Shakespeare's character has escaped him; in imitating Hamlet, Tourneur could retain only what he himself found congenial: the sardonic, savage, "villainous" aspects of the character. A s a result, Vindice is much more nearly the Machiavellian type than Hamlet is, and much closer to the Vice tradition because much less profoundly developed. W h e n Vindice boastfully says of the Duke's murder that, " T w a s some-what witty carried tho we say it,"

34

it is not Hamlet we are re-

minded of but Richard III. Vindice is not the only figure in the Jacobean drama who reveals the influence of the Vice tradition as it had been transmitted through the character of Hamlet. Flamineo, in Webster's White

Devil,

is another

obvious example. Meyer finds "little or no direct Machiavellism in this play," since, he says, "it contains no political intrigue, but is based on that action in the prince Brachiano which Machiavelli expressly f o r b i d s . " 3 3 If we make the presence of political intrigue our criterion of Machiavellianism, then of course Meyer is right. But if the Machiavellian character is a development of the Vice Dissimulation, then f e w figures in the Jacobean drama more definitely belong in that category than Flamineo. In fact, Webster himself does not share Meyer's definition of the Machiavellian character, for he makes Flamineo say:

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51

Those are found waightie strokes which come from th' hand, But those are killing strokes which come from th' head. O the rare trickes of a Machivellian! Hee doth not come like a grosse plodding slave And buffet you to death: No, my quaint knave— Hee tickles you to death; makes you die laughing; As if you had swallow'd downe a pound of saffron. 30 This is an admirable definition of the Vice Dissimulation; and in another context, Flamineo describes his own behavior as character disguising: It may appeare to some ridiculous Thus to talke knave and madman; and sometimes Come in with a dried sentence, stuff with sage. But this allowes my varying of shapes, Knaves do grow great by being great mens apes,37 Like Hamlet and Vindice, Flamineo is a brilliant young intellectual, witty and adroit; and like them he jests even at the very end. The cynicism and braggart wit of his dying words are in the spirit of Vindice rather than of Hamlet: O what blade ist? A Toledo, or an English Fox? I ever thought a Cutler should distinguish T h e cause of my death, rather then a Doctor. 38 When we place Hamlet against such figures as Flamineo and Vindice, we are able to see very clearly the originality of Shakespeare's dramatic art, and to assess his real greatness. For Shakespeare brought to his handling of the Vice tradition something which neither Tourneur nor Webster possessed: a breadth of vision, an essential faith in humanity. He shares, it is true, the sickness of his age, the tortured uncertainty and bitterness that developed as the Elizabethan world grew old and its social fabric began to crack. It is no wonder that Shakespeare reminds us, in Hamlet, not only of other dramatists who worked in the same tradition, but of the metaphysical poets as well; for they are all part of the same age. 39 But Hamlet, however much he may resemble other figures, stands out above them all. T o those who prefer the easy cynicism of a Vindice to the

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complex mixture of hope and despair that is Hamlet, he will appear to be a failure, a dramatic character who is not completely realized. Popular opinion, however, which D r . Johnson regarded as the final judge of all critical disputes, has for a long time considered Hamlet the most successful of all literary characters; and no one who studies Hamlet in the light of the Vice tradition can fail to agree. W e know now that Shakespeare, in creating Hamlet, was not attempting to graft an involved intellectual attitude upon a simple hero of melodrama, as the Robertson school of critics assert. On the contrary, the complexity was there from the beginning in the tradition of disguise which had been developed in the popular drama over a period of many years. Shakespeare exhausted the potentialities of this tradition, raised it to a new level, and fashioned a character w h o is all the greater because he resists all simple explanations.

Chapter Four T H E TWO TRADITIONS IN THE WORK OF SHAKESPEARE HE CENTRAL THESIS of this essay—that such characters as Richard III and Hamlet grew out of the popular dramatic tradition—contradicts the generally accepted idea that the greatest influence upon the development of Elizabethan tragedy was the Senecan drama. Moreover, it seems to go counter to the dominant current in present-day Shakespearean scholarship, as represented by the works of such men as Chambers and Alexander, who emphasize the fact that Shakespeare was not an almost illiterate villager but the relatively well-educated native son of a prosperous and active provincial town. Thus, Professor Alexander, accepting the story that Shakespeare was at one time a country schoolmaster, declares: An Elizabethan schoolmaster would naturally find his early models in Latin authors; and this is where Shakespeare found his. 1 Developing this point of view in a later work, Professor Alexander states dogmatically: Shakespeare, in his first tragedy, Titus in his first comedy, The

Comedy

poem, Venus and Adonis,

Ovid. 2

Andronicus,

of Errors,

imitated Seneca;

Plautus; and in his first

If it is true that Shakespeare developed his dramatic art from Latin models, then the whole argument of this essay collapses. W e cannot consider our task accomplished until we have demonstrated the weaknesses of the theory of Senecan origins and understood why it should have been so universally held for so many years. And this is not easy: for the idea that Shakespeare belongs in a learned tradition has a good deal to recommend it besides its surface plausibility. It has behind it, as we have already indicated, the prestige of many influential scholars who have maintained that the greatness of Elizabethan tragedy derives from Seneca. Since the publication of CunlifTe's important work, 3 it has been the fashion to cry

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HAMLET

down the significance of the native, popular elements in the pre-Shakespearean drama and to hail the Senecan tragedy as the force which lifted the English theatrical tradition from its commonplace and uninspired level. The most thorough students of Senecanism in the European drama can assert: U p to 1559 tragedy hardly enters the story of English drama. For the people at large, delight in the rough humour of comic interludes left little demand for 'serious' drama beyond what could be provided by the sermonisings which were the ballast of the moralities and interludes; and for those whose superior learning required a more literaryseeming product, there were the English offshoots of the humanist tragicomoedia sacra for performances, generally in Latin, at the universities and, very probably, in English in town and country. 4 Only under the fertilizing influence of Seneca did the English tragedy finally come to flower: . . . In the plays of Peele (if he really be the author of Locrine, and if Locrine be of about 1586) and of K y d , a sufficiently suitable amalgam of Seneca and popular tradition was brought together to serve substantially as the basis on which English romantic tragedy should be raised. 5 T h e disciples of the theory that Elizabethan tragedy is essentially English Seneca are also, for the most part, firm adherents of the idea that Shakespeare learned his art from K y d , Peele, and Marlowe. Therefore, the whole story of Senecan influence comes to a climax in the work of Shakespeare. T h e theme of this sort of scholarship can be stated very briefly: without Seneca, no K y d ; without K y d , no Shakespeare. Perhaps the clearest statement of this attitude is given in a recent work by one of the most distinguished contemporary students of the Elizabethan period: . . . It was K y d who, so far as we know, acclimatized neo-Senecan drama on the boards of the public theatre, and who has thus a fuller claim than Sackville to be called 'the true (though imperfect) Father of our tragedy.' H e united the Senecan apparatus, including Ghost, Messenger, and Chorus to a realism and constructive power that were new to the English stage and ensured the triumph of The Spanish

Tragedy.

Hence sprang that long line of 'revenge' plays which reach their apotheosis in

Hamlet.8

TWO TRADITIONS

55

It will be seen that this point of view does not differ materially from that held by Professor Alexander. One assumes that Shakespeare got his Senecanism at second hand; the other, that he was able to go directly to the primary source of the tradition. Both believe in the learned origins of Shakespeare's drama, in its ultimate derivation from the rhetoric of Seneca. Both would agree that "there is much more of [Seneca] than is generally recognized in Shakespeare's art." 7 Undeniably, there is a large body of evidence to support the concept of a Senecan Shakespeare. There are the parallels between the plays of Seneca and those of Elizabethan writers, which have been remarked by Cunliffe and others. There are the stock devices in the Elizabethan drama, such as the use of ghost and chorus, which seem to have been borrowed from the Latin author. There is Nashe's famous reference to "English Seneca" in connection

with his tantalizingly

vague gibe at a pre-

Shakespearean Hamlet." Above all, there is the fact that Titus

Andronicus

has evidently borrowed its climactic scene from Thyestes, and much of its language from other Senecan plays. Recently, however, Dr. Howard Baker has challenged the whole theory of Senecan origins and its particular application to Titus Andronicus.

Dr.

Baker finds nothing of Seneca in that play; every passage in it which has been traced to a Senecan origin he would attribute to the influence either of Virgil or Ovid. The notorious banquet scene is not, according to Dr. Baker, a reminiscence of the grisly meal served up in Thyestes, rather based upon Ovid's story of Philomel.

9

but is

"Professor Cunliffe," says

Dr. Baker, "brings up Seneca where the text itself asserts the prior claims of other traditions;" our recognition of Ovid and Virgil as Shakespeare's sources would "definitely preclude all thought of Senecan influence."

10

Convincing as it may seem at first, Dr. Baker's attack upon the position held by Professor Cunliffe rests upon a fundamental misconception which, it must be said, is shared by most of those who maintain the doctrine of the Senecan origins of Elizabethan tragedy. W e tend, unfortunately, to regard Seneca as a writer apart from the rest of Latin literature, and to treat his influence upon the sixteenth century as distinct from all other classical influences. But the truth of the matter is that Seneca was himself influenced by Virgil, and particularly by Ovid; and that his work is part of the whole body of classical literature, and cannot easily be separated from it. This simple fact, though ignored by students of English literature,

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has been recognized by classical scholars and admirably stated by one of them: Seneca's general method of composition may be briefly stated as follows. For the foundation some famous Greek tragedy is selected; sometimes a second play on the same subject, either in Greek or Latin, is called upon for some of its characteristic features (contaminatio), the situations and personages are more or less altered in order to secure greater opportunity for rhetorical display; the new tragedy is then built up in a robust declamatory style and adorned with copious extracts from many sources, especially from the Latin poets. Among these Seneca makes comparatively little use of Virgil, but draws extensively upon Horace, especially in constructing the lyrical portions of his plays. Ovid seems to have exerted a greater influence upon Seneca than did any other author either Latin or Greek. The two chief reasons why Seneca gave this preference to Ovid are, in the first place, that the latter's works are exceedingly rich in mythological lore, which was just the sort of material the playwright had most need of; and secondly, that, however much they may have differed from each other as men, as writers the two are in certain fundamental characteristics closely akin. 11 The difference between the influence of Ovid and that of Seneca is, therefore, not of crucial importance. Though the subject matter and style of the two writers are far from identical, they are alike in their emphasis upon the ornamental, the picturesque, and the exaggerated in theme and poetic treatment. Even Virgil, as the sixteenth-century translations of the Aeneid demonstrate, was given Ovidian qualities by the Elizabethans. We cannot speak of one influence as precluding the other; on the contrary, where we find traces of Seneca we should expect also to find traces of Ovid. We must revise our terminology and speak, not of a Senecan influence on the Elizabethan drama, but more broadly of a learned influence. Dr. Baker, however, would deny that such a learned influence exists at all. Titus Andronicus, he believes, is, like all other supposedly Senecan plays of the Elizabethan period, fundamentally medieval in style and structure; and he sees a straight line of development from The Spanish Tragedy through Titus Andronicus to Hamlet.12 It becomes apparent, therefore, that Dr. Baker does not really differ in his picture of Shakespeare's growth as a dramatist, from such scholars as Boas, Alexander, and other defenders

TWO TRADITIONS

57

of the Senecan influence. The keystone of his arch is still Titus Andronicus: whether we call it medieval or learned is irrelevant. We are back where we started. We can escape from the vicious cycle we have just been tracing only if we realize that Titus Andronicus is not in the main line of Shakespeare's work and that no interpretation of his development as an artist can be based upon it. Scholars have, almost without exception, been reluctant to attribute Titus Andronicus to Shakespeare, despite the overwhelming evidence in favor of his authorship. They have been disturbed, not so much because it is a bad play, but mainly because it is bad in a way completely uncharacteristic of Shakespeare. He may have written this play; but he certainly never wrote another play like it. This is the important fact to establish. The most obviously un-Shakespearean feature of the play is its selfconscious parade of learning. This work might almost have been written by Master Holofernes himself. We hear his very accent in the lines of Demetrius which close the first scene of Act II: Sit fas aut nefas, till I find the stream T o cool this heat, a charm to calm these fits, Per Styga, per manes vehor} 3 None of the characters is exempt from this contagion of learning. If they do not all speak in Latin tags, yet each one of them is a storehouse of classical allusions. They can hardly speak ten lines without a reference to some figure of classical mythology or literature; and sometimes the display of erudition is thrust in by the heels on the slightest excuse. No sooner does Martius catch sight of the dead Bassianus than he is reminded, for no particular reason, of Pyramus: So pale did shine the moon on Pyramus When he by night lay bath'd in maiden blood. O brother! help me with thy fainting hand, If fear hath made thee faint, as me it hath. Out of this fell devouring receptacle, As hateful as Cocytus' misty mouth. 14 Particularly are the references to Ovid numerous, as Dr. Baker has emphasized. When Marcus comes upon the ravished Lavinia, he immediately

58

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ANTIC

HAMLET

recalls the story of Tereus and Philomel. 1 "' A volume of Ovid's

Metamor-

phoses is actually introduced into the play as a means of leading up to the disclosure of the names of Lavinia's attackers. 10 It is true that in Shakespeare's two poetic narratives, Venus and and The Rape of Lucrece,

Adonis

the influence of O v i d is omnipresent; but there

it is an influence which has been assimilated and absorbed into the very texture of the w o r k . In Shakespeare's plays, however, aside from Andronicus,

Titus

we find very little overt use of classical learning except for

comic and satirical purposes. 1 7 T h e learned tone is absent, above all, from 2 and j Henry VI and Richard III, which w e k n o w to be a m o n g the earliest of Shakespeare's plays. In fact, his freedom from pedantry and his independence of learned material were recognized by Shakespeare's contemporaries as the special hallmark of his w o r k . In a well-known passage of The Returne from Parnassus, K e m p e is made to say: F e w of the vniversity men pen plaies well, they smell too much of that writer Ovid, Proserpina

and that writer Metamorphosis,

and luppiter.

all downe . . .

and talke too much of

W h y heres our fellow Shakespeare puts them

18

A verse letter to Ben Jonson, which was probably written by Francis Beaumont, says much the same thing: A n d f r o m all Learninge keepe these lines as (cl)eere as Shakespeares best are, which our heires shall heare Preachers apt to their auditors to showe h o w farr sometimes a mortall man may goe by the d i m m e light of Nature . . . 1 9 T h e s e are merely two examples a m o n g m a n y ; most of us are familiar with similar remarks by Ben Jonson, Leonard Digges, and others. It is clear that the pedantic affectation of learning in Titus

Andronicus

con-

tradicts the notion of Shakespeare's w o r k held by his o w n contemporaries. But Titus Andronicus

is uncharacteristic of Shakespeare in an even deeper

sense; its dramatic structure is totally different from that of such works as 2 and j Henry

VI and Richard 111. In these plays, the action is extensive,

detailed and almost always carefully motivated. T h e r e are, it is true, great gaps in chronology; "boys shoot up to m e n " in the intervals between scenes, and very often decades of time are passed over with no explanation. Those incidents w h i c h are treated, however, are handled with great care and de-

TWO TRADITIONS

59

vcloped at length. There is no plot in the ordinary sense of the term: rather, the drama is created by the interplay of characters, by their antagonisms and alliances. In Titus Amlronicus, on the other hand, the plot is everything. The narrative does not grow out of the people involved in it, but the characters are motivated by the needs of an artificial and prearranged story. T h e sensationalism of the events in this work has often been remarked. It should be recognized, however, that even without the mutilation of Lavinia and the Thyestean feast, Titus Andronicus would be grotesquely implausible; it is unconvincing and false, not because of its liberal sprinkling of blood and horror, but because of its incredible characterization. A study of the play's opening scene will make this evident. A n extraordinary number of things happen during the first moments of the play; and they happen with breathless haste. Andronicus returns victorious from war against the Goths, is nominated for election as emperor, declines the honor, and places Saturninus on the throne. Lavinia, the daughter of Andronicus, is betrothed to Saturninus and seized by Bassianus. Tamora, Queen of the Goths, is given as a prisoner to Saturninus, who suddenly decides to marry her. And with all this, there is still time to have Alarbus, Tamora's son, executed, and Mutius, a son of Andronicus, killed by his father in a quarrel. The absurdity of the scene cannot be attributed only to the multiplicity of incident, for there are many great scenes in the Elizabethan drama which are just as crowded. What makes the play ludicrous is the sudden manner in which characters reverse their course, without any attempt at explanation by the dramatist. Saturninus, in proposing to Tamora, feels compelled to refer to the abruptness of his decision: And therefore, lovely Tamora, Queen of Goths, That like the stately Phoebe 'mongst her nymphs. Dost overshine the gallant'st dames of Rome, If thou be pleased with this my sudden choice, Behold, I choose thee, Tamora, for my bride. And will create thee Empress of Rome.-" Attempts have been made to explain the bad drama of Titus

Andronicus

on the basis of Shakespeare's inexperience at the time of its composition. Professor H . D. Gray, for example, assumes that the play was written by Shakespeare before he came to London, and was, in its initial form, un-

6o

THE ANTIC

HAMLET

actable; but that it was revised by a more experienced playwright such as Kyd and was then produced.21 This is a clever and beguiling theory which seems to explain the weakness of Titus Andronicus and particularly its incompetent characterization. But there are considerations which prevent us from accepting such an explanation. The workmanship of the play, from the purely theatrical point of view, is surprisingly skillful. Though the crowded and hurried action of the first scene is logically and emotionally impossible, the stage management is very facile; never do the numerous threads become tangled for one moment. Again, the scene in which Bassianus is murdered (Act II, sc. iii) is built around a resourceful use of the stage trapdoor; and it is unlikely that this scene could have been added by a reviser, for it is essential to the unfolding of the plot. The weaknesses of Titus Andronicus are not those of a novice; they are inherent in the tradition in which the play is written. They are inevitable in any work which subordinates character to an artificial plot. At the very height of his powers, Shakespeare can write, in the first scene of King Lear, something which is as unconvincing as any section of Titus Andronicus, and for the same reasons. In fact, there is perhaps more theatrical immaturity in 2 Henry VI than in Titus Andronicus; there is certainly far less coherence and unity of plot. Yet the first is a living drama, while the other is stillborn. The conviction that Titus Andronicus is not necessarily an earlier play than 2 Henry VI is strengthened when we compare the verse of the two plays. Surely, in no passage of 2 Henry VI does Shakespeare reveal such lyric mastery as in the following speech of Tamora's in Titus Andronicus: My lovely Aaron, wherefore look'st thou sad, When every thing doth make a gleeful boast ? The birds chant melody on every bush, The snake lies rolled in the cheerful sun, The green leaves quiver with the cooling wind, And make a chequer'd shadow on the ground. Under their sweet shade, Aaron, let us sit, And, whilst the babbling echo mocks the hounds, Replying shrilly to the well-tun'd horns, As if a double hunt were heard at once, Let us sit down and mark their yelping noise; And after conflict such as was suppos'd

TWO TRADITIONS

61

The wandering prince and Dido once enjoy'd, When with a happy storm they were surpris'd, And curtain'd with a counsel-keeping cave, We may, each wreathed in the other's arms, Our pastimes done, possess a golden slumber; Whiles hounds and horns and sweet melodious birds Be unto us as is a nurse's song Of lullaby to bring her babe asleep.--' This speech is on a much higher level than most of the verse in the play ; but there is no warrant for assuming, as some critics have done, that Shakespeare contributed only this passage and a few others like it to Titus Andronicus. Fine as it is, this is recited poetry, rhetoric and not dramatic speech. It is less stiff, less labored, much more lyrical than the rest of the verse in the play, but of the same kind.1''1 In 2 Henry VI, on the other hand, we find line after line which has a colloquial accent and a living turn of phrase. There is stichomythia aplenty in 2 Henry VI, and its language is not entirely free of learned influence; but in every scene there is a sense of vitality in the verse that is entirely absent from Titus Andronicus. Let us take a passage of dialogue almost at random: QUEEN

MARCARET.

Believe me, lords, for flying at the brook, I saw not better sport these seven years' day: Yet, by your leave, the wind was very high, And, ten to one, old Joan had not gone out. king

henry.

But what a point, my lord, your falcon made, And what a pitch she flew above the rest! To see how God in all his creatures works! Yea, man and birds are fain of climbing high. SUFFOLK.

No marvel, an it like your majesty, My Lord Protector's hawks do tower so well; They know their master loves to be aloft, And bears his thoughts above his falcon's pitch. GLOUCESTER.

My lord, 'tis but a base ignoble mind That mounts no higher than a bird can soar.

THE ANTIC

62

HAMLET

CARDINAL.

I thought as much; he'd be above the clouds. GLOUCESTER.

A y , my Lord Cardinal; how think you by that? Were it not good your Grace could fly to heaven ? KING

HENRY.

T h e treasury of everlasting joy. CARDINAL.

T h y heaven is 011 earth; thine eyes and thoughts Beat on a crown, the treasure of thy heart; Pernicious protector, dangerous peer, That smooth's! it so with king arid commonweal! CI.nrCF.STF.R.

What! cardinal, is your priesthood grown peremptory? Tantaene animis caelestibus irae? Churchmen so hot? good uncle, hide such malice; With such holiness can you do it?

24

As poetry, this is possibly inferior to the speech from Titus Andronicus quoted above; as dramatic dialogue, it is immeasurably superior. It contains the inflections of the human voice and its various emotions; the quotation from Virgil is not introduced to display Shakespeare's learning but because it is exactly the sort of thing Gloucester would say to goad on the Cardinal. One need hardly point out how admirably the scene begins on a quiet and casual note, and then rapidly builds to a climax of anger. Clearly, then, in the early work of Shakespeare we are dealing with two different traditions. One is that of Titus Andronicus, with its abundance of classical allusions, its extravagant plot and cardboard characters, its rhetorical and generally ineffective verse. T h e other is that of the early histories, with their loose and rambling narratives yet splendid vitality. That the Elizabethans recognized the existence of these two separate traditions in their mvn drama is a fact which has been almost completely ignored by modern scholars. Dr. Baker, for example, remarks: Since Elizabethans had the habit of lumping writers of history and tragedy together, the practice in the chronicle histories is of secondary importance, though it certainly brought about technical enrichments.-'' This statement is contradicted by the Induction to A Warning for Fair Women, Here, History and Comedy on the one side, and Tragedy on the

TWO TRADITIONS

63

other, argue for possession of the stage; and Comedy contemptuously declares, in speaking of Tragedy: But once a weeke, if we do not appeere, She shall find few that will attend her heere.26 It is Comedy also which characterizes Tragedy in words which leave no doubt that the Senecan or learned type is being ridiculed: How some damnd tyrant, to obtaine a crowne, Stabs, hangs, impoysons, smothers, cutteth throats, And then a Chorus too comes howling in, And tels us of the worrying of a cat, Then of a filthie whining ghost, Lapt in some fowle sheete, or a leather pelch, Comes skreaming like a pigge halfe stickt, And cries Vindicta, revenge, revenge: With that a little Rosen flasheth forth, Like smoke out of a Tabacco pipe, or a boyes squib: Then comes in two or three like to drovers, With taylers bodkins, stabbing one another. Is not this trim? is not here goodly things? That you should be so much accounted of, I would not else.27 Tragedy herself complains to History and Comedy: Tis you have kept the Theatres so long, Painted in play-bills, upon every poast, That I am scorned of the multitude, My name prophande.28 Not only, therefore, does the author of A Warning for Fair Women distinguish between two traditions, but he ridicules learned tragedy and implies that it is much less popular with the playgoing public than chronicle history.29 A study of the records of dramatic production for the years 1590-1600 reveals the correctness of this judgment; the number of chronicle histories written during that decade is much greater than the total of tragedies and certainly far more than the number of revenge plays. 30 It was no accident that Thomas Nashe, who was so derisive of English Seneca, should have chosen to exalt the history play as the glory of the native stage;

64

THE

ANTIC

HAMLET

and as his specific example, should have taken i Henry

VI or a play on

the same subject. 31 There can be little doubt, then, that scholars have greatly overemphasized the importance of the learned tradition in the work of Shakespeare. They have exaggerated many facts and ignored others; they have based their case upon Titus Andronicus,

a play which is not typical of Shake-

speare's dramatic style and which is outside the main stream of his development as an artist. 32 W e can no longer be satisfied with the theory that Shakespearean tragedy is based, either directly or indirectly, on Seneca. W e must abandon the idea that to seek Shakespeare's origins in the popular dramatic tradition is somehow to lower our estimate of his genius. In a notorious passage, that worst of all critics, Thomas Rymer, remarks: Shakespeare's genius lay for Comedy and Humour. In Tragedy he appears quite out of his Element; his Brains are turn'd, he raves and rambles, without any coherence, any spark of reason, or any rule to controul him, or set bounds to his phrenzy. His imagination was still running after his Masters, the Coblers, and Parish Clerks, and Old Testament Stroulers. 33 Because Rymer despised equally Shakespeare and the native popular drama, he was able to see the connection between them. Modern critics have learned to set a true valuation upon Shakespeare; but they still look down upon the pre-Elizabethan English drama and upon the audience which nourished it. It is not surprising that many scholars should speak contemptuously of the popular drama when we consider their attitude toward the average Elizabethan playgoer. The following statement by Professor Cunliffe is typical: Seneca's bombast and violence the multitude could understand; but they would not submit to his philosophical disquisitions. 34 W e expect the defenders of the learned tradition to talk like this; but it is rather disconcerting to find that those who attack the theory of Senecan influence understand the significance of the popular drama just as little as do their scholarly opponents. D r . Baker, for example, in a paragraph full of sweeping generalizations, dismisses the dramatic achievements of the popular tradition as follows: . . . In the favorite popular forms, tragedy and chronicle history, rhetoric must have been especially important because other things were not im-

TWO TRADITIONS

65

portant: plots were anybody's property, and plays rewritten for rhetorical ends were as much in demand as new plays; the lack of complicated stage equipment must have caused the dramatists to be but little concerned with stage effects; and since the actors themselves attended to stage business and even improvised extensively, the dramatist's occupation was essentially a literary occupation. It was, it seems, Shakespeare's ability to bombast out a blank verse that got him his fellowship in a cry of players. 3 0 But other things were important; even if we accept the doubtful statements that dramatists did not concern themselves with stage effects or stage business, there was still something left for them to deal with besides rhetoric. Their principal problem was characterization, as it was their principal achievement. T h e figure of the Vice, the concept of character disguise, were the rich results of the popular dramatic tradition; and they bore still richer fruit in many great figures of the Elizabethan drama, chief among whom is Shakespeare's Hamlet. Rough and crude as they may have been, the popular moralities were the necessary preparation for the magnificent drama of the Elizabethan period; and their special contribution was not an ethical one, as Professor Farnham would have it, 3 6 but a specifically theatrical one: they developed new methods of character presentation, a new mingling of comedy and tragedy, far superior to the superficial melodrama of Seneca. They need no defense other than the simple exposition which this essay has attempted of their influence upon the drama that followed them. N o tradition that produced a Shakespeare can be ignored or despised. II Since the time of Malone, scholarship has been dominated by the concept of the imitative Shakespeare. For well over a hundred years, critics have kept alive the legend of the ignorant country boy w h o came to London to make himself a fortune, won himself a fellowship in a cry of players by his skill in holding horses outside the theatre, and learned to write plays by zealously imitating his betters. It was useless to look for the origins of his work in any developed literary or dramatic tradition; he was unacquainted with all and therefore could not have been influenced by any. Everything that he k n e w of dramatic technique he learned from his immediate predecessors, men like K y d , Marlowe, Greene and Peele; it is

66

THE

ANTIC

HAMLET

these men w h o m we must study if we wish to understand Shakespeare, and particularly his early plays, which are merely revised versions of works by other writers. Such was the point of view which was generally accepted throughout the nineteenth century. T o d a y , thanks to the work of Pollard, Alexander, and others, we have come to believe in the integrity of the First Folio. W e now recognize that the authority of H e m i n g e and Condell (and the less reliable testimony of Meres) takes precedence over the dubious results of unscientific verse tests. T h e disintegrators of Shakespeare have had their day; the current of scholarship has now definitely set in the direction of those who maintain the simple proposition that Shakespeare wrote Shakespeare. T h e bibliographical evidence for the authenticity of the First Folio tradition has been buttressed by our increased knowledge of Elizabethan grammar-school education and the history of Stratford in the sixteenth century, which has dissipated the notion of Shakespeare's rustic ignorance. T h e theory of Shakespeare as the plagiarist and servile follower of the university wits has been discarded; and in its place has been set up a new appreciation of Shakespeare as an independent and original creative artist. 3 7 T h i s does not mean that modern critics have gone back to the seventeenthcentury notion of Shakespeare as a man who wrote " n o t laboriously but luckily," and triumphed despite his ignorance. It is a truism that no artist, however great, develops in a vacuum cut off from the atmosphere which envelops h i m . In a deeper sense than D o w d e n intended, the first plays of Shakespeare were created " i n the workshop," by an apprentice learning his trade; he was acquiring, however, not the mannerisms of a particular master, but the style of a whole tradition. So long as it was believed that Shakespeare merely copied from one specific writer or another, the study of his literary origins was identical with the investigation of his sources. O u r task has now immeasurably broadened: what we must uncover is the Shakespearean tradition, the school in which he learned dramatic technique, characterization, and verse style. T h i s essay represents only a beginning in the investigation of Shakespeare's dramatic origins; and it has perhaps raised more problems than it has solved. B u t already we see how false is the old idea that Shakespeare meekly followed where other writers led. Already, we begin to realize that Shakespeare was no subservient imitator but a self-assured and confident writer who k n e w his own strength and did not hesitate to use it. T h o u g h he may have made one or two attempts to write in the learned tradition

TWO TRADITIONS

67

(as witness Titus Andronicus) he wisely based himself not on an artificial and empty literary fashion, but on the long development of the popular drama. Shakespeare's dramatic ancestors were not Seneca or Greene or Kyd (or even Marlowe), but the largely unknown and despised creators of the old moralities and interludes. He incurred the enmity of the university wits, not because he copied their work but because he saw no necessity for so doing. Shakespeare, however, was no mere continuator. The secret of his sovereign achievement lies in the fact that he took from the past what the present needed and carried on a tradition by changing it. The splendid growth of the Shakespearean drama far overtops anything which had preceded it; but its roots are deep in the soil of the popular drama.

Appendix

One

A NOTE ON 2 HENRY VI that Shakespeare began his career as a reviser of other men's plays was, until a decade ago, accepted by most scholars. It was based upon the existence of two quartos, The First Part of the Contention Betwixt the Two Famous Houses of Yor^ and Lancaster, and The True Tragedy of Richard Du\e of Yorboth first published in 1594, which seemed to be earlier forms of Henry VI, Parts 2 and 3; these two quartos were attributed, variously, to such writers as Marlowe, Greene, and Peele. In 1929, however, Professor Peter Alexander, in his remarkable volume on Shakespeare's Henry VI and Richard III, made out a striking case for an entirely opposite theory, which can best be summarized in his own words: H E THEORY

The Contention and Richard Du\e of Yor\ are pirated versions of 2 and J Henry VI, put together by two of the leading players in Pembroke's Company, after the failure of the tour in 1593. These actors had in their possession certain manuscripts or portions of them; and they were no doubt helped in places by some of their fellows; but what they chiefly relied on was the memory, sometimes the possession, of their own parts, and the recollection of the plays as a whole that remained with them from frequent rehearsals and performances.1 Professor Alexander has assembled a brilliant array of arguments and facts to prove the above statement; but he has overlooked what is perhaps the most convincing evidence in support of his point. It is evidence which is none the less valid because it rests upon one word in the Quarto. In The Contention, Queen Margaret declares, to the newly banished Suffolk: No more, sweete Suffolk, hie thee hence to France, Or live where thou wilt within this worldes globe, lie have an Irish that shall find thee out.2 The word Irish is inexplicable and meaningless in the context of the speech. The line in which it appears is obviously corrupt. If, now, we turn to the corresponding passage in 2 Henry VI, we find the solution of the difficulty. The Queen there says: To France, sweet Suffolk: let me hear from thee; For wheresoe'er thou art in this world's globe, I'll have an Iris that shall find thee out.3

70

THE ANTIC

HAMLET

Iris is clearly the correct word; the heavenly messenger is appropriately named by the Queen, and her speech presents no puzzle to us. The line in The Contention is, therefore, a faulty rendering of the line which is preserved in its original form in 2 Henry VI. Does this, however, destroy the theory that in 2 Henry VI Shakespeare was reshaping the work of Marlowe (or Greene, or Peele) ? Is it not possible that Shakespeare, in revising the original play, carried over the Iris metaphor, while the printer of the 1594 manuscript mistakenly read the word Iris as Irish? It is hardly likely; for the Iris~>Irish change is not a printer's error but an actor's error, and the explanation of that error supplies decisive proof of Professor Alexander's statement that The Contention is a pirated and garbled version of another play, Shakespeare's 2 Henry VI. The text of The Contention was put together by an actor from his recollection of his own part and the parts of others. That actor (in all probability, Suffolk) remembered having heard the Queen say Irish; and he set the word down in his reconstruction of the text without troubling too much about its meaning. All this can be stated positively, and not as fantasy, because we know that in the 16th century terminal -s was often pronounced -sh. It is unnecessary to multiply examples to demonstrate this fact; a sufficient variety of them will be found in the works of philologists.4 One citation will be enough for our purposes. In such a well-known poem of the 17th century as Crashaw's Wishes to His Supposed Mistress, we find the following lines: Meet you her, my wishes, Bespeak her to my blisses, And be ye called my absent kisses.5 It is, then, reasonable to assume that the actor who played the part of the Queen in 2 Henry VI, pronounced the word Iris as Irish. The actor who compiled the text of The Contention, not having any manuscript to follow, was compelled to put down what he had heard. In so doing, he unmistakably branded as a piracy the distorted and confusing work whose origin Shakespearean scholars have so long misunderstood.

Appendix

Two

ON T H E SOURCES OF RICHARD III AND H A M L E T HIS ESSAY has dealt with the dramatic origins of Shakespeare's treatment of Richard III and Hamlet; and it has therefore omitted all reference to the specific literary sources of the two plays in which these characters appear. It is necessary to ask, however, whether there is anything in these sources which would render untenable the theories we have advanced concerning the influence of the Vice tradition on Richard and Hamlet. The ultimate source of Shakespeare's Richard 111 is, of course, Sir Thomas More's History of King Richard the Third; and we find that Richard is there characterized as follows: None evil captain was he in the war, as to which his disposition was more meedy than for peace. Sundry victories had he, and sometimes overthrows, but never in default as for his own person, either of hardiness or politic order. Free was he called of dispense and somewhat above his power liberal— with large gifts he got him unsteadfast friendship, for which he was fain to pill and spoil in other places and get him steadfast hatred. He was close and secret, a deep dissimulator, lowly of countenance, arrogant of heart, outwardly compinable where he inwardly hated, not letting to kiss whom he thought to kill; dispiteous and cruel, not for evil will always, but after for ambition, and either for the surety or increase of his estate. Friend and foe was muchwhat indifferent: where his advantage grew, he spared no man's death whose life withstood his purpose.1 The fact that More here pictures Richard as "a deep dissimulator" tends to strengthen our hypothesis concerning the relationship between Richard and the Vice Dissimulation. For when Shakespeare set himself the task of translating Richard's hypocrisy into dramatic terms, it was only natural that he should think of that stage figure who typified Dissimulation, and develop Richard as a Vice. T h e connection between source and tradition is clear. The case is far different with Hamlet, however. Those critics who have argued that Hamlet's antic disposition is either real or feigned madness have found their strongest evidence in the language of Shakespeare's ultimate source, Saxo Grammaticus. In the Danish Histories of this writer, there occurs the following famous passage:

72

THE ANTIC HAMLET

Amleth beheld all this, but feared lest too shrewd a behavior might make his uncle suspect him. So he chose to feign dulness, and pretend an utter lack of wits. This cunning course not only concealed his intelligence but ensured his safety. Every day he remained in his mother's house utterly listless and unclean, flinging himself on the ground and bespattering his person with foul and filthy dirt. His discoloured face and visage smutched with slime denoted foolish and grotesque madness. All he said was of a piece with these follies; all he did savoured of utter lethargy. 2 Obviously, in this passage, the emphasis is on feigned madness; the material and tone of the paragraph were retained by Belleforest, 3 and for all we know may have entered into the mysterious Ur-Hamlet. But we can draw no deductions from this passage concerning Shakespeare's own intentions; for nothing is more certain than that the conception of Hamlet's behavior contained in the paragraph quoted is not Shakespeare's. T h e Hamlet of "discoloured face and visage smutched with slime" is nowhere to be found in Shakespeare's play, though there is perhaps a faint reminiscence of him in Ophelia's report of Hamlet's appearance before her with "his doublet all unbrac'd" and "stockings f o u l ' d " ( I I , i, 77-84). Much more significant from the point of view of Shakespeare's own treatment of Hamlet, are three other passages in Saxo's account: 1. . . . H e [Amleth] mingled craft and candour in such wise that, though his words did not lack truth, yet there was nothing to betoken the truth and betray how far his keenness went. 2. O valiant Amleth, and worthy of immortal fame, who being shrewdly armed with a feint of folly, covered a wisdom too high for human wit under a marvelous disguise of silliness! And not only found in his subtlety means to protect his own safety, but also by its guidance found opportunity to avenge his father. 3. I [Amleth] who have baffled the artful hand of my uncle with retorted arts.4 In these passages, we find already a Hamlet who is close to Shakespeare's: a dissimulator, a dealer in double meanings, a contre-Machiavel. This is no longer the filthy and grotesque madman, but rather the Hamlet of the Vice tradition, the character whom we have tried to understand and explain in this essay.

Appendix

Three

E L I Z A B E T H A N SPEECH AND THE DRAMATIC POETRY OF SHAKESPEARE

I

of the difference between the learned and popular traditions in Shakespeare's work, we have relied to a great extent upon differences in verse style. Both Titus Andronicus and 2 Henry VI are written in blank verse; but, as we have seen, the poetry of the first is generally stiff and labored, whereas the poetry of the other, despite its immaturity, has a surprising vitality and colloquial vigor. We are therefore faced with an important and interesting problem. How is it that blank verse, so inflexible and rhetorical in Gorboduc and other plays of the learned tradition, became the infinitely varied and nobly human speech of the great Elizabethan and Jacobean plays? It is not sufficient to say that the transformation was the work of Marlowe; for Tamburlaine, which is supposed to have inaugurated the new style, is, despite its magnificent poetry, still in the rhetorical tradition of "high astounding terms" rather than in the tradition of dramatic speech. In fact, Shakespeare's 2 Henry VI seems to have been one of the first plays successfully to use blank verse as a colloquial medium rather than as declamation. And here again, we must seek the explanation of Shakespeare's preeminence, not alone in his superior genius, but in his ability to base himself on a healthy and vital popular tradition. For the blank verse of 2 Henry VI and subsequent plays owes its greatness to the fact that it is modelled on Elizabethan speech itself, and records its varied inflections and dignity of imagery. This theory has, of course, been put forward before; but it has never been satisfactorily demonstrated, because as examples of Elizabethan speech such writers as North and Raleigh have been cited. All that such a procedure proves is that great Elizabethan poetry and great Elizabethan literary prose share the same qualities. What we must do is to find examples of Elizabethan prose which were obviously written without desire for effect and without thought of publication: prose which retains the spontaneity of speech. Such writing may be found, perhaps better than anywhere else, in a collection of documents (mainly letters) written hurriedly and during the heat of battle by the leaders of the English fleet against the Spanish Armada. 1 We notice, first of all, how inevitably many of the phrases fall into the pattern of blank verse: "Such summer season saw I never the like," says one man; 2 and another describes the fleet as "by sickness and foul weather much beaten and spoiled." 3 The ring of iambic verse resounds through whole passages: N OUR DISCUSSION

74

THE

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HAMLET

And to heap on braveries for conquering little England, that hath always been renowned, and now most famous by the great discovered strength, as well by sea as by land, the same also united with thousands resolute civil minds, how can the same enter into my conceit they should any ways prevail? when heretofore, our country, being divided with many kings, the people barbarous and uncivil, resisted mightily long before they could be conquered. 4 But it is not only by its iambic rhythm that this language reveals its kinship with Shakespeare's dramatic poetry. It has also a feeling for the incisive phrase, a delight in the resources of words, an unaffected pungency of speech, a monosyllabic brevity and directness. All these qualities are evident in one passage after another: God send us a wind to put us out; for go we will, though we starve . . . 5 Sir, sure bind, sure find. A kingdom is a great wager. Sir, you know security is dangerous; and God had not been our best friend, we should have found it so . . . Sir, in your next letters to my brother Stafford I pray write to him that he will let Mendoza know that her Majesty's rotten ships dare meet with his master's sound ships; and in buffeting with them, though they were three great ships to one of us, yet we have shortened them 16 or 17; whereof there is three of them a-fishing in the bottom of the seas.6 Most of all, however, the language of these men resembles that of Shakespeare's heroes in its largeness and nobility of utterance, its greatness of heart. Again, almost innumerable examples might be given, but a few will be sufficient: Sickness and mortality begins wonderfully to grow amongst us; and it is a most pitiful sight to see, here at Margate, how the men, having no place to receive them into here, die in the streets. I am driven myself, of force, to come a-land, to see them bestowed in some lodging; and the best I can get is barns and such outhouses; and the relief is small that I can provide for them here. It would grieve any man's heart to see them that have served so valiantly to die so miserably. 7 . . . It were too pitiful to have men starve after such a service. I know her Majesty would not, for any good. Therefore I had rather open the Queen's Majesty's purse something to relieve them, than they should be in that extremity; for we are to look to have more of these services; and if men should not be cared for better than to let them starve and die miserably, we should very hardly get men to serve. Sir, I desire [but] that there may be but double allowance of but as much as I [give] out of my own purse, and yet I am not the ablest man in [the realm]; but, before God, I had rather have never penny in the world than they should lack. 8 It is not only the heroes of the Shakespearean drama who speak in these letters. There is one document which, in its iich eccentricity of language and the broad humanity of the personality it reveals, reminds us of all the citizen char-

APPENDIX

T H R E E

75

actcrs in the plays of Shakespeare and the other great Elizabethans. T h e writer o f this letter might almost have posed for Dekker's Sim Eyre: M y good Lord, a sharp war and a short, although it be chargeable, and that is fit for England. T h e Queen's subjects doth desire it. If I might a been heard, it had been done ere this day, with a great deal less charges. O u r action hath not gone so forward as it might a done, if things had been furnished to my desire. T h e r e is none that knoweth what I mean but her Majesty and myself; but this I will say unto your Honour and to all the rest of the Privy Council: that the K i n g of Spain will make our mistress wise within few years, if it be not prevented. It might a been done ere this day if it had pleased her Majesty; and yet it may be done if the D u k e of Parma and the Guise and their friends be foreseen for doing us hurt upon the coast of England or to enter our country: I say, if they may have the repulse for the year, and my Lord Admiral to defend their fleet, as I trust in my G o d he shall do for this year likewise, her Majesty shall have made for them the next year that they shall have desire to keep their own country. D o not think to have any quietness with the K i n g of Spain as long as his moneys comes out of the Indies. It is easily to be redressed. I have been desirous to have it known, and yet have I been afraid to move it; for that I have moved unto some of the Council, or at the least way was very willing; and when I have begun to enter into any matter of any importance, one of them told me and said this unto m e : Cely, it is told me that you mell with Councillors' matters. A rebuke I had, and so went my way. Another told me that if I could do her Majesty any service, so that it did cost money, or that if charges should rise upon it, never speak of it, for she will never conscnt unto it. So I went my way with a flea in mine ear. Another told me that if I did not make this and this of my counsel, and not to go unto the Queen, I should lose all the Council's good will. W h y , my good Lord, if I have or had commandment that I should not open some matter which her Majesty would not have known, should I utter it? N o , truly, if I should lose my life for my labour; and peradventure it may be so. My good Lord, I am a poor man, and one that hath been brought up without learning, and one that hath but a patched carcase; for I had thirty-two sundry torments in the Inquisition with the apretados—you term them in English rackings; and eight years in prison lacking but two months. I take it, it was for her Majesty's sake and her subjects. I have been towards her father and her brother and herself this sixty and two years. I have been no great craver, for I cannot spend one groat by the year by her; and yet her Majesty hath promised me good things; but I have been desirous to do her good, and not always begging, as some be. And yet have I lost above two thousand pounds since I served her Majesty, besides the great and cruel imprisonments in the Inquisition, and in the K i n g of Spain's most filthy galleys, and seven other prisons; and God I take to witness without desert, more than that they approved that I was her sworn man. T r u t h is, I

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did strike their secretary as I was before the Inquisidores, they sitting in judgment. I had great reason to do it. Let these things pass. I am now to crave your Honour that you will be a mean to help to abate the malicious intention of the Spaniard. If her Majesty will, she shall have him brought to pass that he shall be glad to entreat her Majesty to have a peace. And if it do cost her a hundred thousand sovereigns, she shall have two hundred thousand again, and all of them of the action well contented. God is the only giver of victory. My trust is only in him. I will not say but God may have put the same secret into another man's head as he hath done into mine; but I believe that there is no creature can do it but myself. I once moved her Majesty that she might have such a thing done. Her Majesty looked very sadly upon me; so I think, in my conscience, she thought it impossible to be done. For in very truth there was a piece of paper which her Majesty did read, and she answered me and said, It cannot be done in time. I asked her if I should show it to two persons in the world living at this present. She said, No. I think in my conscience it was more for that [she] stood in doubt that I could not accomplish [ i t ] , and that her Majesty would not have me to come to any foil; for that I am assured her Majesty doth love me. I take it, it was for this, more than for any other thing. He that looks a man in the face knoweth not what is in his purse. I a m of that opinion, that no man can do it but myself. Within one year after it is done, it will bring her Majesty to more quietness, and her countries, than all her Council in seven years. Good my Lord, bear with my rude and bold manner in writing this word so boldly. I have the very same paper that her Majesty did read; but I do not send it to your Honour. Good my Lord, tell her Majesty from me that I have not yet told the Spaniards what we be doing in England, but when God sends me to meet with them, I will tell them. But I promise your Honour when I have told them, I will bring them home with me into England . . . Yours to command, THOMAS CELY. I doubt your Honour will have much ado to read this letter. Desire her Majesty to help your Honour; her Majesty will. My—but few words. 9 It is in such documents as these, not in the rhetoric of Seneca or the metrical tragedies, that we shall find the basis of the great speech of Elizabethan drama. In the letters of Howard and Cely we hear the voice of Elizabethan England, which is the voice of Shakespeare.

NOTES Chapter One 1

G. L . Kittredge, Sha\spere, Cambridge (U.S.A.), 1916, pp. 33-4. J. Dover Wilson (ed.), Hamlet (New Cambridge Shakespeare), Cambridge, 1934, pp. xliv-xlv. 3 For the statement of a similar point of view, see Kittredge, op. cit., p. 40, and Howard Mumford Jones, The King in "Hamlet," Austin, Texas, 1918, pp. 9 - 1 1 , 96-100. 4 Hamlet, I, v, 106-8. (All quotations from Shakespeare are from the Oxford text, edited by W. J. Craig.) 5 ibid., Ill, i, 5 1 - 3 . 6 ibid., I, v, 123-4. 7 ibid., I, v, 169-72, 178-9. 8 I have found only one doubtful example of such usage: the term "wild unshapen antic" applied by Antonio to the supposed madwoman Isabella in Thomas Middleton's play, The Changeling (V, iii, 1 4 1 ) . 9 Greenes Groatsworth of Witte, ed. by G. B. Harrison, London, 1923, p. 45. 10 Cyril Tourneur, The Revenger's Tragedy (in Worlds, ed. by Allardyce Nicoll, London, n.d.), Ill, v, 95-7. 11 Robert Armin, Foole Upon Foole (1605) (in Wor\s, ed. by A. B. Grosart, privately printed, 1880), p. 34. I owe this reference to Professor O. J. Campbell. 12 L.L.L., V , i, 118-22; see also V, i, 158-9. 13 G. L . Kittredge, The Complete Worlds of Shakespeare, Boston, 1936, see under Glossary. 14 Desiderius Erasmus, The praise of folie, trans, by Sir Thomas Chaloner, 1549 (ed. by Janet E. Ashbee, London, 1901). Cf. Marlowe's lines: "My men, like satyrs grazing on the lawns, Shall with their goat-feet dance an antic hay . . ." (Edward II, I, i, 59-60). It seems probable, therefore, that "antic" was originally used to describe a country dance in which the participants were disguised as satyrs; and that the word was later applied to any masked revel. The N.E.D. article on "antic" does not record Chaloner's use of the word, and is generally rather unsatisfactory. 15 T. of the S., Induction, Sc. i, 93-107. 16 / Henry IV, I, ii, 69. 17 Henry V, III, ii, 34. 18 Much Ado, III, i, 59-64. 10 Richard II, III, ii, 160-3. 2

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20

There is only, so far as I have been able to discover, one passage in Shakespeare in which "antic" is used to mean a lunatic rather than a buffoon. In Troilus and Cressida, Cassandra cries: "Behold, distraction, frenzy, and amazement, Like witless anticks, one another meet, And all cry Hector! Hector's dead! O Hector!" (V, iii, 85-7.) The fact that the word "anticks" is here qualified by the adjective "witless" indicates, however, that "antic" by itself could not mean a madman. 21 Romeo and Juliet, I, v, 58-61. 22 A.C., II, vii, 128-32. 23 Hamlet, III, ii, 247-8. 24 John Corbin, in The Elizabethan Hamlet (London, 1895), pointed out that Hamlet was, in many respects, a comic figure; but he mistakenly assumed that Hamlet was comic because he was mad. Therefore, for him, Hamlet was a butt of ridicule like other representations of madness in the Elizabethan drama. 25 Mark Van Doren, Shakespeare, New York, 1939, p. 197. 28 J. Dover Wilson, What Happens in Hamlet, Cambridge, 1937 (second edition), p. 89. 27 ibid., p. 89. 28 ibid., p. 92. 29 T . S. Eliot, "Hamlet and His Problems," in Selected Essays, New York, 1932, p. 125. 30 L±,.L., V, ii, 849-62. 31 ibid., V, ii, 863-4. 32 Hamlet, I, v, 133. 33 ibid., Ill, i, 172-3. Chapter 1

Two

G. L . Kittredge (ed.), The Complete Wor\s of Shakespeare, Boston, 1936, p. 788. 2 E. E. Stoll, Shakespeare Studies, New York, 1927, p. 344. 3 3 Henry VI, III, ii, 182-93. 4 See Peter Alexander, Shakespeare's Henry VI and Richard III, Cambridge, 1929. 6 The True Tragedie of Richarde Du\e of Yor^e, London, 1600, E3 recto. 8 For a thorough demonstration of this point, see Edward Meyer, Machiavelli and the Elizabethan Drama, Weimar, 1897. 7 Mario Praz, "Machiavelli and the Elizabethans," (Annual Italian Lecture of the British Academy, 1928) Proceedings of the British Academy, Vol. XIII, pp. 48-9. 8 Stoll, op. cit., p. 344. See also Praz, op. cit., pp. 17-18, p. 25, and passim; and John W. Cunliffe, The Influence of Seneca on Elizabethan Tragedy, London, 1893, p. 74.

NOTES

79

9

I Henry VI, V, vi, 78-83. Clarence W . Mendell, Our Seneca, N e w Haven, 1941, p. 185. 11 Thyestes, Act V, sc. ii (in Newton's Seneca [1581], London, 1927, Vol. I, p. 91). 12 L. L. Schucking, Character Problems in Shakespeare's Plays, London, 1922, 10

P- 7313

R III, IV, iii, 31-2. William Hazlitt, Complete Wor\s, ed. by P. P. Howe, London, 1930, Vol. 18, p. 257 (Review of a performance by E d m u n d Kean). 15 William Hazlitt, Characters of Shakespeare's Plays (in Complete Works, Vol. 4), p. 299. Among contemporary critics, Mark Van Doren is almost alone in his emphasis upon the histrionic nature of Richard's character; see his Shakespeare, p. 35. 10 R 111, I, ii, 229-39. 17 ibid., I, ii, 253-61. 18 ibid., V, iii, 73-4. 18 ibid., III, iv, 48-50. 10 ibid., Ill, v, 5-11. 21 See, for example, Victor O. Freeburg, Disguise Plots in Elizabethan Drama, New York, 1915. 22 R III, II, ii, 27-8. 23 R III, III, i, 82-3. It is possible, though by no means certain, that Shakespeare may have been thinking specifically of the following passage in King Darius: Charity. For the prophets require of us no more But that a fervent love we keep in store. Iniquity. That I shall, I will keep it fast. Charity. What wilt thou keep, tell me in haste? For I think thou art a deceitful person. Iniquity. You bad I should keep my money, lest it were gone, And I made my pursle so close and so hard, That it will not be lost, iii halfpence, I will jeopard: No, no, it will not come out again. (Anonymous Plays, 3rd Series, ed. by J. S. Farmer, London, 1906, pp. 45-6.) 24 L. W . Cushman, The Devil and the Vice in the English Dramatic Literature Before Shakespeare, Halle, 1900, p. 63. 25 ibid., p. 75. 26 Dr. Cushman (p. 68) attempts to make a distinction between the early moralities and those produced after 1560, "when the serious role of the Vice had fallen into the background and the farcical role was more and more on the increase." But this theory is not supported by the facts. 27 The Romaunt of the Rose (in the Complete Worlds of Chaucer, ed. by F. N . Robinson, Cambridge [U.S.A.], 1933), 11. 6311-14, 6319-26, 6358-60, 7085-88. 14

8o 28

THE

ANTIC

HAMLET

ibid., 11. 6327-38. Apius and Virginia ( 1 5 7 5 ) , Malone Society Reprints, London, 1 9 1 1 , 11. 210-21. 30 Desiderius Erasmus, The Praise of Folly, trans, by Sir Thomas Chaloner (1549), London, 1901, pp. 2 1 - 2 . 31 This is the main significance of the Erasmus quotation for the purposes of this essay- It is impossible, however, to resist the temptation to point out the striking resemblances between certain portions of the passage and the famous utterances of Jaques, Macbeth and Prospero in the same vein. 32 Sir David Lindsay, Arte Satyre of the Thrie Estaitis (in Wor\s, ed. by Douglas Hammer, Edinburgh, 1 9 3 1 , Vol. II). 33 Richard Wever, Lusty Juventus, in Dodsley's Old Plays, 4th edition, ed. by W. C. Hazlitt, London, 1874, Vol. II. 34 New Custom, in D.O.P., Vol. III. 35 Respublica, ed. by L . A. Magnus, London, E.E.T.S., 1905. 36 D.O.P., Vol. I l l , p. 13. 37 5. of TE., 11. 719-24. 38 R III, III, vii, 44-8. 39 John Skelton, Magnyjycence, ed. by R. L. Ramsay, E.E.T.S., London, 1906, 11. 696-702, 7 1 0 - 1 5 . 40 Nathaniel Woodes, The Conflict of Conscience, in D.O.P., Vol. VI, p. 47 (Act II, sc. i). 41 John Bale, King Johan, Malone Society Reprints, London, 1931, 11. 197279 (I have expanded the manuscript abbreviations). 42 Sir Thomas More, The History of King Richard the Third, in The English Wor\s, ed. by W . E . Campbell, London, 1931, Vol. I, pp. 422-3. 43 Newton's Seneca, Vol. I, p. 5. 44 Cushman (op. cit., pp. 1 0 1 - 1 8 ) , gives an exhaustive, though very mechanical, catalogue of comic characteristics of the Vice in the moralities and interludes. 45 Ulpian Fulwell, Li\e Will to Li\e, in D.O.P., Vol. Ill, p. 309. 48 Thomas Preston, Cambyses, in D.O.P., Vol. IV, p. 177. 47 loc. cit. 48 Robert Wilson, The Three Indies of London, in D.O.P., Vol. V I , p. 2 5 1 . 40 ibid., pp. 2 5 1 - 2 . 50 ibid., pp. 260-3. 51 Robert Wilson, The Three Lords and Three Ladies of London in D.O.P., Vol. VI, pp. 420-1. 112 ibid., p. 424. 63 loc. cit. 54 R 111, I, ii, 193-203. 55 T . S. Eliot, "Christopher Marlowe," in Selected Essays, p. 105. 68 Christopher Marlowe, The few of Malta, ed. by H . S. Bennett, London, 1931, I V , i, 35-43. 28

NOTES

81

57

Thomas Lupton, All for Money, London, 1578 (Students' facsimile edition, Amersham, 1913), D1 recto. 58 Cushman, op. cit., p. 107. Chapter 1

Three

Hamlet, II, ii, 190-4. ibid., II, ii, 227. 3 ibid., II, ii, 402-7. 4 ibid., V, i, 307-10. 6 It is possible that in the hypothetical Ur-Hamlet the hero was already treated as a contre-Machiavel who adopts an antic character in an obvious way for obvious reasons. See Appendix 2. 0 Samuel Johnson, "Cowley," Lives of the English Poets, in Worlds, London, 1816, Vol. 9, p. 20. 7 Hamlet, I, ii, 64-74. 8 ibid., Ill, iv, 31-3. 0 ibid., V, ii, 57-9. 10 ibid., II, ii, 208-10. 11 ibid., Ill, ii, 355-6. 12 Apius and Virginia, 11. 1006-14. Cushman {op. cit., p. 111) remarks the striking resemblance between this passage and what he calls "Hamlet's confused speech," but he fails to see the implications of that fact. 13 Hamlet, I, v, 127-33. 14 ibid., Ill, ii, 287-90. It is significant that Hamlet follows this speech with the question, "Would not this, sir, and a forest of feathers, if the rest of my fortunes turn Turk with me, with two Provincial roses on my razed shoes, get me a fellowship in a cry of players, sir?" 15 *ibid., Ill, ii, 297-300. 18 ibid., Ill, ii, 309-10. 17 ibid., IV, ii, 27-33. 18 ibid., Ill, ii, 133-46. 18 ibid., Ill, i, 141-58. 20 See Arthur Palmer Hudson, "Romantic Apologiae for Hamlet's Treatment of Ophelia," ELH, IX (1942), pp. 59-70. It is interesting to notice that Coleridge could escape from the limitations of his own approach in such a magnificently perceptive description of Hamlet's language in the nunnery scene as "a wild upworking of love, sporting with opposites with a wilful self-tormenting irony." 21 J. Dover Wilson, op. cit., pp. 125-36. 22 Hamlet, II, ii, 183-9. 23 ibid., Ill, ii, 262-5. 24 ibid., Ill, iv, 76-81, 91-4, 144-9, 181-6. 25 ibid., I, v, 150-1, 162-3. 26 ibid., V, i, 206-11. 2

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27

ibid., IV, iii, 18-22, 38-40. So pervasive is the element of mockery in the language of the Vice that it cannot be illustrated by scattered quotations. See, however, Cushman (pp. cit.) pp. 101-18. 29 Lily B. Campbell, Shakespeare's Tragic Heroes, Slaves of Passion, Cambridge, 1930, p. 144. 30 Allardyce Nicoll (ed.), The Wor\s of Cyril Tourneur, p. 8. 31 The Revenger's Tragedy (in Works), III, 5, 56-66, 75-85. 32 ibid., V , 3, 72-5. 33 ibid., V , 3, 157-67. 34 ibid., V , 3, 139. 35 Edward Meyer, op. cit., p. 120. 38 John Webster, The White Devil (in Wor\s, ed. by F. L. Lucas, London, 1927, Vol. I), V , 3, 194-200. 37 ibid., IV, 2, 242-6. The curiously apologetic tone of this passage shows that the tradition of disguise was no longer as familiar as it had once been. 38 ibid., V , 6, 235-8. 39 There is great need of a work which will study all the writers of the late 1590's and early 1600's in relation to each other and to the world in which they lived. Studies of individual writers are too limited and histories of literature too general to cope with the problem of literary change, particularly in this period. 28

Chapter

Four

Peter Alexander, Shakespeare's Henry VI and Richard 111, Cambridge, 1929, p. 139. 2 Peter Alexander, Shakespeare's Life and Art, London, 1939, pp. 58-9. It is hardly necessary to point out that there is no external evidence that T.A. was Shakespeare's first tragedy. Commentators are still divided on the interpretätion of Henslowe's reference to 'titus & ondronicus' as 'ne' on the occasion of its performance on Jan. 23, 1593/4 (Henslowe's Diary, ed. by W. W . Greg, London, 1904, Part I, p. 16. See also Part II, pp. 159-62). 3 John W . Cunliffe, The Influence of Seneca on Elizabethan Tragedy, London, 1893. 4 L. E. Kastner and H . B. Charlton (ed.) The Poetical Wor\s of Sir William Alexander, Earl of Stirling, Manchester, 1921, Vol. I, p. cxxxix. 5 ibid., p. cxliv. 6 F. S. Boas, Christopher Marlowe, Oxford, 1940, p. 311. 7 Kastner and Charlton, op. cit., p. xvii. 8 Thomas Nashe, Preface to Greene's Menaphon, in The Wor\s of Thomas Nashe, ed. by R. B. McKerrow, London, 1904, Vol. Ill, p. 315. 9 Howard Baker, Induction to Tragedy, Louisiana University, 1939, p. 121. 10 ibid., pp. 137-8. 1 1 Harold Loomis Cleasby, "The Medea of Seneca," Harvard Studies in Clas1

NOTES

83

steal Philology, Vol. XVIII (1907), pp. 39-40. See also Mary V. Braginton, The Supernatural in Seneca's Tragedies, Menasha, Wisconsin, 1933, pp. 5-6 (footnote), p. 47. 12 Baker, op. cit. 13 T.A., II, i, 133-5. 14 T.A., II, iii, 231-6. It may be objected that classical allusions are entirely proper in a play on a Roman theme. It is, however, not so much the number of these allusions in T.A. which is remarkable as the clumsy and obvious way in which they are used. 15 T.A., II, iv, 11-57. 16 T.A., IV, i, 30-82. 17 The Pyramus and Thisbe play in M.N.D. is an obvious example. See also the play upon the name Ovidius Naso in LJL.L., IV, ii, 124-34. Even the beautiful sequence of classical allusions at the beginning of Act V of M. of V. ends in a jest. 18 The Returne from Parnassus, Part II, IV, iii, i8o6fF. (in E. K. Chambers, William Shakespeare, Oxford, 1930, Vol. II, p. 199). 10 (Francis Beaumont) To Mr B: J:, 11. 17-21 (in Chambers, op. cit., Vol. II, p. 224). 20 T.A., I, i, 315-20. 21 H. D. Gray, "The Authorship of Titus Andronicus," Fliigel Memorial Volume, Stanford, 1916, pp. 114-26. 22 T.A., II, iii, 10-29. 23 The clown in Act IV, sc. iii and iv, introduces the one truly colloquial note in the play. 24 2 Henry VI, II, i, 1-26. 25 Baker, op. cit., pp. 163-4. 28 A Warning for Fair Women (London, 1599), Students' Facsimile Edition, 1912, A2 verso. 27 ibid., A.1 verso-A3 recto. 28 ibid., A3 recto. 29 It is curious that Professor CunlifTe should use the Induction to A Warning for Fair Women to make the point that the most striking features of Seneca were "selected by a contemporary critic as the most noteworthy characteristics of Elizabethan tragedy." (op. cit., p. 46.) 30 See Alfred Harbage, Annals of the English Drama, 975-rjoo, Philadelphia, 1940. I do not give exact figures for the proportion of histories to tragedies because it is impossible to tell sometimes, merely from the title of a lost play, into which category it falls. 31 Thomas Nashe, Pierce Penilesse His Supplication to the Divell, in Worl{s, ed. by R. B. McKerrow, Vol. I, p. 212. 32 Most scholars, of course, find a very strong Senecan influence in such a chronicle history play as Richard 111; but we have already demonstrated how far removed from Seneca that play is.

84

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HAMLET

33

Thomas Rymer, A Short View of Tragedy, London, 1693, p. 156. J. W. Cunliffe, op. cit., p. 59. It is difficult to understand how Dr. Cunliffe could have made such a statement in view of the fact that the medieval mystery cycles, written especially for the multitude, are full of philosophical disquisitions. 35 Howard Baker, op. cit., p. 56. The same attitude is manifest in his later remark that "the conception of the nature and form of tragedy was inherited from non-dramatic literature, while some incidental technique was borrowed from the older drama." (p. 173.) 36 Willard Farnham, The Medieval Heritage of Elizabethan Tragedy. This excellent work is marred by a tendency to separate tragedy and comedy in a very mechanical way, which leads Professor Farnham to ignore the great achievement of the popular drama in uniting the two categories. Thus, he declares: "Where plays show a tendency to become primarily comic interludes and to minimize serious didacticism, there is obviously a forking of the ways leading from the morality toward comedy and tragedy." (p. 213.) 37 See Appendix 1. 34

Appendix One 1

Peter Alexander, Shakespeare's Henry VI and Richard 111, Cambridge, 1929, p. 116. 2 THE/First part of the Con-/tention betwixt the two famous hou-/ses of Yor\e and Lancaster . . . / . . . , LONDON/Printed by Valentine Simmes for Thomas Millington . . . / . . . , 1600, E4, verso, 11. 29-31. (I quote from the 1600 reprint of the 1594 text.) 3 2 Henry VI, III, ii, 405-7. 4 See H. C. Wyld, A Short History of English, New York, 1937, pp. 209-10. 5 Caxton, in 1477, has the spelling \ysshed. (Wyld, loc. cit.) Appendix

Two

1

Thomas More, The History of King Richard the Third, in The English Worlds, ed. by W. E. Campbell, London, 1931, Vol. I, p. 402. This work, after passing through a number of sixteenth-century chronicles, was finally incorporated in the second edition of Holinshed in 1587. 2 Sir Israel Gollancz (ed.), The Sources of Hamlet, London, 1926, p. 103. 3 ibid., p. 194. 4 ibid., p. 107, p. 131, p. 139. Appendix

Three

1 J . K. Laughton (ed.) State Papers Relating to the Defeat of the Spanish Armada, Navy Records Society, 1894. 2 Henry Seymour to Walsingham, ibid., Vol. I, p. 253. 3 Considerations by Thomas Fenner, ibid., I, p. 240.

NOTES Seymour to Walsingham, ibid., I, p. 254. Howard to Burghley, ibid., I, p. 187. Howard to Walsingham, ibid., II, pp. 59-60. Howard to Burghley, ibid., II, p. 96. Howard to Walsingham, ibid., II, pp. 153-4. Thomas Cely to Burghley, ibid., I, pp. 264-7.

BIBLIOGRAPHY Peter Alexander, Shakespeare's Henry VI and Richard 111. Cambridge, 1929. Peter Alexander, Shakespeare's Life and Art. London, 1939. Apius and Virginia. Malone Society Reprints, London, 1911. Robert Armin, Works, ed. by A. B. Grosart. Privately printed, 1880. John Bale, King Johan. Malone Society Reprints, London, 1931. Howard Baker, Induction to Tragedy. Louisiana University, 1939. F . S. Boas, Christopher Marlowe. Oxford, 1940. Fredson T . Bowers, Elizabethan Revenge Tragedy. Princeton, 1940. Mary V . Braginton, The Supernatural in Seneca's Tragedies. Menasha, Wisconsin, 1933. O. M. Busby, Studies in the Development of the Fool in the Elizabethan Drama. London, 1923. Lily B. Campbell, Shakespeare's Tragic Heroes, Slaves of Passion. Cambridge, 1930. E. K. Chambers, William Shakespeare. Oxford, 1930. Geoffrey Chaucer, Complete Works, ed. by F. N. Robinson. Cambridge (U.S.A.), 1933G . B. Churchill, Richard the Third up to Shakespeare. Berlin, 1900. Harold Loomis Cleasby, "The Medea of Seneca." Harvard Studies in Classical Philology, Vol. XVIII (1907). John Corbin, The Elizabethan Hamlet. London, 1895. John W. CunhfTe, The Influence of Seneca on Elizabethan Tragedy. London, 1893L. W. Cushman, The Devil and the Vice in the English Dramatic Literature Before Shakespeare. Halle, 1900. T . S. Eliot, Selected Essays. New York, 1932. Desiderius Erasmus, The Praise of Folie (trans, by Sir Thomas Chaloner, 1549), ed. by Janet E. Ashbee. London, 1901. J. S. Farmer (ed.), Anonymous Plays, 3rd Series. London, 1906. Willard Farnham, The Medieval Heritage of Elizabethan Tragedy. Berkeley, 1936. Victor O. Freeburg, Disguise Plots in Elizabethan Drama. New York, 1915. Sir Israel Gollancz (ed.), The Sources of Hamlet. London, 1926. H . D. Gray, "The Authorship of Titus Andronicus," Flugel Memorial Volume. Stanford, 1916. Robert Greene, Greenes Groatsworth of Witte, ed. by G. B. Harrison. London, I 2 9 3W. W. Greg (ed.), Henslowe's Diary. London, 1904.

88

T H E A N T I C HAMLET

John E. Hankins, The Character of Hamlet and Other Essays. Chapel Hill, 1941. Alfred Harbage, Annals of the English Drama, 975-1700. Philadelphia, 1940. William Hazlitt, Complete Works, ed. by P. P. Howe. London, 1930. W. C. Hazlitt (ed.), Dodsley's Old Plays. London, 1874. Arthur Palmer Hudson, "Romantic Apologiae for Hamlet's Treatment of Ophelia." ELH, IX (1942). Samuel Johnson, "Cowley," Lives of the English Poets, in Works, Vol. 9. London, 1816. Howard Mumford Jones, The King in Hamlet. Austin, Texas, 1918. L. E. Kastner and H. B. Charlton (ed.), The Poetical Works of Sir William Alexander, Earl of Stirling. Manchester, 1921. George L. Kittredge, Shakspere. Cambridge (U.S.A.), 1916. J. K. Laughton (ed.), State Papers Relating to the Defeat of the Spanish Armada. Navy Records Society, 1894. Sir David Lindsay, Works, ed. by Douglas Hammer. Edinburgh, 1931. Thomas Lupton, All For Money. London, 1578 (Students' Facsimile Edition, Amersham, 1913). W. Roy McKenzie, The English Moralities from the Point of View of Allegory. Boston, 1914. L. A. Magnus (ed.), Respublica. London, E.E.T.S., 1905. Christopher Marlowe, The Jew of Malta, ed. by H. S. Bennet. London, 1931. Clarence W. Mendell, Our Seneca. New Haven, 1941. Edward Meyer, Machiavelli and the Elizabethan Drama. Weimar, 1897. Sir Thomas More, English Works, ed. by W. E. Campbell. London, 1931. Wilhelm Mutz, Der Charakter Richards III in der Darstellung des Chronisten Holinshed und des Dramatikers Shakespeare, mit einem Beitrag zu seiner Charakterpsyche. Berlin, 1936. Thomas Nashe, Works, ed. by R. B. McKerrow. London, 1904. Newton's Seneca (1581). London, 1927. Mario Praz, "Machiavelli and the Elizabethans." (Annual Italian Lecture of the British Academy, 1928.) Proceedings of the British Academy, Vol. XIII. A. A. Raven, A Hamlet Bibliography and Reference Guide. Chicago, 1936. Thomas Rymer, A Short View of Tragedy. London, 1693. L . L. Schucking, Character Problems in Shakespeare's Plays. London, 1922. William Shakespeare, Complete Works, ed. by W. J. Craig (Oxford Text). London, 1930. William Shakespeare, Complete Works, ed. by G. L. Kittredge. Boston, 1936. William Shakespeare, Hamlet, ed. by J. Dover Wilson. Cambridge, 1934. (William Shakespeare?), The True Tragedie of Richarde Duke of Yorke. London, 1600. Percy Simpson, "The Theme of Revenge in Elizabethan Tragedy." Proceedings of the British Academy, Vol. XXI. John Skelton, Magnyfycence, ed. by R. L. Ramsay. London, E.E.T.S., 1906.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

89

Hazelton Spencer, The Art and Life of William Shakespeare. New York, 1940. E . E. Stoll, Shakespeare Studies. New York, 1927. Barbara Swain, Fools and Folly During the Middle Ages and the Renaissance. New York, 1932. Cyril Tourneur, Works, ed. by Allardyce Nicoli. London, n.d. Mark Van Dören, Shakespeare. New York, 1939. A Warning for Fair Women. London, 1599 (Students' Facsimile Edition, Amersham, 1912). John Webster, Works, ed. by F. L. Lucas. London, 1927. Enid Welsford, The Fool: His Social and Literary History. New York, 1936. J. Dover Wilson, What Happens in Hamlet. Cambridge, 1937.

INDEX Alexander, Peter, quoted, 53 Ambidexter, 25, 26 Antic, its meaning in Shakespeare's plays, 4-7 Antic disposition, Hamlet's, 3 ff. Antony and Cleopatra, 6 A pi us and Virginia, 19-20, 39 Armin, Robert, 4 Atreus, and Richard III, 1 3 - 1 5 Baker, Howard, 55, 56, 62, 64-5 Bale, John, 24 Barabas, 30, 32 Beaumont, Francis, quoted, 58 Berowne, compared with Hamlet, 9 Boas, F. S., quoted, 54 Bright, Dr. Timothy, 46, 47 Brutus, compared with Hamlet, 8 Cambyses, 25, 26 Campbell, Lily B., 46, 47 Chronicle history, vogue in the Elizabethan drama, 62-4 Claudius, as a Machiavellian, 2-3; 10; conflict of wits with Hamlet, 2, 10, 35, 40 Cleasby, H. L., quoted, 56 Conflict of Conscience, 23-4 Cunlifïe, John W., 50, 64 Cushman, L. W., quoted, 17-18 Dissimulation, theme of, in medieval literature, 18 ff.; treatment of, in the preShakespcarean drama, 20 ff.; and Seneca, 24-25; in Three Ladies of London and Three Lords and Three Ladies of London, 26-30 Eliot, T. S., quoted, 7, 31 Erasmus, Desiderius, quoted, 21 Fais-Semblant, 18-19 Flamineo, 50-1 Gertrude, Hamlet's attitude toward, 43, 44 Ghost, the, and Hamlet, 44

Gray, H. D., cited, 59, 60 Greene, Robert, 4 Hamlet, as a character in a play, 2-3; and Claudius, 2-3, 10, 35; his antic disposition, 3 ff.; compared with Brutus and Richard II, 8; compared with Mercutio and Berowne, 8-9; as a Machiavellian, 10; and the Vice Dissimulation, 33 ff.; as a character of contradictions, 33 ff.; compared with Richard III, 33, 36; his metaphysical wit, 36 ff.; his savagery, 41 ff.; and Ophelia, 42-3; and Gertrude, 43-4; and the Ghost, 44 ; and Elizabethan psychology, 46-7; compared with Vindice, 48-50; compared with Flamineo, 50-1 Haphazard, 19-20 Hazlitt, William, quoted, 15 Henry IV, Part 1, 5 Henry V, 5 Henry VI, Part II, 60-2 Henry VI, Part III, 10, 12 Jew of Malta, 31 Johnson, Dr. Samuel, quoted, 37 Kastner, L. E., and Charlton, H. B., quoted, 54 King ]ohan, 24 Kittredge, G. L., quoted, 1, 5, 1 1 Kyd, Thomas, influence on Shakespeare, 54 Uke Will to Lik.e, 25 Love's Labour's Lost, 4-5, 9 Lusty Inventus, 22 Machiavellian villain, 2-3, 10, 1 1 - 1 3 , 30, 48 ff. Magnyfycence, 23 Marlowe, Christopher, 30-2 Mercutio, compared with Hamlet, 8-9 Meyer, Edward, 50 Moralties, theme of dissimulation in, 20 ff. More, Sir Thomas, 24

INDEX

92 Mouse-Trap, The, in Hamlet, 40 Much Ado About Nothing, 5 Nashe, Thomas, 55 New Custom, 22 Newton, Thomas, 24-5 Nichol Newfangle, 25

Ophelia, Hamlet's attitude toward, 41, 43 Ovid, and Shakespeare, 57-8 Popular tradition, and Shakespeare's plays,

64-7

Praise of Folly,

21

Respublica, 22 Returne from Parnassus, 58 Revenger's Tragedy, 4, 48-50 Richard II, compared with Hamlet, 8 Richard II, 6 Richard III, 10; as a Machiavellian villain, 1 1 - 1 2 ; and the Senecan tyrant, 1 3 - 1 5 ; as a figure of high comedy, 1 5 - 1 7 ; and the Vice, 17 ff.; and Hamlet, 33, 36 Romatint of the Rose, 18-19 Romeo and Juliet, 6, 9 Rymer, Thomas, quoted, 64 Satyre of the Thrie Estaitis, 22 Seneca and Senecanism, 1 3 - 1 5 , 24-5, 53 ff. Shakespeare, William, need for constant reinterpretation of his work, 1 ; his uses of the term antic, 4-6; the Hamlet type in his

plays, 8-10; compared with Marlowe in his development of the Vice tradition, 30-2; his conception of Hamlet, 35-6; and Elizabethan psychology, 46-7; compared with Tourncur and Webster, 48-52; and the learned tradition, 53 ff.; and the popular tradition, 58 ff.; as an independent creative artist, 65-7 Skelton, John, 23 Stoll, E. E., quoted, 1 1 Taming of the Shrew, 5 Three Ladies of London, 26-8 Three Lords and Three Ladies of London, 28-9 Thyestes, 14, 55 Titus Andronicits, 55 ff. Tourneur, Cyril, 48-50 True Tragedie of Richarde Duk.c of Yor^e, 12 Van Doren, Mark, quoted, 7 Vice Dissimulation, general characteristics and influence on Shakespeare's conception of Richard III, 17 ff.; and Hamlet, 33 ff. Vindice, 48-50 Warning for Fair Women, 62, 63 Webster, John, 50-1 What Happens in Hamlet, 7 White Devil, 50-1 Wilson, J. Dover, quoted, 2, 7; 42, 43 Wilson, Robert, 26, 30