Shakespeare’s comic theory: A study of art and artifice in the last plays [Reprint 2019 ed.] 9783111629728, 9783111251110

Citation preview

DE PROPRIETATIBUS LITTERARUM edenda curat C. H. VAN SCHOONEVELD Indiana University

Series Practica, 57

SHAKESPEARE'S COMIC THEORY A STUDY OF ART AND ARTIFICE IN THE LAST PLAYS

by

THOMAS ALLEN NELSON

1972 MOUTON THE HAGUE · PARIS

© Copyright 1972 in The Netherlands. Mouton & Co. Ν.V., Publishers, The Hague. No part of this book may be translated or reproduced in any form, by print, photoprint, microfilm, or any other means, without written permission from the publishers.

LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOG CARD NUMBER 72-88216

Printed in the Netherlands by N.V. Zuid-Hollandsche Drukkerij

I know more than lean express in words, and the little I can express would not have been expressed, had I not known more. VLADIMIR NABOKOV

TABLE OF CONTENTS

1. Introduction

7

2. The Historical Perspective

18

3. Pericles: Prince of Tyre: Romance and Shakespearean Comedy . .

28

4. Cymbeling: Holinshed and Shakespearean Comedy

42

5. The Winter's Tale: Pastoralism and Shakespearean Comedy

....

54

6. The Tempest: Art and Comedy

68

7. Full Circle

83

Selected Bibliography

90

Index

94

1

INTRODUCTION

The following chapters will attempt to demonstrate that in his last four comedies, the so-called Dramatic Romances, William Shakespeare expresses a particular concept of comedy. Critical to this study is the belief that this concept of comedy is not only revealed through what certain characters say, but primarily through Shakespeare's creation of an elaborately designed artifice of action and character. In the discussion of the four comedies chosen for analysis — Pericles, Cymbeline, The Winter's Tale, and The Tempest — I hope to demonstrate how Shakespeare uses narrative material which is reminiscent of his earlier comedies and which, contrary to much critical opinion, 1 reveals a consistency and unity of purpose in his comedies. Crucial distinctions and remarks, however, need to be clarified at the beginning; such remarks will concentrate on defining and placing in a proper context my use of certain key terms. These terms are: symbolism, symbolic action, symbolic character, imagination, and comic art. Moreover, this introductory chapter will illustrate, through a brief survey of Shakespearean comedy before Pericles, my contention that Shakespeare's conjurations in the Dramatic Romances are consistent with his general comic practices. An understanding of Shakespeare's use of symbolism leads, in turn, to an understanding of his concept of comedy. Symbolism, with its potential for rendering tangible the intangible, artistically enables the dramatist to suggest multiple levels of action and complex ambiguities of character. According to William York Tindall, whose discussion sounds much like T. S. Eliot's definition of the objective correlative, a literary symbol "consists of an articulation of verbal elements that, going beyond reference and the limits of discourse, embodies and offers a complex of feeling and thought". 2 Yet, says Professor Tindall, symbolism, as an analogy for something unstated, is not necessarily an image but may be a "rhythm, a juxtaposition, an action, a proposition, a structure, or a poem". 3 Thus, 1 See Chapter 2 of this study. 2 The Literary Symbol (Bloomington, Ind., 1955), 12-13. 3 Ibid., 13.

8

INTRODUCTION

symbolism may be a concrete representation of something abstract; it may present specific objects, and through those objects or persons or events, reveal what is invisible, intangible, or otherwise unapparent. The word "symbolism" is derived from the Greek word "symballein", meaning "to throw together", a fact suggesting its essential quality of drawing several things together — the specific and the abstract, the tangible and the intangible, the visible object and the invisible idea. 4 Shakespeare's Theseus in A Midsummer-Night's Dream seems to have something like a symbol and symbolic action in mind when, considering madmen and poets, he speaks of "shaping fantasies, that apprehend/More than cool reason ever comprehends" (V.i. 5-6). And as imagination bodies forth The forms of things unknown, the poet's pen Turns them to shapes, and gives to airy nothing A local habitation and a name. 5 (V.i. 14-17) If we can interpret these lines as meaning that the poet's imagination uses symbolism to body forth perceptions of the intellect, then, I think, we can perceive that a given narrative or plot may represent a symbolic action. Regardless of the terminology, I believe, as does Bernice Slote, in the "doubleness of literature — that which is given in language and form is only the embodiment of something more that is not, that cannot, be wholly stated". 6 In my discussion of the Dramatic Romances in later chapters, I will point out that Shakespeare portrays dramatic conflict largely in terms of symbolic action and character, and that, moreover, by doing so, he articulates a particular theory of comedy. Characters are revealed, enlarged, and partially defined in their relation to significant ideas; characters come alive in new dimensions outside the limitations of their immediate function in the plot; they transcend their "local habitation" and name by their symbolic part in a larger action which, at times, imitates a pattern as common and conventional as that of regeneration. 4 Professor Tindall carefully distinguishes between a symbol and a sign; the sign is an exact reference to something definite and a symbol an exact reference to something indefinite. Thus, according to Professor Tindall, Dr. Eckleburg's eyes in Fitzgerald's The Great Gatsby, as a symbol suggest "more thoughts and feelings than we could state; for if we stated as many as we could — the wasteland, the suburb, the modern world, futility, or moral censure - some would be left over and some would remain unstatable" (6). Similarly, in Shakespearean comedy, characters like Marina, Imogen, Hermione and Miranda, as symbolic characters, suggest qualities such as divinity, perfection, grace and forgiveness - qualities which, in themselves, are abstract but which Shakespeare attempts to make concrete through symbolic character. 5 All quotations from Shakespeare's plays can be found in The Complete Works of Shakespeare, ed. George Lyman Kittredge (London, 1936). 6 "Foreword", Myth and Symbol (Lincoln, Nebr., 1963), v.

INTRODUCTION

9

There are, of course, many obvious symbols in Shakespeare's plays, and recent criticism has not neglected their importance in Shakespeare's dramatic method. 7 Here, however, I emphasize these characteristics of Shakespeare as a symbolic dramatist: (1) his use of symbolic conflict for character revelation; in Pericles, for instance, Marina's idealized virtue is given wider dimensions when she confronts the lechery of Boulton; she becomes not only a character who is part of the romantic trappings of the plot, but also one who symbolizes a form of energetic innocence; similarly, in The Tempest, the figures of Miranda and Caliban pose conflicting values: one represents the elevation, through art, of character, the other a form of animalism which man's learning can never totally conquer; (2) his use of dominant symbols, often visual, to reveal not only character, but ironic and heuristic effects that reveal subtle concepts at work within the texture of the plays; thus, in Pericles, Antiochus' daughter (who has no name) is not individualized, but is more significant as a visual and static symbol of corrupted beauty; she is employed as a kind of stage prop which comments upon Antiochus' perverse world — a world which would deny to Pericles a vision of ideal perfection; or, in the final scene of Cymbeline, the Soothsayer's description of an eagle's flight into the sun suggests a renewal of life; (3) his use not only of materials out of Holinshed, the romantic tradition, and pastoralism, but, through a masterful transformation of these sources, his formulation of a distinct theory of comedy which leads to our understanding some of his essential philosophical and artistic attitudes; in later discussions of the Dramatic Romances, I will demonstrate how Shakespeare uses Greek Romance (in Pericles), history out of Holinshed (in Cymbeline), and pastorialism (in The Winter's Tale) for his own comic purposes. Shakespeare, in the Dramatic Romances, no matter what source material he draws on, converts it into those distinctive comic patterns which he seems to have found so aesthetically pleasing throughout his career. Shakespearean comedy, as Northrop Frye has suggested, 8 returns time and again to certain patterns of action and character. Under the category of "action", I refer to four significant designs in Shakespearean comedy in which: (1) the comic action is propelled by a conflict between dialectical concepts of experience: one which reminds us of a real, or lower, form of experience and one which is idealized; hence, the schemes of Cleon and Dionyza in Pericles, or of the Court party in The Tempest, strike us as typical examples of human venality; but, in these plays, we see such actions from an idealized point of view: Prospero's art shapes an idyllic form of human experience — a form of experience in which the virtue of Miranda 7 See, for instance, two books by Derek Traversi: William Shakespeare: The Early Comedies (London, 1960), and Shakespeare: The Last Phase (New York, 1955). 8 Anatomy of Criticism (Princeton, 1957).

10

INTRODUCTION

can be cultivated toward perfection and the bestiality of Caliban kept under some control; (2) this conflict results in a movement which breaks away from the apocalyptic world — a world characterized by moral chaos, injustice, evil, and cruel, irrational laws — and goes toward a vision of an ideal world, noted for its social and spiritual harmony; in Cymbeline and The Winter's Tale, for example, though Cymbeline and Leontes unfairly condemn loved ones and fall prey to irrationality and tyranny, before the actions of these two plays end order and forgiveness appears, primarily through the activities of characters such as Imogen and Hermione whose powers are associated with things magical (in Cymbeline, Shakespeare also employs a supernatural device in the Vision of Jupiter); in The Tempest, the unjust banishment of Prospero has occurred before the play begins, thereby emphasizing Prospero's magical island and his attempts to transform and restore to a sense of brotherhood the society which wronged him; (3) the above movement leads to the formation of a new society which is frequently occasioned by a scene suggestive of harmony, signified by weddings, banquets, music and dancing; weddings are the most common representation of harmony in Shakespeare, as in the quadruple wedding at the end of As You Like It; there is the banquet at the conclusion of The Taming of the Shrew; or, as in Pericles and The Winter's Tale, there is the use of religious setting for the final scene; in Cymbeline an augury of renewal suggests improved harmony, and in The Tempest Prospero's magic circle is the setting for a final scene of forgiveness and restoration; (4) Shakespeare's comic action suggests a movement into an imaginary world of desire: in Shakespearean comedy, this imaginative world collides with the follies and evils of the world of experience, as in Duke Frederick's tyranny, Cymbeline's blindness, Leontes' jealousy, the Court party's plots and intrigues; but this imaginary vision, through art and artifice, imposes its idealized reality upon the workings of ordinary, less than perfect experience; thus, the action of most Shakespearean comedies implies a world of the imagination which human life strives to imitate. Under the heading of "character", which overlaps into action, three important patterns are evident in which: (1) some central character or characters - in many cases a female - controls and directs the final reordering; this figure is an agent of reconciliation who has magical and artistic powers and who, on several occasions, is aided by supernatural forces: in his treatment of Hero in Much Ado, of Helena in All's Well, of Thaisa in Pericles, of Imogen in Cymbeline, and of Hermione in The Winter's Tale, Shakespeare repeats a device which becomes progressively unrealistic and which, by the time of The Winter's Tale, takes on the outline of a Proserpine figure; in The Tempest, however, Shakespeare uses an older man who functions in a similar fashion to these earlier female

INTRODUCTION

11

protagonists; Prospero, not unlike the Duke in Measure for Measure, directs and controls the movements of the other personae in the play; (2) as many people in the play as possible are included in the final society, represented by all levels of existence — good and evil, rich and poor, young and old, wise and ignorant — who are reunited by a new sense of relationship and brotherhood: in Pericles, Cymbeline, The Winter's Tale, and The Tempest, characters like Boulton, Iachimo, Leontes, Autolycus, Stephano, Trinculo, Antonio, Sebastian, and even Caliban, testify to Shakespeare's habit of making the society at the end of his comedies as comprehensive as possible; (3) the important theme of forgiveness and tolerance is associated with the characters of Shakespearean comedy; characters who cause disorder and vice — characters like Falstaff, Bottom, Sir Toby Belch, Iachimo and Autolycus — are granted forgiveness, although there are occasional malcontents and outsiders, like Shylock, Jaques, and Malvolio, who refuse to join in with the festivities of the new society; when we discover that Falstaff is invited to the final feast in The Merry Wives of Windsor, that Caliban is reprieved, that attempts are made to mollify Malvolio, and that Angelo and Parolles are allowed to find forgiveness for their shame, we see a fundamental trait of Shakespearean comedy at work: the tendency to include and forgive rather than to exclude and punish characters who seem, at first glance, to have no business taking part in the final festivities. Such characters remind us that Shakespeare's essential comic vision is purely imaginative — that, in short, it is a view which stands removed from — and in several instances in opposition to — experience. A study of Shakespeare's imaginative uses of action and character, therefore, must go beyond an attempt to see the symbol as "something that stands for something else"; for symbolism is a fundamental trait of all imagination. 9 The word "imagination" suggests a process of image-making, and an image is only an aspect of the actual thing it represents: an image symbolizes the whole — a thing, person, occasion, or whatever — from which it is an abstract. 1 0 Shakespeare's comic imagination, like that in the description by Theseus, is not only a free faculty of continual image-making 9 The uie of the word "imagination" poses certain problems in a study of this sort, mainly because, from the Romantic standpoint, it is a term charged with complex and often metaphysical connotations. When I speak of Shakespeare's "imagination", I do not have in mind Coleridge's (or any other Romantic's) famous theory of the primary imagination as a "repetition of the finite mind of the eternal act of creation in the infinite I AM"; instead, I believe that Shakespeare's concept of the imagination is more conventional: that is, he sees imagination as a basic aspect of all art, a quality of mind which explains the artist's ability to give form to non-experimental concepts. For a highly complex study of this subject, see Edward A. Armstrong, Shakespeare's Imagination: A Study of the Psychology of Association and Inspiration (Lincoln, Nebr., 1963). 10 In this study, I use the distinction between symbol and image formulated by

INTRODUCTION 12 which represents experience past and present, but primarily a faculty which perceives possible and ideal experience. What makes the last four comedies so important is that in these plays Shakespeare takes up the subject of art. In these plays, Shakespeare takes popular narrative material out of the romance and pastoral traditions and out of the chronicles of Holinshed and transforms them into his own imaginative perceptions of idealized human experience. It is my contention that "art" in the last four comedies means more specifically "comic art" and that this art as a whole imitates not the details of ordinary life, but the "forms unknown" of the artistic imagination. An important question, therefore, must be asked by the reader of these Shakespearean comedies: how does Shakespeare's comic art generally represent human experience? My answer is: Shakespearean comedy, fantastic, set in a world of romantic innocence, especially the last four plays, is an image of that reality and truth desired by the artist's imagination; it provides wish-fulfillment for both artist and reader; the happy endings of these plays are the manipulated results of a chain of incredible coincidences but we, as audience and reader, hopefully wish that they were a necessary element in human existence. Because this reality is removed from nonimaginative experience, it takes its form in symbolism. I believe that the last four comedies best illustrate Shakespeare's idealized view of human imagination and his concept of the function of comedy. Perhaps this concept can be clarified through a discussion of a current critical belief that sees the final four comedies as extensions of Shakespeare's interest in tragedy. E. M. W. Tillyard maintains that the four Dramatic Romances develop "the final phase of the tragic period . . . " . 1 1 Similarly, Derek Traversi, is one of the rare full-length books on these four plays, investigates the symbolic similarities between them and Shakespeare's greatest tragedies: Macbeth, Hamlet, King Lear, and Othello. 12 These critics agree with F. D. Hoeniger's comment that the Dramatic Romances are "quite unlike the Romantic Comedies. They share with them plots with happy endings and certain conventions, but there the likeness ends". 1 3 This is one view, among many, that I take exception to in this study. Norman Friedman: "An image with an idea; a fact saturated in value. An image may become a lymbol either by heredity or environment. That is to say, an image may achieve symbolic value either by virtue of its history, its relation to other images in the same work or to the author's intentions." See "Imagery: From Sensation to Symbol", Journal ofAesthetics and Art Criticism (September 1953), 32. 11 Shakespeare's Last Plays (London, 1938), 20. For a detailed analysis and refutation of Tillyard's position, see E. C. Pettet, Shakespeare and the Romance Tradition (London, 1949), 191-99. 12 Shakespeare: The Last Phase. 13 "Introduction", Pericles (New Arden Shakespeare) (London, 1963), pp. lxxi-lxxii.

INTRODUCTION 13 Beginning with Pericles and ending with The Tempest, these critics have noted a shift in "tone" in Shakespearean comedy. Perhaps, however, as the following chapters will demonstrate, the "tragic" aspects of the Dramatic Romances can be partly explained by the manner in which Shakespeare makes use of his sources. In Cymbeline, combining historical and romantic matter, Shakespeare produces a diverse, but well constructed, play. An aspect of the fanciful and pastoral qualities of Cymbeline is the tragic suggestion from the historical world of Holinshed — the world which resembles the realm of actual human experience. The play, however, is neither a chronicle play nor tragedy. How far, one might ask, is the world of romance removed from the world of history. Romance, in the hands of a Shakespeare, can suggest an imaginative extension of a real and tragic world; a history play, although homiletic and moral, depicts the way the world regrettably is, while romance creates an image of a world that ought to be. Romance emphasizes human frailty, as does tragedy, but it also idealizes the transforming power of forgiveness, mercy, understanding, compassion, and love. In Shakespearean tragedy and history, many a downfall suggested by the perversion of these values thus reflects the dark and ironic side to the human situation. In the comedies, Shakespeare reverses this pattern by portraying man's great potentialities; he indicates how a humanistic passion for the elevation of man through learning and the capacity to feel are essential ingredients to a better world. In The Tempest, for example, Antonio and Sebastian plot assassination at a time when ideally they should demonstrate concern for their own and their King's plight; however, because of the workings of Prospero, their potential evil is neutralized through ridicule. The above movement is essential not only to Shakespeare's early Romantic Comedies, but also to this Dramatic Romance. Instrumental in this pattern is the constant implication that a tragic and evil world exists. But within the imaginative world of comedy Shakespeare's inclusion of several forms of viciousness and absurdity serves as an initial dramatic step toward a social and moral transformation. In Shakespearean comedy, man's commendable features transform his evil propensities and not vice versa. In his discussion of the last plays, D. G. James helps to clarify this view:

Shakespeare, having failed to see human life as a neat, orderly, and satisfying unity, had to resort to myth for the conveyance of his new imaginative apprehension of life. But his mythology was not Christian; as long as he wrote poetry he tried to maintain its independence of traditional forms . . . (he) sought to keep his symbols pure, uncontaminated by assertion. Wordworth bowed to what he came to feel was the superior expressiveness of Christian dogma, and his imagination became dominated by forms of expression which did not flow from himself; the autonomy of his poetry, so to speak, was destroyed. Keats and Shakespeare, avoiding

14 INTRODUCTION that path, sought to create their own symbols, and failed in the effort.. . The concern of all three became something more than poetry; we feel that this is so in the last plays of Shakespeare and in The Excursion; and we read it stated in Keats' remark: "Poetry is not so fine a thing as philosophy (sic) for the same reason that an eagle is not so fine a thing as truth."

14

Therefore, using the patterns of symbolic action and character outlined earlier, I contend that the supposedly "tragic" elements which cast shadows over Shakespeare's late comedies do not constitute a difference in kind but in degree from the earlier comedies. As early as The Comedy of Errors, a suggestion of this "tragic" mood appears in Shakespearean comedy. In this play the common separation of brothers and possible death for the father contain overtones of the tragic; The Comedy of Errors is a comic play with very serious scenes; a serious domestic disorder at the beginning of the play is saved from tragedy by the nature of the comic world - a world which envelopes as much experience as possible and then attempts to reach an inclusive social order. Significantly the reconciliation in The Comedy of Errors is brought about by the lost wife, an Abbess (Shakespeare's addition to the source), thus imbuing the play with spiritual overtones. The final scene of spiritual and familial harmony that she effects can be viewed in contrast to the disordering of the storm at the beginning. The pattern of shipwreck, separation, and reunion near a temple is repeated in the much later play Pericles, and both plays draw heavily upon the conventions of Greek Romance. Thus, on one level at least, the action of The Comedy of Errors concerns the transformation of a morally disordered society into one loving and harmonious. Such a change does not occur after painstaking introspection on the part of various personae, as it might in Shakespeare's tragedies, but suddenly and unrealistically in Ephesus, the "magical" city, a setting not too far removed from the magical and transforming powers of Arden in As You Like It and the temple of Diana in Pericles. In several early comedies, Shakespeare developes a conflict between the decay and corruption in a world of actual human experience and the regenerative quality achieved in idealized love. Normally the action moves from the material world to a realm which suggests something absolute and magical. This movement may be portrayed through setting as characters go from the courtly life of the palace — characterized by deceit, misunderstanding, and corruption — to a pastoral world which is characterized by trust, love, and harmony. (The use of pastoralism can be seen particularly in Two Gentlemen of Verona, A Midsummer-Night's Dream, As You Like It, Cymbeline, and The Winter's Tale.) In Two Gentlemen of Verona the action moves from Verona to Milan to the forest. Verona is characterized by stability and simplicity, Milan by complexity and deceit, but the forest 14 Skepticism and Poetry (London, 1937), 210-211.

INTRODUCTION

15

is a place of regeneration where men gain an understanding of idealized love. Valentine loves Silvia, but her father, the Duke, wishes her to marry the fool, Lord Thurio; also, Proteus is struck by Silvia's perfections, denounces Julia, and betrays his friend (even to the point of threatening the rape of Silvia). In this play, Shakespeare not only uses many of the situations of romantic comedy but also the basic movement of serious romance: the movement to an idealized union of human and spiritual love and forgiveness, out of which a lasting social order is formed. As in his use of Windsor Forest in The Merry Wives, the Abbey in The Comedy of Errors, Portia's "mysterious" house in The Merchant of Venice, and the Forest of Arden in As You Like It, Shakespeare, in Two Gentlemen, leads his action toward a gathering point where he may depict the final reconciliation, uniting material and spiritual aspirations in an image of an idealized society. In the later Dramatic Romances, Shakespeare repeats this use of setting: in the temple of Diana in Pericles, the forest in Cymbeline, the "chapel" in The Winter's Tale, and Prospero's magic circle in The Tempest. Such settings remind us of the artist's realm, where irony and tragedy are averted by imagination and chimera. Besides his symbolic use of setting, Shakespeare, in several comedies, develops a central, symbolic figure whose attributes are reconciliatory and sometimes even magical. In The Merchant of Venice, Portia possesses certain powers, usually described as those of a divine or conjuror, which the other characters do not have; Portia is the desideratum sought after by all men who seek an ideal (and by some who seek only her wealth). Bassanio, although a fortune-hunter in the first scene, recognized in Portia more than a means of financial gain: Nor is the wide world ignorant of her worth; For the four winds blow in from every coast Renowned suitors, and her sunny locks Hang on her temples like a golden fleece, Which makes her seat of Belmont Colchos strand And many Jasons come in quest of her. (I.i. 167-172)

Portia's "sunny locks", not just her money, are the objects of Bassanio's quest. By the end of the play, through the workings of Portia, evil is purged and a sense of love and joy permeates the scene. Portia is the one who grants forgiveness, the one who brings about an idealized view of social harmony. 1 5 15 To say his harmony is complete and perfect in itself would be erroneous; the embittered figure of Shylock leaving the court (IV.i.), harassed by Antonio's taunts, indicates an ever-present danger to the new sense of order. This harmony in the last scene, however, is a clear improvement over the melancholy and division of character in the first scene.

16

INTRODUCTION

Similarly Rosalind of Λΐ You Like It helps to move the action into the Forest of Arden for the finalreordering. She possesses an awareness that Orlando and the others do not have. She sees the folly of the material and the pastoral world alike, and thereby instigates an awareness of such values as forgiveness, understanding, sympathy, and compassion, characteristics of the romantic world that, by contrast, reveal the shortcomings of the real world. At the conclusion of the play, all its characters except Jaques, who remains behind in hopes of gaining more knowledge, move back to the Duke's palace, not as they were before, but joined together by the enchantment of Rosalind's magician's circle. In All's Well Helena is the central, controlling figure of the play. She is similar to Portia and Rosalind in her function as an agent of reconciliation and regeneration. Throughout the action, Helena is distinguished by her intelligence, but it is her constancy, her humility, and her love that are her important attributes. She is a physician's daughter who possesses magical healing powers. She heals the ailing king and thus gains nobility in the eyes of others. Bertram, on the other hand, rejects her (Helena is "base" born) and uses foul deceit as he involves himself in lechery and corruption. Bertram pays too much attention to the advice of Parolles, and is thus led away from the powers of love and goodness in Helena. The movement of the play goes from the Count's home to the King's palace, to the Duke of Florence and war and disorder to Marseilles, back to the King's and Count's courts. In this cyclical action the social body is rendered more effective primarily through the magical powers of Helena, powers which are associated with love, compassion, and devotion. It is a movement through decay, corruption, folly, war, and deceit to order and social reconciliation at the end. Going on to Twelfth Night the reader can see the importance of Viola's function in an analogous way. On a note of disorder Viola lands on the shores of Dlyria following a shipwreck. 16 Being separated from her brother, Viola goes into disguise and gains the favor of the Duke of Illyria. During the action of the play she becomes a part of every level of the plot. She helps Olivia gain a better understanding of love; she helps the Duke recognize more about love between man and woman; she reveals her identity and straightens out the confusion over her resemblance to Sebastian. Instead of the context of the forest and its setting for character transformation, Shakespeare, in many comedies, uses a character like Viola to function within the action as an agent of reason and order. Such a character is further developed in the Dramatic Romances through the portrayals of 16 Northrup Frye sees Twelfth Night, along with .4 Comedy of Errors, Pericles, and The Tempest, as "sea" comedies, in which Shakespeare uses the sea as a symbol for the lower or chaotic world; it is from this world which the characters, or an important part of them, are saved. See Anatomy of Criticism (Princeton, 1957), 184-185.

INTRODUCTION 17 Thasia, Marina, Imogen, Hernuone, and Perdita. By the time of The Tempest, we realize that such figures are substitutes for the artist and that Shakespeare, throughout most of his career, has a highly developed concept of comic art. Thus, I maintain, as does Northrop Frye, that through an analysis of repeated structural features and character types in the comedies one can see unity amid diversity. Shakespeare uses the romantic movement of separation and reconciliation in his early plays as well as in his last. The death and revival of Hermione in The Winter's Tale is heralded by the actions of Hero, Helena, Thasia, Imogen, and every heroine who goes through the process of disguise and restoration. Such analogies as these, I believe, indicate patterns of consistency in Shakespearean comedy and likewise shed light upon the dramatist's theory of comedy. Such an approach to the Dramatic Romances, I hope, will be regarded in the experimental spirit that it chronicles. I hope to define a speculative point of view; however, it is not a view without some inner check. I have attempted to let the materials speak for themselves as much as possible, so that my end will not be interpreted as pure theory but also as sound criticism. Therefore, after a brief survey in Chapter 2 of important critical views of Shakespearean comedy, I will examine the four Dramatic Romances and isolate certain literary sources and forms available to Shakespeare and show how he converts them into the comic patterns. In Chapter 3 and my discussion of Pericles, I will examine Shakespeare's use of Greek Romance; in Chapter 4 I will investigate Cymbeline and the use of history out of Holinshed; and in Chapter 5 and the analysis of The Winter's Tale, I will consider the particular use of pastoralism. Finally, in Chapter 6 and my treatment of The Tempest, for which there is no known source, I will emphasize the significance of Shakespeare's final comments on his comic art. What I hope to accomplish through this organization and approach is a fuller appreciation of various facets of Shakespeare's dramaturgy and, simultaneously, a greater awareness of a unity of expression and purpose in the comedies.

2

THE HISTORICAL PERSPECTIVE

In his prologue to the First Folio of Shakespeare's works, Ben Jonson (in a moment of sentiment, no doubt) expresses high regard for Shakespeare's comedies. Jonson allows some eight lines in eulogizing the comedies while he sees fit to write only four in praise of the tragedies: The merry Greeke, tart Aristophanes, Neat Terence, witty Plautus, now not please; But antiquated, and deserted lye As they were not of Natures family. Yet must I not give Nature all: Thy Art, My gentle Shakespeare, must enjoy a part For though the Poets matter, Nature be, His Art doth give the fashion. 1 In the history of Shakespeare criticism, such praise for Shakespeare's comedies is an exception to the rule. Except for Thomas Rhymer and Samuel Johnson few critics have ever suggested that Shakespeare's comedies are equal in artistic stature to the tragedies. Dr. Johnson agrees with Rhymer that Shakespeare's "natural disposition" stirred him to comedy more than to tragedy: "his tragedy seems to be skill, his comedy to be instinct". 2 Even today Milton Crane finds some truth in this position, stating that in Shakespeare the "prevailing tendency is indeed toward the comic . . . " . 3 He elaborates in this manner: What this means, I think, is that Shakespeare, like Tolstoy (among others), in contemplating the eternal disparity between man's aspirations and his limitations, could not but feel that limitations carried the day. 4 1 "To the Memory of my Beloved: The Author Mr. William Shakespeare", The Complete Plays and Poems ofWüliam Shakespeare, ed. William Allan Neilson and Charles Jarvis Hill (Cambridge, Mass., 1942), xxiii. Generally, however, Jonson disliked Shakespeare's comedies: see the Introduction to Bartholomew Fair in Which he alludes to Shakespeare's "Tales, Tempests, and such like drolleries . . .". 2 "Preface to Shakespeare", Eighteenth Century Essays on Shakespeare, ed. D. Nichol Smith (Glasgow, 1903), 121. 3 "Shakespeare's Comedies and the Critics", Shakespeare Quarterly XV (Spring 1964); 68. 4 Ibid.

THE HISTORICAL PERSPECTIVE

19

These commentators, separated by three hundred and fifty years of Shakespeare criticism, do not represent the dominant trend. 5 Most critical attention has been reserved for the tragedies. Only when certain men — men like G. Wilson Knight and E. M. W. Tillyard - have exhausted their explorations into the complexities of Shakespeare's tragedies and history plays have they turned with some relief, no doubt, to his comedies, always viewing Shakespeare's comic genius as vastly inferior to his tragic genius. 6 What this tendency has created, 1 think, is a misunderstanding of, and a general lack of interest in, the nature of Shakespearean comedy. Many critics have expressed either an oversimplified or supersubtle interpretation of the comedies, especially the last four. It is necessary, I believe, to review some of these traditional and more recent viewpoints and to indicate how my position draws from, or rejects, established interpretations of the comedies. The relative lack of interest in Shakespeare's comedies probably has several causes. There is, to begin with, a certain prejudice against comedy which is evident in the way criticism has tended to regard tragedy as the more profound art form and, according to some, one of the signs of a decaying post-renaissance world is its dearth of great tragedians. 7 Such a view is not necessarily shared by everyone, but tragedy does have an intrinsic power, lacking in comedy, that draws the attention of most Western civilizations. In recent times, for instance, Arthur Miller has attempted to define the characteristics of "modern" tragedy. 8 Many readers and critics agree with Matthew Arnold's edict that tragedy as a genre is inherently superior and more profound than comedy. 9 David Daiches, for example, 5 For a critical survey of the comedies before Pericles, see John Russell Brown, "The Interpretation of Shakespeare's Comedies: 1900-1953", Shakespeare Survey VIII (Cambridge, 1955), 1-13; a standard work is Augustus Ralli's/1 History of Shakespearean Criticism, 2 vols. (London, 1932). Concerning the Dramatic Romances see the following critical surveys: Frank Kermode, "Tempest Criticism", The Tempest INew Arden Shakespeare) (London, 1954), lxxxi-lxxxviii; J. M. Nosworthy, "Criticism", Cymbeline (New Arden Shakespeare) (London, 1955), xl-xlviii; Philip Edwards,"Shakespeare's Romances: 1900-1957", Shakespeare Survey XI (Cambridge, 1958), 1-18; J. H. P. Pafford, "The Last Plays", The Winter's Tale (New Arden Shakespeare) (London, 1963), xxxvii-xliv. 6 See, for instance, G. Wilson Knight, The Crown of Life (London, 1947) and E. M. W. Tillyard, The Nature of Comedy and Shakespeare (London, 1958), two studies which appeared long after these critics' important contributions to the study of Shakespearean tragedy and history. 7 See, for example, Joseph Wood Krutch, The Modem Temper (New York,1929); similarly, Francis Fergusson, in The Idea of a Theatre (Princeton, 1949), argues that there is little hope of restoring the comprehensive "idea" of a theatre in modern drama. 8 "Tragedy and the Common Man", New York Ήmes, February 27, 1949, Sec. 2, pp. 1, 3. 9 See "Preface to 1853 Edition of Poems", Matthew Arnold: Poetry and Prose, ed. John Bryson (Cambridge, Mass., 1954), 609-621, where Arnold mentions the

20

THE HISTORICAL PERSPECTIVE

states unequivocally that the "wider and deeper view of the human situation is bound to be tragic for human experience is essentially tragic". 10 Another possible cause for this critical paucity may lie in the characteristics of Shakespeare's comedies. Historically there are two basic theories concerning the purpose of comedy. One theory is illustrated best in Jonsonian satiric comedy and the comedy of manners tradition. According to this theory comedy is a social corrective which heaps abuse and ridicule upon human foibles and purges them through laughter. The second tradition emphasizes sympathy and the formation of social bonds. These two comic modes have been labeled by Tillyard as the negative and the positive and by Coghill as the classical and the medieval. 11 Unfortunately for the student of Shakespeare, the negative theory of comedy has been more favored because it is associated historically with the great theorists of comedy: Aristotle, Jonson, Meredith, and Bergson. 12 As a result, one side of comedy has been stressed to the exclusion of the other. Hence, Shakespeare's comic genius, because his comedies contain a greater degree of sympathy than ridicule, has been unjustly ignored by a large area of criticism which sees the norm of comedy in terms of one or the other extremes. What Shakespeare does — and what most criticism overlooks - is to merge both traditions, thereby formulating a unique theory of comedy. When critics do consider Shakespearean comedy, they tend to stress plot or character. For the purpose of this study such a concentration has some importance. Except for certain critics such as Coleridge and Northrop Frye, the history of Shakespearean comic criticism rarely displays any consistent symbolic interpretation of action and character, let alone any conclusions about a Shakespearean theory of comedy. In isolated instances, confusing and multitudinous voices of the modem age and counsels young writers to turn to Shakespeare, the great model for the English writer; significantly, when he discusses Shakespeare's genius Arnold either states or assumes that his genius is in the tragic mode. 10 Critical Approaches to Literature (Englewood Cliffs, N.J., 1956), 238. 11 E. M. W. Tillyard, The Nature of Comedy and Shakespeare, and Nevill Coghill, "The Basis of Shakespearean Comedy: A Study of Medieval Affinities", Essays and Studies (London, 1950). See also Louis Kronenberger's The Thread of Laughter (New York, 1952), 3-11, in which he discusses both the permanent subject matter of comedy and its changing nature. His terms for the two comic traditions are "criticism" and "understanding". 12 Lane Cooper, in An Aristotelian Theory of Comedy (New York, 1922), says that Aristotle would probably view the effect of comedy as a pleasure "associated with the perception of a defect or ugliness that is neither painful nor injurious" (61); Ben Jonson's position is well known' "But deeds, and language, such as men do use: / And persons, such as Comedie would chose,/ When she would shew an Image of the times, / And sport with humane follies, not with crimes" (Prologue, Every Man In); George Meredith, in "An Essay on Comedy", and Henri Bergson, in "Laughter", tend to associate comedy with the comedy of manners tradition: see Comedy, ed. Wylie Sypher (New York, 1956).

THE HISTORICAL PERSPECTIVE

21

however, certain important critics have pointed directions which this present study follows. The traditional interest in plot is considerably less than the zeal for Shakespeare's characters. The critical disregard for Shakespeare's comic plots originated with the Neoclassical doctrine of probability and was generally continued by the Romantic and Freudian predeliction for personality. Because the plots of Shakespeare's comedies are fantastical and improbable they have been considered as both unimportant and artistically poor. In contrast, his characters appear to be more "interesting" and "realistic", leading critics into orational excesses on the humanity and psychological depth of Shakespeare's mind. Let us first deal with attitudes toward the plots and then consider how various readers of Shakespeare have tested their critical acumen on his characters. When the reader of the comedies considers the problem of Shakespeare's plots, he is confronted with Ben Jonson's famous dictum concerning the Junction of comedy. 13 Jonson's demand for realism results in his attacking Shakespeare for his implausible plots. He especially loathes the Dramatic Romances and Shakespeare's use of the masque, although the "tales" of Shakespeare are the greatest abomination to the Jonsonian sensibility: No doubt some mouldy tale, Like Pericles; and stale As the Shrieve's crusts, and nasty as his fishscraps, out of every dish Throwne forth, and rak't into the common tub, May keepe up the Play-Club: There, sweepings do as well As the best order'd meale. 14 This Jonsonian epithet continues to be associated with the plots of Shakespeare's comedies into the twentieth-century. Generally critical attention has been indifferent toward the plots per se because of a literary aesthetic which calls for the realistic and the familiar. The Neoclassical critics discuss Shakespeare's plots only to emphasize distaste for them. Dryden, Pope, and Johnson all agree that the stories are incredible, improbable, and impossible. Dr. Johnson dislikes Shakespeare's violation of the unities. Most Neoclassical critics search for extra-literary reasons which might exonerate Shakespeare from his faulty plotting. Pope attributes this shortcoming to Shakespeare's need to appeal to the vulgar masses rather than to the learned. 15 Johnson sees the "wild" plots as 13 See the previous footnote. 14 "Ode", appended to The New Inn, 1631, Shakespeare Allusion Book, ed. John Monro (London, 1932), I, 341. 15 "Preface to Edition of Shakespeare", Eighteenth Century Essays on Shakespeare, 50-51.

22

THE HISTORICAL PERSPECTIVE

reflections of the barbarity of the Elizabethan age. 16 These critics, hamstrung by rigidly applied rules of plotting, and a rather naive notion of "realism", do not allow for Shakespeare's literary conjurations. Whereas the Neoclassicists spend a great deal of time illustrating how Shakespeare's plots violate the rules of decorum and right reason, the Romantics scarcely mention them at all. In fact, since the seventeenth century most commentators feel that Shakespeare succeeds in spite of his poor plots. Coleridge views Shakespeare's comic success as more thematic than structural. In many ways Coleridge makes an approach to my basic position when he attempts an aesthetic analysis of Shakespeare's unity. In rejecting the classical approach to Shakespeare, Coleridge says that the plays of Shakespeare, in the ancient sense, neither tragedies (sic) or comedies, nor both in one. They are romantic dramas, or dramatic romances. The ancient dramas required the unities, because the fable, language, and characters appealed to the reason — though a reason which had to accommodate itself to the senses and so become a more elevated understanding. Shakespeare's romantic poetry appealed to the imagination — to the reason as contemplating our inward nature, and the inmost working of the passions. Such reason is independent of time and space; its certainties are eternal truths. If the poet can make us realize a scene imaginatively, he can use time and space as they exist in imagination. The Greek dramatists sternly separated the diverse in kind and disparate in degree. Shakespeare interlaces one with the other by a rainbow-like transfusion of hues. 1 7 Romantic jargon aside, Coleridge believes that plot was unimportant to Shakespeare and that it functioned only as a "canvass" and no more. 18 Concerning the Dramatic Romances Coleridge has little to say. He foreshadows a modern propensity by comparing these last comedies to Shakespeare's greatest tragedies. He discusses the similarities between The Winter's Tale and Othello with special attention to the passion of jealousy. Coleridge, like many critics who discuss the Dramatic Romances, has more to say about The Tempest; in doing so, he attacks the superficiality of eighteenthcentury criticism and praises The Tempest as an example of Shakespeare's imagination "which owes no allegiance to time and space . . . " . 19 Thus Coleridge makes an important contribution to the study of Shakespearean comedy: he draws attention to Shakespeare's plots as artifices of the poetic imagination and thereby, I believe, suggests the need for a symbolic interpretation of their actions. The great Victorians — Dowden, Bradley, Moulton, and Raleigh — write in the Coleridgean tradition, except that they give even less attention to the 16 "Preface to Shakespeare", 132. 17 Lectures and Notes on Shakespeare (1811), quoted in Ralli, I, 132. 18 Coleridge's Shakespeare Criticism, ed. Thomas Middleton Raysor, I (Cambridge, Mass., 1930), 99. 19 Coleridge's Shakespeare Criticism, II, 131.

THE HISTORICAL PERSPECTIVE

23

plots and to the comedies and more to Shakespeare's biography and the thematic significance of his "moral universe". Edward Dowden is renowned for his cataloguing of biographical "periods" in Shakespeare's life and for relating them to the plays. Dowden sees the Dramatic Romances as Shakespeare's final period — "a period of large, serene wisdom . . . " . 2 0 "Reconciliation", according to Dowden, describes the mood of the last comedies, the significance of which is ethical and spiritual. A. C. Bradley's investigations concern the moral world of Shakespeare and are therefore confined primarily to the tragedies. Moulton stresses the moral problems raised in Shakespeare's comedies and pauses to consider Shakespeare's conception of comedy: What is the Shakespearean conception of comedy? We may expect to find that it will comprehend all that has been an element of comedy in the past; further, that its distinctiveness will rest upon the union of drama with romance. 2 1 Moulton views Shakespeare's concept of comedy strictly in terms of the dramatist's ability to merge diverse stories into some kind of romantic unity. Important for the present study is Moulton's emphasis upon Shakespeare's indebtedness to the Greek Romance and to the convention and motifs of the romance tradition as handed down through the Italian Renaissance. Moulton's idea renewed interest in Shakespeare's plots and contributed to many present-day evaluations of Shakespeare's sources. 22 An unpublished dissertation by Wallace Bacon (Michigan, 1940) and E. C. Pettet's ShakesDeare and the Romance Tradition (London, 1949) demonstrate clearly how Shakespeare is beholden to romance for plots, conventions, character types, and themes. 2 3 Besides the interest in Shakespeare's sources, twentieth-century criticism of Shakespeare's plots has taken two other important directions. Ε. E. Stoll, for instance, breaks with the followers of Coleridge and returns to Aristotelian principles by reasserting the primacy of Shakespeare's plots. In rejecting the Victorian critics Stoll tends to overemphasize stage conventions, thereby placing considerable restrictions on the free play of Shakespeare's artistry. In discussing Shakespeare, Stoll says: 20 Shakespeare: His mind and Art (London, 1875), 403. 21 Richard G. Moulton, Shakespeare as a Dramatic Thinker (New York, 1907), 167. 22 Invaluable works dealing with Shakespeare's sources are: Ε. K. Chambers, William Shakespeare: A Study of Facts and Problems, 2 vols. (Oxford, 1930); Narrative and Dramtic Sources of Shakespeare, ed. Geoffrey Bullough, 4 vols. (London, 1957); Kenneth Muir, Shakespeare Sources (London, 1957). 23 See also S. L. Wolff, The Greek Romance in Elizabethan Prose Fiction (New York, 1912), for an exhaustive cataloguing of important romance plots available to every Elizabethan dramatist.

24

THE HISTORICAL PERSPECTIVE

He sought to please pit and gallery and wrote for immediate effect, expecting neither readers nor critics. Hence his work was free from selfconsciousness and the confining requirements of art. 24 What Stoll is primarily renowned for is his revival of historical criticism. Especially important is his relating Shakespeare to the medieval heritage, resulting in a body of criticism which inherits Moulton's interest in Shakespeare's comic plots as reflections of Renaissance enthusiasm for romance.25 As in all areas of Shakespeare criticism, most of the great work in historical analysis has been done by those more interested in the tragedies, particularly E. M. W. Tillyard, Hardin Craig, Lily B. Campbell, Theodore Spencer, Douglas Bush, S. L. Bethell, and Willard Famham. A second important trend in this century is represented by the interests of Logan Pearsall Smith. Smith introduces a penchant for "texture", or as the new critics term it, the "verbal patterns" of Shakespeare's drama. 26 This kind of study replaces the great nineteenth-century interest in character and furnishes one alternative to the examination of plot structure. In recent decades, New Criticism has scrutinized Shakespeare's imagery and language, emphasizing irony, ambiguity, tension, and mood rather than plot. These critics of "texture" concentrate on the poetic dimensions of the plays. Significant works in this group are: L. C. Knights' How Many Children Had Lady Macbeth? and Some Shakespearean Themes; Caroline Spurgeon's Shakespeare's Imagery; William Empson's Seven Types of Ambiguity; G. Wilson Knight's The Shakespearean Tempest. These verbal analysts avoid the larger considerations of plot structure by concentrating on the more manageable aspects of imagery and verbal patterns. These two critical schools of thought — the historical and the verbal — have reinvigorated some interest in the plots of Shakespeare's comedies. The historical critics by concentrating upon stage conventions, influences, and literary traditions have sought to define dramatic form and structure. The new critics, by stressing the autonomy of the text, have made valuable contributions to the understanding of Shakespeare's use of language and language patterns, although they have confined themselves to limited concerns such as imagery and tone. Neither of these critical positions, however, has investigated the implications of Brander Matthews' belief that The Comedy of Errors is the best constructed of Shakespeare's comedies, and that the four Romantic Comedies in their structure . . . are curiously alike. 27 It is my contention that the action of almost all of Shakespeare's 24 Shakespeare Studies (New York, 1927), quoted in Ralli, II, 462. 25 See, for example, W. W. Lawrence's Shakespeare's Problem Comedies (New York, 1931); C. L. Barber's Shakespeare's Festive Comedy (Princeton, 1959). 26 On Reading Shakespeare (New York, 1933). 27 Shakespeare as Play wright (New York, 1913), 143.

THE HISTORICAL PERSPECTIVE

25

comedies are "curiously alike" and that a recognition of certain structural similarities (similarities which I discussed earlier) is tantamount to a definition of Shakespeare's comic theory. Instrumental in the appreciation of the larger symbolic actions of the comedies are the works of such critics as Francis Fergusson and Northrop Frye. These men, according to Wimsatt and Brooks, ask that the Shakespearean scholar consider the overall structure of dramas, Their motives, plots, actions, tragic rhythms, their deeper, wider, and more bulky symbolism, their bigger meaning — in short all that part and aspect of them which may be supposed to be too massive and too important to be penetrated by the technique known as verbal criticism. 28 To understand this interest fully, the reader might turn to Fergusson, a critic who presses for a more philosophical definition of action than that of earlier critics: Aristotle knew plays with a double plot-thread, one of which issues "happily", the other tragically; and he did not like them — they were "less perfect", he says, than pure tragedy; a concession to popular taste. But in his few remarks on the Odyssey he comes closer to describing a multiple plot as Shakespeare employed it. The Odyssey has neither the literal unity . of the one cast of characters, nor the rational unity of the single plot-line. There is the intrigue between Penelope and the suitors. There are the many smaller stories of Odysseus' adventures on the islands and the sea; and at last his conflict with the suitors. The stories are all "actualizations" of the one general action, which is the attempt "to return home". The Odyssey (hoi nostoi) sets forth, in many figures, this basic action, this quest for home. 29 Like Coleridge, Fergusson thinks that the unity of Shakespeare's comedies is thematic, but, similar to the position of this study, he further believes that a theme is fully revealed through artifice of action rather than just through characterization, for, according to Fergusson, in all the comedies a "ritual and allegorical form is basic". 30 While Fergusson related the actions of Shakespeare's plays to an Aristotelian context of universal and typical human experience, Northrop Frye sets Shakespeare within the formal context of literature by looking to the archetypal patterns of literature in order to discover the thematic unity of Shakespearean comedy. 31 Frye points to the movement of comedy 28 William K. Wimsatt and Cleanth Brooks, Literary Criticism: A Short History (New York, 1959), 732. 29 The Idea of a Theatre, 116. 30 "General Introduction", Shakespeare's Comedies of Romance (New York, 1959), 12. 31 My discussion of Northrop Frye is heavily indebted to Mary Curtis Tucker, "Toward a Theory of Shakespearean Comedy: A Study of the Contributions of Northrop Frye", unpublished dissertation (Emory, 1963).

26

THE HISTORICAL PERSPECTIVE

in general — and Shakespearean comedy in particular — toward a birth of a renewed sense of social integration. 32 Although I shall make repeated references to Frye's criticism, my approach will not be from the position of archetypal criticism per se, which views drama as a reflection of certain primordial and universal myths; instead, my analysis of Shakespeare's Dramatic Romances will deal with these plays as part of Shakespeare's total concept of comedy and not with other outside frames of reference. Especially important are those recurring patterns in Shakespeare's comic action and character which I discussed in my introduction. One trend in character interpretation which hampers a spatial interpretation is the generally accepted belief that Shakespeare's characters are "realistic". While his comic plots are scorned as fantastical and implausible by Pope, Johnson, and other Neoclassicists, Shakespeare's characters become an imitation of nature and the "progeny of common humanity, such as the world will always supply, and observation will always find". 33 William Richardson indulges in what becomes the popular Victorian predilection of taking Shakespeare's characters out of context and stressing the moral instruction to be gained. 34 More recently, J. I. M. Stewart tries to sum up some of the mistaken directions of the "realists". In his complex and even bewildering study, Stewart tries to draw attention to the depth — psychological, poetic, and symbolic — of Shakespeare's characterization. Stewart, however, creates more ambiguity than is necessary, as he demonstrates in the following passage on the character of Falstaff: All true drama penetrates through representative fiction to the condition of myth. And Falstaff is in the end the dethroned and sacrificed king, the scapegoat as well as the sweet beef. For Falstaff, so Bacchic, so splendidly with the Maenads Doll and Mistress Quickly a creature of the wine-cart and the cymbal, so fit a sacrifice (as Hal early discerns) to lard the lean, the barren earth, is of that primitive and magical world upon which all art, even if with a profound unconsciousness, draws. 35 What has resulted even in Stewart's work is a criticism which tends to concentrate only on certain controversial comic characters: Falstaff, Shylock, the heroines and the fools. 36 The result of such a limited critical interest is not toward an understanding of the function of character within the dramatic structure, but, at times, toward a criticism which becomes sentimental and subjective. 37 32 See particularly "The Argument of Comedy", English Institute Essays: 1948 (New York, 1959), 58-73. 33 Samuel Johnson, "Preface to Shakespeare", 115. 34 Essay on Some of Shakespeare's Dramatic Characters, 1798, quoted in Ralli, I, 99-102. 35 Character and Motive in Shakespeare (London, 1949), 139. 36 See Tucker, 27-31. 37 For a view of highly subjective interpretations of character, see A. C. Bradley,

THE HISTORICAL PERSPECTIVE

27

Once again it is the perspectives of Francis Fergusson and Northrop Frye which suggest a need to see the imaginative aspects of not only actions, but of characters. There is no denying that Shakespeare puts "real" people (that is, familiar) into his highly romantic narratives; in doing so, he is able to draw attention to the literary artifices being employed and simultaneously construct an imaginative world. Characters like Falstaff, Dogberry, and Sir Toby Belch are certainly realistic, while they also function within the narratives as figures of disorder, as "lords of misrule". 38 And, as Fergusson notes and, as I have noted earlier, Shakespeare even makes room for "danker souls like Malvolio and Don John (who) reveal a dark side of romance, for their love takes the despairing form of envy". 39 There are also romantic characters like Hero, Helena, Portia and Rosalind who go through the process of disguise and restoration. All these types of characters — both realistic and romantic — are present in the Dramatic Romances: realistic characters like Iachimo and Autolycus; romantic characters like Thasia, Imogen, Hermione, and Miranda. These are just a few of the analogies which, as I stated in my introduction, indicate a consistency and unity of purpose in Shakespeare's concept of comedy. In concluding my remarks on the criticism, I reiterate my belief that no consistent theory of Shakespearean comedy exists and that many critics, in fact, do not consider the Dramatic Romances as comedies at all, but as some other hybrid form. The following chapters will attempt to dispel this critical position by demonstrating that Shakespeare's theory of comedy, more than elsewhere, is clearly articulated in the last four plays. Shakespeare constantly emphasizes through his use of symbolic action and character — from the quest of Pericles and the presence of Gower in Pericles and the goal of art in The Winter's Tale, to the culminating depiction of the art of Prospero in The Tempest — the imaginative (and contrived) nature of his comic art and how such an art can invent an idealized ordering which both includes and provides insight into the conflicts, contradictions and limitations of a more real and tragic world.

"The Rejection of Falstaff", Oxford Lectures on Poetry (London, 1909), 247-273, and Morgann's Essay on the Dramatic Character of Sir John Falstaff, ed. William Arthur Gill (London, 1912). In contrast, see E. E. Stoll, Shakespeare Studies, 405, who believes that earlier perspectives, especially those of the Romantics, distorted Falstaff s proper dramatic function; Stoll stresses stage history and convention, and in such a context Falstaff becomes an example of the Miles Gloriosus. Such a view represents the general approach of Historical criticism in its analysis of Shakespeare's characters. 38 C. L. Barber, Shakespeare's Festive Comedy, 24-30. 39 "Introduction", Shakespeare's Comedies of Romance, 12.

3

PERICLES, PRINCE OF TYRE: ROMANCE AND SHAKESPEAREAN COMEDY

Although it did not appear in the First Folio of 1623, Pericles, dated around 1608, is generally accepted as the first of Shakespeare's Dramatic Romances. 1 One feature which distinguishes Pericles and the other three plays — Cymbeline, The Winter's Tale, and The Tempest — is their particular use of fantastic and romantic tales out of Greek Romance. 2 Several critics see in Pericles, with its sixteen year span of action and a resultant episodic plot, the beginning of a Shakespearean experiment with a new kind of dramatic structure. Likewise, these readers note that this play recreates an atmosphere of evil which seems alien to Shakespeare's earlier comedies, but which dissolves under the curtain of dream and unreality. As J. G. McManaway notes, the reader is made aware of the remarkable manner in which this tale of long ago and the far away induces in the reader of spectator a semi-hypnotic state in which everything is experienced as in a dream. This quality, which is shared by The Tempest, invests the narrative and the dramatis personae with significance far in excess of the surface values of the lines. 3 That Pericles is awkward and wooden in structure, characterization, and verse has been convincingly argued by a number of critics. Whether this can 1 According to the Stationers' Register, Pericles was entered by Edward Blount on May 20, 1608; published in the same year was George Wilkins' novel The Painful Adventures of Pericles, Prince of Tyre. J. C. Maxwell believes the novel is dependent upon the play: Pericles (New Cambridge Shakespeare) (London, 1956), pp. xii-xxv. In contrast see Philip Edwards' "An Approach to the Problem of Pericles", Shakespeare Survey K(1952), 25-29, in which he suggests that both the novel and the First Quarto of 1609 are reports of a play probably wholly written by Shakespeare; see also Ε. K. Chambers, William Shakespeare (Oxford, 1930), I, 518-528. 2 Of all the discussions of the sources of Pericles, F. D. Hoeniger's is highly recommended: Pericles (New Arden Shakespeare) (London, 1963), xiii-xlix. The most important source is the Apollonius of Tyre story as it appears in Book VIII of Gower's ConfessioAmantis. As Craig points out, this is not the first time this element appears in Shakespeare, "for the Aegeon-Aemilia episode in The Comedy of Errors is of exactly the same sort, and that episode itself is a variant of the plot which was to appear in Pericles... ": Hardin Craig, A η Interpretation of Shakespeare (New York, 1948), 302. 3 "Review of N. C. S. edn. of Pericles", Modem Language Review LIÏ, No. 4 (October 1957), 583.

PERICLES, PRINCE OF TYRE

29

be attributed to the likelihood of a foreign hand in its compostion I cannot say. 4 Derek Traversi believes such to be the case: As it stands, it is clearly in some sense a stratified construction, in which passages demonstrably in Shakespeare's latest manner are superimposed upon others relatively crude and undeveloped. 5 My purpose is not to demonstrate that Pericles is either a great, poor, or underrated play: it is clearly one of Shakespeare's more lamentable efforts. For my purposes, it is important to view the play in terms of its patterns of action and character and to indicate how these patterns recall earlier Shakespearean comic practice and how they look forward to the later Dramatic Romances. Any discerning reader can point to déficiences in language, characterization, and plotting, which makes the task of analyzing Pericles with the varied and hypersensitive methods of modern criticism even more difficult. One way to approach this play is through the particular nature of its source. The Apollonius of Tyre tale is part of the romantic literature which, according to Pettet, no "Elizabethan writer could help absorbing . . . into his consciousness...". 6 Northrop Fiye says that the romance "is the nearest of all literary forms to the wish-fullfillment dream . . . In every age the ruling social or intellectual class tends to projects its ideals in some form of romance, where the virtuous heroes and beautiful heroines represent the ideals and the villains the threats to their ascendance". 7 Such is the nature of Greek Romance as well as chivalric romance in the Middle Ages and aristocratic romance in the Renaissance with its overtones of Petrarchism and Neo-platonism. Central to romance is the theme of love and its sublime affects, through which man is transformed both morally and spiritually. What is important for this study is the narrative structure of romance, the essential feature of which is its episodic series of adventures. Like Shakespearean comedy, romance moves from one plane of reality to another as the protagonist undergoes adventures replete with danger, separation, and suffering, only to reach some final vision associated with perfection. The form, therefore, becomes the successful quest and, as Frye claims, that quest normally has three main stages: the perilous journey with its minor adventures; the critical struggle with some form of evil; and the final stage of vision. Romance expresses a passage from struggle to near 4 On the problem of authorship see Hoeniger's discussion in which he asserts that Shakespeare undoubtedly wrote all of Acts III-V and certain scenes in Acts I-II (lii-lxiii). He points to the fact that the playwright of Pericles followed the outlines of his sources "more closely than was Shakespeare's usual custom in Comedy or t r a g i - c o m e d y . . . " (xvi). 5 Shakespeare: The Last Phase, 19. 6 Shakespeare and the Romance Tradition, 11. 7 Anatomy of Criticism, 186.

30

PERICLES, PRINCE OF TYRE

death or defeat (or, at times, symbolic death and rebirth) to final recognition. This is the pattern of movement found in the Apollonius of Tyre tale as well as in Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, Spenser's Fairie Queene, and Shakespeare's Pericles. Significantly, this outline which most romance adheres to is likewise the basic movement of Shakespearean comedy. The central form of romance is dialectical, in that everything is focused on a conflict between the hero and some enemy, with the values of importance bound up with the protagonist. In Shakespeare, as has been noted previously, this conflict takes various forms, usually through dialectical concepts of ultimate reality. In Pericles, the hero's enemy is not so much any single antagonist as it is a view of man and the universe which would deny his desire for perfection. What this means, of course, is that Shakespearean comedy is primarily romantic in its narrative structure and that any evaluation of a Shakespearean theory of comedy must take the romance into consideration. In classifying most of the comedies as romantic, I wish to emphasize their universality, since, as Frye points out, the romance is one of the most common forms of literature through the world: The conventions of romantic comedy are much the same whether we find them in Cymbeline, or The Winter's Tale, in Fletcher or Lope de Vega, in the commedia dell' arte or the uninhibited plots of Italian opera . . . If archeologists ever discover a flourishing drama in Mayan or Minoan culture, it may not have plays like Lear or Oedipus but it will assuredly have plays like Pericles. 8 Pericles, although structurally awkward, attests to this universality, while it also shows the unity of Shakespearean comedy and the dramatist's ability for adapting his source material to his comic purpose. One way in which Shakespeare unifies his romantic structure is through the use of a Chorus. Act I of Pericles opens, as do all five acts, with the figure of the artist Gower, thereby introducing the theme of art into the play. Gower discusses the dramatic illusion and makes it clear that the actions of the play are products of art and artifice. In fact, through this figure Shakespeare attests to the imaginative quality of art: I nill relate, action my Conveniently the rest convey, Which might not what by me is told. In your imagination hold This stage the ship, upon whose deck The sea-tost Pericles appears to speak. (III. 55-60) 8 "Comic Myth in Shakespeare", Transactions of the Royal Society of Canada, Section II, XLVI (July 1953), 57.

PERICLES, PRINCE OF T Y R E

31

Gower becomes an early precursor of Prospero in The Tempest. He is the controlling artist-figure who exercises the transforming powers of art in order to suggest some imaginative ideal of human experience. He resembles those earlier characters like Portia, Helena, and Rosalind who have extraordinary powers of control over the course of the action; significantly, in Gower, Shakespeare associates these powers with the artist. It is evident, from the beginning, that as readers we should view Pericles as a journey, not into a tragic universe, but into the imaginative world of Shakespeare's comic art; such a world comes in dramatic conflict with the real realm of experience and imaginatively overwhelms it. Characteristically, then, the dramatic action of Pericles opens on a note of evil and moral disorder. As in the beginnings of a number of earlier comedies — Much Ado, As You Like It, All's Well, Measure for Measure the protagonist is immediately confronted by the complexities of corruption and deceit. Pericles travels to Antioch in order to claim as his bride the beautiful daughter of Antiochus. Gower, in describing the daughter, informs us that an atmosphere of evil contaminates the scene: So buxom, Blithe and full of face As heaven had lent her all her grace; With whom the father liking took, And her to incest did provoke. (I. 23-26) Pericles, unaware of this hidden incest, desires to marry her and accepts the chkllenge of Antiochus' riddle. When Antiochus' daughter appears, another important unifying factor enters. Pericles is a character in search of a vision of perfection to counteract Antiochus' statement that man is entrapped in "death's net, whom none resist" (I.i. 40). Pericles is willing to risk his life for such a "glimpse of heaven" and he hopes that Antiochus' daughter is its incarnation: See, where she comes apparell'd like the spring, Graces her subjects, and her thoughts the king Of every virtue gives renown to men! Her face the book of praises, where is read Nothing but curious pleasures, as from thence Sorrow were ever ras'd, and testy wrath Could never be her mild companion. You gods that made men mad, and sway in love, That have inflam'd desire in my breast To taste the fruit of yon celestial tree Or die in the adventure . . . (I.i. 12-22) Speaking in the typical fashion of the chivalrous lover, Pericles envisions in the daughter what he romantically and ideally would like to see. The

32

PERICLES, PRINCE OF TYRE

language itself suggests an allegorical journey through life toward an ideal of love. Yet, lost in his reverence and eloquence, Pericles is oblivious to the reality of the evil which would destroy the value of what he seeks. Shakespeare, therefore, implies that Pericles needs a more mature understanding of the antinomies of the real world. Shakespeare, as he does with Orlando in As You Like It, Bertram in All's Well, and Olivia in Twelfth Night, points to a pattern of experience and growth which must occur before Pericles can fulfill his quest. Pericles will "taste the fruit" of the celestial tree but not before a series of highly significant adventures. When Pericles diciphers the riddle and discovers its evil message, he rejects vice and its infectious qualities: One sin, I know, another doth provoke; Murther's as near to lust as flame to smoke. Poison and treason are the hands of sin; Ay, and the targets to put off the shame. Then, lest my life be cropp'd to keep you clear, By flight I'll shun the danger which I fear. (I.i. 137-142) Shakespeare establishes a narrative pattern which is common to his comedies: a pattern of action which does not deny evil but does not gravitate toward it; instead, the comedies, as is true of the Dramatic Romances and untrue of the tragedies, deal with a movement away from the confrontation and involvement with evil toward an image of a reality of a perfect moral order. 9 Thus Pericles, with his vision of perfection obscured, flees from the false image of spiritual harmony in Antioch, only to be followed by Thaliard, the malignant agent of Antiochus: Thaliard, You are of our chamber, Thaliard, and our mind partakes Her private actions to your secrecy; And for your faithfullness we will advance you. Thaliard, behold here's poison, and here's gold; We hate the prince of Tyre, and thou must kill him. It fits thee not to ask the reason why. Because we bid it. Say, is it done? (I.i. 151-158) Another crucial consideration in this initial scene is the static character of Antiochus' daughter. She is given no name and seems to function only in 9 The reader might consider, for purposes of contrast, Hamlet's relationship with Ophelia; like Antiochus' daughter, Ophelia is a portrayal of corrupted innocence; however, the action oí Hamlet moves toward a confrontation and analysis of this evil, whereas in Pericles the action moves away from it. Pericles, in the riddle scene, matches his wits against evil and its long history, as does Hamlet, but still remains devoted to his quest for perfection.

PERICLES, PRINCE OF T Y R E

33

order to suggest certain ideas. Indeed, she represents a kind of stage prop which comments symbolically upon characters and actions in the scene. As a static character, she serves as commentary upon Antiochus and his world: like Claudius, he not only perverts law, but also beauty and goodness and thereby renders both passive and non-functional. Into this world comes Pericles, the voyager through life, who responds in a conventional romantic fashion to these complex and hidden subtleties; such a response not only alerts us to a probable maturation theme, but it also brings in tension two opposing forces: Pericles essentially represents, as does Leonates in Cymbeline, a knight-like devotion to an ideal which is characteristic of Shakespeare's comedies; Antiochus, Thaliard, and their world represent a force which is suggestive of Shakespeare's tragic actions. The tragic pattern ultimately plays a secondary role to the comic and is either transformed by, or unified with, it. The next two scenes develop further this contrast between Pericles' search and Antiochus' degeneracy. Through a thematic contrast between Antioch and Tyre, Shakespeare focuses immediate attention on conflicting values. Whereas Antioch is ruled by perverse tyranny, Tyre suggests the rule of joy, order, and trust; whereas Antiochus surrounds himself with agents who reflect and transmit his own evil, Pericles has the trustworthy advice and counsel of Helicanus, who, in answer to Pericles' fear that Antiochus might visit his wrath upon his innocent Tynan citizens, advises that Pericles travel. In this manner, Shakespeare continues the physical movement of the action and, in turn, the symbolic movement. As the play progresses, the action oí Pericles will leave the realm of Antiochus almost entirely, with its connotations of the tragic, and become increasingly unrealistic and symbolic. It becomes a journey away from the known (the riddle and its message) toward the unknown. Shakespeare, the comic puppetmaster, once again pulls on familiar strings. Before the action turns to Pericles' travels, an important motif is introduced by Helicanus; in relating Pericles' departure to his fellow countrymen, Helicanus says: Royal Antiochus, on what cause I know not, Took some displeasure at him; at least he judg'd so; And doubting lest that he had err'd or sinn'd, To show his sorrow, he'd correct himself; So puts himself unto the shipman's toil, With whom each minute threatens life or death. (I.iii. 2 0 - 2 5 )

For the second time in Act I Pericles puts his life in danger; the first time was an effort to realize a "vision" by accepting Antiochus' challenge; now, there is a suggestion of Pericles doing penance, although on a primary level

34

PERICLES, PRINCE OF TYRE

Helicanus' speech indicates his wish to mollify the fears of the Tyrian lords. Yet, Shakespeare, through this device, suggests that Pericles' journey represents a movement away from "frail mortality" toward an idealized world; it is not an escape from that reality (the pursuing malevolence of Antiochus), but an escape to an awaiting perfection. The disappearance of Antiochus and his henchman Thaliard from the narrative testifies to this development: the action of Pericles, after scene three of Act I, moves almost entirely out of the "tragic" world into a world suggestive of romance. Shakespeare has carefully established a tension between Pericles' ultimate goal and the condition of a real and less than perfect world; from here on, we are immersed in the more contrived and less realistic domain of the comic imagination. In the final scene of Act I Pericles travels to Tarsus and introduces the theme of rebirth. Tarsus, in the throes of poverty, hunger, and cannibalism, suffers as a result of the pride of Cleon, its Governor, to whom "the name of help grew odious to repeat" (I.iv. 31). A Boethian theme of the transitoriness of earth's riches is sounded through Cleon's complaints: But see what heaven can do! By this our change, Those mouths who, but of late, earth, sea, and air Were all too little to content and please, Although they gave their creatures in abundance, As houses are defil'd for want of use, They are now starv'd for want of exercise. Those palates who, not yet two savours younger, Must have inventions to delight the taste, Would now be glad of bread, and beg for it. Those mothers who to nuzzle up their babes Thought naught too curious, are ready now To eat those little darlings whom they lov'd. (I.iv. 33-44) Into this setting of moral decay comes Pericles, acting as savior by administrating to the physical and spiritual needs of the city. Moreover, Shakespeare suggests the values which, in this play, will be offered as alternatives to the conundrums of the real world; these values of charity, kindness and love carry with them the potential for a better social whole: We do not look for reverence, but for love, And harbourage for ourself, our ships, and men. (I.iv. 99-100) Similar to Helena in All's Well, Pericles, at this point, functions as an agent of regeneration who both heals and educates a morally and spiritually ailing society. Shakespeare, in Act I, creates certain patterns which are clearly reminis-

PERICLES, PRINCE OF T Y R E

35

cent of his earlier comedies. There is the emphasis upon physical movement as a means of suggesting a form of moral progression; there is the character of Pericles who takes on connotations of the reconciliatory figure employed in As You Like It, The Merchant of Venice and All's Well, but who will ultimately embody other ideas. And, unique to Shakespearean comedy before Pericles, there is the figure of the artist Gower brooding over the action. It will become increasingly clear that in the Dramatic Romances Shakespeare explores more explicitly the function of comic art and that this concept deepens considerably beyond that of Christopher Sly's in The Taming of the Shrew: Is not a commonty a Christmas gambold, or a tumbling-trick? Gower begins Act II by commenting upon the future course of the action. Also, he offers insight into the importance of Pericles' travails: I'll show you those in trouble reign; Losing a mite, a mountain gain. (II. 7-8) Besides indicating that Pericles will have to leave Tarsus, Gower clearly emphasizes how Pericles' eventual gains will be considerable, thus pointing to an action of ascent. Moreover, Pericles once again places his life in jeopardy as his ship wrecks during a tempest and he alone escapes. Similar to his use of the tempest in the opening scene of The Tempest, Shakespeare here implies that such a tempest is not so much the machinations of cruel fortune as it is the workings of a larger artistic design, central to which is the creation of environments of suffering and joy through which the protagonist moves. Act II concerns Pericles' stay in the Greek city of Pentapolis which is ruled over by the good King Simonides. In this setting, Shakespeare sets up further contrasts and parallels. Unlike Tarsus, this city is blessed with prosperity and joy; unlike Pericles' experiences with Cleon, his stay at Pentapolis offers him rebirth: in a joust for the hand of Simonides' daughter Thasia, Pericles has as his motto, In hoc spe vivo (In this hope I live). Pericles hopes for a form of new life which will relieve his dejected state. Important in this reading is Pericles' "devices" for the tournament, a withered branch which is green only at the top, which Simonides interprets: "From the dejected state wherein he is / He hopes by you [Thasia] his fortunes yet may flourish" (II.ii. 46-47). For a second time, Pericles turns to the beauty of a woman in hopes of fulfilling his search. After winning Thasia's hand and love, Pericles is told to postpone marriage for twelve months, which immediately causes Pericles to recall the

36

PERICLES, PRINCE OF T Y R E

former plot of Antiochus: "A letter, that she loves the knight of Tyre? / 'This the King's subtilty to have my life" (II.v. 43-44). Pericles has become conditioned to deceit and evil. In his search for the "celestial" light Pericles loses some of his former trustfulness and momentarily suspects the goodness of Simonides and the purity of Thasia. Because of this complication Pericles' dramatic function changes by its involvement with the character of Thasia. Pericles becomes the searcher who must experience and perceive much more about human experience before he will complete his idealistic quest, while Thasia assumes the role of the symbolic figure in whom final rebirth and reconciliation will ultimately preside. The twelve month delay which Thasia demands represents a continued testing of the knight errant. Another important theme is suggested by Pericles' perturbation over the "angry stars of heaven" which toss him from one misfortune to another. The theme of the superiority of nature to man's frail pursuits unfolds in the scene with the three fishermen. These three characters not only serve the plot function as alleviators of Pericles' desolate condition after a shipwreck, but as articulators of a view of the universe which is diametrically opposed to Pericles' needs: they claim that the fish in the sea survive as do men on land — the larger ones devour the smaller ones. Such would be the view of Antiochus and a ruthless, opportunistic world: a view which Pericles, in his flight, rejects. According to Hoeniger, "the course of Pericles' life is shaped mainly by Providence and only secondarily by his human contacts and his own actions". 10 To a certain extent Hoeniger is correct, but what is noteworthy is how Pericles' passive acceptance of what he calls "fortune's powers" is only one stage of his growth toward his ideal. One fisherman, speaking of King Simonides, says: "He would purge the land of these I drones that rob the bee of her honey" (Il.i. 50-51), which indicates that in certain phases of life the action of men can redress certain contradictions and imbalances. What Shakespeare portrays as a possible rebuttal to man's feelings of estrangement at the workings of nature are those values of human charity and love embodied in his comic action. Shakespeare evokes this pessimistic concept to operate in dramatic tension with the basic movement of his action. Similar to all the comedies, the action of Pericles represents an artistic vision of what ought to be, which will be viewed in ironic and thematic contrast with a concept of a more deterministic and tragic universe which is suggestive of what really is. The latter pattern is closer to Shakespeare's tragic vision, while the former, conceived of as an idealized form of reality, is the basis of his comic theory. In Pericles, this contrast between nature and art is not fully developed. For that, we must look to The Tempest. The theme of art is carried over into Act III, which takes place some 10 Pericles, p. lxxx.

PERICLES, PRINCE OF TYRE

37

two years later and which operates in a sphere of action heavily laden with symbolic overtones. Before the action settles at Ephesus, Pericles, now married to Thasia who bears their child, must return to Tyre in order to settle rising dissension among his lords over his long absence. During another storm, Thasia gives birth to a daughter and is believed dead; to allay the superstitions of his crew, Pericles places Thasia in a chest and turns her body out to sea. Through the storm Thasia's supposed death, Shakespeare terminates the calm of the preceding scene and creates further disorder and separation. Ephesus, in scene two, becomes a magical realm associated with the "secret art" of its benevolent ruler Ceremon. Ceremon's art contrasts with the passive determinism of Pericles: Virtue and cunning were endowments greater Than nobleness and riches. Careless heirs May the two latter darken and expend; But immortality attends the former, Making a man a god. 'Tis known, I ever Have studied physic, though which secret art, By turning o'er authorities, I have, Together with my practice, made familiar To me and my aid the blest infusions That dwells in vegetives, in metals, stones: And I can speak of the disturbances That nature works, and of her cures, which doth give me A more content in course of true delight Than to be thirsty after tottering honour, Or tie my treasures up in silken bags, To please the fool and death. (Ill.ii. 27-42) His "art" searches through nature which reveals its secrets to the inquiring mind. According to Ceremon, instead of being a helpless victim of nature, man has a capacity for exercising some kind of understanding and thereby asserting a degree of control over his destiny. Ceremon, representing the learned man, is also distinguished by his kind charity and his ability to use his knowledge toward perpetuating certain ethical values at his command. Ephesus is also important as a symbolic arena of actions and ideas. Later, in Act V, Ephesus will be the final setting of reconciliation. Similarly, in Act III, it is the place where Thasia's enchested body washes ashore and where Ceremon brings her back to life. Ephesus becomes analogous to the Forest of Arden as a gathering point toward which the action will gravitate. Significantly, Shakespeare introduces it in the middle of the play and thus allows both setting (Ephesus) and character (Ceremon and Thasia) to radiate all the values and pertinent ideas of the entire action: that man, like

38

PERICLES, PRINCE OF TYRE

Ceremon, can make significant moral strides if only he would use his knowledge toward the formulation and perpetuation of an ideal moral system; that man need not fall prey to "fate", as does Pericles, but can exercise some degree of free will toward creating a greater social whole; and lastly, that the great power of art — and comic art in Shakespeare's case — is its capacity for forging these concepts in images of action and character. As Act I opens with corruption and evil, so Act III begins on a note of social chaos. The men of Tyre wish to make Helicanus their king, but he remains loyal to Pericles. In the context of a Shakespearean history play or tragedy, such a situation might indicate that Pericles, like Lear, has abdicated his responsibilities as a ruler; similarly, in Act II, he leaves his newly born daughter with Cleon at Tarsus and thereby neglects his responsibilities as a father. Pericles, however, is neither a tragedy nor a history play. Shakespeare's intent is not to develop the theme of political chaos and kingly responsibility; his main concern rests with emphasizing further separation in the play: Pericles is at Tyre, Thasia, unknown to Pericles, is alive and a priestess at Ephesus, and Marina, his daughter, attains adulthood at Tarsus. Not until they are reconciled will the comic action terminate. Act IV concentrates on what, at first glance, seems an entirely new play. The adventures of Pericles are relegated to a few cursory explanations by Gower, as he fills in lengthy time gaps. This act primarily concerns the treachery of Dionyza, Cleon's wife, and the resulting plight of Marina. The action, once more, begins on a note of disorder (Dionyza's jealousy and her attempts to kill Marina are reminiscent of Antiochus and look forward to the Queen in Cymbelinej. Gower clearly indicates that Marina is a paragon of virtue and perfection and that the once gracious land of Tarsus no longer shares or cultivates these values. When Cleon learns of his wife's treachery, he is shocked. Like Lady Macbeth and Goneril, Dionyza instigates the evil and, in turn, draws her husband into a web of conspiracy. Although Cleon is not directly involved in the plot, as was Macbeth, he is eventually held responsible. Because they are dealt with in such a cursory manner, however, the "tragic" dimensions of Dionyza's acts are never very profound; instead, she resembles a fairy tale witch more than an agent of calculating evil. The action concerns the plight of goodness and perfection and its eventual triumph. Within this one act, Shakespeare presents a miniature of his basic comic action: the values which Marina embodies encompass and transform the pressing forces of corruption, thus bringing these tragic elements into the realm of comic art. 1 1 Dionyza is similar to the Queen in Cymbeline who also 11 Significantly, Shakespeare's Marina, above all, is given a far more prominent role in the play than in the sources. According to Hoeniger, when "considering the Play's purpose and meaning, it will be well to keep some of these changes in mind" (xvii).

PERICLES, PRINCE OF TYRE

39

sets in motion the primary evil in the play but whose evil cannot be effectively transmitted to others. By the end of Act IV, Marina has helped give rise to a new sense of moral order, one which includes various levels of human experience. This important theme of transformation develops in a series of scenes which depict Marina's pilgrimage in a brothel. Boulton, the Bawd's principal procurer, is convinced that Marina's beauty ("What a paragon she is") will effectively stir the lewd emotions. Instead, however, Marina's goodness changes this brothel into a house of moral correction, for, as Boulton caustically remarks, she would "make a puritan of the devil". Because he can find no one to ravish Marina, Boulton decides to do it himself. Marina, in turn, converts him, as Imogen does Iachimo in Cymbeline, and neutralizes his villainy. If Act IV seems incredible and highly implausible to the reader, I would say that it was so intended. Shakespeare implies that such a conversion would be unlikely in the "real" world and through the use of humor and irony, Shakespeare makes these scenes palatable to realistic tastes; note, for instance, some of Boulton's responses to Marina's proficiency as a prostitute: She makes our profession as it were to stink afore the face of the gods. (IV. vi. 144-145) and The nobleman would have dealt with her like a nobleman, and she sent him away as cold as a snowball; saying his prayers too. (IV. vi. 147-149) Boulton's lamentations offer some perspective to Marina's function in the play. She represents the ideal, however carelessly portrayed, and, more importantly, an active force of goodness. Unlike his earlier presentation of Antiochus' daughter, Shakespeare, in Marina, creates a dynamic force of beauty and goodness and presents it as a compelling counterforce to the malicious evil of Dionyza. Later Imogen, in Cymbeline, becomes a much more forceful symbol of these qualities than does Marina. By viewing Marina's exhortations in contrast to Boulton's crude realism Shakespeare creates a dramatic tension which is characteristic of his comedies. And, similar to his usual comic practice, it is the image of an ideal moral code which dynamically overcomes a code of self-interest and exploitation. This theme of goodness and perfection enriched through experience constitutes the importance of the dumb show in Act IV. Here, Pericles is seen kneeling before what he thinks to be the tomb of Marina. Dionyza

40

PERICLES, PRINCE OF TYRE

even writes a glowing epitaph for the tomb, and Pericles sees it as a symbol of Marina's virtue. Pericles is a picture of acceptance and resignation, still believing "his courses to be ordered by Lady Fortune", even to the point of assuming a ritualistic show of sackcloth mourning and penance. What Pericles does not perceive is that his "course" is not totally determined by fortune, but partly by the treachery and flattery of Dionyza. Pericles accepts his fate passively and never actively asserts goodness in face of evil and disaster. Marina's character, through the brothel scenes especially, crystallizes as the reader views her active goodness in contrast to Pericles' passive determinism: But what the brothel scenes emphasize in her (Marina) is a quality stronger than anything in Pericles. He tried to protect himself from the wastes of infidelity and sorrow by his ritual-like asceticism, wearing mourning garments, letting his hair grow to deformity, fleeing even into dumbness. After a while Pericles could only run from evil, though Marina somehow overcame it. 12 Shakespeare, besides demonstrating Pericles' further need for moral growth, shows how Marina's assertive virtue ennobles and overwhelms baseness. Marina, in Act V, continues an active part of her character — her role as teacher. Earlier she had schooled the brothel in the strength and fortitude of her virtue and now she will teach Pericles those same values. Pericles, in a state of mute grief, has not spoken for three months as the tempests turn his ship toward Mytilene, the place where Marina lives in an "honest house" and where she is renowned for her goodness and wisdom. Marina comes to Pericles, not knowing that she confronts her own father, and relates her griefs: My lord, that, may be, hath endur'd a grief Might equal yours, if both were justly weigh'd. Though wayward fortune did malign my state, My derivation was from ancestors Who stood equivalent with mighty kings. (V.i. 88-92) There is present a contrast between the way Marina heroically bears her grief and the way Pericles' acedia has paralyzed him into sterile passivity. When Pericles realizes Marina is his daughter, his regeneration begins. As with the depictions of Portia, Helena, and Rosaline, Shakespeare portrays a character who functions as an agent of regeneration and who, as Hoeniger notes, enables Pericles to "see beyond tragedy". 13 What remains to complete this highly imaginative action is a setting proper to the regene12 John Arthos, "Pericles, Prince of Tyre: A Study in The Dramatic Use of Romance Narrative", Shakespeare Quarterly IV (Summer 1953), 268. 13 Pericles, lxxxv.

PERICLES, PRINCE OF TYRE

41

ration theme and that, accordingly, is Ephesus, the magical realm of Ceremon. Though the vision of Diana which appears to Pericles and instructs him to go to her altar at Ephesus, Shakespeare introduces, as he did as far back as The Comedy of Errors, certain spiritual associations to the place of reconciliation. First, it is at the altar of Diana in Ephesus that Pericles discovers his wife, Thasia, now a high priestess. Also, the vision completes the theme of nature by indicating that man is not indifferently cast about by fortune, but "Led on by heaven, and crown'd with joy at last" (Epilogue, 6). Through Shakespeare's comic imagination, an image of man's triumph over evil pays homage to the ideal of a perfect moral order. And so our discussion of Pericles has come full circle. It is a cycle common to romance and to Shakespearean comedy; that is, the action moves from an opening situation of evil and moral chaos to a concluding image of the success of goodness and a resulting sense of restoration and spiritual gain. Through the use of symbolism, moreover, Shakespeare, in the action and characters of Pericles, depicts how the ideal values of human love, charity, and mutual reciprocation, within a world created, controlled, and directed by the artist, can find fruition and harmonious propagation. What Shakespeare creates is not so much a view of the "tragic" world (as some critics claim), as an imaginative ideal which points to both the limitations and potentialities of man's moral existence.

4

CYMBELINE: HOLINSHED AND SHAKESPEAREAN COMEDY

Cymbeline, generally dated around 1609-1611 1 , is second to Pericles in the order of Shakespeare's four Dramatic Romances. As in the case of Pericles, Cymbeline furnishes no real difficulties in its sources, but does present an interesting instance in which the reader can observe Shakespeare's ability to weld diverse sources and plots into a symbolic and romantic unity. The two primary sources are Boccaccio's Decameron and Holinshed's Chronicle: Shakespeare combines the wager-plot, a common story circulated in much of European literature, and the legendary history from the Scottish section of Holinshed. He does this, I believe, not for historical purposes, but for the symbolic elements evoked in Boccaccio's ninth novel of the second day and Holinshed's account of King Cymbeline's conflict with the Romans. 2 Into this framework, Shakespeare weaves the story of Belarius and the lost princes which is drawn from the old play The Rare Triumphs of Love and Fortune (1589), a romantic tale which deals with the unjust banishment of Hermione, an orphan brought up in the court of Phizantius. Like Shakespeare's Imogen (who uses the name Fidele) in Cymbeline, the heroine of this romantic story, Fidelia, goes to meet her banished lover only to come upon the cave of Bomelio, a former courtier exiled by Phizantius. Finally the lovers overcome the treachery of Armenio, who, like Cloten in Shakespeare, provokes the separation and disorder. This plot is very close to the circumstances leading up to the banishment of Posthumus and the Belarius story, both of which fall outside the Holinshed or wager-story sources. Nosworthy argues for the prose tale of Frederyke ofJennen as a more direct source of the wager-plot than the Decameron: 1 For a glance at the question of dating, see J. M. Nosworthy, ed., Cymbeline (New Arden Shakespeare) (London, 1955), xiii-xviii, who is inclined to the 1608 or 1609 dating of the play; see also E. K. Chambers, I, who places Cymbeline in the 16091610 period for reasons of stylistic affinities to the plays of the last period. Dr. Simon Forman, in his commonplace book, records the earliest known date of the performance of the play in 1611. 2 See G. Wilson Knight, The Crown of Life (London, 1947), who argues that Cymbeline should be viewed as a historical play (129).

CYMBELINE: HOLINSHED AND SHAKESPEAREAN COMEDY

43

Frederyke of Jennen is, in essence, the same as the Decameron story, though it is less artistic, more prolix and betrays signs of mistranslation. Its differences lie in points of detail, and it is significant that at several points it agrees with Cymbeline while differing from Boccaccio. Whereas in the Decameron all the merchants are Italian, in Frederyke of Jennen we find that "foure ryche marchauntes departed out of divers countreis" and that they comprise a Spaniard, a Frenchman, a Florentine and a Genoese. This will account for what is otherwise inexplicable, the fact that the company in Philario's house comprises Iachimo, a Frenchman, a Dutchman, and a Spaniard, of whom the last two are mutes . . . The villian of Frederyke of Jennen, like Iachimo, declares that he has lost the wager the moment that he sets eyes on the heroine. 3 He goes on to say that it is impossible to eliminate Boccaccio, for in scenes of description, like the heroine's bedchamber, Frederyke of Jennen is inferior. As a consequence, Nosworthy favors both as sources, but leans toward the prose tale as a more direct influence (for, he says, there is no evidence that Shakespeare could read Italian). The argument does not seem particularly important when one realizes that the wager-story is a common stock-in-trade for the writer of romantic stories. Shakespeare simply ennobles his characters so that they may fall within the framework of the courtly world of romance. Instead of merchants, he uses kings and princes, characters more suitable to the generic requirements of a highly romantic play. In Holinshed's account of the legendary reign of King Cymbeline, there is one question raised about the two sons, Guiderius and Arviragus, who become in Shakespeare the lost sons taken to the forest by the banished Belarius. In Holinshed, however, the conflict with the Romans results from Guiderius' refusal to pay tribute to Rome. Another possible source appears in Thomas Blennerhasset's "The Complaint of Guiderius" in Mirror for Magistrates, in which Guiderius' character is offered as a moral and political example as he goes forth into battle with the intention of winning all the worlde, spoyled France, Germany, and a great part of Italy: and lastly, how hee was .miserably slayne in a tempest of thunder, even at what time hee shoulde have dealt with Caesar. This History is a synguler ensample of God's vengance, against pride and arrogancy. 4 In this play, Guiderius upsets the order of God and the State and loses his spiritual being; in a storm, symbolic of a spiritual and political disorder, Guiderius is punished and order is restored. Like many of the tales in Mirror for Magistrates, Blennerhasset's depicts the fall of the Prince and offers it as a mirror of conduct for the politically ambitious. Of course, 3 Cymbeline, xxiv. See Appendix A of the Nosworthy edition for a reprint of Frederyke of Jennen. 4 Parts Added to Mirror for Magistrates, ed. Lily Β. Campbell (Cambridge, 1946), 386.

44

CYMBELINE: HOLINSHED AND SHAKESPEAREAN COMEDY

this kind of material would be more suited for a history play, which is basically didactic and political in nature. It is significant to note that Shakespeare's Cymbeline, like Pericles, is neither. In proving that Shakespeare made use of the Mirror, Harold F. Brooks points to Act III, scene i, of Cymbeline. In this scene, "Shakespeare dramatizes the British refusal to pay tribute originally imposed by Julius Caesar, and now demanded by a successor — Augustus in the play (and for this there is a basis in Holinshed), but Claudius in most accounts". 5 Brooks sees parallels to this scene in Blennerhasset's "Complaint of Guiderius" and "especially with the tragedies of Nennius, Irenglas, Guiderius, and Cauius Julius Caesar, by Higgins, in The Mirror for Magistrates, 1587 ...". 6 In Shakespeare, however, it is Cymbeline, not Guiderius, who refuses to pay the tribute. Such a change seems more appropriate in that Shakespeare moves the two sons out of the world of history into the romantic world of Belarius' cave. Thus Cymbeline is neither a history play nor a tragedy. As Irving Ribner notes, the play is a "romantic drama employing historical figures.. ." 7 and furnishes insight into Shakespeare's method of manipulating sources for his own artistic and comic purposes. Shakespeare takes the historical sources and turns away from their serious and didactic intents and produces a characteristic Shakespearean comedy. He places Cymbeline's two sons in the green world of the pastoral instead of on the bloody fields of history; he links this setting to the romantic story of the wager-plot, using princes instead of merchants; he employs the romantic trappings of the virtuous heroine, disguises, and the forgiveness and reconciliation theme common to earlier Shakespearean comedy; he uses elements which can be found in The Rare Triumphs of Love and Fortune and other romance tales - elements like a banished lover raised at court, a boorish brother, Jupiter as a deus ex machina and the name Fidele. Later, in The Winter's Tale, Shakespeare also adopts the name, Hermione, for one of his characters. As Nosworthy takes pains to note, Love and Fortune has a more romantic flavor than any of the other sources, for the dramatic conduct of Cymbeline requires that Posthumus and Imogen should be parted reunited, that Imogen's lost brothers should be found, 5 "Act III and Scene i and The Mirror for Magistrates", printed in Nosworthy, 212. 6 Ibid. 7 The English History Play in the Age of Shakespeare (Princeton, 1957), 267. See also J. P. Brockban, "History and Histrionics in Cymbeline", Shakespeare Survey XI (1958), 42-49, who calls the play both a "historical-pastoral" and a "historical romance". Another historical factor is pointed out by Northrop Frye in "the Argument of Comedy" who observes that Cymbeline's reign corresponds with the birth of Christ. For a development of this idea, see Robin Moffet, "Cymbeline and the Nativity", Shakespeare Quarterly XIII (Spring 1962), 207, who believes that this historical fact is "reflected in the form and details of the play".

CYMBELINE: HOLINSHED AND SHAKESPEAREAN COMEDY

45

that the wrongs done to Belarius should be set right, and that all discordant circumstances should be resolved into a final invulnerable unity. 8 What Nosworthy describes is the essential action of Shakespearean comedy. Although the wager-plot and the historical matter are not germane to romance, according to Coleridge and Nosworthy, they help Shakespeare to elaborate, motivate, and complicate and "finally to secure that willing suspension of disbelief which constitutes poetic, and sometimes dramatic, faith". 9 There have been two essential critical approaches to Shakespeare's Cymbeline: one involves the somewhat overly subtle interpretations of critics like Tillyard and G. Wilson Knight 10 and the other is represented by those who prefer to view the play within its romantic and tragi-comic conventions. Clearly both these elements are at work within the play which indicates that Shakespeare is operating within a different kind of dramatic structure; it is not divorced, however, from his earlier comedies in its symbolism and conception, but seems, instead, to move into a slightly different kind of dramatic form. Northrop Frye notes that Shakespearean comedy illustrates as "clearly as any mythos we have, the archetypal function of literature in visualizing the world of desire, not as any escape from "reality", but as the genuine form of the world that human Ufe tries to imitate". 11 Such a vision is embodied in the dramatic action and, according to Frye, Cymbeline belongs to what he calls the "fifth phase of comedy" where the design of the play takes on an increasingly religious cast and "seems to be drawing away from human experience altogether". 12 What Nosworthy and E. C. Pettet see as a masterfully woven romantic plot becomes a part of Shakespeare's comic development. Shakespeare uses many romantic conventions in Cymbeline, common to all his comedies, for his own unique purposes. What the reader must see is the way in which Shakespeare uses such conventional njodes as romance and pastoralism in his own dramaturgy and how a play like Cymbeline is related to his comic development. Perhaps Cymbeline does not contain the profundity which Tillyard and Knight ascribe to it, but its scope seems to extend beyond that of conventional romance. 13 8 Cymbeline, xxvi-xxvii. 9 Ibid., xxvii. 10 See The Crown of Life in which Knight sees the last plays as the "inevitable development of the questioning, the pain, the profundity and grandeur of the plays they succeed" (9). 11 Anatomy of Criticism, 184. 12 Ibid., 185. 13 See F. R. Leavis, "A Criticism of Shakespeare's Late Plays", Scrutiny X (1942), 339-345, who argues against trying to impose a profound significance upon a play whose scope, he believes, does not extend beyond that of conventional romance; in

46

CYMBELINE: HOLINSHED AND SHAKESPEAREAN COMEDY

Cymbeline opens on a note of social disorder and injustice. Leonatus Posthumus, patterned after the chivalric hero of romance, 14 is banished from Cymbeline's court and Britain due to the treachery of the Queen and her son, Cloten. Like Helena at the beginning of All's Well, Posthumus is degraded because he lacks the noble birth of Prince Cloten and therefore cannot marry the king's daughter, Imogen. In the first act, Shakespeare draws a contrast between Posthumus and the "noble" Cloten: Leonatus is spoken of in terms of the chivalric code while Cloten, although treacherous, is viewed in extremely foolish terms. Unlike Helena, Posthumus is not overly perceptive or intelligent. As a romantic lover, he resembles Orlando of /Is You Like It. In the first act, through analogy, the reader can guess the future direction of the play: Imogen is an extension of earlier heroines like Rosalind and Helena as she is the figure who holds the action together and moves it toward a final reconciliation; Cymbeline is the slightly misguided King who is deceived by the treachery of his Queen and who must attain forgiveness for his transgressions against Posthumus, Imogen, and Belarius; the Queen is the figure who instigates and controls most of the "tragic" aspects of the play — she seeks to place her son on the throne and wishes to eliminate both Posthumus and Imogen if necessary; Cloten, because of his foolishness and false bravado, is never taken seriously as an agent of evil: he is no Iago; Iachimo, on the other hand, has been compared to Iago, but does not possess the intensity and malevolent seriousness of the Othello villain; he is closer to what Nosworthy calls the "mischief-maker" of comedy since he offers opposition to Posthumus' highly romantic view of love. In fact, in the process of the play, both Posthumus and Iachimo come to realize and perceive the idealized reality common to Shakespearean comedy. In Act I, Shakespeare, as he does in Pericles, brings into conflict two opposing views through separate evaluations of Posthumus' character. In one expository passage, two gentlemen contrast the characters of Posthumus and Cloten:

opposition to this view, see F. C. Tinkler, "Cymbeline", Scrutiny VII (1938), 5-20, who would agree with Tillyard's notion that the play is a continuance of Shakespeare's achievements in tragedy; this controversy extends also to Father A. A. Stephenson, "The Significance of 'Cymbeline'", Scrutiny X (1942), 329-338, who refutes Tinkler's argument and sees that Shakespeare was preoccupied with the "idea of an ideal perfection, an absolute value". 14 See W. W. Lawrence, Shakespeare's Problem Comedies (New York, 1931), 174-205, and his discussion of Posthumus and his actions. He shows that the wager theme is a popular part of romantic.tradition and sees Shakespeare's characters as gentlemen: Posthumus' actions are reflective of the knight and man of chivalry in general and his wager with Iachimo is according to the rule of chivalry.

CYMBELINE: HOLINSHED A N D SHAKESPEAREAN COMEDY

47

1. Gent. He that hath miss'd the Princess is a thing Too bad for bad report meaning (Cloten): and he that hath her (I mean, that married her, alack good man! And therefore banish'd) is a creature such As, to seek through the regions of the earth failing In him that would compare.I do not think So fair an outward, and such stuff within Endows a man but he. 2. Gent.

You speak him far.

1. Gent. I do extend him sir, within himself; Crush him together rather than unfold His measure duly. (I.i. 16-27) Such nobility embues Leonatus with a knight-like ardor reminiscent of Pericles. In opposition to this romantic view is Iachimo's cynical judgment of Posthumus: Believe it sir, I have seen him in Britain. He was then of a crescent note, expected to prove so worthy as since he hath been allowed the name of. But I could then have look'd on him without the help of admiration, though the catalogue of his endowments had been tabled by his side and I to peruse him by items. (I.iv. 1-7) Iachimo, representative of a cynical and materialistic world, thinks that all men are corrupt and that the ideal values embodied in Leonatus' love are inoperative in a real world. Iachimo, like the action of the play, will move away from this rigid pessimism toward an awareness of perfection. Similar to this contrast is the one between Posthumus and Cloten, with Imogen significantly in the middle. Posthumus represents a form of natural nobility, uneducated in the subtler intricacies of court intrigue. Cloten is "civilized" but foolishly superficial in his conception of nobility and refinement. Between these two extremes stands Imogen who opposes her father's wishes by marrying Posthumus; in doing so, she exercises her superior insight and wisdom which is juxtaposed to the blindness of Cymbeline. By the end of the play both Cymbeline and Posthumus will gain a certain wisdom through a reconciliation with Imogen. Of central importance in Act I is the wager-plot. Posthumus, in a somewhat imprudent manner, extols the virtues of Imogen to the company of gentlemen at Philario's home in Rome. He is immediately challenged by

48

CYMBELINE: HOLINSHED AND SHAKESPEAREAN COMEDY

Iachimo who scoffs at the notion of virtue and chastity. Iachimo, however, is no villain in reality, but is primarily an agent of a skeptical and realistic world. Iachimo, within the context of Shakespeare's comic world, must be converted; Posthumus, like Pericles, also must undergo a moral growth so that he may gain the mature understanding of love common to Shakespeare's comedies. When Iachimo falsely accuses Imogen of adultery (although no longer legally married to Leonatus, Imogen would be considered his "spiritual bride"), he furnishes a test for Posthumus' constancy. Afterwards, when Iachimo deceives him, Posthumus will go through a period of guilt, suffering, and comic redemption, for it is through the forgiveness of Imogen that Leonatus gains a vision of order and richer meaning to love. While the wager-plot motivates a major romantic thread in the play, it also points to certain tragic implications which must be included and ultimately transformed within the comic action. When Iachimo goes to Britain to seduce Imogen and win the wager, he is immediately struck by her perfections: All of her that is out of door most rich! If she be furnish'd with mind so rare, She is alone th' Arabian bird, and I Have lost the wager. Boldness be my friend! Arm me, audacity, from head to foot! Or, like the Parthian, I shall flying fight; Rather, directly fly. (I. vi. 15-21) When Iachimo tries "boldness and audacity" he is quickly repelled by Imogen. As a result, he reverts to trickery and deception - familiar tools of the comic "mischief-maker". Such traits are common to Iago as well, but in a comedy such as Cymbeline, tragedy is averted and potential evil is consumed and transformed. Iachimo, himself, sees the possibilities of tragic action when he enters Imogen's bedchamber while she sleeps: The crickets sing, and man's o'erlabour'd sense Repairs itself by rest. Our Tarquín thus Did softly press the rushes ere he waken'd The chastity he wounded. Cytherea, How bravely thou becom'st thy bed! That I might touch! But kiss; one kiss! Rubies unparagon'd, How dearly they d o ' t . . . . (Il.ii. 11-18)

CYMBELINE: HOLINSHED AND SHAKESPEAREAN COMEDY

49

Iachimo does not speak lustfully, but sees in Imogen a glimpse of a superior form of reality. In this one scene alone Iachimo begins his conversion. He makes reference to the myth of Philomel — a myth which Shakespeare used for tragic purposes in The Rape of Lucrece and its tragic pattern. In Cymbeline, however, the tragic action of Lucrece is not reinacted but redirected. The action moves toward a conversion and regeneration in which the comic and romantic action assimilates as much of human experience as possible in its final unity. The potential tragedy of lachimo's position is averted and he gains forgiveness at the end — not suddenly and dramatically unmotivated, but prepared for by his instant perception into Imogen's character. Iachimo, who possesses the critical awareness of a skeptical and cynical world, gains insight into love and moral awareness through Imogen; Posthumus, limited by the circumscribed bounds of the romantic lover, reaches a mature perception of human potentiality. In these two characters, Shakespeare merges two different views of the world into the reconciliatory realm of his comic imagination. An important symbol in Act I furnishes insight into Posthumus' shortcomings at this stage of the action. The ring which Imogen gives Posthumus at their separation (he in return gives her a bracelet) represents to him a tangible token of their bond. Iachimo, the materialist, believes that ideal concepts must inevitably succumb to materialistic exploitation and expediency. It would be expected thatPosthumus does not share this view. When Iachimo discovers that Imogen's virtue is adamant, he turns away from the intangibility of ideal virtue or chastity toward the material: he steals the bracelet and other valuables and sneaks a look at a mole on a sleeping Imogen's breast. When Posthumus is confronted with these tangible proofs, he accepts defeat, thus losing his faith in Imogen. As Traversi astutely observes, the romantic love of Posthumus, "far from being, as he believes, a final and sufficient relationship, needs to be subjected to a destructive process which will eventually bring it to full maturity". 15 Posthumus' view of Imogen has been corrupted by courtly deceit and worldly cynicism. The action of the play will remove both Posthumus and Imogen from that context — as in A s You Like It — into a setting which is highly suggestive of art and artifice. The Queen and Cloten offer opposition to the progression of the action toward its ideal order. The Queen, like the foolish Cloten, threatens to destroy rather than create. From the beginning, she does not provide any real mystery. Imogen recognizes her deceit from the first: Dissembling courtesy! How fine this tyrant Can tickle where she wounds! (I.i. 84-85) 15

Shakespeare: The Last Phase, 52.

50

CYMBELINE: HOLINSHED AND SHAKESPEAREAN COMEDY

Significantly Posthumus fails to make such observations; he, unlike Imogen, is not fully conscious of the kind of threat which the Queen poses. Later, when the Queen receives the drugs from Cornelius, the physician, she fails to deceive him concerning the nature of her character; he therefore gives her a harmless potion in order to curtail any evil design. In reality, the Queen only fools one person and that is Cymbeline. In keeping with a comic convention, Cymbeline becomes a slightly ennobled senex; of course, in his stand against the threat of Rome, Cymbeline is characterized as more than an old fool. As in the Iachimo-Imogen scenes, the relationship between Cymbeline and his Queen has overtones of a tragic action. The Queen, however, is no Lady Macbeth, but rather an ineffectual extension of Dionyza, who becomes ludicrous in her blatant designs against Imogen and Posthumus. After the first act, the Queen's actions, like Antiochus' in Pericles, are relegated to the background and are not seen significantly. When she hears of Cloten's absence she becomes ill, is reported to have gone mad, and eventually dies. Perhaps Nosworthy is correct when he sees Cymbeline as similar to the fairy-tale king and the Queen as the witch. It is one of the major weaknesses of the play that the Queen's character is totally submerged by the romantic action (Shakespeare does not even bother to give her a name); because of this, her role is mechanical, used only to complicate the movements of other principal characters. Of course, in keeping with Shakespeare's comic practice and romantic conventions in general, her character does not necessarily have to be realistic. She does increase the pensive, and less festive, mood of the play. A significant contrast might be drawn between the Queen and the character of Ceremon in Pericles. Whereas Ceremon's "secret art" illustrates the proper use of knowledge toward the creative goal of a greater social integration, the "art" of the Queen, who likewise has studied science and physic, only corrupts nature by rendering its flowers poisonous. CQjpelius warns her that such "experiments" will harden the heart and that such practice is infectious. Here is an image of the sterility and negation of evil which also suggests the causes for the Queen's subsequent death. She is one character who is not brought into the final scene of social order; there is no rebirth for the Queen, only a sudden and mysterious disappearance from the comic action. Cloten is more instrumental in the play than the Queen. He may resemble the braggart soldier of comedy, but his primary function seems to be as a combination fool-villain. He hates Imogen for not loving him and wishes to have revenge. From the beginning, Cloten cannot be taken too seriously, but the fact that he is killed in the forest (Mitford Haven) does seem important. The setting of the forest in Cymbeline is not one of light innocence; it contains a potential tragedy. Cloten is deceived easily

CYMBELINE: HOLINSHED AND SHAKESPEAREAN COMEDY

51

b y Pisanio, Posthumus' servant, and goes into the forest t o intercede in a meeting between Posthumus and Imogen. Disguised in the garments o f Posthumus, Cloten compares himself to Imogen's lover: I mean, the lines of m y b o d y are as well drawn as his; no less young, more strong, not beneath him in fortunes, beyond him in the advantage of the time, above him in birth, alike conversant in general services, and more remarkable in single oppositions. Y e t this imperceiverant thing loves him in my despite. What mortality is! Posthumus, thy head, which now is growing upon thy shoulders, shall within this hour be o f f . . . . ( j y j j o_i 9) It is the old theme o f appearance versus reality. Cloten foolishly looks t o the outer aspects o f man's mortal existence, failing t o perceive the nobility of the spirit which Posthumus possesses. Cloten does not take part in the transforming aspects o f the green world: he thinks that Guiderius is a robber when they meet and, in his foolishness, Cloten loses his head when he provokes the king's lost son. Death does enter the comic world, but it is curiously transformed and ennobled. When Imogen sees the headless b o d y of Cloten, she thinks it is Posthumus and suspects Pisanio o f treachery. Imogen, likewise, becomes subject t o human suspicion and frailty. She, like Marina, attains more knowledge through human action so that the social unity at the conclusion will be more lasting and universal. While Cymbeline faces the outside problem of Roman invasion he is involved in the primary problem of an internal, moral upheaval. It is here that the plot o f Belarius and the lost princes becomes important. In the play, the world o f Belarius' cave is viewed in contrast t o the foolishness and disorder o f Cymbeline's realm. Belarius draws a parallel of some significance: A goodly day not to keep house, with such Whose r o o f s as low as ours! Stoop, boys. This gate Instructs y o u h o w t'adore the heavens and bows you T o a morning's holy office. The gates of monarchs Are arch'd so high that giants may jet through And keep their impious turbands on without G o o d morrow to the sun. Hail, thou fair heaven! We house i' th' rock, yet use thee not so hardly A s prouder livers do. , , „ . . . , „x (IH.m. 1-9)

52

CYMBELINE: HOLINSHED AND SHAKESPEAREAN COMEDY

Belarius, described as the "conventional romance hermit", 1 6 teaches the king's sons humility and brotherhood. Using a pastoral setting to reflect upon the corruption of the palace world, Shakespeare employs the humility and compassion of Belarius as normative values to offset the complexity and disorder of Cymbeline's moral blindness. When the brothers, Guiderius and Arviragus, see Imogen disguised as a boy, they immediately express a feeling of love, compassion, and brotherhood: the very values so important to Pericles. In such a setting Imogen, wronged as Belarius is wronged, gains new insight into human love and kindness. It is important to take special notice of the fact that it is Belarius and the two young princes who save the social order when they rescue Cymbeline from the clutches of the Romans. The action in the forest symbolizes a rebirth and regeneration for the realm: Posthumus begins to feel the powers of this higher spiritual perception after the Vision of Jupiter; he reads from the "fare book" of the green world: 'When as a lion's whelp shall, to himself unknown, without seeking find, and be embrac'd by a piece of tender air; and when from a stately cedar shall be lopp'd branches which, being dead many years, shall after revive, he jointed to the old stock, and freshly grow; then shall Posthumus end his miseries. Britain be fortunate and flourish in peace and plenty.' (V.iv. 138-145) He reads the prophecy of a future world; it is a place divorced from the world of experience, for "Tis still a dream, or else such stuff as madmen / Tongue, and brain n o t . . . " (V.iv. 146-147); it is a world of desire and wishfulfillment imaginatively embodied in Shakespeare's comedies. It is in this sense that the forest — the green world Frye describes — becomes the world of art. It is not a way to "escape" experience, but a way to dramatize and embody an image of the ideal. The scene of recognition and reconciliation in Act V brings all disharmonious elements into a harmony of brotherhood. Roman and British, nobility and commoner, the ideal and the real are all merged in a visionary scene of artistic unity. Ironically a Jailer best describes those values which the action of Cymbeline seeks to represent: I would we were all of one mind, and one mind good. O, there were desolation of jailers and gallowses! I speak against my present profit, but my wish hath a preferment in't. (V.iv. 211-215) 16 Nosworthy, p. liiL

CYMBELINE: HOLINSHED AND SHAKESPEAREAN COMEDY

53

All the principals — Cymbeline, Leonatus, Iachimo — seek unity in the name of Imogen, whom they have all wronged and incorrectly interpreted, and who functions as the agent of higher perception. 17 She, like Marina, is a dynamic symbol of goodness which represents a counterforce to, and a triumph over, the negation and destructiveness of the Queen and infectious evil. She is the primary character who overcomes all obstacles, all natural fact, and leads us to the final end of Shakespearean comedy, "a movement from things in themselves toward a moment of natural perfection . . . " . 18 Another augury of unity and rebirth is suggested by the Soothsayer as he attempts to interpret his glimpse of an eagle flying toward the sun: For the Roman eagle From South to West on wing soaring aloft, Lessen'd herself and in the beams o' the sun So vanish'd; which foreshow'd our princely eagle, Th' imperial Caesar, should again unite His favour with the radiant Cymbeline, Which shines here in the West. (V.v. 471-277) According to one critic, the tradition of the eagle's flight into the sun signified a renewal of youth and vision, "applicable to all the surviving persons of the play and to the whole world in which its action takes place". 19 In such a way I have tried to include some of the aspects of a play like Cymbeline which I think most important in fully assessing both Shakespeare's use of symbolism and his comic theory. It is one thing to see the play as a romance, a history play, or a tragi-comedy, but still another to view it in the light of Shakespeare's development as a comic artist. Cymbeline as a work of art has many faults — perhaps more than I realize — but as an expression of a comic artist's view of man's material and spiritual existence, it cannot be overlooked as merely a "conventional romance" ; n which Shakespeare masterfully weaves together diverse source materials. Like Shakespeare's earlier comedies and The Winter's Tale and The Tempest, Cymbeline exhibits the characteristic interests and continued development of a unique comic vision.

17 Significantly, Iachimo's repentance and integration into the final order is contrary to the sources, in which he dies as punishment for his crimes. 18 Geoffrey Bush, Shakespeare and the Natural Condition (Cambridge, Mass., 1956), 23. 19 Robin Moffet, "Cymbeline and the Nativity", 217.

5

THE WINTER'S TALE: PASTORALISM AND SHAKESPEAREAN COMEDY

With The Winter's Tale Shakespeare's Dramatic Romances attain artistic maturity. This play, written inthel610-1611 period, 1 displays a structural and thematic virtuosity which is characteristic of earlier comedies such as As You Like It and Twelfth Night. More clearly than either Pericles or Cymbeline, the action of The Winter's Tale attests to the full range of Shakespeare's comic imagination and more explicitly deals with the purpose of his comic art. Through a masterful transformation of a romantic and arcadian source, Shakespeare widens and expands the implications and techniques of his former comedies. Only one of the last four comedies can stand on equal footing with The Winter's Tale - and that play is The Tempest. The source for Shakespeare's play is Robert Greene's prose romance, Pandosto (1588). In many respects Greene's work defies classification; he calls it the "Historie of Dorastus and Fawnia" at the beginning of the work and at its conclusion he refers to Pandosto's death in these terms: and to close up the Comedie with a tragicall stratageme, he slew himself.

2

Within the narrative, the reader likewise detects common pastoral, romance, and novella motifs. Thus Pandosto might be called in its narrative and thematic structure a tragicomic-pastoral romance which offers amusement and instruction (or so says Greene). As the reader t i m s from Greene's highly imitative work to Shakespeare's The Winter's Tale, he can safely label the latter as a characteristic — although different in certain devices and methods — Shakespearean comedy. Most editions of The Winter's Tale summarize Greene's work and 1 Important evidence concerning the date comes from Simon Forman, who saw the play at the Globe on Wednesday, 15 May 1611. See J. H. P. Pafford, ed. The Winter's Tale (New Arden Shakespeare) (London, 1963), xxxi-xxiv. Chambers, I, 487-490, agrees to the 1611 date "by the probability that the bear of III.3. and the dance of the satyrs at IV.4.352 were both inspired by those in Jonson's mask of Oberon on 1 January 1611" (p. 489). 2 The Descent ofEuphues: Three Elizabethan Romance Stories, ed. James Winny (Cambridge, 1957), 121.

THE WINTER'S TALE

55

compare it to Shakespeare's play. 3 An interesting comparison of parallel characters is cited by Pafford, 4 which indicates that Shakespeare, besides drawing his principal characters from Greene, enriches the story by elaborating on the sub-plot role of Autolycus and by introducing the important character of Paulina. Another significant change is the resuscitation of Hermione and the final reconciliation between her, Leontes, and Perdita. Shakespeare cuts out the "tragic" ending of Greene's work, in which Pandosto (Leontes in Shakespeare) kills himself, bringing the action, including the realistic sub-plot, into a typically imaginative scene of moral unity. In Pandosto, Greene announces his real thematic intent through the novel's sub-title, The Triumph of Time. This title, according to Greene, suggests that the truth will inevitably win out and that all evils will be punished. Thus Pandosto must die (a "tragical stratageme") in order to satisfy the moral intent of the work. In connection with this idea, Shakespeare, in The Winter's Tale, introduces Father Time as a Chorus to Act IV to account for a sixteen-year lapse of time. He avoids, however, the blatant gnomic moralism of Greene's ending by allowing Leontes to live and gain regeneration. Shakespeare, as he demonstrates in Pericles and Cymbeline, is interested in depicting the moral growth of his erring characters; unlike Greene, Shakespeare examines these concepts through highly imaginative patterns of action and character. Another important element in both the source and Shakespeare's play needs, at this point, further consideration. As most critics of Shakespeare have observed, the comedies make use not only of conventional romantic motifs, but also of related pastoral elements. There is, for instance, the pastoral nature of the world of Belarius' cave in Cymbeline; here, Shakespeare employs pastorialism in a conventional manner as he compares the natural simplicity of Belarius and his up-bringing of Cymbeline's sons to the complex and surreptitious deceit of Cymbeline's palace. In the discussion of Cymbeline my primary concern was to show how Shakespeare used his sources — both romantic and historical — for his own comic purpose. He avoided the implications of serious history and suggested more than the conventional romance; instead, he produced another Shakespearean comedy which, through different techniques, follows the basic patterns prevelant to all his comedies. Now, with The Winter's Tale, I shall examine another facet of Shakespeare's method: his use of the conventions of pastoralism, which are transformed into the Shakespearean comic formula. The romantic and pastoral elements cannot be separated. By the time of Shakespeare — and Greene for that matter — the fusion of romance and pastoralism had long since occurred. In his study of the Greek Romance, 3 See Muir, I, 240-257. 4 The Winter's Tale, xxviii.

56

THE WINTER'S TALE

S. L. Wolff discusses the accessibility of these ancient romances to the Renaissance writer. Angel Day's paraphrase of Amyot's version of Daphnis and Chloe appeared in 1587; Thomas Underdowne translated Heliodrus into English and the Aethiopica was available by 1577. 5 There is no way to determine exactly where the story of Pandosto comes from, but it is probably a borrowed story from an older romantic tale available to Greene and later writers through the constant stream of translated stories which came into England during the last half of the sixteenth century. In The Winter's Tale Shakespeare makes use of popular romantic and pastoral conventions: there is the pattern of separation and reunion common to romance; there is the prince who is scornful of love and who is punished by hopelessly falling in love; there is the prince disguised as a shepherd and his attempt to woe a shepherdess who is really a lost princess; and finally there is the reconciliation of disunited and warring factions at the end, bound together by the common bond of love and friendship. Although this description outlines the conventional romantic plot, there are also the "tragic" complications of Leontes' destructive jealousy, resulting in his wife's disgrace and his son's death, his perversion of both human and divine law, and the cynical materialism of Autolycusin the sub-plot. These are all evils which threaten the happy ending of romance and pastoral, and, in turn, of Shakespearean comedy. Perhaps, therefore, it would be helpful to relate these aspects of the "tragic", which cause many to label the last comedies as "tragi-comedies", to the pastoral tradition, for it seems that so-called "tragi-comedy" has its moral and aesthetic roots in pastoralism. 6 The philosophical basis of serious pastoral, according to Frank Kermode, is a conflict between nature and art. 7 Pastoralism refers to the literature about shepherds and shepherdesses, and the convention associated with this literature as it was handed down by classical writers and developed and enlarged by Renaissance writers; such writers would include Robert Greene and Thomas Lodge (whose R osalynde furnished the main plot for As You Like It), neither of whose pastoral works could be construed to reflect a conflict between nature and art. For Theocritus and his followers, the pastoral poem is set in idealized surroundings upon which the real world of experience does not impinge, or if it does, it is transfigured and defeated. The typical setting of the pastoral is the meadow with such logical extensions as a forest and other green worlds. Sherwood Forest, moreover, is not only a setting for the pastoral, but is a refuge from the sheriff. When pastoral 5 See Wolff, 1-247. 6 For many of my ideas on pastoralism and tragic-comedy, I am heavily indebted to Calvin Thayer, professor of English, University of Ohio, Athens, Ohio. 7 Pastoral Poetry and Pastoral Drama (London, 1906), 7.

THE WINTER'S TALE

57

setting changes, the tone changes. Thus, in The Winter's Tale, Perdita, the abandoned child of Leontes and Hermione, suffers potential tragedy, but moves safely within the pastoral scene populated by simple shepherds. The tone moves from one of tragedy and the slings and arrows of fortune (a tempest) to the simpler existence of the pastoral world. There is, however, the hint of a "darkening" pastoral — the pastoral closer to tragedy — when Shakespeare, in The Winter's Tale, suggests an element ofgreedinthe old shepherd who raises Perdita, or when he depicts the death of Cloten in Cymbeline. It should be remembered that these dark qualities are not sustained enough to produce tragedy; instead, they are subsumed by the active and overpowering activity of idealized characters like Imogen and Perdita. W. W. Greg speaks throughout his book on pastoralism or the "pastoral ideal". 8 From Theocritus forward the poetry about shepherds became associated, not only with a highly idealized landscape, but also with virtuous simplicity and beauty. The pastoral scene came to provide a ready-made norm by which writers had available a concept of praiseworthy secular life: a concept which they could develop in contrasting the "ideal" of the pastoral with an image of corrupt court life. Thus the pastoral affords a pattern of life in which man is in harmony with his fellow man as well as with nature. In such a pattern, it is the corruption and baseness of the outside, material world, the world of the non-pastoral, which is constantly in tension with the ideal. As a result, in the realm of the darkening pastoral — what some prefer to call tragi-comedy — the action moves toward romance and the world of improbability. It leaves behind the laws of probability and seems to move more in the direction of art and artifice. What I think this indicates is that Shakespeare makes unique use of the pastoral as part of his comic technique and theory. Available to him was the pastoral conflict between an ideal world and a real world in which the former could suggest symbolically needed reforms in the realm of human experience. These two worlds represent the two levels of experience which are dominant in Shakespeare's comedies. Not always, however, is this conflict presented in terms of a pastoral-palace world antithesis; in Pericles such a dialectic was depicted in the conflict between man's desire to realize ideal perfection and the operations of man's all too imperfect world; in Cymbeline the tension was created by Iachimo's resistance to Leonatus' ideal image of Imogen. In both plays, Shakespeare portrays a significant spiritual growth resulting from these oppositions. Likewise, in Cymbeline, he employs pastoralism as a means of characterizing the simplicity of Belarius' virtue and of portraying the important values of love, humility, 8 Pastoral Poetry and Pastoral Drama (London, 1906), 7.

58

THE WINTER'S TALE

and charity. It is in The Winter's Tale that Shakespeare investigates the full range of pastoralism and thereby further demonstrates his particular use of symbolism and his comic theory. Around the conflict of the two levels of experience — the palace world and its apocalyptic vision and the idyllic vision of the pastoral world — Shakespeare constructs a cyclical-Structure which reinforces the prevailing theme of rebirth in The Winter's Tale. The three part structure of the play moves from the palace world at Sicilia to the pastoral world at Bohemia and back again to Sicilia for the final reordering of society. 9 This structure resembles that of As You Like It, another comedy of prevailing pastoral overtones, except that in the latter play the reconciliation occurs in the Forest of Arden, whereas in The Winter's Tale Shakespeare seems intent upon augmenting his action by suggesting the rebirth cycle in returning to Leontes' palace. I think this movement is significant because it complements several other motifs of rejuvenation in both characters and nature. More than any other Shakespearean comedy, The Winter's Tale depicts the pattern of death and rebirth which inevitably leads to an invulnerable moral order wrought out of the contrivances of art. Shakespeare lends his ending an irrevocable unity through a skillful use of contrasts and parallels. Instead of one tyrannical monarch who perpetrates disorder and injustice, The Winter's Tale has two: represented by Leontes' unreasoning jealousy in Act I and Polixenes' lack of vision in Act IV. As in Pericles, Shakespeare introduces two female characters — mother and daughter — who are identified with perfection and reconciliatory powers: Perdita, the image of pristine beauty and dynamic goodness, and Hermione, the statuesque vision of divine grace and harmony. Another pairing off consists in the two figures who work in the service of the ideal, Camillo and Paulina; they help bring about the final reconciliation, one in Bohemia, the other in Sicilia. In The Winter's Tale, Camillo and Paulina represent a form of conscience, in that when other characters deviate from a course toward the realization of ideal potentialities, these characters keep the ideal alive and energetic in the hearts of others. This function is clearly evident in Paulina's constant remonstrances to Leontes concerning the enormity of his crime against Hermione. The title of the play indicates an imaginative framework in which to see this action of conflicts and blendings. "A Winter's Tale", as Pafford notes, means "an old trivial tale of some length suitable for nothing better than to while away a winter evening". 1 0 In contrast, Frye believes the title points 9 The three part division is likewise suggested by Pafford, liv-lxiii; Northrup Frye, "Recognition in The Winter's Tale", Essays on Shakespeare and Elizabethan Drama in Honor of Hardin Craig (Columbia, Mo., 1962), 235-246, argues for a two-part structure with the storm in IH.iii. as the dividing point. 10 Pafford, liii. He argues against any symbolic interpretation of the title as an

THE WINTER'S TALE

59

to an important structural crux of the play: the "cycle of nature, turning through the winter and summer of the year and through the age and youth of human generations, is at the center of the play's imagery". 11 I find it difficult to dismiss the title as merely a convenient contrivance, for, as Frye demonstrates, there is a consistent pattern of action, setting, character, and imagery which corresponds to a seasonal symbolism. In fact, the cyclical nature of the action itself complements a movement from winter to spring. Significantly, the first part of the play takes place in winter (Il.i. 25) and the pastoral scene of part two evidently takes place in late autumn, thus suggesting that the last part finishes in winter. In the pastoral scene, however, spring is evident in Autolycus' first song, "When daffodils begin to peer". Thus, it is difficult to believe that Shakespeare was not partially conscious of the thematic possibilities of his title. What Shakespeare accomplishes through this cyclical action, with its parallels and contrasts, is a sense of an all-inclusive harmony, where one generation is united with another, where man is in harmony with nature, where all levels of humanity are brought into social cohesion, and where all these actions are directed and reinforced by an artistic vision of spiritual inviolability at the end. Shakespeare accomplishes this feat not through an allegorical rigidity but through the suggestive and poetic use of symbolism. The first part of the action originates in Sicilia and concerns the evil and unreasoning jealousy of King Leontes. Oddly enough, Shakespeare opens on a note of continuing love and harmony between the two realms of Sicilia and Bohemia, the latter being ruled over by Leontes' childhood friend Polixenes. Before the play will end, the action will return to this sense of harmony, but to one which has been tested and strengthened. Moreover, Shakespeare uses this first scene for exposition and for the introduction of his rebirth theme. The idea is put forth that one older generation gains some form of immortality through the hopes and abiding new life of a younger generation. Of Mamillius, Leontes' young son, Camillo says the following: I very well agree with you in the hope of him. It is a gallant child; one that, indeed, physics the subject, makes old hearts fresh. They that went on crutches ere he was born desire yet their life, to see him a man. (I.i. 41-45) This note of fecundity and ever-generating life permeates the imagery and allegory of the seasons, but, he says, this is "by no means to say the play itself lacks profundity" (liv). 11 "Recognition in The Winter's Tale", 236.

60

THE WINTER'S TALE

symbolism of the entire play, being significantly related to both Leontes' initial evil and his final regeneration. 12 As the play moves into the second scene we discover that the harmony between these two lands is temporary. Caught up in a state of consuming jealousy, Leontes suspects Polixenes and Hermione of adultery; vaguely similar to Othello, he distorts all that he sees and interprets it as evil; in this one act there is a suggestion of the Fall: the innocence of a boyhood bond between Leontes and Polixenes - "we knew not / The doctrine of ill-doing" (I.ii. 69-70) - is shattered by Leontes' suspicions, "How now, you wanton calf!" (I.ii. 126) Unlike Othello, Leontes has not a serpent-Iago whispering in his ear; instead, Shakespeare will point to the direction of his comic action by employing Paulina as a voice of conscience. Another significant element appears when we view the mysterious and unreasoning evil in Leontes' mind in contrast to the reasonable tone of other characters. Camillo, like everyone else, thinks that Leontes' suspicions have no rational basis: I would not be a stander-by to hear My sovereign mistress clouded so, without My present vengeance taken. Shrew my heart! You never spoke what did become you less Than this; which to reiterate were sin As deep as that, though true. (I.i. 279-284) Camillo represents a realistic and rational view; his reason is not clouded and he has no evidence to corroborate Leontes' obsessions. Thus Shakespeare establishes a contrast between reasoning and unreasoning which is especially important later. One thing to consider is that Camillo does not necessarily worship the perfections of Hermione; he is a loyal servant and considers himself rational, but if he had any evidence to support Leontes' accusations he might have readily executed the murder plot against Polixenes. Leontes, as the instigator of the evil and resulting moral and social chaos, denies those values of fecund life embodied in Mamillius, whose death leaves Leontes without an heir and suggests the sterility of evil; likewise he isolates himself from the elevating nature of Hermione's perfection, whose character is constantly associated with "grace" in these early scenes. Note, 12 Some interpretations of the basic symbolic and thematic significance of the play include S. L. Bethell, The Winter's Tale: A Study (London, 1945), who thinks the play expounds Christian doctrine, especially the theme of redemption; J. A. Bryant, Jr., Hippolyta's View (Lexington, 1961), who essentially agrees with Bethell although he leans more toward strict Christian allegory; and G. Wilson Knight, The Crown of Life, 76-128, who thinks that "great creating nature" is the key image which unlocks the meaning of the play.

THE WINTER'S T A L E

61

for instance, Hermione's speech immediately preceding her imprisonment: Who is't that goes with me? Beseech your Highness My women stay with me; for you see My plight requires it. Do not weep, good fools; There is no cause: when you know your mistress Has deserv'd prison, then abound in tears As I come out. This action I now go on Is for my better grace. Adieu, my lord. I never wish'd to see you sorry ; now I trust I shall. My women, come; you have leave. (Il.i. 116-124) The majesty of Hermione's character is stressed by her dignity and fortitude in adversity. Also, her speech looks forward to the unfolding action, which will ultimately be for her "better grace". Hermione's function is analogous to Thasia's in Pericles: she will come to represent some spiritual presence around which will be enacted the final ordering of society. The tragic potentialities of these events are made increasingly nontragic by several important factors. First, there is Leontes' total isolation; unlike Antiochus in Pericles he has no agent to whom he can transmit his evil. Camillo flees to Bohemia with Polixenes. By concentrating and isolating the evil in Leontes' jealousy, Shakespeare makes it less foreboding than in the case of the Iago-Othello detente, or the Macbeth-Lady Macbeth league; instead Shakespeare is clearly intent upon exploring the theme of conversion, for immediately upon hearing the Oracle's decree and the news of his son's death Leontes prays to Apollo for forgiveness. Likewise, the death of Mamillius is less than tragic because Florizel, Polixenes' son, will later reassert the role of the younger generation; in that sense Mamillius is reborn in the character of Florozel. Another non-tragic factor enters with the Oracle itself and its foreordainment that the action will not end until it ends happily. It says that Leontes will die without an heir unless the lost be found. This lost child is Perdita whom Leontes orders to be abandoned in some desert place. Connected with this abandonment is Hermione's alleged death while giving birth to Perdita. This death-life motif complements the old age-youth antithesis and points once again to a rebirth theme. These symbolic threads indicate an action of renewal and spiritual transformation. The evil of Leontes' act, however, will not be completely healed until the comic action comes to the end of its cyclic movement. Until then, Leontes will live in "perpetual winter". The sense of a spiritually disordered world is carried over into the second part of The Winter's Tale, which begins with the chaotic overtones of a

62

THE WINTER'S TALE

storm and the divine implications of Antigonus' dream (IH.iii.). This transitional scene depicts the spiritual presence of Hermione in a dream which attests to her regenerative role and simultaneously introduces the operations of a higher force: 'Good Antigonus, Since fate, against thy better disposition, Hath made thy person for the thrower-out Of my poor babe, according to thine oath, Places remote enough are in Bohemia, There weep, and leave it crying: and, for the babe Is counted lost forever, Perdita, I prithee, call't. For this ungentle business, Put on thee by my lord, there ne'er shalt see Thy wife Paulina more. (IH.iii. 27-36) The death of Antigonus (in the jaws of a bear) is mitigated by the juxtaposition in the comic entrance of the old shepherd, who, upon discovering the child, says: "thou met'st with things dying, I with things new-born" (IH.iii. 117). The idea of the continuing life introduced in the first scene is a crucial aspect of this event. Similarly, at the end of the play, continued fecundity is suggested by the proposed marriage between Camillo and Paulina, Antigonus' wife, which further mitigates the tragic dimensions of his death. 1 3 Time as Chorus begins Act IV by offering expository details of events since the last scene. Some sixteen years have elapsed and Leontes still suffers for his sin while Perdita has grown beautiful as a shepherd's daughter and Polixenes' son, Florizel, has come to manhood. This choral dedication seems extraneous except that it does recall the sub-title of Greene's Pandosto. Shakespeare portrays Time as the "father of truth". As it is in Time's power to "overthrow law", so it is in the power of Shakespeare's comic imagination to hurl his action beyond the laws of probability toward an inevitable idealization of human experience. The reader is reminded, as he was by Gower in Pericles, of the imaginative quality of art and of an action which moves beyond probability into artistic vision. It is significant, therefore, that the second part of Shakespeare's threepart structure takes place in the realm of pastoralism. Besides the usual associations with simplicity and virtue, the pastoral scenes in The Winter's 13 A recent interpretation of this perplexing scene is suggested by Dennis Biggins, "Exite pursued by a Beare: A Problem in The Winter's Tale", Shakespeare Quarterly XIII (Winter 1962), 3-13, who sees "Antigonus' taking-offasa complex function of symbolic, tonal, and structural movements in the play" and, through Antigonus and this fantastic comic scene, "the tragic world of Leontes' jealousy is finally manifested and symbolically destroyed" (8).

THE WINTER'S TALE

63

Tale develop the theme of continuous rebirth. Florizel, who immediately perceives the perfections of Perdita, attires himself as a country swain and devotes himself to her beauty and goodness. Into this scene are drawn the disguised strangers — Polixenes and Camillo — who, with a preconceived bias, wish to discover what attracts Florizel to this unsophisticated world. Shakespeare introduces them to an uncourtly group of characters who make up a humorous sub-plot; in this group, the roguish Autolycus, with his many con-man tricks, is the most significant. What this cross-section of human experience suggests is that Shakespeare intends to create an all-inclusive social order by the end of the play. The Autolycus sub-plot furnishes an ironic contrast to the actions of the courtly characters. Autolycus, a figure common to Plautine comedy (the clever slave), articulates a point of view which is more ironic and satiric than is usual in the Dramatic Romances: I have served Prince Florizel, and in my time wore three-pile, but now I am out of service. But shall I mourn for that, my dear? The pale moon shines by night; And when I wander here and there, I then do most go right. If tinkers may have leave to live And bear the sow-skin budget, Then my account I well may give, And in the stocks avouch it. My traffic is sheets; when the kite builds, look to lesser linen. My father named me Autolycus, who being, as I am, litter'd under Mercury, was likewise a snapper-up of unconsidered trifles, With die and drab I purchas'd this caparison, and my revenue is the silly cheat. Gallows and knock are too powerful on the highway. Beating and hanging are terrors to me. For the life to come, I sleep out the thought of it. (IV.iii. 15-31) This "mischief-maker", unlike Iachimo, poses no tragic threat to the more idyllic level of action, but he does represent a careless irresponsibility and a view of ephemeral pleasure (he cares not for "life to come") which stands in opposition to a movement toward permanent values. Thus, as in Iachimo's case, the theme of conversion will extend far down the ladder of humanity. A sheep-shearing feast offers the occasion for the assertion of a youthful pastoral order. In the flower scene, Shakespeare reiterates the old age-youth motif, the rebirth theme, and complements them with a nature-art antithesis. Perdita welcomes her guests by distributing flowers according to ages:

64

THE WINTER'S TALE

one flower she offers is the "rosemary" which keeps its "savour all the winter long" (IV.iv. 75); and to Polixenes she would like to offer carnations and streaked gillyvors, but they are for old age and do not grow in her garden ("which some call nature's bastards") (IV.iv. 831). Polixenes, in reply, says that man can sometimes improve upon nature with his art: Yet nature is made better by no mean But nature makes than mean. So, over that art, Which you say adds to nature, is an art That nature makes. You see sweet maid, we marry A gentler scion to the wildest stock, And make conceive a bark of baser kind By bud of nobler race. This is an art Which does mend nature-change it rather; but The art itself is nature. (IV.iv. 89-97) Perdita, in her pure vision of nature, sees an opposition between nature and art. Polixenes, on the other hand, points to a union between nature and art. In the "gentler scion to the wildest stock" reference by Polixenes, Shakespeare may be pointing to the future marriage of Florizel (gentler scion) and Perdita (wildest stock), thus indicating a binding union between the workings of the natural world with the workings of man's learning and art. That Perdita is a rebirth figure becomes evident as she continues to be associated with spring, flowers, and the myth of Proserpina: O Proserpina, For the flowers now that, frighted, thou let'st faU From Dis's wagon! daffodils, That come before the swallow dares and take The winds of March with beauty; violetsdim, But sweeter than the lids of Juno's eyes Or Cytherea's b r e a t h . . . (Iviy n6.122) Perdita, the "lost child" mentioned in the Oracle, sets the tone for the pastoral scenes; in contrast to the wintry and evil overtones of the first part, this middle section deals with youth, springtime and the continuous creativity of nature. The second level of existence — the more idyllic level which promotes the values of love and fertility — is viewed in the pastoral context. This, however, will not be the setting for the final reconciliation; disharmonious elements are still at work which must be eliminated and integrated before a lasting harmony can be achieved. Primarily a note of discord is struck by the activities of the subplot

THE WINTER'S TALE

65

personae. The actions of Autolycus, the Clown, and Mopsa, with their dancing and singing, offer an ironic and more realistic counterpart to the bucolic language and actions of the main plot. The Clown, who loves Mopsa, is cozened by the clever Autolycus into buying many of his stolen wares. While the love between Perdita and Florizel is clothed with spiritual connotations, the love match of the Clown and Mopsa is decidedly sexual; however, both are complementary in the sense that they emphasize procreation and the vitality of creating life. On the other hand, discord sounds in the materialistic cynicism of Autolycus who feels that money comes into everything and is the power which propels all human activities: Come to the pedlar. Money's to the meddlar That doth utter all men's ware-a. (IV.iv. 328-330) Shakespeare includes as much of human experience in the action as possible; the symbolic action of the first four acts evokes a series of important antitheses, only to point to the potential union of opposites through the operations of symbolic characters like Perdita and Hermione. Another discordant element upsets the pastoral order: this is the tyranny of Polixenes, who fails to see the perfections of Perdita and who, like Autolycus, views events in terms of their material significance. Polixenes does not desire his throne to be debased by his son's marriage to Perdita; when he reveals his identity during the pastoral festivities, he blocks FlorizeFs nupitals with his ideal. Like Leontes' actions toward Hermione, Polixenes' views run counter to the idyllic movement of the comic action; Polixenes, like all the so-called "blocking" characters in Shakespearean comedy, lacks the vision which inspires Florizel to these words: And he, and more Than he, and men — the earth, the heavens, and all! Thereof most worthy — were I the fairest youth That ever made eye swerve, had force and knowledge More than was ever man's, I would not prize them Without her love; for her employ them all; Commend them and condemn them to her service Or to their own perdition. (IV.iv. 382-389) Polixenes, who feels that he is not "incapable of reasonable affairs", is imaginatively confined by his faith in pragmatic reason; the implications of

66

THE WINTER'S TALE

this attitude carry us back to the first part of the play where Leontes' irrational evil was juxtaposed with Camillo and the right-thinking objectivity of his court. Now, in part two, Polixenes' objections seem reasonable from this same practical standpoint: he is concerned with monarchial succession and feels Florizel owes a certain amount of filial loyalty to him and Bohemia. Yet, within the context of the pastoral and Shakespearean comedy in general, this rationale is untenable: the loyalty which Florizel owes to Perdita and an ideal concept of love evokes an imaginative vision which takes precedent over the dictates of Camillo, the emissary of right reason and social harmony, who, in turn, questions Florizel's decision: Cam. Be advis'd Flo. I am, and by my fancy. If my reason Will thereto be obedient, I have reason; If not, my senses, better pleas'd with madness, Do bid it welcome. Cam. This is desperate, sir. Flo. So call it; but it does fulfill my vow; I needs must think it honesty. Camillo, Not for Bohemia, nor the pomp, that may Be thereat glean'd, for all the sun sees or The close earth wombs or the profound sea hides In unknown fathoms, will I break my oath To this my fair belov'd. (IV.iv. 492-503) Camillo, as an agent working for reconciliation, aids Florizel and Perdita, and, in doing so, exercises direction over the course of their plight: he will lead them and the action to Sicilia, not because he shares the heights of their vision, but because he works toward creating social harmony. Thus he tells Polixenes their destination and draws him back to the initial place of discord. Shakespeare, at the end of Act IV, makes it clear that the final act will be all-inclusive, even to the point of having Autolycus unintentionally aid the movement and happy dénouement of the main plot. Act V, the third and final part of The Winter's Tale, is one of recognition and restoration. All the discordant antitheses introduced throughout the first four acts are reconciled and harmonized in a paeon to an idyllic vision. The cyclical structure ends with the resurrection of Hermione, who, says Leontes, "was as tender as infancy and grace" (V.iii. 26-27). This rebirth scene, which unites the death-life motif, is given distinct spiritual suggestions as it occurs in the "chapel". The divisions between the old and the young are reunited as Florizel and Perdita unite the two families in a bond of love and renewal. The sub-plot characters, and Autolycus in particular, are transformed by the infectiousness of goodness. He asks forgiveness of

THE WINTER'S TALE

67

all those whom he formerly viewed as only exploitative potential. A union between nature and art is evident not only in the marriage of Perdita and Florizel, but also in the statue scene where art helps Hermione "preserve" herself until the Oracle is fulfilled. All in all, it is perhaps Shakespeare's most comprehensive image of a perfect moral order. That this final apotheosis is an imaginative one is demonstrated by the further development of the reason-fancy theme. At the beginning of the act Paulina, while discussing the apparent hopelessness of Leontes' state, refers to the Oracle: Is't not the tenor of his oracle, That King Leontes shall not have an heir Till his lost child be found? Which that it shall Is all as monstrous to our human reason As my Antigonus to break his grave And come again to me; who, on my life, Did perish with the infant. (V.i. 38-44) What she calls "monstrous to our human reason" is the imaginative and ideal vision embodied in the last scene. I believe, therefore, that Shakespeare announces clearly the function of his comic art: that art not only enshrines in images a conception of what ought to be, it also has the task of preserving — like the artist who preserves Hermione and like Prospero in The Tempest who preserves the social order — and paying homage to man's potential as a moral and ethical being. Leontes expresses this concept best as he views the resurrection of Hermione: "If this be magic, let be an art / Lawful as eating" (V.iii. 110-111).

6

THE TEMPEST: ART AND SHAKESPEAREAN COMEDY

No one to date hasi discovered the sources for The Tempest. 1 Unlike Pericles, Cymbeline, and The Winter's Tale, in which Shakespeare takes known sources and shapes them according to his comic design, The Tempest has for its main source the full scope of artistic imagination. To say, however, it is removed from his earlier Dramatic Romances would be erroneous; instead, The Tempest represents a creative height in Shakespeare's late comic mood and is an imaginative extension of earlier themes and techniques. 2 As in Pericles, elements common to romance abound in The Tempest: storms, exile princes, separations and reconciliation; like Cymbeline and The Winter's Tale, the play rises above the implications of history, play political interests through the use of pastoralism, but in such a manner to suggest an essence of all these modes. One critic believes a primary influence on the play of Longus' Daphne and Chloe: The conclusion that Longus is an ultimate influence on The Tempest is based on the presence of the elements of the stock pastoral plot, from which it deviates in only one instance. The conclusion that Longus is a direct, a primary influence is not so surely established, but the coincidences of the chief characters, the striking coincidences in storms, and the similar1 The background to the composition of The Tempest is generally believed to be contemporary travel accounts which had many enchanted and mysterious associations; the only undisputed source is Montaigne's essay "of Cannibals" which contrasts the "profitable vertues" of the primitive life to the "corrupted taste" of civilized life: see Montaigne Essays, translated by John Florio (London, 1892), I, 217-232. See Chambers (Oxford,1930), I, 490-494. For the discussion of the Bermuda Pamphlets of 1609 and the New World influences, see Frank Kermode, ed., The Tempest, xxvi-xxxiv; see also Robert Ralston Cawley, "Shakespeare's Use of the Voyagers in The Tempest", PMLA XLI (June 1926), 688-726. What is important is that these New World explorations stimulated an interest not only in the unknown but in the related themes of a newly discovered Golden Age, all of which are heard in The Tempest; significantly, the general symbolic structure of Shakespearean comedy is analogous to these ideas associated with a movement into strange, mysterious realms. 2 The 1611 dating of The Tempest creates little dissension; according to Chambers, the first full description of Bermuda life was Jourdan's A Discovery of the Barmudas (1610). The play was given at court on 1 November 1611, and it could not have been written much earlier because of Shakespeare's use of the narratives describing the wreck of Sir George Somers at the Bermudas on 25 July 1609.

THE TEMPEST: ART AND SHAKESPEAREAN COMEDY

69

ities in the wedding festivities certainly suggest that Shakespeare was familar with Longus at first hand. In connection with this it is well to recall Wolffs conclusion that Longus is a primary source of The Winter's Tale, a play written probably no more than a year before the composition of The Tempest.3

All of these conventional sources are further reshaped by Shakespeare to suggest more completely the realm of imaginative art. The implications of Gower's exhortations about art are more fully realized in The Tempest; the transforming powers of the second world in Cymbeline and The Winter's Tale are brought into expanded affinity with Shakespeare's concept of comedy; the rebirth theme in The Winter's Tale is more closely associated with art in The Tempest; and, the movement toward order is examined with more maturity and complexity, so that Shakespeare leaves the reader with a sense of scope and depth beyond that achieved in the other comedies. I believe that The Tempest should be viewed as Shakespeare's most significant and definitive statement on his own comic theory. Since Coleridge, criticism of The Tempest has stressed the play's appeal to the imagination. 4 Thus the symbolic and allegorical nature of the play has been emphasized to the point that Derek Traversi feels "that the various characters and situations exist from the first entirely in terms of definite 'symbolic function' ". s Many of the critical evaluations are fantastic, 6 but some display unusual insight. G. Wilson Knight sees The Tempest and the other Dramatic Romances as "myths of immortality". 7 Closer to the position of this study is D.G. James's belief that Shakespeare conveys a "new imaginative apprehension of life" through a mythology of the artistic imagination. 8 James believes that the important myth in the Dramatic 3 Carol Gesner, "The Tempest as Pastoral Romance", Shakespeare Quarterly X (Autumn 1959), 538-539; see also 532-533 for a catalogue of stock pastoral situations which appear in The Tempest. Similarly, see O. J. Campbell, "Miss Webster and The Tempest", The American Scholar XIV (Summer 1945), 271-281, who believes that the plot of The Tempest is a replica of the plots of the popular Italian pastorals. 4 See Chapter II, p. 22. For a survey of Tempest criticism, see Kermode, pp. lxxxHxxxviii. 5 Shakespeare: The Last Phase, 193. 6 See especially Emma Brockway Wagner, Shakespeare's Tempest: An Allegorical Interpretation (Yellow Springs, Ohio, 1933), who believes the play is an allegory of the drama and history of Christianity, with the title of the play signifying the Reformation; see also Colin Still, The Timeless Theme (New York, 1936), who argues for the following scheme: Prospero-tGod, Ariel— the Angel of the Lord, Caliban » the Devil, and Miranda — the Celestial Bride. 7 The Crown of Life. Knight does become extreme toward the end of his essay when he maintains that the play is a history of the British nation and that it is close to the Histories and the Tragedies, which too are "so saturated with the spirit of the l a n d . . . " (255). 8 See Introduction, 13-14; James, using Coleridgian concepts of the imagination, says that The Tempest is "the record of the final dissolution, the ultimate destruction, of the world by the imagination" (241).

70

THE TEMPEST: ART AND SHAKESPEAREAN COMEDY

Romances is the rediscovery of what is lost which, in turn, is related to the theme of rebirth. An important critical approach is Theodore Spencer's belief that The Tempest represents the three hierarchical levels of nature — the animal, human, and intellectual — which can be identified with various sets of characters in the play. In Shakespeare's comedies, and especially in the Dramatic Romances, Spencer believes that evil is appearance and goodness a "blessed reality": Here, as in all the last plays, there is a rebirth, a return to life, a heightened, almost symbolic, awareness of beauty of normal humanity after it has been purged of evil — a blessed reality under evil appearance.9 The Tempest is unquestionably the most sophisticated of Shakespeare's late plays, although it still adheres to the recurring patterns of earlier comedies. All the patterns of action and character indigenous to Shakespearean comedy appear in The Tempest - but with expanded thematic significance. The conflict between two levels of experience — one realistic and cynical, the other artistic and imaginative — is complexly represented through Prospero's magical manipulations (which represents the higher order of awareness) of two sets of characters: Alonzo and his party, Caliban and his group (which represent the lower form of awareness); there is the movement toward a greater moral and social order, which, in turn, gives a sense of a lasting form of human life at the end; thus, the comic action of The Tempest contains overtones of the myth of rebirth. This action is propelled and unified by a central character whose "art" is magical and supernatural. Harold S. Wilson, on this point, proposes an interesting parallel between The Tempest and Measure for Measure: In each play, the action is set going and guided throughout by its duke; yet neither Duke Vincentio nor Prospero controls anyone else's choice; rather, they prepare the conditions in which others choose while taking precautions that no one shall give effect to a choice injurious to others. As Vincentio guides Claudio and Angelo to choose penitence and Isabella to prefer mercy to revenge or even justice in favor of mercy; and even Caliban shows signs of amendment at the end. As Barnardine and Lucio in Measure for Measure are given the chance to repent, though they remain unmoved, so with Antonio and Sebastian; but though all four are pardoned, they are also curbed of their evil propensities. 10 9 Shakespeare and the Nature of Man (New York, 1942), 200. In contrast, see George Coffin Taylor, "Shakespeare's Use of the Idea of the Beast in Man", Studies in Philology XLII (July 1945), 530-542, who disagrees with Spencer by saying that evil is not redeemed, but that the "conventions of Shakespeare's comedy almost always demand that however villainous any character may be, he must go scot free in the end" (542). 10 "Action and Symbol in Measure for Measure and The Tempest", Shakespeare Quarterly IV (October 1953), 382.

THE TEMPEST: ART AND SHAKESPEAREAN COMEDY

71

The final scene attempts to include as many people as possible in its final image of order; thus, there is the important theme of forgiveness and conversion associated with the characters. Significantly, all the action of The Tempest takes place in the magical realm of Prospero. Except for the storm at the beginning and Prospero's recounting of his expulsion from Milan, there are no scenes which visually or verbally describe the apocalyptic world. Hence, in The Tempest, Shakespeare fully explores the imaginative and thematic possibilities of the second world and notably this world becomes the world of art. Part of the added complexity of The Tempest comes from the character of Caliban. No where else in Shakespearean comedy is there a creation comparable to this bestial, deformed slave. I think, as Kermode suggests, 11 that Caliban is certainly used for thematic contrast: as readers we see Prospero's success in perfecting Miranda in contrast with his failure in changing Caliban; we see Caliban's primitive and "natural" evil in contrast to Antonio's civilized treachery; we view Caliban's comic attempts at establishing a new order on the island in contrast to Antonio's and Sebastian's Machiavellian plots. Shakespeare creates in Caliban a character who functions simultaneously in several thematic threads. Most critics agree that the personality of Caliban is a refutation of the "noble savage" theories of Montaigne. 12 Another complication in the usual Shakespearean comic scheme is in the function of Ariel. More than any of the other comedies, with the possible exception of A Midsummer-Night's Dream, The Tempest contains techniques which suggest the enchanted, the mythical, and the magical. Ariel, as spiritual emissary to Prospero, is reminiscent of the oracular device in The Winter's Tale, the supernatural visions in Pericles and Cymbeline, and of a character like Paulina in The Winter's Tale who functions as an active agent of the ideal. Ariel, however, is Prospero's slave and is not always a willing helper. At times, he resembles the morality play Vice, or mischief-maker of New Comedy, who delights in chicanery and mix-ups; but primarily Ariel denotes a union between the spiritual world and Prospero's art, both of which are working toward a goal of human harmony. All agree, as James Philips says, "in identifying him with the spiritual and intangible, in contrast to the earthiness of Caliban". 13 The two scenes which comprise Act I offer not only important expos11 The Tempest, xxxviii-xliii; Kermode feels that Caliban's deformity is a "result of evil natural magic, and it stands as a natural criterion by which we measure the world of Art, represented by Prospero's divine magic . . . " (p. xli). 12 See John E. Hankins, "Caliban the Bestial Man", PMLA LXII (September 1947), 793-801. 13 "The Tempest and the Renaissance Idea of Man", Shakespeare Quarterly XV (Spring 1964), 152; Philips sees Caliban as the "vegetative soul", Ariel as the "sensitive soul", and Prospero as the "rational soul".

72

THE TEMPEST: ART AND SHAKESPEAREAN COMEDY

itory information but they also establish certain symbolic patterns which recall Shakespeare's comic method. The storm in the opening scene suggests a morally disintegrating society; this common symbol of disorder is followed by the usual calm and steady movement toward a new order. The exact nature of this decay is not explained until scene two where Prospero recounts his past history to Miranda. The storm does pose a power which is mightier than the political authority held by King Alonzo, Antonio, and Sebastian. Gonzalo, who attempts to preserve the social order, chides the Boatswain for his insolence toward the rank of the party aboard ship; in reply, the Boatswain points to a higher power in which they must all now trust for their lives: None that I more love than myself. You are a Councillor. If you can command these elements to silence and work the peace of the present, we will not hand a rope more; use your authority. If you cannot, give thanks you have liv'd so long, and make yourself ready in your cabin for the mischance of the hour, if it so hap. — Cheerly, good hearts! — Out of our way, I say. (I.i. 22-30) Ironically the King and his party must rely upon the skills of mariners for their existence; this is difficult for Antonio and Sebastian to accept since they view other men as competitors. Even Gonzalo futilely tries to exercise the power of regal authority by offering a particle of hope in his view that the Boatswain "hath no drowning mark upon him" (I.i. 32) and is therefore destined to be hanged. What none aboard realize is that their fate is predetermined and controlled by the art of Prospero. From this scene of disorder the action turns to the god-like artistry of Prospero. Similar to Ceremon in Pericles, Prospero is the learned man who has aligned his powers with those of nature. More importantly, Prospero, like Gower, is the artist-figure whose "design" is to bring about a vision of a new social order. He envisions an imaginative ideal informed by the values of harmony, mercy, and love, and through his "art" Prospero hopes to bring the discordant elements of scene one into his magic circle. An important structural element at work in this first act is the compression of the action. Unlike the earlier Dramatic Romances the action on stage does not encompass a number of years. Prospero's account of his past recalls twelve years, but unlike The Winter's Tale in which the cyclical stricture moves through two distinct settings, the action of The Tempest takes place exclusively (except for the brief storm scene) in the second world of transformation. What this concentration emphasizes is the act of change itself. Prospero's history recalls the usual first phase of action in

THE TEMPEST: ART AND SHAKESPEAREAN COMEDY

73

Shakespearean comedy: it is described in terms of man's political power and a resulting sense of evil and disorder. Prospero, after being exiled from his rightful position as King of Milan, moved into the realm of comic art: his magical island where he perfected his "art". From the vantage point of Prospero's magical realm, the representatives of a more "real" world are brought within the artist's sphere of influence so that he can set in motion his plan for a new order. Thus Prospero combines the powers of the supernatural oracles of Pericles, Cymbeline, and The Winter's Tale with those of the comic artist. Shakespeare clearly points to the imaginative purpose of his own comic action. To indicate that the final order will be all-inclusive Shakespeare introduces the conflicting personalities of Caliban and Miranda. Both are pupils of Prospero: his art perfected the virtue and higher nature of Miranda, but has been largely unsuccessful in elevating the bestiality of Caliban. As a natural man, Caliban represents what Prospero would call nature without nurture: Caliban's evil is instinctive and non-intellectual, unlike the rational and calculated evil of Antonio and Sebastian. Caliban is the deformed progeny of Sycorax, the evil witch who changes men into beasts. She, like Circe, is an allegorized figure of a seductive nature which works on the appetites of man and reduces him to the level of a beast. Caliban and Sycorax are a nature which is antithetical to the movement of the play toward an affirmation of spirit. Prospero's description of Ariel's imprisonment by Sycorax, who formerly ruled the isle, clearly suggests this opposition: This blue-ey'd hag was hither brought with child And here was left by th' sailors. Thou, my slave, As thou report'st thyself, was then her servant; And, for thou wast a spirit too delicate To act her earthy and abhorr'd commands, Refusing her grand hests, she did confine thee, By help of her more potent ministers, And in her most unmitigable rage, Into a cloven pine; within which space she died And left thee there; where thou didst vent thy groans As fast as millwheels strike. Then was this island (Save for the son that she did litter here, A freckled whelp, hag-born) not honour'd with A human shape. (I.ii. 2 6 8 - 2 8 3 )

Sycorax's art and its beastly negativism forms a contrast to the positive spiritual aims of Prospero's art; one is characteristic of a subhuman sensu-

74

THE TEMPEST: ART AND SHAKESPEAREAN COMEDY

ality which knows no earthly restraints and the other is based on an intellectual awareness of the potentialities of the human spirit. At the other extreme from Caliban is Miranda, who represents a higher nature guided and informed by art: she is nature with nurture. Note, for instance, the instinctive and intuitive aspect of Miranda's character as she pleads for those on the storm-tossed ship: If by your art, my dearest father, you have Put the wild waters in this roar, allay them. The sky, it seems, would pour down stinking pitch, But that the sea, mounting to th' welkin's cheek, Cashes the fire out. Ο, I have suffered With those that I saw suffer ! a brave vessel (Who had no doubt some noble creature in her) Dash'd all to pieces! O, the cry did knock Against my very heart! Poor souls, they perish'd! Had I been any god of power, I would Have sunk the sea within the earth or ere It should the good ship so have swallow'd and The fraughting souls within her. (I.ii. 1-13) Miranda's humanity and compassion are as instinctive as Caliban's lust and vengeance; she is unaware of the deceitful "art" of political ambition which characterizes Antonio. She only wishes to be a "god of power" so that she might form a benign social order, a "brave new world". Miranda stands at the higher end of the human ladder from Caliban (if, indeed, he can be called human): she represents all the spiritual potential of the human experience, whereas Caliban embodies an unconquerable aspect of nature. Significantly the final order of The Tempest includes both. Prospero's description of his déposai from political power depicts a movement away from the evil and intrigue of the "real" world toward the understanding and practice of powers associated with a supernatural, more artistic world. Miranda's remembrances of this former world are "like a dream" and for her "reality" consists of the benevolent despotism of Prospero's art. This past world dwells in the "dark backward and abysm of time" (I.ii. 50), thus suggesting the timelessness of Prospero's island. In Prospero's history, we see a bond of brotherhood and love broken by the perfidious deceit of Antonio, Prospero's brother. We see the ambition for political power overthrowing every desire for a social order bound by love and trust. We see in Prospero the desire to study and to raise his vision above the concerns of ambition and greed. It is significant that Shakespeare

THE TEMPEST: ART AND SHAKESPEAREAN COMEDY

75

moves his action into a realm emblematic of art for this imaginative vision. Prospero has no real evil in his past; he is in tune, through Ariel and his art, with the higher and more "delicate" forces of nature. His world is the timeless and imaginative world of art. The Court party is saved from the storm in order that Prospero's designs be fulfilled. That this dissolving society will find rebirth on the isle is sounded by Ariel's account of their landing: Not a hair perish'd On their sustaining garments not a blemish But fresher than before; and, as thou bad'st me, In troops I have disper'd them 'bout the isle. The King's son have I landed by himself, Whom I left cooling off the air with sighs In an odd angle of the isle, and sitting, His arms in this sad knot. ^ „ 217 224) That they are "fresher than before" alerts us to their forthcoming transformation. Ferdinand, the King's son, is particularly signaled out because he will attain the higher vision of perfection through his love for Miranda; his wandering will be crowned with the greatest reward. The shipwrecked society is divided by Ariel and Prospero into three groups: the party of Alonzo, Gonzalo, Antonio, and Sebastian; the subplot characters, Stephano and Trinculo; and Ferdinand. Each wanders in separate directions, only to end up within Prospero's magic circle; each goes through a period of ordeal and testing according to the predesigned plans of Prospero. Each, as a result, represents a particular form of order which recalls The Winter's Tale. For instance, Ferdinand's search culminates very early in his instant perception of Miranda's perfection: "Most sure the goddess / On whom these airs attend!" (I.ii. 422-423). He goes through a testing in the logging ordeal, but his regeneration is never in doubt; the form of spiritual union which the marriage of Ferdinand and Miranda represents is reminiscent of the union between Florizel and Perdita. The second form of order presented through the Court party is dependent upon the exercise of evil toward political ends. This concept of order is ruled over by moral expediency and a Machiavellian ruthlessness; note, for instance, that Alonzo was on his way to Tunis to secure a politically advantageous marriage between his unwilling daughter and the King of Tunis. This social body represents the "real" world in as much as it works according to practical ends through expedient means. The order envisioned by Stephano and Trinculo is one of folly, which is dependent upon an outward show of power; they are an external counterpart to the internal decay of the system of values represented in the Court party proper. Both, however, are basically cynical and materialistic. This main plot-sub-plot contrast

76

THE TEMPEST: ART AND SHAKESPEAREAN COMEDY

recalls a similar technique used by Shakespeare in The Winter's Tale. What is important is that each group is isolated on the island and each goes through a distinct form of transformation before taking its appropriate place in a new social order. Act II begins with the plight of the Court party proper who view the circumstances in varying lights. King Alonzo, certain that his son is dead, suffers quietly and passively, expounding a form of Periclean determinism as Gonzalo tries to lift his spirits. An opposite response is the naive optimism of Gonzalo who sees the enchanted isle as a realm of untainted innocence. His Rousseauesque utopianism, although ingenuously simpleminded, indicates a "capacity for wonder" lacking in the rest of the party; Gonzalo, who did aid Prospero in his flight from Milan, is close at times to becoming a garrulous old bore, although his sincere wonder at the miraculous enlists him in the category of those who see life in terms of something beyond that of the expedient and the material. Sebastian and Antonio respond to their travail with a worldly cynicism; their visions are restricted by a mistrust of the "miraculous" and a capacity for dealing only in immediate gains and losses. They project evil into Gonzalo's dream of a "golden age"— in itself a restricting cliché — by saying its population consists of "whores and knaves" (II.i. 166); Gonzalo, like Camillo in The Winter's Tale, endeavors to keep the ideal of perfection alive, no matter how naively. Antonio and Sebastian, on the other hand, see everything in terms of opportunity and material acquisition. Thus the enchanted music of Ariel which lulls all the party to sleep except Antonio and Sebastian does not inspire them to wonder; it furnishes them an opportunity to further their ambitions by plotting the assassination of Alonzo. It is only through the particular artistic context of this scene that this venality is never viewed as a real threat to the final outcome of the comic action. As readers, we are made aware dramatically of Prospero's art and his plan which we feel certain is not one of revenge, but one of reconciliation. Evil is rendered less dynamic and functions only as a temporary obstacle to a happy dénouement. Hence Ariel conveniently awakens the sleeping group before they would have been killed. The resulting journey of the Court party proper is a crucible of ordeals, illusions, and eventual vision. Prospero prepares a masque-like banquet with dancing spirits to entice the group. They are invited to eat, but immediately Ariel enters and carries the food away when Sebastian, not particularly dismayed, thinks that their spiritual starvation can be alleviated through such a feast. When Ariel appears to them as a harpy, Sebastian and Antonio react in the only way they know, by futilely drawing their swords: You fools! I and my fellows Are ministers of Fate. The elements,

THE TEMPEST: ART A N D SHAKESPEAREAN COMEDY

77

Of whom your swords are temper'd, may as well Wound the loud winds, or with bemock's-at stabs Kill the still-closing waters, as diminish One dowle that's in my plume. My fellow ministers Are like invulnerable (IH.iii. 60-66) These delusions taunt the restricted materialism of Sebastian and Antonio. Their possible conversion is hinted at in this exchange: Seb.

A living drollery. Now I will believe That there are unicorns; that in Arabia There is one tree, the phoenix' throne; one phoenix At this hour reigning there.

Ant.

I'll believe both; And I'll be sworn 'tis true. Travellers ne'er did lie, Though fools at home condemn 'em. (IILiii. 21-27)

Significantly, Sebastian alludes to what he considers the least credible of the travellers' tales: the renewal of the phoenix from the ashes of its pyre. This myth corresponds to the internal, spiritual rebirth of the Court party as it moves from one ordeal to another. Gonzalo strikes the proper note when he views these sprite-like shapes as "more gentle, kind, than of / Our human generation" (IILiii. 32-33). Another stage of ascension is a period of madness and confinement which leads the Court party proper to a symbolic process of self-knowledge and regeneration. Gonzalo sées the guilt of Alonzo, Sebastian, and Antonio as they flail about in their madness and frenzied confrontation with their evil pasts. Alonzo, like Lear, feels himself going mad as he faces his own guilt; Sebastian and Antonio are rendered comical as they madly think that they can fight these psychic fiends with their swords. Their ordeal now involves, as Gonzalo observes, an internal struggle for sanity and selfknowledge: All three of them are desperate. Their great guilt Like poison given to work a great time after, Now gins to bite the spirits. I do beseech you, That are of suppler joints, follow them swiftly And hinder them from what this ecstasy May now provoke them to. (IILiii. 104-109)

78

THE TEMPEST: A R T A N D SHAKESPEAREAN COMEDY

The reader might see parallels between this action and Shakespeare's Hamlet and King Lear. Like Hamlet, Prospero, as Frye remarks, "delays revenge and sets up a dramatic action to catch the conscience of the king". 1 4 Prospero's goal, however, is not revenge but a more ethical and humanistic reorganization of the very society which he formerly had neglected and which, in turn, had wronged him. He is more than the vengeful and brooding protagonist — he is an artist who seeks to assert an imaginative ideal which is beyond tragedy. Prospero not only wishes to confront this society with its conscience, but to transfigure it into something more dedicated to an ideal moral code. Alonzo, likewise, is similar to Lear in that he gains some dignity through suffering; however, I would say that the search for analogies would be more fruitful if directed toward Shakespeare's other comedies. Alonzo, in this context, has not the tragical dimensions of Lear in that his wrongs, like Leontes', can be righted and he can be reconciled with his lost son. This is the comic pattern and it makes no pretense to "realism", but is clearly the depiction of a Utopian world which comments upon b o t h human limitation and potential. The second group of characters who wander about the isle and encounter various ordeals is an order of lower characters who represent no real threat but who must be controlled. Stephano and Trinculo are characters of misrule who are not calculating in their disorder or even venal; they do not project their ambitions very far into the future as do Antonio and Sebastian; they have no intellectualized concept of power or of beauty. They pursue immediate ends which further particular pleasures and appetites. Thus Caliban joins their ranks in hopes of overthrowing the rule of Prospero's art. In fact Caliban worships Trinculo and Stephano although the only spirits they can conjure up are out of a bottle: These be fine things, and if they be not sprites, That's a brave god and bears celestial liquor. I will kneel to him. (Il.ii. 120-122) The folly and vulgarity of this form of worship is contrasted to "rich ends". The goals of the sub-plot characters are external and physical (as is the agony of their ordeal), whereas Ferdinand's are internal and spiritual. Trinculo and Stephano, spurred on by Caliban's hatred, search for Prospero in order to establish a new rule. Trinculo, like all Shakespearean fools, speaks with some incongruous insight: Servant-master? the folly of this island! They say there's but five upon this isle. 14 "Introduction", The Tempest (Pelican Shakespearej (Baltimore, 1959), 15.

THE TEMPEST: ART AND SHAKESPEAREAN COMEDY

79

We are three of them. If th' other two be brain'd like us, the state totters. (IH.iii. 5-8) Caliban instills in this twosome, especially in Stephano, certain political ambitions; he proposes that Stephano be King and Miranda his Queen. Stephano, unlike Antonio and Sebastian, has no rational and calculated ambitions, but only responds according to a natural instinct for lust. Also, both these comic characters see order and rule only in terms of its outward manifestations: the proper titles and garments. As he did with the Court party, Prospero enlists Ariel to present delusions before this group in order to chastize them for their folly and make them aware of a more potent authority. Immediately upon hearing Ariel's enchanted music, Trinculo and Stephano ask forgiveness and mercy, thinking that devils possess the island. Their forthcoming "conversion" is a comical counterpart to the serious and mental anguish undergone by Alonzo. It is added comedy that Caliban allays their fears and Stephano thinks that the island "will prove a brave kingdom to me, / where I shall have my music for nothing" (Ill.ii. 153-154). The romantic movement of Ferdinand toward a union with Miranda is set against the comic activities of Trinculo, Stephano, and Caliban in the first scene of Act IV. The first image of order and reconciliation appears when Prospero terminates Ferdinand's testing period and joins him to Miranda. Cast in a scene of spiritual order, with the wedding masque depicting nature's fertility, Prospero and the spiritual world confer their blessings upon Ferdinand and Miranda. 1S It is a picture of continual spring and spiritual order and concludes with the dance of the nymphs representing spring and the reapers autumnal harvest. Ferdinand calls it a "majestic vision" (IV.i. 117) and Shakespeare clearly indicates that it is a vision of artistic wonder, controlled and brought forth through the art of Prospero. In immediate contrast is the folly of the lower world — the world of Alonzo, Sebastian, Antonio, Stephano, Trinculo - which denies and works against an idealization of experience. Note how Prospero is aroused to anger as he remembers that the forces of disorder, Caliban's "foul conspiracy", threaten the fabric of his vision; which, in turn, occasions his most famous speech:

15 For a standard discussion of the masque, see Enid Welsford, The Court Masque (Cambridge, 1927); a more recent discussion of the masque elements is John M. Major, "Comus and The Tempest", Shakespeare Quarterly X (Spring 1959), 177-183, who says that the influence on The Tempest of the masque, as developed by Ben Jonson and Indigo Jones, "may be observed in the play's sense of mystery and spaciousness; in its abundance of music, close association of music and dancing; and masque-like episodes; in the role of Prospero, who acts something like a 'masque presenter', and who plays the part of Hymen (in masques, the spirit of order and unity)..(183).

80

THE TEMPEST: ART AND SHAKESPEAREAN COMEDY

You do look, my son, in a mov'd sort. As if you were dismay'd. Be cheerful, sir. Our revels now are ended. These our actors, As I foretold you, were all spirits and Are melted into air, into thin air; And, like the baseless fabric of this vision, The cloud-capp'd towers, the gorgeous palaces, The solemn temples, the great globe itself, Yea, all which it inherit, shall dissolve, And, like this insubstantial pageant faded, Leave not a rack behind. We are such stuff As dreams are made on, and our little life Is rounded with a sleep. (IV.i. 146-158) This speech, almost a microcosm of Shakespearean comedy, asserts that man must strive for an awareness of values beyond those of the material world: the passion which Antonio has for power, in this context, is an illusion and thus the ideal strivings of Ferdinand become a reality. Prospero, through his art, offers an image of an intangible sort that would not satisfy Antonio — an image of a lost paradise, informed by the values of love, forgiveness, and harmony. Yet, there is a force in nature, like Caliban, which is beyond help; Caliban gets older, uglier, and more vengeful. He is a subhuman creature without learning, without art, without those human qualities which can elevate man beyond tragedy toward at least an imaginative grasp of his moral potentialities. To Prospero, as it is to Shakespeare, comic art has the responsibility of formulating a vision of this ideal by which man can measure his actions and aspirations. Prospero's "our revels now are ended" speech attests to the never-ending duty of art not to use its visionary capacities as an escape from the real world, but as a combative force against the negativism of greed, folly, and cynicism. There are "all mine enemies" (IV.i. 264). The recognition scene of Act V, in contrast to the opening scene of disorder, is one of rejuvenation and restoration, acted out within Prospero's magic circle and to the music of the spheres. Alonzo is reunited with his lost son and experiences a vision of a higher order. Even Sebastian, the materialist, sees it as a "high miracle" (V.i. 177). Tragedy has been averted and, as in The Winter's Tale, a reality beyond reason has been perceived by Alonzo: This is as strange a maze as e'er men trod, And there is in this business more than nature Was ever conduct of. Some oracle Must rectify our knowledge. (V.i. 242-245)

THE TEMPEST: ART AND SHAKESPEAREAN COMEDY

81

Even Antonio is forgiven, although his muteness either indicates his wonder or his stubborn resistance to vision. (Antonio does think that Caliban is a fish and, "no doubt marketable".) The kingdoms of Alonzo and Prospero are bound in harmony through the marriage of Ferdinand and Miranda. Stephano, part of this new society, ironically strikes a cord of brotherhood: "Every man shift for all the rest, and let / no man take care for himself' (V.i. 256-257). Caliban, fearing Prospero's wrath, begs forgiveness and says he was an ass "to take this drunkard for a god / And worship this dull fool!" (V.i. 296-297), thus indicating that any meaningful vision of order must take into account and ultimately control the brutal elements of nature. And lastly, Prospero releases Ariel to the elements to be free, thereby rejoining the social community by ending his isolation and his art. Prospero's design was the design of Shakespearean comic art: to transform the dissolving society of Alonzo's ship by immersing it in the magic of his art and then to send it back to the "real world", not as it was before, but enlightened with a new vision to counteract and make "unnatural" the evils of all the Antonios. Miranda voices the greatness of this new breed of men: O, wonder! How many goodly creatures are these here! How beauteous mankind is! O brave new worlds That has such people in't! (V.i. 182-185) Thus, in the Epilogue, Prospero relinquishes to the audience this vision of a new world motivated by the values of love and humanity. It is likewise a fitting conclusion to Shakespeare's comic genius, as he offers us, the twentieth-century reader, an insight into the visionary and imaginative quality of art. In retrospect, The Tempest suggests a refinement and sophistication of techniques in the earlier Dramatic Romances. In Pericles, the sense of an inevitable assertion of order was voiced through Gower, the Chorus, who appears now as a cruder attempt at the Prospero-like artist. The fate of Pericles, on whom perfection waits, is never really in doubt because of a prevailing artistic design. As in The Tempest, there are forces of materialism and determinism in Pericles which stand in the way: the survival of the fittest determinism of the fishermen is not too far removed from Antonio's Machiavellianism; in Cymbeline, the ambitions of Cloten and the cynicism of Iachimo are this-worldly factors which the comic design seeks to transform and overwhelm. In The Tempest, however, there is the added complexity of Caliban's animalism and the reiterated idea that man's superior insights must be constantly on guard against any usurpations by apocalyptic forces. Moreover, all the Dramatic Romances are permeated with suggestions of

82

THE TEMPEST : ART AND SHAKESPEAREAN COMEDY

divine Providence: in Pericles, it is not clear what we are to make of the threat of deterministic elements to man's free will, although it seems that the gods are working toward man's betterment; in Cymbeline, the device of deus ex machina is awkwardly employed, but the resourceful activities of an individual agent are more emphasized; similarly, in The Winter's Tale the idea of perfection and happiness waiting in the wings is always present through Hermione and the Oracle. The Tempest is perhaps more successful and, in retrospect, illuminating in regard to the thematic and imaginative function of the spiritual world. Again, it seems to correspond more with Shakespeare's comic purpose of presenting an imaginative ideal which includes a harmonious and benevolent association between art and nature. Prospero, therefore, controls through his art both Ariel and Caliban, using the former to assert a higher authority over the latter. Since such a scale of values is abstract it might be better to retain conventional Renaissance Neo-platonic terminology, which has not been within the defined context of this study. My purpose has not been to deny Shakespeare's knowledge of several philosophical systems available to him, but merely to place Shakespeare's Dramatic Romances in the context of broader symbolic and poetic patterns which might indicate a pervasive comic theory — the dimensions of which will be further discussed in the concluding chapter.

7

FULL CIRCLE

This study now turns to a final assessment of Shaekspearean comedy by returning to certain questions raised in the first chapter. First, what exactly is Shakespeare's concept of comedy? How does it differ from satiric comedy, the so-called norm of comedy? In what way does Shakespeare's concept of comedy depart from his concept of tragedy? And finally, what artistic and philosophical importance can be attached to these concepts? Perhaps we should first reconsider Shakespearean comedy through what many critics take as its opposite — the satiric comedy of Ben Jonson. Comedy, many assume, has as its end laughter and some type of moral instruction. Clearly, however, different kinds of laughter and moral exemplum distinguish Jonson's Volpone from Dante's The Divine Comedy and both from Shakespeare's As You Like It. The milieu of Jonsonian comedy is social, necessitating a "closed" dramatic structure - that is, there is no movement, as in Dante and Shakespeare, outside the social world. Jonson offers a microscopic view not of a "real" world necessarily, but of a world which exists in comic isolation. He puts on display human follies and thereby creates an imaginative society of pure folly. Calvin Thayer, when discussing The Alchemist, pinpoints this Jonsonian technique: The world of The Alchemist is a world turned upside down, a world in which the motivating forces are folly and avarice. Jonson has created a microcosm, complete in itself, not so much a reflection of the world of ordinary experience, as one in which a single aspect of the experiential world, folly, acts as the prime mover of all that occurs.1 Within this Jonsonian "world of folly" few escape the contagion of foolish behavior and rarely does an ideal norm emerge out of the action of Jonson's comedies, except perhaps at the conclusion of The New Inn. Instead, it is implied that we, as onlookers, should be instructed by this meretricious display of disorder and, in turn, go about creating a better society in our own dealings with a world of ordinary experience. 1 Ben Jonson: Studies in the Plays (Norman, Okla., 1963), 85.

84

FULL CIRCLE

Shakespeare rarely approaches a full expression of this Jonsonian formula, although in The Merry Wives of Windsor, he comes close. When Shakespeare does use highly satiric characters - Falstaff, Dogberry, Sir Andrew Aguecheek, Touchstone, Autolycus, Stephano, and Trinculo — he does so to suggest their opposition to his primary comic vision. Jaques in As You Like It stays behind and refuses to join the new order of society; he is a figure of dissent, an "intruder at a holiday who refuses to celebrate . . . .". 2 Such characters remind us that the comic vision is an idealized picture of reality and not a real one. Unlike Jonsonian comedy, Shakespeare's comic structure is not "closed" but "open", indicating that a perceptible dramatic movement is evident wherein the action moves from a scene of disorder and social chaos to one of artistic wonder and harmony. This idea of an ideally ordered society generates the movement of Shakespearean comedy. If Shakespeare's comedies in both form and purpose do not adhere to the Jonsonian formula, they then might reflect other traditional concepts of comedy. Nevill Coghill believes that Shakespeare "was following a tradition that evolved during the middle ages from the same parent-stock of thought as that from which evolved the contrary tradition followed by Ben Jonson". 3 Coghill turns to Dante for this tradition. What he ultimately formulates is a Christian comedy. Thus Dante's great work moves from the Inferno to Paradiso, as Shakespearean comedy develops from a lower world of chaos to a higher world of perfection. According to Coghill Shakespeare adapts the romance form in order to restate this Christian comic tradition, which formerly was evoked in the medieval cycles and their depiction of this same process of chaos, despair, and salvation, or in the Moralities which dramatized man's movement through a world of evil toward a world of redemption and goodness. Using Coghill's "medieval affinities", therefore, we would have to conclude that Shakespeare's comedies are basically moral in terms of a Christian scheme. This present study has not viewed Shakespeare's last comedies — or any of his comedies — in this light and it is perhaps time to explain why. To clarify my position — and how it deviates from critics like Coghill — 1 must return to some facets of historical criticism. Coghill, approaching Shakespeare through an historical context, discusses how Shakespeare conforms to this external body of material. To the historical critic a "narrative" means the relation of the order of language to events resembling 2 Geoffrey Bush, Shakespeare and the Natural Condition, 31. 3 The Basis of Shakespearean Comedy, 1-2; for a fuller study of this medieval and Renaissance background, see Thomas Marc Parrott, Shakespearean Comedy (New York, 1949); although briefer, an interesting comment is contained in Williard Farnham, "The Medieval Comic Spirit in the English Renaissance", John Quincey Adams Memorial Studies, ed. James G. McManaway (Washington, 1948), 429-437.

FULL CIRCLE 85 patterns outside the work; meaning comes to mean "the relation of its pattern to a body of assertive propositions, and the conception of symbolism involved in the one which literature has in common, not with the arts, but with other structures in words". 4 I do not mean to say that historical criticism is to be ignored — indeed it adds an important dimension to any given literary work — but that, in the study of Shakespearean comedy, the critic might perceive even wider dimensions if he could extricate himself from the confinement of a rigid historical, or quasi-historical, method; for instance, historical criticism, as Frye points out, cannot explain the timelessness and universality of Shakespearean comedy:

No doubt many in Shakespeare's audience did addle their brains with the theory of monarchy or Reformation theology or the chain of being or the four humours when they were not being better educated by Shakespeare. But theatrical audiences, as such, hardly change at all from one millennium to another. In the earliest extant European play, The Acharnions of Aristophanes, we meet the miles glorio sus or swaggering soldier who is still going strong in Shaw's Arms and the Man and Chaplin's Great Dictator. We meet the comic parasite who the Denis of O'Casey's Juno and the Pay cock appears practically unchanged in twenty-five centuries . . . It will therefore not do to explain, say, the rejection of Falstaff in historical terms only, and merely say that the original audience were much more aware than we of the importance of getting France conquered by a strong leader. (One may observe in passing that if any member of Shakespeare's audience did not know that sixty years of unbroken disaster followed the career of Henry V, his ignorance was certainly no fault of Shakespeare's). We know little about the contemporary reception of Shakespeare's plays, but one of the things we do know is that Falstaff was exactly the same kind of popular favorite then that he is now, and for exactly the same reasons. It is similarly not surprising that Elizabethan audiences could still be amused by Plautus and Terence, or by adaptation of them which differ very little from their models. 5 According to Frye, "of all forms of literary expression, the drama is the least dependent on its historical context". 6 Answers to those questions raised at the beginning of this chapter cannot be phrased in strict "religious" language. As A. C. Bradley states in his discussion of Shakespearean tragedy, the Elizabethan drama was almost wholly secular, "and while Shakespeare was writing he practically confined his view to the world of non-theological observation and thought, so that he represents it substantially in one and the same way whether the period of the story is pre-Christian or Christian". 7 More recently, Roland 4 Northrop Frye, Anatomy of Criticism, 78. 5 "Characterization in Shakespearean Comedy", Shakespeare Quarterly IV (July 1953), 271. 6 Ibid. 7 Shakespearean Tragedy (London, 1904), 30.

86

FULL CIRCLE

Frye attempts a definition of this secularism which can apply to this study: It should be understood from the outset that I do not use "secular" as a pejorative term and do not imply in my use of it any positive rejection of Christianity or antagonism to it. Such rejection and antagonism are sometimes associated with the word in other contexts, but should not be read into it here. My use should convey the meaning of temporal and "this worldly", somewhat after the fashion of the Latin saeculum, referring to an age or a generation, rather than to the domain of the eternal. Thus I see the word "secular" to direct attention primarily to Shakespeare's dramatic concern with the temporal order, without denying him a personal or other concern with the eternal. Such usage in my judgment, is in keeping with Shakespeare's dramatic intent and practice. 8 Shakespeare, it is true, had available to him the language and structure of Christianity, as he had available the multifarious conventions of romance; however, Shakespeare does not employ allusions to gods or God, to evil spirits, to heaven or hell, as a means of depicting a strict religious dogma, but rather, analogous to his use of romance, Holinshed, or pastoralism, as a source of expression germane to his particular artistic and philosophical purposes. At the basis of a Shakespearean conception of comedy, therefore, is a form of idealism. Idealism, I think, can explain Shakespeare's technique of emphasizing two orders of existence in his comedies. In Pericles, one world is identified with evil and negation, the other — Pericles' search — with perfection and order; in Cymbeline deceit and its concomitant evil contrast with humility and goodness; in The Winter's Tale the upper world of desire is characterized by art, grace, and love, the lower world of reality by jealousy, madness, and tyranny; in The Tempest forgiveness overrules revenge. The endings of these plays suggest freedom and reunion, not morality; and this freedom is gained through an effort to find goodness through experience. Thus this important element in Shakespeare's idealism pre-dominates: the manner in which the ideal form of reality is obtained. We might recall Troilus and Cressida in which Ulysses contemplates what he considers the primary reality of the fallen world — the chain of being: O, when degree is shak'd Which is the ladder to all high designs, Then enterprise is sick! How could communities, Degrees in schools and brotherhoods in cities, Peaceful commerce from dividable shores, The primogenity and due of birth, 8 Shakespeare and Christian Doctrine (Princeton, 1963), 7. Frye demonstrates that the "Christianizing" of Shakespearean drama has relied more on assertion than historical fact.

FULL CIRCLE

87

Prerogative of age, crowns, sceptres, laurels, But by degree, stand in authentic place? (I.iii. 1 0 1 - 1 0 8 )

Ulysses expresses the traditional notion that God can be reached through the chain of being, but is this necessarily the position of Shakespeare's comedies? I would question this assumption because Shakespeare represents the two levels of perception (the ideal and the real) as discontinuous. 9 The ideal reality, in Shakespeare, cannot be reached through the chain of being, but only through a visionary leap of the imagination. In The Winter's Tale and The Tempest the movement from a lower world of confusion to an upper world of order is not so much evolution, as it is a "bodily metamorphosis and a transformation from one kind of life to another". 10 Shakespeare's idealism includes the belief that experience is important and necessary. The Forest of Arden encompasses, and does not ignore, those forces which are less than ideal. Marina, in Pericles, exercises her perfection in the real world and thus brings her goodness into an active and fruitful contact with baser forms of human life. Innocence in Shakespearean comedy does not ignore experience, but includes and transforms it. Florizel's love for Perdita is tested through a confrontation with the real world; Prosper's magic works on a world of experience and shapes a vision of a body politic which might function in a humane and compassionate way. Never is there a total withdrawal from the lower world — which ultimately would lead to isolation and a form of negation — but instead a return to the community of men with a renewed sense of moral being and with an awareness of the Calibanian forces in nature in need of control. Another aspect of Shakespeare's idealism has to do with what I call a "moral order" around which the comic action rotates. In Shakespeare's comic world, the power of particular characters is great, culminating in the magic of Prospero; however, even in The Tempest, Prospero could not bring the erring characters within his sphere of influence until some higher power had channeled their actions in his direction. Likewise, Pericles, "on whom perfection waits", is dependent upon the powers of some higher force, as are the characters of Cymbeline and The Winter's Tale. Of course, one of the standard conventions of romance is the deployment of fortune to bridge one fantastic sequence with another; in Shakespeare, as I have pointed out a number of times, the dramatic illusion is broken and reader and audience alike clearly recognize that art and artifice control these 9 See Northrop Frye, "A Conspectus of Dramatic Genres", The Kenyon Review XIII (Autumn 1951), 543-562, who makes this very point about Troilus, a play in which "the sense of the fallen world is very acute" (549). 10 Northrop Frye, Anatomy of Criticism, 184.

88

FULL CIRCLE

implausible events and that Shakespeare does not wish to examine any fatalistic themes. The "moral order" in Shakespearean comedy is one of the artistic imagination; good overcomes evil not necessarily because there is a principle of divine justice in the universe, but because Shakespeare, the artist, sees a desirable moral order in such terms. What Bradley says about Shakespeare's tragic vision might well apply to his comic vision: Let us understand the statement that the ultimate power or order is "moral" to mean that it does not show itself indifferent to good and evil, or equally favorable or unfavorable to both, but shows itself to good and alien to evil. 11 W& return to Theodore Spencer's belief that in Shakespearean comedy especially in the last plays — evil is the appearance and goodness the reality beneath the appearance. Or, to phrase it another way, evil only produces disorder and barren negativism — conditions which the creative mind abhors — whereas goodness leads to the artistic and philosophical ideals of order and creation. Yet, as Bradley says, there still exists "a painful mystery" in Shakespeare's drama produced by one's failure to rationally and materially reconcile contradictions: the main one being that an "order" seems to exist in the plays which is animated by a passion for perfection and yet this very power "appears to engender . . . this evil within i t s e l f . . . " . 12 Perhaps this problem involves the continuing human dilemma of harmonizing fact with value and that this problem was especially intense during the English Renaissance. In his tragedies, Shakespeare indicates that life wears down and destroys the good and the ideal and that the potency of evil manifested by egoism, ambition and sterilizing inhumanity — has greater power to destroy than goodness has to create. The recovery Shakespeare portrays in many of his comedies offers an artistic and philosophical commitment to moral and social order, an order realized in the comedies not so much through a chain of being or any other philosophical scheme but by the unlimited potential of artistic imagination, a brave new world achieved by Prospero's magic wand. No doubt this imaginative order is informed by those values common to Renaissance Christian humanism, neo-platonism and Christianity; this order, however, does not suggest Biblical allegory or Christian humanist dogma, but rather an attempt to fill in the outline of an ideal world which, in the tragic world, is fragmentary and unattainable. Shakespeare's concept of comedy, therefore, is both similar to and the reverse of what Bradley believes to be the substance of his tragedy:

11 Shakespearean Tragedy, 37. 12 Ibid., 40.

FULL CIRCLE

89

We remain confronted with the inexplicable fact, or the no less inexplicable appearance, of a world travailing for perfection, but bringing to birth, together with glorious good, an evil which it is able to overcome only by self-torture and self-waste. And this fact or appearance is tragedy. 1 3 In the comedies evil is likewise overcome by good, but not at such high costs and not with the tragic sense that such a triumph is elusive and ephemeral; instead, the final sense o f harmony in Shakespearean comedy suggests vision and imagination, not irony. One concluding impression, therefore, prevails in the evolution of Shakespearean comedy. As a literary artist, Shakespeare was not as interested as his readers in employing his plays as pegs on which to hang a series of "meanings" in the usual sociological, psychological, moral or religious sense. Clearly, Shakespeare had several "ideas" to exploit, but in his comedies especially he seepis more concerned with the wonders o f the artist's free ranging imagination; it becomes an imagination which seeks to transcend as much as possible the limitations o f the perceived world, to recombine and redesign sensory data into a vivid and unique vision of existence. Art and artifice, for Shakespeare, represents an intricate game of imagination and perception for author and audience — one which reinacts a sense of wonder and mystery about a world which defies the common formulations o f human perception. 13 Ibid., 41.

SELECTED BIBLIOGRAPHY

Armstrong, Edward Α., Shakespeare's Imagination: A Study of Association and Inspiration (Lincoln, Nebr., 1963). Arthos, John, "Pericles: Prince of Tyre: A Study of the Dramatic Use of Romance Narrative", Shakespeare Quarterly IV (Summer 1953), 2 5 7 - 7 0 . Bacon, Wallace, "A Study of Shakespeare's Dramatic Romances". Unpublished dissertation. Michigan, 1940. Barker, Gerald Α., "Themes and Variations in Shakespeare's 'Pericles' ", English Studies XLIV (December 1963), 401-414. Bethell, S. L. The Winter's Tale: A Study (London, 1945). Biggins, Dennis, "Exite pursued by a Beare: A Problem in The Winter's Tale", Shakespeare Quarterly XIII (Winter 1962), 3 - 1 3 . Bowling, Lawrence E., "The Theme of Natural Order in 'The Tempest' ", College • English XII (January 1951), 203-209. Bradbrook, Muriel C., The Growth and Structure of Elizabethan Comedy (London, 1909). Bradley, A. C. "The Rejection of Falstaff', Oxford Lectures on Poetry (London, 1953). - , Shakespearean Tragedy (London, 1904). Brockbank, J. P., "History and Histrionics in Cymbeline", Shakespeare Survey XI (1958), 4 2 - 4 9 . Brooks, Cleanth and William K. Wimsatt, Literary Criticism: A Short History (New York, 1959). Brown, John Russell, "The Interpretation of Shakespeare's Comedies: 1900-1953", Shakespeare Survey VIII ( 1955), 1 - 1 3 . -, Shakespeare and His Comedies (London, 1957). Bush, Geoffrey, Shakespeare and the Natural Condition (Cambridge, Mass., 1956). Bryant, J. Α., Jr., Hippolyta's View (Lexington, 1961). Bryant, Jerry H., "The Winter's Tale and the Pastoral Traditions", Shakespeare Quarterly XIV (Autumn 1963), 387-398. Bryson, John, ed., Matthew Arnold: Poetry and Prose (Cambridge, Mass., 1954). Bullough, Geoffrey, ed., Narrative and Dramatic Sources of Shakespeare. 4 vols. (London, 1957). Campbell, Lily B., ed., Parts Added to Mirror for Magistrates (Cambridge, 1946). Campbell, O. J., "Miss Webster and The Tempest", The, American Scholar XIV (Summer 1945), 271-281. Cawley, Robert Ralston, "Shakespeare's Use of the Voyagers in The Tempest", PMLA XLI (June 1926), 688-726. Chambers, E. K., William Shakespeare: A Study of Facts and Problems. 2 vols. (Oxford, 1930). Charlton, Η. B., Shakespearean Comedy (London, 1938). Clemen, Wolfgang, The Development of Shakespeare's Imagery (Cambridge, Mass., 1951).

SELECTED BIBLIOGRAPHY

91

Coghill, Nevill, "The Basis of Shakespearean Comedy: A Study of Medieval Affinities", Essays and Studies (1950), 1 - 2 8 . Cooper, Lane, An Aristotelian Theory of Comedy (New York, 1922). Cornford, F. M„ The Origin of Attic Comedy (London, 1914). Craig, Hardin, An Interpretation of Shakespeare (New York, 1948). Crane, Milton, "Shakespeare's Comedies and the Critics", Shakespeare Quarterly XV (Spring 1964), 6 7 - 7 3 . Daiches, David,Critical Approaches to Literature (Englewood Cliffs, N. J., 1956). Dowden, Edward, Shakespeare: His Mind and Art (London, 1875). Edwards, Philip, "An Approach to the Problem oí Pericles", Shakespeare Survey XI (1958), 1 - 1 8 . - , "Shakespeare's Romances: 1900-1957", Shakespeare Survey X/ (1958), 1 - 1 8 . Eliot, T. S., Poetry and Drama (Cambridge, Mass., 1951). Farnham, Willard, "the Medieval Comic Spirit in the English Renaissance", Joseph Quincy Adams Memorial Studies, ed. James G. McManaway et al. (Washington, 1948), 13-20. Fergusson, Francis, The Idea of a Theatre (Garden City, N. Y„ 1957). - , ed., Shakespeare's Comedies of Romance (New York, 1959). Friedman, Norman, "Imagery: From Sensation to Symbol", Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism (September 1953), 2 5 - 3 7 . Fromm, Erich, The Forgotten Language (New York, 1951). Frye, Northrop, Anatomy of Criticism (Princeton, 1957). - , "The Archetypes of Literature", Kenyon Review XIII (Winter 1951), 92-110. - , "The Argument of Comedy", English Institute Essays: 1948 (New York, 1959), 58-73. - , "Characterization in Shakespearean Comedy", Shakespeare Quarterly IV (July 1953), 271-77. - , "Comic Myth in Shakespeare", Transactions of the Royal Society of Canada XLVI (June 1952), 4 7 - 5 8 . - , "A Conspectus of Dramatic Genres", Kenyon Review XIII (Autumn 1951), 543-562. - , "Recognition in The Winter's Tale", Essays on Shakespeare and Elizabethan Drama in Honor of Hardin Craig, ed. Richard Hosley (Columbia, Mo., 1962), 235-246. - , Introduction to The Tempest (The Pelican Shakespeare) (Baltimore, 1960). Frye, Roland, Shakespeare and Christian Doctrine (Princeton, 1963). Gesner, Carol, "The Tempest as Pastoral Romance", Shakespeare Quarterly X (Autumn 1959), 5 3 1 - 3 9 . Greg, W. W., Pastoral Poetry and Pastoral Drama (London, 1906). Hankins, John E., "Caliban and the Bestial Man",PMLA LXII (September 1947), 793-801. Hoeniger, F. D., ed., Pericles (The New Arden Shakespeare) (London, 1963). Hazlitt, William, The Characters in Shakespeare's Plays (London, 1949). Herrick, Marvin T., Comic Theory in the Sixteenth Century (Urbana, 1950). James, D. G., Skepticism and Poetry (London, 1937). Kermode, Frank, ed., English Pastoral Poetry (London, 1952). - , ed., The Tempest (The New Arden Shakespeare) (London, 1954). Knight, G. Wilson, The Crown of Life (London, 1947). - , The Shakespearean Tempest (London, 1932). Knights, L. C„ How Many Children Had Lady Macbeth? (Cambridge, 1933). - , Some Shakespearean Themes (London, 1959). Kronenberger, Louis, The Thread of Laughter (New York, 1952). Krutch, Joseph Wood, The Modern Temper (New York, 1929). Lawrence, W. W., Shakespeare's Problem Comedies (New York, 1931). Leavis, F. R., "A Criticism of Shakespeare's Late Plays", Scrutiny X (Spring 1942), 339-345.

92

SELECTED BIBLIOGRAPHY

Major, John M., "Comus and The Tempest", Shakespeare Quarterly X (Spring 1959), 177-183. Matthews, Brander, Shakespeare as a Play wright (New York, 1913). Maxwell, J. C., ed., Pericles (New Cambridge Shakespeare) (London, 1956). McManaway, J. G., "Review of N. C. S. edn. of Pericles", Modern Language Review LII, No. 4 (October 1957), 5 8 3 - 8 4 . Moffet, Robin, "Cymbeline and the Nativity", Shakespeare Quarterly XIII (Spring 1962), 207-218. Monro, John, ed., Shakespeare Allusion Book: A Collection of Allusions to Shakespeare from 1591 to 1700. 2 Vols. (London, 1932). Morgann's Essay on the Dramatic Character of Sir John Fallstaff ed. William Arthur Gill (London, 1912). Moulton, Richard G., Shakespeare as a Dramatic Thinker (New York, 1907). Muir, Kenneth, Shakespeare's Sources. 2 vols. (London, 1957). Nicoli, Allardyce, Shakespeare (London, 1952). Nosworthy, J. M., ed., Cymbeline (The New Arden Shakespeare) (London, 1955). Pafford, J. H. P., ed., The Winter's Tale (The New Arden Shakespeare) (London, 1963). Parrott, Thomas Marc, Shakespearean Comedy (New York, 1949). Pettet, E. C., Shakespeare and the Romance Tradition (London, 1949). Philips, James, "The Tempest and the Renaissance Idea of Man", Shakespeare Quarterly XV (Spring 1964), 147-159. Ralli, Augustus, A History of Shakespearean Criticism. 2 vols. (London, 1932). Raysor, Thomas Middleton, ed., Coleridge's Shakespearean Criticism. 2 vols. (Cambridge, Mass., 1930). Ribner, Irving, The English History Play in the Age of Shakespeare (Princeton, 1957). Shakespeare, William, The Complete Plays and Poems, ed. William Allan Neilson and Charles Jarvis Hill (Cambridge, Mass., 1942). - , The Complete Works, ed. George Lyman Kittredge (New York, 1936). Slote, Bernice, ed., Myth and Symbol: Critical Approaches and Applications (Lincoln, Nebraska, 1963). Smith, D. Nichol, ed., Eighteenth Century Essays on Shakespeare (Glasgow, 1903). Smith, Logan Pearsall, On Reading Shakespeare (New York, 1933). Spencer, Theodore, Shakespeare and the Nature of Man (New York, 194 2). Stephenson, Α. Α., "The Significance of 'Cymbeline' ", Scrutiny X (1942), 329-338. Stewart, J. I. M., Character and Motive in Shakespeare (London, 1949). Still, Colin, The Timeless Theme (New York, 1936). Stoll, E. E., Art and Artifice in Shakespeare (New York, 1933). -, Shakespeare Studies (New York, 1960). Sypher, Wylie, ed., Comedy (Garden City, N.Y., 1956). Taylor, George Coffin, "Shakespeare's Use of the Idea of the Beast in Man", Studies in Philology XLII (July 1945), 530-542. Thayer, Calvin, Ben Jonson: Studies in the Plays (Norman, Okla., 1963). Thorndyke, Ashley W„ English Comedy (New York, 1929). Tillyard, Ε. M. W., The Nature of Comedy and Shakespeare (London, 1958). -, Shakespeare's Last Plays (London, 1938). Tindall, William York, The Literary Symbol (Bloomington, Ind., 1955). Tinkler, F. C., "Cymbeline", Scrutiny VII (1938), 5 - 2 0 . Traversi, Derek, Shakespeare: The Last Phase (New York, 1953). - , William Shakespeare: The Early Comedies (London, 1960). Tucker, Mary Curtis, "Toward a Theory of Shakespearean Comedy: A Study of the Contributions of Northrop Frye". Unpublished dissertation. Emory, 1963. Wagner, Emma Brockway, Shakespeare's Tempest: An Allegorical Interpretation (Yellow Springs, Ohio, 1933). Welsford, Enid, The Court Masque (Cambridge, 1927).

SELECTED BIBLIOGRAPHY Wilson, Harold S., "Action and Symbol in Measure for Measure and The Tempest", Shakespeare Quarterly IV (October 1953), 375-384. Winny, James, ed., The Descent of Euphues: Three Elizabethan Romance Stories (Cambridge, 1957). Wolff, S. L., The Greek Romance in Elizabethan Prose Fiction (New York, 1912).

INDEX

Aethiopica, 56 Apollonius of Tyre, 28«., 29 Aristotle, 20 Armstrong, Edward Α., 11«. Arnold, Matthew, 19, 19-20«. Arthos, John, 40 Bacon, Wallace, 23 Barber, C. L„ 24η., 27η. Bergson, Henri, 20 BetheU, S. L., 24, 60η. Biggins, Dennis, 62η. Blennerhasset, Thomas, 43 Boccaccio, 42-43 Bradley, A. C„ 22-23, 26-27/1, 85, 88-89 Brockban, J. P., 44η. Brooks, Cleanth, 25 Brooks, Harold F., 44 Brown, John Russel, 19 Bryant, Jr., J. Α., 60n. Bush, Douglas, 24 Bush, Geoffrey, 53, 84 Cawley, Rooert Ralston, 68η. Chambers, Ε. K., 23η., 28η., 42«., 54η., 68η. Coghill, Nevill, 20, 84 Coleridge, Samuel Taylor, 1 In., 20, 22-23, 25,69 Cooper, Lane, 20n Craig, Hardin, 24, 28n. Crane, Milton, 18 Daiches, David, 19 Dante, 83-84 Daphnis and Chloe, 56, 68 Dowden, Edward, 22-23 Dryden, John, 21 Edwards, Philip, 19η., 28η. Eliot, T. S., 7 Empson, William, 24

Farnham, Willard, 24, 84η. Fergusson, Francis, 19η., 25-27 Frederyke of Jenrten, 42-43 Friedman, Norman, 11-12η. Frye, Northrop, 9, 16η., 17, 20, 25-27 29-30,45,58-59, 78, 85, 87 Frye, Roland M., 35-86 Gesner, Carol, 68-69 Greene, Robert, 54-57, 62 Greg, W. W., 57 Hankins, John F., 71 n Heliodrus, 56 Hoeniger, F. D„ 12, 28-29/1, 36, 38/1, 40 Holinshed, Raphael, 13, 17, 42-46, 86 James, D. G., 13-14, 69-70 Johnson, Samuel, 18, 21, 26 Jones, Indigo, 79n. Jonson, Ben, 18, 18η., 20η., 21, 54η., 79ru, 83-84 Kermode, Frank, 19«., 68-69/»., 71 Kittredge, George Lyman, 8n. Knight, G. Wilson, 19, 24, 42η., 45, 60η., 69 Knights, L. C„ 24 Kronenberger, Louis, 20«. Krutch, Joseph Wood, 19η Lawrence, W. W., 24«., 46η. Lodge, Thomas, 56 Major, John, Μ., 79η. Matthews, Brander, 24 Maxwell, J. C., 28η. McManaway, J. G., 28 Meredith, George, 20 Miller, Arthur, 19 Mirror for Magistrates, 43-44 Moffet, Robin, 44«., 53

95 Montaigne, 68«., 71 Moulton, Richard G., 22-23 Muir, Kenneth, 23«., 55«. Nosworthy, J. M., 19«., 42-45, 52 Pafford, J. H. P., 19«., 54«., 55 Parrot, Thomas Marc, 84«. Pettet, E. C„ 12«., 23, 29, 45 Philips, James, 71 Pope, Alexander, 21, 26 Ralli, Augustus, 19«. Rare Triumphs of Love and Fortune, The, 42, 44 Rhymer, Thomas, 18 Ribner, Irving, 44 Richardson, William, 26 Shakespeare, William All's Well That Ends Well, 10, 16, 31-32, 34-35,46 As You Like It, 10, 14, 16, 31-32, 35, 46, 49, 56, 58 83-84 Comedy of Errors, The, 14-15, 24, 41 Cymbeline, 7, 9-11, 13-15, 17, 28, 33, 38-39, 42-53, 54-55, 57, 68-69, 71, 73, 81-82, 86-87 Hamlet, 12, 32«., 78 King Lear, 12, 78 Macbeth, 12 Measure for Measure, 11, 31, 70 Merchant of Venice, The, 15, 15«., 35 Merry Wives of Windsor, The, 11, 15, 84 Midsummer Night's Dream, Α., 8, 14, 71 Much Ado About Nothing, 10, 31

Othello, 12, 22, 46 Pericles, 7, 9-12, 17, 27, 28-41, 42, 46,50, 54-55,61-62,68,71-73, 81-82, 86-87 Rape of Lucrece, The, 49 Taming of the Shrew, The, 10,35 Tempest, The, 7, 9-11, 13, 15, 17, 22, 27-28, 31, 35, 53-54, 67, 68-82, 86-87 Troilus and Cressida, 86-87 Twelfth Night, 16, 32, 54 Two Gentlemen of Verona, 14-15 Winter's Tale, The, !, 9-11, 14-15, 17, 22, 27-28, 44, 53, 54-67, 68-69, 71-73. 75-76, 80, 82, 86-87 Sir Gawain and the Gréen Knight, 30 Slote, Bernice, 8 Smith, Logan Pearsall, 24 Spencer, Theodore, 24, 70, 88 Spenser, Edmund, 30 Spurgeon, Caroline, 24 Stephenson, Α. Α., 46«. Stewart, J. I. M„ 26 Still, Colin, 69«. Stoll, Ε. E„ 23-24, 27n. Taylor, George Coffin, 70«. Thayer, Calvin, 56κ, 83 Tfflyard, E. M. W., 12, 19, 24, 45 Tindall, William York, 7, 8n. Tinkler, F. C., 45-46«. Traversi, Derek, 9m, 12, 29, 49, 69 Tucker, Mary Curtis, 25-26n. Wagner, Emma Brockway, 6 9«. Welsford, Enid, 79n. Wilson, Harold S„ 70 Wimsatt, William K„ 25 Wolff, S. L., 23«., 56

DE PROPRIETATIBUS LITTERARUM edited by C. H. VAN SCHOONEVELD Series Practica 1. Robert G. Cohn, Mallarmê's Masterpiece: New Findings. 1966. 144 pp.

/ 24,-

2 Constance B. Hieatt, The Realism of Dream Vision: The Poetic Exploitation of the Dream-Experience in Chaucer and His comtemporaries. 1967.112 pp. /18,3. Joseph J. Morgan Jr., Chaucer and the Time of Mutability. 1969. 190 pp.

/ 30,-

4. Peter Nusser, Musils Romantheorie. 1967. 144 pp.

/ 22,—

5. Majorie Perloff, Rhyme and Meaning in the Poetry of Yeats. 1970. 249 pp.

/48,-

6. Marian H. Cusac, Narrative Structure in the Novels of Sir Walter Scott. 1969. 128 pp.

m -

7. Victor Wortley, Tallement des Rêauz: The Man trough his Style. 1969. 99 pp.

/ 34,-

9. Donald R. Swanson, Three Conquerors: Character and Method in the Mature Works of George Meredith. 1969. 148 pp.

f 24,-

10. Irwin Gopnik, A Theory of Style and Richardson's Clarissa. 1970. 140 pp.

/ 22,-

12. Sylvia D. Feldman, The Morality-Patterned Comedy of the Renaissance. 1971. 165 pp. /18,13. Giles Mitchell, The Art Theme in Joyce Cary's First Trilogy. 1971. 136 pp.

/18-

17. Meredith B. Raymond, Swinburne's Poetics: Theory and Practice. 1971. 202 pp.

/ 36,-

20. Edgar B. Schick, Metaphorical Organism in Herder's Early Works: A Study of the Relation of Herder's literary Idion to His World-view. 1971. 135 pp.

f

22. James E. Magner Jr., John Crowe Ransom: Critical Principles and Pre-occupations 1971. 134 pp.

f 18,-

23. Elisabeth Th. M. van de Laar, The Inner Structure of Wuthering Heights: A Study of an Imaginative Field. 1969. 262 pp.

/40,-

24. Bernard L. Einbond, Samuel Johnson's Allegory 1971. 104 pp.

/18,-

27. Richard Vernier, 'Poesie ininterrompue' et la poétique de Paul Edward. 1971. 180 pp.

f 25,-

28. Hugh L. Hennedy, Unity in Barsteshire. 1971. 144 pp.

/ 28,-

35. Roman Jakobson and Lawrence G. Jones, Shakespeare's Verbal Art in Th'Expence of Spirit. 1970. 32 pp.

/10,-

MOUTON PUBLISHERS THE HAGUE

25-