Word as Bond in English Literature from the Middle Ages to the Restoration [Reprint 2016 ed.] 9781512801255

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WORD AS BOND in English Literature from the Middle Ages to the Restoration

WORD UBOND in English Literature from the Middle Ages to the Restoration J. DOUGLAS CANFIELD

UNIVERSITY OF PENNSYLVANIA PRESS P H I L A D E L P H I A

UKk

Copyright © 1989 by the University of Pennsylvania Press All rights reserved Printed in the United States of America Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Canfield, J. Douglas (John Douglas), 191,1Word as bond in English literature from the Middle Ages to the Restoration / J. Douglas Canfield. p. cm. Bibliography: p. Includes index. ISBN 0-8122-8162-4 1. English literature—Early modern, 1500-1700—History and criticism. 2. English literature—Middle English, 1100-1500 —History and criticism,. 3. Trust (Psychology) in literature, i. Allegiance in literature. 5. Betrothal in literature. 6. Constancy in literature. 7. Loyalty in literature. 8. Oaths in literature. 9. Vows in literature. I. Title. PRU28.T77CS6 1989 820' .9'353—dcl9

88-29999 CIP

Designed by Adrianne Onderdonk Dudden COVER—Jan van Eyck. The Marriage of Giovanni (?) Arnolfini and Giovanna Cenami. lUSU. Reproduced by courtesy cfthe Trustees, The National Gallery, London.

For Colin —he surprised and delighted

CONTENTS

Acknowledgments Foreword xi

ix

RATIO ONE: COMIC CLOSURE 1 HEROIC ROMANCE 3 Beowulf 4 Sir Gawain and the Green Knight 13 The First Booke of the Faerie Queene 21 The Conquest of Granada by the Spaniards 32 2 TRAGICOMIC ROMANCE The Franklin's Tale 45 The Winter's Tale 52 Marriage A-la-Mode 66 3 SOCIAL COMEDY 83 The Pardoner's Tale 84 Volpone 90 The Man of Mode 104

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45

4

SUBVERSIVE COMEDY 117 The Wife of Bath's Tale 117 Bartholomew Fair 126 The Country Wife 135

INTERLUDE 5

THE LYRIC 151 Chaucer 151 Donne 157 Rochester 165

RATIO TWO: NON-COMIC CLOSURE 6

POLITICAL TRAGEDY 179 Le Morte Darthur 179 Macbeth 190 Absalom and, Achitophel: A Poem 199 7

PERSONAL TRAGEDY 213 Troilus and Criseyde 213 Hamlet, Prince of Denmark 222 All for Love; or, The World Well Lost 235 8

CORRECTIVE SATIRE 249 Piers Plowman 249 The History of Troilus and Cressida 260 The Medall: A Satyre Against Sedition 272 9

ABSURDIST SATIRE 281 The Knight's Tale 281 Antony and Cleopatra 291 Venice Presero'd; or, A Plot Discovered

Afterword 313 Works Cited 323 Index 335

Contents viii

300

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

I owe debts of gratitude to the following: To the late Don Howard, to Maynard Mack, and to Paul Hunter for the initial encouragement to undertake this study. To many extramural colleagues and friends—especially Paula Backscheider, Dustin Griffin, Phil Harth, Tom Hester, Grant Holly, Mike Holquist, Paul Korshin, Don Marshall, Tom Mitchell, Stephen Orgel, Ellen Pollak, Claude Rawson, John Richetti, James Thompson, and Aubrey Williams—for encouragement along the way. To the members of the Arizona Study Group on Critical Theory and many other intramural colleagues and friends for the same, especially Barbara Babcock, L. D. Clark, Pat O'Donnell, Herb Schneidau, Jon Solomon, and Bob ter Horst, who generously took the time to read and critique large portions or even all of the manuscript. To my former department head, Ed Dryden; my former dean, Dick Kinkade; and my Provost, Nils Hasselmmo, for released time to read and write. To Juliane Ariail and Brooke Fredericksen for research assistance. To students in my undergraduate classes, humanities seminars, graduate seminars, and independent studies—especially Stephen Barker, Brian Connery, Jennifer Jenkins, and Homer Pettey—for allowing me to experiment on them and helping me think the project through.

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To the readers for and the staff of the University of Pennsylvania Press for their positive response and suggestions. Finally, to Michael McKeon and Al Shoaf for their detailed critiques of the entire manuscript; their extremely intelligent and professional engagement with it has helped me make it a better book. My dialogue with them and with others mentioned above has renewed my faith in the possibility of real intellectual exchange. Such exchange, either in the classroom or through publication, is our very raison d'être, an ideal often smothered in fear and loathing in the academy. I invite my readers to continue the dialogue.

Several of the Restoration sections of the book have been presented in whole or in part at meetings of the American Society for Eighteenth-Century Studies and its regional affiliates since 1978. The sections on The Conquest of Granada, Marriage A-la-Mode, The Man of Mode, and The Country Wife have been adumbrated, often distantly, in articles that appeared in Eighteenth-Century Studies (1979), ELH: A Journal of English Literary History (1984), and Studies in English Literature (1980). The section on All for Love was rather more closely adumbrated in an article in ELH (1975). Again, I have appreciated the dialogue with readers and auditors alike.

Acknowledgments

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FOREWORD He Plights his Faith; and we believe him just; His Honour is to Promise, ours to Trust. Thus Britain's Basis on a Word is laid, As by a Word the World it self was made. John Dryden, Epilogue to Albion and, Albanins

(Works 15:55) Thus in 1685 at the moment of the virtual demise of the feudal epoch in England, John Dryden could celebrate the chivalric code of the word as the bond of society, the mutual pledge of trust. This code included not only the pledge of allegiance between subject and king, but also the betrothal of lovers, the vow of friendship, and the judicial oath. These various forms of the pledged word constitute a crucial part, a "master trope," of the "hegemonic code" invented to establish and maintain feudal Europe's version of patriarchy, and literature embodies that code as much as any other form of discourse. Literature portrays society as based upon a gentleman's or gentlewoman's word, which was itself underwritten ultimately by the Word of God. And it portrays this code of the word as continually threatened by antithetical or disintegrating forces. The code has a set of key words (with their attendant antitheses): loyalty, fidelity, constancy, trust. The values they represent are always being tried in the fires of monstrous deviation or subtle subversion. But whether the threat to the word is displaced onto some external monster or demon or is revealed as lurking within, the "unheimlich," the "Stranger in the House," is always really the heimlich, the potentially deadly rivalry of grappling twins and "monstrous doubles," the bastard sons and Dark Queens, the mothers, the lovers, the friends. Usually such threats are overcome, if at all, by supernatural aid, by the intervention of the Logos to guarantee the validity of the

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word, of oaths, vows, promises. But the real "transcendental signified" remains in the logos of the poet, that sign of our desire for transcendence, for permanence in the face of a mutable world characterized by multiple purposes and passions and, indeed, significances.1 If I had knowledge enough and time, I would try to examine this code in all the culture texts of Europe, where it manifests itself in countless chansons de geste, medieval romances, Renaissance epics, comedies, lyrics, tragedies, and satires. But prudence dictates that I confine myself to feudal aristocratic literature in my own language, which, when one includes Old English, covers virtually a thousand years. Therefore I propose to demonstrate how this code of the word preoccupies English literature from the Middle Ages to the Restoration. The examples I have chosen not only best illustrate the theme of the word but are among those usually placed in our cultural pantheon.

Why is the theme of word as bond so central to the conflicts of so much major English feudal literature? Because it is a master trope, a master figure by which feudal society defined itself. That is, the culture determined its central vir-tue in a literal sense, the quality essential to the men that hold the power (see Nietzsche, Genealogy of Morals), as a bond which guards against that which most threatens the continuity of that power. Organizing itself first around tribal leaders and later around local barons with their retinues and dependents, medieval society relied upon the (fiction of the) pledge of allegiance for political continuity and upon the (fiction of the) pledge of betrothal for both political alliance and genealogical continuity. The Germanic unifying principle of comitatus combined with Roman contract law to produce a society based upon oaths of fealty, sanctioned first by pagan then by Christian gods.2 As society centralized, fealty also became centralized, attached to the person of the king. It is important to realize that this fealty was a personal affair, a bond between persons, modeled on the bond between fathers and sons and uttered as a word—an oath of allegiance. The pledge of betrothal is a domestic version of essentially the same relationship: a wife's pledge of fidelity to her lord-husband. Therefore, feudal literature, carrying out its encoding function, focuses repeatedly on the defining thesis of society, word as bond, and its antithesis, the ultimate transgression— betrayal.

Foreword,

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A signal symbol in medieval culture for this arch transgression is Satan's three mouthfuls at the dead center of Dante's Inferno: Brutus, Cassius, and Judas. Feudal English literature portrays its own radical traitors with special power. Breaking of the word at its darkest takes on overtones of castration, infanticide, and cannibalism; at its lightest, it still threatens with insecurity: the celebratory dance at the end of either social or subversive comedy is as beautiful, as necessary, and as tenuous as the morning dew. What could be more fragile than a promise? How can breath bind? Yet how, the literature insists, can culture survive without word as bond, especially when it loses faith in an underwriting Word? So, these poets utilized their constitutive words to hold English feudal society together for a thousand years. Social organization by means of word-as-bond—or covenant—is, of course, not peculiar to European, much less Anglo-Saxon feudalism (see Zacharias P. Thundyil, Covenant in Anglo-Saxon Thought, ch. 1). I am arguing, however, that the trope is particularly contested in the central conflicts of a great deal of English feudal literature. Hannah Arendt, writing in a more humanistic vein than Nietzsche (although she herself cites the Genealogy), describes government by promise in The Human Condition as a via, media between absolutism (read: totalitarianism) on the one hand and anarchy on the other, a heritage from the Romans and the Hebrews that retains but tempers freedom. Such government masters the "two-fold darkness of human affairs," Arendt writes, that is, the unreliability of human behavior and the unpredictability of events, not by attempting to cancel them out but by living with them. Her eloquent depiction of this dialectic can be applied to the dialectic between code and transgression that I am attempting to demonstrate: "The danger and the advantage inherent in all bodies politic that rely on contracts and treaties is that they, unlike those that rely on rule and sovereignty [absolutism], leave the unpredictability of human affairs and the unreliability of men as they are, using them merely as the medium, as it were, into which certain islands of predictability are thrown and in which certain guideposts of reliability are erected" (243-45). The islands and guideposts would have no definition, no meaning without the medium: constancy makes sense only in a sea of mutability. The theme is universal, but English feudal literature was particularly preoccupied with it because European feudal society in general was not only patriarchal but also patrilineal, and the transmission of power and property, from king to

Foreword xiii

freeholder, was a matter of male succession. Political and sexual fidelity were essential, and they were enforced not only with swords but with words.

Though I am attempting to articulate some of the history of English literature, my procedure will not be simply chronological. The temptation in such a procedure is tofinda pristine beginning when the cultural code was unproblematized, then to find a transitional middle and a terminal stage of disintegration. I do not believe literature operates that way. Borrowing a notion central to Hegel's theory of tragedy (see Hegel on Tragedy), I believe that the soul of literature is conflict and that any cultural code is always being problematized in various ways—with varying resolutions—according to the different moods of writers or to the different modes of literature. English chivalric literature has five dominant modes—romance, comedy, lyric, tragedy, and satire. For analytic purposes, I have divided each of these (except lyric) in two, as I shall explain when introducing the pertinent chapters. In each mode I offer three examples—one from the Middle Ages, one from the Renaissance, and one from the Restoration (except in chapter 1, where Beowulf demands inclusion as the Alpha of the tradition)—in order to demonstrate that no Viconian evolution obtains but that each mode from the heroic to the satiric is always operating cheek by jowl with the others. If I have most often used examples from Chaucer, Shakespeare, and Dryden, that is because they are not only the best but the most representative poets of their respective ages. I have organized the modes I discuss into two "ratios," that is, two sets of relations that are themselves proportional. The first ratio includes works whose endings are essentially comic closures: romances with heroes and lovers tried and proved (finally) true; comedies with problems resolved—if not solved—through poetical justice, marriage, or sheer celebration. The second includes works whose endings are essentially non-comic closures: tragedies with heroes and lovers dead, though order may be finally restored; satires with problems neither solved nor resolved, where closure is at best wish fulfillment or the veil of illusion to hide the Nietzschean abyss. There is a progression in each of the ratios from high art to low, from idealistic to realistic, from mythic projections of the self out onto the cosmic to more psychological inscapes. And there is a proportion between the ratios: heroic romance is related to political tragedy in that both treat the heroic, the

Foreword xiv

serious, the public; tragicomic romance is related to personal tragedy in that both are more domestic than their heroic counterparts; social comedy is related to corrective satire in that both concentrate on social standards; subversive comedy is related to absurdist satire in that both reveal social codes as thin tissues. The proportion could also be expressed this way: heroic is to tragicomic romance as political is to personal tragedy; social is to subversive comedy as corrective is to absurdist satire. Finally, I have included a chapter on the lyric as an interlude between the two ratios, first because the lyric demands inclusion as a major genre of feudal literature, second because it is as centrally preoccupied with the theme of word as bond as the other genres, and third because, as a quasi-personal mode, it takes us into the mind of the creating poet and reveals his radical ambivalence toward both the constancy of women and the constancy of the world. Thus, I have tried to balance the two ratios of the book on the fulcrum of representative reflection. In conclusion, I shall examine what happens to the master trope of word-as-bond in emerging bourgeois literature, especially in its epic masterpiece, Paradise Lost; in its dominant form, the novel; and in the work of the three great Augustan writers, the later Dryden, Swift, and Pope. Obviously, the trope retains power after the Glorious Revolution: Modern economy is built upon credit; contemporary politics is filled with revelations of violations of trust; country music is virtually based on the theme of sexual fidelity. But once patrilineal succession is no longer the fundamental principle of the transmission of political power, once any man—not to mention woman—can become prime minister or president, once Heathcliff can "equal" Cathy, then literature, co-constituting the shift in the wind, ceases to be centrally preoccupied with word-as-bond. The trope ceases to be master and yields to a new master trope, self-reliance.

My critical method is a form of structuralism, not the formalist structuralism of the earlier twentieth century but the more semiotic kind practiced recently by Geertz in anthropology, Hayden White in historiography, and Michel Foucault in philosophy. This is a study of a contested trope at the very center of literary conflict that helps define a cultural epoch by means of the fold between virtuous and trasgressive behavior. And this is a synchronic study, not a diachronic one.

Foreword XV

Whereas numerous changes occur over this thousand-year period; whereas, for example, an essentially tribal code becomes absorbed into an increasingly centralized and Christianized feudal state; and whereas transgressive behavior within English feudalism was not necessarily negative—usurpation and adultery often resulted in improved succession; nevertheless, this master trope remains at the center of conflict in an enormous amount of the literature in various modes that run parallel throughout the epoch. It is incumbent upon us to have a synchronic analysis of the way this trope helps to structure the ideology of an entire epoch. This is a synchronic study of a master trope in literature alone. It does not attempt to establish a context in the history of ideas, partly because such a project would require preterhuman powers and time, but also and emphatically because such studies tend to privilege certain forms of historical or philosophical or theological discourse over literary. As I have said, literary discourse is as constitutive of ideology as any other form of discourse. Moreover, as poststructuralism has insisted, all discourse is tropic. Contextual materials do not ground literary discourse. The interplay of texts is more like heat lightning across the near or distant sky of interpretation. Yet one may single out, for heuristic purposes, a "kind" of discourse to study. My training is as a literary critic; interpreting literary discourse is what I do—and I hope what I do well. So, readers expecting a narrative of literary history or a narrative of the history of ideas will not find them here. Nor is this book on wordas-bond an historical study of epistemological theories of the referentiality of language. What theory I employ is modern, the lenses through which we see and interpret literature of the past. And whereas the book is essentially structuralist, whenever a concept from modern critical theory has appeared useful, I have employed it, even though I am aware that in an absolute sense such a concept may form part of a system that is incompatible with another from which I have borrowed a concept. For example, Jacques Derrida and Raymond Williams differ profoundly over the concept of Presence; Derrida and René Girard differ profoundly over the concept of Difference. But I have employed these concepts not as parts of systematic theoretical analyses, but rather as tools to crack individual or local problems of interpretation. Girard's concepts of mimetic desire and deadly rivalry or Freud's concept of the unheimlich can be enormously useful, for

Foreword, xvi

example, without one's subscribing to Girard's theory of the unity of all religious rites or Freud's complete theory of neuroses.

One further word about procedure: In a book of this kind, it is simply impossible to cover all the secondary material on so many major works. I have made a good-faith effort to scan that material, and when I have encountered a study that anticipates a reading of mine or is related to it in an important way, I have cited it. I may well have omitted others, for which I beg the specialist's indulgence. Nevertheless, I am confident that the originality of this book lies not so much in its individual readings as in its configuration of those readings together in a kaleidoscopic vision of one of feudal aristocracy's most important constitutive tropes. In other words, I am inviting other scholars and students of English literature to look up from their specializations for a while and join me in a synchronic overview of our early literary landscape, examining a trope that runs through it in a way as to organize it like Wallace Stevens's jar on that hill in Tennessee. At least, Stevens might say, this is one way to look at it.3

N O T E S 1. I am indebted here and throughout this study to Clifford Geertz for the concept of master trope ("Art as a Cultural System"), to Raymond Williams for the concepts of hegemonic and constitutive codes (Marxism and Literature), to Sigmund Freud for the concept of the unheimlich ("The Uncanny"), to Tony Tanner for the concept of the Stranger in the House (Adultery in the Novel), to René Girard for the concepts of rivalry and the monstrous double (Violence and the Sacred), and to Jacques Derrida for the concept of desire as the transcendental signified (0/ Grammatology). Since it would require too much time and interruption here to explicate these and other theoretical concepts I employ, I can only assure my reader that their significance emerges in the body of the study. 2. See Carolyn Barry Cole's 1984 dissertation, "The Purpose and Practice of Troth in Medieval English Society and Literature." Ms. Cole's work came to my attention in early 1987 through the MLA Bibliography for 1985. I conceived this book in 1980 and finished the first draft in late 1985. My work is therefore not derivative from hers; rather, I see our studies as corroborative, hers going into more depth in other historical discourses, while limiting itself to the Middle Ages, mine having much more chronological breadth and refer-

Foreword xvii

ring to many more primary literary works. Furthermore, her readings tend to be paraphrastic, mine (I hope), more dialectical. 3. A Note on texts. I have used definitive editions of Beowulf, Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, Piers Plowman, and the works of Chaucer, Shakespeare, Dryden, and Rochester. For the other works I have used reliable but readily available texts. Instead of sending my reader to the library for the Spenser Variorum or the three-volume Vinaver text of Morte Darthur, I have used the Oxford Standard Authors texts, which in the case of Malory includes Vinaver's text in one volume. For Ben Jonson, instead of the old Hereford and Simpson edition, I have used volumes from the Yale Edition. For the Restoration dramatists (except Dryden), I have used volumes from the Regents Restoration Drama Series. In the case of Donne, instead of the multivolume Oxford Edition of his poetic works, I have used the convenient Modern Language College Edition, which contains all the poems and some prose. And in the Afterword, I have followed a similar procedure of citing readily available texts, often in anthologies.

Foreword xviii

RATIO ONE

Comic Closure

ONE

Heroic Romance

Heroic romance usually features a great or potentially great warrior who must face severe trials designed to test the values of his culture. Often the antithesis of those values is embodied in an external threat, some unheimlich monster who comes to wreak havoc or just to challenge the best, the most representative warrior within the society. But the unheimlich is only a displaced version of the society's gravest internal threats, and often the hero's worst enemy lurks within his own breast. The four works included in this part range from epic to romance to rhymed heroic play and are among the greatest English heroic romances from the Middle Ages to the Restoration. Central to their conflicts is the pledged word—the boast, the promise, the oath—to face the monster, to fight the enemy, to remain loyal to one's lord and, in some cases, faithful to one's mistress, all with an initial or a learned reliance upon the god in whose name the hero swears or to whom he finally kneels. Though tempted to break his bond at one point, Beowulf remains loyal, but as we move into the High Middle Ages, the Renaissance, and the Restoration, the heroes become frailer, more human. In various ways they break their words, and they must subsequently learn to overcome their weaknesses, to control their passions, to turn humiliation into humility, and above all to keep their word.

3

Beowulf Upon his arrival at Heorot to rescue Hrothgar and his people from the ravages of Grendel, Beowulf is immediately challenged by Unferth to a war of words ("beadurüne," Klaeber ed., line 501). The function of this encounter is to establish the importance of one's boast ("bëot" passim). Beowulf has come unlocking his "wordhord" (259) and boasting that he alone will settle the dispute with Grendel. But Hrothgar notes that others, drunk with beer, have boasted as much ("gebëotedon" 480), yet could accomplish nothing. Perhaps himself reproached by Hrothgar's words, Unferth calls Beowulf a vain boaster who was beaten in a contest with Breca. Beowulf gives his version of the story, in which he not only beat Breca but saved his life, and he seems to win the war of words for two reasons: the rhetoric of his narration—he protests he does not over-boast ("fela gylpe" 586)—and his subsequent ad hominem attack on Unferth. By calling him "bëore druncen" (531), Beowulf associates Unferth directly with those drunkards who had failed to kill Grendel, and later he explicitly accuses him of that failure (590-94); moreover, Beowulf reminds everyone present that Unferth is famous only for killing his brother (587-89). Thus Beowulf has portrayed Unferth as the slayer of a rival brother figure and himself as the savior of such a figure (Breca). What is symbolized in the encounter between Beowulf and Unferth is another version of the central conflict of the poem: Grendel is an externally displaced image of the gravest internal threat to this society, that fundamental breaking of words and bonds—kin-killing. As a descendent of Cain, Grendel is a monstrous or unheimlich double for Unferth—potentially even for Beowulf himself. Beowulf is the person of good faith who keeps his word, but his antithesis, the person of bad faith, always lurks within. As has been ably demonstrated (Alvin Lee, The Guest-Hall of Eden, 184-96; David Williams, Cain and Beowulf), the conflict between figures of good and bad faith pervades the stories within the story, for they are shadow images of the eventual fate of both Hrothgar's and Beowulf's societies. Sigemund's nephew Fitela was faithful to him, and he prospered. We are supposed to compare that faith with that of a greater nephew—Beowulf, nephew to Hygelac. And we are supposed to contrast it to the faith of Hrothulf, nephew to Hrothgar, who, the poet and the audience knew, would eventually betray Hrothgar's son to seize the Danish throne (thus the poignancy of Wealhtheow's appeal to Beowulf to protect her sons and

Comic Closure

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to Hrothulf himself to therefore keep his trust). Commenting on the gifts Beowulf gives Hygelac upon his return, the scop implicitly contrasts Beowulf's and Hrothulf's behavior: "So ought kinsmen do, not weave malice-nets for each other with secret craft, prepare death for comrades. To Hygelac his nephew was most true" ("Swâ sceal mseg dòn, / nealles inwitnet öörum bregdon / dyrnum crœfte, dëaô rênian / hondgesteallan. / Hygeläce waes, nlöa heardum / nefa swyöe hold" 2166-71: Donaldson translation). Wealhtheow's appeals immediately follow the story of kin killing at Finn's Court, at his own home ("häm" 1147), where the unheimlich which Grendel represents proves to be heimlich. And that story is similar to Beowulf's prophetic story of the failure of Hrothgar's daughter Freawaru's marriage to heal the feud between the Danes and the Heatho-Bards, who will both break their oath ("aösweord" 2064) and kill each other anew. Other similar stories include that of the usurpation among the great Swedish king Ongentheow's own descendente or that of the fratricide, however unintentional, between Hygelac's brothers. All these stories culminate in the contrast between Wiglaf, the man of faith (despite his origins), and the craven trothbreakers ("tydre trëowlogan" 2847) who desert Beowulf in his hour of need. Thus when Beowulf fights with Grendel, he is a culture hero, embodying the heroic values of his society, particularly the crucial virtue of truth to one's word—not only one's bêot but his pledge of allegiance. And his opponent is the arch troth-breaker. Grendel's strength symbolically represents the great potency of evil, portrayed through the stories within the story as the evil of malicious deceit, of perjury, treachery, and betrayal. In other words, Grendel is the embodiment of those vices antithetical to the culture's values. And his strength is backed by the metaphysical power of the Devil, with whom Grendel is repeatedly associated. But Beowulf's even greater strength symbolically represents the potency of his own virtue, his troth—an ethical power that triumphs because it is backed by an even greater metaphysical power. The scop speaks of Beowulf's two powers in one breath: "And the man of the Geats had sure trust in his great might, the favor of the Ruler" ("Hûru Gëata lêod georne truwode / mödgan maegnes, Metodes hyldo" 669-70). What we have, then, is a trial by combat, judged ultimately by God in favor of the Right, as the scop insists by his punctuation of the battle with references to "witig God" (685), "hâlig

Heroic Romance

5

Dryhten" (686), "mihtig God" (701), "Metod" (707), and with the characterization of Grendel as "wearing God's anger" ("Godes yrre baer" 711) and being "at war with God" ("hë waes fäg wiö God" 811). Hrothgar interprets the battle as having been won "through the Lord's might" ("[>urh Drihtnes miht" 940). As if to conclude this theme of attribution, the scopfinallysays flatly, "The Lord guided all the race of men, as he does now" ("Metod eallum wëold / gúmena cynnes, swä hê nü gît dêô" 1057-58). So, remembering in the midst of battle his evening's speech (759), this man of the Geats fulfilled his boast to the East-Danes (828-29). Beowulf is true to his word, and as the sign of his mastery over Grendel's potency—through divine power—he symbolically castrates him, tearing off his arm and hanging it on the high wall of Heorot. At the sight of the hand Unferth is struck silent, his hoard of contentious words locked up. The power of the true word, backed by God, is manifest. Wealhtheow punctuates the harmonic closure: "Here is each earl true to other, mild of heart, loyal to his lord" ("Her is seghwylc eorl ö[>rum getrywe, / mödes milde, mandrihtne hold" 1228-29). Yet why, symbolically, must Beowulffightwith Grendel's mother? Just who is she? In one sense, Beowulf as an epic culture hero must demonstrate the transcendence of his culture's values over death. Like other such heroes, he must descend into the underworld and come back alive (see Northrop Frye, The Secular Scripture). In this case, as all the imagery surrounding the mere suggests, Beowulf must actually descend into the grave and wrestle with a personification of death. And he nearly loses, because Unferth's sword, loaned him as a gesture of the good faith now between them, still smacks of mortality: it is still somehow tainted by the primal eldest sin of fratricide. Only God can save him: "and holy God brought about victory in war . . . . Then he saw among the armor a victory-blessed blade" ("ond hälig God / gewëold wlgsigor . . . . Geseah Ôa on searwum sigeêadig bil" 1553-54, 1557; cf. 1657-64). Others have compared Beowulf to Christ and his descent to the harrowing of hell, and surely Beowulf is a redeemer figure (see Lee, 196-211). As the imagery associated with this miraculous sword suggests, Beowulf's ascent from the depths represents the resurrection of the vegetation god and the renewal of the earth after winter's death: "Then the blade began to waste away from the battle-sweat, the warsword into battle-icicles. That was a wondrous thing, that it should all melt, most like the ice when the Father loosens the frost's fetters,

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undoes the water-bonds—He Who has power over seasons and times" ("M Jjaet sweord ongan / sefter heajjoswâte hildegicelum, / wïgbil wanian; fjast wses wundra sum, / {>aet hit eal gemealt îse gellcost, / öonne forstes bend Faeder onlaeteö, / onwindeÖ wœlrâpas, sé geweald hafaö / sàia ond míela" 1605-11). But why Grendel's mother? Does she represent only death? Why a woman, one living with her son, yet referred to as "monster-wife" ("âglœcwif " 1259)? And why the detail that Hrothgar's people know of no "faeder" (1355) for Grendel—or either of them—not even among the "dark spirits" ("dyrnra gästa" 1357). A Freudian might say that this is an Oedipal relationship, representing a fundamental threat to society by breaking a sacred taboo. Symbolically, Grendel would be the King's own son, mating with his mother and re-enacting the primal son's rebellion against the father (Freud, Totem and Taboo). A Jungian might be able to account for more of the details: the mother who on the one hand is associated with death, and on the other seems capable of parthenogenesis, may be a version of the Great Mother (see Erich Neumann's book of that title): a devourer as well as producer of her own children and the ultimate threat to any patriarchal system, so interested in "lineage" ("aejjelum" 332), so dependent upon patrilinear genealogy for its very existence.1 Grendel's Mother returns to steal her son's arm, the phallic symbol of significance. Thus she threatens to steal the male signifying power itself, which would destroy the code of the word as we know it (see Julia Kristeva, Desire in Language). Finally, Lévi-Strauss (à la "The Structural Study of Myth") might modify these interpretations and see both Grendel and his mother as reminders of the persistence of autochthonous origin, locked in contradiction with denials of such origin (the killing of them and other earth-spirits), a set of relations analogous to the contradiction between kin-killing (the undervaluing of kinship) and revenge (the overvaluing of kinship). To paraphrase Lévi-Strauss, one of human society's antinomies is the problem of origin from one or two. Any patriarchal system must constantly deny or socialize figures that suggest autochthony, on the one hand, or that threaten patrilineal succession by kinkilling or endless vendettas, on the other. An interesting example from Beowulf, a double of sorts for Grendel's Mother, is Modthryth—a version of the folktale figure of the destroying female who kills violators with a glance. In Beowulf, Modthryth becomes socialized, neutralized by patriarchy, as she is married to Offa and becomes, instead of a destroyer, "famous for generosity" ("göde märe" 1952). In short, she

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becomes Grendel's Mother's antithetical double, Wealhtheow, a mediator between contradictions, a sign of the continuity of society. Like the monsters', Wealhtheow's essence in the poem is symbolic, as is that of all the good women, like Hildeburh and Freawaru, whose main significance is to make peace between warring tribes through marriage. As Lévi-Strauss would say, they are exchange items employed to establish kinship relations that lessen the threat of war ( The Elementary Structures of Kinship). Wealhtheow is explicitly termed a "pledge of peace" ("friöusibb" 2017). She is the keeper of the cup, that sign of community and continuity; she, too, is a giver of rings, those round signs of mutualfidelity.Moreover, she is Hrothgar's constant queen. Only he seeks her bed (664-65); only he emerges from the bride-bower, "his cwên mid him" (923), along with a host of maidens. These details suggest the King's potency but also his possession, his control over the generative process, over the woman as vessel of his seed. It is this control over generation, this patriarchal determination of lineage that Grendel's Mother, producer of Grendel without a father, symbolically threatens. But on another level of signification, of course, if Grendel is a descendent of Cain, then we know who his father is—and who his mother is: "she who had to dwell in the terrible water, the cold currents, after Cain became sword-slayer of his only brother, his own father's son" ("sé Jje waeteregesan wunian scolde, / cealde strëamas, sijaôan Câin wearö / to ecgbanan ängan brêjjer, / fœderenmiëge" 1260-63). Thus she is a displacedfigureof Eve, who is herself mythologically that negative side of woman in the patriarchal dichotomy: she is the arch-betrayer, the cause of death and all our woe. Grendel's Mother is an overdetermined sign; she is at least all these figures wrapped into one: Eve, Oedipal mother, devouring mother, chthonic originator of life, death itself. She personifies all the threats to Anglo-Saxon patriarchy, especially the desire to leave something permanent, to guarantee the succession not only of one's children, of one's name, but also of one's deeds, of one's fame. Like Nietzsche's Dionysian Original Mother, she is poised to destroy all of Apollonian man's attempts at transcendence, from Heorot and Beowulf's hall to the memory of great deeds (see Nietzsche, The Birth of Tragedy). It is no accident, then, that Beowulf must destroy her with a giant sword, a divinely blessed symbol of male, phallic power, which penetrates all through her body ("bil eal Öurhwöd / fœgne flsëschoman" 1567-68). Moreover, upon the hilt of the sword is depicted the triumph

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of the "Everlasting Lord" ("ëcean Dryhtne" 1692)—obviously, in Nietzsche's scheme, an Apollonian sky-god—over the chthonic giants—obviously earth-spirits, doubles for Grendel, who are drowned to death to be left by the ebb in their originating slime. Thus Beowulf's act guarantees the hegemony of the patriarchal order over the matriarchal. Thus it guarantees the continuity of society and its code of the word: "I promise you that you may sleep in Heorot without care" ("Ic hit J)ê Jionne gehäte, Jjaet J)ü on Heorote möst / sorhlêas swefan" 1671-72). Beowulf has kept his bëot, and now he himself deserves to be a king and, like Scyld and Hrothgar, to rule wide with his words. At this point, Beowulf can turn into his monstrous double, Grendel, by becoming a betrayer and kin-killer. When Hygelac is slain, his queen Hygd "had no trust in her son" ("bearne ne truwode" 2370) and offers the kingdom to Beowulf. Yet Beowulf refuses and instead props up the throne of the young Heardred. Beowulf becomes king only upon the death of Heardred and the end of Hrethel's direct line. And "Jjset waes göd cyning" (2390), because (unlike Heremod, in Hrothgar's exemplum after Beowulf's victories) he preserves the bonds between himself and his people by protecting them, by providing them treasure, by giving his warriors rings as the sign of mutual trust between them, and most importantly because "Drunk, he slew no hearthcompanions" ("nealles druncne slög / heorSgenêatas" 2179-80). He never becomes a kin-killer. "Nor," he boasts at the moment of his death, "did I swear many oaths unrightfully" ("në më swör felá / äöa on unriht" 2738-39). Yet, like all men, Beowulf must die. And the Dragon he faces is surely another manifestation of death. But his death seems no tragedy, for he is ready for it ("waelfüs" 2420). Furthermore, the Dragon itself is killed; Beowulf, with the help of Wiglaf, triumphs over it. That is, symbolically, Beowulf's culture conquers death, for when Beowulf's potent sword Naegling fails, Wiglaf's sword prevails. Though Wiglaf's sword has been the instrument of hostility to the Geats before, Wiglafs loyalty seems to sanctify it. The sword is passed. The phallic power is transmitted from one generation to another. Symbolically, Wiglaf is the son and heir Beowulf wishes for, to whom he passes on his armor, along with his golden necklace, as he dies asking Wiglaf to care for his people. The patriarchal succession is completed and triumphs over time and death. But Beowulf's fight with the Dragon means yet more. The Dragon, like Grendel, means more than mere death. The details surrounding

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him are opaque, but he appears on one level to represent great wrath released by violation, by the stealing of treasure. What does this symbolize? The most important detail seems to be the precious cup stolen by the violator, referred to as a "sincfaet" (2231 & 2300), "drincfaet" (2306), and "mäöjjum faet" (2405)—all related to fset or vat. The last term occurs nowhere else in Beowulf except where it names the stolen cup. But the other two recur in a few key locations, and related terms help clarify the significance of the cup. First, Wealhtheow is described as distributing such precious cups ("sincfato sealde" 622) to Hrothgar's loyal retainers. And the old lone warrior who reburies the treasure guarded by the Dragon not only includes many such cups as Wiglaf eventually finds (2760-61), but he laments the loss of his retainers: "I have none who wears sword or cleans the plated cup, rich drinking vessel" ("Näh, hwä sweord wege / oÖSe feormie feted waëge, / dryncfaet dêore" 2252-54). These two passages remind us how important the image of the cup is to this society. Hrothgar builds a meadhall where men can drink together, that is, enter into a communion. Wealhtheow and Hygd walk among the retainers bearing them alecups. Thus, the cup is the sign of union, of mutual trust. "Sincfaet" is also a name for at least part of that which Hama stole from Eormenric, the great Frankish king—"the necklace of the Brosings, chain and rich setting" ("Brösinga mene, / sigle ond sincfaet" 1199-1200). Whatever exactly this treasure is ("mene" means "necklace," but "sigle" means "jewel," and "sincfaet," as we have seen, is a word for a "precious vessel" of some kind2), it is apparently round, connoting unity, and its theft provokes a wrath, a treacherous enmity ("searoniSas" 1200) similar to that of the Dragon. Moreover, this particular round jewel appears to have persistent evil associations, for Hygelac wears it when, out of pride, he invades the Frisians and Franks and loses his life. In a kind of poetic justice, the precious jewel is returned to the Franks. Hence the stealing of the cup from the Dragon represents some fundamental violation of the bonds of society by some Stranger in the House who breaks the laws of hospitality and once more releases the chaotic forces of feuding and deadly rivalry. Perhaps, because of the association of cups with women and the related traditional image of woman as vessel, the violation is a rape, like that of Helen, which precipitates the equivalent of another Trojan War, a cataclysmic conflict figured forth by the Dragon. Corroboration of such an interpreta-

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tion might, if the text and context were not so corrupt, come from the strange detail that after killing Haethcyn, Hrethel's son and Hygelac's older brother, the great Swedish king Ongentheow "rescued his wife, old woman of times past, bereft of her gold, mother of Onela and Ohthere" ("bryd ähredde, / gómela iômêowlan golde berofene, / Onelan mödor one Öhtheres" 2930-32). Why would Ongentheow have to rescue his wife, why was she stripped of her gold, unless she had been seized and ravished by one of the Danes, perhaps Haethcyn himself, in narrative action either lost or omitted? If such be the case, then this rape and subsequent wrath may be an undisplaced analogue to Hama's stealing of the necklace and the stranger's stealing of the Dragon's cup. Whichever is the case, like Grendel and his Mother, the Dragon is an embodiment of the forces that continuously threaten to disintegrate Germanic society—specifically, fundamental violations of trust. This can perhaps best be seen in the figure of those ten troth-breakers who fail to come to Beowulf's aid as he fights the Dragon. The Dragon may be seen as a monstrous version of their crime or at least the chaos released by it, soon to be literally realized, if we may believe the messenger, in attacks from the Franks and the Swedes. Nevertheless, as I have argued, Beowulf and Wiglaf do defeat the Dragon, and the sword is passed. The special significance of their victory, I think, in light of the conflicts I have attempted to illuminate, is that the code of the word is passed. In contrast to all the trothbreakers in the poem, Wiglaf remains loyal to Beowulf; he keeps his word to him, his bond of allegiance and gratitude. He is a loyal "kinsman" (the scop stresses this relationship by repetition), who risks his life to save his lord and berates the others for their failure to do so, for their breach of faith. The importance of the code of the word is further emphasized by the following details. As he enters battle with the Dragon, Beowulf for the last time speaks boastwords ("bêotwordum" 2510). As he confronts the Dragon, he hurls at him a defiant word that breaks through out of his breast (2551). And Beowulf's final words—words indicating acceptance of death, fulfillment of his duty to his people; words of instruction for his funeral, and bequeathal of his function and his power—are described as issuing forth thus: "Again [Wiglaf] began to sprinkle him with water until this word's point broke through his breast-hoard" ("hë hine eft ongon / waeteres weorpan, oô J>aet wordes ord / brëosthord J>urhbraec" 2790-92). Thus, Beowulf's word, his bêot, his true word, is

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associated with his sword, with his potency itself. Whatever the subsequent history of the Geats, this magnificent poem has portrayed the code of the word engaging in deadly conflict with its antithesis and emerging triumphant. Just as Beowulf has passed on his sword and the code to Wiglaf, he has passed on to him his eloquence, the force of righteous words, as Wiglaf berates the word-breakers and then eulogizes his great dead leader. The scop says in closing, "So it is fitting that man honor his liege lord with words" ("swä hit gedëfe biÖ, / jiaet mon his winedryhten wordum herge" 3174-75). But Wiglafs words are the words of the scop himself, whose function is to reconstitute the very code of the word, to warn against its potential abuse, to praise those who keep it—all through his own words, which guarantee the transcendence of time and death by perpetuating the names and genealogies of the heroes and their stories. Even Beowulf, upon his return to the court of Hygelac, becomes a scop and prophetically tells the story of Freawaru as an exemplum, another warning against kin-killing, the breaking of the bonds of peace that Freawaru's marriage is supposed to guarantee. Hence, if Beowulf is a storyteller, the scop elevates the art of storytelling to the heroic. And the passing of the phallic sword from generation to generation also involves the passing of the sword-word of storytelling that perpetuates the patriarchal code of the word. So why does Wiglaf bury the treasure with Beowulf and predict the end of the Geatish kingdom? Perhaps because, as troth-breakers, the Geats are no longer worthy of the treasure. That which mediates between the two major contradictions in the poem—kin-killing and revenge, persistence and denial of the chthonic—is, on the one hand, the figure of the constant woman, exchanged in marriage as a peacepledge, and, on the other, the figure of the powerful warrior whose troth is validated by divine power. The image for the one is the cup, for the other the sword. But of course, the figures go together, because their secret of strength is the same—constancy. When that constancy is lost by whatever act of kin-killing or troth-breaking, the monsters again creep out of their lairs, war breaks out anew, and the treasure, the cup of cultural unity, cannot be passed. Beowulf's retainers have broken the fundamental bond of allegiance with their lord, the treasure giver, and he has died as a result of their betrayal. What is worse, as a people destined to be defeated, the Geats mil no longer deserve to have their story told, and that is a punishment worse than death. Only he who keeps his word merits the logos of the poet.

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Sir Gawain and the Green Knight When the Green Knight gallops into King Arthur's court and issues his challenge to the Knights of the Round Table, he precipitates a moment of deadly crisis. For the knights are temporarily stunned at his speech, and, out of shame, the King himself leaps to seize the Green Knight's dreaded axe. The giant alights, and the two stare at each other undaunted. If King Arthur trades blows, the Round Table will lose its Head and the culture will be destroyed. Since, as we learn later, the Giant is associated with Morgan le Fay, King Arthur's deadly rival, engaged with him in an ongoing feud of conflicting powers, this ominous confrontation can perhaps be seen as a version of what René Girard calls "the sacrificial crisis" (Violence and the Sacred), and, as Girard's analysis suggests, a substitute for King Arthur must be found, a kind of sacrifice accepted by both sides. The King's Champion must take his place. He must be the best among the best and embody the values of the culture. Those values are what is on trial, concluding in the crucial test—death. The Champion must by his death transcend death. He must demonstrate that his culture's values are worth dying for. In these particular circumstances, King Arthur's Champion must show that the "grete wordes" (312) vaunting the glory of the Knights of the Round Table are not merely empty, dissipated by the potent "worde" of one man's "speche" (314). King Arthur's knights have the reputation of being the most famous knights under Christ (51). And now the Green Knight comes to prove them—and to mock them when they appear to beridingon reputation alone. King Arthur asserts that he knows of no one who is aghast "of {jy grete wordes" 325), but this is clearly a contest of great words, a question of which set of words really has the potency signified by them, and King Arthur's silent knights seem impotent in the face of this boasting, bearded giant. It is fitting that Sir Gawain should offer himself as King Arthur's surrogate, for he sits at the high table next his Queen, obviously in the privileged position of Champion. Not to act would make Sir Gawain like Unferth, privileged but impotent. Moreover, Sir Gawain is described as a man "of tale most trwe / And gentylest kny3t of lote [speech]" (638-39). His sign is the Pentangle, that token of "trawjje" (626), whose unbroken line symbolizes the unbroken word.3 Sir Gawain answers the Green Knight's booming verbal aggression with soft, modest, courteous words, avoiding offense or embarrassment to King Ar-

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thur in his offer of substitution and gracefully accepting the terms of "couenaunt" (393) with the Green Knight. Sir Gawain pledges his word and ratifies it repeatedly with oaths. Now he must prove true to it. But as the story proceeds, we must ask ourselves why Sir Gawain's journey to the Green Chapel and his encounter with death is diverted into the mysterious castle. One answer is that the trial of his word is being multiplied both for variation on the theme and extension of the meaning of "traw^e." Sir Gawain enters into another covenant and swears "with trawjie" (1108) to exchange benefits with the lord of the castle. This trial is not categorically different from his other—the keeping of a covenant (cf. R. A. Shoaf, The Poem as Green Girdle, esp. ch. 3.3). However, the temptation by the lady of the castle is categorically different, and we must ask what it has to do with Sir Gawain's "trawjje." This temptation certainly tests Sir Gawain's courtesy, that is, his ability to parry the lady's sexual advances with speech, with courteous words that will not offend (cf. A. C. Spearing, Criticism and Medieval Poetry, ch. 2). He repeatedly rescues himself by two essential means: deliberately misinterpreting the lady—and thus appearing so innocent as to be dense—and deprecating himself by pretending not to be the gallant of whom the lady has heard. Thus real sex play is concealed and deferred by word play, and the poet again and again calls attention to the verbal nature of their encounter. On the first day, in the face of barely concealed propositions, Sir Gawain insists upon drawing the veil close again and agrees to while away the time "with tale" (1235); he answers each challenge "with speches skere [pure]" (1261-62). The lady comes again the second day "ful 3erne [eager] of hir wordez" (1478). And her very temptation is to get him to talk of love, to repeat the tales of love which are, she insists, the essence of chivalry ("of alle cheualry to chose, f)e chef Jjyng" 1512). This is a more insidious temptation than the rather straightforward proposition of the previous day, for Sir Gawain must not seem to agree with the lady's interpretation. To do so would diminish his culture and its code to the sentimentalized version of courtly love literature—as if the only vows ("hetes" 1525) that were important were those uttered to seduce women, the only loyalty (the lady uses the adjective "lei" or "loyal" throughout the passage) that of the rather trivial "layk" or sport of love (1513). Sir Gawain deftly demurs and defers to her the job of expounding on "trwluf" (1540). On the third day, the lady assails Sir Gawain anew with "hir riche

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wordes" (1744). Together they utter "wordes gode" (1766). She is again so nearly explicit that he fears for his courtesy "lest crajmyn he were" (1773), yet he manages to laugh off all her "spechez of specialté [fondness] [jat spränge of her mouthe" (1777-78). She finally offers him a way out of her verbal onslaught: he can simply pretend that he has another lover. But he cannot avail himself of even that little white lie and finally flatly denies he possesses one (1790-91). His rebuke verges on being discourteous, but she accepts it, takes refuge in the fiction of lovelorn maidens, and changes the subject to whether he will give her a token. Again he risks discourtesy by speaking directly to the point: "Hit is not your honour to haf at J>is tyme / A gloue for a garysoun [keepsake] of Gawaynez giftez" 1806-7). Just as forcefully, he refuses her offers of love tokens and finally begs her not to be offended as he speaks imperatively: "lettez be your bisinesse" (1840). He immediately softens his language and pledges to be her servant, but he has, in effect, commanded her to cease her busy-ness, not a very flattering term. Nevertheless, Sir Gawain has passed the real test here, signified in the gifts she offers him. Courtesy must finally yield to plain speaking in a temptation to adultery. What she offers him are the very tokens of her troth with her lord: the precious ring ("riche rynk" 1817) whose circularity symbolizes the eternity of her pledged word, and the intimate cincture or girdle with which she wraps the body that belongs to her husband. One can well imagine why Sir Gawain would want to hide it—and what would happen to him if he were caught with it: the flaying, disembowling, castrating, beheading, drawing, and quartering, all graphically described in the hunting scenes and brilliantly connected by Barron with the theme of treason, a species of which was adultery in the Middle Ages. Why has the poet complicated Sir Gawain's test with the temptation to adultery? What does adultery mean in the world of the poem? At one point Sir Gawain analyzes it explicitly: far worse than discourtesy would be his yielding to the lady, for he would thus be "traytor" to the lord of the house (1775). How so a traitor? First, committing adultery would violate the laws of hospitality. As Stranger in the House, Sir Gawain would be reenacting the crime of Paris—and perhaps Hama and Haethcyn and the stealer of the Dragon's cup in Beaumlf. Moreover, he would be breaking the explicit bond of trust between lord and lady and the implicit bond of trust which forbids him to invade a fellow knight's possessions. Just as Hrothgar alone has

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access to the women's apartments and issues forth with them on his arms, so the lord of the castle summons the ladies to the table as sign of his potency and possession. Even more important, we must interpret where we are in this enchanted castle and who the principals be. However strange or weird seem the castle and its inhabitants, the unheimlich is again the heimlich. The castle is a double for Camelot, the lord a double for King Arthur, the lady a double for Guenevere, as we can tell especially by her position next to Sir Gawain at the table—a position mirroring Guenevere's at Camelot. Now we are better situated to determine why the poet has placed the temptation of adultery along Sir Gawain's path. Symbolically, he is a surrogate son of King Arthur—just like Sir Lancelot—and the poet's audience would know as well as we what crime caused the ruin of the Round Table: not just adultery, but one that was incestuous, Oedipal, and literally a crime of treason against the King, Lancelot being indeed "traytor" to his pledged word, as we shall see in more detail when we discuss Malory's Morte Darthur under the rubric of political tragedy. Thus, the gravest temptation in King Arthur's kingdom—adultery that involves treason—the poet of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight displaces out of Camelot. Yet the significance remains the same and can best be understood by examination of that other lady of the castle, the disguised Morgan le Fay. What are her characteristics in this poem? Though she is described as looking like a plain, old nun in her disguise, she is still associated with the beautiful lady of the castle and finally described as dealing in love ("drwry") with Merlin in order to obtain his secrets (2448-49); that is, she has wheedled them out of him through sex. In other words, she is an adultress and a symbolic dark double for Guenevere, who in this poem at least is the constant queen. Their opposition can best be seen in the Green Knight's discussion of Morgan's motive in sending him to Camelot not only to test the Knights of the Round Table but also to shock the queen to death with the spectacle of his beheading (2460). She is Guenevere's unheimlich monstrous double who, like Merlin, knows Sir Gawain and all King Arthur's knights at home ("at hame" 2450). As Sir Gawain's "aunt" (2464), she reminds us of the threat not only of adultery but of incest, for, as anyone who is familiar with the Arthurian legends would know, her sister Morgause, Sir Gawain's mother, is also King Arthur's halfsister and thus the incestuous mother of the King's own bastard son

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and eventual murderer, Sir Mordred. The threat is even greater. As the Green Knight says of Morgan, no one is so high that she cannot make him "ful tame" (2454-55). He even calls her a "goddes" (2451), which makes her a dark double for the Virgin herselfand symbolically even a threat to the patriarchal Christian God. Therefore, Morgan is the very symbol of adultery, of adulteration, the contamination of the purity of the patriarchal line, the home-grown disease that is the gravest threat to the bonds of Arthurian society and that will eventually destroy it. Sir Gawain's misogynistic outburst at the end of the poem is no anomaly: within this patriarchal aristocratic world, women are always trying to beguile true knights with their "wyles" (2415), to betray them as did Eve, Delilah ("Dalyda" 2418), and Bathsheba ("Barsabe" 2419). Hence, adultery would be treasonous in this poem specifically because it is symbolically associated with the eventual betrayal of King Arthur, indeed with the primal betrayal of Adam and the origin of evil. But Sir Gawain is not Sir Lancelot, and the lesson of his trial is that the true knight can resist the wiles of women; he can remain faithful to the lord-king-father figure; he does not have to commit Oedipal rebellion—though, as with Hrothulf and Sir Lancelot, someone else will always do it for him. But in this poem, Sir Gawain is a Culture Hero who is not destroyed by his society's most dangerous vice. Yet, Sir Gawain does not live up to the perfection of the Pentangle.4 He does break his word. Time and again he repeats his oath to the lord of the castle that, on his "trawjje" (1108, 1638, 2348), he will render back his daily gains. And twice the lordfindshim "faythful" to his word (1679; cf. 2348). But Sir Gawain does not render the lord his lady's girdle. As a result, the lord as Green Knight accuses him, "Bot here yow lakked a lyttel, sir, and lewté [loyalty] you wonted" (2366). The key word is "lewté," and Sir Gawain repeats it once here (he lacked the "lewté" belonging to knights, 2381), and back at Camelot he accuses himself of "vnleuté" (2499), which constitutes "vntrawjie" (2509), the opposite of the "trawjie" he is supposed to represent. Moreover, Sir Gawain in the same breath associates "vntrawjje" with "trecherye" (2383). He has broken his word to the lord. Symbolically, such a breach is tantamount to breaching the fundamental feudal bond of fealty, and Sir Gawain becomes associated with the image of Aeneas as archtraitor that opens the poem. Furthermore, Sir Gawain's breach is tantamount to breaking his

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word to the Lord. Accepting the girdle constitutes a lack of faith in God's power to save him. Sir Gawain misplaces his faith onto a pagan talisman, the girdle, because the lady assures him: For quat gome so is gorde with J>is grene lace, While he hit had hemely halched aboute, Per is no hajjel vnder heuen tohewe hym |>at myjt, For he m y j t not be slay η for sly 3 t vpon erjje.

(1851-54) For whatever man is girt with this green lace, While he has it looped neatly about, There is no knight under heaven that might hew him down, For he might not be slain by any skill on earth.

The poet underscores the significance of Sir Gawain's acceptance in the exchange between Sir Gawain and his guide to the Green Chapel. The guide advises Sir Gawain to avoid the encounter with the Green Knight and to let him return and loyally lie about Sir Gawain's default ("I schal lelly yow layne" 2124 ), a phrase the poet emphasizes by having Sir Gawain repeat it ("And f>at lelly me layne I leue wel JJOU woldez" 2128), a phrase that echoes precisely the language of the lady when she asks Sir Gawain to conceal the girdle: "And biso3t hym, for hir sake, disceuer hit neuer, / Bot to lelly layne fro hir lorde" (1862-63). The phrase highlights the inherent contradiction: one cannot loyally lie, especially to one's lord. Sir Gawain proceeds to rebuke the guide with exactly the statement of faith the perfect knight ought to make: "Ful wel con Dry3tyn schape / His seruauntez for to saue" (2139: God knows full well how to save his servants). But even as he says this, Sir Gawain wears the girdle alongside the Pentangle, the sign of his supposed faithfulness. We have seen that the Pentangle means faithfulness to his word and to the value of courtesy. Furthermore, it signifies the basis of all his trust ("afyaunce" 642) and fortitude ("forsnes" 646): the former is based on the five wounds of Christ, the latter on the five joys of the Mother of Christ, whose image he wears on the inside of his shield. Moreover, the shield represents a five-times-fivefold power "fiat fayld neuer" (658). Yet Sir Gawain's faith in it is weak enough to accept the girdle. The special significance of what Sir Gawain does is underscored by the ironic oaths uttered by the guide: "vpon Goddez halue [behalf]"

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(2119), "Jjer Kryst mot yow spede" (2120), "I>at I schal swere bi God and alle his gode hal3ez [saints], / As help me God and Jje halydam, and ojjez innoghe" 2122-23). It is underscored by the guide's or the lady's ironic oaths, "Mary" (2140 & 1268). It is underscored by Sir Gawain's own oaths both here and throughout his stay at the castle, as he punctuates his temptations with apparently casual expletives and ejaculations. And it is underscored by the myriad oaths, casual or conscious, that run throughout the entire poem. Those oaths, however moribund they may sometimes appear, still have efficacy precisely because of the central fact to which so many of them refer, the central event of Christian history. There is a reason why so much of the poem's action takes place at Christmastide, why Sir Gawain searches so desperately and prays so fervently for a place to hear Christ-mass to commemorate the birth of our "syre," born of a maiden that night to quell our sorrow and strife and to die in our stead (751-52, 996). In other words, Sir Gawain is sent out to meet his death clothed in the signs of the death of Christ and the joy that "Cros Kryst" (762) brought to all humans because it means the conquest of death itself. Thus, the poet concludes the poem with a wish addressed to Him "J>at bere f)e croun of f>orne" (2529). Sir Gawain's failure is that, even as references to that Deed pour unheeded out of his and others' mouths, he symbolically denies its efficacy by seeking another talisman. Even as the poet fears for Sir Gawain should Mary forget him ("Nif Maré of hir kny3t mynne" 1769), even as he mentions the "sayn Jon" (1788) who stood with her beneath the cross, the knight forgets his patroness: he does not own her as his spiritual "lemman" to whom he owes "fayth" (1782-83); he does not acknowledge that he already wears her token inside his shield; and he finally accepts wearing the lady's green despite the Virgin's blue. Sir Gawain's misdeed, then, is a violation of his fealty with the Lord and His Lady. And ironically, the green talisman gives him no greater peace of mind, because like the fox, he still shuns the sharp edge of the ax, around the haft of which, as if in rebuke, is wrapped a "lace" (2226) that must itself be green like the "luf-lace" girdle (1874). Nevertheless, Sir Gawain's misdeed (whatever theological critics may think)'is presented as far less a crime than the adultery to which he was tempted. It is neither a sin of wiliness nor one of lechery ("wylyde werke, ne wowyng naujaer" 2367) but only the strong urge of selfpreservation ("Bot for 3e lufed your lyf" 2368), qualifying—but not erasing—his faith. He still articulates that faith to the guide, and he

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does not think the concealing of the girdle is worthy of confession. Whatever the state of Sir Gawain's guilt or innocence, however, the point is that the reader knows his faith has slipped. And whatever the status of his confession in the castle, when he is confronted with what he has done, the important consequence is his true confession and his being forgiven by this lord-king-father figure, who holds him as polished and clean as on the day he was born (2393-94; cf. Robert Blanch and Julian Wasserman, "To 'ouertake your wylle"'). In other words, Sir Gawain has the chance of being born again, as if his baptism were renewed by a plenary indulgence. But Sir Gawain's humiliation leads him to be harder on himself than the Green Knight and his surrogate, King Arthur. He is perhaps in danger of despair, and he must learn to turn humiliation into humility. We note that the Green Knight is very kind to him and still considers his "traute," while not flawless, to be "grete" (2470). We note that King Arthur "comfortez f>e kny3t" (2513), and we must interpret the laughter of Camelot as intended to be comforting too, salving. The other courtiers gracefully assume the badge of Sir Gawain's shame and turn it into a sign of hope—as the color green might suggest—hope in a spiritual rebirth, in the efficacy of the Word of Saint John, Who was made flesh at this season of Christmas and Who, like the other vegetative gods the Green Knight reminds us of, died in order that the world might be reborn. The ultimate solution to the sacrificial crisis at the beginning of the poem, then, is the sacrifice of Christ Himself, Whom Sir Gawain cannot perfectly imitate. But he does remain loyal to the lord of the castle and symbolically therefore to King Arthur by refusing the offer of adultery, which itself would provoke another sacrificial crisis, one eventually precipitated by Sir Lancelot, as he and King Arthur face each other over another symbolically cleaving ax. Sir Gawain remains the embodiment of the best that man can be—flawed but essentially faithful, his force dependent upon and supplemented by the Lord Whose most important gift to man is his salvation, in the sign of which, "Cros Kryst," man can surely trust. At least that appears to be the meaning underwritten by the Gawain poet. This poem stands as the embodiment of what heroic romance should be: not the popular courtly-love "texts" the lady cites as the essence of chivalry (1515 & 1540) but a magnificently woven or even braided (like the Green Knight's horse's mane) tapestry of words

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that offers exempla enforcing, reaffirming the code of the word. The poet concludes his narrative thus: For t>at [the girdle] watz acorded j>e renoun of f>e Rounde Table, And he honoured J>at hit hade euermore after, As hit is breued [written] in j>e best boke of romaunce. (2519-21) While this appears a graceful acknowledgment of the poet's source in "I>e Brutus bokez" (2523), "Jje best boke of romaunce" is obviously the one we are reading, a book that presents the significance of the sign of the Pentangle in its own attempt at an unbroken line, a word that reveals and reaffirms a code supported by the Word Itself.

The First Booke of the Faerie Queene The poem opens with a knight pricking across a plain in search of adventure—violent adventure, because like Beowulf's land this land is also under a curse: a dragon has dispossessed Una's parents, and he and his minions wreak a havoc that entails repeated violent encounters. Even when the encounters are less blatantly violent and take the form of sinister temptations, the result is nonetheless violent: the hurling of the victim into some dungeon or prison. Unless overcome, the Dragon bodes endless violent destruction. This dragon has been interpreted by critics as having multiple meanings: he is the Beast of Revelation; he is Satan; he is Death. But just as in Beowulf and Sir Gawain and, the Green Knight, the unheimlich figure here embodies a fundamental antithesis to Spenser's society, an antithesis that is revealed by the Dragon's earlier figurations from the dragon Errour to Archimago, Sans foy, Duessa, Lucifera, Sans ioy, Orgoglio, Despayre, even the Paynim King. All these figures represent multiple versions of faithlessness, and Sir George, the Redcrosse Knight, another Culture Hero who, like Sir Gawain, is "Right faithful, true . . . in deede and word" (1.1.2), must set out to confront them. Sans foy is the most obvious embodiment of faithlessness. He is visibly a "faithlesse Sarazin" whose very name proclaims his antipathy

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for Redcrosse's entire culture from religion to ethics: he "cared not for God or man a point" (1.2.12). Brazenly, Sans foy cries, "Curse on that Crosse," calling it nothing more than a "charme" (1.2.18), and this direct assault so rouses Redcrosse's "sleeping spark / Of natiue vertue" (1.2.19) that he fells the Infidel with one stroke. Sans ioy is another "Paynim" (1.4.41) whose name proclaims him an enemy to the joy of the Christian who has faith in the significance of the Cross. He is also a perverter of words, who lies to Lucifera about his brother's death at the hands of Redcrosse. But the "faithfull knight" (1.5.epigraph) refuses to fight with words; after reeling from Sans ioy's first blows and upon hearing his lady's (Duessa's) voice, he quickens his "faith" (1.5.12) and "subdewes his faithlesse foe" (1.5.epigraph). These naked forms of faithlessness are not much threat to Redcrosse. They are not difficult to interpret, and thus he vanquishes them readily. Although Redcrosse's fight with Errour is really no more difficult once his "faith" is aroused (1.1.19), his progress against her is retarded by a more serious version of Sans ioy's perverted words, Errour's vomit, "full of bookes and papers" (1.1.20), bad (Catholic) texts all perverting the original Word of Scripture into error and heresy.5 Though momentarily dismayed, Redcrosse quickly dispatches her, cutting off her head and thereby stopping her brood's access through her mouth, the source of perverted words. Perhaps he can do so easily because her threat is an open book. Before Redcrosse meets this dragon's double at the end, however, he encounters other, subtler manifestations of faithlessness with whom he has a more difficult struggle. Almost immediately after defeating Errour and her obviously perverted words, he encounters an ostensibly "holy father" (1.1.30) with a "booke" hanging at his belt that appears to be the Bible (1.1.29). And the old man "of pleasing wordes had store, / And well could file his tongue as smooth as glas" (1.1.35). Yet we learn when Redcrosse and Una are trustingly asleep in his hermitage that the old man is a hypocrite, whose "bookes" are "Magick" (1.1.36) and who utters not pleasing words but "wordes" so "horrible" that none should even "read" them, for they curse heaven, offend "the Lord of life and light," and summon forth the Lord of the Flies (1.1.37). The old man then employs two of those demonic flies, "fittest for to forge true-seeming lyes" (1.1.38), to destroy Redcrosse's "faith" in Una (1.1.52) by making him "Suspect her truth" (1.1.53), that is, her chastity. When that plot fails, Archimago consults "his

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balefull bookes againe" (1.2.2), changes the flies into lovers, and runs "with feigned faithfull hast" to summon Redcrosse (1.2.4), who this time believes his misdeeming senses and deserts Una. Later, Spenser gives us the terms with which to judge this desertion; he warns all young knights: Beware of fraud, beware of ficklenesse, In choice, and change of thy deare loued Dame, Least thou of her beleeue too lightly blame, And rash mis weening doe thy hart remove: For vnto knight there is no greater shame, Then lightnesse and inconstancie in loue; That doth this Redcrosse knights ensample plainly proue.

(1.4.1) And Despayre explicitly accuses Redcrosse, "to this Ladie milde / Thou falsed hast thy faith with periurie" (1.9.46). How is Redcrosse's faithlessness to Una "periurie?" By deserting her he violates his promise to rescue her parents and breaks his personal bond with her, choosing instead "to serue Duessa vilde" (1.9.46). Here again Redcrosse is fooled by appearances: Duessa's true nature, implied in her real name—duplicity, falseness—is masked by her outward beauty and her pseudonym, Fidessa. She is false faith, and she attempts to betray Redcrosse, first by delivering him into the hands of Lucifera and then by entering into a treaty of "secret faith" with Sans ioy against him (1.4.45). Yet her secret nature is made manifest to Redcrosse in a story as transparent as any of Errour's books, though he negligently fails to interpret it. That, of course, is the history told by Fradubio, whose own blindness to Duessa's true nature caused him to believe her lies about his beloved, to doubt her (thus his name), and to replace her with the supplanting Duessa. But one night he learns to his dismay that the real witch has slandered the true lover. Unfortunately, Redcrosse sees no connection between Fradubio's story and his own, thanks especially to Duessa's distracting faint (feint). Though Redcrosse learns how to interpret the rather blatant signs at the House of Pride through Una's faithful Dwarf and thus is able to free himself from that trap, he still cannot interpret Duessa properly and lies down with her, sans armor, by a well. He does not interpret the well's story either, however, which Spenser recites for us but apparently not for him, since he remains "vnweeting" (1.7.6). It seems

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one of Phoebe's nymphs once tired of the chase and "Sat downe to rest in middest of the race" (1.7.5). In punishment the goddess of chastity imprisoned the nymph in the well and bade its waters flow "dull and slow, / And all that drunke thereof, did faint and feeble grow" (1.7.5). Victim of this lethargy, Redcrosse lay in the grass with Duessa and "Pourd" himself "out in loosness" (1.7.7). He is caught in this compromising position by the Giant Orgoglio, who stalks him with his monstrous club. Perhaps our ability to interpret the signs in this scene is enhanced by knowledge of the later scene in which Prince Arthur disturbs the victorious Orgoglio and his prize, Duessa, in amorous "dalliance" (1.8.5). Duessa's promiscuous sexual nature has been obvious since her story of her inconstancy to her original husband's memory. And we must not be blind to the very sexual nature of the scene at the well, where Duessa is obviously sapping Redcrosse's vital bodily fluids, which come pouring forth. The giant with the club may be seen as a potent father figure or superego who catches them, metaphorically if you will, in flagrante delicto (cf. Kenneth Gross, Spenserian Poetics, 113-21). We have been prepared in more ways than one for the sexual nature of Redcrosse's conflict. Nowhere is this clearer than in the two Strippings of Duessa. She is revealed to be a lamia figure with "monstruous . . . neather parts" (1.2.41, 1.8.48). A variation on this image for Duessa is her riding the "manyheaded beast" (1.8.6). Her essential lamia nature associates her with Errour, who is half woman, half "serpent" (1.1.14), and with Lucifera, who has a dragon "vnderneath her scornefull feete" (1.4.10), and even with Lucifera's house—fair in front but whose "hinder parts" were "ruinous and old" (1.4.5). The ultimate Dragon itself has a particularly nasty tail, and although it is called a he, it is clearly a culmination of all these negative female images: some of the rabble believe that "in his wombe might lurke some hidden nest / Of many Dragonets, his fruitfull seed" (1.12.10)—an image that recalls the description of Errour. In other words, the central image for infidelity in the poem is a lamia figure. Why? Because once again, as with Grendel's Mother and Morgan le Fay, her very tail is a threat, the threat female sexuality presents to patriarchy. Thus, in typical fashion, Spenser portrays woman as split into the dichotomy between saint and sinner, Mary and Eve. One kind of woman (Duessa) threatens to seduce men away from their duty, fame, honor. She sleeps with every man who comes along— Sans foy, Redcrosse, Sans ioy, Orgoglio. She therefore threatens male

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control over generation, genealogy, one's very name. She even threatens to destroy the bond between father and son through Oedipal seduction or through the vengeance of a scorned, devouring woman, like Phaedra, whose story Spenser is at pains to tell (1.5.37-39). Duessa is related not only to these lamia figures and destructive women throughout the poem but also to a family of dark goddesses that Spenser establishes as a Manichaean antithesis to his goddesses of light. In his conjuring, Archimago prays first to "blacke Plutoes griesly Dame" (1.1.37), who is also Lucifera's mother, "sad Proserpina the Queene of hell" (1.4.11). When the demonic fly Archimago sends to Morpheus's cave fails to waken him, he invokes "the dreaded name / Of Hecate" (1.1.43). And when the fly and the evil dream are initially unsuccessful, Archimago threatens them with "sad Proserpines wrath" (1.2.2). The archetypal dark goddess is "griesly Night," who not only avoids "Phoebus chearefull face" (1.5.20) and hates all the "sonnes of Day" favored by Jove (1.5.25) but is the "most auncient Grandmother of all, / More old than lorn, whom thou at first didst breede" (1.5.22). Mythologically, she is the Great Mother, chthonic Mother Earth, who by parthenogenesis produces Jove himself and against whom the God of Light and his sons and daughters eternally contend in an effort to maintain difference, hierarchy, genealogy, and the words that sustain them. She is Nietzsche's Original Mother, who represents the anonymous life force blind to Apollonian individuality, reason, light, poetry, the word, the Logos. In opposition to her, Spenser offers not only the figures of Apollonian light—Jove, Christ, Prince Arthur, Redcrosse—but also a series of white goddesses, female figures of light. Una is an earthly manifestation of this figure, but most of the other manifestations are literally heavenly and live at the House of Holinesse, the house of Celia, of her daughters Fidelia, Speranza, and Charissa, and of "the godly Matrone" Mercie (1.10.35). Perhaps the most important embodiment of the heavenly figure is one that also has an earthly manifestation, although a faerie one—Gloriana herself, the Faerie Queene, who is at once earthly lover, "royall Mayd" (1.9.13), and heavenly Virgin. She is the antithesis of the archetypal Dark Goddess. She is Heavenly Beauty itself; her face is "diuine" (1.9.15). If Una is her most human analogue, Una is no less a sign of the divine: "Her angels face / As the great eye of heauen shyned bright" (1.3.4.). Redcrosse addresses her as "0 fairest virgin, full of heauenly light" (1.9.17). The key aspect of these figures is that, with one exception, they

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are virgins. Thus their ideological function is clear: they are the pure vessels for the patriarchal seed. Their sexuality is not promiscuous but controlled. They are either perpetually dedicated virgins, or if they are lovers, they are, like Una, "most faithfull" (1.3.3). Even the prolific Charissa is no chthonic Earth Mother, no threat to patriarchal genealogy, because one of her signs is "a gentle paire / Of turtle doues" (1.10.31). She is not a Venus genetrix but a faithful wife. And, of course, she is praised for having recently brought forth not just a baby but "one sonne more" (1.10.16). In other words, the goddesses of light themselves are subservient, finally, to "highest God, the Lord of life and light" (1.1.37), in contrast to the dark goddesses of the poem, who are not portrayed as subservient to any ultimate male figure (Night seems hierarchically the highest, the oldest of the powers of darkness). At the top of the mountain of Holinesse, Mercie hands Redcrosse over to "that godly aged Sire" (1.10.48), who explicates the appropriateness of Mercie's having brought him, for she does "the prayers of the righteous sead / Present before the maiestie diuine, / And his auenging wrath to clemencie incline" (1.10.51). Symbolically, these white goddesses are the potent male God's daughters, and He is "the great king" (1.10.55). Another figure for him is "That aged Sire, the Lord of all that land" (1.12.3)—Una's father, a royal version of Adam. When he calls Una to him at the end, she emerges like "the morning starre" (1.12.21) about to be transmitted from one male protector to another, as her father pledges her to be Redcrosse's bride, symbolically, the Bride of the Lamb, one of "the sonnes of Day" favored by Jove (1.5.25), the Son of God. The white goddesses are figures of chastity, of female sexuality controlled by males. And thus Una's greatest trial in the poem— rape—is the ultimate threat to the purity of the chaste vessel (as opposed to the threat of Duessa's promiscuity). It is appropriate that her rapist be named Sans loy, because the ultimate lawlessness is the violation of patriarchy's most jealously guarded possession—the sexual vessel of its identity. Spenser gives us two doubles of Sans loy so that we might better be able to read his significance. The first is Lechery, who is described in Lucifera's pageant as Inconstant man, that loued all he saw, And lusted after all, that he did loue, Ne would his looser life be tide to law,

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But ioyd weake wemens hearts to tempt and proue If from their loyall loues he might then [sic] move. (1.4.26)

This "Inconstant," omnivorous, Don Juan figure is contemptuous of the property law that controls women, women who themselves are portrayed in this passage as belonging to men by "loyall loues." The word "loyall" is as crucial here as "lely" in Sir Gawain and the Green Knight. The other figure of lawlessness is the satyr who rapes Satyrane's mother Thyamis "That was in sacred bands of wedlocke tyde" (1.6.21). Finding her in the wood, the satyr, "kindling coles of lust in brutish eye, / The loyall links of wedlocke did vnbind" (1.6.22). Spenser says nothing of the woman's anguish at this violation of her body and mind. The real offense is that to patriarchy, to her husband, Therion; to the "loyall links" that guarantee possession and control. Sans loy tries Una's loyal links with Redcrosse, her "constant hart," first "With fawning wordes," against which she remains "As rocke of Diamond stedfast euermore" (1.6.4). When Sans loy resorts to force, Spenser complains against the "heauens" that view this outrage with seeming insouciance (1.6.5). This is a threat to woman's constancy, the very symbol of the code of faith, of the word. The powers of darkness seem about to triumph, while "Phoebus flying so most shamefull sight, / His blushing face in foggy cloud implyes" (1.6.6). Spenser's complaint really means, Why should any woman remain constant, why should anyone keep his or her word if the powers of light cannot save their faithful devotees? Yet "Eternali prouidence," strangely but appropriately given feminine gender in this instance, "her selfe" devises a "way" (1.6.7). Una is saved by "Faunes and Satyres" (1.6.7), goat-like creatures usually associated with sensuality. And later she is defended once more against Sans loy by Satyrane, the wild son of a satyr. One of Spenser's points seems to be that Una's "heauenly beautie" (1.12.22) has charms to soothe savage breasts, that is, to socialize the sex urge, tame it like the Lyon. What she cannot tame is the civilized breast, the sophisticated mind capable of conscious malice, of intentional lawlessness, the calculated rejection of all the bonds of society. Una's constancy is threatened later from within when she complains to the powers of light at Redcrosse's fall, a complaint that records her doubt in their potency (1.7.23). Again, eternal providence

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answers her plaint, this time in the person of Prince Arthur. Symbolically, he is one of those "sonnes of Day," favored by Jove. He is a sun god, a figure of the Son of God. He brings "heauenly grace" (1.8.1), defeats Duessa's many-headed beast and the giant Orgoglio, descends into the depths of the castle, figuratively harrowing hell, saving all those righteous souls, and redeeming Redcrosse. Moreover, "His glitterand armour shined farre away, / Like glauncing light of Phoebus brightest ray" (1.7.29), and his shield, like the earlier diamond of Una's constancy, is "all of Diamond perfect pure and cleene" that shines so bright when uncovered that "Phoebus golden face it did attaint" (1.7.33-34). This shield, Prince Arthur's pentangle, as it were, is the poem's answer to the problem of hypocrisy and perverted words: No magicke arts hereof had any might, Nor bloudie wordes of bold Enchaunters call, But all that was not such, as seemd in sight, Before that shield did fade, and suddeine fall. (1.7.35)

And it is this shield that finally defeats Orgoglio and the beast with its "blazing brightnesse" (1.8.19), the light of "grace" and "stedfast truth" (1.8.1). In other words, patriarchy pretends to a divine power that protects its vessels and preserves genealogical differentiation (cf. Gross, 128-44). Like Una, the Redcrosse knight is also tempted to this ultimate sin against the patriarchal Christian order: despair in its power to enforce itself. His temptation to despair begins when he is "hopelesse" at the sight of Orgoglio (1.7.11). Once he is in the dungeon he longs for death, as we learn when he responds to Prince Arthur's voice: "0 who is that, which brings me happy choyce / Of death . . . ?" (1.8.38). Despite being saved by Prince Arthur and being virtually brought back to life, and despite giving him in exchange of friendship "A booke, wherein his Saueours testament / Was writ" (1.9.19), Redcrosse apparently has not learned to read that book correctly, because he is still subject to the temptation of his most insidious enemy, the personification Despayre. Despayre is the ultimate perverter of words in the poem, and Spenser brilliantly portrays him not as a fierce warrior like one of the Sans brothers but as a frail old man, who yet utters "charmed speeches" with a "subtill tongue," as Sir Trevisan warns Redcrosse (1.9.30-31). The latter scoffs at the idea of temptation merely by "idle

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speach" (1.9.31), but he is unprepared for the way Despayre can twist the very words of faith, of Scripture. Despayre perverts the traditional explanation of death as rest, a respite from the woes of life, into an argument for euthanasia. He similarly perverts the traditional Christian consolation that the deceased is happier when he goes to his rest. He perverts the explanation that the guilty deceased has received his just due. When Redcrosse answers that a man must not shorten his designated term of life, Despayre twists the concept in words that have a Scriptural sonority. Who life did limit by almightie doome, (Quoth he) knowes best the termes established . . . . Is not his deed, what euer thing is donne, In heauen and earth? (1.9.41-42)

Despayre also perverts the concept of contemptus mundi. And most insidiously, he interprets life as an endless train of sin that were better foreshortened. This interpretation is most insidious because, like the girdle in Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, it attacks the significance of the Christian Hero's sign of the Cross. Overcome by Despayre's "inchaunted rimes" (1.9.48) and envisioning only hell fire as his due, Redcrosse attempts to stab himself and is saved once again by Una's cry to have faith, for she interprets properly the meaning of the Word; she knows the significance of the sign of the Cross. In heauenly mercies hast thou not a part? Why shouldst thou then despeire, that chosen art? Where iustice growes, there grows eke greater grace. (1.9.53)

This lesson, the central doctrine of Christianity, must be developed for Redcrosse. His notional knowledge must become real knowledge, to borrow a distinction from Cardinal Newman (Grammar of Assent, ch. 4). He must be placed in the hands of Fidelia, whose "cup of gold" (1.10.13) is the antithesis of Duessa's enchanted cup; the one, like Wealhtheow's, denotes fidelity; the other, infidelity. Fidelia must teach Redcrosse how to read that Testament he gave Prince Arthur, that "sacred Booke, with bloud ywrit" (1.10.19). And the central lesson of that book is that "bloud," which leads Redcrosse to Speranza or Hope. But before he can really learn her lesson he must be purged of

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his sins and especially of his lingering despair. Once purged, he is ready for the lesson of Hope by way of understanding Charissa or Heavenly Love, which leads directly to Mercie: "In heauenly mercies hast thou not a part?" The ultimate significance of the sign of the Cross is the mercy purchased for men by the death of the Christian Sun God. In hoc signo vincit: Redcrosse conquers the Dragon wearing this sign of the Word. The sign is doubled, supplemented in many details of the battle, not only the allusions to the Book of Revelation but the three days, the "well of life" (1.11.29), and the "tree of life" (1.11.46). This last sign is itself a double image that suggests "the crime of our first fathers fall" (1.11.46) by eating of the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil that "eke grew thereby" (1.11.47). Furthermore, this Tree issues forth "A trickling streame of Balme," capable even of resurrecting "The senselesse corse appointed for the graue" (1.11.48). In short, the balm is the blood of Christ, that which incarnadines Sir George's own red cross. Rising from the dead himself on the morning of the third day, Redcrosse slays the Dragon in its only mortal place—its mouth, the source of all the words that threaten to pervert the Word and destroy the very bonds of society. One last version of these bonds is the banns, bands, vows, and promises of the last book. Spenser brings us to the two Edens, the Alpha and the Omega of Sacred History, with the redemption of Adam and Eve completed and the promise of the marriage of the Lamb. But he also returns us to the practical world, where one of the main messages of this complex allegory is that the only things that hold human society (read: feudal patriarchal society and see Leonard Tennenhouse, Power on Display, 102-5 for Elizabeth [and thus the Faerie Queene herself] as patriarchal ruler) together and protect it from chaos are words of promise. Redcrosse demurs and defers marriage with Una because: by the faith, which I to armes haue plight, I bounden am . . . Backe to returne to that great Faerie Queene, And her to serue six yeares in warlike wize, Gainst that proud Paynim king, that workes her teene. (1.12.18)

Just like all true knights, he must honor that "band" that binds him in fealty to his sovereign; as the King says, "vowes may not be vaine"

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(1.12.19). Nevertheless, Rederosse intends to return "The marriage to accomplish vowd betwixt" Una and him (1.12.19). Now enter once again those archperverters of words, Archimago and Duessa, who intend to break this latest "band" (1.12.34) by pretending that Redcrosse belongs to Fidessa by a precontract. This is a serious charge, because such vows must be honored, or the whole edifice of the word crumbles. The "banes" of marriage (1.12.36) are announced precisely to avoid the contamination of the word. Duessa, who accuses Redcrosse of "breach of loue, and loyalty betrayd" (1.12.31), exploits the system. What is to protect marriage—or any human relationship—against such breach of promise, such "periury" (1.12.27)? Only a divine sanction built into the process that guarantees perjurers will be punished. Duessa has grown so competent at appropriating the code for her own purposes—and so contemptuous of any future punishment—that she herself reminds the company of that divine sanction: "Witnesse the burning Altars, which he swore" (1.12.27). But heaven protects against this perversion of the word, for the heavenly Una has also progressed in the poem: She has learned how to interpret properly; she sees right through the ruse and exposes the hypocrites. Earlier Spenser has asked in another complaint: What man so wise, what earthly wit so ware, As to descry the crafty cunning traine, By which deceit doth maske in visour faire, And cast her colours dyed deepe in graine, To seeme like Truth, whose shape she well can faine, Andfittinggestures to her purpose frame, The guiltlesse man with guile to entertaine? (1.7.1)

The answer the poem provides is only that man (or woman) who has, through grace, been taught how to read the signs surrounding him. The figures of such teachers are Una instructing the satyrs, Arthur instructing Una, Fidelia instructing Redcrosse, and, of course, the poet, whose "pleasaunt Mount" (1.10.54) is listed alongside Sinai and the Mount of Olives, obviously as a source of divine inspiration for instructing the faithful. The defense of the word against those who would break it—against the ubiquitous attacks of faithlessness with all its false words—is finally the task of the poet, whose true words reveal or repeat the Word. To put it another way, the poet's words preserve

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the fundamental discriminations of patriarchal hegemony, portraying society as dependent upon a word that is divinely privileged and protected.

The Conquest of Granada by the

Spaniards

Dryden opens his ten-act heroic play with key imagery from the two games being held to celebrate the Granadan King Boabdelin's imminent marriage to Almahide. The first game is a juego de cañas and the second a juego de toros. The former is a ritualized form of combat consisting of darting blunted spears or "canes" between mock armies. In this particular game, groups of thirty or more of the two feuding factions in Granada are conducting (offstage) a typical "flying skirmish,"6 that is, fighting "like Parthyans" (1.1.1.158), until Tarifa, a Zegry, breaks the rules of combat, changes "his blunt Cane for a steelpointed Dart" (1.1.1.162), and wounds Ozmyn, an Abencerrago. The act is characterized as "Treason" (1.1.1.164), because it violates fundamental sociopolitical codes designed to sublimate the very deadly rivalry it now precipitates, a rivalry governed only by rules of revenge. Instead of ritual, Granada is faced with a sacrificial crisis which threatens to destroy the city from within. The rivalry is imitated everywhere in the play. The old Abencerrago Abenemar is already a deadly rival of the Zegry chief, Selin, and their inveterate hatred causes them to violate the bonds of nature and attempt to kill their children, Ozmyn and Benzayda, who, like Romeo and Juliet, fall in love with each other despite their clans' feud. Prince Abdalla and the Abencerrago chief, Abdelmelech, become deadly rivals for Lyndaraxa's hand. Abdalla also becomes a rival for his brother Boabdelin's throne, violating both the bonds of nature and of society. Lyndaraxa eventually becomes a rival with Almahide for the love of the heroic Almanzor. Almanzor becomes a rival with Boabdelin for the love of Almahide. And, of course, the Moors are deadly rivals with the Christians for the last Islamic stronghold in Western Europe. This is a world threatening to come apart in the "flying skirmish" of dialectical forces. The bullfight is really an image of the same skirmish, as if the chief bull were a figure for the monstrous double of the sacrificial crisis. The bull charges the stranger Almanzor, who spears him once, sidesteps, and then severs his head from the shoulders in one swordstroke. This

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is an image for Almanzor's conflict with himself, with his unruly passion. But it is also an image for Almanzor's contest with Boabdelin, for Christianity's contest with the Moors, and finally for the entire culture's struggle with a displaced version of its worst enemy—deadly rivalry brought about by the breaking of words, the perjury that eventually destroys Granada from within. Almanzor is a great warrior summoned to help the Moors raise the Christian siege of Granada. His immediate past is extremely significant, but like Redcrosse, Boabdelin fails to read its lesson aright. Almanzor had been summoned to a similar scene of rivalry in Fez, where the Xeriff brothers feuded for the throne of Morocco. At first Almanzor fought for the Elder, the "juster cause," but when he waxed ungrateful, Almanzor changed sides and placed the Younger on the throne (1.1.1.247-52). The lesson of the consequences of ingratitude is clear. Nevertheless, Boabdelin fails to read the lesson and thus is doomed to have history repeat itself. In Almanzor's first battle for the Granadans, he wins a victory and captures the mighty Duke of Arcos but heroically pledges to set him free to fight again. Boabdelin refuses to honor Almanzor's "promise" and absolves him from his "word" (1.3.1.5-6). Almanzor's response not only insists upon his right to his word but characterizes the King as a troth-breaker whose factionridden state is the result of his inconstancy. He break my promise and absolve my vow! 'Tis more than Mahomet himself can do. The word which I have giv'n shall stand like Fate; Not like the King's, that weathercock of State. He stands so high, with so unfix't a mind, Two Factions turn him with each blast of wind. (1.3.1.7-12)

Predictably, Almanzor, who, as Dryden insists in the prefatory essay, "Of Heroique Playes," "is not born their Subject whom he serves" (Works, 11:16) and therefore owes them no allegiance, deserts Boabdelin and joins the rebellion of his rival brother Abdalla. Abdalla himself, however, though witness to Almanzor's Morroccan history, learns its lesson no better than Boabdelin. Nor does he profit from his brother's mistake, but breaks his own word to Almanzor, reneging on his agreement to let him set another captive free—this time, the beauteous Almahide, with whom Almanzor has fallen instantly in love. Abdalla yields to Zulema's threat to withdraw

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the support of the Zegrys, and Almanzor accuses him of rationalizing his "ingratitude" with empty "words" (1.3.1.502-04). Thus, Almanzor returns to Boabdelin, not to vindicate the latter's claim to the throne but simply to rescue Almahide and set her free. But after Almanzor keeps his "Promise," his bêot to Boabdelin (1.5.1.185), and again turns the tide, Boabdelin makes the mistake of swearing by "Alka" to grant him any desire (1.5.1.225). When Almanzor then asks for Almahide, Boabdelin naturally refuses to surrender his betrothed. Furious, Almanzor responds, "I'll call thee thankless, King; and perjur'd both: / Thou swor'st by Alha; and hast broke thy oath" (1.5.1.268-69). Almanzor deserts both brothers and departs for Africa. With the loss of the heroic defender and with Abdalla's escape to join the Christians, Boabdelin's fortunes precipitately decline, and his people begin to rebel. In other words, his troth-breaking has produced anarchy. The "many-headed Beast" (2.1.2.29) here is not the Roman Catholic Church, as in Spenser, but the mob, rebelling in "The name of Common-wealth," where "the People their own Tyrants are" (2.1.2.47-48). Dryden uses the code of the word to buttress an obviously Royalist position. Boabdelin argues that "Kings who rule with limited Command / Have Players Scepters put into their Hand" (2.1.2.49-50), and Abenamar describes the results of the destabilizing dialectic that occurs when kings must contend for power, a dialectic that divides within and leads to conquest from without. Then, the mob will "want that pow'r of Kings they durst not trust" (2.1.2.55-58). Nevertheless, Boabdelin has been incapable of commanding the trust of his people from the beginning. He has always been a trothbreaker. As he often does, Dryden provides some original sin of distrust that lies like a curse over the land. Ferdinand's claim to Granada is two-fold. The Spaniards have a prior "just, and rightful claim" to Spain because they were there before the Moors, who simply took it by conquest and therefore rule merely by "force," defacto and not de jure (1.1.1.294, 303). Moreover, Arcos had once captured Boabdelin and his father and released them upon their "Contract" to resign the "Crown" of Granada and rule as Ferdinand's vassals till the death of the father, when Boabdelin would "lay aside all marks of Royalty" (1.1.1.317-22). When that time came, however, Boabdelin refused to yield the throne, and Arcos accuses him, "like a perjur'd Prince, you broke your oath" (1.1.1.316). Similar to Heremod in Beowulf, such a king, according to the pattern of feudal literature, will inevitably suffer a poetical justice that is a sign of a divine justice that avenges

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forswearing. Boabdelin is "slain by a Zegry's hand" (2.5.3.171)—killed not by a Spaniard but by one of his own rebellious, troth-breaking Granadans. Boabdelin might as well have been killed by his own brother, but Dryden has another fate in store for Abdalla, whose political rivalry with his brother, though it is based in part upon Zulema's Hobbist perversion of words, of such concepts as "Vertue" (1.2.1.208-13), "Justice" (1.2.1.226-27), and primogeniture (1.2.1.247-51), is complicated by a sexual rivalry with Abdelmelech over that central chivalric figure, the inconstant woman. Abdalla rebels because only with a crown can he obtain Lyndaraxa, who is pre-engaged, she maintains, to Abdelmelech. Lyndaraxa's manipulation of her lovers at times borders on the comic. But she epitomizes the very grave threat of uncontrolled desire which seduces men away from the code of loyalty to participate in a rebellion against the very order of patriarchy. Jealous of Almahide, she wishes to be a queen—not simply a royal consort. No, she would "be that one, to live without controul" (1.2.1.148). She is another version of Grendel's Mother, Morgan le Fay, Duessa, and Old Night. Figuratively, she is the Dread Maternal Anarch, who threatens all the bonds of patriarchal society. She provokes Abdalla to Oedipal rebellion: "For such another pleasure, did he live, / 1 could my Father of a Crown deprive" (1.2.1.172-73). Abdelmelech laments, "With what indifference all her Vows she breaks!" (1.3.1.150), as she mockingly taunts him with libertine doctrine, "'Twas during pleasure, 'tis revok'd this hour. / Now call me false, and rail on Woman-kind" (1.3.1.141-42). She is also capable of manipulating by perverting the code of the word and accusing her two puppets of being the ones who are "faithless" and "false" (1.4.2.63, 75). When Abdelmelech tries to leave her because of her "falshood" (1.4.2.59), she hypocritically accuses him, "your breach of Faith is plain" (1.4.2.77). When Abdalla demands constancy from her, she explains that frailty's name is woman: "Poor womens thoughts are all ExtemporeF (1.4.2.180). He complains, "Is this the faith you promis'd me to keep?" (1.5.1.38), then concludes her "faithless and ingrateful maid!" (1.5.1.67). Old Selin properly brands her "faithless as the wind" (2.2.1.110). Like Duessa, Lyndaraxa is a symbol of the faithlessness always threatening feudal aristocracy. Mythologically, she is associated with "Circe" (1.3.1.93-96), that seducer of heroes who distracts them from the paths of true glory and turns them into beasts. More prominently,

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Lyndaraxa associates herself with the goddess "Fortune," who, as she believes, governs events (1.3.1.265-69). And yet, as the Middle Ages and the Renaissance portrayed her, Fortune is ultimately a whore. Abenamar proclaims, "I have too long th'effects of Fortune known, / Either to trust her smiles, or fear her frown" (1.4.1.7-8). Lyndaraxa proves incapable of being Fortune, of controlling events, and thus she turns eventually to Almanzor, who himself claims to Boabdelin, "I am your fortune; but am swift like her, / And turn my hairy front if you defer" (1.4.1.30-31). Lyndaraxa plans to assault him with her wiles, because "In gaining him, I gain that Fortune too / Which he has Wedded, and which I but Wooe" (2.3.3.61-62). To win Almanzor, Lyndaraxa must destroy "his vow'd Constancy" to Almahide (2.3.3.65), and her ultimate weapon is to declare her nominalism and proclaim: There's no such thing as Constancy you call: Faith ties not Hearts; 'tis Inclination all. Some Wit deform'd or Beauty much decay'd, First, constancy in Love, a Vertue made. (2.3.3.162-65)

When he resists her, she spitefully taunts, "The Fate of Constancy your Love pursue! / Still to be faithful to what's false to you" (2.3.3.181-82). Thus according to her—and to the secular, selfinterested philosophy for which she stands—the faithful are the fools. And yet, despite all her wiles, despite perjury against Almahide and dirty tricks against Almanzor and Ozmyn, Lyndaraxa does not triumph. Abdelmelech kills Abdalla and then resists and rejects her, throwing her philosophy back in her teeth and berating her for her inconstancy, which has been justly rewarded (2.4.2.130-33). Not finished yet, she finally joins the Christians in the last assault and is rewarded with the Crown of Granada. She exults, "I knew this Empyre to my fate was ow'd: / Heav'n held it back as long as 'ere it cou'd" (2.5.3.238-39). But she taunts Abdlemelech once too often, and he stabs her. Lyndaraxa, Queen of Rebellion itself, ironically charges her "fate" with "Rebellion" (2.5.3.262), but Abenemar passes the final judgment on her and her quest to master Fortune: "Such fortune still, such black designs attends" (2.5.3.267). In other words, however capricious be Fortune in her own person—and therefore a fitting figure for Lyndaraxa the Inconstant—Fortune is finally only an instrument

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of Nemesis. No "Blind Queen of Chance" rules this world (2.3.2.17) but a Providence that underwrites the code of constancy. Contrasted with the faithless Lyndaraxa, as Mary with Eve, Saint with Sinner, is the faithful Almahide, model of chivalric female behavior. When Almanzor falls in love with her, she protests she is "promis'd to Boabdelin" (1.3.1.376). He would disregard such bonds as mere "Ceremony" (1.3.1.388), but she tries to explain to this "noble Savage" (1.1.1.209), "Our Souls are ty'd by holy Vows above. . . . I gave my faith to him, he his to me" (1.3.1.392, 396). Later, when Almanzor again presses his suit, she again protests, "My Fathers choice I never will dispute" (1.4.2.428), though this time she allows Almanzor to try to change that father's mind and retrieve her hand from Boabdelin. When Boabdelin breaks his oath to Alha to grant Almanzor any wish, denies him Almahide, condemns him to death, and then proceeds to demand that Almahide keep her "promise" to marry him, Almahide exclaims, "How dare you claim my faith, and break your own?" (1.5.1.347-48). How can there be troth among troth-breakers? Nevertheless, when her father insists, "No second vows can with your first dispence" (1.5.1.350) and when he guarantees that Almanzor shall only be exiled, Almahide capitulates—"honor ties me" (1.5.1.356)—and she gives her "oath to be his wife" (1.5.1.404). Married to him in the second part of the play, she remains constant despite Boabdelin's jealousy, insisting, "That hour when I my Faith to you did plight, / I banish'd him [Almanzor] for ever from my sight" (2.1.2.158-59). Forced to recall Almanzor to save her husband's throne, she fully intends to "square" her "Love" by "Vertue" (2.1.2.219). Unfortunately, she miscalculates Boabdelin's response to her yielding to Almanzor's request and giving him her scarf "for my Husbands sake" (2.2.3.111)—that is, as a sign that he is their Champion. Of course, the scarf has the same significance as Lady Bertilak's girdle or Desdemona's handkerchief: it is the very badge of marital chastity, a "publick" sign of a "private" "Gift," an "Embleme" of "Love" (2.3.1.55-56). Consequently, at its sight in Almanzor's possession, Boabdelin breaks into jealous rage and concludes Almahide "False" (2.3.1.54). Insisting on her "Loyalty" (2.3.1.127), she demands the scarf back and returns it to her husband. And she even makes the sullen Almanzor fight to save him. Almahide's most crucial trial comes when Almanzor sneaks into her chambers of the palace and demands a tangible reward for his ser-

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vices. Unable to deter him by any of her arguments and unable to deny her own desire for him for a moment longer, she resorts to the ultimate remedy of the chaste matron, at least from the time of Lucrece— suicide: "You've mov'd my heart, so much, I can deny / No more; but know, Almanzor, I can dye" (2.4.3.265-66). Immediately Almanzor aborts both her and his attempts, and her chastity is preserved alive. Ironically, however, this temptation of Almahide takes place in the context of her imminent rape by Zulema and Hamet—as if to underscore the nature of Almanzor's assault as a form of rape. After Almanzor leaves, the second rape is begun, and Almahide, who calls on "heav'n" for help (2.4.3.293), seems to be saved only by the providential appearance of Abdelmelech: "I thank thee, heav'n; some succour does appear" (2.4.3.296). But hers appears to be a hasty interpretation, for Lyndaraxa and her brothers perjure themselves and accuse Almahide and Abdelmelech of adultery. Despite all the signs of fidelity his wife has given, Boabdelin immediately concludes her—and all women—false: "0 proud, ingrateful, faithless, womankind!" (2.4.3.362). He condemns her to summary execution without trial. But what is much more surprising is that Almanzor, who has just had such indelible proof of her chastity, likewise misogynistically concludes her—and all women—"false" (2.4.3.369). She was as faithless as her Sex could be:. . . She's fain! and now where shall we vertue find? She was the last that stood of Woman-kind.

(2.5.1.3-6) Thus, Hobbist philosophy seems momentarily to have triumphed: the faithful appear to be the fools, their code inefficacious, with no supernatural validation. It is as if the old gods have been overthrown, as Abdelmelech complains (2.5.1.15-18). Without such validation, to be virtuous is a joke on oneself, as Almahide complains nominalistically. Let never woman trust in Innocence; Or think her Chastity its own defence; Mine has betray'd me to this publick shame: And vertue, which I serv'd, is but a name.

(2.5.2.5-8) In other words, the play has brought us to the point of asking crucial questions about the chivalric code: What protection is there

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against perjury and hypocrisy? Why be virtuous if the innocent suffer? Are oaths and vows mere breaths of air? Either the rebels are right or some sign of divine protection must appear. That is why Dryden has Ozmyn demand a Trial by Combat, a jugement de Dieu as the French call it. Boabdelin begins it by proclaiming, "And may just Heav'n assist the juster side" (2.5.2.24). All the combatants swear the justice of their cause and kiss the Koran. The implication of the contest is clear: even if Almanzor is fighting only for reputation's sake, the audience knows Almahide is chaste and expects that Heaven will indeed assist the juster side. Almahide's Christian lady-in-waiting Esperanza teaches her to "Trust" in a higher power than mere stoic virtue, "the Christians Deity" (2.5.2.9-14), and Almahide asks that God for a sign of His "succour" (2.5.2.18). Despite Lyndaraxa's dirty tricks, Almanzor and Ozmyn win. The truth emerges as Zulema confesses his party's treachery and perjury. Appropriately, Abdelmelech, who before had doubted the gods, concludes, "Heav'n thou art just" (2.5.2.88), and Almahide thanks her new God, upbraids her husband for his distrust, and plans never to see him or Almanzor again, but to sublate her love upward "to Heav'n," to a new "plighted Lord" (2.5.3.63-64). At the end of the play Almahide's constancy is not just vindicated but rewarded. By Boabdelin's death she is free from her former vow, and her new "Parent," her godmother Queen Isabella, dispenses with her constancy to his ghost and gives her hand to Almanzor, whom she will marry after her "year of Widowhood expires" (2.5.3.331-37). Then she—and not her antithesis, Lyndaraxa—will receive a "Coronet of Spain" from Almanzor's family and will reign as princess (2.5.3.307), but one properly subordinated to her hew husband, her new King, and her new God. Meanwhile, the young and heroic Almanzor is only potentially a culture hero. He is a diamond in the rough who must be polished; he is a great source of martial and sexual energy that must either be socialized or remain anarchic and destructive. He must learn to control the raging bull of his own passion and to respect the code of the word, the bonds of society—ethical, political, metaphysical. Though he takes the side of the oppressed Abencerrages when he first arrives, he owes allegiance not only to no king but to the wrong god and to virtually no code of ethics. When Abdalla seeks his help rebelling against Boabdelin, Almanzor eschews talk of what's "right" or of the bonds of nature and society Abdalla is violating and bases his response on his "friendship" with Abdalla and on his desire for revenge against Boabdelin

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(1.3.1.22): "True, I would wish my friend the juster side: / But in th'unjust my kindness more is try'd" (1.3.1.27-28). When he helps Boabdelin regain the throne, again he does so out of revenge against Âbdalla for breaking his word—and also to have his will in setting Almahide free. But it is Almahide who tames him, and she does so especially by teaching him the value of constancy. She refuses to yield herself as a spoil of the war not only because brute force is wrong but also because she has plighted troth to Boabdelin. Thus, like Una, she ennobles the savage. At one point, Almanzor exclaims: There's something noble, lab'ring in my brest: This raging fire which through the Mass does move, Shall purge my dross, and shall refine my Love.

(1.3.1.422-24) Nevertheless, considering Almahide his "Right" by war (1.4.2.423), he still has no respect for the King's right to her (1.4.2.442) and little more for her father's, who has given her to Boabdelin. He is justified in being angry with Boabdelin for breaking his word to grant his request, but he is not justified in demanding Almahide with no respect for her vows, and she upbraids him for it. Only her honoring her word saves him from death, as he is sent into exile. Upon his departure, she tries to teach him to have faith that "Heav'n will reward your worth some better way" than by having her (1.5.1.422). Finally, he stubbornly decides to live and "not be out-done in Constancy" (1.5.1.482), but his understanding of the term includes more obduracy than fidelity. When Almahide calls him back from exile, she demands an even higher form of service: "Unbrib'd, preserve a Mistress and a King," and he pledges, "I'le stop at nothing that appears so brave" (2.2.3.100-101). She has apparently raised his love from the selfinterest of a Lyndaraxa to the selflessness and even self-sacrifice of herself and the other models of such a love, such a constancy, Ozmyn and Benzayda. But he backslides, stubbornly contending with Boabdelin over the scarf, stubbornly refusing to fight after Almahide makes him give it back. Then when Boabdelin is captured, Almahide berates him for breaking his word (2.3.1.174-80). Stung by her rebuke, he honors his promise and fights again. Against Lyndaraxa's temptation to inconstancy Almanzor maintains his own constancy to his pledge, despite the lack of reward, though he still is too sullen, has too much of Sans ioy in him.

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Though Almahide, with scorn rewards my care; Yet; than to change, 'tis nobler to despair. My Love's my Soul; and that from Fate is free: 'Tis that unchang'd; and deathless part of me. (2.3.3.177-80)

But from this joyless resolution Almanzor proceeds once more after victory to press his suit to Almahide. In the name of the needs of "flesh and blood" (2.4.3.264), he demands payment for his services. As the ghost of his mother warns him, he is in danger of becoming Sans loy as he pursues "lawless Love"—adultery (2.4.3.132). Almanzor rejects the ghost's warning, however, and takes refuge in his theory of predestination. Though she has just informed him he is a Christian, he has not learned to trust in their God. Almanzor now resembles his libertine counterpart in Restoration comedy. He excuses himself from his "bond" with the specious argument that it was compelled by "force." He rejects as idealistic nonsense the notion that "purest love can live without reward." When Almahide appeals to "honour" as "the Conscience of an Act well done," "the strong, and secret curb of headlong Will; / The self reward of good; and shame of ill," he nominalistically responds that honor is "but a Love well hid" and that her words are but "the Maximes of the Day" to be discarded at night, the time for "warm desire." "Enrag'd" with such desire, he paints a vivid, lurid picture of the sexual "Extasie" they will have if she but yield. In vain are her appeals to his previous "Myracle of Vertue" in serving her "unbrib'd," her attack on his request as "mercenary." Only her attempted suicide enables him to defeat that raging bull of his "desire" (2.4.3.164-274). Even now Almanzor is "but half converted" (2.4.3.281), his great energy but half socialized. Within an hour he distrusts Almahide so much as to believe her an adultress. Though he defends her honor, he believes her only when Zulema confesses the truth. When she enjoins him never to see her again, he insists on kissing her hand, which provokes Boabdelin to new rage and exposes Almahide to an attack that might have proved fatal if not interrupted by the Christians' assault. Now Almahide makes her last appeal that Almanzor raise himself once more above Boabdelin's faults and his own passion, that he once again protect them. As he goes to fight, he responds, "You've rais'd my Soul" (2.5.3.124). Having overcome his passion thus, Almanzor appears to have earned what his mother's ghost has promised: the secret of his birth.

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In the ensuing battle, as the Duke of Arcos relates, "Heav'n (it must be Heav'n)" intervenes and reveals to him his son through unmistakable signs (2.5.3.187), and Almanzor's mother, expressly sent from heaven (2.4.3.107), restrains him by crying twice, "Strike not thy father" (2.5.3.196). Himself a child of passion, born in exile, raised in captivity, Almanzor is an embodiment of his father's rebellious energy, who married the King's sister without permission. Therefore, he is a perfect double of the monstrous bull, an energy that must be contained and socialized or it will wreak havoc. And the restraining order is the patriarchal code: he is brought to know and kneel at the feet of his father (2.5.3.205), to acknowledge and pay allegiance to his kinsman as king—his cousin Ferdinand (2.5.3.278-85)—and to respect the laws of sexual constancy, which protect the patrilineal genealogy. Finally, he is brought to serve the patriarchal Christian God, to spread His "Conqu'ring Crosses" to the rest of Spain (2.5.3.346). It is that God who has validated the code of the word by His repeated providential interposition. Hence, rivalry and revenge have finally been conquered in this Christian conquest of Granada, and they have been overcome by a countervailing set of values, best epitomized in the Ozmyn and Benzayda subplot. In the face of their fathers' inveterate hatred, they refuse to accept the code of revenge. Despite her father Selin's commands, Benzayda refuses to kill Ozmyn as payment for her brother Tarifa's death. Out of her "Pity" grows love between them (1.4.2.240). They are rescued by his father Abenamar, only to have to flee his hatred, as Ozmyn refuses to renege his "vows and faith" to Benzayda (1.5.1.141). Succored by the Christians, who respect such noble pity and love, they yet refuse to turn against their own country. Then, Ozmyn rescues Selin from his own father, being careful to preserve both elders. Selin is vanquished by his generosity and embraces both youngsters, surrendering his revenge. When Selin is later captured by Abenamar, both Ozmyn and Benzayda separately go to offer themselves as sacrifices in his stead: as Selin says of his daughter, she "comes to suffer for anothers fau't" (2.4.1.49). Finally this spirit of sacrifice, of selfless love, vanquishes even Abenamar. Self-sacrifice rescues civilization from endless rivalry. Ozmyn and Benzayda do not actually die. But their actions recall One Who did, as Dryden seems to suggest by concluding the play with their conversion to Christianity. It is as if their faith—as well as that of Almahide—is

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sublated upwards, converted into Faith. What Abdalla has said to Lyndaraxa in scorn is, of course, true in the world of the play: "There is more faith in Christian Dogs, than thee" (1.5.1.71). The Zegrys scorn the Abencerrages for possessing not only some Christian blood but even the Christian value of charity to prisoners. The real conquest of Granada is the triumph of Christian values. As Isabella expresses it, Granada is finally "At once to freedom and true faith restor'd: / Its old Religion, and its antient Lord" (2.1.1.26-27). That "Lord" is at once its rightful king and its God, a God that the Spaniards—and all peoples, Dryden seems to imply—should serve by keeping faith: to lovers, fathers, kings, and the Christian Father-King-God.

In these heroic romances, then, the crucial problems of endless reciprocal violence, on the one hand, and the contamination of genealogy» on the other, are both mediated by a code of fidelity to one's word. And the two problems are intimately related. Not only are the political and the sexual metaphors for each other, the two realms interpenetrate. The Queen or faithful lady is a sign of cultural integrity, and he who steals her away in the night precipitates catastrophic violence. Her dark double, the sexually promiscuous, faithless woman, threatens patriarchal hierarchy at its core. But the Culture Hero endures his trials and lays the devouring dragons to rest. If he falters, he eventually places his faith where it belongs, confirmed in the belief that his faith is underwritten by supernatural patriarchal power. Since they are so central to English literature of this long period, the symbols of the sword and the cup might be seen as the signs of mediation of the problems of violence and promiscuity. The (phallic) sword, when blessed with the favor of the Ruler, is the sign of the culture's power to enforce allegiance, to restrain rebellion. The (uterine) cup, when kept pure, is the sign of the culture's power to control the transmission of power and property. Both are metonymies for the central feudal value of troth. And when they fail to mediate, the consequences are disastrous, for example, in the Morte Darthur, where the cultural loss is symbolized by the loss of the ultimate cup, the Grail, and the surrender of King Arthur's sword to the Lady of the Lake. One thinks ahead also to the fatal poisoned sword and cup in the last scene of Hamlet.1

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N O T E S

1. See Randall Bohrer, "Beowulf and the Bog People," for a fascinating situation of such a Jungian reading in the historical Danish replacement of the matriarchal Nerthus cultus with their own patriarchal Odin cult in the fifth and sixth centuries A.D. 2. In his note to the passage, Klaeber suggests that "sincfaet" must mean something like "rich setting." Even so, the connotation of roundness obtains. 3. The best and most thorough treatment I know of this theme of traw\>e is W. R. J. Barron, Trawthe and Treason. 4. The best treatment I know of the contrast between the pentangle and the girdle is Donald R. Howard, "Structure and Symmetry in Sir Gawain." 5. The best treatment I know of this theme of perverted words throughout The Faerie Queene is A. Bartlett Giamatti, Play of Double Senses, ch. 10. 6. Works, 11:23 (Part 1, act 1, scene 1, line 10, hereafter abbreviated as 1.1.1.10). 7. For other illustrative examples of heroic romances where the pledged word is at the center of conflict, see, in the Middle Ages, King Horn and Havelok the Dane; in the Renaissance, the rest of The Faerie Queene, especially Books 3 and 4, and Sir Philip Sidney's Arcadia; in the Restoration, my "Significance of the Restoration Rhymed Heroic Play," which surveys the entire genre. C. R. Kropf, "Political Theory and Dryden's Heroic Tragedies," though published six years after my article, makes many of my same points about The Conquest of Granada in particular and heroic plays in general without citing me (esp. pp. 134-36).

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TWO

Tragicomic Romance

Tragicomic is a more domestic form of romance than heroic. As Mikhail Bakhtin has best shown, this kind of romance is traditionally dominated by variations on the theme of fidelity amidst the fires of trial {The Dialogic Imagination, 105-9). It usually features constant lovers tempted to infidelity, or lost children or beleaguered wives or sometimes rightful princes exiled or cast adrift because of some original act of infidelity. Here the threats are usually not displaced outward onto monsters but reside in one's spouse, one's brother, one's supposedly loyal general, one's best friend, a nearly irresistible paramour. Central to the conflict in the three superb English tragicomic romances that follow is the plighted word, the promise of sexual fidelity. Not that political considerations are excluded. The political and the sexual continue to mirror each other. There are political ramifications to Leontes's jealousy, and in Dryden's play, the sexual and the political are separated into heroic and comic plots which are simply versions of the same threat of transgression. Moreover, throughout these works ethical and political breaches of the word ultimately involve metaphysical ramifications, breaches of trust with the gods themselves.

The Franklin's Tale At the heart of Chaucer's Franklin's Tale lie two paradoxes. Because she loves her husband, Arveragus, intensely, Dorigen promises to

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commit adultery with Aurelius. Chaucer emphasizes the irony by having Dorigen use exactly the same words to pledge her faith to both: "Have heer my trouthe" (V[F]759, 998). The more famous paradox is that Arveragus believes so much in keeping trouthe that he sends Dorigen to keep hers, even when it means violating her trouthe with him. To understand these paradoxes we must first understand the key conflicts in the poem. The central conflict appears to be simply the typical love triangle in chivalric literature: lordly husband, beautiful wife, courtly lover. Aurelius is the beautiful young lover of the courtly love tradition (see C. Hugh Holman, "Courtly Love in the Merchant's and the Franklin's Tales"), who is sick to death over Dorigen unless she reward him—by committing adultery. In other words, Aurelius is the Stranger in the House who would supplant the lordly husband in his bed. Chaucer emphasizes Aurelius's role of supplanter through the visions vouchsafed him by the magician, who takes Aurelius home not to a humble clerk's dwelling but to a magnificent mansion, where "He shewed hym, er he wente to sopeer, / Forestes, parkes ful of wilde deer" (1189-90), deer he momentarily sees hunted and killed. The scene is quickly replaced by successive illusions, one of falconers hunting heron, then one of knights jousting. Finally, "he hym shewed his lady on a daunce, / On which hymself he daunced, as hym thoughte" (1200-1201). All this time they have really been in the magician's study. The import of the images is that this magician has merely given shape to Aurelius's desires, allowing the "lusty squier" (937) to daydream in wish fulfillment that he is already a knight, the lord of a mansion, the owner of lands filled with deer, the participant in aristocratic pastimes, and finally the man before whom his lady dances, a lady with whom ("On" whom) he eventually dances himself. In short, his libido has instated him in Arveragus's place. Chaucer undercuts this supplanter further by having him pray to pagan gods, linked with the "supersticious cursednesse" (1272) of the magician's art, which is explicitly at odds with the Christian's "hooly chirches feith" (1133). Aurelius is "servant to Venus" (937), who here seems merely the goddess of sexuality. He prays to Apollo as a vegetation or fertility god, the sun as impregnator of earth (1031-35). Aurelius's appeal is also to Lucina, Apollo's sister the moon, herself "quyked" or impregnated by his "fir" (1050). And finally, Aurelius pictures Lucina in another manifestation, as Proserpina, that dark vegetative goddess of the Underworld. Thus Aurelius is a courtly version

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of the Don Juan figure, the "servant" of unrestrained, promiscuous sexuality. His presence in the "gardyn" that is compared to "paradys" (911-12) associates him with the Satanic serpent, that phallic snake in the grass that threatens all patriarchal attempts to control female sexuality and to keep aristocratic genealogy pure. His being the tempter in the garden and his bargain with the magician are meant to show the complicity of the powers of darkness with his subversive desire. Like Sir Gawain's final response to the lady of the castle's sexual temptation, Dorigen's response to Aurelius's temptation is a swift, definitive rebuke, as she demonstrates how firm her trouthe: "Ne shal I nevere been untrewe wyf, . . . Taak this for fynal answere as of me" (984-87). Yet, of course, this is not her "fynal answere." Why does she make the fatal promise to Aurelius to be his if he remove the rocks from the coast of Brittany? The reason is that she loves Arveragus so much that she fears for his safety and thus "in pley" (988) articulates her deepest wish, that the rocks which threaten Arveragus be removed. What complicates her conflict with Aurelius is her conflict with those rocks. And her momentary indulgence of her real desire results in promising to "love" Aurelius "best of any man" (997) precisely because she loves Arveragus thus. She really has no intention of committing adultery. But the secret to her problem and the key to its significance lie in the repeated oath: "By thilke God that yaf me soule and lyf" (983) and "by heighe God above, / Yet wolde I graunte yow to been youre love" (989-90). Let us examine Dorigen's conflict with the rocks. Pining like a grass widow, Dorigen stares at the sea looking for a sign of her husband's return. But she also stares at the threatening "grisly rokkes blake" (859), which cause her to swoon and utter a complaint against "a parfit wys God," Who can by definition do nothing supererogatory, for having "wroght" so "unresonable" a "werk" as "thise grisly feendly rokkes blake." Since mankind is supposedly so special to You, she argues, why have You invented such a persecution (865-84)? What she has done, in reasoning to the best of her "wit" (875), is to question the wisdom of God in His creation. God's work, however clerks may dispute that "al is for the beste" (886), Dorigen finds "unresonable." Her plaint is poignant, but she has raised a theodicean challenge, and the point is that she should know the answer to this version of the problem of evil (or at least Chaucer's audience should; if Dorigen is not a Christian, the tale certainly is). The clerks

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might indeed offer the ontological explanation that all is best in the best of all possible worlds. But more important for the tale is the historical explanation for the origin of evil, even such physical evils as the jagged rocks. Man brought evil and death into the world, as Chaucer pointedly reminds us by the immediate setting of the scene of Dorigen's temptation in a "gardyn of swich prys" that it can compare only with "verray paradys" (911-12). Dorigen's problem is that she not only violates her troutke to Arveragus but she does so precisely because she violates it to God in the very act of plighting it to Aurelius. She concludes her earlier complaint with a prayer to God for her husband, with a deferral to clerks to solve the problem of evil, and with an understandable wish that the rocks were absent. But when she bargains with her tempter, even "in pley," she actualizes her potential infidelity to God and entails her infidelity to her husband. Thus the irony in her oaths "by heighe God above." Like Sir Gawain, out of understandable frailty, she neglects the lesson in her very words and casually displaces her faith from God to something that eventually involves "swich folye" as magic (1131). The irony in her words is not only that she swears by the God she is distrusting but that she forgets why she should trust Him: "By thilke God that yaf me soule and lyf." Chaucer drives home his point by having Aurelius initiate his temptation with a similar oath, "by God that this world made" (967), and, when Aurelius asks, "Is ther noon oother grace in yow?",by having Dorigen conclude her rejection, '"No, by that Lord,' quod she, 'that maked me!'" (999-1000). In other words, while, like Sir Gawain, Dorigen has done well to resist the main temptation, she ought not to have made her qualification, even in play, because it constitutes distrust of Him Who made the world and her. And this irony is further underlined when Aurelius tells the magician that he would give the world to make the rocks disappear—"if I were lord of it" (1229). Not only is he not lord of Arveragus's possessions, he emphatically is not lord of the world. Someone else is, in Whom one ought have the "feith" that is ultimately displaced onto the magician (1234). Furthermore, Dorigen ought to have that faith in God because of the double sense in which He gave her soul and life. The second sense Chaucer emphasizes again by setting. If the temptation of Dorigen takes place in a pseudo-Eden, the climax of her story takes place in "The colde, frosty seson of Decembre" (1244), when all things have died—as Dorigen is in danger of doing—when Aurelius's "Phebus" is

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in decline (1245), but when "'Nowel' crieth every lusty man" (1255). The news they cry is the ultimate answer to the problem of evil and Dorigen's complaint. Adam's fall brought death into the world and all our woe, but Christ's death redeemed it. Therefore, one should have faith even in the face of "grisly rokkes blake" and not look for another—false—"myracle" (1299). Dorigen's unintentional breaking of trouthe with both Arveragus and God has potentially disastrous consequences. She appears faced with only two alternatives: adultery or suicide. But, of course, there is a hidden third alternative, present even in Aurelius's request for her "trouthe" to him (1320,1328): "Repenteth yow, for thilke God above, / Er ye me sleen by cause that I yow love" (1321-22). Aurelius has appropriated language from the Christian code and is using it perversely to obtain his ends. But he has unwittingly taught Dorigen what to do: to repair to her lord and repent. Arveragus, temporarily at least, assumes the role of a surrogate for a merciful Father-God. Let us examine Dorigen's plight more closely. Dorigen's long rehearsal of the suicides of threatened or ravished matrons and maidens reminds us of the usual sad recourse of women in Western patriarchal aristocracies—or at least in their encoding texts. If the vessel of man's seed is about to receive or has received a flaw, it must be destroyed. Dorigen extends her catalogue to include examples of true wives, whether they died for their chastity or not. She wishes to be "trewe" like them (1424), to be another example of aristocratic "parfit wyfhod" (1451). But must she, like the other chaste women, "rather hirselven slee / Than be defouled, as it thynketh me" (1397-98)? Instead, upon Arveragus's return from another sojourn, she confesses the truth to him. Far from a sign of her culpable weakness, Dorigen's seeking this third alternative is a sign of her need of her lord's "grace"—a term perverted by Aurelius (999,1325) but about to be restored to its proper meaning. Chaucer seems to present Arveragus, at least in part, as a rebuke to traditional sexist, sadistic attitudes toward women and chastity. Instead of the stereotypical outraged husband—like, say, Chaucer's own merchant—Chaucer offers here a better model, one marked by generosity, pity, understanding. Whether or not Arveragus is supposed to contrast with Walter from The Clerk's Tale, he clearly eschews "maistrie" over his wife (747), and the Franklin, at least, clearly approves (761-66). One form of maistrie Arveragus eschews is "jalousie" (748), as he manifests upon his return from England (1094-96). Moreover,

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upon hearing Dorigen's confession, he manifests another of the marital virtues the Franklin expounds, "Pacience" as opposed to traditional "rigour" (773, 775). For every word men may nat chide or pleyne. Lerneth to suffre, or elles, so moot I goon, Ye shul it lerne, wher so ye wole or noon; For in this world, certein, ther no wight is That he ne dooth or seith somtyme amys. . . . On every wrong a man may nat be wreken. (776-80, 784)

Arveragus promises Dorigen such "suffrance" (788) during their marriage, and he is extremely tolerant of her frailty when she confesses, responding "with glad chiere, in freendly wyse" (1467). His immediate response replaces an Old Law of vengeance with a New Law of patience and forgiveness. It is true, as R. A. Shoaf has recently reiterated ("The Franklin's Tale: Chaucer and Medusa"), that Arveragus cannot maintain this "glad chiere" but breaks down and lapses into a mode of maistrie: I yow forbede, up peyne of deeth, That nevere, whil thee lasteth lyf ne breeth, To no wight telle thou of this aventure. (1481-83)

And modern readers are perhaps disdainful of Arveragus's insistence on maintaining the public show of "soveraynetee . . . for shame of his degree" (751-52). Nevertheless, while Arveragus may be in part a surrogate for a merciful God, he is not God but one of those frail human wights, none of whom but "he ne dooth or seith somtyme amys." It is also true that Arveragus's action seems absurd. Why send his wife to keep her trouthe to commit adultery which constitutes breaking her prior trouthe with him? Why not kill Aurelius? Why not advise Dorigen to forget the whole thing, that such promises do not bind? Such solutions are more realistic than the one Chaucer provides. But his design seems to be symbolic. The Franklin warns those critics who consider Arveragus's action "lewed" (1494) or stupid to await the outcome. So let us try to interpret the paradox symbolically. Arveragus considers "Trouthe" as "the hyeste thyng that man may kepe" (1479), the most essential cement of society. He knows not

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how, but somehow the best thing Dorigen can do is keep her word to Aurelius.1 Somehow the solution to her breaking trouthe to him and to God is to honor it now. Somehow—"paraventure"—"It may be wel," he trusts (1473). Is his hope absurd? Perhaps. But perhaps the basis for such hope is couched in his very language. Ye shul youre trouthe holden, by my fay! For God so wisly have mercy upon me, I hadde wel levere ystiked for to be For verray love which that I to yow have, But if ye sholde youre trouthe kepe and save.

(1474-78) "By my fay," he says almost casually. By my faith, God have mercy on me if I wouldn't rather be killed than have you break your word. The ethical and the metaphysical are interrelated: the trust we show to one another in this life will be rewarded in the next, we can trust, for faith is connected to Faith. As in a Trial by Combat, man's word is finally vindicated by God. That is something man can trust in, as God demonstrated when He vouchsafed the ultimate sign of His trustworthiness, His care for His people: the Redemption, the sign of divine mercy, announced in the cry—and the season—of "Nowel." In other words, the two central paradoxes of The Franklin's Tale concern tests of faith. Dorigen distrusts God's wisdom and consequently, however unintentionally, violates her fidelity to her other lord, at least in word if not in deed. But Arveragus, like Kierkegaard's Abraham in Fear and Trembling, keeps his faith in the face of an impossible situation. And his faith is rewarded. The socially necessary virtue of trouthe is portrayed very subtly as underwritten by religion. Arveragus's tentative "paraventure" is repeated and gradually transformed as the narrative continues.2 "Paraventure" critics think Arveragus stupid (1493). "Of aventure" Dorigen and Aurelius meet in the middle of the town "right in the quykkest strete" (1501-2), the center of commercial—and social—life, rather than in the dangerous "gardyn" (1504). "But thus they mette, of aventure or grace" (1508). "Aventure" has been renamed, tentatively, as "grace." Whose "grace?" There seems to be a divinity at work shaping rough-hewn ends. In the center of society its most essential virtue is reaffirmed. Awed by Arveragus's incredible faith in faith itself as the acme of aristocratic behavior, Aurelius too responds mercifully and releases Dorigen from

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her "trouthe" to him (passim), thereby preserving her original trouthe. He pledges his own "trouthe" never to accuse her of breaking her "biheste" (1537-38) and pronounces her "the treweste and the beste wyf / That evere yet I knew in al my lyf" (1539-40). She thus remains, by a kind of "myracle"—a miracle of "grace" (God's, Arveragus's, Aurelius's)—the "parfit wyf," forever "trewe" to her husband (1555) as "In sovereyn blisse" they "leden forth hir lyf" (1552). She is reinstated as the sign of cultural integrity "as though she were a queene" (1554). Blessed are the merciful, for Aurelius's "greet pitee" (1603) in turn wins him "grace" (1566) from the magician. But he also wins it because he himself pledges, "I failled nevere of my trouthe as yit" (1577), and promises to quit his debt eventually, even if he must sell his patrimony, a social suicide. Whatever the magician's motive—even if simply not to be outdone in gentilesse by a couple of patricians—and however the Franklin may throw us off by asking a misleading (and bourgeois) question at the end ("Which was the mooste fre" 1622), The Franklin's Tale affirms trouthe—between husband and wife or between any two persons—as the highest value in society, a value sanctioned ultimately by God, in Whom one ought therefore have absolute trust, however absurd or paradoxical the situation. Of course, the value of trust is really underwritten by Chaucer himself, whose gentle humor and irony are signs of a human tolerance akin to that of the Gawain poet—and to that of the one character who in all The Canterbury Tales comes closest to a self-portrait, the Franklin of this very tale.

The Winter's Tale The Winter's Tale tells of disastrous distrust. The opposite of Arveragus, Leontes precipitately distrusts his wife and his best friend, and his distrust grows into a paranoia that includes his old counselor Camillo, his other counselors, all women, and even the gods themselves: "All's true that is mistrusted" (2.1.48).3 So convinced is he that every detail of circumstantial evidence against wife and friend is "a note infallible / Of breaking honesty" (1.2.286-87) that he hypothesizes if the evidence amounts to "nothing": then the world and all that's in't is nothing, The covering sky is nothing, Bohemia nothing,

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My wife is nothing, nor nothing have these nothings, If this be nothing. (1.2.291-95)

He reiterates the contingency to his counselors. If I mistake In those foundations which I build upon, The center is not big enough to bear A schoolboy's top. (2.1.100-102)

If his interpretation of such certain signs be false, then the world has no meaning, no center, no Logos. Just as sure of his reading of signs, Antigonus says of Hermione's putative infidelity: If it be so, We need no grave to bury honesty; There's not a grain of it the face to sweeten Of the whole dungy earth. (2.1.154-57)

If the Queen, who in chivalric literature must be the very sign of the constancy that holds society together, if she be false, then a fortiori there is no truth, no trouthe. And Hermione herself is just as sure in her related hypothesis. if powers divine Behold our human actions, as they do, I doubt not then but innocence shall make False accusation blush and tyranny Tremble at patience. (3.2.27-31)

The crucial question in the early part of the play is whose hypothesis is right. The direct appeal to the oracle of Apollo is analogous to a Trial by Combat to settle the issue. And for once, Apollo is unequivocal, calls a tyrant a tyrant, and vindicates Hermione's faith. Leontes's distrust of Apollo—"There is no truth at all i'th'oracle" (3.2.138)— results in instantaneous and unequivocal signs. Tragically, his son— and his wife too, apparently—are struck dead, and Leontes himself interprets the signs: "Apollo's angry, and the heavens themselves / Do strike at my injustice" (3.2.144-45).

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Nevertheless, the tragic justice delivered upon Leontes and his subsequent years of penance seem small consolation for such a loss. How beneficial is it to be vindicated in the grave? Another question the play raises, then, is how efficacious is the chivalric code of trust for someone in this life. Mamillius is dead, as are Hermione (as far as we know) and Antigonus by the end of the same act, and the faithful Camillo and the innocent Polixenes are both in a form of exile. Autolycus enunciates the problem: "Ha, ha, what a fool Honesty is! and Trust, his sworn brother, a very simple gentleman!" (4.4.588-89). A confidence man, who preys upon naive trust, he has just duped a whole party of rustics who believe his lies, among them his ballads, which he has pawned off as historical truth. He describes his spellbound audience: "No hearing, no feeling, but my sir's song and admiring the nothing of it. So that in this time of lethargy I picked and cut most of their festival purses" (4.4.604-6). Autolycus's "nothing" picks up Leontes's and redefines it: there really is no truth, just appearances. While Apollo's judgment gives Autolycus's creed the lie in part, in the posthumous vindication of honesty, it still leaves the question of the terrestrial efficacy of trust unanswered. Thus, Shakespeare did not conclude the play with Apollo's judgment. Instead, he wrote the second half of the play in order to work out the oracle's own cryptic hypothesis: "and the king shall live without an heir if that which is lost be not found" (3.2.133-34). The second half of the play implies that time and penitence heal wrongs, that Providence acts in strange and wonderful ways, that if winter comes, spring cannot be far behind: "Thou mettest with things dying, I with things new-born" (3.3.106-7), says the old Shepherd to his son at the transitional moment of the play. Leontes' finding of the lost Perdita occurs at the moment he forgets about the problem of dying heirless and places himself in his scourge Paulina's hands, implicitly trusting that somehow, as she says, "the gods / Will have fulfilled their secret purposes" (5.1.35-36). And Hermione's symbolic rebirth occurs at the moment Leontes awakens his "faith" (5.3.95)—not only in the miracle Paulina apparently performs but, by extension, that total trust in Hermione lost at the beginning of the play. Hermione's own honesty and fidelity are shown to have been not futile but ultimately efficacious in this life. And the loyalty of both Camillo and Polixenes is also rewarded in reunion. But why the episode of Florizel and Perdita? Partly, to reunite the alienated friends through their children, to restore to Leontes both his

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daughter and a surrogate son, to portray the renewal of grace in the love of the young. But what theme in the episode relates to the first half of the play? First, while the relationship between Leontes and Hermione is characterized by distrust, by suspicions of adultery, Shakespeare seems to have wanted to present us with a counterexample, with a relationship based firmly on trust, a trust shown to be ultimately efficacious too, despite the obstacles. From his opening remarks, Florizel pledges constancy to Perdita, whatever his father might say. In another of the play's desperate hypotheses, he says: Or I'll be thine, my fair, Or not my father's. For I cannot be Mine own, nor anything to any, if I be not thine. To this I am most constant, Though destiny say no. (4.4.42-46)

Here is the threat of nothingness again: If I am false, I shall be nothing; my trouthe is my essence. Like Antigonus and Hermione, Florizel equates fidelity with integrity, in this case his own, literally. And he is so adamant as to defy destiny itself to undo his vows. In another hypothesis he affirms: were I crowned the most imperial monarch, 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. (4.4.365-71)

These protestations of love are mutual. Florizel would have Perdita treat the sheep-shearing feast "as it were the day / Of celebration of that nuptial which / We two have sworn shall come" (4.4.49-51). Preparing to dance, Florizel comments of the couple they make, "So turtles pair / That never mean to part," and Perdita answers, "I'll swear for 'em" (4.4.154-55). Yet are these oaths and vows, especially Florizel's, infallible signs, like those the Shepherd thinks he sees in Florizel's demeanor? Or are they potentially empty words, no more trustworthy than those of Autolycus's songs? In the comic interlude that follows, the Clown is a figure of the inconstant youth, who has

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apparently "promised" more than he can deliver to two lovers (4.4.232ff.)—or perhaps delivered more than he promised, as Mopsa says wryly. His situation is parodied in Autolycus's song, "Two maids wooing a man" (4.4.284), in which both maids lay claim to their lovers' "oath" (4.4.295). Dorcas. Thou hast sworn my love to be. Mopsa. Thou hast sworn it more to me. (4.4.301-2)

The clown leaves the stage saying, "Wenches, I'll buy for you both" (4.4.307), thus embodying the problem of the promiscuous sex urge of youth his father earlier laments: "I would there were no age between ten and three-and-twenty, or that youth would sleep out the rest; for there is nothing in the between but getting wenches with child, wronging the ancientry, stealing, fighting" (3.3.58-61). Is Florizel similarly just sowing his wild oats? As Hermione represents to Leontes's diseased imagination one of the major threats to sexual constancy—the unfaithful wife—and as Polixenes represents another—the adulterous friend or guest—so potentially does Florizel represent another—the Don Juan. Nevertheless, when Florizel unfortunately has the opportunity of testing his first hypothesis—even if his father, the King, forbids their love—he responds without hesitation (and with another desperate hypothesis) that his love, which transcends class and raises Perdita to be his equal: cannot fail but by The violation of my faith; and then Let nature crush the sides o'th'earth together And mar the seeds within. . . . Not for Bohemia nor the pomp that may Be thereat gleaned, for all the sun sees or The close earth wombs or the profound seas hide In unknown fathoms, will I break my oath To this my fair beloved. (4.4.469-85)

If I fail then chaos is come, but I shall not fail for all the world. This is Hermione's kind of constancy, and it is an implicit rebuke to Leontes, for such constancy includes as concomitant an absolute trust in the oaths of the other. Symbolically, this constancy is rewarded by the

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providential unravelling of the plot. Leontes explicitly interprets their movements toward "troth-plight" as being Heaven-directed (5.3.150-51). And their faith is rewarded at virtually the same moment as Leontes's is renewed. Husband and wife, rival friends, son and daughter, even loyal counselor and faithful scourge are all united in the same harmonic closure, which signifies the necessity for and efficacy of the bonds of the word, a word underwritten by a metaphysical dynamic, which Shakespeare allows to speak under the guise of Time as chorus: "I, that please some, try all, both joy and terror / Of good and bad, that makes and unfolds error" (4.1.1-2). Whether this is still Apollo or the Christian God is inconsequential. Shakespeare portrays human events as trials judged by a supernatural force that guarantees the punishment of sin, the reward of virtue, and the unfolding of truth. In this instance, as often in his work, the sin is distrust, the virtue constancy, and the truth trouthe. There is a second important thematic link between the two plots of the play. Both concern fears about the control of genealogy. Whatever the ultimate cause of Leontes's jealousy,4 he is certainly preoccupied with threats to paternity. First, the threat of a twin brother who, because of female sexuality, is transformed into a rival, a supplanter in his bed: "You have mistook, my lady, / Polixenes for Leontes" (2.1.81-82). This threat is best revealed in Leontes's morbid fear of retroactive cuckolding. He says to Mamillius, "What, hast smutched thy nose? / They say it is a copy out of mine" (1.2.121-22). As he wipes off the nose, enjoining Mamillius to be "neat," his diseased imagination leaps to the other meaning of the word—to be horned as cattle are called "neat" (1.2.123-25)—and he pursues the metaphor: "Art thou my calf? . . . / Thou want'st a rough pash [head] and the shoots [horns] that I have, / To be full like me" (1.2.127-30). Paradoxically, to be fully like him and therefore certainly his son, Mamillius would have to bear Leontes's sign of the cuckold—the very indication that to him denies his paternity of Mamillius. Even as Leontes insists that a strong paternal resemblance exists, he undercuts his certainty by basing it upon what women say, who by Hermione's sin are a fortiori all "false," even as "false / As dice are to be wished by one that fixes / No bourn 'twixt his and mine" (1.2.131-34). Leontes concludes Polixenes such a one, who has invaded Leontes's property, "fished" in his neighbor's "pond" (1.2.194), made a "crack" in his friend's sacred vessel (1.2.321). As a result, contrary to his certitude, without foundation Leontes himself gives "scan-

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dal to the blood o'th'prince my son" (1.2.329). And then, despite Paulina's delineation of the baby Perdita—"Although the print be little, the whole matter / And copy of the father" (2.3.98-99)— Leontes repeatedly brands it "bastard" and claims, "This brat is none of mine; / It is the issue of Polixenes" (2.3.92-93). Ironically, by the end of the play, Leontes has learned better how to read the signs of paternity. He says to Florizel, "Your mother was most true to wedlock, prince, / For she did print your royal father off, / Conceiving you"; he is his "father's image" (5.1.123-26). Resemblance is the only sure sign of fidelity in a world of sexual difference. Or to put it another way, the world of patriarchal signs is validated only by repetition. The second threat to paternity that Leontes fears is, of course, his wife's sexual promiscuity. To him, her most important utterance was her pledge of betrothal: "I am yours for ever" (1.2.105). But now he is convinced, "My wife's a hobby-horse, deserves a name / As rank as any flax-wench that puts to / Before her troth-plight" (1.2.275-78). Moreover, by extension his diseased imagination sees no deterrent to "revolted wives," "No barricado for a belly" (1.2.198-206). The amazing thing about such misogyny is how near to the surface it lies, as we have seen, for example, in Sir Gawain's outburst against women at the end of his story, and as is evidenced even in Antigonus's apparent declarations of faith in Hermione's chastity. Once again, Shakespeare employs desperate hypotheses. If it prove She's otherwise, I'll keep my stables where I lodge my wife. I'll go in couples with her, Than when I feel and see her no farther trust her; For every inch of woman in the world, Ay, every dram of woman's flesh is false, If she be. . . . . . . Be she honor-flawed, I have three daughters . . . If this prove true, they'll pay for't. By mine honor, I'll geld 'em all. . . And I had rather glib myself than they Should not produce fair issue.

(2.1.133-50) The sense is, clearly, that if the Queen be false, then a fortiori all women are false, but the grossness of the metaphors reveals latent

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misogyny. If "keep my stables where / 1 lodge my wife" means on one level, as the Arden editor interprets it, to guard his wife well, it also, as the Signet editor suggests, means something "certainly coarse," at least subliminally. And the threat to spay one's daughters and even to castrate oneself implies what lies beneath misogyny in general and Leontes's jealous paranoia in particular: a castrating fear of female sexuality itself. We must never allow ourselves to forget that the single most striking sign in the opening of this play—really striking only when it is performed properly—is Hermione's pregnant belly. At the very first moment Leontes's jealousy breaks forth into words, he mentions the signs that tease him out of thought, upon which he tries to throw a positive interpretation: their mingling of hands, their courtly address, her "heartiness," her "bounty," but also—certainly out of context— her "fertile bosom" (1.2.113). The "paddling palms and pinching fingers" (1.2.115) are obvious enough signs that portend passion and threaten the just-mentioned trothplight clapping of hands between Leontes and Hermione. But the detail of the "fertile bosom" indicates Leontes's preoccupation with Hermione's pregnancy. The point seems to be not so much that Hermione represents the mother whom Leontes's twin is stealing away from him, as Schwartz argues plausibly (214), but that Leontes is jealous of Hermione's potency. Archetypally, she is the Great Mother, and Leontes's fears of her seem based precisely on his inability to do what she alone can do—bear children and therefore always ultimately control generation. Thus Leontes fears "mingling bloods" (1.2.109), fears Hermione's having "too much blood" in Mamillius (2.1.58). The child's name itself is a clear sign of the threat: he is of the mother, and to Leontes that means not of the father. Paulina underlines this theme when she answers Leontes' typical sexist accusation of Antigonus as hen-pecked ("He dreads his wife" 2.3.79) with this wonderful verbal shot and report: "So I would you did. Then 'twere past all doubt / You'ld call your children yours" (2.3.80-81). Not that he would know they were his! But that if he really dreaded her power, he would call them his, he would never provoke her wrath and thus teach her to commit the crime of which she is unjustly accused. As Schwartz has brilliantly suggested (222), Leontes has turned the benign goddess of generation into her negative, devouring aspect, the "spider" (2.1.45). Yet what does Hermione exude? Good humor, grace, wit, gentle persuasion—and sex appeal, obvious in her beauty and manners but

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also in her conversation, which is filled with sexual overtones. She says to Polixenes: Verily? You put me off with limber vows, but I, Though you would seek t'unsphere the stars with oaths, Should yet say, 'Sir, no going.' Verily, You shall not go. A lady's 'Verily' is As potent as a lord's. (1.2.46-51) And she says to Leontes: Cram's with praise, and make's As fat as tame things. . . . . . . You may ride's With one soft kiss a thousand furlongs ere With spur we heat an aere. (1.2.91-96) Moreover, she offers Polixenes the choice of being either her "prisoner" or her "guest" (1.2.55)—a choice reminiscent of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight and the Courtly Love and Petrarchan traditions of amatory tropes. In the next breath, Polixenes and Hermione discuss the former's virtually prelapsarian friendship with Leontes—until they fell into the knowledge of sexual difference. Polixenes. O my most sacred lady, Temptations have since then been born to's, for In those unfledged days was my wife a girl; Your precious self had then not crossed the eyes Of my young playfellow. (1.2.76-80) This is a typical male fantasy of narcissistic (or perhaps homosexual) nostalgia, on the one hand, and of misogynistic anxiety, on the other. Hermione's responding exclamation points to the heart of Western patriarchal mythology. Grace to boot! Of this make no conclusion, lest you say Your queen and I are devils. (1.2.80-82)

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Thus, Leontes's distrust is portrayed as the fear of the male rival but, even more, the fear of his wife's potency and his own impotence. Leontes responds jealously after he has been verbally impotent and she verbally potent to keep his friend in Sicily. Shakespeare introduces the theme of verbal potency in the opening scene, where Archidamas has difficulty expressing himself—"Verily, I speak it in the freedom of my knowledge. We cannot with such magnificence—in so rare—I know not what to say" (1.1.11-13)—and finds some things simply "unspeakable" (1.1.32). The obdurate Polixenes insists to Leontes, "There is no tongue that moves, none, none i'th'world, / So soon as yours could win me" (1.2.20-21). Yet he refuses to stay. Almost as a challenge, Leontes turns to Hermione and asks, "Tongue-tied our queen? Speak you" (1.2.27). To his consternation, Hermione's seductive eloquence entices Polixenes to stay, and Leontes remarks petulantly, "At my request he would not" (1.2.87). Obviously, his mind has already leaped to the conclusion that this word has supplanted their previous word: "Hermione, my dearest, thou never spok'st / To better purpose" (1.2.88-89). As she teasingly taunts him with the sexual metaphors noted before, he responds with a metaphor suggestive of his bitterness—and impotence: "Three crabbed months had soured themselves to death / Ere I could make thee open thy white hand / And clap thyself my love" (1.2.201-4). In other words, Shakespeare has employed the metaphor of verbal potency to stand for sexual and to reveal the nature of Leontes's jealousy. Concern with paternity and genealogy is also central to the second plot of the play. The threat Florizel presents to his father is not so much the random dissemination of his princely seed. Aristocratic family picnics were filled with bastards. The real threat is disclosed in Polixenes's famous debate with Perdita concerning "gillyvors, / Which some call nature's bastards" (4.4.82-83). Ironically, Polixenes argues in favor of hybrids. 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.

(4.4.92-95) Yet such a grafting is precisely what he fears most. He tells Camillo he fears Florizel's "not being gracious" (4.2.26-27), but what does that mean? He attacks Florizel on the grounds that the latter has not con-

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suited his father concerning his marital choice. But the issue is not simply courtesy; it is genealogy. Polixenes never mentions Florizel's mother and her interest in her son's marriage. He mentions only the father. Methinks a father Is at the nuptial of his son a guest That best becomes the table. (4.4.387-89) Why is a father the best guest? Reason my son Should choose himself a wife, but as good reason The father, all whose joy is nothing else But fair posterity, should hold some counsel In such a business. (4.4.399-403) The father is the best guest at his (eldest) son's wedding because all his concern is "fair posterity," the purity of aristocratic—in this case royal—generation. Perdita's father urges Florizel to acquaint his father with his love: "He shall not need to grieve / At knowing of thy choice" (4.4.408-9). However, Polixenes grieves sorely at it: "Thou a sceptre's heir / That thus affects a sheep-hook!" (4.4.412-13). Though earlier he has seemed to recognize in her "something greater than herself, / Too noble for this place" (4.4.158-59), Polixenes now views Perdita as a "fresh piece / Of excellent withcraft," an "enchantment," but really nothing more than a "knack" like those Autolycus hawks (4.4.415-16, 427, 421). Marriage with her will cost Florizel not only "succession" to the throne (4.4.422) but paternity, kinship, genealogy itself. Shakespeare's resolution to this conflict really supplies no solution. Florizel's marriage to Perdita finally no longer poses a threat only because, as in many romances, the cryptic signs of her nobility turn out to be revelatory: she is indeed herself royal and therefore a fit match for the Prince. Thus, she is no base stock that will produce hybrid bastards, like gillyvors. The genealogical tree is safe. Nevertheless, Shakespeare suggests qualifications of the patriarchal triumph. First, Polixenes himself makes the argument for hybridization. Second, both Camillo and Leontes are friends to Florizel's desires. And Shakespeare provides a way for the hybridization argument to receive positive sanc-

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tion by displacing the grafting from the supposed shepherdess to the real Shepherd and his son, who are raised to the gentry as reward for their service. Shakespeare pokes some fun at these nouveaux gentilhommes: the son identifies his new rank with his clothes, claims precedence over his father, sheds "gentleman-like tears" (5.2.136), and perverts oaths with the best of them. He promises to swear Autolycus is honest, even if it be false: "If it be ne'er so false, a true gentleman may swear it in the behalf of his friend" (5.2.154-55). But the point is that the nobility in England has indeed been constantly renewed from below. Here the energy and good-naturedness of these shepherds are portrayed as positive values. Moreover, Shakespeare gives to Perdita the strongest language in favor of an egalitarian challenge to aristocratic genealogical authority. She says of her chastisement by Polixenes: I was not much afeard; for once or twice I was about to speak and tell him plainly The selfsame sun that shines upon his court Hides not his visage from our cottage but Looks on all alike. (4.4.435-39)

Both plots, then, concern genealogical purity, to protect which the entire chivalric code of marital constancy and premarital chastity (at least for women) was invented. To fish in one's neighbor's pond or betray one's husband or even seduce a prince to marry a shepherdess— all are fundamental violations of the bonds of aristocratic society. At the same time, Shakespeare, as was often his wont (Othello, Cymbeline), has focused not on the transgressions both Leontes and Polixenes fear—not on misplaced trust in a friend or a woman, for example—but on the obverse transgression of misplaced distrust. And the resolution of this problem does not consist simply of the divine revelation of the truth of Hermione or even of the subsequent penance of Leontes. If those events were all, then the sheep-shearing scenes would be irrelevant. The deepest aspect of Leontes's distrust, as I have argued, is his radical fear of women, specifically of his wife's potency. While he is proved to be wrong and while women have their revenge against this sexist tyrant through Paulina's caustics, these are only negative correctives. What seems needed and what Shakespeare provides is a very positive portrayal of female generative power. The renewal so often discussed in this play is embodied in a more

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archetypal version of Hermione, a figure of the benevolent goddess of life itself. Perdita is "Flora / Peering in April's front"; her "sheepshearing / Is as a meeting of the petty gods, / And you the queen on't" (4.4.2-5). And she associates herself with Proserpina, not in a negative sense (as Chaucer and Spenser employ her) but as a figure of rebirth, evidenced in Perdita's magnificent catalogue of the flowers of spring (4.4.116-27), with which she would strew Florizel "like a bank for love to lie and play on" (4.4.130). When he asks if she would strew him "like a corse," she protests, "Not like a corse; or if, not to be buried, / But quick and in mine arms" (4.4.129, 131-32). She is Queen of the May, Queen of the Harvest, presiding over vegetation rituals, a figure of quickening Mother Earth. And in contrast to Leontes's envious response to Hermione's sexuality and its signifying eloquence, Florizel responds to Perdita's aura and eloquence with admiration close to adoration. When you do dance, I wish you A wave o'th'sea, that you might ever do Nothing but that, move still, still so, And own no other function. Each your doing, So singular in each particular, Crowns what you are doing in the present deeds, That all your acts are queens. (4.4.140-46) Florizel's relation to Perdita, one of trust and near worship of her Cytherea-like fecundity (She who was born from such rhythmic waves), prepares for Leontes's near-worship of the goddess-like Hermione's statue at the end of the play. His envy has been purged, his faith renewed, and he interprets her look not as negative and "chiding" (the spider) but "as tender / As infancy and grace" (5.3.26-27): "There's magic in thy majesty" (5.3.39). At least part of the meaning of this "magic" is her power over death, as she, like Proserpina, is symbolically reborn: "Bequeath to death your numbness, for from him / Dear life redeems you" (5.3.102-3). Finally, Hermione's generative potency, figured forth in her eloquence, is related to another dimension of the theme of the word in The Winter's Tale. Not only must one keep one's word and not precipitately doubt that of others, but one must try to find the words to combat the perversion of words—as does Paulina, relentlessly. She says of Leontes's lunacy:

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He must be told on't, and he shall. The office Becomes a woman best; I'll take't upon me. If I prove honey-mouthed, let my tongue blister And never to my red-looked anger be The trumpet any more. (2.2.31-35)

She assails him "with words as medicinal as true . . . to purge him" (2.3.37-38). Not all his threats can stay her tongue. And after the death of Mamillius and the apparent death of Hermione, Paulina becomes a version of Shakespeare's favored figure, the malcontent, whose acid words are a necessary scourge, as Leontes acknowledges: "Thou canst not speak too much. I have deserved / All tongues to talk their bitt'rest" (3.2.213-14). Another version of the theme of necessary words is the play's focus on the effort to speak the unspeakable, even if it sounds "so like an old tale that the verity of it is in strong suspicion" (5.2.28-29), even if it "should be hooted at / Like an old tale" (5.3.116-17). Nowhere is this theme more evident than in the scene where the play's climactic moment of anagnorisis—the reunion of Leontes and Polixenes and the unfolding of the truth of Perdita's origin—takes place offstage and must be related. As one of the gentlemen says, "The dignity of this act was worth the audience of kings and princes, for by such it was acted" (5.2.75-76). Then why is it denied our audience? Are we not worthy? Another gentleman tells a third who did not witness the reunion, "Then have you lost a sight which was to be seen, cannot be spoken of" (5.2.41-42). Why has Shakespeare kept it from our eyes, only to give us a relation that is merely "a broken delivery of the business" (5.2.9)? The gentlemen repeatedly comment on its inexpressibility: "Such a deal of wonder is broken out within this hour that balladmakers cannot be able to express it" (5.2.23-25); "I never heard of such another encounter, which lames report to follow it and undoes description to do it" (5.2.54-56). Such a procedure seems a flaw in the play, a resort to narration in a dramatic mode. Perhaps Shakespeare did not want to upstage the scene of Hermione's rebirth. But why does he call so much attention to the impotence of narration even while he tells something which is "Like an old tale still, which will have matter to rehearse, though credit be asleep and not an ear open" (5.2.59-61)? Perhaps another way to answer the question is to see that the play is one not only where sexual difference causes worlds to be "destroyed" and later "ransomed" (5.2.15) but where that difference is

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figured in linguistic difference, a difference Derrida throughout his work has redefined as différance or deferral. The moments of absolute oneness, harmony, Presence are never available to us directly but must always be mediated by signs metonymically succeeding one another in the play of language over time. And yet Shakespeare holds out hope for the efficacy of such tales that seem to defy credibility: "That which you hear you'll swear you see, there is such unity in the proofs" (5.2.31-32). The secondary revision of art, to borrow a concept from Freud {Interpretation of Dreams, 526-46), provides such a powerful congruity of signs that one infers a Presence behind them. The function of the poet, then, is to speak the unspeakable, to suggest the "wonder" of a scene that cannot be presented, and to fill with words about words and bonds the winter nights that threaten to strew the leaves of sure obliteration on our paths. Autolycus seems to exist in this play primarily to portray the sheer energy of speech which steals away not so much our purses but our ears in order to defer, as Peter Brooks has argued ("Freud's Masterplot"), the inevitable movement of time and moment of death. And in Shakespeare's world, the movement of words, like the movement of time, takes us through a trial of difference and distrust toward "new grace" (5.2.105), awakened "faith" (5.3.95), and new winter's tales. Leontes. Good Paulina, Lead us from hence, where we may leisurely Each one demand and answer to his part Performed in this wide gap of time since first We were dissevered. (5.3.151-55)

Marriage A -La-Mode In the Restoration, split-plot plays became the vogue in tragicomedy, and Dryden's Marriage A-la-Mode is the classic of the type. In it, the "high" plot bends toward heroic romance with its political as well as ethical concerns, while the "low" plot bends toward realistic social comedy. This extreme dialectical structure strains the form to the limit and causes many critics to view the two parts of the play as irreconcilably antithetical, except perhaps in the similarity of their formal, essentially comic closures. 5 Indeed, the chivalric code of the heroic plot seems undercut by the libertine code of the comic. Both codes concern

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the efficacy of words as bonds, and both plots stretch such bonds seemingly beyond the breaking point as society on both levels threatens to disintegrate into civil war or deadly rivalry. And this anarchy is itself reflected in Melantha's apparently frivolous volubility. The heroic plot begins in civil war. Approximately twenty years before the action of the play, Theagenes, King of Syracuse, had set out to quell "a Rebellion in the heart of Sicily" (Works 11:236 [1.1.258]), was victorious, but received a mortal wound and died leaving his Queen and infant son to the care of his loyal general, Polydamas. But rebellion was not really quelled, for "false Polydamas betray'd his trust" (1.1.269) and usurped the throne. Ironically, however, at this moment of apparent success, Polydamas's world refused to coalesce into harmony. Not only the Queen and the Prince but Polydamas's own pregnant wife fled into oblivion with the loyal vicegerent, Eubulus. Like Leontes, then, Polydamas is left heirless, and the noble Amalthea interprets his plight as a providential retribution: "see how heav'n can punish wicked men / In granting their desires" (1.1.276-77). Moreover, Polydamas is shadowed by Amalthea's brother Argaleon, son of one of the rebels who helped him to the throne. "Standing in the dark to him," Argaleon studies Polydamas and plays upon his desires, "which he so times and sooths, that, in effect, he reigns" (1.1.223-25). And he clearly hopes to succeed Polydamas, further displacing the throne from the lost royal family. Thus when Polydamas comes to Sicily "in hope to find an Heir" (1.1.245), Argaleon tries to cast doubt upon the signs of his lost child. And when Leonidas and Palmyra are found, Argaleon swears Palmyra is the Perdita, "By all my hopes" (1.1.388). His only hope now is to become royal consort of the Princess and eventually reign not merely in effect but in deed. In other words, once Polydamas has broken the bonds of loyalty and legitimate succession, both principles remain destabilized. Even when he thinks he has found a son and heir, he cannot control Leonidas's will, and this time he himself infers providential retribution. But you are just, you Gods; O you are just, In punishing the crimes of my rebellion With a rebellious Son! (2.1.316-18)

Rebellion begets rebellion, disloyalty disloyalty, and the original act of usurpation comes perilously close to being repeated. Once Argaleon

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realizes Leonidas is the young Theagenes and thus the legitimate king, he counsels Polydamas: Command his execution instantly; Give him not leisure to discover it; He may corrupt the Soldiers. (5.1.416-18)

As the concepts of loyalty and legitimacy become perverted, so does language: Leonidas's declaration of his legitimacy will "corrupt the Soldiers"—from what? loyalty to a usurper? Both Argaleon and Polydamas go so far as to call Leonidas, their sovereign, a "Traitour" (5.1.419, 423). Besides this threat to the word as the pledge of allegiance, the heroic plot features a threat to the word as pledge of betrothal. Polydamas has promised to wed his lost heir, according to its sex, to either Argaleon or Amalthea. When he believes Leonidas to be his son, he insists that his "vow" to Amalthea be honored, even though Amalthea generously releases him from it when she observes Leonidas's disinclination (2.1.337ff.). For Leonidas has already plighted his troth to Palmyra, and not all Polydamas's threats can shake his constancy (any more than Polixenes's threats shake Florizel's). Palmyra. Speak quickly; what have you resolv'd to do? Leonidas. To keep my faith inviolate to you. . . . Think not that time or fate shall e'r divide Those hearts, which Love and mutual Vows have ty'd. (2.1.458-59, 490-91)

Polydamas's attitude toward the supposedly low-class Palmyra is typically aristocratic—at best she can be "Fit onely for a Prince his vacant hours" (3.1.295)—and he condemns her to drift at sea with only three days' provision. At this point, three different themes emerge from the conflict. The first is apparent egalitarianism in the face of the condemnation of Palmyra. Leonidas argues that love "knows no difference in degrees" (3.1.280). Earlier, Hermogenes asserts a natural nobility greater than that found in courts (1.1.352-54). Connected is the theme of the noble savage. At the beginning, Leonidas seems to have a native greatness, as he contrasts the glory of the Court with the glory of nature (1.1.396-400). When he apparently is revealed to be not the Prince but

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a peasant, he exclaims, "Though meanly born, I have a Kingly Soul yet" (4.1.22), arrogantly comparing himself to the self-sufficient "Godhead" (3.1.471). Like Almanzor, he alone is king of himself, and he feels kingly motions in his mind. Nevertheless, like Shakespeare in The Winter's Tale, Dryden has raised these themes only to dissipate them in the revelation that both Palmyra and Leonidas are noble, the latter indeed a king. Like Perdita's, their real nobility shines through their circumstances. Thus, as in much romance, the apparent threat to the purity of aristocratic genealogy proves to be specious, and Dryden's apparent egalitarianism constitutes merely a theatrical gesture.6 The third theme that emerges from the lovers' conflict in the heroic plot is more substantial—Leonidas's distrust of Palmyra and of the chivalric code itself. He begins to fear that Palmyra "Is grown asham'd of a mean ill-plac'd love" (4.1.13). He complains to her, "But you, I fear, are chang'd" (4.2.22). In a scene reminiscent of that between Almanzor and Almahide, Leónidas demands whether he must hope or despair, and Palmyra justly rebukes him: "After so many proofs, how can you call / My love in doubt?" (4.4.37-38). But she refuses to give herself to Leonidas without her father's permission, rather can only vow "ne'r to wed another man" (4.4.69): "I'll keep my promise, though I lose my life" (4.4.71). Nevertheless, Leónidas demands the body's reward, and he has no respect for her appeal to her relationship with her father: "Duty's a Name; and Love's a Real thing" (4.4.46). Here, his faith in the efficacy of the code is yielding to nominalism: "Duty" is a mere word, whereas "Love" corresponds to real passion. This incipient nominalism is leading Leonidas to disregard the bonds of society and to become a rebel himself. Earlier he appeals to the "Gods" to protect his "piety" and "Keep me from saying that which misbecomes a son" (3.1.314-15). Yet in a moment he draws his sword against his supposed father, and Palmyra is hard-pressed to recall him from the ethic of the usurper, the use of "lawless force" (3.1.339). In the later scene, Leónidas no longer rebels against a father or even a king but the usurper of his own throne. Yet Palmyra still calls his method "ruinous" (4.4.89), for he would seize both "Love and Crown, by force" (4.4.57). Palmyra is prepared, "if you force employ," to "divorce" him forever (4.4.78-79). She is pleading that there must be a better way than another civil war. Her recalcitrance causes him to delay long enough to be captured by Polydamas and condemned to death. Palmyra appears to be a dreamy-eyed idealist who should have

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listened to Leonidas's practical wisdom. As he is led off, Argaleon appears to have triumphed not only over Leonidas but the code of the word itself, for he mockingly perverts one of its key concepts, telling Palmyra, "You must be constant" (5.1.377). Constant to what? To her principles despite adversity? To him? Such goading is mere nasty gloating. The realistic comedy of the low plot offers its own challenge to the traditional code of the word in two of its major manifestations, the bonds of marriage and friendship. Antithetical mirror images of Leónidas and Palmyra (who have just concluded a scene of renewed betrothal), Rhodophil and Doralice pretend "true love" in public (3.1.2). Doralice claims to be "every day worse and worse in love" (3.1.21-22). Nevertheless, she opens the play with a song that reveals the opposite movement. Why should a foolish Marriage Vow Which long ago was made, Oblige us to each other now When Passion is decay'd? We lov'd, and we lov'd, as long as we cou'd, Till our love was lov'd out in us both: But our Marriage is dead, when the Pleasure is fled: 'Twas Pleasure first made it an Oath. (1.1.3-10)

The last line especially attacks the idealization of the code in that the word is portrayed as merely the mask of desire. The comic plot thus opposes a libertine to the chivalric ethic. To the libertine, marriage is not a manifestation of Natural Law, for humans are not naturally monogamous. Sounding like Chaucer's subversive Wife of Bath, Doralice expounds this philosophy in her song (1.1.11-18). According to this view, the bonds of matrimony really cannot hold, especially against the power of desire for variety and novelty. Rhodophil suffers the same desire. He complains to his friend Palamede that he has violated his libertine "Vows and Resolutions" and committed the utmost sin, marriage (1.1.126). Later he says aside, "There's something of antipathy in the word Marriage to the nature of love" (4.1.169-70). All he now knows of Doralice's "perfections" that enticed him "is only by memory" (1.1.144-45). He has loved her "a whole half year, double the natural term of any Mistress," but they have finally "arriv'd at that point, that there was nothing left in us to

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make us new to one another" (1.1.147-48,151-52). Palamede counsels an endless series of mistresses as the only remedy: "as fast as one fails, you must supply it with another" (1.1.161). Rhodophil's later response to this ethic is very instructive: "This were a blessed Doctrine, indeed, if our Wives would hear it; but, they're their own enemies: if they would suffer us but now and then to make excursions, the benefit of our variety would be theirs; instead of one continu'd, lazy, tyr'd love, they would, in their turns, have twenty vigorous, fresh, and active loves" (2.1.108-13). Thus, while he too seeks variety, his ethic is not so completely libertine as that expressed in Doralice's song. For there she would not "bar" her husband's similar satisfaction of his desire for variety (1.1.16). But Rhodophil's ethic is based upon a double standard. His wife would benefit only vicariously from his promiscuity. And he outrageously upbraids her. Why there's the devil on't! if thou couldst make my enjoying thee but a little less easie, or a little more unlawful, thou shouldst see, what a Termagant Lover I would prove. I have taken such pains to enjoy thee, Doralice, that I have fanci'd thee all the fine women in the Town, to help me out. But now there's none left for me to think on, my imagination is quite jaded. Thou art a Wife, and thou wilt be a Wife, and I can make thee another no longer. (3.1.77-84)

In his imagination he has already availed himself of Palamede's remedy, and he is about to graduate from imagination to reality, as he courts Melantha to be his mistress. For both Doralice and Rhodophil, then, the bonds have become the "Banes of Matrimony" (3.1.63), with the connotation of ruin replacing that of proclamation. This is marriage à la mode. Each cruelly wishes for the other's death, if only to pursue sexual variety, and Rhodophil accurately characterizes their relationship: "Prethee, Doralice, why do we quarrel thus a-days? ha? this is but a kind of Heathenish life, and does not answer the ends of marriage" (3.1.66-68). For him, the "ends of marriage" are no more than sexual gratification, and chivalric idealism has been converted to libertine realism. The bond of friendship is also fractured in the comic plot. Rhodophil and Palamede are supposedly best of friends. But the tenuousness of that relationship is underlined when Palamede confides to Rhodophil "sub sigillo" (2.1.122)—that is, he swears "under the seal" of their friendship—that the lady he points to is his mistress. Ironically, of

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course, the lady is Doralice, and Rhodophil exclaims aside, "By all that's vertuous, my Wife!" (2.1.124). Believing Palamede "abuses" him to his face (2.1.127), Rhodophil waxes wroth, and a crisis is avoided only because Palamede senses his error and wittily escapes. But ironically he identifies Rhodophil's own mistress as his fiancée—and then realizes he himself will be cuckolded by the friend he sets out to cuckold, a shame he must endure; otherwise,he must either be disinherited or (his unspoken reservation) confront Rhodophil and force the issue to a crisis. Dryden makes explicit the violated standard. At their assignation in the grotto, Palamede pretends to have "one scruple of conscience," and Doralice impishly asks, "I hope you are afraid of betraying your friend?" (3.2.42,44-45). Palamede's answer perverts the very concept: "Of betraying my friend! I am more afraid of being betray'd by you to my friend" (3.2.46-47). The only sin in his libertine world, obviously, is getting caught. The trust between friends becomes exchanged for a "trust" between illicit lovers not to tell (3.2.49). When Rhodophil and Melantha arrive for their own tryst, confrontation between the friends seems inevitable, and Palamede struggles frenetically to avoid it—and to complete his affair—to the point of willingly sending his friend away with his fiancée and further perverting the language of the code: "Well, dear friend, to let you see I scorn to be jealous, and that I dare trust my Mistris [Melantha] with you, take her back . . . : there's an effect of pure friendship for you now" (3.2.100-102, 105-6). Finally, crisis is again narrowly averted by deft verbal manipulation. Still, as Palamede in soliloquy forsees the progress of this "odd kind of game" (3.2.140), he fears not betrayal of friendship but that "both our women will certainly betray their party" (3.2.144-45)—not by violating moral standards nor even by kissing and telling but by enjoying both lovers, which is the very thing he and Rhodophil intend to do. The concept of betrayal has become warped indeed. Dryden's device of disguising the two women as boys allows the public enacting of what is usually hidden. Rhodophil unwittingly delivers his wife to his friend (4.1), and later the two court one another's betrothed before his "face" (4.3.90-91, 102-4) in a hilarious scene of carnival freedom, where the sexual rivalry has free play in masquerade. Crisis threatens when the women rivals move from verbal to physical attack, but again their business is interrupted, this time by the King's business. The actual moment of crisis finally arrives when Rhodophil catches Palamede dead to rights kissing Doralice's hand.

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Each friend accuses the other of seducing his betrothed, and finally each draws his sword. The kind of deadly rivalry the aristocratic codes of friendship and chastity were designed to prevent has exploded in all of its violence. Thus, both plots strain the bond of the word to the breaking point. The heroic plot is on the verge of regicide; the comic, adultery and homicide. And in both, as we have seen, not only are the bonds corrupted but so, too, are the key words that name the bonds and their violations: "Traitour," "constant," "betrayal," "trust." Such words are all in danger of becoming what Doralice calls Palamede's amorous cant: "words of course" (1.1.51). This motif of the perversion of words is extended in the comic plot to include the religious language that traditionally invests the ethical and political codes with metaphysical significance and sanction. For the libertine Palamede, as for Rhodophil, marriage is a sin "past redemption" (1.1.73). A "vertuous Woman" is "damnable" (1.1.67). Rhodophil explains the phenomenon of his marrying: "Yes, faith, the Devil has had power over me" (1.1.125-26), but, following Palamede's "blessed Doctrine" (2.1.108), he has already begun the remedy of getting a mistress: "faith, considering the damn'd disadvantages of a marry'd man, I have provided well enough, for a poor humble sinner" (1.1.165-67). Meanwhile, Doralice makes an assignation by resolving to "pray" for Palamede at her private "devotions" (2.1.240-43), assuring him thus of privacy and opportunity, to which he wittily and bawdily responds in soliloquy, "Well, I will not be so prophane a wretch as to interrupt her devotions; but to make 'em more effectual, I'll down upon my knees, and endeavor to joyn my own with 'em" (2.1.246-48). When they keep their tryst, they work a series of puns off such religious language (3.2), and later Palamede has three delightful displays: When Rhodophil wishes him good hunting with his mistress, Palamede responds, "He has wish'd me good fortune with his Wife: there's no sin in this then, there's fair leave given. Well, I must go visit the sick; I cannot resist the temptations of my charity" (4.1.179-81). When the four of them are interrupted by the King's business, he complains, "Yes, yes, I will go; but the devil take me if ever I was less in humour. . . . Truth is, I had a little transitory crime to have committed first; and I am the worst man in the world at repenting, till a sin be thoroughly done" (4.3.166-71). Finally, when Doralice accosts him at the end with the immanence of his marriage, Palamede protests, "I have abundance of grace in me, that I find: But if you have any spark

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of true friendship in you, retire a little with me to the next room that has a couch or bed in't, and bestow your charity upon a poor dying man" (5.1.207-11). Especially witty in this dialogue, as in much Restoration comedy, are the religious expletives, whose moribund status indicates the emptiness of such language and the apparent death of the old standard. Yet these seemingly dead metaphors are paradoxically quick with ironic significance. Some of the best examples of this technique occur when Palamede nervously answers Rhodophil's demand to know who calls him at the grotto assignation, "Faith I can't imagine," and Doralice's impudent response to being caught, "0, Gentleman [Rhodophil], have I caught you i'faith?" (3.2.98, 113-14). To swear by faith in such situations implies that the violators of marital faith no longer need fear the metaphysic that was once portrayed as punishing it. The play's central symbol of this decadence of language is Melantha. As one fanatically thirsting for a language that is in vogue, she purchases new French words from her maid Philotis every day and discards yesterday's, making Philotis "heir to all my cast words, as thou art to my old Wardrobe" (2.1.15-16), as if words were transient garb no sooner put on than put off, no longer à la mode. She cares not about the meanings of words: she replaces "Intrigue" with "Amour" thus whitewashing the affair (2.1.14-15); when Philotis tries to define a few new entries, Melantha exclaims, "Truce with your interpretations" (3.1.212). Desiring to be absolutely au courant, she lays claim to the very invention of the words she hears, only to have them stolen out of her mouth by Palamede before she can employ them for their only value, their daily currency at court, which will, she hopes, buy attention. But her incessant tongue produces nothing but cacophony. Palamede describes her affected verbal manner: "to be very aiery, with abundance of noise, and no sense" (5.1.178-79). The text continues here, "Fa, la, la, la, &c." Even more than the nonsense syllables, the "&c." is Melantha's mark. One of her favorite phrases is "and all that" (passim). She is a figure for what Derrida calls "That Dangerous Supplement" (Of Grammatology, Part 2, ch. 2), that necessity for language to endlessly supplement itself in a series of metonymns that constantly supplant their predecessors, destroying the possibility of a logocentric language that can ever adequately name the Ding an sich. The problem with such endless supplementarity in the play is that it does not confine itself to Melantha but becomes symbolic of the action of both plots. In the comic plot, Doralice considers a husband per

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se "the creature of the world the most out of fashion" (5.1.238), and Rhodophil complains of being "out of fashion" as a constant husband (1.1.150). His and Palamede's remedy—and Doralice's—is an infinite series of lovers, that is, infinite supplementarity, as one lover supplants the other in a perpetual masquerade of shifting identities, of constant displacements because the absolute Presence of love, the Logos of its language, will not abide. In the heroic plot, just as Melantha herself invades the "Presence" of the Court (3.1.110), so also does supplementarity in the deferral of the presence of a king who represents a divine presence, a Logos, and in the threat of a series of usurping supplantera, from Polydamas to Argaleon and beyond.7 Not by accident are the legitimate kings, both father and son, named Theagenes, or "divine descendant," the patronymic name itself pretending a different order of succession than supplementarity through metonymy, an order of repetition without difference that preserves the Logos. But Theagenes père is dead and Theagenes fils displaced and in danger of perpetual deferral. Moreover, the slippage of language that Melantha represents, as we have seen, permeates the comic plot and subtly invades the heroic, moving even Leonidas toward nominalism. More insidious is the invasion of echoes from the comic plot—echoes of a dying language—into his relationship with Palmyra. Melantha punctuates her monologues with the meaningless ejaculation, "let me die," a phrase paraphrased often by Leonidas and Palmyra as they pledge constancy till death— and a phrase actually echoed by Leonidas verbatim as he rails at Palmyra's exile, "But let me die before I see this done" (3.1.316). How compromised is such a line in the middle of the play? How compromised is all their language of constancy and honor? What do we make of their presence at the same masquerade that the four lovers attend? Of their making an assignation? During the masquerade, Leonidas and Palmyra's planning a tryst is immediately followed by a bawdy song about premature ejaculation. Thereupon, like any other rake, Argaleon supplants Leonidas with Palmyra and betrays the two of them. When Doralice pledges "to him that has the fairest Lady of Sicily in Masquerade to night" (4.3.114-15), whom are we supposed to take as the referent? Even the virtuous Amalthea seems tainted, for it is she who bids Doralice learn the opening song celebrating inconstancy. The worlds are all tending to collapse together, destroying fixed hierarchy, fixed differentiation, and creating the kind of crisis Girard analyzes in Violence and the Sacred. The entire world of the play appears to be

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one marked by absence: of God, of order, of love, of meaning to all the words that bind society together. The dangerous supplement seems to have triumphed; it seems to have disseminated all the orders of discourse in a kind of coitus interruptus mirrored by all the interrupted assignations. As Melantha says at the end, "our damn'd Language expresses nothing" (5.1.495). She means explicitly English as opposed to French, but in the light of the play's pervasive perversion of words, the statement carries dire universal significance. Nevertheless, the play seems to close in a way that wills-to-mean (Derrida's vouloir-dire) and to reaffirm the traditional aristocratic code of the word.8 The rightful king is, after all, restored to the throne. The usurper is replaced by one who really precedes him, by one who represents the Father-King-Logos. Leonidas's original right—and name—are restored to him as Theagenes. Hence Divine Presence is restored to the Court, a restoration symbolized in the explicit attribution of the dynamic of the denouement to Providence: Leonidas credits "the Gods" and Palmyra exclaims, "Now all my prayers are heard" (5.1.454, 489). The chain of political supplements is therefore broken. The usurper becomes repentant and resumes his proper role in society, his proper name, as "Father" to both Palmyra and, by extension, Leonidas (5.1.475). The recalcitrant supplanter, Argaleon, is rebuked and sequestered. And even Amalthea, supposedly tragically excluded from the happy ending because of her frustrated love for Leonidas,9 goes off to become a Vestal Virgin and pray for Leonidas. Perhaps her completely selfless act of saving Leonidas can be interpreted, like the selfless love between Ozmyn and Benzayda in Dryden's Conquest of Granada, as a suggestion of that sacrificial act Girard discusses which redeems society from impending disaster, or better, as a reminder to a Christian audience of the efficacy of the central event in their mythology. At any rate, though frustrated, her love is being sublated upwards to a relationship with the gods, trust in whose Presence, however they may appear absent or absconditi, has been reaffirmed. This reestablished order permeates even the comic plot. The relation between the plots is reversed and the heroic invades the comic when Amalthea races in to plead for help from Rhodophil and Palamede for their rightful king, appealing to their "loyalty" (5.1.438). Their instantaneous response demonstrates their heretofore obscured place in the hierarchy, and Palamede, of all people, reaffirms the political code: "no Subject e'r can meet / A nobler fate, than at his Sov-

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ereign's feet" (5.1.451-52). To this "Loyalty and Valour" Leonidas also attributes the dynamic of the denouement, thus linking the political code with the metaphysical, its sanction: "Next to the Gods, brave friends, be yours the honour" (5.1.454). Moreover, the lovers resolve their sexual conflict. For pragmatic rather than idealistic reasons, they repudiate the libertine code. First, Doralice and Palamede reach an agreement not to sleep together. He is to be married on the morrow, and she contemns an affair with a married man, not because of the invasion of another's "propriety," her reservation at the beginning (1.1.76), but because a married man is not a vigorous lover. According to her, everything about him is married, "and if we could look within his Breeches, we should find him marri'd there too" (5.1.242-43). Her most poignant pragmatic reason is actually the fear of the desire for supplements, the fear of the absence of Presence in love: "we might upon trial have lik'd each other less, as many a man and woman, that have lov'd as desperately as we, and yet when they came to possession, have sigh'd, and cri'd to themselves, Is this all?" (5.1.252-55). She indulges in a kind of Keatsian fantasy of Presence: "The onely way to keep us new to one another, is never to enjoy, as they keep grapes by hanging 'em upon a line; they must touch nothing if you would preserve 'em fresh" (5.1.271-73). Palamede recognizes the flaw in her fantasy: "But then they wither, and grow dry in the very keeping" (5.1.274). And he still believes in the doctrine of supplements. Thus, he suggests the one possibility the aristocratic code allows, sequential rather than simultaneous supplementation: they pledge to keep fit and marry each other if their spouses die. This contract anticipates another that brings the comic plot to resolution. Preparatory to it, a different dynamic has been at work. First, the rivals discover they love (desire) their betrotheds more than they thought. Rhodophil is revealed to be incompatible with Melantha, whereas Palamede waxes quite compatible as he fences with her en français and à la mode. To his surprise he finds, "I begin to like her" (5.1.190). And Doralice cleverly interrupts Palamede and Rhodophil's duel by asking the crucial question, "are not you two a couple of mad fighting fools, to cut one another's throats for nothing? . . . you can neither of you be jealous of what you love not" (5.1.314-15, 318-19). Rhodophil concludes, "Faith I am jealous, and that makes me partly suspect that I love you better then I thought" (5.1.320-21). Second, the rivals reason according to what Girard calls "mimetic desire,"10 that each's betrothed must be valuable since the rival desires her.

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The next crucial consideration for the rivals is the patriarchal aristocratic concern with the woman's, the vessel's purity. And here, though arrived at for pragmatic reasons, the code of trust is reestablished. When Rhodophil says he is ready to reconcile with Doralice if he can be sure she is chaste, that is, faithful to him, she answers wittily and with a bit of Paulina's wisdom: "If you are wise, believe me for your own sake: Love and Religion have but one thing to trust to; that's a good sound faith" (5.1.336-37). Like Paulina, Doralice links trust in love to that in religion, and the effect is more than an analogy. The language of the comic plot now reapproaches that of the heroic. The ethical code of trust is reaffirmed and re-connected with the metaphysical. And when both rivals move to witness each woman's chastity, their testimony is dependent upon faith in a word that carries divine sanction; at the same time, they restore the bonds of friendship. Palamede. Rhodophil, you know me too well, to imagine I speak for fear; and therefore in consideration of our past friendship, I will tell you, and bind it by all things holy, that Doralice is innocent. Rhodophil. Friend, I will believe you, and vow the same for your Melantha. (5.1.346-50)

The last crucial consideration, as Rhodophil says, is how the rivals can keep their wives faithful. To put it another way, how to avoid such sexual rivalry in the future? One solution—the libertine answer—is the radical suggestion of "a blessed community" (5.1.351), a sexual commune. But Dryden apparently knew the psychological hazards of such a solution, for Palamede and Rhodophil immediately demonstrate fear of a different and equally deadly rivalry over sexual performance. The apparent random equity of the women drawing lots for their night's partner would degenerate, as Palamede says in a typical male fantasy born of insecurity, into each desiring "the longest cut" (5.1.358). For these realistic, pragmatic considerations the two men enter into "afirmLeague, not to invade each others propriety" (5.1.359-60). They have rediscovered patrilineal patriarchy's need for binding words—based ultimately on faith—to bar deadly sexual rivalry, for proprietary sexual laws and contracts, a need that continues even when feudalism yields to the bourgeois code (see Tanner, Adultery in the Novel). But Doralice's witty promise of sexual retribution as a

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sanction implies the perpetual threat of sexual anarchy, thereby underscoring both the tenuousness and the exigency of such covenants. There is a similar tenuousness in the resolution of the heroic plot. The legitimate king and the principle of orderly succession are restored. But Argaleon is not killed, just sequestered, and his dark shadow remains as the reminder of the threat of future usurpers. And Amalthea's sublation is still a sign of the sublimation of unfulfilled desire, a desire which will always threaten monogamy even within the privileged confines of the Court. At the same time, both plots do achieve a comic closure that reinforces the code of the word. Language has not proved to be meaningless in either plot but rather to consititute the very bonds of society. In that sense, the two plots do not seem antithetical. On the other hand, the rationale for the code in the denouement of the comic plot is closer to our own, perhaps, more middle class, the underlying pragmatism of bourgeois morality. And in that sense this play is Janusfaced, looking both backward to feudal literature and forward to the modern age, to Bob and Carol and Ted and Alice.

In these romances sexual inconstancy is portrayed as entailing endless supplanting and anarchic deadly rivalry, both of which are mirrored in the political arena (Aurelius taking Arveragus's place, Polydamas taking Leonidas's, the figuratively twin kings of Sicily and Bohemia falling out into division). The resolutions range from unrealistic, apparently absurd trust in the value of trouthe to the quasimiraculous redemption of the world from tragic distrust to the tenuous contiguity of idealistic and pragmatic reaffirmations of the need for trust. Yet in their different ways all three works insist on trust in the word as the only antidote to a sexual—and political—anarchy. Two very interesting figures are employed to mediate the problems of sexual transgression, on the one hand, and precipitate distrust, on the other. The first is the figure of the understanding and forgiving male, the second the figure of the potent but absolutely chaste female. Arveragus obviously fits the first model, but so also do Polixenes and Leonidas in their forgiveness of those men who have trespassed against them. Hermione, Perdita, and Palmyra obviously fit the second model, but so also do Paulina and Doralice in their function as scourges of male inconstancy and distrust; and so also does Dorigen herself, who is never unchaste in thought or deed but only word, and

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then for understandable reasons of human frailty, of too much love for her husband. Curiously, Dryden, who picks his names very carefully for their etymological significance (for example, Polydamas means "conqueror of many," Argaleon means "troublesome"), names his dead king and the rightful heir Theagenes, a name which means not just "divine descendent" but "descendent of a goddess." In all three works, then, there seems the suggestion that patriarchy can endure only through the respect (Paulina and Doralice and, I think, the Franklin would insist upon a healthy respect) for the power of female sexuality figured forth in Dorigen's delicate but unmistakably sensuous attractiveness, in Hermione's pregnant belly and pregnant words, in Perdita's appearance as the goddess Flora, and in even the delightful volubility of Dryden's Melantha. The mysterious power of women is strangely figured forth in Dryden's absent goddess who appears to be the progenitress of Dryden's kings. Like Malory's Lady of the Lake, as we shall see, this goddess seems to provide a glimpse of a benevolent and tolerant originating power that man can never really control.11

N O T E S 1. For Arveragus's gradual maturity in love and the importance of this passage, see M. R. Golding, "The Importance of Keeping 'Trouthe' in The Franklin's Tale." 2. For a similar reading of this passage—and of the theodicy of the tale in general—see Gerhard Joseph, "The Franklin's Tale: Chaucer's Theodicy." 3. Throughout this study, all quotations from Shakespeare are from the Pelican edition, unless otherwise noted. 4. The best treatment of Leontes's jealousy I know is Murray M. Schwartz, "Leontes's Jealousy in The Winter's Tale," to which I am deeply indebted. And the best treatments of the concomitant theme of patriarchy and genealogy I know are Peter Erickson, Patriarchal Structures in Shakespeare's Drama, ch. 5, and Marilyn L. Williamson, The Patriarchy of Shakespeare's Comedies, ch. 3. For a Derridean reading that nicely dovetails with my own reading of absences and silences below, see Howard Felperin, " 'Tonguetied our queen?': The Deconstruction of Presence in The Winter's Tale." 5. For the most recent and most interesting example, see Laura S. Brown, "The Divided Plot: Tragicomic Form in the Restoration." 6. Cf. Michael McKeon, "Marxist Criticism and Marriage à la Mode," whose argument is provocative. 7. For the concepts being employed here, see not only OfGrammatology,

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passim, but also and especially Derrida, "The Pharmacy of Plato," Part 1 of Dissemination. 8. Of course, an orthodox Derridean (admittedly, an oxymoron) would not be interested ultimately in a work's meaning except insofar as to deconstruct it. Obviously, I am not an orthodox Derridean but have purloined some of his concepts and employed them, I hope, not unprovocatively. 9. For the most recent of these interpretations, see Derek Hughes, "The Unity of Dryden's Marriage A-la-Mode," 131, 141. Along with McKeon's, Hughes's is the most profound reading of the play to date. My disagreements with them do not cancel my admiration. 10. See esp. Violence and the Sacred, ch. 7, and also his earlier Deceit, Desire, and the Novel. 11. Other illustrative examples: in the Middle Ages, Sir Orfeo, The Wedding of Sir Gawain and Dame Ragnall, Chaucer's Man of Law's Tale and Clerk's Tale; in the Renaissance, Shakespeare's tragicomedies, of course, but also several of his "comedies," including A Midsummer Night's Dream, Much Ado about Nothing, All's Well that Ends Well, and Measure for Measure, as well as John Fletcher's tragicomedies, especially The Faithful Shepherdess, Philaster, and A King and No King; in the Restoration, see my "Ideology of Restoration Tragicomedy."

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THREE

Social Comedy

By social I mean realistic rather than romantic comedy, comedy which usually features a subversive figure who appropriates the rhetoric of the feudal code of the word and exploits it for his own gain. The two dominant examples of such a figure are the confidence man and the Don Juan. Often the two are combined, for both are con-fidence men, both exploit the system of trust, both promise more than they deliver. Both seem to triumph over naive, trusting dupes. But in social comedy, the threat they present to society is neutralized: Either they suffer a poetical justice of some sort, their energy dissipated or banished or forceably restrained, or they are socialized into the bonds of society, their energy saved for productive use through forgiveness or marriage. Either way, the circle of society's integrity is redrawn and the code of trust vindicated. The three following examples feature two of the greatest con artists and one of the greatest Don Juans in English chivalric literature. They so successfully pervert the code of the word that society seems powerless against them. They are figures of incredible—and tremendously valuable—energy, energy society can ill afford to lose but is illequipped to contain. But in a pattern endemic to Christian comedy and full of Christian irony, the con men simply go too far and defeat themselves. Meanwhile, the Don Juan surprisingly finds himself plighting troth in earnest.

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The Pardoner's Tale Confidence men prey on the system of word as bond not just of political allegiance or sexual fidelity but of verbal agreement in its broadest sense, trusting someone to say what he means and mean what he says. Chaucer's Pardoner is a fast talker—"Myne handes and my tonge goon so yerne" (VI[C]398)—and a great preacher and storyteller—"Wei koude he rede a lessoun or a storyie" (General Prologue, 709)—who uses his rhetoric merely to make money, even by preaching "agayn that same vice / Which that I use, and that is avarice" (427-28). He contaminates his sacred function with simony and literally does not give a damn about saving souls (403-6). The Pardoner establishes trust with his victims by displaying his papal license bearing "Oure lige lordes seel" (337)—a liege lord that is at once the pope and God Himself, Whose sign, in feudal literature, is the ultimate mark of trust. Then he shows the gullible faithful false relics, while he dashes his discourse with meaningless Latin "to stire hem to devocioun" (346). Appealing to them to "taak of my wordes keep" (352), he tricks them into buying his wares for the wrong reasons. Like a mountebank, he convinces them that water stirred with "a sholder-boon / Which that was of an hooly Jewes sheep" (350-51) can cure cattle and make them multiply or that a mitten will multiply grain. Thus, he appeals to the desire for potency, displaced onto one's property. On the other hand, he turns this appeal to husbands inside out and mischievously suggests to the potent wives that the same putative holy water will blind a man to his wife's adultery (366-71). The perversion here is manifold. The Pardoner not only perverts his function of forgiving sins and thereby saving souls, but he actively encourages sins (like adultery) that strike at the ethical code of the word and even at the hierophantic class instituted to provide metaphysical sanction for that code. Moreover, the Pardoner abuses the pious act of giving at the Offertory of the Mass by making it a smokescreen, particularly for adultery. He brilliantly manipulates his audience so that those who refuse to buy his wares are automatically branded guilty of such sins (377-89). Hence, he perverts what was supposed to be an exchange of "grace" into one that masks his greed and his audience's hypocrisy. The telltale signs of piety become distorted, detached from their supposed referents. The Pardoner's abuse of words and the bonds they represent extends to abuse of the Word Itself, as Chaucer subtly suggests in The

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Pardoner's Prologue and makes explicit in the Tale proper. For example, the Pardoner explains how he uses his preaching to wreak revenge on someone who "Hath trespased to my bretheren or to me" (416). The very language violates the text of Scripture where Jesus teaches His disciples the Lord's Prayer, embodying the lesson of the Sermon on the Mount: "forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us"; in answer to offense, turn the other cheek (see especially Mat. 5:38-7:15). The Pardoner would pervert the sacrifice of the "povereste widwe" to his own use (450)—language recalling the Widow's Mite (Mark 12:41-44; Luke 21:1-4). In the sermon that introduces the Tale, the Pardoner peppers his text with explicit references to Scripture. Here, he perverts the Word by employing it for the wrong purposes; he is simply softening up his marks for the sting. But he perverts the Word in more subtle ways as well; he twists allusions to suit his momentary purposes. For example, alluding to Lot's lying with his daughters (Gen. 19:30-36), the Pardoner emphasizes Lot's drunkenness rather than the more heinous sin of his daughters' incest. Alluding to the beheading of John the Baptist (Mat. 14:1-12; Mark 6:17-19), the Pardoner infers that Herod must have been drunk, whereas the common interpretation was that he was so overcome with passion for Salome that he promised to grant her anything, even John's head, which he was reluctant to take. Alluding to the Fall in Paradise, the Pardoner stresses not the sin of disobedience, a form of distrust, but gluttony (498-510). We must ask why the Pardoner perverts Scripture in this particular fashion. More generally, why this long preamble on such sins as drunkenness, gluttony, gambling, and swearing, especially since he has announced that his theme is always avarice? The answer lies in his incredible ability to adapt a sermon to his audience. As others have argued,1 his audience here is not hypothetical but the Canterbury pilgrims themselves. He is setting them up for a con. Let us remember some important facts. He confesses that he preaches against avarice "for to make hem free / To yeven hir pens, and namely unto me" (401-2). So his theme is functionally related to his con. Why the tavern vices? Earlier, before he would honor the Host's request and tell a tale, he insists: "But first," quod he, "heere at this alestake I wol bothe drynke, and eten of a cake. . . . I moot thynke Upon som honest thyng while that I drynke." (321-28)

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That the pilgrims have indeed stopped at a tavern, which then provides the setting for the Pardoner's performance, is attested to by the Pardoner's conclusion of his Prologue. But herkneth, lordynges, in conclusioun: Youre likyng is that I shal telle a tale. Now have I dronke a draughte of corny ale, By God, I hope I shal yow telle a thyng That shal by reson been at youre likyng. (454-58) Consequently, the Pardoner slants his tale toward tavern vices, as if to catch the pilgrims themselves in the act of drinking or eating too much, swearing or even throwing dice for recreation. Perhaps he is even aiming his sermon at other patrons of the tavern. Nevertheless, if he did not succeed in setting up a number of the pilgrims this way, he at least succeeded in priming Harry Bailly—an innkeeper himself—for his outburst at the end. Something in us loves a trickster. And when the Pardoner has the cheek to try to con an audience to whom he has revealed himself, I think most readers respond at least partly with admiration. Perhaps Harry's rude rebuke is designed to recall us—as it does the Pardoner—to sobriety. For like any con man's, the Pardoner's greatest weapon is his insidious attractiveness, especially embodied in his verbal facility. We must, like Odysseus, plug our ears and realize the grave problem someone like the Pardoner represents. How can society protect itself against such underminers of the codes that hold society together? And what greater threat than one who glibly distorts the Sacred Word that supposedly underwrites all the others? One answer lies in a motif common to a great deal of feudal literature. The con man (like his tragic counterpart the Machiavel) usually goes one step too far, in this instance, as Sedgewick has argued (pp. 216-19), pushing the wrong person beyond his limits, mocking Harry Bailly to his face, first as innkeeper, finally as a fool (941-45). Whether the Pardoner be "a geldyng or a mare" (GP 691)—that is, a eunuch or a homosexual 2 —Harry's wish to have his testicles in hand is a stinging humiliation. While the Pardoner has confessed everything else, his repeated pretense to "have a joly wenche in every toun" (453) or to be "aboute to wedde a wyf" (The Wife of Bath's Tale III [D]166) and his continual singing "Com hider, love, to me!" (GP 672) represent an attempt to conceal that which other signs about him—hair, eyes,

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voice—ineluctably reveal: either that he has no testicles at all or that he would not have them if the punishment for his homosexuality were carried out. But whatever the realistic meaning of the Host's threat, symbolically it can be seen to reveal the Pardoner as not only physically but spiritually nonproductive—devoid of grace. Yet ironically, as the Pardoner himself attests, despite his perversion of words and the Word he still manages to tell "A moral tale" (460). Out of his "yvel entencioun," as often happens, he says, comes a "predicacioun" (407-8) that in spite of his very intention makes many in his audience not only give him their money but "twynne / From avarice, and soore to repente" (430-31). Whatever his intention, he directs his dupes to the Bible time and again (e.g., 578, 586). All his perversions notwithstanding, he explicitly prays for them: "Jhesu Crist, that is oure soules leche, / So graunte yow his pardoun to receyve" (916-17). And he even insists that such a pardon "is best; I wol yow nat deceyve" (918). Perhaps he speaks these particular last words in an attempt at the ultimate con, winning sympathy by uttering the truth: the arch-deceiver protesting not to deceive at just the moment when he plans the final deception. But the point in all these protestations that he speaks the truth and moves people to repentance is that despite his moral vacuity, the Pardoner ironically carries out his function of pardoning, of saving souls. God speaks His Word even through a totally corrupt persona. Evil not only defeats itself, it even carries grace in its leaky vessel. Chaucer further conveys this paradoxical solution to the threat of the Pardoner through the meaning of the tale proper. At the center is another variation on the problem of evil, its most difficult conundrum, the problem of death. The three rioters are angry that a friend of theirs has been slain by "a privee theef men clepeth Deeth" (675), one who has slain hundreds in the current plague. Thus the rioters set out to get even, to "sleen this false traytour Deeth" (699). Death is a thief, a traitor, a violator of codes. He does not play fair, he betrays us. Like medieval knights, the rioters "hir trouthes plight" in a pledge of brotherhood (702) till they destroy destruction itself: "Deeth shal be deed, if that they may hym hente" (710). Theirs would seem a noble enterprise, worthy of the greatest mythic culture heroes. Nevertheless, we know this pledge of troth and this quest are vain and bogus. The rioters have no real bonds and, despite calling each other "sworen brother" (808), plot against and murder one another. This catastrophe is one answer to the problem of death. As it struck

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their friend when he was "Fordronke" (674), it strikes the rioters when they are in the heat of their sins. Thus, it is an agent of retribution, as the Pardoner has already insisted in his tale's preliminary homily, where he cites St. Paul's predictions of the result of vice—"Of whiche the ende is deeth" (533; cf. 523)—and he gives the example of Attila, who "Deyde in his sleep, with shame and dishonour, / Bledynge ay at his nose in dronkenesse" (580-81). Even worse is the retribution of living death for him who "Is deed, whil that he lyveth in tho vices" (548); for example, "dronkenesse is verray sepulture / Of mannes wit and his discrecioun" (558-59). The message is to lead the virtuous life; as the boy's mother tells him, "Beth redy for to meete hym [Deeth] everemoore" (683). Yet death is not always retribution. Witness the significance of the figure of the Old Man in the tale. To him, death is not an evil but a positive good, a "grace" (737). He does not flee death but agonizes that death will not take him: "Ne Deeth, allas! ne wol nat han my lyf" (727). The point is the same as in God's allowing Death into the world in Paradise Lost and the struldbrugg episode in Gulliver's Travels: immortality would merely extend man's misery, his degeneration. Only in death can the "restelees" Old Manfindthe "reste" he so desperately seeks (728, 733). But the most important answer to the problem of death resides in the symbolism of the landscape in the tale. The Old Man tells the rioters they will find death up the "croked wey, . . . Under a tree" (761-63). Why is death under a tree and why is the way crooked? This tree has been mentioned before. It is the "tree" of "Paradys" from which Adam and Eve ate the "fruyt" of the knowledge of good and evil (509-10). Thus, "al this world" became "Corrupt" (504), the "wey" became "croked," and death ensued. As in The Franklin's Tale, the origin of evil and death is not Death's—or God's—fault, according to the Christian story. It is man's. There is more to this symbolism, and the key to it is the subtle motif of swearing. We have considered some of the Pardoner's reasons for beginning his tale with a homily on tavern vices. But Chaucer seems to have other, more profound reasons. Swearing is merely one of the three vices the Pardoner anatomizes. Yet, Chaucer has him emphasize it at the beginning and then conclude with it. After briefly describing the rioters and their "superfluytee abhomynable" (471), the Pardoner devotes these four lines to swearing.

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Hir othes been so grete and so dampnable That it is grisly for to heere hem swere. Olire blissed Lordes body they totere,— Hem thoughte that Jewes rente hym noght ynough. (472-75)

Swearing is one of the worst forms of perversion of words, and at the end of the homily the Pardoner provides an antilitany of profane oaths, uttered for vain and sinful purposes. "By Goddes precious herte," and "By his nayles," And "By the blood of Crist that is in Hayles, Sevene is my chaunce, and thyn is cynk and treye!" "By Goddes armes, if thou falsly pleye, This daggere shal thurghout thyn herte go!" (651-55)

In the tale proper, the rioters punctuate their dialogue with such oaths. Upon the boy's report of their friend's death, one swears by "Goddes armes!" by "Goddes digne bones!" and "By Goddes dignitee" to get even (692-701). Then they all plight their troth in a pact against Death, witnessing it by "many a grisly ooth": "And Cristes blessed body al torente" (708-9). By now the significance of the motif should be obvious. Like the Gawain poet, Chaucer did not include all these oaths as throwaway lines, as metric fillers, or even as characterizing tics. The careless, casual oaths of the rioters are sins of swearing, blasphemy, yes, but like the corrupt Pardoner, they carry within themselves the very solution to the problem the rioters seek to attack. In particular, all the references to God's arms, His heart, His nails, His bones, to Christ's body and blood remind us readers—as they should the rioters—of the other significance of the tree up the crooked way. It is also the Tree of the Cross, whereon occurred the central act of the Christian story, the Crucifixion of Christ, by which act Death has already and eternally been slain (thus, he is at the foot of the tree), by which act, as the Old Man says in his parting prayer for the rioters, Christ "boghte agayn mankynde" (766). The Pardoner himself, perverter of words, explicitly reminds us time and again of the meaning of "Cristes croys" (532). He laments the damning effects of Original Sin "Til Crist hadde boght us with his blood agayn" (501). He prays that his auditors forswear oaths

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"for the love of Crist, that for us dyde" (658). He concludes his tale with this lament: Alias! mankynde, how may it bitide That to thy creatour, which that the wroghte, And with his precious herte-blood thee boghte, Thou art so fais and so unkynde, alias? (900-903) And finally he commends to his audience "Jhesu Crist, that is our soules leche" (916)—the One Who can cure even the disease of Death. Whatever the Pardoner's personal motivation for this last commendation, the meaning seems clear. The ultimate answer to the problem of death, to the problem of all evil, even the perversion of word and Word, is on the tip of the pilgrims' tongues. And by conveying this message, will-he nill-he, the Pardoner carries out his function supremely. His message is not so much "avoid sin" as "have faith," "be not 'fais' to Christ," "trust in the central truth of Christianity." If his auditors renew their trust, indeed God will "graunte you his pardoun to receyve" (917). And the last, wonderful sign of this truth is the Knight's response to Harry Bailly's aggressive hostility to the Pardoner. Harry himself fears "Cristes curs" if he be taken in (946), so he rejects the Pardoner, swearing himself profanely "by the croys which that Seint Eleyne fond" (951). But the Knight induces them to kiss, to exchange charity: despite the Pardoner's totering of "Oure blissed Lordes body"—tearing the text of the very words He left—even the Pardoner can be pardoned. That is the meaning of the Word, its most powerful concept in enforcing word as bond.

Volpone If something in us loves a trickster, it does so because of his or her ability to dupe not only the apparently innocuous gulls of society but the powerful frauds as well. Hence in Jonson's classic, we applaud Volpone and Mosca's confidence game, because their marks deserve it: they so pervert the word as bond that they have no right to protest these con artists' perjury. And in this play we especially admire the sheer energy and exuberance of the tricksters, who seem to love more the getting than the simple possession of gold. Mosca describes Volpone as very unbourgeois: he delights not in making widows and or-

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phans weep by his gain; nor does he lead the miserable life of the penurious miser, denying himself the pleasures his amassed wealth can buy. Instead, Mosca says, "You know the use of riches" (1.1.62); that is, Volpone retains the liberality and the taste for pleasure of the aristocrat. For his part Mosca makes us fall in love with the quintessential parasite. your fine, elegant rascal, that can rise And stoop, almost together, like an arrow; Shoot through the air as nimbly as a star; Turn short as doth a swallow; and be here, And there, and here, and yonder, all at once; Present to any humor, all occasion; And change a visor swifter than a thought. (3.1.23-29) From the Saturnalian Lord of Misrule to the Coyote of the Winnebago Cycle, this Protean figure embodies for us all the anarchic, subversive energy of boundless desire. He and Volpone are counterparts of that Rabelasian figure who views life and language as sheer play (see Bakhtin, Rabelais and His World). Thus, they appropriate to themselves not just the code of the word, which they pervert, but the power of eloquence itself. And, like the Pardoner, they threaten the bonds of society with radical nominalism. They make the rhetoric of Bonario and Celia seem impotent. They distort the word in one of its citadels, a court of law. But in their so doing, Jonson portrays them as overreaching, and their ultimate defeat must be seen as the reconstitution of the word, finally vindicated by the Word. All the satiric butts in Volpone are perverters of the word as bond and deserve to be duped. Voltore is the type of the corrupt lawyer. Mosca says to his face: I oft have heard him [Volpone] say how he admired Men of your large profession, that could speak To every cause, and things mere contraries, Till they were hoarse again, yet all be law. (1.3.52-55) This is legal nominalism or radical antinomianism: if "all" can be made to seem "law" by the eloquence of lawyers, the danger is that there consequently is no real law or that it would disappear under legal obfuscation. Jonson wonderfully underscores the threat. In a metaphor

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which parallels the pervading imagery of metamorphoses downward from spiritual to material (see Kernan's intro.), and in an image worthy of Swift, Mosca describes Voltore as a "suffering s p i r i t . . . of so perplexed a tongue" that "every word / Your worship but lets fall, is a chequin" (1.3.62-66). Here is the ultimate despiritualizing of the word, its materialization into gold. Voltore's great scene, of course, is the hearing before the Scrutineo. He makes the apparent seem unreal, the impossible seem probable. And he reflexively reveals his perverse process. What he says of Bonario applies to himself, as well as the other perverters of the word: "So much more full of danger is his vice, / That can beguile so under shade of virtue" (4.5.61-62). Equally applicable is what he says of both Bonario and Celia. vicious persons when they are hot and fleshed In impious acts, their constancy abounds: Damned deeds are done with greatest confidence.

(4.6.51-53) Voltore has used the word "constancy" in this perverted sense earlier, when he cautions all those about to perjure themselves in order to thwart justice: "Well, now you know the carriage of the business, / Your constancy is all that is required, / Unto the safety of it" (4.4.1-3). Like Dryden's Argaleon, he alters one of the key words of the chivalric code to mean steadfastness in iniquity. Again speaking of Bonario and Celia, Voltore raises the crucial question of the play, one which refers really to him and the other perverters: How can society protect itself against those who distort words and perjure themselves (4.6.38-42)? To save their faltering cause, Mosca bids Mercury, god of eloquence—but also of thieves—sit upon Voltore's "thund'ring tongue" that he might use his "language" as a Herculean "club, to beat along, / As with a tempest, flat, our adversaries" (4.4.21-24). And when Voltore succeeds in blinding justice—to make her not impartial but impotent—in another image of materialization Mosca exclaims in gratitude, "I'd ha' your tongue, sir, tipped with gold for this" (4.6.64). Bonario correctly protests that Voltore's "soul moves in his fee," that his "mercenary tongue . . . For six sols more would plead against his Maker" (4.5.95-97). In effect, Voltore does so plead, for he not only uses false words to obtain his ends, he does so in a forum where the truth of one's words is supposed to be attested by God Himself. Voltore

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and the other perjurers are impudent blasphemers. But as radical nominalists, they do not fear divine retribution, because to them nothing in reality would correspond to the Word. "Without thought / Or least regard unto [his] proper issue, / A son. so brave and highly meriting" (1.4.102-4), Corbaccio agrees to disinherit his son by perverting the word of his will, that sign of the natural (patriarchal) bonds between generations and of their concomitant societal bonds of patrilinearity and primogeniture. Of course, Corbaccio is shocked by the idea at first and proceeds only because Mosca convinces him that substituting Volpone for Bonario is but a ruse to make himself Volpone's sole heir. And at first the satiric point is Corbaccio's incredible vanity to believe that he will outlive Volpone, because the senex Corbaccio, even as he fools himself with "confident belying" of his age (1.4.155), is undergoing the ultimate materialization. Corbaccio's moral culpability increases, however, when we realize that he would murder Volpone if given the chance and when we see how he responds to Mosca's version of Bonario's intervention to save Celia. According to Mosca, Bonario had heard of Corbaccio's intention to disinherit him and had come to murder his own "unnatural" father (3.9.6). Instead of trusting his own son over Mosca, instead of realizing the appropriateness of the epithet "unnatural," Corbaccio disinherits Bonario "indeed" (3.9.8). By the time of the hearing, Corbaccio is apparently privy to Voltore's "lie," because he emerges with the others and Mosca asks, "Knows every man his burden?" (4.4.3-5). Later, Mosca accuses him of having "Perjured" himself (5.3.74). Thus, Corbaccio's testimony to the court amounts to an inhuman, hypocritical, unnatural breaking of the bond with his son. Speak to the knave? I'll ha' my mouth first stopped with earth. My heart Abhors his knowledge. I disclaim in him. . . . The mere portent of nature. He is an utter stranger to my loins. . . . I will not hear thee, Monster of men, swine, goat, wolf; parricide! Speak not, thou viper.

(4.5.105-12)

Jonson emphasizes the horrid depth of this imprecation by having Bonario, in stark contrast, honor the bonds of nature, the implicit word between father and son.

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Sir, I will sit down, And rather wish my innocence should suffer, Than I resist the authority of a father. (4.5.112-14)

Corvino perverts the word of his marriage bond, first with jealousy. He so radically distrusts his wife that he threatens her with the most horrible punishments (like vivisection) for the most innocent behavior. Second, Corvino perverts his bond with greed. He so loves gold that he is willing, to his self-torture, to prostitute his wife to Volpone. "Wretch! / Covetous wretch!" he comments aside as he engages with Mosca (2.6.78-79). However, not only his greed but also his nominalism overcome his possessive jealousy. Of her adultery with Volpone he rationalizes, "The thing in't self, / 1 know, is nothing" (2.6.69-70). Just as Voltore makes law arbitrary and redefines "constancy," so Corvino makes sexual morality arbitrary and redefines another key term of the aristocratic code of the word: he demands of Celia, "if you be / Loyal and mine, be won, respect my venture" (3.7.36-37). Loyalty is now not to one's husband's honor, but to his business investments! And in answer to Celia's appeal to his honor, Corvino reveals in total nakedness his assault upon the word, his radical nominalism. Honor! tut, a breath. There's no such thing in nature; a mere term Invented to awe fools. (3.7.38-40)

When she stubbornly refuses, he curses her—"Be damned!" (3.7.95)— and again threatens a public flaying (mouth- and nose-slitting), after which he will bind her to the rotting corpse of a dead slave. And at my window hang you forth, devising Some monstrous crime, which I, in capital letters, Will eat into thy flesh with aquafortis, And burning cor'si ves, on this stubborn breast. (3.7.102-5)

Through this terrible threat Corvino inscribes his own infamous perversion of the word across the white pages of his wife's innocence. Third, Corvino travesties the word in a different way in the courtroom scene. Again in extravagant rhetoric that evinces a deep strain

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of sadomasochism, he portrays an imagined scene worthy the most inveterate voyeur. This woman, please your fatherhoods, is a whore Of most hot exercise, more than a partridge, Upon record— . . . Neighs like a jennet. . . . these eyes Have seen her glued unto that piece of cedar, That fine, well-timbered gallant; and that here [Tapping his forehead.] The letters may be read, thorough the horn, That make the story perfect. (4.5.117-26)

Besides revealing his most intimate fears of sexual inadequacy, his testimony destroys another delicate preserve of the word, reputation. Excusing himself casuistically, he writes his "shame" across his own broad forehead (4.5.127). While Corvino would prostitute his own wife to Volpone, Lady Wouldbe would prostitute herself in shameless adultery. As Mosca says, she has offered to do what "e'en your best madams did / For maintenance" (5.3.42-43). Adultery is redefined as economic selfsufficiency. And Lady Wouldbe perverts the code of the word in other ways. As her name and her very discourse imply, she is a nouvelle riche, a social climber, one who would be a lady but is not—neither in morals nor in manners. Her manners are her morals. She has "preached" to her maids the "principles" of haute coiffeure and proper dressing, the knowledge of which will be "an ample dowry" to get "noble husbands" (3.4.23-30). She further perverts the aristocratic ideal of education as she ostentatiously displays her endless recipes— for cures or culture—debasing spiritual values into merely material goods or the simple appearance of aristocratic taste (3.4.67-76)—no mention of the soul or the more important aristocratic "ornaments" of chastity and modesty. Lady Wouldbe's bourgeois pretentions, as her malapropism "golden mediocrity" unintentionally but brilliantly attests (3.4.47), threaten to reduce the inscribed code of hierarchy down to a dead level. Volpone's admonition that the "highest female grace is silence" (3.4.78), while it misogynistically distorts the virtue of modesty (itself a very patriarchal virtue), nevertheless underscores Lady Wouldbe's most serious assault upon the code of the word, the endless volubility

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of her "everlasting voice" (3.5.4). Such constant trivial "discourse" (3.4.121), like that of Dryden's Melantha, threatens an infinite series of supplements that will destroy referentiality itself. Volpone exclaims apocalyptically, "Another flood of words! a very torrent! . . . The sun, the sea, will sooner both stand still / Than her eternal tongue" (3.4.64, 84-85). She nearly drowns the Scrutineo in her torrent as she adds her interminable voice to those that perjure the word in its very citadel. Lady Wouldbe's nouveau knight, Sir Politic (obviously a mockery of James I's spontaneous creations), is guilty of similar violations of the word. His bourgeois affectations also threaten chivalric hierarchy and travesty aristocratic education, especially that to be acquired through travel. No longer the Renaissance Man on the Grand Tour, he is the Ugly Briton unleashed on cultured Continental society. Sir Pol (the parrot) has ventured forth on no "idle, antique, stale, grey-headed project / Of knowing men's minds, and manners, with Ulysses" but "to observe, / To quote, to learn the language, and so forth" (2.1.9-13): to merely mouth sentences and platitudes, to learn cocktail party trivia, to ostentatiously drop a phrase to a waiter, a museum guide. The type is still familiar. Thus language is materialized, emptied of its spiritual significance. Sir Pol advises, "beware / You never speak a truth" (4.1.16-17)—a view he modifies only when Peregrine protests. Of course Sir Pol would see mountebanks as "The only languaged men of all the world!" (2.2.13). In contrast, Peregrine can see through such "imposters," perverters of words and "oaths" (2.2.14-17), just as he can see through Sir Pol's persiflage. But Sir Pol's real threat is that he would not only be a nobleman but a political projector. His endless chatter, his absurd interpretations, could be simply the source of "mirth" to the self-contained Peregrine (2.3.16). But as with Shakespeare's Lucio in Measure for Measure, Sir Pol's loose words begin to traduce religion and the state, and thus he must be silenced. Sir Pol advises the ambitious man not only never to speak truth but also to "profess" no "religion," remaining content to be an Erastian (4.1.22ff.), as if religion, like language and culture, were just a matter of "forms" (4.1.39). Finally, his plotmongering leads him to the language of sedition (4.1.128-31). Peregrine properly interrupts him here to stop his mouth. However it innocuously continues with the reading of diurnal (diurinal?) notes, and however much Peregrine seems motivated by Sir Pol's attraction of his

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harridan wife down on Peregrine's head, nevertheless, Peregrine's express intention when he brings comic punishment down on Sir Pol is "to fright him" (5.4.2)—apparently from seditious talk. The theme of the punishment is Sir Pol's professed plot. He protests that he drew his notes only "out of play-books," that he "but talked so / For discourse' sake merely" (5.4.42-47). Not by accident did Jonson name Sir Pol's antagonist Peregrine, the feudal aristocratic falcon, the symbol of superiority. Here, he finally swoops down and silences the loosetalking parvenu, whose notes are burned and who will creep off and hide his head under his tortoise shell. Peregrine has successfully defended the class structure and its discourse. If Sir Pol's catastrophe must be interpreted as the vindication of part of the chivalric code of the word, so also must the general catastrophe for the legacy hunters, the perjurers and perverters of the word. Mosca delivers Lady Wouldbe's sentence: "Go home and use the poor Sir Pol, your knight, well" (5.3.44). She is absolutely silenced, returns to her lodgings, and plans to leave Venice immediately. Distracted into confession then recantation then mock possession by the devil—who appropriately appears to depart him through his "throat" (5.12.29)—Voltore is finally disbarred and banished, "to take away the scandal" he has given "all worthy men" of his "profession" (5.12.12627). Thus, the legal profession is symbolically purged of its false mouthpieces. Unnatural author of his son's disinheritance, Corbaccio is stripped of that authority; all his possessions are given immediately to Bonario; and he who refused to learn the ars vivendi is confined to a monastery to learn the ars moriendi. Prostituier of the sacred bonds of matrimony, Corvino, who still refuses to "see" his "shame" (5.12.142), will be publicly paraded not as a shameless cuckold but a shameless ass, and his wife will be sent home with her dowry, freed at least from the bonds Corvino has turned into bondage, shackling her not to the putrefying corpse of a dead slave but to the living spiritual corpse of an insane misogynist. But Volpone and Mosca, the supreme con men, are not so easily dismissed by either author or critic. They pose a much greater threat to the word. First, the word as hierarchic code: As Kernan has shown (intro.), their speeches are pervaded with imagery of limitless becoming, especially in Mosca's characterization of the parasite, who can "be here, / And there, and here, and yonder, all at once," who can "change a visor swifter than a thought" (3.1.26-29), and in Volpone's magnilo-

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quent courtship of Celia, whose beauty has already transformed him into "several shapes" and can inspire him "In varying figures" to contend with "Proteus" himself (3.7.148-53). my dwarf shall dance, My eunuch sing, my fool make up the antic. Whilst we, in changèd shapes, act Ovid's tales . . . Then will I have thee in more modern forms, . . . And I will meet thee in as many shapes. (3.7.219-33)

The danger in this passage is manifold. Not only does Volpone's boundless energy threaten the boundaries of fixed essence—indeed, the Great Chain of Being itself, as his acting the role of "Jove" (222) seems to shade into living it, into destroying the distinction between men and gods—but also Volpone here combines the role of the con man with that of the other chief subversive figure in chivalric comedy, the Don Juan. Volpone is the supreme "voluptuary" (4.5.10), one of the greatest sensualists in Western comedy, second only to Jonson's own Sir Epicure Mammon in The Alchemist. What makes Jonson's sensualists so great is what constitutes their gravest threat to the word— their very magniloquence. Jonson gives Volpone all the rhetorical power of the Renaissance Man. The speeches to Celia match the best speeches in Marlowe and Shakespeare. Like Volpone's desire, they burst with vitality and exuberance, they are enormously seductive. The song, "Come, my Celia, let us prove" (3.7.166ff.), is a masterpiece of carpe diem lyric poetry, and Volpone's presentation of his sacred treasure to Celia abounds in extravagant sensual delight (3.7.191-205, 213-19). The threat of the rhetoric is that vice not only appropriates eloquence but transforms values. In the song, Volpone nominalistically asserts that "Fame and rumor are but toys," that "'Tis no sin love's fruits to steal / But the sweet thefts to reveal" (3.7.175, 180-81). "St. Mark" is employed not spiritually to remind one of the saint himself and the sacred text he wrote but only materialistically to measure the value of Volpone's "carbuncle" (3.7.193-94). The value of Volpone's "diamond," that nearly flawless gem traditionally associated with marital constancy (as in Shakespeare's contemporaneous play Cymbeline, for example), is measured by reference to the infamous Roman meretrix, Lollia Paulina, and the specious "star-light" of the jewels that hid her shame (3.7.195-97). Spiritual values in general are materialized,

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melted down like Volpone's pearls and gold and amber. And like the typical obscenely wealthy hedonist—whether in Rome or Jonson's England or today's America—Volpone would exterminate a species or oppress nine-tenths of the world to serve his pleasures and feed his overrefined palate. When Celia protests. "If you have conscience," Volpone's answer demonstrates his sense of how radically values have shifted in his world and how utterly money means power: '"Tis the beggar's virtue; / If thou hast wisdom, hear me, Celia" (3.7.211-12). Wisdom is no longer sacred Sophia; it is mere pragmatism, opportunism: "Observe the real way of the world and take it to your advantage." Indeed, Celia's constant appeals to both Corvino and Volpone, calling upon God, Heaven, angels, saints (3.7. passim) seem quaint, antiquated, empty. Her most poignant questions—"Are heaven and saints then nothing? / Will they be blind, or stupid?" (3.7.53-54)—seem answerable only in the affirmative. Even when Bonario arrives to save her, his rhetoric seems formal, stiff, outdated: "Forbear, foulravisher! libidinous swine! / Free the forced lady, or thou diest, impostor" (3.7.26768). And both their appeals before the Scrutineo fall on deaf ears. 1st Avocatole. What witnesses have you To make good your report?

Bonario.

Our consciences.

Celia. And heaven, that never fails the innocent. Uh Avocatore. These are no testimonies. (4.6.15-18)

What Voltore calls Celia and Bonario's "bold tongues" are put "to utter dumbness" (4.6.22). He and the other perjurers and the con men have appropriated the word to themselves and frustrated appeals to the Word. This appropriation of the word is seen most radically in these perverters' travesty of religious language. They punctuate their discourse with those traditional oaths, fashionably and insouciantly uttered by the upper class: "Faith" or "in faith" or "in good faith" 3 ; "Troth" or "In troth" 4 ; "Truth be my comfort"5; "so truth help me" 6 ; "by this light" 7 ; "let me perish"8; "would to heaven"9; "heaven knows"10; "Heaven be good to me." 11 The most astonishing and blasphemous use of such ironic religious language occurs in the third act. First, Corvino incredibly utters religious expletives even as he forces his own wife to adultery: "Good faith," "'Sdeath," "God's precious, this is scurvy"

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(3.7.110ff.). This last appears to drain all literal meaning from such language and leave it bloodless indeed. Then, in no mere rhetoric of courtly love but in a process of blasphemous redefinition, Volpone tempts Celia with "the true heaven of love," in effect identifies her with "Paradise," and calls her beauty a "miracle" (3.7.140-46). Perhaps the most audacious inversion occurs when the two con men are in danger of being totally exposed and they plan their daring diversion of justice. Mosca. [To Volpone] Patron, go in and pray for our success. Volpone. Need makes devotion; heaven your labor bless! (3.9.62-63)

The assault upon the word thus constitutes an assault upon the Word, as Volpone's opening aubade to his only god attests. Dear saint, Riches, the dumb god that giv'st all men tongues, That canst do nought, and yet mak'st men do all things; The price of souls; even hell, with thee to boot, Is made worth heaven! Thou art virtue, fame, Honor, and all things else. Who can get thee, He shall be noble, valiant, honest, wise— (1.1.21-27)

This Unholy Spirit now distributes power and the Gift of Tongues. Bonario is certainly in the right when he desires to make Volpone "the timely sacrifice of vengeance / Before this altar, and this dross, thy idol" (3.7.271-72). And yet, the power appears to have slipped out of his and Celia's grasp, out. of their words and into the mercenary tongues of those who serve the new god. When appeals to the validating Logos of the code fail, what recourse is there for those who would follow it? Mosca and Volpone have cause to triumph. And their sense of victory, of invulnerability, leads them brazenly to delight in their con game, to flaunt it in the very faces of their victims, from Mosca's daring ploy to invite Bonario to witness his father disinherit him, to Volpone's irrepressible urge to taunt his marks beyond endurance. Volpone and Mosca use their "game" to turn everything—especially words—into sheer play. As Kernan has argued (intro.), they are consummate actors, madly in love with their eloquence, their verbal acrobatics. Perhaps the best symbol in the play of this logophilia is the nonsense skits of Volpone's "children," Nano, Castrone, and Andro-

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gyno. They have turned language into circus, into carnival. So too have Volpone and Mosca turned life into a perpetual sideshow with the endless palaver of the mountebank. By the end of the play, however, they and their confederates are defeated. How? Why? Essentially, Volpone and Mosca defeat themselves. In their hubris, they insist on one trick too many, and they push their victims one step too far. Mosca calls their triumph in court their "masterpiece" and cautions, "We cannot think to go beyond this" (5.2.13-14). Yet they do, and Volpone laments the result. To make a snare for mine own neck! And run My head into it wilfully, with laughter! When I had newly 'scaped, was free and clear! Out of mere wantonness! 0, the dull devil Was in this brain of mine when I devised it. (5.11.1-5) Part of the meaning of the denouement, then, is that Volpone and Mosca are Renaissance Overreachers who strain the limits of being and perforce fall. P a r t of it, too, is that they suffer the consequences of perversion of the word as bond. How can Volpone expect loyalty from Mosca? There is no honor among confidence men precisely because they abrogate the very concept, they thrive on its subversion. Beyond these lessons, part of the meaning too is the suggestion of a dynamic of justice. Throughout the play Volpone and the others mockingly pronounce various sententiae that proclaim such a justice. Volpone. What a rare punishment Is avarice to itself! (1.4.142-43) Mosca. Guilty men Suspect what they deserve still. (3.8.20-21) Mosca. But Fortune can, at any time, o'erthrow The projects of a hundred learned clerks. (3.9.59-60) Voltare. Mischief doth ever end where it begins— (4.5.79) Concerning Corbaccio's degeneracy, Mosca exclaims less mockingly, almost with a belief in such a dynamic, "What horrid, strange offense

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/ Did he commit 'gainst nature in his youth, / Worthy this age?" (4.6.89-90). Finally, the mocked sententiae are redeemed for current use when the First Avocatore concludes the righteous judgments— and the play—thus: Let all that see these vices thus rewarded, Take heart, and love to study 'em. Mischiefs feed Like beasts, till they be fat, and then they bleed. (5.12.149-51) In his dedicatory epistle, Jonson asserts that it is "the office of a comic poet to imitate justice," and that is certainly what he has done in Volpone. But there is a deeper dimension to this poetical justice. If the play concludes with condign punishment for Volpone— since the most was gotten by imposture, By feigning lame, gout, palsy, and such diseases, Thou art to lie in prison, cramped with irons, Till thou be'st sick and lame indeed. (5.12.121-24)— Jonson has prepared for it skillfully with adumbrations of his final hell, the final "mortifying of a fox" (5.12.125). When Lady Wouldbe comes to visit him, he apprehends "torment," a "hell" (3.3.25, 28), and complains, "I do feel the fever / Ent'ring in at mine ears. . . . Before I feigned diseases, now I have one" (3.4.8-9, 62). This archperverter of the word is tormented by an endless flood of volubility. And ironically, he and his minions begin to use religious language literally, out of desperation. Nano. Deliver us!

Now, St. Mark (3.4.14-15)

Volpone. Of patience help me!

Now, the spirit (3.4.112-13)

Volpone.

My good angel save me! (3.4.115)

Mosca arrives ironically saluting Lady Wouldbe with "God save you," but Volpone uses the language more insistently, welcoming Mosca as

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his "redemption" and pleading "For hell's sake" that Mosca rid him of her "everlasting voice" (3.5.1ff.). Later, after feigning incipient morbidity to fool the Scrutineo, Volpone makes another startling testimony employing religious language. 'Fore God, my left leg 'gan to have the cramp, And I apprehended, straight, some power had struck me With a dead palsy. (5.1.5-7)

Consequently, Volpone sweats, exposing his jugular vein of vulnerability to Mosca, who then begins to turn wolf against the fox. But there is a growing sense that the apparently moribund religious language still names the metaphysics of the dynamic that drives Volpone and his fellow perverters to destruction. We remember that Volpone complains of a "dull devil" in his brain that causes him to overreach himself. And at the end it is as if "some power" beyond just that of human justice destines him to the morbidity which he feigned; as if "some power" punishes him for trifling with death, with the ultimate materialization; as if "some power" reinterprets Volpone's text as a memento mori. This "power" is named in various ways at the end as the plot becomes unravelled. Celia. O heav'n, how just thou art! (5.10.13)

Bonario.

O sure vengeance! (5.10.24)

Celia. How ready is heav'n to those that pray! (5.12.5)

1st Avocatore.

The knot is now undone by miracle! (5.12.95)

Bonario. Heaven could not long let such gross crimes be hid. (5.12.98)

Is this still merely empty rhetoric? Or has the word been restored to its meaning and its potency? Certainly the closure of both plots serves to re-establish chivalric order and relation: the Peregrine falcon triumphs over the false Pol parrot; Volpone, Mosca, and the carrion creatures are all exposed and punished; the seemingly impotent Celia and

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Bonario are vindicated; the Scrutineo itself finally overcomes perjury and becomes the instrument of justice; "some power" has provided a clue for the "labyrinth" (5.10.42), the "maze" so "misty," so "intricate" and "full of wonder" (5.12.43, 14, 61, 36). All these are metaphors for the dark depths of human understanding which cannot fathom the ways of Providence. The "knot" is finally undone "by miracle." And perhaps the best evidence in the play that the Word finally manifests itself and vindicates the word, the rhetoric of Celia and Bonario, is Celia's incredibly altruistic plea at the end for "mercy" for Corvino (5.12.105). Though the judges reject the plea in favor of a strict—and merited—justice, can we view Celia still as naif? Does not her act of forgiveness, in its obvious moral superiority, administer the final shame to those who would pervert the word? In short, Volpone seems designed to finally wrest control of the word from those who would appropriate it, perjure and pervert it, threaten to empty it of all meaning, and turn it into a mere instrument of gain or, even worse, of sheer play. The word—like Apollo's soul, which has supposedly degenerated into Androgyno, or like Venus's powder, which has supposedly degenerated into Scoto of Mantua's quack concoction—appears throughout most of the play to have degenerated from its divine original (the Logos), to have lost its divine sanction. But in the nick of time it is reappropriated to its sociopolitical function of binding men and women together by the promise that their aristocratic code is ultimately efficacious, that it has real meaning and Real support.

The Man of Mode The favorite trickster in Restoration literature is a Don Juan figure, the rake of Restoration comedy. He, too, is a confidence man, for he plays off the code of the word as bond—of fidelity, constancy, trust. Hence, the Don Juan of Restoration comedy par excellence, Dorimant of Etherege's Man of Mode, is upbraided by his mistresses for breaking his word. The lowclass Molly writes, "I told a you you dud not love me" (1.1.469). The termagant Mrs. Loveit calls him "Traitor," "Ungrateful, perjured man," "Faithless," "Without sense of love, of honor, or of gratitude," and in outrage she demands, "Is this the constancy you vowed? . . . Think on your oaths, your vows, and protestations, perjured man! . . . ought they not to bind?" (2.2.passim). Having

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after their matinal assignation begged Dorimant's "word," his solemn "promise," that he would never see Loveit again (4.2.27ff.), Bellinda exclaims when he arrives at Loveit's lodging only a short time later, "I am betrayed indeed. H'has broke his word" (5.1.70), and to his face, under the guise of defending Loveit, she accuses him of "breach of faith" (5.1.257). Later, she demands of him, "Do all men break their words thus?" (5.2.271). To both Loveit and Bellinda, Dorimant tenders the same justification. The "words" men "speak" while engaged in seduction are "extravagant" (5.2.272): "What we swear at such a time may be a certain proof of a present passion; but to say truth, in love there is no security to be given for the future"; "'Tis as unreasonable to expect we should perform all we promise then, as do all we threaten when we are angry" (2.2.202-4; 5.2.272-74). This is the response of the libertine, for whom sexual promiscuity is natural and any attempt socially to bind or restrict it unnatural: "Constancy at my years? 'Tis not a virtue in season; you might as well expect the fruit the autumn ripens i'the spring" (2.2.179-81). For the libertine, marriage is unnatural, out of fashion, as Medley so humorously insists when he inverts the religious language traditionally employed to sanction it and hopes for Young Bellair's "salvation" from it—through adultery (1.1.309)—or when he suggests that, "Since marriage has lost its good name," Young Bellair and Emilia ought not to risk their fashionable "reputations" by acknowledging theirs till she can no longer hide it (5.2.5-8). Even Sir Fopling Flutter is described as being fashionably "not overconstant" (1.1.367). The perversion of the traditional system of word as sexual bond is perhaps best highlighted in Medley's continued mockery of marriage: "Is it not great indiscretion for a man of credit, who may have money enough on his word, to go and deal with Jews, who for little sums make men enter into bonds and give judgments?" (1.1.317-20). The problem, of course, is that the libertine gentleman's word, as we have seen with Dorimant, is not as good as his bond, and as a result he presents a grave threat to chivalric social order. For the libertine devours women as casually as does Dorimant the fruit the OrangeWoman brings him. Metaphorically, women and fruit are associated throughout the play. Dorimant's omnivorous appetite is whetted not only by the delectable objects themselves but, as in Marriage A-laMode, by what Girard calls "mimetic desire": "There is no charm so infallibly makes me fall in love with a woman as my knowing a friend

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loves her" (3.2.154-55). And not even a married woman—not even one married to his friend—is considered out of bounds: Dormant says of Emilia in particular and women in general, "I have known many women make a difficulty of losing a maidenhead, who have afterwards made none of making a cuckold" (1.1.415-17). This philosophy is also based upon the premise that every woman is at heart a rake, that she would be as promiscuous as men once she got used to it or provided she could get away with it, that modesty and constancy are simply imprisoning social bonds. Dorimant pronounces, "These young women apprehend loving as much as the young men do fighting at first; but once entered, like them too, they all turn bullies straight" (1.1.388-91). To a Sir Fopling reluctant to dance, Medley makes a commonplace analogy: "Like a woman I find you must be struggled with before one brings you to what you desire" (4.1.275-76). And Dorimant sees "inbred falsehood" in all women (5.1.137). The threat of the Don Juan to feudal society, then, is to unleash the sexual appetite of women, to seduce them, and to "ruin" them (passim). Bellinda says if her affair with Dorimant were known she would be "lost forever" (5.1.60). The woman in Harriet's favorite song warns of the threat of being "quite undone" (3.1.65). What does it mean to be "lost" or "undone" in this society? First, it means to lose reputation. Thus, Lady Townley concludes that the "indiscreet" young lovers of Medley's story "deserve to be unfortunate"—because they got caught and lost their good name to such a scandal-spreading tongue (3.2.1-3). But the threat goes further. Loveit may have a modicum of reputation left to make yet another "conquest" (3.2.226-28), but the fate awaiting her is "to turn rook and cheat it [her remaining "stock of reputation"] up again on a good, substantial bubble" (5.1.144-47) or, even worse, like the fictional mistress Dorimant and Medley create, to "be of the number of the ladies kept by public-spirited men for the good of the whole town" (4.2.78-79)—like Dorimant's Molly. In other words, the threat of the Don Juan is that he will spoil the goods and cause them to dwindle in exchange value till they become so used they can no longer bring the price of sustenance.12 The value of women is their ability to be traded for the increase of property and the strengthening of blood lines. But the vessel for the patriarchy's seed must be certified pure and uncontaminated. A good deal of the play is given over to the conflict between the older and younger generations of Bellairs over an arranged marriage. While this conflict has the outlines of the typical plot of New Comedy and while it is similar to the

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Polixenes-Florizel conflict in The Winter's Tale, it has the specific context of the English gentry's need to perpetuate itself. Old Bellair warns Young about "an idle town flirt, with a painted face, a rotten reputation, and a crazy fortune," for she is a "devil" (2.1.65-67). The use of the religious rhetoric here is very significant, because the person in the play most often referred to as a "devil" is Dorimant (passim). Now the lowclass woman is a "devil," an anathema to the genealogical system because young aristocratic men, as Old Bellair says in exasperation, "ha' got an ill habit of preferring beauty, no matter where they find it" (3.1.130-31). Thus, the pretty lowclass thing can seduce the young heir and perhaps trap him into a marriage that would degenerate the blood line. On the other hand, Old Bellair's counterpart, Lady Woodvill, desperately fears the "prince of all the devils," Dorimant, as a "plague" that will infect her daughter (3.3.108-12). Hence, she prays heaven every day "on her knees" to defend Harriet from him (3.3.17-18)—not because she fears Harriet's eternal damnation for the sin of fornication but because she fears her loss of exchange value. That is why she and Old Bellair are so anxious to have the contract between Harriet and Young Bellair drawn and sealed, religiously sanctioned and consummated. Only then will Harriet's value be permanently secured, patriarchal property enhanced, and genealogy guaranteed. As Old Bellair says to his reluctant son, "A wife is no curse when she brings the blessing of a good estate with her" (2.1.64-65). On one level, Etherege's play satirizes this patriarchal code. The libertines flaunt it and the oppressed youth rebel against it. Obviously, Dorimant mocks the entire system. Loveit and Bellinda would seem to also, for they choose to risk reputation and be promiscuous. And yet, of course, they do not reject the system entirely. Loveit wishes she could scorn Dorimant, could replace him at will—that is, outdo him at his own libertine game of endless supplementarity. She heaps powerful imprecations on his head at one moment, longing to have him in her "power" and revenge herself upon him (2.2.265-68). Here, she approximates the Devouring Goddess and speaks for all similarly oppressed women. Then at another moment, she tries to verbally fence with Dorimant over Sir Fopling. Nevertheless, her words are ultimately powerless against him; she acknowledges his "power" over her (5.1.164) and agrees to debase herself to restore his reputation, besmirched when she flirted with a fool. His real power over her is that "he has something of the angel yet undefaced in him, which makes him

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so charming and agreeable that I must love him, be he never so wicked" (2.2.15-17). That is, he is so sexually attractive that she wants to keep him, despite his "wicked" inconstancy. But she wants him to be constant to her, to keep his word. She is not really promiscuous; she has given herself only to him (5.1.183-86). She has taken him at his word and now feels betrayed. So she does not really reject the chivalric code of chastity and constancy. She has only painfully come to realize why "church security" (4.2.180) and marriage contracts were deemed necessary to ensure it. For her part, Bellinda appears to have more savoir faire than Loveit. She enters her relationship with Dorimant illusionless. And the promises she exchanges with him are not traditional betrothals but pledges to be secret or faithful to an assignation or never to see a former lover.13 Her behavior is antithetical to the code of the word, for she betrays her bond of friendship with Loveit in order to separate Dorimant from her and have him herself. When Loveit suspects as much, she exclaims bitterly, "There is no truth in friendship neither. Women as well as men, all are false" (5.1.17-18). Bellinda perverts words themselves as she relies on "confidence and lies" to assuage Loveit's suspicion (4.3.24). Her very use of the word "confidence" here shows, through at least one of its operative meanings, that she is no different from Dorimant, employing the system of trust—of confidence—in order to subvert it. She is a con artist too. Then how can Bellinda object when Dorimant breaks his word? How can she hold him accountable to the very standard through whose violation they both succeed? As she admits, "I knew him false and helped to make him so. Was not her [Loveit's] ruin enough to fright me from the danger? It should have been, but love can take no warning" (5.1.294-96). Her language here is very important, for it shows she has not really rejected the code. Dorimant "ruined" Loveit by being "false" to her. Bellinda should have known he would be equally "false" to her, but too much "love" blinded her. And now, as she insists, "H'has broke his word" to her (5.1.70). Clearly (pace Zimbardo), she is concerned for more than her reputation. She wants Dorimant not to see Loveit again because she wants him to be faithful to her. And his infidelity is what destroys their relationship and makes her vow "Never" to see him again (5.2.281). Especially in the tenuous world of this play, one should never say never, but Bellinda condemns herself to total loss of exchange value if she should have a relapse: "When we do [meet

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again], may I be as infamous as you are false" (5.2.283). Neither she nor Loveit is capable of rejecting the code of the word. Against the oppressive version of the code represented by Old Bellair and Lady Woodvill, Young Bellair and Harriet rebel. In a delightful mock marriage they vow not to have each other, and Young Bellair goes so far as to marry behind his father's back, risking disinheritance. The danger of such a course is humorously but tellingly elaborated by Medley: "Why, hang an estate, marry Emilia out of hand, and provoke your father to do what he threatens. 'Tis but despising a coach, humbling yourself to a pair of galoshes, being out of countenance when you meet your friends, pointed at and pitied wherever you go by all the amorous fops that know you, and your fame will be immortal" (1.1.44550). Such a marriage would be romantic but painfully penniless. For her part, Harriet is wild and willful. Her initial impatience with hairdressing constraints symbolizes her impatience with all restraints. She has feigned obeissance only to get her mother to leave the country for the town, with whose freedom she is "in love" (3.1.9698). And though she finds her destined husband attractive enough, as she tells her maid in the words of Cowley, there is "duty i' the case" and her "'stubborn mind"' is averse to "'being promised and designed' " (3.1.49-52). Her lively spirit rebels simply because it is constrained but also because the idea of enforced marriage is abhorrent to her. When asked what she will do to escape, she replies, "Be carried back and mewed up in the country again, run away here— anything rather than be married to a man I do not care for" (5.2.37-39). But she refuses to follow Young Bellair's course and marry someone else so she cannot be forced. She resists Emilia's efforts to have her "consult with some judicious man"—namely Dorimant (5.2.43-44). And she resists Dorimant's protestations, refuses to "promise" him anything (5.2.150), and resolves only "To be obstinate and protest against this marriage" (5.2.168). Yet neither Young Bellair's nor Harriet's rebellion is radical. Though he marries behind his father's back, he does not marry out of his class, as Old Bellair had feared. The point of Etherege's making Old Bellair fall in love with Emilia himself—to the extreme of actually marrying her to get another heir and disinherit Young Bellair as is his apparent intention in his immediate reaction to the discovery that Young Bellair is already married (5.2.198-200)—would seem to be that Emilia is an acceptable mate to preserve the aristocratic gene-

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alogy. Etherege does not realistically solve the problem of enforced marriages. He rather sentimentally resolves the problem of Old Bellair's resentment at being tricked by having his "heart" melt so that he gives the rebellious couple his blessing (5.2.310-13). But Etherege symbolically solves one threat to the aristocratic order by limiting Young Bellair's rebellion. He does marry within his class, and he does marry, exchanging the customary vows. His relationship with Emilia is based upon the word. When early in the play Young Bellair protests his "constancy," Emilia cuts him off with practical—if not libertine—wisdom: "Do not vow. Our love is frail as is our life, and full as little in our power; and are you sure you shall outlive this day?" (2.1.26-28). Young Bellair's answer is as good a one as can be made to the transience of human affection. Staying within the analogy of the incertitude of human existence, he answers Emilia's query whether he is sure he shall outlive the day: "I am not, but when we are in perfect health, 'twere an idle thing to fright ourselves with the thoughts of sudden death" (2.1.29-30). By implication, then, the possibility of inconstancy does not deter him from vowing his fidelity. In other words, he eschews the libertine "faith" Medley teases him with and chooses instead the traditional code, sanctioned by religious language. It is a religion that has its fanatics who are perennially worried about possible infidelity, but Young Bellair answers Medley's libertine objections to marriage with a restatement of his answer to Emilia: "Because religion makes some run mad, must I live an atheist?" (1.1.315-16). He refuses to be an infidel to the code and instead plights his troth. And Harriet? All her wildness and love of freedom do not lead her to libertine promiscuity. Though she says to Dorimant, "My eyes are wild and wand'ring like my passions" (4.1.110), when Young Bellair teases her with having lost a "conquest"—that is, making him fall in love with her, a displaced and therefore safe version of the Don Juan's conquests—she responds, "There are some, it may be, have an eye like Bart'lomew, big enough for the whole fair; but I am not of the number, and you may keep your gingerbread" (3.1.85-89). Though she rebels at an enforced marriage, as Young Bellair warns Dorimant about her, "Without church security, there's no taking up there" (4.2.179-80). When Emilia and Busy try to induce her into a marriage with Dorimant to avoid one with Young Bellair, although she already loves Dorimant, she refuses to "do a thing against the rules of decency and honor" (5.2.162-63). No revolutionary she. And though she hates "to promise," she boldly declares to her mother that she "would" marry

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Dorimant "and never will marry any other man" (5.2.304-5). At the same time, delicately balancing personal desire with "duty," she promises Lady Woodvill, "But I will never marry him against your will" (5.2.306-7). As with the Young Bellair plot, Etherege does not solve the fundamental problem of enforced marriage. Once again the resolution is sentimental: Harriet melts her mother's "heart" with her last promise (5.2.308). But again, symbolically, Etherege has revitalized the code of marital fidelity. Harriet has converted the greatest threat against it—Dorimant. As we have seen, Dorimant is the arch troth-breaker for whom constancy is unnatural and vows merely the currency necessary to purchase an evening's sexual pleasure. He is the libertine man of mode for whom marriage and its code of the word are as out of fashion as those forms of the previus age he so delightfully mocks as Mr. Courtage. Yet Harriet succeeds in getting him to "bear being laughed at" for love (4.1.166-67). She means for him to be so unfashionable as to "keep a Lent for a mistress" (3.3.79-80), in this case by following her "To a great, rambling, lone house" that is the antithesis of the fashionable town (5.2.379). In short, Dorimant is willing to postpone immediate sexual gratification, and since there's no taking up with Harriet without church security, the implication clearly is that he will have to do something so unfashionable and unnatural as marry. How does Harriet succeed in socializing Dorimant's sex urge? She not only has beauty (as does Loveit) and wit (as does Bellinda), but she also sees Dorimant for what he is—a man of mode as affected, in his own way, as Sir Fopling Flutter. She thinks he "affects" being "agreeable and pleasant" (3.3.23-24). To his face she mimics his "sly softness" in his "looks" and a "gentle slowness" in his "bows" as he courts ladies in the Mall (3.3.96-97). And at Lady Townley's soirée she accuses his "grave bow" of pure "Affectation" (4.1.102). In other words, she exposes Dorimant as a counterfeit, which, of course, is what he is. He counterfeits manners and words in order to satisfy his sexual appetite—to obtain his daily fruit. In doing so, he does not differ in kind, morally, from the shoemaker or the "ill-fashioned fellows" on the Mall (3.3.212s.d.), but merely in degree of sophistication, as he differs from Sir Fopling. But perhaps the thing he affects most is his fashionable libertinism. The implication of his very name is that something is sleeping in Dorimant and is about to be awakened. That something is so unfashionable as to be true love. Or at least such is the import of his language. We have noted Medley's libertine

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inversion of the religious language traditionally investing the aristocratic code of marriage and sexual constancy. Thus, the libertines not only use religious language casually and insouciantly, as in their constant, meaningless expletives, but they make their own code the proper "faith," sexual promiscuity "heaven," and marital fidelity a "hell" from which adultery is the only "salvation" (1.1.306-9). Dorimant could "keep a Lent for a mistress" and consider the "forty days well lost" if he could expect "a happy Easter"—but he is thinking of a different kind of resurrection (3.3.79-82). Nevertheless, Dorimant reverts this very language to its traditional function. After his first meeting with Harriet, he says to himself, "She has left a pleasing image of herself behind that wanders in my soul. It must not settle there." And he proceeds to quote lines from Waller's "Of Loving at First Sight": "'Snatched from myself, how far behind / Already I behold the shore!' " (3.3.121-26). The implication is that Harriet has affected him where no other woman has—in his "soul." His libertine "self" is threatened. Hence, he insists that Harriet's "image . . . must not settle there"—in his soul—or he will no longer be a libertine. This interpretation is reinforced by Dorimant's subsequent language. At their second meeting, he says aside (and is thus to be taken at his word), "I love her and dare not let her know it. I fear sh'as an ascendant o'er me and may revenge the wrongs I have done her sex" (4.1.139-41). What could be those "wrongs" except his confidence game of gaining sex through promising constancy, only to break his word? By the libertine code, these are not "wrongs," and he has mocked Loveit's attempts to name them as such. But here he so names them himself and fears Harriet will "revenge" them. How could she do so except by exercising over him the "power" he has exercised over Loveit—making him love her so much he wants to possess and keep her, a desire she could either frustrate by scorning him or fulfill with a vengeance by making him pay "church security"? He tries to save libertine face by fashionably referring to his incipient "love" as a "disease," but he describes it as one that threatens to take permanent hold; he tells her, "I never knew what 'twas to have a settled ague yet, but now and then have had irregular fits" (4.1.141-49). The word "settled" picks up his earlier insistence that her image "must not settle" in his soul. That permanence would make him unfashionable, no longer the man of mode. He would be "foppishly in love," an outcome he resists as he leaves Lady Townley's for a rendezvous with Bellinda

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as if to prove he is "flesh and blood yet"—still à la mode, still libertine, still his old self (4.1.324-25). He also fashionably pretends libertine contempt for "Ma-tri-mony" (4.2.158) and explains to friends and mistresses alike his growing vulnerability to it as mere "estate" hunting "to repair the ruins" of his own fortune (4.2.183; 5.2.265). Yet the crucial scene between him and Harriet occurs when he, with the aid of Emilia and Busy, is trying to get Harriet to marry him immediately to avoid enforced marriage. Now he uses the language of the traditional code with its attendant religious metaphors. He confesses to Harriet that, whereas his arms have always been open to other women, his "heart" is open to her "where none yet did ever enter" (5.2.114-16). Ironically, he who has so often perverted words now has difficulty making himself believed. As Harriet says, "Your tongue is so famed for falsehood, 'twill do the truth an injury" for him to proclaim his "secret" love (5.2.116-19). He persists in claiming to be no longer "counterfeit" but to be this time "free from art" (5.2.126-29)— the art of the Don Juan confidence artist. Now the religious language in its traditional formulation begins to dominate. Harriet: "In men who have been long hardened in sin, we have reason to mistrust the first signs of repentance" (5.2.130-31). The sin is no longer marriage or constancy; it is sexual promiscuity (wittily emphasized by the pun in the word "hardened"). Dorimant accepts the reversion of language, for, in order to attain "heav'n" with Harriet, he pledges "infallible" signs of his sincerity (5.2.132-33). When he enumerates these as renouncing friends, wine, and other women, she wittily and wisely interrupts: "Hold! Though I wish you devout, I would not have you turn fanatic" (5.2.137-38). Dorimant protests too much. Yet we need to remember Young Bellair's answer to Medley to see clearly all the terms in the dialectic here: "Because religion makes some run mad, must I live an atheist" (1.1.315-16). "Religion" here means traditional sexual mores. Harriet would not have Dorimant be a "fanatic" and promise too much, for performance will perforce fall short of the promise. But she would not have him be an "atheist" to the code either. She would have him be "devout"—not a devout Christian but a devout lover, true to the code of constancy. And to test his sincerity she exacts the payment of that unfashionable Lent in the country. Does that not "stagger" his "resolution," she asks? He insists, "This day my soul has quite given up her liberty" (5.2.383-87). Harriet's rejoinder—"This is more dismal than the country" (5.2.388)—casts again the grey light of irony upon Dorimant's protes-

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tations. And after all, has he not just tried to keep alive at least his affair with Bellinda? Etherege gives us no easy, sentimental resolution of this problem, the threat of the Don Juan. Yet the gradual awakening of something different in Dorimant's desire, his obvious attempt to marry Harriet, his resolve to unfashionably pursue her into the country, and especially the reversion of the religious language to once again underwrite the traditional code of the word as sexual bond—all this implies that the play moves to socialize the great sexual energy of the highly desirable Don Juan figure (with something of the angel yet undefaced in him). As comedy, the play has let the subversive genie out of the bottle to strut and fret his acts upon the stage, but it has replaced him, socialized his threat—at least potentially. Not that we return to the traditional status quo. That would be to return to the "forms and commonplaces, sucked out of the remaining lees of the last age" (4.1.318-19). Instead, because of the vitality of all the young rebels—Young Bellair, Emilia, Harriet, and Dorimant— those forms have been reinvigorated, their raison d'être rediscovered. Whether Harriet's comment to Loveit—"Mr. Dorimant has been your God almighty long enough. 'Tis time to think of another" (5.2.351-52)—points her, and us, beyond the secular to the sacred, as I once argued,14 it does work to suggest that those women in aristocratic literature who play the libertine sex game and lose are consigned to the metaphoric hell of all Loveit's dark curses and imprecations. Loveit has followed the god of desire and not the god of the code invented to restrain that desire and its threat against property and genealogy. In order to be safe from ruin, she and Bellinda and others tempted by the false promises of the sexual confidence man must, as she ironically advises Bellinda, give themselves "wholly up to goodness" (5.2.350). Like Harriet, they must demand "church security" before they accept a gentleman's word as his bond.

In an important sense, the resolutions to all three of these comedies are motivated by the same dynamic: overreaching. All three comic protagonists—the Pardoner, Volpone, and Dorimant—are catapulted by the sheer energy of their desire around the curve of infinity, as it were, back to the origins of the code of the word as restraint upon that energy. In these social comedies, societal bonds reassert themselves in the face of unrestrained monetary and sexual greed. None finally can escape the Text he perverts. The Pardoner and Volpone receive a

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poetical justice emblematic of the underwriting power of the Logos, and their works conclude with a sign of Christianity's most potent weapon—mercy, the ultimate reward for faith. Dorimant cannot fulfill his strongest desire and remain faithful to his libertine anticode; he must revert to the chivalric code of "true love" and sexual fidelity in order to satisfy not this time merely his "flesh and blood" but that "soul" that Harriet has touched as no other before her. All are reinscribed into the discourse that enforces power relations within feudal society. Thus, the overreacher of feudal social comedy gets caught in his culture's textual web of thesis and antithesis. As the radical Other, he is either made an outcast or subsumed back into his negation. And Tradition exercises its enormous elasticity to co-opt extreme threats by laughing at them, even forgiving them and closing with them in Its paternal, patriarchal comic embrace.15

N O T E S 1. For the classic argument about the tavern setting for the tale, see Frederick Tupper, "The Pardoner's Tavern." Cf. G. G. Sedgewick, "The Progress of Chaucer's Pardoner, 1880-1940," 199-201. For the argument that the Pardoner is setting up the pilgrims, see Ralph W. V. Elliott, "The Pardoner's Sermon and Its Exemplum," 24. 2. For the best arguments I know concerning either position, see Robert P. Miller, "Chaucer's Pardoner, the Scriptural Eunuch, and the Pardoner's Tale," and Monica E. McAlpine, "The Pardoner's Homosexuality and How It Matters." 3. Mosca 1.5.68, 4.6.74, 5.2.44, 5.3.31, 5.3.100; Sir Pol 2.1.90; Corvino 2.7.6; Voltore 4.6.33; Lady Wouldbe 3.4.5,4.3.17; Volpone 5.2.39, 5.6.15, 5.8.4. 4. Volpone 5.2.38, 47; 5.6.20. 5. Mosca 3.9.37. 6. Mosca 5.2.42. 7. Corvino 2.7.3; cf. Lady Wouldbe 3.4.22. 8. Mosca 3.2.34. 9. Voltore 1.3.19. 10. Mosca 1.4.119. 11. Mosca 3.2.11. 12. The classic study of woman as exchange item remains Lévi-Strauss's development of Mauss's theory of gifts, The Elementary Structures of Kinship. 13. Rose A. Zimbardo, in "Of Women, Comic Imitation of Nature, and Etherege's Man of Mode," sees the difference between Loveit's and Bellinda's codes (p. 383), though she reads the play quite differently than I. 14. "Religious Language and Religious Meaning in Restoration Comedy,"

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390. For a critique of my earlier position, see Derek Hughes, "Play and Passion in The Man of Mode." Would that Hughes had acknowledged the main thrust of my argument, essentially repeated here. It is interesting that his attack on me for being as foolish a moralist as Loveit itself takes on all the stridency of the scandalized moralist. Cf. Robert Wess, "Utopian Rhetoric in The Man of Mode," who, following a long line of interpreters that extends back to Dale Underwood, Etherege and the Seventeenth-Century Comedy of Manners, argues that the play concludes in irresolvable ambiguity between codes. I should rather borrow Shoshana Felman's application of speech act theory to the Don Juan myth (The Literary Speech Act, ch. 2) and argue that Dorimant, whose rhetoric up to this point in his life has been performative, is now forced by his desire to reinform that rhetoric with constative meaning (that is, real constancy). Unlike Molière's Dom Juan, whom Felman analyzes brilliantly, Dorimant is redeemable, and his libertine protestations at the end have attained the status of the performative. 15. I am indebted here to Hegelian and Marxist notions, best expounded recently by Raymond Williams, Marxism and Literature, and Michel Foucault, The History of Sexuality. Other illustrative examples: in the Middle Ages, Chaucer's Friar's Tale and Summoner's Tale; in the Renaissance, Philip Massinger's City Madam and the comic plots of Shakespeare's Love's Labour's Lost and MuchAdoAbout Nothing, as well as the inverted example of the socialization of Kate in The Taming of the Shrew; in the Restoration, the comic plots of Etherege's Comicall Revenge and Dryden's Secret Love, and plays where the rake assumes center stage, like William Wycherley's Love in a Wood and Aphra Behn's Rover.

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FOUR

Subversive Comedy Not all feudal comedy fully socializes the threat of the confidence man or the Don Juan. Occasionally, some figure stands out amidst the general poetical justice as unregenerate. When, like Shakespeare's Jacques or Malvolio or Etherege's Mrs. Loveit or Congreve's Marwood, that figure is in effect banished from the concluding comic embrace, the comedy remains social. But when such a figure receives no poetical justice but lurks at large within the society, the effect is subversive to the code of the word. And yet the final effect of the works is not satirical but celebratory, still comic. The following works are three of the most profoundly subversive in English feudal literature. They feature some of our greatest comic creations, figures who resist socialization, who successfully appropriate the code invented to protect society from their likes. Outrageous tricksters, from the Wife of Bath to Ursula the Pig-Woman and her cohorts in crime to the wits Quarlous and Horner to Margery Pinchwife, the incipient Country Wife of Bath, these con artists represent some of our deepest wish fulfillments even as they pervert the moral, political, and metaphysical bonds of the word aristocratic society clung to so desperately for security.

The Wife of Bath's Tale Unlike Etherege's Harriet, Chaucer's Wife of Bath is a real rebel. And while both her Prologue and her Tale move toward comic closure—

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with apparent discrepancies reconciled—she remains subversive to the chivalric code of the word as bond. Her attack seems at first aimed not so much at that code in its usual, moderate expression but rather at the extremes to which it has been stretched: the extreme positions of Saints Paul, Augustine, and Jerome, for example, on the question of human and especially female sexuality. To her practical mind the exaltation of virginity reaches absurdity when Fathers of the Church seem to forget that if everyone were" one there would be no one. She berates her husbands for their repeated misogynistic portrayals of women as inherently lascivious and inconstant. Her fifth husband, Janekyn, actually reads such lessons to her from a series of traditional tracts. In a sense, the Wife is forced to listen to the same traditional portrayal of women we have been examining in English chivalric literature, except that Janekyn's examples come from Scripture and the Classical literary tradition as handed down through the Middle Ages and except that all his examples are negative, analogues to Grendel's Mother, Morgan le Fay, Duessa, Lyndaraxa, and Mrs. Loveit. His list is merely an extension of the list Sir Gawain recites in his moment of misogynistic anger at the Lady of the Castle. Tearing leaves out of Janekyn's book is an act of rebellion against an oppressive stereotype. As the Wife eloquently puts it, "Who peyntede the leon, tel me who?" (III[D]692). Out of their fear of female sexuality, men have painted these portraits, designed to keep women subservient and pure vessels for their hegemonic patrilineal genealogy. Through her alter ego, the hag in the Tale, the Wife even attacks the concept of aristocratic genealogy itself, arguing that gentle is as gentle does and that poverty does not preclude worth. Hence the Wife heroically exposes the extremes and flaws in the chivalric code of chastity. Yet what motivates her rebellion? Desire for fair treatment or equal status? On the contrary, she would be equally dominant. To her, the relationship between wives and husbands is a "werre" (390). With her first three husbands she is interested only in "wynnyng" (416), both conquering and gaining profit. She "governed" them according to her "lawe" (219)—a countercode whose values are "profit" and "ese" (214), dominance and revenge. She prides herself on quitting her first three husbands "word for word" (422) and on making her fourth, unfaithful husband "frye" in "his owene grece" (487). And obviously she prides herself on turning her fifth husband's violence against him and

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subduing him to her "governance" and "soveraynetee" (814-18), just as the women in the Tale turn the knight's violent rape ultimately into his submission to the "governance" and "maistrie" of the hag (1231-36). To put it another way, as the Wife does in her astrological analogue, she is engaged from the opening line in a debate with that aspect of men that produces tracts and disputations on women, among countless other topics. That is, as specifically in the case of her fifth husband, she is a child of Venus and he of Mercury. The children of Mercurie and of Venus Been in hir wirkyng ful contrarius; Mercurie loveth wysdam and science, And Venus loveth ryot and dispence. (697-700) In this debate the Wife's appeal is ostensibly to "Experience," as opposed to the clerkish "auctoritee" (1). But she obviously (and perversely) delights in turning Mercury's weapons on himself. She quits him "word for word." For every Scriptural text used against her, the Wife finds a contradictory one that justifies her. Against Jesus's words to the Samaritan woman, used as authority to limit widows from remarrying, she simply alludes to the injunction in Genesis: "God bad us for to wexe and multiplye" (28; Gen 1:28). Or against "Lameth and his bigamye" (54), she cites the polygamous examples of Abraham and Jacob (35ff., 55-58). She delights in citing Paul's (grudging) approval of marriage—"Bet is to be wedded than to brynne" (52; 1 Corinthians 7:9)—and in using against him the notion that she has "power" over her husband's "propre body" (158-59; 1 Corinthians 7:4). In the Tale, the hag similarly delights in appeals to Scriptural and Classical authority: to "Jhesus" (1181), "Senek" (1168, 1184), "Juvenal" (1192), "Valerius" (1165), "Boece" (1168). Both wives love to confound the male intellect with its own logic. Perhaps the best example comes when the Wife asks her first husbands why they hide the keys to their chests: "What, wenestow make an ydiot of oure dame?" (311). The logic runs thus: "By not trusting me with the keys you are implying that I am an idiot merely because I am a woman. But if all women are idiots by definition, then you are calling the Blessed Mother of God an idiot.

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Therefore your conclusion is invalid as based upon a false hidden premise. Give me the keys." What is most wonderfully comic is not so much the way the Wife uses logic but the Logos Itself. 1 When she says of the injunction to multiply, "That gentil text kan I wel understonde" (29), she does so with a sensualist's twinkle in her eye. She comments with unfeigned envy concerning Solomon's sex life. As wolde God it were leveful unto me To be refresshed half so ofte as he! Which yifte of God hadde he for alle his wyvys! No man hath swich that in this world alyve is. (37-40) To her, Solomon's "yifte" is surely not his wisdom! She loves to point out that Paul had no Scriptural authority to command virginity and so could only counsel it (69-82). And she loves to misinterpret Paul's injunction to husbands to love their wives well (160-62). Of course, she uses the text as justification for demanding continual sexual satisfaction, to the extent of turning her husband into a "thral" and making her pleasure his "tribulación" (155-56). Such a threat to his "flessh so deere" (167) in his supposed upcoming marriage causes the Pardoner playfully to interrupt her, though he really wants her to continue and "teche us yonge men of your praktike" (187). She has perverted the auctoritee of the Word to the service of her "praktike" in the "olde daunce" (GP 476). Another way she perverts the code of the word is to continually obtain or bear false witness. All her accusations about her first husband's misogyny are "fais," and yet she suborns the servants and even her niece (381-83). Covering her own tracks she reports saying to one of these husbands, "I swoor that al my walkynge out by nyghte / Was for t'espye wenches that he dighte" (397-98). At the end of her diatribe against her first three husbands she falsely swears, "Ye be to blame, by God! I sey yow sooth" (450). But more subtle and outrageous are her apparently perfunctory oaths when seen in their immediate context. Not only does she sprinkle her discourse to her first husband with ubiquitous benedicitees, she utters such incredibly juxtaposed statements as the following:

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In wyfhod I wol use myn instrument As frely as my Makere hath it sent. If I be daungerous, God yeve me sorwe! Myn housbonde shal it have bothe eve and morwe. (149-52; see also 222-23, 365, 446) Concerning her unfaithful husband, she swears, "But he was quit, by God and by Seint Joce! / I made hym of the same wode a croce" (483-84; see also 489-90). And concerning her prospective fifth, as they follow the funeral of the fourth, she says with irrepressible sensuality: As help me God! whan that I saugh hym go After the beere, me thoughte he hadde a paire Of legges and of feet so clene and faire That al myn herte I yaf unto his hoold. (596-99) Describing her character she says: I hadde the prente of seinte Venus seel. As help me God! I was a lusty oon, . . . For God so wys be my savacioun, I ne loved nevere by no discrecioun, But evere folwede myn appétit, Al were he short, or long, or blak, or whit. (604-24) And finally, she concludes her tale thus: and Jhesu Crist us sende Housbondes meeke, yonge, and fresshe abedde, And grace t'overbyde hem that we wedde; And eek I praye Jhesu shorte hir lyves That wol nat be governed by hir wyves; And olde and angry nygardes of dispence, God sende hem soone verray pestilence! (1258-64) However casual may be her expletives, she inadvertently calls upon God to witness her unbridled sensuality, cruelty, pragmatism, sexual bribery, duplicity, vindictiveness, wantonness, unsatiability.

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She calls upon Him to curse incorrigibles and cut short their lives. Since the form of so many of these oaths is "So help me God," by calling attention to the comic disparity between her oaths and her intentions, Chaucer reveals just how blasphemously defiant she is. According to the Word she defies, she risks eternal damnation in her rebellion. Yet she appears to be saved, to be reabsorbed into the chivalric code. After all, she assures her audience that she did not really avenge her fourth husband in kind but merely made him think so (484-88). The worst she appears guilty of is talking frankly about the imperfect but acceptable sexual role she has chosen. In terms of deeds she is guilty only of manipulating her first three husbands and preparing for her fifth. And with him, she assures us, after their physical altercation over his misogynistic texts, he gave her "al the soveraynetee" (818) and she in turn becomes absolutely "trewe" (825). So the purpose of the code is served after all. Both here and in her Tale the Wife (like Arveragus in reverse) seems to want only "the name of soveraynetee" (FT V[F]751), that is, merely the appearance of overturning the patriarchal code, after which she will observe that code faithfully. The hag says, "For, by my trouthe, I wol be to yow bothe, / This is to seyn, ye, bothe fair and good" (1240-41). Interpreted in the best possible light (for the code's sake), the Wife's rhetoric can be seen as a plea: for recognition of her value and vitality, for a share in power and responsibility. Acknowledge her identity, her desires, her needs and she will keep the faith. Yet can we believe this interpretation? Is not the Wife finally too subversive to be socialized? Let us remember that she characterizes the relationship between the sexes as a "werre" one must constantly strive to win. And her most dangerous weapon is not so much her "queinte," which she uses as both reward and punishment, but her tongue, with which she subverts not only Scripture, as we have seen, but the entire code. For example, she redefines certain key words. A "goode" husband is "riche, and olde"—and submissive (197). The "statut" that binds man and wife together is not the bond we have seen in tragicomic romance or social comedy but merely Paul's statement that the wife rules the husband's body (1 Cor. 7:4). That alone makes sense of this comment about the Wife's first three husbands. Unnethe myghte they the statut holde In which that they were bounden unto me. Ye woot wel what I meene of this, pardee!

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As help me God, I laughe whan I thynke How pitously a-nyght I made hem swynke. (198-202) "Lawe" becomes the sexual rule by which she "governs" (219). Wisdom becomes the pragmatics of manipulation: A "wys" wife will work hard to get a man and his wealth; after that, she need "nat do lenger diligence" (see 205-14). "Wise wyves," if they know their own "good," know how to "speke and bere [husbands] wrong on honde," especially if they have "mysavysed" themselves and gotten caught in adultery (225-34). In other words, their own good is not morality but survival by means of what a wife is best at: "For half so boldely kan ther no man / Swere and lyen, as a womman kan" (227-28). Such false oaths she uses to get even with her fourth husband, as we have seen, and she justifies such behavior thus: For al swich wit is yeven us in oure byrthe; Deceite, wepyng, spynnyng God hath yive To wommen kyndely, whil that they may lyve. (400-402) But women are not only born with such tricks, according to the Wife, they learn them from their mothers; their subversive antithetical "lawe" is passed on from generation to generation in subversive sisterhood. My dame taughte me that soutiltee, . . . But as I folwed ay my dames loore, As wel of this as of othere thynges moore. (576-84) This lore teaches her how to manipulate men through lying. What about her apparently heroic act of defiance toward her fifth husband's misogyny? The Wife confesses a more selfish motivation. Ne I wolde nat of hym corrected be. I hate hym that my vices telleth me, And so doo mo, God woot, of us than I. (661-63; cf. 935-44) In other words, the antifeminist tracts are not wrong. The Wife just does not like to hear them.

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In the face of all these details, how can we believe the Wife when she says she was "trewe" to her fifth husband? How could we believe the hag? Chaucer undercuts all such pledges by the Wife's subversive use of such rhetoric to fool her first husbands. She completes her verbal conquest over them outrageously concluding that if they insist on having her "queynte" all to themselves, well, silly as such a typical male request is, since she can walk "fressh as is a rose" no matter how often she shares it or sells it, nevertheless she promises each she will "kepe it for youre owene tooth" (440-49). Are these just empty "wordes," as she herself implies (451)? Hasn't she said earlier "al is for to selle" (414)? Still, sounding almost like Arveragus, the Wife counsels husbands to beware jealousy and instead to allow their wives freedom, to believe no rumors, but to trust them to be "trewe" (316-20). Her reasoning, however, is more that of Paulina or Doralice, as is obvious in her interpretation of Ptolemy's injunction to "rekketh nevere who hath the world in honde" (327). By this proverbe thou shalt understonde, Have thou ynogh, what thar thee recche or care How myrily that othere folkes fare? (328-30) The Wife's real philosophy seems to be that what a husband doesn't know won't hurt him. Concerning constancy, she provides an interesting gloss in the Tale. And somme seyn that greet délit han we For to been holden stable, and eek secree, And in o purpos stedefastly to dwelle, And nat biwreye thyng that men us telle. (945-48) But the Wife will have none of this and provides the counterexample of Midas's wife, who could not keep his secret. By extension, the Wife undermines the possibility of the constant wife. Midas "trusted" his wife absolutely, and she "swoor" she would not reveal his secret (949-82). Nevertheless, she is un-"stable" and incapable of remaining "in o purpos stedefastly." The Wife's most signal self-revelation is her declaration that she is "Venerien / In feelynge, and myn herte is Marcien" (609-10). This is

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the essence of the Wife: She is both sexy and uppity. She has not only an appetite but a polemical spirit that gives her the spunk to defy Mercury's clerkish "text" (346). Nietzsche would have made the opposition between Dionysiac and Apollonian, but the point is the same. Man invents his systems of words with which to constrain or conquer the forces of nature (sex, death). But the life force surges on in spite of them. Why then does the Wife hold out the promise of constancy? First, to obtain sovereignty by promising that which feudal man so desperately seems to need—the guarantee of untainted genealogy. So the promise is a lie? A wise woman will cover her tracks. Sounding like Dryden's Doralice, the Wife in effect says tauntingly that there is no experiment a husband can perform on a wife to discover if she has shared her lantern (see 331-35). The Wife's second reason would seem to be occasional. She is on the pilgrimage precisely to seek a sixth husband: "Welcome the sixte, whan that evere he shal" (45). She admits that age has bereft the "flour" of her beauty and that "The bren, as I best kan, now moste I selle" (477-78). She confesses that she goes on such "pilgrimages" precisely "for to se, and eek for to be seye / Of lusty folk" (552-59); thus her ostentatious garb as described in the General Prologue and thus especially her rhetoric, her words, her antilogos. All her elaborate descriptions of her Venereal nature, her Martian "hardynesse," her "likerous tayl" (466), the "beste quoniam," in town (608), and particularly her "experience," that wisdom of widows (1027)—all this seems addressed to her fellow pilgrims, to titillate the males and attract a potential husband. What better way to do so than hold out the fantasy of the old hag who will be both beautiful and true to the man that submits to her experience and turns it into authority? Perhaps it is no accident that Chaucer has only the Pardoner really respond to what the Wife says. He is the one pilgrim who can do nothing about it (or who surely would not please her if he tried). Perhaps Chaucer suggests that whoever believes that the Wife—any wife?— will be true is a fool. But perhaps also anyone who believes that the Wife represents the Great Female Rebel or the Dionysiac essence of woman is a fool too. Those are very male interpretations of woman. English chivalric literature portrays woman as having a potentially voracious and destructive sexual appetite that threatens the patriarchal aristocratic order. While in the Wife of Bath Chaucer has given us a wonderfully comic, subversive, rebellious woman, he has not

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really departed from that tradition. The Wife refuses to follow that "text," that "rubriche" (346), but she is inscribed in it nonetheless. Yet even as she is redrawn into the chivalric comic circle, she is not socialized by having the threat she represents neutered (like the Pardoner) or punished (like Volpone or Mosca) or converted (like Dorimant). She pretends to be socialized but remains the sign of the chivalric code's deepest fear.2

Bartholomew

Fair

Bartholomew Fair promises to end like Volpone in a distributive poetical justice. The magistrate Adam Overdo throws off his disguise and begins to conduct a kind of Last Judgment, a separating of the sheep from the goats. He thinks of himself as a "scourge of enormity" (5.6.35). But when he sees his own wife as one of Whit and Knockem's whores, he is struck dumb, and Quarlous transforms the ending from the distribution of justice into a comic embrace of common, sinful humanity: "Remember you are but Adam, flesh and blood! You have your frailty; forget your other name of Overdo and invite us all to supper" (5.6.94-96). Nevertheless, a certain amount of poetical justice has already been distributed, much of it for violations of the code of the word as bond. Littlewit is punished for treating so lightly the bond between husband and wife. He attempts to appear fashionable and to ingratiate himself with the real cavalier wits by assiduously inviting them to kiss his wife Win-the-Fight. As Winwife kisses her repeatedly, enumerating her attractions, Littlewit says with foolish insouciance, "I envy no man my delicates, sir" (1.2.12). When Winwife carresses Win's velvet-capped head, Littlewit rejoices in his own verbal dexterity, completely ignoring the symbolic cuckolding before his face and exclaiming, "Good i'faith!" (1.2.16). The casual expletive underscores his casual attitude toward marital fidelity. Littlewit has gone so far as to engage Quarlous, when the two were in their cups before the action of the play, to perform some mock gallantry toward his wife. Whether he remembers the specific agreement, Quarlous kisses Win amorously enough for her to protest to her husband: "Why, John! do you see this, John? Look you! help me, John" (1.3.35-36). Ludicrously, Littlewit insists that both Winwife and Quarlous are gentlemen and their "worshipful good friends" (1.3.43), and he encourages Quarlous to continue.

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When Quarlous sexually puns to his face—"We'll kiss again and fall in" (1.3.46)—Win admonishes Littlewit, again with the casual expletive underscoring the mockery of fidelity, "I'faith you are a fool, John" (1.3.48). Quarlous's transformation of "fool-John" to "appleJohn" (1.3.50-51) makes the meaning of all this play explicit: Littlewit is performing the function of "apple-squire" or pander to his own wife (see 1.3.51n). Later in the play he delivers her into the hands of whoremasters whom he mistakes for "honest gentlemen" as Win protests, "Will you leave me alone with two men, John?" (4.5.7-8). But heedlessly he leaves her "in trust" with them and then complains, "I ha' lost my little wife, as I shall be trusted" (5.6.15-17). Jonson's use of the mild oath highlights the problem. Littlewit cannot be trusted because he is too lavish of his trust. As a result, his wife becomes one of Whit's whores and is given to Edgworth as his promised reward for a day's work as a cutpurse. Whether Edgworth actually commits with her before the puppet show, whether her body has been defiled, her mind has been. Whit and Knockem convince her that "an honest woman's life"—protected by the bond of the word, of betrothal—is "de leef of a bondwoman"; that she can be "a freewoman and a lady" and "be honest too" (4.5.29-33). Of course, all these key words are redefined: the bond of marital fidelity is bondage; to be a freewoman is to be not economically independent but sexually promiscuous; to be a lady is to have not noble blood but noble clothes; to be honest is to be not chaste but discreet. Her corruption is signaled by her exclamation, "Lord, what a fool have I been!" (4.5.49). And again, Jonson highlights what is being corrupted by Whit's casual oaths: "by my fait and trot," "fait," "by my hand" (4.5.27, 30, 41-42). Win's ironic appeal to the "Lord" completes the series and marks her faith as corrupted. It remains so when she attends the puppet show with Edgworth, flattered at all the attention she is getting. Edgworth asks, "Is not this a finer life, lady, than to be clogged with a husband?" and she responds, "Yes, a great deal" (5.4.58-60). Thus, Littlewit has in effect received what he has asked for. When Justice Overdo unmasks the "green madam herself, of the price," the loose-tongued Littlewit can only be as silent as Harpocrates (5.6.45-48). One of Jonson's greatest creations, Zeal-of-the-Land Busy, is also punished in the play for violation of the code of the word. He is exposed as a hypocrite who "stands upon his face more than his faith" (1.3.127), "making himself rich by being made feoffee in trust to deceased brethren, and coz'ning their heirs by swearing the absolute gift

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of their inheritance" (5.2.62-64). But these breaches of trust are trivial compared to his real "enormity," as Justice Overdo would call it. This quintessential Puritan appropriates to himself the Word of God and uses it to clothe himself in self-righteousness as he rails like an Old Testament prophet against the abominations of others. Jonson has infused Busy with the rhetorical energy of a Volpone or Sir Epicure Mammon, and it breaks out in resplendence when he can finally control his supposedly righteous anger at the Fair no longer. Of course, Jonson has undercut his attack. Now that he has literally pigged-out in Ursula's tent, he can afford the luxury of displaying his own wares as he decries those of Ursula and Leatherhead and Joan Trash. His appropriation and idiosyncratic application of the Word is perhaps most obvious in his use of Biblical allusions to attack Leatherhead's goods: "Peace with thy apocryphal wares, thou profane publican—thy bells, thy dragons, and thy Toby's dogs. Thy hobbyhorse is an idol, a very idol, a fierce and rank idol; and thou the Nebuchadnezzar, the proud Nebuchadnezzar of the Fair, that sett'st it up for children to fall down to and worship" (3.6.51-55). The allusions are to the Apocrypha (Bel and the Dragon and Tobit) and the Book of Daniel, and the joke is the use of such profound references to attack such trivial offenses. The image of children worshipping a hobbyhorse is hilariously absurd. To Busy, a child's drum is "the broken belly of the Beast" (3.6.63), Trash's gingerbread a "basket of popery," a "nest of images" (3.6.67-68). But all this is not merely silly, it is an ostentation solely for its own sake, as we can tell from Busy's self-conscious delight in such rhetorical techniques as incremental repetition, punning, and alliteration. I was moved in spirit to be here this day in this Fair, this wicked and foul Fair—and fitter may it be called a foul than a Fair—to protest against the abuses of it, the foul abuses of it, in regard of the afflicted saints, that are troubled, very much troubled, exceedingly troubled, with the opening of the merchandise of Babylon again, and the peeping of popery upon the stalls, here, here, in the high places. (3.6.79-86)

Busy pretends the "sin of the Fair provokes" him, and thus he refuses to be "silent" (3.6.71): "I will make a loud and most strong noise, till I have daunted the profane enemy" (3.6.96-97). But as Wasp later says, enunciating an important principle in the play, "He that will correct another must want fault in himself" (5.4.99). Because Busy is a hypo-

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crite, he does not have the right to his righteous rhetoric. For his abuse of words and of the Word, then, he is put into the stocks, and, what is worse for the inspired Saint, he is pubicly defeated in disputation with a puppet, whose ultimate argument is a Puritan-style equivocation (like the one Busy uses to justify going to the Fair for pig [1.6]). Puppets are sexless (as Dionysius hilariously demonstrates by pulling up his skirts), and therefore Busy's charge of transvestism among players does not hold against them. All at once, Busy is "confuted" and "converted" from his Puritanical zeal (5.5.101-2). At the end, like Littlewit, he is completely silenced. Dame Purecraft exposes herself to Quarlous as a similar hypocrite. Full of the cant of the Saints, she is herself a confidence artist, playing upon the trust of others to bilk them. She has pretended to be a "holy widow . . . only to draw feasts and gifts from my entangled suitors"; she has been "a devourer, instead of a distributor, of the alms"; she has, for a price, been a marriage broker, obtaining rich widows for "decayed brethren" and virgins for "wealthy bachelors or widowers"; these virgins she has taught to "steal from their husbands" and share the proceeds with her after she has "confirmed them in the faith" (5.2.50-58). In other words, this Puritan dame is pure craft, and once again Jonson highlights the perversion of the code by having a key word be redefined: "faith" here is no longer shared religion but a shared craft of trickery and thievery. Thus, Dame Purecraft deserves her treatment at Quarlous's hands. Playing off her desire for the ultimate madcap (Trouble-all), he tricks her into marriage and obtains her six thousand pounds for his own. Quarlous leads her in at the end a silent woman. Bartholomew Cokes deserves to be duped not for any violation of faith but simply for being an "ass" (1.5.47), a country bumpkin, who really has no "soul" (4.2.50), who is really a child, valuing his lost trinkets more than his lost fiancée, Grace (4.2.74-79). Certainly he deserves her not, deserves instead to lose her to Winwife, if only because the latter, along with Quarlous, has "manners" and "language," "understanding and discourse" (3.5.271; 4.3.34)—all signs of aristocratic worth which the rich country booby lacks. In some sense, then, the duping of Cokes is related to that of Busy and Purecraft. The latter use language hypocritically; the former has no "language" at all except that of a fool. Cokes's fate is related also to Littlewit's, for the latter's language is entirely that of a would-be wit. Both are ciphers in Jonson's system of accounting.

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This theme of language, of proper and improper words, entails also Wasp, who is appropriately punished for his insolent and impertinent words. He hurls "turd i'your teeth" (passim) not only at his young master Cokes, but also at Mistress Overdo, the Justice's wife, at Quarlous and Winwife, at nearly everyone. Hence, it is poetical justice that he should be caught up in a game of "vapors" (4.4.21) or senseless contradictions until it explodes in anarchic strife. Wasp's impertinence ultimately threatens the aristocratic hierarchic order. It is a form of leveling. At the high point of the quarrel, Mistress Overdo attempts to impose order by threatening to arrest these anarchic "rebels" upon her "justice-hood" (4.4.138-41). Wasp's response challenges authority itself, recognizes no distinction conferred by office: "Upon your justicehood? Marry, shit o'your hood . . . . Why mistress, I knew Adam, the clerk, your husband, when he was Adam scrivener, and writ for twopence a sheet, as high as he bears his head now, or you your hood, dame" (4.4.142-53). Not only is he thrown in the stocks, the public knowledge of which costs him "authority" over Cokes (5.4.97), but his pride in his circumspectness is dealt the blow of Edgworth's stealing Cokes's marriage license out of the box Wasp momentarily neglects during the fight of vapors. The knowledge of this bubbling finally strikes Wasp dumb: "I will never speak while I live, again, for aught I know" (5.6.101). Finally, poetical justice is visited upon Justice Overdo himself for trying to play deus absconditus and appropriating to himself God's own righteousness and rhetoric—the Word with a vengeance.3 He cites as precedent another magistrate (historically the Lord Mayor of London) who "would not trust his corrupt officers" (2.1.23) but went underground to spy on and to entrap lawbreakers. This is a form of pride in his own ability to see what others cannot, to not be deceived. And his rhetoric sounds like that traditionally used to describe the Hidden God: he calls his disguise "the cloud that hides me; under this covert I shall see and not be seen" (2.1.40-41); "I will not discover who I am till my due time" (3.3.34-35). Later, he looks forward to his éblouissance in apocalyptic terms: "Neither is the hour of my severity yet come, to reveal myself, wherein, cloud-like, I will break out in rain and hail, lightning and thunder, upon the head of enormity" (5.2.3-6). And at the moment of his revelation he declares with Biblical sonority, "Look upon me, o London! and see me, o Smithfield! the example of justice and mirror of magistrates, the true top of formality and scourge

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of enormity. Hearken unto my labors and but observe my discoveries" (5.6.33-36). But Overdo cannot measure up to such rhetoric. He is repeatedly fooled by appearances (especially by Edgworth, whom he takes as an innocent "lamb" being led astray [2.4.74]), and does not even see that one of the "persons of such fashion" before him at the puppet show is his own wife, who has been bewhored (5.4.38). Even Overdo's mercy miscarries, as he gives Quarlous instead of Trouble-all his blank warrant for restitution (5.2). What is worse, spending all this time in such vain pursuits, he has neglected his wife and, like Littlewit, in effect has turned her over to the tricksters, where her secret desire for "men of war and the sons of the sword" (4.4.210) can be indulged. His discovery at the end that she too is a "green madam" causes him, even this would-be Jehovah, to be "silenced" (5.6.66s. d.). Quarlous, it would seem, restores the Word at the end and closes the circle of comic acceptance. He reminds the stupefied Justice Overdo that he is not God but fallen man, according to Genesis: "remember you are but Adam, flesh and blood! You have your frailty" (5.6.94-95). With this admonition, Overdo is taught to be "patient" (5.6.102) and in effect allowed to speak again, as he accepts Quarlous's graceful suggestion to have a "supper," preaches similar patience to Wasp, calls "good friends all," forgets "enormities," and enunciates the apparent standard of comedy in the play, "ad correctionem, non ad destructionem; ad aedificandum, non ad diruendum" (5.6.102-9). Nevertheless, there is something very subversive about a good deal of the action and a good deal of the ending of this play. In Volpone not only the deservedly duped but also the tricksters themselves are punished. Here the nest of con artists at the Fair get off scot free. Leatherhead and Trash have at least bilked Cokes of the money he spent for their wares. Though detected by Quarlous, Edgworth has cut two of Cokes's purses, and Quarlous uses his knowledge only to blackmail Edgworth into stealing Cokes's marriage license for him. Nightingale creates a diversion while Edgworth cuts purses. Knockem and Whit turn wives into whores. And Ursula's booth serves as a front for most if not all of these operations, while Mooncalf her tapster learns how to shortdraught customers. Moreover, the gentlemen tricksters succeed in their devices, too. Winwife steals Grace from Cokes, and Quarlous gets not only Dame Purecraft and her fortune but part of Grace's. There is not the slightest hint of condemna-

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tion of all this trickery. On the contrary, it is celebrated, portrayed as the exuberance of vital energy. For all the "enormity" of Ursula the pig-woman, she seems an embodiment of a life force that flows through countless thieves and rogues who survive by their wits and whom we admire despite what we ought to say. Against the wit and vitality of such characters, the rhetoric of reformers seems absurdly inefficacious, from Overdo's mad Arthur of Bradley routine on liqour and tobacco—which unwittingly serves only as a screen for Edgworth's cutting a purse (2.6)—to Busy's rhapsodical remonstrations. At the Fair, not Overdo nor the Watch but the Lords of Misrule reign. No one heeds Mistress Overdo's repeated evocation of "the King's name" (4.4.109; 4.5.60). For survival or just for fun in a game of vapors, the thieves will turn on each other at a moment's notice. All become "rebels" against authority, not just Wasp (4.4.138). We have seen how easily Win-the-Fight Littlewit is drawn into this rebellion against the bonds of society and how easily it can serve to level all distinctions of class and of morals. The amorality is chiseled into exquisite relief by Captain Whit's wordplay. Speaking of his new recruits Win Littlewit and Mistress Overdo, he bubbles exuberantly, "Yes, fait, dey shall all both be ladies and write Madam. I vili do't myself for dem. Do is the vord, and D is the middle letter of Madam. DD, put 'em together and make deeds, without which all words are alike, la" (4.5.82-85). Words are inherently meaningless themselves unless turned into deeds. There is no such thing as a lady; the title Madam confers no distinction. Anyone may assume them in order to survive by deeds. And this insouciantly nominalistic philosophy is punctuated ironically by "fait . . . la!" The world of the Fair is a counterculture that turns the chivalric code on its head. Perhaps the best symbol in the play for this counterculture is the puppet show. Its title promises all the traditional values of the code of the word: "The ancient modern history of Hero and Leander, otherwise called The Touchstone of True Love, with as true a trial of friendship between Damon and Pythias, two faithful friends o'the Bankside" (5.3.6-9). But the show is mock-heroic: the characters are low class, the dialogue vulgar; Hero is a whore who masturbates with a "whole candle" (5.4.282: so much for true love) and over whom Damon and Pythias fight, hurling insults in each other's face with "true friendly greeting" (5.4.212: so much for faithful friends). Lantern Leatherhead ironically comments concerning this "friendship's true trial," "They

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fight you no more than does brother with brother" (5.4.255-57). And the key "word" of the puppet play becomes "whoremaster•" (5.4.307-8). What makes this mock-heroic show the symbol of the serious threat of moral anarchy is its counterparts in the larger play: wives become whores; those taken to be heroes (Captain Jordan and Captain Whit) are whoremasters; and good friends fall into deadly rivalry, as Quarlous and Winwife draw swords over Grace. In other words, at its most subversive level, the play suggests that just as the microcosm of play or play-within-a-play has no justice, so also the macrocosm of the real world has no justice. Indeed, even the King is a son of Adam and therefore frail. And perhaps there is the blasphemous suggestion that the macrocosm of the universe has no justice either, that Overdo both is not and is God Himself (see Cope, "Bartholomew Fair as Blasphemy")· Whichever is the case, the world of the play, at least up to the last minute, is one without a determining Word. Jonson emphasizes this point through the wonderfully mad and seemingly irrelevant Trouble-all, who constantly cries out for a "warrant," for some word, some sign of the authority whereby people do things in the play. And the only "word," the only name he will accept on the warrant is Adam Overdo, for "that is the name of names" (4.6.138-39). In short, the world is in need of a Logos. Without it, all codes have no authority, all systems are arbitrary. The world needs a Superego, without which there is no justice—and no guilt either. Trouble-all's demands for a warrant momentarily trouble Edgworth. He says to Nightingale, "Beshrew him, he startled me. I thought he had known of our plot. Guilt's a terrible thing!" (4.2.9-10). When Dame Purecraft insists she has "a warrant out of the Word" to thank Trouble-all for providing Busy with a respite (4.1.98), he tells her, "keep your word" (4.1.101), for he will accept none but Adam Overdo's. The meaning of this exchange is that the Puritans' claim to direct authority from the Bible will not do to enforce the social and political codes. Individual interpretation is too anarchic. Instead, the Logos must manifest itself through hierarchical authority, through "the King's name" down through those even of his lowliest magistrate. Without an anchoring word, warrants and licenses become blank, to be arbitrarily changed or filled in. They become floating signifiers, words to be nailed down only by the deeds of desire. Jonson stresses the arbitrariness of such a world in the antiromantic career of Grace. Antipathetic to a union with a fool like Cokes, Grace would marry "anybody else" so she "might 'scape" him (1.5.79-80); she "would take

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up any husband, almost upon any trust" (4.3.10-11). When Quarlous and Winwife fall to swords over her, she agrees to a totally arbitrary device to avoid this comic but still dangerous sacrificial crisis. Although she insists she must have a husband she loves (4.3.13-14), she nevertheless refuses to choose between the two wits. Each is to scribble a "word" or a "name" into her book, and she will have the next person who comes along designate which word he or she approves, upon which choice she will irrevocably base hers (4.3.44-50). Winwife chooses the name Palamon and Quarlous Argalus—constant lovers out of heroic romance, Shakespeare and Fletcher's version of The Knight's Tale, Two Noble Kinsmen, and Sidney's Arcadia, respectively. Grace pretends there is "destiny" in the "business" (4.3.47), but she plights her troth on the merest whim of chance. The arbitrariness is underlined by its being Trouble-all who marks the book, completely disinterestedly, approving of no word, no name but Overdo's. The only distinguishing mark Jonson allows Graces's two potential husbands is class. She is attracted (of course, being Grace Wellborn) to men whose "manners," "language," "understanding and discourse" mark them as superior—and gentlemen. But otherwise, the choice between them is capricious. After Quarlous, disguised as Trouble-all, reveals the name is Palamon, Grace announces to Winwife, "Yes, faith, he has discovered it to you now, and therefore 'twere vain to disguise it longer; I am yours, sir, by the benefit of your fortune" (5.2.28-30). In contrast to the intervention of benevolent deities in favor of Palamon in Two Noble Kinsmen, here the decision, the awarding of Grace, belongs to chance alone (as it does, I will argue later, in Chaucer's tale), for Winwife is no constant lover but a pragmatic wit. Similarly arbitrary is Quarlous's obtaining Overdo's blank warrant, which he uses to strip Grace of a moiety of her fortune. Overdo thinks he is redressing an injury to Trouble-all, for whom he mistakes the disguised Quarlous. And also arbitrary is Quarlous's additional good fortune of obtaining Dame Purecraft and her wealth. Equally fooled by Quarlous's disguise, she thinks she is fulfilling her recently told fortune that she would never be happy lest she marry a madman within a week (1.2.42-46). Who is more truly mad than Trouble-all? Quarlous's response to these two accidents is extremely important. Concerning Overdo's warrant he says, "Why should not I ha' the conscience to make this a bond of a thousand pound, now? or what I would else?" (5.2.112-13). As with other key words from the traditional code in the play, here "conscience" is redefined to mean nothing moral but

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rather amoral worldly wisdom. Concerning Dame Purecraft's falling into his lap he says, "There's no playing with a man's fortune" (5.2.77). One must seize Fortune (in her related shape of Occasio) by the forelock or one will lose her. Thus, the only real value in the play emerges. If the world have no warrant, no legitimating Logos; if all be arbitrary, then one must rely on one's wit and use it to make the best of one's lot, one's fortune. Quarlous prides himself for being above the tricksters of the Fair. By using Edgworth to obtain Cokes's license he is afraid he has been dragged down to his level: "Facinus quos inquinai, aequat" (4.6.27: "crime levels those whom it corrupts"). But like Dorimant, morally Quarlous is no different from the other tricksters. He is just superior in wit (being wellborn himself). This superiority is demonstrated in repeated encounters with the Fair people: with Ursula, who must resort to her pig-pan, ignominiously falling on it when she would wield it against Quarlous (2.5); with Edgworth, whom he catches in the act and forces to serve him; with Val Cutting and the other roarers in the game of vapors (4.4). Not even Winwife is a match for Quarlous. In a world where there is no Word for warrant and no honor among thieves, one must one-up even one's friends (as Winwife himself tries to do with Quarlous, seeking to get Grace for himself). Wit alone becomes Quarlous's warrant for his triumph. Bartholomew Fair turns the traditional world of the Word upside down. Does Quarlous's final allusion to Genesis and the Fall finally right the world back on its traditional keel? If it does, it does so very tenuously. The play is not a satire that condemns the world. Its denouement locks all together in a comic embrace, a communal dinner at Overdo's to be marked by acceptance of the shared reality of human frailty. But one must still wonder at the end whether wit or the Word is the ultimate warrant. After all, it is Quarlous who is still in command, directing the action, managing the stage, wittily employing the rhetoric of Genesis to effect a desirable reconciliation. In contrast to the denouement of Volpone, here, the knot of dramatic complication is undone not by miracle but by wit in control of the words that rebind society.

The Country Wife Like Bartholomew Fair, Wycherley's Country Wife has a comic ending. Horner, an archwit like Quarlous, similarly invites everyone to

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drown their troubles in wine or divert themselves in a ballet by maskers as they celebrate the impending marriage between Harcourt and Alithea. And that marriage itself typically socializes a young wit by uniting him to an intelligent and resourceful woman, after they overcome blocking (or in this case, blockhead) obstacles. Harcourt and Alithea's is very much a story of the word. Alithea has given her word to marry the fop Sparkish, and she steadfastly refuses to break it, even as she progressively falls in love with Harcourt (shades of Almahide). She tells Harcourt, "The writings are drawn, sir, settlements made; 'tis too late, sir, and past all revocation" (2.1.205-6). Reflecting the deep ambivalence in this literature toward women, Harcourt laments, "Have women only constancy when 'tis a vice, and, like fortune, only true to fools?" (3.2.504-5). Later, Alithea insists to her maid Lucy that she is bound by "justice" because she has pledged her "word," a word which entails absolute "fidelity" to Sparkish (4.1.17, 37, 34). Alithea's motives are somewhat tainted, however. She fears becoming a country wife and losing the liberty of the "town" (4.1.58-61), so she has agreed to a match where her heart is not engaged. Meanwhile, Harcourt's "merit," as Lucy argues, has "bribed" Alithea's "heart" against her "word and rigid honor" (4.1.27-28). A thoroughgoing nominalist, Lucy sounds like Falstaff: "But what a devil is this honor! 'Tis sure a disease in the head, like the megrim, or falling sickness, that always hurries people away to do themselves mischief. Men lose their lives by it; women what's dearer to 'em, their love, the life of life" (4.1.28-32). Nevertheless, Alithea is so constant to her word as to allow that only Sparkish can give her a reason why she "should not marry him" (3.2.501). What she then says provides a clue to precisely what sort of contingency she means: "But if he be true, and what I think him to me, I must be so to him" (3.2.501-2). Later she tells Lucy, '"Tis Sparkish's confidence in my truth that obliges me to be so faithful to him" (4.1.48-49). What dissolves the blockage between Harcourt and Alithea can only be a violation of confidence, of mutual trust. And that Sparkish himself provides. First, like Littlewit, Sparkish is overly trusting and delivers Alithea into the hands of the wits he would impress in order that they might fashionably salute her. Harcourt takes the liberty actually to court her, much to Alithea's and her brother Pinchwife's concern (2.1.123ff.; 3.2.198ff.). Sparkish says with affected insouciance, "I love to have rivals in a wife" (3.2.350). When Horner indicates Sparkish

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does indeed have a rival, the fool anticipates the time "when a rival will be as good sauce for a married man to a wife as an orange to veal" (4.3.379-80). Of course, such nonchalance merely indicates that, as he admits later, Sparkish has no "passion" for Alithea but is interested only in having her money to spend and having her to wear as a fashionable ornament on his arm in high society (5.3.66-69). Second, probably only because his reputation as a man of parts is thereby tarnished, when Sparkish sees the letter Margery has finessed as Alithea's, he immediately concludes Alithea "false" (5.3.2) and prepares to rail at her as a slighted poet might. He assails her thus: "Could you find out no easy country fool to abuse? none but me, a gentleman of wit and pleasure about the town? But it was your pride to be too hard for a man of parts, unworthy false woman! false as a friend that lends a man money to lose; false as dice, who undo those that trust all they have to 'em" (5.3.33-38). Despite the ineptness of his similes, Sparkish manages to manifest enough lack of "confidence" in her "truth" (4.1.48) to enable Alithea to "consent" to the breaking of the "match" she believes her brother has designed (5.3.58-60). Meanwhile, Harcourt manifests the opposite concern for Alithea. Adopting the predominant trickster's device of the play—disguising oneself in order to court a man's woman before his face—from the first moment he sees her, Harcourt attempts to communicate an interest that transcends the mercenary. However unfashionably, he appears to have fallen in love at first sight. But then, even in conversation with his fellow wits, Harcourt has resisted their cynicism and upheld the value of "love" (1.1.217). The immediate context might suggest that by "love" Harcourt means only sex. And he does say to Alithea, "Marriage is rather a sign of interest than love; and he that marries a fortune covets a mistress, not loves her" (2.1.219-20). Nevertheless, this last remark is used to discredit Sparkish. And from the beginning, Harcourt wittily employs traditional chivalric language to convince Alithea that his feeling for her transcends both mercenary and mere sexual interest. He likes her "So infinitely well" he wishes she were his instead of Sparkish's (2.1.138-40); he admires her "above the world" (2.1.152); he calls her "the most estimable and most glorious creature in the world" (3.2.230); he declares he loves her with all his "soul," with "the best and truest love in the world," "better than his eyes, that first made him love you" (3.2.291, 294, 320-21); and when he is disguised as a chaplain, he has liberty to call her "divine, heavenly creature," "seraphic lady" (4.1.125, 137). He pulls out every trick

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in his bag to keep her from marriage with Sparkish and for marriage with himself. All this activity and language indicate the conversion of the fashionable libertine, who normally disdains marriage. Harcourt tells Sparkish, "Till now I never thought I should have envied you, or any man about to marry, but you have the best excuse for marriage I ever knew" (2.1.153-55). The most important sign of the depth of Harcourt's affection, however, is his pledge of constancy and his faithfulness to it. In his rival's face he points indirectly at himself as he "Who can only match your [Alithea's] faith and constancy in love, . . . Who could no more suffer a rival than your absence, and yet could no more suspect your virtue than his own constancy in his love to you" (3.2.308, 316-18). This declaration clearly separates him from Sparkish's carelessness and distrust. And when Sparkish and nearly all the other characters believe Alithea a false woman and Horner's harlot, Harcourt alone defends her, proclaiming to her, "I will not only believe your innocence myself, but make all the world believe it" (5.4.251-53). Risking her being cut off without a penny by Pinchwife, Harcourt declares that he will marry her. After her reputation is cleared, Pinchwife can no longer have an objection to their marriage, and Harcourt is "impatient" till he be a husband, however unpopular a role that may be to the other men in the play (5.4.383). Reaffirming the chivalric code of trust, Alithea concludes, "Women and fortune are truest still to those that trust 'em" (5.4.378-79). A propos of this realistic comic world, she does not say that women and fortune are absolutely true to those that trust. The action of the play belies such a naive belief. But she does say that they are truesi to those that trust. Such is the traditional wisdom in this feudal literature, from Arveragus to Doralice and perhaps even to the Wife of Bath herself. The ending of The Country Wife is traditionally comic also in its poetical justice. Sparkish has obviously received what he deserves because of his failure to find the proper balance between too much and too little trust. And Sir Jasper and Pinchwife have both been cuckolded for similar reasons. Sir Jasper does not really trust his wife or his sister or his cousin at all. Yet he would fashionably provide them with the appearance of a gallant, so he chooses the reportedly impotent Horner. Reveling in his role of protector of his women's chastity and at the same time revealing his radical distrust of women, he confides aside to the audience, "'Tis as much a husband's prudence to provide innocent diversion for a wife as to hinder her unlawful plea-

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sures, and he had better employ her than let her employ herself" (1.1.115-18). Nor does Sir Jasper really love his wife any more than Sparkish loves Alithea, for his real "pleasure" is "business" (2.1.570) and thus he neglects her. A nearly sure retributive justice consequently awaits him, as Lady Fidget says wittily: "Who for his business from his wife will run, / Takes the best care to have her business done" (2.1.575-76). Needing someone to substitute for him as guardian, Sir Jasper is led into a reckless trust that is not based upon the bonding of a word between respectful persons but upon Sir Jasper's incontinent delight in and imposition upon Horner's supposed condition. Thus, he too deserves what he gets. As blinded as January by the deceptions of May, though he catches his wife in the arms of a man, he gullibly believes their lies and is reduced to announcing to his wife that Horner "is coming in to you the back way" (4.3.126-27), little realizing that he speaks the sexual truth. Pinchwife is an even worse misogynist who radically distrusts his wife. Like Corvino, he locks her from the potentially impregnating sight of the world. Like all misogynists, Pinchwife suffers terrible fears of sexual inadequacy, and as Horner says, he has "only married to keep a whore"—something of which he has hitherto been incapable, for the "jades" would always "jilt" him (1.1.431-33). Against Horner and all the town wits, Pinchwife justifies marrying a country wife in terms that show his—and the patriarchal aristocracy's—paranoid concern: "At least we are a little surer of the breed there, know what her keeping has been, whether foiled or unsound" (1.1.357-59). In an anticipation of Swift (not to mention Faulkner), Horner's hilarious reply explodes all such myths of genealogical purity: "Come, come, I have known a clap gotten in Wales; and there are cousins, justices' clerks, and chaplains in the country, I won't say coachmen" (1.1.360-62). Nevertheless, such fanatics as Pinchwife ignore human wisdom and turn the bond of marriage into shackling bondage. For Pinchwife, marriage is covert if not overt warfare: "If we do not cheat women, they'll cheat us; and fraud may be justly used with secret enemies, of which a wife is the most dangerous" (4.2.192-95). Women were fine, he says, as "out of nature's hands they came plain, open, silly, and fit for slaves, as she and Heaven intended 'em," until they were corrupted by Cupid: "'Twas he gave women first their craft, their art of deluding" (4.2.4951); and 'tis Cupid who makes "these dough-baked, senseless, indocile animals, women, too hard for us, their politic lords and rulers, in a moment" (4.4.37-39). As a result, to keep Margery chaste, Pinchwife

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must employ stratagems, spies, and finally naked weapons. His misogyny breaks out in sadism, as he threatens her first with his penknife (4.2) and then with his sword (4.4). Only thus can he maintain his phallocentric, phallocratie control. But of course, Pinchwife fails. He defeats himself constantly by teaching Margery the very means to defy him and delivering her over into the hands of the punishing cuckolder, whose very name implies his function of comic scourge and minister. Most significantly, under his very knife Pinchwife forces Margery to write to Horner, thereby putting in her hands the phallic substitute whereby she liberates herself. Through her pen, she usurps his phallic power, especially over the word, and employs words to subvert him and his bondage. Thus, as Pinchwife himself earlier says about Margery somewhat helplessly, "Well, if thou cuckold me, 'twill be my own fault—for cuckolds and bastards are generally makers of their own fortune" (3.1.56-58). The comic ending and the poetical justice on those who distrust their women notwithstanding, The Country Wife is a profoundly subversive comedy. As in Bartholomew Fair, the poetical justice is not fully distributive. Horner and his adulterous partners have escaped justice—however narrowly. And they have all posed radical threats to the code of the word.4 Margery represents a kind of libertine naturalism, free from the constraints of a code invented to contain desire. She does not understand why she cannot immediately have what she wants, from the actors in the play (2.1) to the stranger who loves her (3.2), who turns out to be Horner. Her affection for him is uninhibited, from her delight in his sweet breath (4.2) to her hot fits when she but thinks of him (4.3) to her desire to leave her first husband and go marry him (5.4). As a result, she cannot understand the traditional (read: patriarchal) language and rules. When Pinchwife describes Horner as a basilisk who seeks to "destroy" women, Margery asks incredulously, "Ay, but if he loves me, why should he ruin me?" (2.1.111-13). She does not understand why Horner "cannot" be her "husband" too (5.4.207) or why she simply cannot leave one for the other if her affection has altered (5.4.210-11). When Pinchwife draws his sword to force Horner to marry Alithea, Margery emerges from hiding to save her "second husband" (5.4.273). Nor will she repress her affection for him under Lucy's ruses: "For I do love Mr. Horner with all my soul, and nobody shall say me nay" (5.4.324-26). Nor is she sophisticated enough to suppress their affair and her consequent intimate knowledge of the health of his anatomy: "You shall not disparage poor Mr.

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Horner, for to my certain knowledge—" (5.4.363-64). Only the clamor of other, more sophisticated women drowns out her naive declaration. Instead of having this raw sexual desire socialized in the normal pattern of comedy, however, Margery learns the tricks of sophisticated women, for whom words simply mask desire and its pursuit. In the letter-writing scene she yearns for the kind of "shift" a "London woman" would devise to get what she wants in a similar situation (4.2.143). So she employs the phallic instrument of dominance against itself. She becomes educated, literate, and starts sending subversive letters, begging Horner to "free" her from her "unfortunate match," which was not made by her "choice" (4.4.25-27). The "politic lords and rulers" of Pinchwife's repressive patriarchy ought indeed to tremble and draw their swords. At the end, Margery's education as a subversive is completed and she learns to repress her desires, not out of her body but out of her language, and to use words, vows, and promises—men's weapons—to deceive and thereby achieve the object of those desires after all. The country wife has learned, then, not the code of the word but the code of an antiword, best exemplified by the town ladies and Horner. The first time Lady Fidget and her cohorts are left alone they complain in guarded language that aristocratic men throw away their desires on lowclass women rather than share those desires with—and satisfy the similarly voracious sexual appetites of—"women of honor and reputation" (2.1.343-44). Lady Fidget protests petulantly, "Methinks birth—birth should go for something" (2.1.349-50). Here, the key word "birth" refers to the genealogical superstructure of aristocratic society, its crucial principle of differentiation between the nobles—that is, the people of merit—and all others. So "birth" marks the entrance into the power elite and thus must be kept pure. Yet Lady Fidget wants to use it as a principle of differentiation between lowclass and upperclass objects of adulterous desire, a desire whose consummation adulterates the pure blood lines. At the same time, the ladies' language sounds almost indistinguishable from Old Bellair's in his concern over the purity of blood lines: Mrs. Squeamish says, "Ay, one would think men of honor should not love, no more than marry, out of their own rank" (2.1.352-53). "Love" here, however, is a euphemism for having illicit affairs. What is worse in this anti-ethical world is for a "noble" woman to "defame her own noble person with little inconsiderable fellows, foh!" (2.1.366-68). Adultery with a "man of quality" is a lesser crime, for he

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"is likest one's husband," but the crime is least when the man is "private" and therefore the affair discreet (2.1.371-80). And the "greatest wrong in the whole world" is to be accused of adultery without having had the pleasure of committing it (2.1.360-63). Like Jonson, Wycherley avails himself of one of those casual expletives to punctuate this dialogue and thus subtly remind us of the code being subverted. Lady Fidget acknowledges the justice of Mrs. Squeamish's version of the Eleventh Commandment (Don't Get Caught): "You say true; i'faith, I think you are in the right on't" (2.1.381). "Faith" refers simultaneously to the code of marital fidelity and to its religious sanction, its validating Logos, both of which have been subverted. When Horner confesses his secret to Lady Fidget, this process of redefining key words continues in a hilarious way. She marvels that Horner would be "so truly a man of honor" as to sacrifice his reputation as a "man" and to "suffer" the "greatest shame that could fall upon a man" (2.1.525-28), that is, to be thought sexually impotent. Would not Dante be surprised at this new hierarchy of sin and shame! Lady Fidget takes Horner at his "word," has such "faith" in him that she risks her "honor" with him, fearing only that he might "betray" his "trust" (2.1.535-50). And when they meet for the great china scene assignation, each claims to be "as good as" his or her "word" (4.3.3539). When Horner drinks with the ladies, the process continues more outrageously. Horner claims to have been a "true man" (5.4.24), but here truth means not "faithful" but "real," "whole," "solid." "Trust" (5.4.15) is what one renders only to one's intimates and maids and it means merely "no telling." Underneath their various masks, these ladies want a man to "be as free as he pleases with us, as frolic, as gamesome, as wild as he will" (5.4.91-92)—that is, completely sexually uninhibited. The town ladies thus differfromthe country wife only in their knowledge of how to use the male code of the word against itself. When Horner protests their reputation kept him at bay, Lady Fidget, punctuating her discourse with another apposite casual oath, confesses with extraordinary frankness, "Our reputation! Lord, why should you not think that we women make use of our reputation, as you men of yours, only to deceive the world with less suspicion? Our virtue is like the statesman's religion, the Quaker's word, the gamester's oath, and the great man's honor—but to cheat those that trust us" (5.4.98-103; cf. Deborah Payne, "Reading the Signs in The Country Wife").

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Ironically, however, the ladies cannot fully escape the code. Surprisingly, Lady Fidget calls Horner "false man!" and she says "truth" is not to be found in his "heart" (5.4.22-23). She is not referring to his promise to deliver or his fidelity of performance or his wholeness as a man. Her meaning emerges when, unable any longer to restrain her "jealousy," she claps him on the back and to the other ladies proclaims, "This is my false rogue" (5.4.147-49). Horner is "false" in the sense that he is not what he seems, but the possessive adjective reveals the most. Horner is "false" to Lady Fidget in a traditional sense. He has shared not only his secret but also his perfect body with other women, and Lady Fidget now possessively claims him all for herself. Mrs. Squeamish and Mrs. Dainty Fidget both protest each thought him hers alone. Most tellingly, Dainty protests, "Did you not swear to me, 'twas for my love and honor you passed for that thing you do?" (5.4.154-55). The realization is dawning on them that once you have broken the code of the word and chosen to live outside it, you can no longer invoke it. No honor among those for whom honor is by redefinition merely a mask. Lady Fidget seems to realize the paradox as she attempts to make the most of the situation: "Well, Harry Common, I hope you can be true to three. Swear—but 'tis to no purpose to require your oath, for you are as often forsworn as you swear to new women" (5.4.170-72). Obviously, though at the end she berates Horner for "trusting" his "secret to a fool" (5.4.370), she has nothing about which to complain. The Don Juan himself is a figure for the Dangerous Supplement and the ultimate threat to the word (see Felman, The Literary Speech Act, ch. 2; cf. Anthony Kaufman, "Wycherley's The Country Wife and the Don Juan Character"). Horner's sexual appetite is voracious, and he partly conceives his scam to replace one set of mistresses with another, as he tells his accomplice, Dr. Quack (1.1.136-41). As a libertine, he believes promiscuous sex to be natural and (as do the ladies) marriage a destroyer of sex. When he meets Pinchwife, he deduces his married state from his unfashionable "absence from the town," the "grumness" of his "countenance," and the "slovenliness" of his "habit" (1.1.334-35)—the outward manifestations of one's sexual character. For a libertine, "a marriage vow is like a penitent gamester's oath" (1.1.415-16); "you may see by marriage, nothing makes a man hate a woman more than her constant conversation" (3.2.17-18). To Horner, the code of words and bonds is not only unnatural, it is inefficacious: women "are like

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soldiers, made constant and loyal by good pay rather than by oaths and covenants" (1.1.434-36). This formula of constancy through regular sexual service will not work either, however, for Horner believes women less "faithful" than a spaniel (2.1.455-57). Employing one of those ironic expletives, he appeases Lady Fidget's jealousy and anger at his forswearing by calling a spade a spade: "Come, faith, madam, let us e'en pardon one another, for all the difference I find betwixt we men and you women, we forswear ourselves at the beginning of an amour, you as long as it lasts" (5.4.173-76). To him, as to the ladies all the key words of the code are just words, and he mockingly distorts the very concept of word as bond. When Lady Fidget keeps her "word" in making their rendezvous, he promises to keep his "word" too—that is, to deliver his sexual service. Nominalist and relativist, he argues that "counterfeit" honor "is e'en as good as if it were true, provided the world think so; for honor, like beauty now, only depends on the opinion of others" (5.4.166-69). His utter amorality is evident when he protects Margery at the expense of Alithea's reputation and his friendship with Harcourt. He rationalizes his action, "Now must I wrong one woman for another's sake, but that's no new thing with me; for in these cases I am still on the criminal's side, against the innocent" (5.4.223-25). If Horner the amoral libertine had his way, then, he would do away with all the socializing "ceremony in love": "falling on briskly is all should be done" (5.4.86-87). But naked sexual aggression leads to sacrificial crises, as when Pinchwife draws his sword on Horner in deadly rivalry at the climax of the play. So Horner is forced to resort to his outrageous and hilarious scam. He becomes the "doctor," the magister confidence man (1.1.160) as he carries out the ultimate in male fantasies: nearly unlimited access to all the desirable women, as if he were invisible and able, as Quack believes him, "to cuckold the Grand Signior amidst his guards of eunuchs" (4.3.345-46).5 It is not only because of his putative syphilis that Horner is related to "Mercury," as Sir Jasper nominates him mockingly (1.1.76). It is also because, like the Classical deity, Horner is an archtrickster. His motto could be a line he lets fall casually: "Your arrantest cheat is your trustee" (1.1.257), for he ingratiates himself into the confidence of Sir Jasper, Old Lady Squeamish, and Margery Pinchwife as he pursues his endless supplementary seductions. And what is cleverest about his con game is that he gains access to women by becoming merely the "sign of a man" (1.1.291)—that is, the empty representation and not

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the thing itself—precisely by pretending to have had the essence of his potency, the essence of his threat as a Don Juan, removed. Just as Margery gains power by stealing the instruments of male power—the pen and the word—so Horner gains power by appearing to surrender the ultimate implement, his very ability to horn. It has become critically fashionable for critics to argue that Horner really does suffer a kind of poetical justice in the hell of the tedious, tawdry daily existence he must lead.6 But Wycherley constructs Horner's escape in a Swiftian way that seems to me now to disallow any comfortable castration of Horner's subversive potency. His friends and admirers are so taken with him that they effect the last perversion of the word in the play for his sake. They bear false witness. They perjure themselves to convince the outraged that Horner really is impotent and thus defuse the crisis. First Quack: "Sir Jasper, by heavens and upon the word of a physician, sir—" (5.4.341-42). To Pinchwife he promises, "I'll bring half the surgeons in town to swear it" (5.4.348), and all his further assurances are sprinkled with the expletive "Pray" (5.4.351, 354, 356). Then when the wonderfully ingenuous Margery would speak the truth, Lady Fidget swears to Pinchwife, "Upon my honor, sir, 'tis as true—" (5.4.367). Finally, Lucy protests to him, "Indeed, she's innocent, sir, I am her witness" (5.4.397), and Margery ratifies the perjury: "Yes, indeed, bud" (5.4.402). Even Alithea participates in the coverup. If Wycherley had wanted to undercut Horner at the end, I do not believe he would have had him, after a concluding dance of cuckolds, triumph over "Vain fops" (5.4.408)—as he had earlier triumphed over "vain rogues," lesser tricksters (1.1.34)—by reveling in the success of his scam. The ending of the play is comic, celebratory both of Harcourt and Alithea's love and of Horner's wit. The former reaffirms the code of the word even as the latter undercuts it, places it in an unresolved dialogic tension. But the injunction of the moment is to bury the ambivalence in wine and dance.

By now it should be obvious that the sense of an ending is crucial for feudal as for all literature. We have seen that poetical justice is a sign of the metaphysic that underwrites the code of the word. Therefore, when such justice is signally absent, as in these three works, the effect can be profoundly disturbing. What makes these comedies so subversive is precisely their lack of punishment inflicted upon such

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blatant transgressors as the Wife of Bath, Quarlous and the thieves of the Fair, and Horner. Yet what makes these subversive plays comedies and not satires is their unabashed celebration of transgression as trickery, as a form of play, of Dionysiac jouissance that cannot be contained in Apollonian logocentric discourse. At the same time, as I have suggested concerning the Wife, these tricksters do not ever really escape the Western culture-text they subvert; their subversion is written in the terms (key words) of that text and cannot be understood outside it. They do not subvert the Classical morality of Stoicism, for example, or the bourgeois morality of selfreliance. They subvert the feudal morality of mutual trust and its validating metaphysic. They appropriate the code of the word/Word to the service of wit. And still, at the same time, though their rebellion is apparently contained in and takes its meaning from the feudal tradition of word as bond, they represent an emergent dialectical force that eventually becomes heroic instead of subversive, as I shall attempt to show in the Afterword.7

N O T E S 1. The best treatment I know of the Wife's manipulations of Scripture is my colleague Herbert N. Schneidau's unpublished paper, "Parody as a Mode of Allusion." 2. For similar readings of the Wife's failure to escape patriarchal signs, see R. A. Shoaf, Dante, Chaucer, and the Currency of the Word, 180, and Barbara Gottfried, "Conflict and Relationship, Sovereignty and Survival: Parables of Power in the Wife of Bath's Prologue." For a provocative argument that the Wife actually speaks for a higher level of interpersonal relationships, see Lee Patterson, '"For the Wyves love of Bathe': Feminine Rhetoric and Poetic Resolution in the Roman de la Rose and the Canterbury Tales." 3. The best treatment I know of Overdo's rhetoric—and indeed of the entire play—remains Jackson I. Cope, "Bartholomew Fair as Blasphemy." For recent provocative readings of the play's subversiveness, see Jonathan Haynes, "Festivity and the Dramatic Economy of Jonson's Bartholomew Fair," and John Gordon Sweeney III, Jonson and the Psychology of Public Theater, ch. 6. 4. For a reading of the theme of words, see also James Thompson, Language in Wycherley's Plays, ch. 5. For recent provocative readings of the play's subversiveness, see Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick, "Sexualism and the Citizen of the World: Wycherley, Sterne, and Male Homosocial Desire," and Harold Weber, The Restoration Rake-Hero 53-69.

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5. In a paper given at a Special Session on Restoration Drama at the 1975 Modern Language Association convention, Maximillian Novak discussed Horner as the ultimate trickster, a position I at the time attempted to refute; I now agree essentially with Novak. Leslie Silko has a magnificent coyotetrickster story that features a similarly outrageous and hilarious scam ("Coyote Holds a Full House in His Hand"). 6. Myself among them in "Religious Language," 391-93; most recently, see Derek Cohen, "The Revengers' Comedy: A Reading of The Country Wife." 7. Other illustrative examples: in the Middle Ages, Chaucer's Shipment's Tale and Miller's Tale; in the Renaissance, Jonson's Alchemist and Thomas Middleton's Mad World, My Masters; in the Restoration, Wycherley's Plain Dealer and Otway's three comedies, Friendship in Fashion, The Souldiers Fortune, and The Atheist.

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INTERLUDE

FIVE

The Lyric

Lyric is a loose term by which I mean those relatively short poems in which a poet reflects, sometimes in a pseudo-personal voice, sometimes through a persona, on his or her world. As usual, I am not so much interested in genre here as in theme. But I have begun with neither. Rather, I have chosen the three best lyric poets of their respective ages. What I discovered and wish to share is how remarkably preoccupied they too are with the problem of the impermanence ofthat world, a problem they treat in terms of the key words of the code of the word: constancy and inconstancy, fickleness and fidelity, lust and loyalty, oaths and vows and promises. They focus especially on the twin problems of the mutability of Fortune and the transience of love, seeking in a world marked by the absence of a transcendent Presence, a Full Word that constitutes a Transcendental Signified.

Chaucer Somtyme the world was so stedfast and stable That mannes word was obligacioun; And now it is so fais and deceivable That word and deed, as in oonclusioun, Ben nothing lyk, for turned up-so-doun Is al this world for mede and wilfulnesse, That al is lost for lak of stedfastnesse.

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So reads the opening stanza of Chaucer's "Lak of Stedfastnesse." The controlling motif of the poem is a nostalgia for a Golden Age of Chivalry when "mannes word was obligacioun."1 But "The world hath mad a permutacioun / Fro right to wrong, fro trouthe to fikelnesse" (vss. 19-20). This is a typical myth of a fall from some putative state of perfection, a state that never exists historically but only rhetorically, serving as a standard to judge a present portrayed as if decadent. What is most interesting about the poem is its description of the world as having fallen precisely into that condition of deadly rivalry the code of the word was invented to prevent or at least ameliorate. What maketh this world to be so variable But lust that folk have in dissensioun? For among us now a man is holde unable, But if he can, by som collusioun, Don his neighbour wrong or oppressioun. (8-12)

Always beneath the chivalric code lurks this menace, the potential sacrificial crisis of neighbors at each other's throats. Chaucer elaborates the myth of the Golden Age in "The Former Age," where he portrays an idyllic innocence, free from deadly rivalry (49-55). "Good feith" reigned (55) because "Hir hertes were al oon, withoute galles; / Everich of hem his feith to other kepte" (47-48). But the present age, the poet laments, is "forpampred with outrage" and "delicacye" (5, 57). It is marred by "coveytyse" (32), which drives men to increase production, to seek new sources and new markets for "outlandish ware" (22), to "grobbe up metal" (29), and to hoard goods. And it is plagued by "offence of egge or spere" (19), by the "trompes" and the "toures heye and walles rounde or square"—the trappings of "werres folk" (23-24). The entrance of all this evil into the world seems especially marked by the advent of "Nembrot" or Nimrod, traditionally thought to be not only the builder of Babel but the first tyrant, "desirous / To regne" (58-59). Thus, the empire of "feith" is usurped by the tyrant responsible for the breaking of the one language, the one word, into fragments. Against this condition of the world, many of Chaucer's speakers complain in one way or another. Several lovers complain that their "trouthe" is unrequited ("The Complaint unto Pity," 7), even though they be as "trewe" as "Tristam" ("To Rosamounde," 20), even though their hearts pledge "trewe perséveraunce / Never to chaunge" ("Wom-

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anly Noblesse," 8-9). Just a "word" from the beloved would save them ("Mercilesse Beaute," 4), but the disdainful mistresses appear to impassively slay them for their very "trewthe" ("Complaynt D'Amours," 7), a condition that causes one lover to cynically conclude, "As good were thanne untrewe as trewe to be" ("A Complaint to his Lady," 117). Set in a pagan world and thus freed from orthodox constraints, one of Chaucer's most poignant—and daring—poems is "The Complaint of Mars," wherein Mars rails against "The God that sit so hye" (218) for creating a world in which desire—especially the desire for permanence in love—is so often frustrated. For thogh so be that lovers be as trewe As any metal that is forged newe, In many a cas hem tydeth ofte sorowe. . . . But he be fais, no lover hath his ese. (200-208)

Mars's anguish results from having "bynt him to perpetuali obeisaunce" to Venus, just as she "bynt her to loven him for evere" (47-48). Yet the two of them, against their wills and despite their words, are inevitably separated by the motion of the spheres (the poem is a sustained astronomical allegory). Why, he asks, if such is the world, does God make people love? her joy, for oght I can espye, Ne lasteth not the twynkelyng of an ye, And somme han never joy til they be ded. What meneth this? What is this mystihed? Whereto constreyneth he his folk so faste Thing to desyre, but hit shulde laste? (221-26)

God seems capriciously and even sadistically to tantalize humans by making the object of desire "seme stedfast and during" only to subject it to "such mysaventure" that Mars can only conclude, "reste nys ther non in his yeving"—no permanence resides in God's gifts—"And that is wonder, that so juste a kyng / Doth such hardnesse to his creature" (227-32). To Mars in his suffering and loss, God seems to have actual "enmyte" toward lovers, taking "som plesaunce" in their persecution (236-44). The "vice" is not in the creature but "in the worcher" who made him or her (261). Hence, the pagan fiction allows Chaucer to raise blasphemous

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doubts about the whole system of words that bind and about the Word that is supposed to underwrite them. How could so putatively "juste a kyng" fail so miserably to vindicate the promises implicitly invoking Him as a witness? Therfore my herte forever I to her hette; Ne truly, for my deth, I shal not lette To ben her truest servaunt and her knyght. (185-87)

The phrase "for my deth" follows the traditional pattern of oaths to God. But despite Mars's plea and his pledge of betrothal, the narrator says, events transpired "as God wolde": in effect, Venus is forced into an adulterous alliance with Cilenius or Mercury (142ff.). Mars ends his complaint by asking all knights that serve him and all ladies that serve Venus to themselves complain against God. Less bold and more conventionally Christian is Chaucer's Boethian poem "Fortune." To the speaker's plaints against her "mutabilitee" (57), Fortune asks, in effect, what did he expect who was born "in my regne of variaunce" (45). Variance is the very nature of this world, and "Aboute the wheel with other most thou dryve" (46). Moreover, Fortune insists that her caprice should teach him valuable lessons, chief of which is not to put his trust in the things of this world. Only "the hevene hath propretee of sikernesse," she argues, "This world hath ever resteles travayle" (69-70). Therefore, the plaintiff had best develop a healthy contemptus mundi, for only on his "laste day" will Fortune's reign end (71). Meanwhile, he needs to turn his Stoic defiance, the "stidfast champioun" of which is "Socrates" (17), into active Christian Faith, for what he blindly calls "Fortune" is "th'execucion of the majestee / That al purveyeth of his rightwysnesse" (65-66). In Him alone resides "sikernesse." And ultimately, it is He Who, in contrast to the fair-weather friends both the plaintiff and Fortune decry throughout the poem, is the former's "beste frend" (passim, esp. 78)—not Fortune herself or the King or Chaucer's patron,2 all of whom are surrogates for the Heavenly King. In another mood, unlike Mars, Chaucer blames neither God nor Fortune but, in typical Occidental misogyny, woman, who becomes identified with a sign of inconstancy. Such a signification is evident in the conventional portrayal of Fortune as a faithless woman. The plaintiff in "Fortune" praises the "stidfast" Socrates, who resisted the feminine wiles and temptations of the goddess (17-22). Her very essence

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is to appear what she is not, her greatest pleasure to lie, to break her word, her apparent promise. Similarly, Chaucer writes of woman in "Against Women Unconstant" that her only "sikernesse" stands "ever in chaunging" (17).3 Her only constant is inconstancy. She is all "newefangelnesse" and "unstedfastnesse" (1-3). She is a mirror that won't hold a lasting image, a weathercock that turns with the winds of her desire. In effect, the poet accuses every woman of being at heart a rake: For wel I wot, whyl ye have lyves space, Ye can not love ful half yeer in a place, To newe thing your lust is ay so kene; In stede of blew, thus may ye were al grene. (4-7)

The last lines surely admit of a rather vulgar sexual interpretation: we can guess what things attract her and why her gown might be literally green. What seems to upset the poet most (like Pope in "To a Lady" centuries later) is that her malleable matter will bear no mark other than that of her own inconstancy: "That tache may no wight fro your herte arace" (18). Thus, man's favorite mark makes no impression on her: "Ther is no feith that may your herte enbrace" (11). Man's code of the word fails to hold her fast. She cannot take his imprint in hylomorphic union. In fact, she has no real essence within the chivalric code. Her "tache" is a cipher, a sign of her absence from the system. She exists only as antithetical negation, the Other. Along with "Dalyda, Creseyde or Candace" (16), she belongs in the Pantheon of Negativity, of all those dark seductresses we have seen who threaten patriarchy and patrilinearity. If Fortune and women are inconstant, then one must seek a true lover elsewhere. So argue several other of Chaucer's poems. Since "wrastling for this world axeth a fai," since there is no "trust" in "hir that turneth as a bai," man must learn to "Flee fro the prees, and dwelle with sothfastnesse," an inner "trouthe" to one's self, one's real "contree," and one's "God." If one thus contemns the world and looks "hoom"-ward, "trouthe thee shal delivere, it is no drede" ("Truth" passim). The whole chivalric code notwithstanding, real "gentilesse," real nobility and worth, stem not from genealogocial roots but from "the fader of gentilesse," Who alone is "Trewe of his word" ("Gentilesse," 1-9). (Here we catch a glimpse of the way Christianity's primitive anti-imperial democratic thrust, co-opted by feudalism, still manages to survive in dialectical tension, as it does later in Donne's Satire 3.)

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In the misnamed "Complaint of Venus," Chaucer ironically juxtaposes love for "the best that ever on erthe wente" (60)—that is, Christ, love of Whom guarantees "sikernesse" (21)—to the love that Venus spawns, which provokes "Al the revers of any glad felyng" (refrain in section 2), including languishing in the opposite of "sikernesse," "In nouncerteyn" (46). In "An ABC," Chaucer portrays the antithesis of Fortune and Women Inconstant, the ever-faithful Virgin Mary, who "ne fallest nevere wight at neede" (112). Even though the poet is "fais" to Christ, he can call upon this heavenly "quene" and "mooder" (passim), for she is the only way to grace (17, 26, 32, 98-99). Indeed, Chaucer deifies her into "Almighty and al merciable queene" (1), whose mercy tempers the vindictive "Fader's" justice (52). As in the chivalric romances, then, woman is either sinner or saint, whore or virgin, tainted or "unwemmed" (91), utterly inconstant or absolutely constant. And thus Chaucer gives us a figure of perfection that is really no more satisfying an image of woman than Fortune or the Women Inconstant. Mary is equally a cipher: she does not dwell in difference, but is immaculate—not like us, fallen, imperfect, very maculate. But she is a central sign in chivalric literature, the faithful queen whose presence is a sign of the binding force of the word and the Word. Chaucer addresses the "Lenvoy" at the end of "Lak of Stedfastnesse" to King Richard II, another mediator between man and God, a surrogate god on earth. Chaucer appeals to Richard to be a good king, to hate evil and especially to "Dred God, do law, love trouthe and worthinesse" (27). Troth cannot be separated from truth in the word "trouthe" here. It contains both, and Chaucer emphasizes troth in the final line when he appeals to the King as a high priest who will "wed thy folk agein to stedfastnesse" (28) as obviously the single most important virtue not only in an individual's life but in the life of the commonwealth. Make "mannes word," Chaucer prays Richard, again be his "obligacioun," that binding force of feudal society. In short, Chaucer's nostalgia for a lost Presence, one that he wishes restored, is that desire for transcendence which is itself the referent for Presence. It is the desire for an immutable love, an immutable being that can free man from the vagaries of change, chance, time, and, in feudal patriarchy, women.

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Donne Oh, to vex me, contraryes meet in one: Inconstancy unnaturally hath begott A constant habit; that when I would not I change in vowes, and in devotione.4 In this apparently late Holy Sonnet (#19), Donne reveals the persistence of a vexing ambivalence in his poetry, a dialectical tension between the passionate desire for permanence in love, either secular or divine, and gnawing fear that it is unattainable, at least for him.6 This fear takes its most bizarre form in one of his voices' apparently insouciant contempt for sexual constancy—a defensive posture if there ever were one. In Holy Sonnet 19, Donne laments that this "Inconstancy" has come home to haunt him. But it has haunted him all along. In several Songs and Sonnets and Elegies (not to mention his early prose work, "A Defence of Womens Inconstancy"), Donne strikes the pose of the fashionable libertine. In "Communitie," he argues that women exist for the commen "use" of men, as if they were "fruits" or other edibles: "Chang'd loves are but chang'd sorts of meat." Constancy, he argues in "Confined Love," is the invention of "Some man unworthy to be possessor / Of old or new love"—a Pinchwife, perhaps, or a Littlewit. In "The Dampe," he portrays "Constancy" as one of his "Gyants" or "Witches"—bogeys he disdains to employ either to obtain or to preserve sexual gratification. In the unfinished poem, "Metempsychosis: The Progress of the Soule," Donne thus describes the promiscuous cock the "Soule" once inhabited: Already this hot cocke, in bush and tree, In field and tent oreflutters his next hen; He asks her not, who did so last, nor when, Nor if his sister, or his neece shee be; Nor doth she pule for his inconstancie If in her sight he change, nor doth refuse The next that calls; both liberty doe use; Where store is of both kindes, both kindes may freely chuse. (stanza 20) And in the third Elegie, entitled "Change," Donne protests, "Change'is the nursery / Of musicke, joy, life, and eternity" (vss. 34-35) and insists,

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Women are made for men, not him, nor mee. Foxes and goats; all beasts change when they please, Shall women, more hot, wily, wild than these, Be bound to one man, and did Nature then Idly make them apter to'endure than men? (10-14)

Indeed, in "The Indifferent," Donne seems exasperated by a lover who would be constant: "Will no other vice content you?" Is her desire based upon a fear that "men are true?" "Oh we are not," he insists, "be not you so, / Let mee, and doe you, twenty know." In his fantasy, Venus comes to punish such "Heretiques" who would establish "dangerous constancie" as a principle in love. Venus condemns such to be "true to them, who'are false to you." And in "Womans Constancy," Donne has the last laugh on the lover whom he anticipates as arguing that "oathes made in reverentiall feare / Of Love, and his wrath, any may forsweare" as made under duress, or that "lovers contracts. . . Binde but till sleep." The poet could "Dispute, and conquer," if he would, but "by to morrow, I may thinke so too." Thus, in effect, he preempts inconstancy. Nevertheless, especially in these last three poems, there is an ineluctable sense that the poet doth protest too much, that his mask of libertinism is worn to conceal a misogyny based on the fear of being abandoned. Witness again the lines from "Change." The poet links "hot, wily, wild" women not only with the relatively neutral category of "all beasts" but also with particular beasts traditionally portrayed as indiscriminately lustful and promiscuous, foul smelling foxes and goats (like Othello's famous "goats and monkeys"). In "The Indifferent," Donne more tellingly asks his constant lover, "Will it not serve your turn to do, as did your mothers?" The implication is that a woman's essence is to be inconstant. And the poet here, like Hamlet, seems to harbor a resentment particularly against inconstant "mothers," who have, by betraying fathers, destroyed the code of the word and established an anticode, against which this Ophelia-like lover is being an "Heretique." It is as if the poet, with a touch of restrained but bitter cynicism, would punish such a lover with what has been his own curse: to be true to one who is false. Such a cynicism is even more evident in "Womans Constancy," where out of self-defense the poet preempts the very thing he fears. Of course, anger and frustration at woman's inconstancy are perfectly clear in several other poems. The most famous is the "Song,"

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known by its opening line: "Goe, and catche a falling starre." A thing more impossible than all such impossibles is to find a woman who is at the same time both "true, and faire." Donne's playfully bittersweet concluding stanza is nonetheless based upon misogyny: If you find such a one, let me know—but nevermind, by the time I get there she will already have been "False . . . to two, or three." In "The Legacie," he complains that his lover's heart has "corners" instead of the round perfection of the circle; that it is "intire to none," for no one man "could hold it." In "The Will," taught by his lover's inconstancy "Onely to give to such as have an incapacitie," he bequeathes his "constancie" to the "planets," whose eccentricities and irregularities are presumably emblematic of hers. In "A Jeat Ring Sent," Donne complains that this ring, potentially a symbol of the "endlesse" circle of perfection and constancy, is, unlike "Marriage rings," too brittle, too soon "broke" and therefore nought but a symbol of "She that, Oh, broke her faith." From just such a "false" lover in "The Message," Donne requests back his heart, unless she have taught it her pernicious art To make jestings Of protestings, And crosse both Word and oath. In Elegie 6, the poet laments a similar crossing of word and oath. Believing his lover's "constancie" as hard as steel, he was "by oathes betroth'd." Her subsequent "Faithlesse" behavior (11-14) he describes in one of Donne's magnificent extended metaphors. When I behold a streame, which, from the spring, Doth with doubtfull melodious murmuring, Or in a speechlesse slumber, calmely ride Her wedded channels bosome, and then chide And bend her browes, and swell if any bough Do but stoop downe, or kisse her upmost brow: Yet, if her often gnawing kisses winne The traiterous banke to gape, and let her in, She rusheth violently, and doth divorce Her from her native, and her long-kept course, And rores, and braves it, and in gallant scorne, Inflatteringeddies promising retorne, She flouts the channell, who thenceforth is drie; Then say I; that is shee, and this am I. (21-34)

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Her behavior at first, then, is as chaste as Hermione's. But the phrase "often gnawing kisses" betokens a sexual appetite that cannot be restrained, and she turns as false as Cressid, vainly "promising retorne." The poet's concluding "disdaine" (38), though bravely put on, seems but another defensive posture. Defensive in a different way is the resolution of the fifteenth Elegie, "The Expostulation,"6 which seems an expostulation indeed, a willful displacing of blame onto a third person so the poet can preserve, "by art" (70), his pleasing and apparently necessary fiction of his lover's constancy. Yet the opening series of what turn out to be rhetorical questions allows the poet at once to express and retract his misogynistic fears. "Who could have thought" that her "words . . . sighs . . . oathes . . . should now prove empty" (13-18)? Such behavior threatens to verify the conventional misogyny: "that no woman's true"; that "she needs be false because she's faire" (1-4). He poignantly asks, "Are vowes so cheape with women . . . ? Did you draw bonds to forfet? signe to breake?" (9, 19). And most significantly he asks, "Or thinke you heaven is deafe, or hath no eyes? / Or those it hath, smile at your perjuries?" (7-8). Such a mockery of one's word implies that the entire code must be empty, that there could be no enforcing Logos to guarantee pledges made in His Name. Opposed to this image of woman's treacherous inconstancy is the constancy of an ideal woman. In some of Donne's most daring poetry, she threatens not to signal the absence of the Logos but, together with him, blasphemously to appropriate and supplant it. Thus, in "The Good-Morrow," "The Sunne Rising," and "The Canonization," the "little roome" where they make love contracts "the whole worlds soule" and becomes "an every where," indeed the very center of the cosmos: "This bed thy center is, these walls, thy spheare." In "The Anniversarie," the poet boasts, "All other things, to their destruction draw, / Only our love hath no decay," a love based upon "true oathes." And in "A Valediction: Of the Booke," the love forms a new Scripture, a new ground of "faith," in "cypher writ," decipherable by other lovers. One of the most interesting of these poems is "The Relique," for in it, though Donne apotheosizes the lovers' love "First" because they "lov'd well and faithfully," and though he celebrates his lover as a "miracle," by calling her "a Mary Magdalen," he implies that she is a penitent of some kind. Perhaps he suggests that she is a "miracle" because she is not typical of women, that indeed she was once a sinner (inconstant) who has learned to love "faithfully." The parenthetical

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comment in the opening of the poem sets their love in the context of generalized female inconstancy. When my grave is broke up againe Some second ghest to entertaine, (For graves have learn'd that woman-head To be to more than one a Bed). Whatever this woman is, she is beyond "All measure, and all language." She, too, transcends difference ("Difference of sex no more wee knew") and becomes an unspeakable Logos. Similarly transcendent are Donne's portraits of a lady in his Verse Letters—most often of Lucy, Countess of Bedford, who is most often described as the emblem of perfection itself, that constant circle which nothing can lessen "or changed make." She becomes a new "faithfull booke" of Scripture to compete with that of Esther, a new Logos to be studied, followed, worshipped ("To the Lady Bedford"). This last poem to the Countess of Bedford celebrates her transcendence of that potentially disastrous threat to constancy—a major theme of Donne's—the parting of lovers. In a very witty poem attempting to dissuade his mistress from incurring her father's wrath by running away with him disguised as a page, the poet appeals to her by "all the oathes which I / And thou have sworne to seale joynt constancy." At first he "unswears" them, seeming to cancel them, but then insists he "overswears" them, canceling only his and her pledges to accompany each other. He still prays her, "Be my true Mistris still, not my faign'd Page" (Elegie 16: "On His Mistris"). The greatest of these poems of parting is "A Valediction: Forbidding Mourning." The love between the poet and his mistress is contrasted to that of "Dull sublunary lovers love" in that the latter is profoundly affected by "Absence," by change, by the mutability that predominates in that sphere, whereas the former transcends all such perturbation—even death itself—because it is so "refin'd." The ideal lovers are in such harmony that when they part they form the two legs of a compass, she remaining "fixt" in the "centre" as she leans toward him, and together they draw the perfect "circle" of their love—a sphere whose constancy transcends even the crystalline, which suffers the mutability of "trepidation." Thus again,· Donne blasphemously makes his love both the center and the circumference of the cosmos, transcending all created things.

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Sometimes—and those instances most signal—Donne's idealized woman is a figure for the more traditional Logos. In Satyre 3, opposed to earthly inconstant mistresses, false religions, and the "worne strumpet" of the mutable world itself (39) is the one true religion, with whom one must cultivate a monogamous relationship. unmoved thou Of force must one, and forc'd but one allow; And the right. (69-71) Like the God of Moses or Peter, James, and John, she manifests herself, "dazling, yet plaine to all eyes" (88), on the top of a "huge hill" (79), whither the lover must intrepidly seek her. Then he must remain absolutely constant—"Keepe the truth which thou hast found" (89)— especially in the face of the apparent absence of the validating Word in the unjust decrees of earthly lords. Donne counsels trust in Providence, Who has not issued "blanck-charters" to such murderous kings but makes them ultimately mere "hangmen to fate" (89-92). Earthly "power" is another shee that by exceeding "her bounds" becomes another whore: "Those past, her nature, and name is chang'd" to tyranny, power's version of breaking the bonds of the word passed between sovereigns and subjects (100-1). Therefore, the poem says implicitly (and radically, the emerging radicalism of Protestant bourgeois individualism), put not thy "trust" in Princes (110), at least not overmuch. Instead, remain faithful to "our Mistresse faire Religion" (5), no matter how the false world may break its word and attempt to obscure the Word. In an even greater poem, "An Anatomy of the World," Donne portrays the Logos, the informing principle of the world, the "name" of all its significance (31ff.), as a woman, a "Queene" (7), who has died or who, like Astraea, has fled. "Shee" (passim) is no single historical person or mythological figure. Shee is the one of whom "is meant what ever hath beene said, /Or shall be spoken well by any tongue"(444-45). Shee is a sign of man's highest desire, a transcendental signified, that is manifested only by its absence. Without her, the world is "speechlesse growne" (30), for "Her name defin'd thee, gave thee forme and frame" (37). Shee is the absent Presence that exists only in nostalgic myths of Eden, of a Golden Age. Shee is the "law" that once bound the world, "The Cyment which did faithfully compact / And glue all ver-

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tues" (48-50). Shee is the Full Word, the Original "Text," that "our lesse volume," in the world's decline, no longer contains (147-48). In the absence of that Text, the "new Philosophy cals all in doubt" (205); mutability affects even the quintessential heaven; the macrocosm and the microcosm, the social order, are all in pieces, all cohaerence gone; All just supply, and all Relation: Prince, Subject, Father, Sonne, are things forgot. (213-15)

The reigning principle is now a rapacious individualism that knows no bonds nor bounds. For every man alone thinkes he hath got To be a Phoenix, and that there can bee None of that kinde, of which he is, but hee. (216-18)

The world itself is now as false as Eve (101-7), herself a figure for the timeless, dateless loss of Presence. In the face of such a loss one's only choice is to contemn the world, "to be none of it" (246) and remain true to its absent Ideal, carrying within oneself "a new world" (76) and waiting to be really "borne" through death into one's real "home" (452-54). Even though Shee is gone, then, and can no longer be named or drawn "hither" (392), the task of the poet becomes the impossible one of manifesting her transcendental Presence, of "emprisoning" her "incomprehensiblenesse"(469-70) in a word that now can never be Full.7 In the face, then, of both women and world that seem void of constancy—the exceptions being rare and other-worldly or transwomanly (see especially the Verse Letter "To the Countesse of Huntingdon," who transcends the low nature and the "low names" [36] associated with woman), Donne sometimes—and those instances again signal—portrays the search for permanence as profoundly problematic. In "A Lecture upon the Shadow," the Shadow is primarily that which disguises and masks, hiding love's growth from prying eyes in the morning but "falsly" concealing love's decline from the lovers in the afternoon. To keep love constant, then, the lovers need to freeze its sun at noon, for "Love is a growing, or full constant light; / And his first minute, after noone, is night." But to arrest love's "decay," the

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poem murmurs implicitly, would be as difficult as to arrest the sun's, indeed the world's. For the Shadow is also Death, that certain slant of light on winter afternoons, reflected in the poem's own failure to maintain the stasis of its mid-couplet as it slants away through the second discursive stanza toward the stasis of "night." Talk of maintaining love at its high noon is the rhetoric of desire scribbled across Time's blank page. In Holy Sonnet 14, Donne adopts the voice of a woman who would be true to her lover, God, but is "betroth'd" instead to His "enemie." She prays desperately—and paradoxically—that He "Divorce" her and "breake that knot againe." The paradox is that she is asking God to help her violate her oaths, to break the bond of the word that His Word is supposed to secure. Why is she betrothed to Satan? Is it a forced marriage? Was her word therefore given under duress? Such an excuse would provide a convenient escape from the paradoxical dilemma of the poem. And the carryover from the previous metaphor—that of a usurpt town—might seem to support such an interpretation. But the town is usurped through the complicity of its "viceroy," "Reason," who though "captiv'd" nevertheless "proves weak or untrue." Such weakness, to regress to the first metaphor, is why the pleading soul of the poem cannot simply be mended but must be "o'erthrown" into the forge and made entirely "new." And such weakness is why this female soul pleads to be seized and imprisoned, lest, the implication is, she prove untrue again. She is incapable of remaining "chast" unless ravished—seized, raped—wholly by the Logos, Who alone can remain absolutely constant. No one or no thing on earth can do it without being snatched from time, from change, from becoming. The speaker seeks Being-in-itself, but her human condition is ineluctably Being-for-itself, a condition of perpetual Bad Faith, however much Faith one protests.8 It is that Bad Faith that plagues the consciousness—and the conscience—of the poet in Holy Sonnet 19. when I would not I change in vowes, and in devotione. As humorous is my contritione As my prophane Love, and as soone forgott: As ridlingly distemper'd, cold and hott, As praying, as mute; as infinite, as none. I durst not view heaven yesterday; and to day

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In prayers, and flattering speaches I court God: To morrow I quake with true feare of his rod.

No better words suggest themselves as a description of Donne's poetry, a world of words trying to hold fast the object of desire, always fearing it—or He—will fail to be true: "Those are my best dayes, when I shake with feare." Rochester As we would expect from the quintessential libertine, Rochester's poetry is replete with attacks on sexual constancy and defenses of promiscuity. Inverting the traditional language, he portrays marriage as the real "hell-fire," and he naturalistically (if crudely) proclaims, "a cunt has no sense of conscience or law" ("Against Marriage"). Impatiently, he insists: Tell me no more of constancy, The frivolous pretense Of cold age, narrow jealousy, Disease, and want of sense. ("Against Constancy")

For Rochester, "sense" means following natural desires without the cloud of philosophical reason (see "A Satyr against Reason and Mankind"). For "Old men and weak," he continues in "Against Constancy," sexual promiscuity—or "changing"—"can but spread their shame" of sexual incompetence. But the competent "Long to be often tried," and with libertine bravado he boasts, "I'll change a mistress till I'm dead— / And fate change me to worms." Especially in light of his obviously affectionate "Translation from Seneca's 'Troades', Act II, Chorus" ("After death nothing is, and nothing, death"), Rochester's libertine morality stands in defiance of the ultimate impermanence. Perhaps his best poem on the subject is the carpe diem song, "Love and Life," which does not so much celebrate inconstancy as justify it by the stunning nothingness of the past and the future and the concomitant tenuousness of the present. All my past life is mine no more; The flying hours are gone,

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Like transitory dreams given o'er Whose images are kept in store By memory alone. Whatever is to come is not: How can it then be mine? The present moment's all my lot, And that, as fast as it is got, Phyllis, is wholly thine, [pun intended] Then talk not of inconstancy, False hearts, and broken vows; If I, by miracle, can be This livelong minute true to thee, 'Tis all that heaven allows.

In some poems, Rochester is so apparently unjealous as to actively encourage his mistress's promiscuity. If she were to do less, she were "no match" for him ("To a Lady in a Letter"). Delightfully inverting religious language, he asks how could he in conscience "damn" her to be "only" his whom some kinder power did fashion, By merit and by inclination, The joy at least of one whole nation. ("Upon His Leaving His Mistress")

Redefining the key words of the chivalric code, he calls woman's honor, in the poem ofthat title, "mistrustful shame." "Real honor," real trust, would be to yield to the "noble confidence in men"—where "confidence" at once means keeping a secret and being sure of one's sexual prowess. Comparing his mistress to "the kind"—and promiscuous— "seed-receiving earth," he exhorts her to let "meaner spirits" be faithful to "one," while she impartially dispenses "Favors . . . With universal influence" ("Upon His Leaving His Mistress"). Yet in another mood, in another voice, Rochester sings in favor of constancy. Perhaps perfunctorily—though wittily—he styles himself "forever true" to his wife. With low-made legs and sugared speeches, Yielding to your fair bum the breeches,

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I'll show myself, in all I can, Your faithful, humble servant, John. ("To My More Than Meritorious Wife")

In "A Song" ("My dear mistress has a heart"), he complains that his mistress is inconstant. But her constancy's so weak— She's so wild, and apt to wander— That my jealous heart would break Should we live one day asunder.

And in two other songs about parting, Rochester maintains that "sacred jealousy" is the "proof" of the "fixed" nature of their love ("The Mistress"); yet he fears lest he be "Faithless" and "lose" his "everlasting rest" (Song: "Absent from thee, I languish still"). Here, religious language is appropriated but it is not inverted to the service of the libertine ethic. Instead, it is employed quite traditionally to exalt secular love into something eternal and transcendent. Thus, Rochester's libertine pose is adulterated (pardon the pun), and in his very best poems the two stances are joined in a dialectical tension marked by an ambivalence that is sometimes guilty, sometimes angry, sometimes painful, sometimes poignant and even wistful.9 In these poems, Rochester seems especially afflicted by a sense of the betrayal inherent in the breaking of words from "Kings' promises" to "whores' vows" ("Upon Nothing") to his own shattered "Oaths" ("To the Postboy"). Although his "Very Heroical Epistle in Answer to Ephelia" is apparently an attack upon the Earl of Mulgrave, written in the first person it is also a devastating self-parody. The opening lines sound very much like Rochester's typical libertine pose. If you're deceived, it is not by my cheat, For all disguises are below the great. What man or woman upon earth can say I ever used 'em well above a day? How is it, then, that I inconstant am? He changes not who always is the same. (vss. 1-6,)

He converts the traditional metaphor of a woman's "precious" treasure into a libertine system of sexual exchange which is "no more than

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changing of my gold": "Whate'er you gave, I paid you back in bliss; / Then where's the obligation, pray, of this?" (24-27). So much for another key bond in the chivalric code, "obligation," in this instance the responsibility to be constant—a responsibility the libertine thinks unnatural. Then in a libertine fantasy of wish fulfillment, the speaker rhapsodically envies the sultan's supreme bliss: "0 happy sultan, whom we barbarous call"—traditionally "barbarous" because an Infidel—"How much refined art thou above us all! / Who envies not the joys of thy serail?" (32-34). Sounding a bit like Donne, the speaker relocates the center of the universe. In my dear self I center everything: My servants, friends, my mistress, and my King; Nay, heaven and earth to that one point I bring. (7-9)

Yet the resemblance to Donne is imperfect, and here we sense the extremism in the portrait that makes it not celebratory but satirical. Donne's lovers, remaking the Aristophanic circular being, are the center of the universe; here the center is the speaking, egotistical self. This self is so thoroughly nominalistic as to eshew virtues a libertine would attribute to his ideal, l'honnête homme. Well mannered, honest, generous, and stout (Names by dull fools to plague mankind found out) Should I regard, I must myself constrain, And 'tis my maxim to avoid all pain. (10-13)

He has used neither man nor woman "well above a day." And his fantasy of the sultan reveals no libertine desire to effect mutual pleasure but a mean-spirited patriarchal desire to enslave women solely for his selfish use, to silence them, stripping them of their humanity. The concealed misogyny of his position finally manifests itself in a terrifyingly sadistic redefinition of the chivalric concept of true love. No loud reproach nor fond unwelcome sound Of women's tongues thy [the Sultan's] sacred ear dares wound. If any do, a nimble mute straight ties The true love knot, and stops her foolish cries. (49-52)

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A similarly misogynistic extremism occurs in "The Mock Song." Phyllis's lines in the poem are a defense of her sexual promiscuity, her insatiable nymphomania that absolutely precludes constancy. Were every pore of her body filled with "A well-stuck standing prick," her eyes would still rove, desiring more. But the last line is so extreme (since every other aperture is full, she would wish to have her "eyes fucked out") that it converts her libertinism into masochism, itself a sign of the poet's hatred. Perhaps one could try to dismiss the hatred as satire directed at Sir Carr Scroope through his mistress Cary Frazier (see Vieth's headnote). And indeed, the following poem "On Cary Frazier" itself is a satire. Yet "The Mock Song" is not alone in expressing a misogyny that belies Rochester's cultivated stance of celebrating female as well as male promiscuity. I have in mind not the poems previously cited that explicitly advocate constancy but the far better, more troubled, angrier poem, "A Ramble in St. James's Park." What enrages the supposedly witty libertine speaker in this poem is not, he protests, that his mistress has been promiscuous as long as she has had "pleasure for excuse" (124): "Such natural freedoms are but just: / There's something generous in mere lust" (97-98). What really bothers him is that this time she has settled on "three confounded asses," "fools," "knight-errant paramours," made up of nothing but "noise and color" (81, 102, 128, 126). By thus trafficking with affected fops (compare Dorimant's complaint to Mrs. Loveit concerning Sir Fopling Flutter), she has made herself "a whore" not in body but "in understanding" (101). Nevertheless, the gentleman doth protest too much. Even making allowances for his anger at her current choice, we still detect a deep hostility in his ugly, spiteful descriptions of more reasonable potential or previous choices (91-94, 113-14, 117-20). One need not be a Freudian to interpret such language here or the equally vicious imprecations of his subsequent curse. Obviously, the poet bitterly resents all her infidelities. No real libertine, he is jealous and possessive. The clearest revelation of his true feelings comes when he describes himself "Wrapped in security and rest," lying on her "faithless breast" (12930). How can a libertine even employ the word "faithless"? There is no fidelity among infidels. Yet he plainly feels she has betrayed his trust ("Why this treachery / To humble, fond, believing me?" [107-8]), and it is a trust that transcends the libertine ethic and vectors toward the chivalric.

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The misogyny of "A Ramble in St. James's Park" is matched by the self-loathing in "The Imperfect Enjoyment." Here, the poet feels betrayed not by his mistress but by his phallus and his past. His libertine excesses have made him incapable of coitus with someone he genuinely loves. How could his "False" phallus, he plaintively inquires, "prove / So true to lewdness, so untrue to love?" (47-49). The playfully witty tone of the first half of the poem yields to increasing bitterness, concluding in a curse whose vile language reveals the intensity of the loathing, displaced from the self onto the scapegoat phallus (62-70). How ironic for a libertine (compare Horner, for example) to call his phallus his "Worst part" (62), to curse it with venereal disease! But it is his own falseness the poet upbraids. In other words, he restates Donne's complaint, "Inconstancy unnaturally hath begott / A constant habit." Abler to "each small whore invade," he fails "when great Love the onset does command" (59-60). The deification here of "Love" also vectors past the mere Ovidian towards the chivalric. In a lighter poem and Rochester's best pastoral, "A Dialogue between Strephon and Daphne," some of this ambivalence still manages to manifest itself. Typically, the slighted lover Daphne complains at Strephon's inconstancy, calling him "Perjured swain" (5). And typically, the libertine Strephon justifies himself by appealing to nature. Nymph, unjustly you inveigh: Love, like us, must fate obey. Since 'tis nature's law to change, Constancy alone is strange.

(29-32) "Constancy," then, is unnatural, foreign to the world we know. Strephon calls it "Tedious, trading constancy" (56), associating it with bourgeois activity with all its banal contracts and litigiousness. Worshipping only "Change" (62), he advises poor Daphne, who so charmingly laments the absence of his sexual "showers" (41), "Faith to pleasure sacrifice" (64)—the libertine First Commandment, and the direct antithesis of the chivalric code of word as bond. In answer to this injunction—and in a surprising and hilarious twist to end the poem—Rochester has Daphne turn and triumph over Strephon. Whilst you vainly thought me true, I was false in scorn of you.

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By my tears, my heart's disguise, I thy love and thee despise. Womankind more joy discovers Making fools, than keeping lovers.

(67-72) What makes this joke work is that Daphne violates Strephon's—and the reader's—expectations. That is, she exposes libertinism's hidden double standard. All the while Strephon was being promiscuous, he (like a typical male) assumed that she remained "true" to him. In fact, she has beaten him at his own game, preempted his inconstancy. But written by a male poet, Daphne's lines suggest, on the one hand, sympathy with the plight of female victims of libertinism and disarming self-deprecation (as in the "Very Heroical Epistle"). On the other hand, the use of such words as "scorn" and "despise" suggests a bitterness that may really be directed at women. Witness the last two lines. The only way "Womankind" makes "fools" of men is by deceiving men into believing they are true when they are really false or that they care about constancy when they are even more promiscuous than men. Do we not between the lines glimpse man's vulnerability? Howbeit, Daphne's last word is more complicated than a simple celebratory affirmation of libertine values. In his finest poem, "A Letter from Artemisia in the Town to Chloe in the Country," Rochester definitely gives voice, in however refracted a fashion, to the victims of libertinism, of the Don Juan confidence men. The Melantha-like "fine lady" (74) of the poem is indubitably a satiric portrait. She talks incessantly, condemns men of sense and advocates treating only with fools who are easily deceived, like the husband she manipulates so handily. To her, the sex game is a confidence game, so a wise woman will avoid the wits who cannot be deceived and concentrate on the fool who "trusts us" even when "all mankind / Perceive us false": "These are true women's men" (125-35). Her use of the word "true" here is another libertine redefinition of a chivalric key word. Whether the adjective modifies either "women" or "women's men," neither is true in any traditional sense. The fools the lady advises obtaining are "necessary" things (92), necessary to provide both the money and position for courtly pleasures and also the marital security for promiscuous pregnancies. Just as the lady advocates inconstancy, she embodies it in a frenetic, "antic" (passim) behavior that keeps her in perpetual motion, interrupting herself to impulsively dash over and fondle a pet monkey

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then returning to pursue her loquacious discourse with avidity. Like Melantha, she too seems a symbol for endless supplementation—lover supplanting lover, word supplanting word: she "who had turned o'er / As many books as men" (162-63). That the portrait is satiric is emphasized by its frame. Artemisia introduces it as an exemplum of her general censoring of the age. True love, a love "secured by truth" (43), has become a "lost thing" (38). What can Artemisia mean here by "truth" except that which is opposed to the lady's "debauched" version of love (39)? That is, a love which is constant. Certainly, hers is no libertine definition of love but Platonic: love is "the most generous passion of the mind" (40), a proof of a "God" (46), a Divine Presence. But that Logos now has fled, leaving the lady's logorrhea behind. And Artemisia interrupts her dialogue to wonder that "So very wise" a woman could be "so impertinent" (149), that she could recognize "Everyone's fault and merit, but her own" (165). Artemisia concludes the lady's dialogue by classifying it as one of those "stories . . . As true as heaven, more infamous than hell" (261-63). Thus we can have no doubt how to read it. Still, not everything the lady says is "impertinent." As Artemisia expresses it, her "volleys of impertinence" contain "some grains of sense" (256-57). Those grains seem to reside in the lady's storywithin-the-story, the tale of Corinna. Corinna's portrait also is satiric. She cons a country fool into mortgaging all for her and making their bastard his heir; then she poisons him. Yet there is a poignancy in her story that greatly mitigates her guilt and clearly implicates others, nearly justifying her behavior. The reason that a woman becomes such a con artist is to "Be still revenged on her undoer, man" (186). Corinna is the lady's exemplum. She made the mistake of doting on, really falling in love with, "a man of wit" who as a typical libertine "found 'twas dull to love above a day" (198-99). Thus, "Cozened at first by love," by a Don Juan confidence man, and consequently having lost her reputation and thus her marketability among those in the know, she is forced to make do "By turning the too dear-bought trick on men" (191-92). Her portrait is as filled with pathos as that of Behn's Angellica, Defoe's Moll, or Swift's Beautiful Young Nymph. Diseased, decayed, to take up half a crown Must mortgage her long scarf and manteau gown. Poor creature! who, unheard of as a fly, In some dark hole must all the winter lie,

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And want and dirt endure a whole half year That for one month she tawdry may appear.

(203-8) These words are the lady's, repeated by Artemisia in a letter intended for Chloe which, as it were, we read over her shoulder. Yet despite all these refractions and all the complications they introduce, including that of Artemisia's calling attention to her very selfconscious and diffident role as a poetess, this is a poem written by Rochester to be read and understood by a coterie audience. By an act of imagination we can participate in that audience and try to hear Rochester's message (or perceive the poem's intentionality, if you prefer). Rochester adopts a compound female persona in order to give voice distantly to his own guilt as "undoer" of women. The libertine that undoes Corinna "Made his ill-natured jest, and went away" (200). Although the words are the loquacious lady's, it would be difficult to interpret them as a displaced or indirect libertinism. The portrait of Corinna contains too much pathos. Apparently, at some level, Rochester had a sympathy with women who are forced "To patch up vices men of wit"—like Rochester himself and the many "Perjured" men of his poems—"wear out" (255). As an epigraph to Rochester's ambivalence I offer "A Song" ("Injurious charmer of my vanquished heart"), another dialogue in which a Nymph, fearful of her lover's eventual faithlessness, seeks of him ways to leave him first. He sees such fears as a "vain pretense" to hide her "scorn" of him and threatens suicide: "You cannot sooner change than I can die." But instead, in the face of all the mutability of the world and the impermanence of love, together in chorus they pledge mutual suicide—or at least the mutual death of orgasm, as if to defy "time" and "change" by healthy sexual love, not worrying about what tomorrow will bring: Then let our flaming hearts be joined While in that sacred fire [of love]; Ere thou prove false, or I unkind, Together both expire.

In their various voices, these three poets respond to transience with radical ambivalence. They portray the world as a woman and

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woman as a figure for the problematics of that world. Sometimes woman is true, absolutely constant, but most often she is as variable as the wind. The libertine pretends to respond to such insecurity with insouciance. But underneath he is angry at woman and the world—and even, like Chaucer's Mars, at the god who made them, who infused fickleness as a fundamental principle and consequently left him so vulnerable. All three poets long nostalgically for a lost Presence, a time when the world was not a whore, when desire and fulfillment were one. But alas, such coherence is gone, capricious Fortune reigns, and not only woman but man's reason and his phallus prove untrue. The sun will not stand still at noon. And the poet must try to recall his muse to themes of contemptus mundi and cavalier sprezzatura. To hold the threat of impermanence at bay, Chaucer paints transcendent Woman, Donne outrageously converts the most ephemeral love into the center of the universe, and Rochester makes inconstancy itself transcendent. But in each poet the underlying fear glows like an ember that refuses to die: it is the fear of death itself, against which one can only cling to words.10

N O T E S 1. For the best treatment I know of the themes of nostalgia and mutability in Chaucer's short poems, see Joseph J. Mogan, Jr., Chaucer and the Theme of Mutability, ch. 3. 2. See Robinson's note for the controversy over this line. 3. Chaucer addresses the poem to "Madame" but through his title seems to be generalizing. 4. For convenience's sake, I have used Frank Warnke's edition, John Donne: Poetry and Prose. It has the advantage of containing in one volume almost all the poems, certainly all those to which I refer, plus some major prose selections, one of which I cite. Warnke's basic text is that of John Hayward's redaction of H. J. C. Grierson's texts, except that he has availed himself of Frank Manley's texts of The Anniversaries and Helen Gardner's ordering of and commentary on the Divine Poems and The Elegies and the Songs and Sonnets. W. Milgate's editions of The Satires and The Anniversaries were published later. I have checked all these standard editions for both text and commentary, and I have retained the traditional numbering of the Holy Sonnets. Moreover, I have omitted line numbers in short poems. 5. The best treatment I know of Donne's ambivalence is John Carey, John Donne: Life, Mind and Art, chs. 2 & 6. 6. Whether the historical Donne is actually the author of "The Expostulation," as Gardner maintains he is not (The Elegies and the Songs and Son-

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nets, xxxv-xxxvii), is highly problematical. I accept Gardner's attribution in other instances, and here I agree that the resolution of the problem of woman's constancy seems uncharacteristic of Donne. But the opening seems like him. Perhaps this is a poem unfinished by Donne but finished by someone else (Sir Thomas Roe?). Ultimately, however, authorship is not important for my purposes. The poet Donne I describe is my own fiction, a locus of various voices in what is or was taken to be "John Donne's Poetry," a coherent body of Renaissance poems published together. Mutatis mutandis, the same thing can be said of my "Chaucer" or my "Rochester," who may or may not have written all the poems I have ascribed to them. 7. In this section I am obviously indebted not only to Derrida but also to Jacques Lacan, The Langvage of the Self. 8. Here, I am obviously indebted to Jean-Paul Sartre, Being and Nothingness. 9. The best treatment I know of Rochester's ambivalence is Dustin Griffin, Satires against Man, chs. 3 & 4. For a more recent treatment, one close to mine in several respects, see Sarah Wintle, "Libertinism and Sexual Politics." 10. Other illustrative examples: For the theme of the inconstancy of the world and the need for faith in a transcendent god, see, in the Middle Ages, the Old English poem "The Wanderer" and the Middle English poems grouped in the standard anthology, Middle English Lyrics, under the rubric "Worldes bliss"; in the Renaissance through to the Restoration, Spenser's Mutabilitie Cantos, Henry Vaughan's "Quickness," "The World," and "Man," Patrick Cary's "Nulla Fides," and Joseph Beaumont's "The Oath." For the dialectic between constancy and inconstancy in love, see, in the Middle Ages, the Old English pair, "The Wife's Lament" and "The Husband's Message," and the poems grouped in Middle English Lyrics under the rubric "All for love"; in the Renaissance, see the sonnet sequences in general and Shakespeare's in particular, especially this wonderfully contrastive pair, "Let me not to the marriage of true minds" and "When my love swears that she is made of truth"; and in the later seventeenth century into the Restoration, see Lord Herbert of Cherbury's "Ode upon a Question Moved, Whether Love Should Continue Forever?" and Thomas Stanley's "La Belle Confidence" versus Richard Lovelace's "Love Made in the First Age: To Cloris," Margaret Cavendish's "Nature's Dessert," and especially Thomas Carew's remarkable "A Rapture."

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RATIO 2

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SIX

Political Tragedy

Feudal political tragedy usually features some dark villain or flawed hero who topples the columns of society's temple leaving a rubble that can be reconstructed only over the graves of the suffering innocent. The assault is upon fundamental socio-political institutions like kingship, succession, allegiance. English political tragedy usually features a rebellion against the king that is essentially Oedipal. Such rebellion inevitably involves the breaking of the political word as bond, the subject-son's oath of allegiance to his father-king, a king whose authority is typically portrayed as ratified by a father-god. Such rebellion teaches others to disregard their oaths and thus threatens to become epidemic and to culminate in apocalyptic anarchy. Yet society usually is reconstituted at the end, however tenuously, and a new order established based upon the old values, the old enabling codes.

Le Morte

Darthur

The tragedy of Le Morte Darthur is the failure of the code of the word, even among its noblest adherents, to suppress the violence it was created to contain. The tragedy is political, because it involves the destruction of a socio-political system. Out of the chaos of England, Arthur forges a court and a code to establish order. In the later words of Dryden, "He Plights his Faith" to his people, and they plight theirs

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in return—not only to him but to a system of ethics. Malory describes Arthur's Coronation Oath: "And so anon was the coronacyon made, and ther was he sworne unto his lordes and the comyns for to be a true kyng, to stand with true justyce fro thens forth the dayes of this lyf " (p. 10). Later, against the threat of the Five Kings, Arthur reaffirms his pledge to his people: "I make myne avow; for my trwe lyege peple shall nat be destroyed in my defaughte" (77). In return, his Knights of the Round Table swear to be faithful to him and to each other and also to avoid the specific crimes of "outerage," "mourthir," "treson," rape, and "batayles in a wrongefull quarell" and to pursue the positive virtues of dispensing mercy and succoring damsels in distress (75). By mercifully sparing conquered knights, instead of summarily beheading them on the spot as was their wont (see Sir Gawain's first adventure, 64-67), and by making them repair to Camelot and submit to King Arthur, the Knights of the Round Table ideally socialize enemies into a fellowship whose only violence is the ritualized warfare of tournaments. Ideally. But throughout Le Morte Darthur we witness the return of the suppressed, the reciprocal violence of an endless cycle of rivalry and revenge that is constantly threatening to erupt into what Girard calls the sacrificial crisis.1 Immediately after Arthur has secured his throne begins the story of "The Knight with the Two Swords," Sir Balyn, whom Arthur had imprisoned for slaying one of Arthur's cousins but whom, as if to end the cycle of violence, Arthur had released in a kind of amnesty. Apparently, his slate is washed clean, for Sir Balyn is able to draw the Dolorous Sword out of the sheath as proof that he is the knight at Arthur's court most "withoute velony other trechory and withoute treson" (38). But the damsel demands the sword's return, as if it is only safe in its sheath, for as soon as Sir Balyn refuses, a cycle of reciprocal violence is renewed. The Lady of the Lake demands Sir Balyn's head for killing her brother and the damsel's for killing her father. Instead, because the Lady of the Lake "had slayne hys modir" (41), Sir Balyn summarily beheads her in the Royal Presence. As a result, Sir Balyn is banished and, what is worse, after a trail of reciprocal bloodshed, is destined to strike the Dolorous Stroke, maiming King Pellam while his guest and creating the Wasteland. The fact that King Pellam is wounded in the sacred Grail chamber and with the same spear that struck the original Dolorous Stroke in the side of Christ indicates that from the first act of violence in the Royal Presence to the last in the Grail chamber, Sir Balyn vio-

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lates sacred taboos created to forestall such violence. Sir Balyn is a Stranger in the House who transgresses the laws of hospitality, who transforms the host/guest relationship back into one of hostility (see Tanner, Adultery in the Novel, 24-27). Like the Dolorous Stroke against Christ, Sir Balyn's strokes are symbolic acts of faithlessness. Reciprocal violence erupts throughout the Morte. Sir Brewnys Saunze Pité, who keeps reappearing in The Book of Sir Tristram de Lyones, is a figure for the perpetual return of the suppressed. And of course, reciprocal violence is disastrous in its consequences. King Lott's desire for revenge against King Arthur begets his death at the hands of Sir Pellinor, which begets Sir Pellinor's death at the hands of King Lott's son Sir Gawain, which begets the vengeful seduction of King Lott's widow Morgause by Sir Pellinor's son Sir Lamerok, which begets Morgause's beheading at the hands of her own son Sir Gaherys and finally Sir Lamerok's death at the hands especially of Sir Mordred, son of Morgause and King Arthur. Thus, not only does the Round Table lose two of its greatest knights, Sirs Pellinor and Lamerok, but Sir Gawain and his brothers (excepting Sir Gareth) are never fully socialized by the code; Sir Gawain never fully learns the lesson of his first adventure, mercy. Consequently, the reciprocal violence invades King Arthur's very household when Sir Lamerok's kinsman Sir Pyonell attempts to poison Sir Gawain at Queen Guinevere's table, nearly causing the Queen's death for suspected treason. Worse yet, when Sir Launcelot accidently kills his beloved Sir Gareth, Sir Gawain implacably seeks a revenge that eventually destroys King Arthur and the Round Table. Even when the last earthly court of appeal, the Vatican, intervenes to end the war, Sir Gawain fuels the feud between Sir Launcelot and King Arthur; even when Sir Launcelot offers extraordinary terms of spiritual retribution for his much-lamented accidental killing of Sir Gareth, Sir Gawain refuses to be merciful and thus violates the oath of the Round Table. As he admits in his deathbed letter to Sir Launcelot, Sir Gawain has provoked his own death through the reopening of the wound Sir Launcelot reluctantly gave him. And as he admits to King Arthur, he is responsible for the absence of his Champion, him who "hylde all youre cankyrde enemyes in subjeccion and daungere" (709) and whom he now implores to return to England and save King Arthur from Sir Mordred. Sir Gawain's implacable vengeance is indirectly responsible for the morte darthur.2 This kind of reciprocal violence turns friends into deadly rivals,

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and Malory stresses the theme of rivalry with the familiar motif of enemy brothers. Not only are Sirs Lancelot and Gawain symbolically brothers, so also are Sirs Gawain and Uwayne, who are actually cousins. Sir Gawain kills Sir Uwayne on the Grail quest, a tragedy Malory underlines by having them not recognize each other until too late and by Sir Uwayne's dying lament, "And now forgyff the God, for hit shall be ever rehersed that the tone sworne brother hath slayne the other" (561). The tragedy is extended to include the slaying of most of the Knights of the Round Table by their own on that quest. The Round Table destroys itself because its code of the word fails to suppress the reciprocal violence smoldering barely beneath the surface, as is imaged so perfectly by the repeated motif of knights fighting in disguise and thereby failing to recognize their friends and brothers (Sirs Gawain and Gareth, Sirs Tristram and Launcelot, Sir Launcelot and his kinsmen). Malory imagistically epitomizes this motif by Sir Balyn's unwitting fight to the death with his own brother Sir Balan. As the damsel with the Dolorous Sword has prophesied, he kills "the beste frende that ye have and the man that ye moste love in the worlde" (39-40). Their fraternal love is stressed by their kiss when they meet earlier and by Sir Balan's pledge to risk his life in his brother's adventures "as a brothir ought to do" (44). The depth of their tragedy—and the frightening implications of unrestrained violence that destroys all distinctions and all bonds—is symbolized by their being buried in the same tomb together, victims of each other's sword.3 There is another dimension to this reciprocal violence, one that Girard carefully delineates ( Violence and the Sacred, ch. 6) and one that Malory carefully images forth. Rivalry in the Morte is often complicated by sexuality. As Sirs Balyn and Balan fight, they glance up at the ladies in the tower nearby (57). Sir Lamerok strikes at Sir Pellinor's sons by sleeping with their mother. More signally, King Uther Pendragon sleeps with his rival's wife, as does his son King Arthur years later. This is what Girard calls mimetic desire. King Uther wars against the Duke of Tyntagil, sees his wife, and cannot restrain his "desire" (3-4 passim). His complicated motivation is expressed thus: "Thenne for pure angre and for grete love of fayr Igrayne the kyng Uther felle seke" (3-4). King Lott mocks the Boy-king Arthur and refuses to pledge his allegiance. Amidst their subsequent warfare, King Lott's wife and Arthur's half-sister, Morgause, comes as a messenger to King Arthur, and "the kynge caste grete love unto hir and desired to ly by her" (27). Subsequently, the adultery becomes King

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Lott's excuse for continuing the rivalry (48). What is worse, just as deadly rivalry symbolically leads to a centripetal collapse until the rival becomes one's brother, so also in mimetic desire does distinction collapse until the object of desire turns out to be one's sister. King Arthur's incest is unintentional, but it is nonetheless a sign that the collapse of the code of the word precipitates the war of all against all and all in pursuit of all in unlimited and unrestrained desire. Nowhere are the complications of mimetic desire more evident than in The Book of Sir Tristram. No sooner does Sir Tristram free Cornwall from having to pay tribute than the ungrateful King Mark conceives an unremitting hatred and envy of his nephew, evident in their parallel desire for Sir Segwarydes's wife. Upon learning of Sir Tristram's love for La Beale Isode, out of unmitigated spite King Mark orders Sir Tristram upon his allegiance to fetch her for him as his wife. Although Isode has pledged never to marry anyone else without his consent, Sir Tristram's loyalty transcends his love and he obeys, refusing to break his word to King Mark (257). Throughout the story, King Mark is clearly the aggressor, relentlessly pursuing Sir Tristram, repeatedly breaking vows to accord himself with him (375, 414) and finally treacherously murdering him (666). Elsewhere, King Mark is portrayed as implacably envious of all those whose fame eclipses his. When none of his knights can or will defeat Sir Uwayne in a fair joust, King Mark attacks him from the blind side (335). Out of envy at his brother Prince Bodwyne's saving of Cornwall from the Saracens, he treacherously murders him and subsequently his avenging son, Alexander the Orphan. King Mark is thus a figure of pure envy, an envy that causes him to constantly and treacherously break his word, both explicit, as in the case of Sir Tristram, and implicit, as in the case of Sir Uwayne and the other visiting Knights of the Round Table. In this last instance, Sir Gaherys upbraids him for violating the cream that anointed him a king and bound him to be just to subjects and guests alike (336). He has corrupted his role as father-king, and the pattern of reciprocal violence he refuses to abandon ends only when he dies at the hands of his grandnephew, the son of Alexander and the avenger not only of his father but also of Sir Tristram (398). Despite our sympathy for Sir Tristram, however, he does commit adultery, and the love potion he and Isode accidentally drink symbolizes the desire that their pledged words to King Mark cannot restrain. Moreover, Sir Tristram's unrestrained desire breeds deadly rivalry

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with others. Like King Mark, Sir Palomides repeatedly swears that he will overcome his desire for La Beale Isode and yield to Sir Tristram's claim (241, 426). But every time he sees her he reneges, literally. When Sir Tristram finally upbraids him for his repeated treasonous troth-breaking, Sir Palomides invokes the ethic of naturalism and libertinism: '"Sir, I have done to you no treson,' seyde sir Palomydes, 'for love is fre for all men, and thoughe I have loved your lady, she ys my lady as well as youres' " (474). In a sense, Sir Palomides is right, for however much of a claim Sir Tristram has to Isode, however sympathetically their love is treated, she is Sir Tristram's uncle's—and his king's—wife. By remaining her paramour and eventually eloping with her to Joyous Gard, Sir Tristram teaches others to disrespect the bonds of betrothal. If Isode belongs to Sir Tristram, then she belongs to everyman who desires her. The episode of "The Knight of the Cart" in The Book of Sir Launcelot and Queen Guinevere reveals best the ineluctable consequences of mimetic desire. It is as if Sir Launcelot's adultery invites Sir Meliagaunt's. Not only oaths of loyalty but words themselves appear to have been drained of their force4 because of the noblest knight's breach of his word. Queen Guinevere protests to Sir Meliagaunt in words whose application to Sir Launcelot is inescapable: "Bethynke the how thou arte a kyngis sonne and a knyght of the Table Rounde, and thou thus to be aboute to dishonoure the noble kyng that made the knyght! Thou shamyst all knyghthode and thyselffe and me" (651). Sir Meliagaunt's response is devastating: "As for all thys langayge, . . . be as hit be may. For wyte you well, madame, I have loved you many a yere, and never ar now cowde I gete you at such avayle. And therefore I woll take you as I fynde you" (651). This is as clear a repudiation of the code of the word and as clear an expression of unrestrained desire as occur in the Morte. And Sir Launcelot would seem to have made it possible not only because he has violated his oath of allegiance to King Arthur, his oath of knighthood, his oath of the Round Table, and his promise to amend his sinful behavior at the end of the Grail quest ("sir Launcelot began to resorte unto quene Gwenivere agayne and forgate the promyse and the perfección that he made in the queste" 611), but because he has begun to make a mockery of the code of words. First, Sir Launcelot and Queen Guinevere appropriate the code to themselves, to their courtly love, constantly pledging to be faithful to one another, constantly worrying about Sir Launcelot's putative or unwitting breaches of his fidelity, as in his affairs with both Ladies

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Elayne. Whatever the state of their consciences or consciousnesses, and however Malory himself seems complicit with this appropriation, calling the Queen "a trew lover" (649), the reader cannot fail to hear the irony in pledges of fidelity among those whose love exists in the fold created by infidelity. Second, early in this book when the Queen is falsely accused of treachery in the death of Sir Patrise, Sir Launcelot defends her in a Trial by Combat, and in accordance with the tradition of right makes might, she is vindicated. Nevertheless, in a troubling passage, Sir Bors assures the Queen that Sir Launcelot would "nat a fayled you in youre ryght nother in youre wronge" (616). In "The Knight of the Cart," when the Queen is discovered by Sir Meliagaunt in bloody sheets, accused of treason, and condemned to another Trial by Combat, Sir Launcelot brazenly equivocates (she did not sleep with one of her ten wounded knights, as alleged, but with the wounded Launcelot) and successfully defends her, thus corrupting the trial that exists to validate one's word and reversing the tradition so that now might makes right. However much Sir Meliagaunt deserves to be punished for his attempted rape, the reader cannot mistake the signs that run throughout this book. Sir Launcelot's wounds in the thigh and the buttocks and his riding in the cart are symbolic warnings of the ignominious consequences of his treasonous adultery—at least dismemberment and hanging. 6 His fighting in disguise against his brother knights and his kinsmen, even while wearing the Queen's unmistakable sleeve on his helmet, are signs of his impudence and belief in his impunity. This belief causes him to continue to mock the code of the word to the very end of King Arthur's reign, for throughout the rest of the Morte he brazenly challenges anyone to prove the Queen false to the King, even when he is caught in her very bedroom (680; see also 688, 694). King Arthur is driven to break through his persiflage and call a spade a spade: "Now, fye uppon thy fayre langayge! . . . thou haste layne be my quene and holdyn her many wynters, and sytthyn, lyke a traytoure, taken her away fro me by fors" (688). If Sir Launcelot has temporarily succeeded in obfuscating the truth through his prowess and his eloquence, the Queen's final, public confession affirms the truth of the charge against them and thus restores the referentiality of words: "Thorow thys same man and me hath all thys warre be wrought, and the deth of the moste nobelest knyghtes of the worlde; for thorow oure love that we have loved togydir ys my moste noble lorde slayne" (720).

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If King Arthur is willing to be reconciled with Sir Launcelot, and if Malory portrays the latter's rescue and defense of the Queen in as favorable a light as possible, the reader cannot fail to interpret the significance of his killing of Sir Gareth, who unlike Sir Launcelot, heeds the warning of his wound in the thigh and restrains his sexual desire until his solemn betrothal to the Lady Lyones is fulfilled in marriage ("The Tale of Sir Gareth of Orkney"). In contrast, Sir Launcelot is a Stranger in the House himself, a violator of King Arthur's great trust in him. In "The Knight of the Cart," Sir Launcelot is portrayed as a nearly comic—and familiar—figure. Honoring a tryst with the Queen in the most dangerous circumstances of another man's castle, he takes a ladder, climbs to her bedroom window, and unable to restrain his desire in the face of her seductive enticement (complete with double entendre: "I wolde as fayne as ye that ye myght com in to me" 657), breaks through the bars and takes "hys plesaunce and hys lykynge untyll hit was the dawnyng of the day" (657). In short, he is a Don Juan, breaking through the bars of sexual restraint, in this instance through the bonds of his pledged word. Sir Launcelot's wound is another sign of the risk he runs of castration by the authority figure the castle symbolically represents. If this interpretation is beginning to sound Freudian, we must realize that Sir Mordred, like Sir Meliagaunt, is simply a darker version of Sir Launcelot. He, too, desires King Arthur's queen. Pretending King Arthur has been killed and causing himself to be crowned king at Canterbury, Sir Mordred "drew hym unto Wynchester, and there he toke quene Gwenyver, and seyde playnly that he wolde wedde her (which was hys unclys wyff and hys fadirs wyff)" (707). But Girard's reinterpretation of Freud (Violence and the Sacred, ch. 7) allows us to view this Oedipal conflict as another example of mimetic desire.6 Sir Mordred desires not his mother but his father's wife, the sign of his power. Even though Sir Launcelot does not consciously wish to usurp King Arthur's power and goes out of his way to avoid combat with him and to keep others from harming him during their wars ("For I woll never se that moste noble kynge that made me knyght nother slayne nor shamed" 691), supplanting King Arthur in his bed is, in medieval symbolism, tantamount to supplanting him on his throne. Thus, Sir Mordred merely acts out the full implications of Sir Launcelot's rebellion. Yet as the dark figure of Sir Mordred leans "uppon hys swerde

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amonge a grete hepe of dede men" (713), waiting for the final battle with his father, we recognize him as the child Merlin prophesies will come to avenge King Arthur's incest with Morgause (29). And therefore we recognize him not so much as Launcelot's double but as King Arthur's. Sir Mordred recapitulates his father's original sin of an incest deriving from mimetic desire. And he has been prefigured in King Arthur's Monstrous Double, the giant werlow in The Tale of the Noble King Arthur That Was Emperor Himself through Dignity of His Hands. The giant is a figure of absolute desire, a figure who knows no bonds and no bounds. Significantly, he rages in "the contrey of Constantyne" (119), the antithesis of constancy. He kills, rapes, and devours whomever he wants. And now he wants "Arthurs wyff, dame Gwenyvere" (120). Obscenely, he warms his naked buttocks by his fire as he gnaws "on a lymme of a large man" and awaits the main course of twelve children and the dessert of three maidens, whom he plans to rape to death as he has already done the duchess, King Arthur's cousin's wife (119-21). King Arthur comes as champion of his "lyege peple" to save them from this unleashed terror (120). But like Beowulf, he fights with a displaced, monstrous version of his society's worst crimes, unrestrained killing and unrestrained sex. Like enemy brothers, they are locked in each other's arms in deadly struggle as they roll down the cliff and as the maidens pray to Christ for King Arthur's victory (122). At this point in his career, King Arthur is powerful enough to castrate and kill his monstrous double ("he swappis his genytrottys in sondir" 121). But the suppressed returns to kill and symbolically castrate him in the end, for just as in his dream (711), King Arthur is figuratively dismembered by the phallic serpents of Sir Launcelot's and Sir Mordred's Oedipal, mimetic rebellions. In other words, King Arthur's world collapses because of the following logic. If the best of all his knights is disloyal, if even he himself has violated the bonds of society, a fortiori so will lesser people, from Sir Gawain to Sir Mordred to the commons of England, whom Malory upbraids thus for their disloyalty. Lo ye all Englysshemen, se ye nat what a myschyff here was? For he that was the moste kynge and nobelyst knyght of the worlde, and moste loved the felyshyp of noble knyghtes, and by hym they all were upholdyn, and yet myght nat thes Englyshemen holde them contente with hym. Lo thus was the olde custom and usayges of thys londe, and men say that we of thys londe have nat yet loste that custom.

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Alas! thys ys a greate defaughte of us Englysshemen, for there may no thynge us please no terme. (708)

And yet it is for just this "unstablenesse" that Sir Launcelot is criticized on the Grail quest. Not even King Arthur himself could be absolutely stable, absolutely constant to the standard of the word. Only one man could. And he was too perfect for this "unsyker worlde" (607). In pursuing the Holy Grail, Sir Galahad in effect sets out to redeem the world from Sir Balyn's Dolorous Stroke, that is, from reciprocal violence. Hence, he carries Sir Balyn's sword. And he merits the Grail because he is the perfectly loyal knight, untainted by sexual, mimetic desire. What is more, he is the perfectly loyal son—of Sir Launcelot, of his Father-King Arthur, and of God. His prototype Christ came to save the world from sins epitomized in rivalry between father and son: "For there was suche wrecchydnesse that the fadir loved nat the sonne, nother the sonne loved nat the fadir" (528). The same sin characterizes the world of King Arthur: "for in tho dayes the sonne spared nat the fadir no more than a straunger" (546). And like Christ, Sir Galahad can heal the world because of his perfect obedience to and rapport with his father. At their last meeting, Sir Galahad "wente to hys fadir and kyste hym swetely and seyde, 'Fayre swete fadir, I wote nat whan I shall se you more tyll I se the body of Jesu Cryste' " (595). There is no envy or mimetic desire between them, and sensing his son's special relationship with the ultimate authority figure, the Divine Father, Sir Launcelot asks Sir Galahad, "Pray to the Fadir that He holde me stylle in Hys servyse. . . . I pray to that Hyghe Fadir, conserve me and you bothe" (595). Because as a perfect virgin he presents no sexual, no Oedipal rivalry to the father, Sir Galahad can heal the Maimed King in his many manifestations: in the penultimate healing, he mends the pieces of the broken sword that had wounded Joseph of Arimethea's thigh (601-2). Thus, he heals the symbolic castrations caused by Oedipal rivalry, by mimetic desire that abrogates the bonds of pledged words and leads to reciprocal violence. Finally, Sir Galahad is vouchsafed a theophany along with Sirs Percival and Bors. It is instructive to interpret why the latter are permitted to attend. The clues are in their temptations. Despite the horrible provocations committed by his brother Sir Lionel, Sir Bors heroically resists fratricide and at the point of capitulation is saved by grace (576). With great difficulty and "by adventure and grace" Sir Percival resists sexual temptation to forswear his word to God and

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give it instead to a seductive woman, who is really a fiend beneath (550-51). They have overcome fratricidal vengeance and desire. They have remained loyal to their. Quest Oath. Thus, they are permitted to join Sir Galahad. And thus Christ appears to them and, in a figure that combines God, King, Father, and even Loyal Son (Christ Himself) in one, addresses them as persons who have healed the breaches of rivalry and mimetic desire: "My knyghtes and my servauntes and my trew chyldren . . . . My sunnes" (603-4). They respond, "A, thanked be Thou, Lorde, that Thou wolt whyghtsauff to calle us Thy sunnes!" (604). "The trouth of the Sankgreall" (541, 605), then, must be seen on one level to represent perfect trust. And perhaps the sacrifices of the perfect maiden, Sir Percival's sister, who gives her blood to save the ailing dame, and the perfectly loyal Sir Galahad, who dies in absolute submission to the father as he achieves the disappearing Grail, can be seen as the scapegoat sacrifices, themselves imitations of the sacrifice of Christ signified by the Grail, necessary to redeem the world from its worst evil of reciprocal violence. If so, the sacrifices are inefficacious. Like the treasure at the end of Beowulf, the Grail is withdrawn from a faithless people: "For he [the Grail, Christ] ys nat served nother worshipped to hys ryght by hem of thys londe, for they be turned to evyll lyvyng, and therefore I shall disherite them of the honoure whych I have done them" (604). Hence, Absolute Trust departs and King Arthur dies as a result of troth-breaking, his own included. And not only does his kingdom lose the Grail as a sign of its continuity, it loses King Arthur's sword, the phallic sign of his power. The Lady of the Lake reclaims it, as if to say that man's puny effort to establish his patriarchal order has failed. Indeed, the dying King Arthur concludes to the wounded Sir Bedyvere, "Do as well as thou mayste, for in me ys no truste for to truste in" (716). He utters these words as the ladies take him off in the barge toward Avylon. First among these ladies, the only one named, is a queen, who turns out to be King Arthur's sister and nemesis, Morgan le Fay. Finally, it appears, Morgan has triumphed. She is the last symbolic figure of that which destroys King Arthur's order. Like Duessa, she is a figure for the faithless woman, who commits adultery, attempts to murder her own husband, and directs her paramour to kill the king by deceit and treachery ("Arthur and Accolon"). That is, she is a Dark Queen who lusts after power herself. Consequently, she violates King Arthur's great "trust" in her (88) and steals his phallic sword and its talismanic scabbard. Although her designs are tempo-

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rarily defeated, that which she represents—lawless desire—is not. She is a dark double of Queen Guinevere herself, who as queen is the sign of the constancy that is supposed to hold the society together. Symbolically, she is associated with the roundness of the Round Table that is her dowry and even with the pure vessel of the Holy Grail. It is as if, when she is unfaithful, the Grail, troth itself, cannot abide. At the end of the Morte there appears only one thing left to trust in, the absent Christ. The Queen, Sir Launcelot, and the remaining Knights of the Round Table retire to monasteries to develop a contempt for this "unsyker worlde," and to do penance in hopes of a future stability in heaven. As Sir Launcelot proclaims, "Alas! Who may truste thys world?" (721). And yet, after they die Malory does not leave a world without political order. Perhaps because of the depth of the Queen's and Sir Launcelot's penance, the world appears to be purged and ready for renewed political order based upon the code of the word: a new king is crowned and his name is "Costantyn" (725).

Macbeth He's here in double trust: First, as I am his kinsman and his subject, Strong both against the deed; then, as his host, Who should against his murderer shut the door, Not bear the knife myself. (1.7.12-16)

When Macbeth murders King Duncan, he thinks he hears a voice cry out, "Macbeth does murder sleep" (2.2.35). One of the senses of that pregnant phrase informs Macduff's intention to seek the aid of the English that the Scots may again purchase "sleep to our nights" (3.6.34), that is, the mutual trust necessary to social tranquillity. Macbeth has murdered trust itself.7 As he says in the quotation above, he violates the trust between king and subject. The relationship is compounded, as usual in chivalric literature, by the bonds of kinship. Like Grendel, Macbeth represents one of the extreme threats to patriarchal aristocracy, kin-killing. Moreover, in a variation on the motif of the Stranger in the House, Macbeth violates the sacred rules of hospitality and turns himself as host into hostis, the enemy (see Tanner, loc. cit.). The significance of his crime is carefully prepared for. Shakespeare opens the play associating the witches, manifestations of the Powers

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of Darkness, with the "revolt" that has erupted in Duncan's land (1.2.2). Duncan's enemies are the invading Norwegians and, more important, two rebellious subjects, the villainous Macdonwald, "Worthy to be a rebel" (1.2.9), and "that most disloyal traitor / The Thane of Cawdor" (1.2.52-53). Cawdor is "most disloyal" because he is a turncoat, a renegade who assists the invading forces, and because, Duncan says, "He was a gentleman on whom I built / An absolute trust" (1.4.13-14). Opposed to these are Duncan's loyal thanes, especially Macbeth, who most valiantly fights the king's enemies and finally, "Point against point rebellious" (1.2.56), defeats the last traitor, Cawdor, with whose title his "service and loyalty" are repaid (1.4.22). That the central conflict in the play is between troth-keepers and troth-breakers is underscored by Banquo's resistance to temptation. When Macbeth promises to increase Banquo's "honor," he replies, "So I lose none / In seeking to augment it, but still keep / My bosom franchised and allegiance clear" (2.1.26-28). And later, Angus, one of the thanes who deserts Macbeth, clearly characterizes Macbeth's crime when he says that "minutely revolts upbraid his faith-breach" (5.2.18). Ironically, a moment later he who has by the ultimate act of disloyalty destroyed loyalty curses the "false thanes" who desert him in legitimate revolt (5.3.7). Macbeth's original breach of faith opens a Pandora's box of unnatural evils, imaged forth in narrations of the portentous signs and ominous events of the night of Duncan's murder. Most frightening, perhaps, is the report of Duncan's horses' turning wild and eating each other (2.4.14-20). By killing the king, Macbeth destroys the traces and harnesses of hierarchical order and turns matched teams, twins, against each other in deadly rivalry. Hence, Macbeth's next major crime is to break "that great bond" between him and his warrior twin, Banquo (3.2.49). Symbolically, Macbeth now commits the crime of Cain and murders his brother. To emphasize the consequences of the murder of trust, in the moment before their brutal murder by Macbeth's order, Macduff's wife and son wittily but relevantly banter about the fate of those who swear and lie and are therefore traitors. She maintains that all such must be hanged by the "honest men" (4.2.54), but he perceives the problem: "Then the liars and swearers are fools, for there are liars and swearers enow to beat the honest men and hang up them" (4.2.55-57). In a world without trust, where troth-breakers like Macbeth can sin with impunity, the honest have no chance, as both wife and son discover momentarily to both their and our horror.

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The play is filled with "horrid images" (1.3.135): "wicked" and "terrible dreams" (2.1.50; 3.2.18), the "Gorgon" sight of Duncan's murder (2.3.68), the horrifying spectacle at the witches' cave, the terrifying prospect of Birnam Wood come to Dunsinane. The motif begins with Macbeth's startled response to the witches' prophecy, upon which Banquo comments (1.3.51-52). The reason for Macbeth's amazement he later reveals in soliloquy. This supernatural soliciting Cannot be ill, cannot be good. If ill, Why hath it given me earnest of success, Commencing in a truth? I am Thane of Cawdor. If good, why do I yield to that suggestion Whose horrid image doth unfix my hair And make my seated heart knock at my ribs Against the use of nature? Present fears Are less than horrible imaginings. My thought, whose murder yet is but fantastical, Shakes so my single state of man that function Is smothered in surmise and nothing is But what is not. (1.3.130-42)

The horrid image Macbeth sees is as unheimlich as the witches themselves, who "look not like th'inhabitants o'th'earth" (1.3.41). But the point is that the witches and the image are actually heimlich: they are the projection of Macbeth's own darkest desires. He has obviously already contemplated the murder of Duncan, or at least his unconscious has. Probably, then, Macbeth's horror is the secret shock of recognition. And the horror would be intensified by Duncan's symbolic relationship to him. For symbolically, Duncan is Macbeth's—and all his subjects'—father. While Macbeth is in the act of murdering him, Lady Macbeth explains her inability to do the deed herself: "Had he not resembled / My father as he slept, I had done't" (2.2.12-13). Macbeth's act is not only regicide but parricide. It is the primal rebellion of son against father, and it even has sexual overtones. Contemplating his act beforehand, Macbeth imagines in one of those daytime "wicked dreams" his act of murder as stalking "With Targuin's ravishing strides, towards his design" (2.1.55). In a sense, Macbeth's murder is a rape of the helpless, sleeping Duncan. It is certainly a sexual act in that it constitutes a symbolic castration, a seizing of the father's

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power. As such, it recapitulates the archetypal killing of the primal father Freud discusses in Totem and Taboo. If so, then the horrid image of Duncan's murder is invested with all the frightening power of not only the personal but the racial unconscious; And if so, then Macbeth murders not only trust but patriarchy itself, the whole system the code of the word was invented to preserve (cf. Tennenhouse, Power on Display, 127-32). Macbeth hypocritically concludes that "Renown and grace is dead" (2.3.90), and Macduff laments Duncan's death as if it were the destruction of the Temple, the sign of the end of an order once divinely protected (like that of the Hebrews). Confusion now hath made his masterpiece: Most sacrilegious murder hath broke ope The Lord's anointed temple and stole thence The life o'th'building.

(2.3.62-65) It is as if the Ark of the Covenant has been irretrievably stolen from the Holy of Holies. The sign of man's connection with the Word has been erased. The horrid image of Duncan's murdered body is "The great doom's image" (2.3.74), the sign of the end of the world. Macbeth's "faith-breach" has Apocalyptic consequences. Shakespeare invests this central conflict of the play between trothkeepers and troth-breakers with extremely powerful Manichaean imagery of the powers of light versus the powers of darkness. Perhaps the best contrast in the play is that between the birds. As the patriarchal Duncan approaches Macbeth's castle of Inverness to further honor him and further increase the bonds between them (1.4.43), Banquo describes the swallows that inhabit its nooks. This guest of summer, The temple-haunting martlet, does approve By his loved mansionry that the heaven's breath Smells wooingly here. No jutty, frieze, Buttress, nor coign of vantage, but this bird Hath made his pendent bed and procréant cradle.

(1.6.3-8). The fact that the martlet, which normally haunts temples, lives here should indicate that Macbeth's castle will be an appropriate temporary

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dwelling for the Lord's anointed. Yet we know that just a moment earlier Lady Macbeth has screeched exultantly: The raven himself is hoarse That croaks the fatal entrance of Duncan Under my battlements. (1.5.36-38)

Simple martlets appear no match for all the fell birds of prey that hover over the play. As Macbeth anticipates the murder of Banquo, he prays the night to ravenously "Cancel and tear to pieces that great bond" between the generals (3.2.49), and he describes the encroaching twilight. Light thickens, and the crow Makes wing to th'rooky wood. Good things of day begin to droop and drowse, Whiles night's black agents to their preys do rouse. (3.2.50-53)

Macduff calls Macbeth "hell-kite" for the murder of Macduff's defenseless "chickens and their dam" (4.3.217-18), who have proved ineffective wrens "against the owl" (4.2.9-11). This same "obscure bird," the owl, "Clamored the livelong night" of Duncan's murder (2.3.55-56). Even Macbeth and Lady Macbeth hear it (2.2.3 & 15). An obscene "mousing owl," it has metaphorically "hawked at and killed" the aristocratic "falcon, tow'ring in her pride of place" (2.4.12-13). In this Manichaean dichotomy, the Powers of Darkness are also associated with women. Every raven must have her Maleficent and vice-versa. The play opens with the weird sisters, and as soon as Macbeth consciously contemplates the murder of Duncan, the Dark Lady of the play emerges under the sign of the raven and prays the unclean spirits of darkness, those "murd'ring ministers," to "unsex" her, trading her "milk for gall" (1.5.36ff.). Just as the imagery of Duncan's horses' eating each other extends the notion of preying to cannibalism, so the imagery of Lady Macbeth's speeches suggests infanticide. Her hypothetical example to Macbeth must be more than casual. It suggests all the horror of the Devouring Goddess. I have given suck, and know How tender 'tis to love the babe that milks me: I would, while it was smiling in my face,

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Have plucked my nipple from his boneless gums And dashed the brains out, had I so sworn as you Have done to this. (1.7.54-59) Again, it is thoroughly ironic for those about to break their most solemn oath of allegiance to demand allegiance to murderous oaths. But Shakespeare is investing such troth-breaking with some of the most negative rhetoric available to him. If Macbeth murders patriarchy, it is with the help of evil women who seem enemies to their own offspring. The catalogue of ingredients for the witches' evil brew becomes truly horrible when they begin adding human parts: "mummy, . . . Liver of blaspheming Jew, . . . Nose of Turk, and Tartar's lips" (4.1.23-29). Perhaps this cannibalism can be excused as a legitimate menu of Infidels, but the next ingredient cannot: "Finger of birth-strangled babe / Ditch-delivered by a drab / Make the gruel thick and slab" (4.1.30-32). One of the last ingredients they add, although it is not human, still represents cannibalistic infancticide: "Pour in sow's blood, that hath eaten / Her nine farrow" (4.1.64-65). And let us remember that Macbeth is about to be presented with a vision of a "Bloody Child" (4.1.76s.d.), that we have seen Fleance assaulted and nearly murdered, and that we will see Macduff's son cruelly butchered on the stage. The assault on patriarchy, then, is an assault on genealogy abetted by the child-devouring goddesses of matriarchy. Even if the Hecate scenes are interpolations, they are appropriate. She presides over the play as the evil goddess of night. Anticipating the murder of Banquo and Fleance, Macbeth paints for his lady another image of the flying things of the night. Ere the bat hath flown His cloistered flight, ere to black Hecate's summons The shard-borne beetle with his drowsy hums Hath rung night's yawning peal, there shall be done A deed of dreadful note. (3.2.40-44) Hecate presides over the destruction of genealogy. Insanely jealous of the promise for his progeny, Macbeth tries to obliterate Banquo's line. And immediately after he has seen the vision not only of Macduff as his enemy but also of Banquo's progeny as triumphant despite his attempts, Macbeth seeks revenge on Macduff's

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"wife, his babes, and all unfortunate souls / That trace him in his line" (4.1.152-53). Of course, one of the greatest ironies of Macbeth's punishment throughout the play is that this castrating murderer of his Father-King, this cannibalistic infant-killer, can produce no heirs. If Lady Macbeth has indeed suckled a male child as she insists above, he is evidently dead. Macbeth's injunction, "Bring forth men-children only" echoes emptily through his hour upon the stage (1.7.72). Cursed by "a fruitless crown" and "a barren sceptre" (3.1.61-62), he is obviously constantly upbraided by the procréant cradles of his enemies, which he cannot everfinallyobliterate, for Banquo's issue lives to mock him. And so does Duncan's. As he contemplates the murder of Duncan early in the play, Macbeth realizes that Duncan's proclaiming Malcolm the Prince of Cumberland and thus heir apparent to the throne "is a step / On which I must fall down or else o'erleap" (1.4.48-49). Yet in an incredible Freudian slip, he neglects to murder him when he murders Duncan. He thus leaves himself vulnerable to the avenging castration of the reincarnated Father, a Father whose line he has been unable to attenuate. The third apparition vouchsafed him by the witches is "a Child Crowned, with a tree in his hand" (4.1.86.s.d.). The figure doubles for both Fleance and Malcolm, and the tree doubles for both Birnam Wood and genealogy. The child will replant the family tree Macbeth has vainly endeavored to uproot. But immediately in the play it is Duncan's progeny which returns to haunt Macbeth. When Malcolm pretends to the suing Macduff that he, like the rebel Macdonwald the Captain describes at the beginning of the play (in lines that prophetically refer to Macbeth), embodies the "multiplying villainies of nature" (1.2.11)—from lust to avarice to absolute evil itself—Macduff sobs forth a profound lament that he "does blaspheme his breed," leaving Scotland without a worthy heir to Duncan (4.3.10814). But Malcolm is just testing Macduff, and moved by his sincerity, the Prince sets the record straight. I put myself to thy direction and Unspeak mine own detraction, here abjure The taints and blames I laid upon myself For strangers to my nature. I am yet Unknown to woman, never was forsworn, Scarcely have coveted what was mine own, At no time broke my faith, would not betray The devil to his fellow, and delight

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No less in truth than life. My first false speaking Was this upon myself. What I am truly, Is thine and my poor country's to command. (4.3.122-32)

The values here are extremely important. Malcolm has never broken his word or betrayed anyone. Therefore, he is worthy not just to reign but to take the throne back from the arch-troth-breaker, Macbeth. And his true self-portrait is placed between Macduff's portrait of his saintly father and his own and the doctor's portrait of King Edward of England, who has offered his aid in Malcolm's enterprise. The seemingly irrelevant detail of this king's ability to cure the King's Evil is actually very important. This is Saint Edward the Confessor, and Shakespeare is symbolically investing Malcolm with his divine powers. As his father was the Lord's anointed and as Edward is actually a saint, "full of grace" (4.3.159), so is Malcolm king de jure divino. His trust is established with God. Malcolm therefore is worthy of trust, and much to Macbeth's dismay at his "false thanes," they desert him precisely to "Do faithful homage" and "give obedience where 'tis truly owed" (3.6.36; 5.2.26). Moreover, they place their trust in God. Right after Duncan's murder, Banquo consigns himself to "the great hand of God" (2.3.126), and Ross interprets the night's dreadful signs as implying, "the heavens, as troubled with man's act, / Threatens [sic] his bloody stage" (2.4.5-6). Both utterances appear empty, for Macbeth reigns tyrannically for years. Nevertheless, when Lennox and "another Lord" discuss Macduff's flight to England, they speak in terms of a holy war against Macbeth with help of "Him above" (3.6.32). Finally Malcolm assures Macduff, "Macbeth / Is ripe for shaking, and the pow'rs above / Put on their instruments" (4.3.237-38). This is a divinely sanctioned righteous war against a devilish tyrant, and at the end Macbeth himself is symbolically castrated and the emblem of his power (like Grendel's head) delivered by the loyal Macduff to his sovereign, whom he hails, "King of Scotland" (5.8.59). Sleep has been restored as Malcolm has promised: "Cousins, I hope the days are near at hand / That chambers will be safe" (5.4.1-2). And trust has been restored, as all Malcolm's cousins and kinsmen and thanes—his "kingdom's pearl" (5.8.56)—join Macduff: "Hail, King of Scotland!" (5.8.59). Malcolm is now king in divine trust, "by the grace of Grace" (5.8.72). Meanwhile, of course, another meaning of the phrase "Macbeth

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does murder sleep" is that he and his lady will lose their sleep to agenbite of inwit. But this is also a loss of trust. They both come to despair. With the blood of regicide, parricide, fratricide, and infanticide on her hands too (in her sleepwalking scene she mentions Duncan, Macduff's family, and Banquo, 5.1.36,38,58), Lady Macbeth's conscience tortures her into suicide (metaphorically if not literally). And, to his horror, Macbeth increasingly learns that, as Banquo has warned him, he has misplaced his trust. Banquo sees more profoundly into the tendency of witches "to win us to our harm" (1.3.123). Macbeth knows better than to trust them after they have given their equivocating apparitions: "Infected be the air whereon they ride, / And damned all those that trust them!" (4.1.138-39). Ironically though, only when Birnam Wood comes to Dunsinane does Macbeth really begin "To doubt th'equivocation of the fiend, / That lies like truth" (5.5.43-44). And finally, faced with the bloody child, Macduff, grown into an instrument of divine vengeance, Macbeth bitterly laments: be these juggling fiends no more believed, That palter with us in a double sense, That keep the word of promise to our ear And break it to our hope. (5.8.19-22)

He who has broken all word of promise now ironically brands the witches word-breakers. And perhaps the last grand irony of the play is that when all the players have finished strutting and fretting their hour upon the stage, the word-breakers find to their (everlasting) chagrin that even their despair, that ultimate act of distrust, is futile. Life turns out to be more than a "tale, / Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, / Signifying nothing" (5.5.26-28). As Shakespeare has shaped his play of words, it signifies the efficacy of trust, the necessity of loyalty, and the ultimate vindication of those who keep their word despite their overwhelming suffering and loss. And the play graphically portrays the fate of those who violate their trust and misplace it in the Powers of Darkness. The hilarious Porter, playing his role as if at hell's gate, could have told Macbeth as much: "Knock, knock. Who's there, in th'other devil's name? Faith, here's an equivocator, that could swear in both the scales against either scale; who committed treason enough for God's sake, yet could not equivocate to heaven. O come in, equivocator" (2.3.6-11).

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Absalom and Achitophel: A Poem In order to write the history of his own time, of the Exclusion Crisis and its threat to the fundamental monarchal principle of succession, Dryden availed himself of the Scriptural story of Absalom's rebellion against his father David, thereby implicitly informing his story with the arc of tragedy, the ending of which he could leave to the future—or his audience's imagination. Writing in the shadow of Paradise Lost and particularly Paradise Regained, Dryden fleshed out the Scriptural account by portraying a successful temptation of a false Messiah by a Satanic agent. And although the final act of the Scriptural tragedy is never portrayed on Dryden's stage, nevertheless, Absalom's "Honours" are stripped from him and given to Adriel (just as many of the Duke of Monmouth's were in fact given to John Sheffield, third earl of Mulgrave8) and David (Charles II) decrees, "If my Young Samson will pretend a Call / To shake the Column [that is, the King, for "Kings are the publick Pillars of the State"], let him share the Fall" (953-56). Of course, the Fall David predicts is not that of the Temple of State but of the conspiracy itself. Absalom's fate is thus entailed in David's proclamation, "By their own arts 'tis Righteously decreed, / Those dire Artificers of Death shall bleed" (1010-11). While Dryden's audience might hope for some reprieve for Monmouth, the tragic ending of the Scriptural story looms over the figure of Absalom in the corner (as if in a Bruegel painting) at the end of the poem. He has already suffered a tragic fall from greatness and glory through pride and ambition. Whether he be eventually redeemed from the general fall of the conspirators is left extremely doubtful. And given Monmouth's actual execution in 1685, it is almost as if Dryden cursed him with a text from which he could not escape. Like Macbeth's, Absalom's tragedy is one of distrust. And like Milton's Christ, he is tempted above all to distrust God's word, to believe that "heavens Anointing Oyle," to paraphrase Achitophel (Anthony Ashley Cooper, first earl of Shaftesbury), could be "in vain" (265). In this instance, however, the problem is that Absalom's head is not the one that was anointed. David's brother is the heir apparent, and his right is secured by the Law. Again, Dryden's rhetorical purposes are immensely aided by his availing himself of the Scriptural story, where the Law comes directly from God. It is the Logos, and as Absalom himself admits, the law of succession is "Heavens Decree" (361). Achitophel attempts to counter with social contract theory, in which he-

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reditary succession may be a useful principle "for the general Good design'd," but it "In its own wrong a Nation cannot bind" (413-14). He insidiously redefines the feudal concept of the bonds between kings and subjects. the People have a Right Supreme To make their Kings; for Kings are made for them. All Empire is no more than Pow'r in Trust. (409-11)

This is insidious because it pretends to obfuscate the fact (as Dryden presents the matter) that even if such were the basis of government, the people's resuming the power to themselves in order to confer it on another constitutes troth-breaking, the breaking of a "Cov'nant" (767; cf. Michael McKeon, "Historicizing Absalom and Ackitophel"). The use of the word covenant subtly sanctifies the principle of succession, a process completed when Dryden argues that to go beyond peaceful amendment of the constitution is tantamount to tampering with the Ark of the Covenant itself, the repository of the Word (804). Another extremely subtle implication of Dryden's rhetoric concerning succession resides in his analogy to the hereditary transmission of the effects of the Fall (769-74). The analogy seems strained, to say the least—unless we see its hidden significance. Adam's sin, especially as it had been recently characterized by Milton, was one of "foul distrust, and breach / Disloyal on the part of man, revolt, / And disobedience" (PL 9.6-8). Dryden seems to be reminding his audience that the Original Sin provides the paradigm and the very entry into the world of the kind of distrust and disloyalty rampant in the poem. Absalom and Achitophel and their party recapitulate Original Sin. Achitophel's own rhetoric undercuts his philosophical position. At one point he asks, "But when shoud People strive their Bonds to break, / If not when Kings are Negligent or Weak?" (387-88). Here, he admits that his party is breaking "Bonds," for whatever reason. And at the end of his seduction, he utilizes a damning analogy. And who can sound the depth of David's Soul? Perhaps his fear, his kindness may Controul. He fears his Brother, though he loves his Son, For plighted Vows too late to be undone. If so, by Force he wishes to be gain'd,

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Like womens Leachery, to seem Constrain'd: Doubt not, but when he most affects the Frown, Commit a pleasing Rape upon the Crown. (467-74)

Achitophel thus makes David into that central threatening figure in Western feudal literature, the unfaithful wife—a Helen, a Guinevere—who despite her pretenses to modesty and constancy, the mythology would have it, is just begging to be raped. Hence unwittingly, Achitophel invokes the full power of the code he is attempting to subvert. The audience sees that his reasoning would turn their sovereign into a whore, a breaker of "plighted Vows." At the same time Achitophel reveals that he has no real respect for "Trust" of any kind. He is a nominalist who fears that if given enough time the people might come to consider "Rebellion" a "Crime" (460); otherwise, he implies, it is not. He is a Hobbist whose only real principle is that "They who possess the Prince, possess the Laws" (476). Moreover, Achitophel's rhetoric is blasphemous. In a speech fraught with Biblical phrases, he tempts Absalom to believe that he is the "Savioui" (230-43). Of course, all of these Biblical phrases could well befit a descendant of David. Yet neither Absalom nor Achitophel really believes they fit Absalom. Achitophel is only trying to flatter him and win him to his scheme of power. And Absalom never once claims to be the Messiah. (The inappropriateness of the application is even more obvious when one thinks of Shaftesbury and Monmouth: the real Messiah has already come and gone.) Furthermore, Achitophel's reasoning bespeaks a fundamental lack of faith in a providential god. As Milton's Satan does Christ in Paradise Regained, he urges Absalom to seize "Fortune" by the forelock lest "heavens Anointing Oyle" prove to be in vain in his case. Only by doing so did David avoid such a fate (252-66). To believe that Heaven's anointment could possibly be in vain is to blaspheme Divine Providence. It is to pervert the Word. Though Absalom does not explicitly claim to be the Messiah, his progress throughout the country can perhaps be seen as the kind of mock Triumphal Entry Achitophel's words suggest ("Swift, unbespoken Pomps, thy steps proclaim, / And stammerring Babes are taught to lisp thy Name" [242-43]). And he does seem to accept the adulation of the crowd who praise him as "their young Messiah" and receive him "as a Guardian God," proudly displaying his "Glories" and surveying

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"the promis'd land" (723 ff.). He thus assumes the role of a "second Moses" (234). The "Heavens Decree" that he violates is more than an underwriting of the principle of succession. It is the Promise of a Redeemer itself. He who acknowledges to Achitophel that he has "no Pretence to Royalty" (362); that for David to yield to Achitophel's demands would be for him to "Betray" his people and "change his Right, for Arbitrary Sway" (329-30); that even if David were a tyrant, he would break "Natures Holy Bands" by rebelling against his own father; that the heir apparent has the "Native Right" and manifests nothing but "Truth" and "Loyalty" himself (339-58); that he has nothing to "Repine at" in "Heavens Decree" (361); this same Absalom finally and tragically yields to Achitophel's temptations, assumes the role of Messiah, and insinuates himself into the hearts of the people, pretending no rebellion but, using Achitophel's style of perverting words, portraying himself as the victim of "Arbitrary laws" who has been denied his "right" (698ff.). He thus breaks his bond at once with his father, his king, and his god. And like Adam, he indeed falls. Aside from Absalom's fall, there appears to be a lack of action in Dryden's poem. Its heroic style seems to demand epic deeds. But the war in Dryden's poem is a War of Words. Achitophel perverts both word and Word in tempting Absalom, and Absalom imitates him in addressing the people. Moreover, the other leaders of the rebellion are infidels whose loose or false words are signs of their radical inconstancy. And opposing them are the faithful few, whose loyalty manifests itself in (Parliamentary) debate. The portrait of Achitophel (150ff.) provides a kind of paradigm for the other rebels. "Restless, unfixt in Principles and Place," he cannot remain constant, neither to any position nor friend ("In Friendship False") nor alliance ("the Triple Bond he broke") nor king ("He stood at bold Defiance with his Prince"). He has no real essence (any more than his sign, that "shapeless Lump" his son, whom Dryden compares to "Anarchy") and worships not Providence but Fortune: "But wilde Ambition loves to slide, not stand; / And Fortunes Ice prefers to Vertues Land." Equally inconstant to principles and self is Zimri (George Villiers, second duke of Buckingham). A man so various, that he seem'd to be Not one, but all Mankinds Epitome. Stiff in Opinions, always in the wrong; Was every thing by starts, and nothing long:. . .

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Blest Madman, who coud every hour employ, With something New to wish, or to enjoy! (546-55)

Such desire for novelty is not only immoderate but related to that constitutional "Innovation" Dryden later identifies as the crippling blow to a government (800). And Zimri's immoderation extends to loose words: "Rayling and praising were his usual Theams; / And both (to shew his Judgment) in Extreams" (555-56). The abuse of words as well as bonds is particularly prevalent in Dryden's two other major negative portraits. Shimei (Slingsby Bethel, a sheriff of London) is a more formidable opponent than the dissipated Zimri, for he can pervert words more effectively. His chief distinction is the perverting of oaths into curses, especially against his king. Dryden again makes such a perversion implicitly blasphemous, as Shimei distorts the Word of Scripture into black parody. For Shimei, though not prodigal of pelf, Yet lov'd his wicked Neighbour as himself: When two or three were gather'd to declaim Against the Monarch of Jerusalem, Shimei was always in the midst of them: And, if they Curst the King when he was by, Woud rather Curse, than break good Company. (599-605)

Dryden thus portrays him not only as perverting the Biblical injunction to love one's neighbor as oneself, but as assuming a minor antichrist figure, distorting the promise of Christ's presence among those gathered in His name (Matthew 18:20) and turning their prayer into cursing even "Heavens Annointed" (584). The contradiction involved is perfectly captured in the oxymoron "pious Hate" (593). He further perverts prayer by using it to mask his cheating (like a typical Puritan as the Cavaliers portrayed them). He perverts the word of the law by packing juries in favor of his "Factious Friends" (606): "For Laws are only made to Punish those, / Who serve the King, and to protect his Foes" (610-11). And he marshals his forces in a verbal attack against monarchy. If any leisure time he had from Power, (Because 'tis Sin to misimploy an hour;)

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His business was, by Writing, to Persuade, That Kings were Useless, and a Clog to Trade. (612-15) Throughout his portrait, Dryden exposes him as a hypocrite who merely mouths the words of Scripture, concluding in the wonderful mock respect Shimei has for "Moses's Laws" because, like the stereotypical abstemious Puritan, Moses fasted forty days on Mount Sinai (628-29). Shimei has no respect for the spirit of the Law, for the genuine Logos. The most dangerous perverter of word and Word is Corah (Titus Oates, arch-witness in the Popish Plot). Corah perverts the witness's sacred oath and bears false testimony against his neighbors, his countrymen, anyone his enemy. One dare not call "his Plots, exceeding mans belief," obvious "Lies" nor "his writ Apocryphal" for fear of retaliation (651-71). Like Shimei's, "His Zeal to heav'n, made him his Prince despise" (672). But his perjury identifies him with the false witnesses "Whose Oath with Martyrdom did Stephen grace" (643). And his writ is indeed apocryphal, an anti-Writ, a blasphemous assault upon both social and sacred Logos. He attacks the code of law in its most vulnerable spot, its courts, where justice hangs in desperate contingency from a witness's promise to tell the truth, so help him God. If the system can be subverted with impunity, if God does not really strike the false witness dead—either now or later for eternity—then human law is doomed to be the prey of the hypocrites. Thus, along with minor figures such as "Canting Nadab" (William, Lord Howard of Esrick, republican and Anabaptist), who implicitly corrupts the sacred Logos by contaminating the Communion ritual (575-76), and "Bull-fac'd Jonas" (Sir William Jones, attorney general), who corrupts the social logos by nominalistically redrawing statutes "To mean Rebellion, and make Treason Law" (581-82), Dryden portrays the leaders as inconstant and word-wrenchers. So also are the various factions. One party of nobles is "Seduc'd by Impious Arts," perverted words, into thinking "the power of Monarchy too much" (496-500). Another perverts loyalty into a financial exchange, hoping "To sell their Duty at a dearer rate" (501-4). Others subject loyalty to principles of parsimony (505-8), and "With them Joyn'd all th'Haranguers of the Throng, / That thought to get Preferment by the Tongue" (509-10). But the most dangerous are "The Solymaean Rout" (the London mob), led by "Hot Levites" (nonconforming di-

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vines), who with "their Cant, and with a Zealous Cry, / Pursu'd their old belov'd Theocracy"; these last are "deepest mouth'd against the Government," for they hate not only David himself but the very institution of monarchy (511-28). They would erase the king or any such human patriarchal mediator between themselves and their god. But this itself is a form of blasphemy, because according to the Old Testament, God instituted kingship and sent Samuel to anoint David king. Finally, the bulk of the rebels comprises "the herd of such, / Who think too little, and who talk too much" (533-34). Sounding like Malory in his attack on the inconstant English people, Dryden reserves special opprobrium for the Jews in general, that is, the common people who, not knowing when they were well off, joined the rebellion. But such inconstancy seems endemic to a People easie to Rebell. For, govern'd by the Moon, the giddy Jews Tread the same track when she the Prime renews: And once in twenty Years, their Scribes Record, By natural Instinct they change their Lord. (215-19)

The ambiguous reference for "their Lord" is functional, for Dryden, thanks to his source, can portray political and religious rebellion as the same (45-66). What Dryden effects by conflating the two rebellions is perhaps most obvious in the subtle rhetoric of his apparently moderate and reasonable response to republican theory: "Yet, grant our Lords the People Kings can make, / What Prudent men a setled Throne woud shake?" (795-96). As I have argued at length elsewhere, the grammatical anarchy of the line images forth the political anarchy that would ensue if anyone but the Lord made a king.9 To "Make Heirs for Monarks" is to try to "decree" for God Himself (758), to make someone else Lord—lords, people, an arbitrary king who betrays the law—in short, to supplant God and replace Him with a Golden Calf, in this case, a commonwealth. But then, "These Adam-wits," descendants of Adam the disloyal rebel, would "Depose" even "God" Himself when he was their "King" (51, 418). In Dryden's rhetoric, to depose King David is to depose the Logos.10 To level all words is to attempt to erase the Word. Opposed to all these rebels are those Dryden characterizes by loyalty and good words spoken in defence of the King and the Law. First, Barzillai (James Butler, duke of Ormonde, lord lieutenant of Ireland),

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whose loyalty began to be manifested in the Civil War and continued through the Restoration and on through the Popish Plot (819-24). Barzillai's loyalty in the face of nearly total loss stands as a rebuke to the inconstant rebels. Moreover, Dryden's portrait of Barzillai's son (Thomas Butler, earl of Ossory) stands as a rebuke to Absalom especially, for young Barzillai, before he died prematurely, "All parts fulfill'd of Subject and of Son" (836), raising his arm not against his fatherly king but against his country's—and his god's—foes (840-43). An important feature of these portraits of Barzillai père et fils is Dryden's calling attention to his own role in the War of Words as soothsaying poet. He praises the elder Barzillai for his largesse and liberality, especially in choosing the "Noblest Objects," "The Fighting Warriour, and Recording Muse"—apparently to patronize (826-28). Whether Ormonde ever actually patronized Dryden to some extent, as the California Edition's footnote suggests, within the poem Dryden becomes his "Recording Muse," whose function is to underwrite the code of the word by portraying the sanctity of Barzillai's loyalty and by drawing his son's portrait round, as it were, to reveal the "Circle" of perfection of his soul (838). After completing the second portrait and implicitly answering the theodicean problem of the son's death as "Providences crime" (834) by painting him as now a saint in heaven to whom the poet can pray "To aid the guardian Angel of thy King" (853), Dryden appears to imitate Milton's addresses to his heavenly muse (854-63). Implicitly, Dryden's too is a heavenly muse who can fly high enough to see into the truth of things. Dryden's ensuing Homeric catalogue of warriors, "a small but faithful Band / Of Worthies, in the Breach [of faith] who dar'd to stand" (914-15), portrays verbal champions. First, there are the priests (William Sancroft, Archbishop of Canterbury; Henry Compton, Bishop of London; and John Dolben, Bishop of Rochester), who (if we may read the brief portrait of Dolben, "Him of the Western dome," as appropriate to all three bishops) bring their "fit words and heavenly eloquence" to support David and to inculcate "Learning" and "Loyalty" into "The Prophets [the nobility's] Sons" (864-73). Next come "the Pillars of the Laws," judges "Who best cou'd plead and best can judge a Cause" (874-75). Then there is the first of "a train of Loyal Peers," Adriel (Mulgrave), "In Sanhédrins [Parliament's] debate / True to his Prince" (878-79). Then there is Jotham (George Savile, marquis of Halifax, member of the Privy Council), who has the power "To move Assemblies" (884), so much so that, as the California Edition

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notes, Halifax was Shaftesbury's most formidable adversary in single combat during the Parliamentary debate over the Exclusion Bill, answering him some sixteen times in one night. Dryden and his contemporaries gave Halifax the credit for the defeat of the bill. Dryden next praises Hushai (Lawrence Hyde, earl of Rochester, first lord of the Treasury) for his loyal administration of his function and especially for being "the friend of David in distress, / In publick storms of manly stedfastness" (888-89). But as if to stress his theme of words, Dryden forces his muse to one last (loyal) endeavor and concludes these portraits of the faithful with that of Amiel (Edward Seymour, erstwhile speaker of the House of Commons and currently treasurer of the Navy), who so well guided the Sanhédrin, who was "So dextrous . . . in the Crown's defence," "So form'd to speak a Loyal Nation's Sense," that he epitomizes Drydenic heroism (898-905). Dryden concludes with Amiel's portrait also because he has now retired, and Israel desperately needs a verbal champion to replace him. Dryden's strategy is to fill the vacuum with the mightiest voice in the land. David finally comes forth to restore the Logos. Thus from his Royal Throne by Heav'n inspir'd, The God-like David spoke: with awfull fear His Train their Maker in their Master hear. (936-38) Through the King, the Logos speaks as he restores the social logos and reestablishes control over the legislative and judicial processes, that is, over loose tongues, whether manifested in rebellious "Votes" or "groundless Clamours" or false witnesses (991-98). And David invokes a further aspect of Law, the sense of law as retributive justice: "Law they require, let Law then shew her Face" (1006). In invoking justice, David also restores trust in Moses's God, Who eventually will turn and confront His enemies (1007-9), yet still acting, as usual, by secondary causes. As in Volpone, the evil defeat themselves, a motif that, as Dryden's own imagery suggests, runs back through Spenser's description of Errour all the way to Christ's driving out of devils and remarking that a kingdom divided against itself cannot stand (Mark 3:22-26). Against themselves their Witnesses will Swear, Till Viper-like their Mother Plot they tear: And suck for Nutriment that bloody gore

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Which was their Principle of Life before. Their Belial with their Belzebub will fight; Thus on my Foes, my Foes shall do me Right. (1012-17) False witnesses will breed false witnesses and devour each other, for their principles breed an anarchy with no respect for word as bond, and then the faithful have only to mop up the remains. With complete faith that right makes might because it has divine support, David concludes, "Nor doubt th'event:. . . / For Lawfull Pow'r is still Superiour found, / When long driven back, at length it stands the ground" (1018-25). The divine support is immediately manifested: "He said. Th'Almighty, nodding, gave Consent; / And Peals of Thunder shook the Firmament" (1026-27). The last couplet of the poem completes the restoration not only of David but of the correspondence between both earthly and heavenly lords: "Once more the Godlike David was Restor'd, / And willing Nations knew their Lawfull Lord" (1030-31). The bond of the word has been underwritten by the loyal words of faithful followers, a faithful poet, and finally the Word Itself. Nevertheless, Absalom remains absent from this restoration, unredeemed from his fall. Moreover, there is a sense in which this tragedy is also David's. However wittily Dryden portrays his Merry Monarch's sexual promiscuity at the opening of the poem, that promiscuity is a kind of original sin within the poem. It results precisely in Absalom's dilemma: "How happy had he been, if Destiny / Had higher plac'd his Birth, or not so high!" (481-82). In a world where the very political principle of succession is a crucial issue, where it is sanctified by being made analagous to the Covenant itself, that "Successive Title" Achitophel ironically but appropriately acknowledges as having descended all the way from "Noah's Ark" (301-2), David has himself produced threats to genealogy. Dryden says of the mothers of his bastards, "since like slaves his bed they did ascend, / No True Succession could their seed attend" (15-16). Like King Arthur, Dryden's David has bred the seeds of his own potential destruction. While he escapes the destruction, his anguish is manifested in his lament at the end. If my Young Samson will pretend a Call To shake the Column, let him share the Fall: But oh that yet he woud repent and live! How easie 'tis for Parents to forgive! With how few Tears a Pardon might be won

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From Nature, pleading for a Darling Son! Poor pitied Youth, by my Paternal care, Rais'd up to all the Height his Frame coud bear: Had God ordain'd his fate for Empire born, He woud have given his Soul another turn. (955-64)

Dryden is extremely careful not to explicitly criticize King Charles. But a careful reader might see in this speech the tragic irony in the last lines. David himself is responsible for the turn Absalom's soul takes, a diversion from the straight line of legitimate patrilinearity. Precisely because David did not take proper "Paternal care," he "Rais'd up" Absalom to a precipitate height, from which his tempter all too easily threw him down. When Absalom, for whatever reasons, characterizes David as "grown in Bathsheba's Embraces old" (710), the line nevertheless implicitly rebukes David, for his adultery with Bathsheba has already had disastrous consequences. If the analogy does not quite fit King Charles, still Dryden is glancing at his affairs, probably here at that with Louise de Kéroualle, Duchess of Portsmouth, dangerous because she was French, Catholic, and suspected of being an agent of Louis XIV (710n). All this gives further poignancy to David's last lament. Oh that my Power to Saving were confin'd: Why am I forc'd, like Heaven, against my mind, To make Examples of another Kind? Must I at length the Sword of Justice draw? Oh curst Effects of necessary Law! (999-1003)

The poignancy is compounded by the implication that the sword also pierces David's breast for his own offense against both word and Word. Omitting the ending of the Biblical narrative, Dryden of course omits David's pathetic lament, "0 my son Absalom, my son, my son Absalom!" (2 Sam. 18:33) Nevertheless, does the attentive reader not hear the cry over the figure in the corner of Dryden's verbal painting? Dryden portrays the Logos as restored after a grave threat, but not without grave loss.

The Oedipal rebellion of Sirs Lancelot and Mordred, of Macbeth and Absalom thus constitutes a seizing of the Father-King-God's

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power—or at least the signs of his power. We see such seizure most visibly, most nakedly in Sir Mordred's rape (in its root sense) of Guinevere and his standing there, leaning on his sword, in open confrontation with his father, then driving his body up his father's penetrating spear in order to kill him with the phallic sword he has usurped. Or in Macbeth's attempt to sit in Duncan's place at the banquet while the ghost of his murdered "twin" frights him from it. Or in Absalom's making a royal "Progress" through the land as if he were the Messiah come to displace and supplant his foreshadowing father. Such rebellion has dire consequences: The Round Table isfinallyfractured into fragments and its knights retreat into otherworldly monasteries, while the phallic sword of patriarchy is surrendered back to an Original Mother. Scotland is virtually dispeopled either by murder or desertion. A chaotic war of words breaks out until David speaks to quell it at the cost of the "Fall" of his own son. Yet in these works, as in similar political tragedies, order is restored, patriarchy reestablished, as the figures of Costantyn, Malcolm, and David emerge at the end to rule over a ravaged land, to summon the disiecta membra of society back together, to reconstitute the key institution of mutual trust, embodied in the social logos of the law and underwritten by the sacred Logos of the Word."

N O T E S 1. Violence and the Sacred, ch. 2. I am indebted to Girard throughout this chapter. For an interesting Girardian analysis, esp. of the Sir Tristram part of the Morte, one which dovetails nicely with mine, see Maureen Fries, "Indiscreet Objects of Desire: Malory's 'Tristram' and the Necessity of Deceit." 2. For the best treatment I know of the Lott-Pellinor feud, see Charles Moorman, The Book of Kyng Arthur, ch. 4. 3. Elizabeth T. Pochoda, Arthurian Propaganda, perceptively writes, "For Malory, fratricide seems to be the central symbol of societal dissolution" (118). Hers is an excellent study of the political implications of the Morte. 4. For an excellent treatment of what happens to language in the Marte, see John F. Plummer, "Tunc se Coeperunt non Intelligere: The Image of Language in Malory's Last Books." 5. See Barron, Trawthe and Treason, and the discussion of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight above, ch. 1. 6. The classic Freudian interpretation of the Morte is Alan Dundes, "The Father, the Son, and the Holy Grail."

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7. Recently, Rajiva Verma, "Winners and Losers: A Study of Macbeth and Antony and Cleopatra," interprets the play as one of mistrust, but his nihilistic reading runs counter to mine. Much closer is the Oedipal reading by Patrick Colm Hogan, "Macbeth: Authority and Progenitorship." 8. Absalom and Achitophel, vss. 880-81 & n., in Dryden, Works, 2:31. 9. "Anarchy and Style: What Dryden 'Grants' in Absalom and Achitophel." For a reading of the poem's rhetorical strategies similar to mine, see Steven N. Zwicker, Politics and Langauge in Dryden's Poetry, ch. 4. Though, as usual, I find McKeon's argument ("Historicizing Absalom and Achitophel") provocative, we obviously disagree, especially over the significance of what Dryden really grants to the social-contract theorists: I see the hypothesis as ironic and as undercut by all the other imagery in the poem that reinforces the kind of patriarchal succession discussed most recently by Jonathan Goldberg, "Fatherly Authority." 10. The best treatments I know of these points are Paul Ramsey, The Art of John Dryden, 113ff., and Thomas E. Maresca, "The Context of Dryden's Absalom and Achitophel." 11. Other illustrative examples: in the Middle Ages, the Old English Battle of Maldon; in the Renaissance, the English history plays of Marlowe, Shakespeare, and Ford, plus Jonson's Sejanus·, in the Restoration, see my "Royalism's Last Dramatic Stand: English Political Tragedy, 1679-89."

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SEVEN

Personal Tragedy

By personal tragedy I mean tragedy that impacts upon an individual's consciousness to such a degree of suffering that he feels the world has betrayed him. Hence the world no longer has meaning, is no longer worth the struggle to set right its wrongs. Though the setting might be in the midst of political crisis or conflict, it is as if the protagonist is abstracted out of his setting to contemplate the insignificance of existence. The crucial temptation becomes suicidal despair. The following three works focus on the suffering of a protagonist trapped in the middle of such political crisis yet wounded so deeply, so personally as to believe the world no longer worth his care. Each believes the world's binding Presence has fled, leaving him with the empty shell of words, words, words. Chaucer and Dryden give us figures whose fortunes fluctuate, and they are caught up in the ebb and flow of hope and despair. But the arc of each work is tragic, leading inevitably to death. If faith in the word is finally restored, the stage is nevertheless littered with bodies.

Troilus and Criseyde The tragedy of Chaucer's Troilus and Criseyde is the failure of trouthe to secure the permanence of love in a mutable world.1 The tragedy is personal, for it centers on Troilus's poignant experience of his own loss

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of that which he values most, of that which binds his world together. Chaucer brilliantly shapes the poem in accordance with the fluctuations of Troilus's emotions from emptiness to fulfillment to emptiness again. The first movement is the human comedy of falling in love and pursuing the object of desire. For Troilus and Criseyde, the courtship develops toward a betrothal that binds them together even as love itself binds together the universe. Or so they hope. Troilus is at first disdainful of lovers, particularly because of the uncertainty that plagues their condition: "In nouncerteyn ben alle youre observaunces" (1.337). But when he himself falls in love with Criseyde, he pledges before the God of Love a fidelity to her that recalls formal oaths of fealty. For myn estât roial I here resigne Into hire hond, and with ful humble chere Bicorne hir man, as to my lady dere. (1.432-34)

When the pragmatic Pandaras finally convinces him to do something besides pining away, Troilus endites a letter to Criseyde promising "he wolde in trouthe alwey hym holde" (2.1084). At their first interview when Criseyde asks what are Troilus's intentions, he responds, "In trouthe alwey to don yow my servise" (3.133), a service she accepts for so long as Troilus means well "in honour of trouthe" (3.163). Criseyde herself is at first skeptical about Troilus's and Pandarus's intentions, complaining that "of this world the feyth is al agoon" (2.410) if her own uncle thus betrays her honor. And concerning Troilus, she has enough practical experience to understand the ways of men, those Don Juans who "ben so untrewe, / That, right anon as cessed is hire lest, / So cesseth love, and forth to love a newe" (2.786-88). But gradually she believes that Troilus means nought but "trouthe" (2.665). Pandaras predicts to his friend that he shall eventually "be saved by thi feyth, in trouthe" (2.1503), and indeed at their second interview Criseyde maintains that Troilus's "grete trouthe" has wrought him pity in her heart (3.992). In response to Pandarus's spurious charge against her fidelity to Troilus, she protests that she is "trewe" (3.1001), and when Troilus faints at her bedside, she begins to pledge her vows in earnest: '"Have here my trouthe!' and many an other oth" (3.1111). He returns "swiche othes as hire leste devyse" (3.1143), and the two fulfill their desire.

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After the lovers have become "oon" (3.1405), they pledge their vows anew—repeatedly—and exchange rings and other jewelry as signs of their constancy. Chaucer stresses the significance of all this language of trouthe with imagery of binding, describing their lovemaking thus: And as aboute a tree, with many a twiste, Bytrent and writh the swote wodebynde, Gan ech of hem in armes other wynde. (3.1230-32)

The supremely happy Troilus asks, "How koude ye withouten bond me bynde?" (3.1358). The explicit use of the words reminds us of Troilus's earlier apostrophe to Love, "thow holy bond of thynges" (3.1261). It is the image Chaucer has employed to frame the entire Book Three from the poet's address to Love in the Proem—"Ye holden regne and hous in unitee" (3.29)—to Troilus's address in his Song, where he describes Love as the force that binds the cosmos in concordia discors and concludes: So wolde God, that auctour is of kynde, That with his bond Love of his vertu liste To cerclen hertes alle, and faste bynde, That from his bond no wight the wey out wiste. (3.1765-68)

This prayer is the rhetoric of desire, a profound wish that love bind with irrefragable permanence the hearts of humans as it does the elements. Up to this point in the poem the movement is both comic and celebratory. Sexual love is portrayed as the Life Force that through the green fuse drives the flower (3.8-14). If Pandaras uses deceit to get the lovers into bed together, he is portrayed as a benign trickster, an agent of the forces of spring. Self-deprecatingly suggesting that he is acting like a pimp, prostituting his own niece (3.260ff.), Pandaras begs Troilus not to reveal the affair he is managing, but Troilus, reminding Pandaras of his earlier debilitating woe, renames Pandarus's activity "gentilesse, / Compassioun, and felawship, and trist" (3.402-3), for he has allowed Troilus to be reborn. In response to Pandarus's promise of consummation, Troilus rejoices and the narrator comments approvingly, complicit in the rhetoric of spring and rebirth (3.351-57). Pan-

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darus engineers a rebirth for Criseyde too. Her "beaute" and her "youthe" both militate against her being consigned to purely "celestial" love, he argues to Troilus (1.981-87), and when she protests that she has no business dancing to "don to May som observaunce" but should rather retire to read hagiographies (2.112-19), Pandaras irrepressibly bids her: cast youre widewes habit to mischaunce! What list yow thus youreself to disfigure, Sith yow is tid thus fair an aventure?

(2.222-24) Throughout these early books he counsels both lovers to seize the opportunity of this "aventure," for it might not come again. Time and time again he pledges his trouthe that he serves them for the best, and they take him at his word. Although unsuccessful in love himself, he ministers to these others and to the Law of Kinde. If, sitting in his fireside chair reading an old romance while they make love, Pandaras seems to us something of a voyeur, vicariously sharing the erotic experience, we must realize that he is really a figure for us, the readers, who, unless our sensitivities have been thoroughly deadened by moral or religious prudishness, vicariously share the experience too and cheer the lovers on. They act out the olde daunce that is the way of the world (even the gods and the planets conspire to abet the consummation, 3.617ff.). And we, too, hope that their trouthe binds them permanently. The reason for the lovers'—and our—desire for the permanence that trouthe promises is that the poem reminds us at every turn of the mutability of this world and, more important, of the ubiquity of human betrayal. From the opening of the poem we are reminded that "Fortune" reigns in this setting, that is, over the fortunes of the Trojan War (1.134-40). However much she fluctuates, though, we also know the inevitable outcome for Troy, and the denouement of the poem coincides with that of the city, as Chaucer renders one of his most memorable images. Fortune, which that permutacioun Of thynges hath, as it is hire comitted Thorugh purveyaunce and disposicioun Of heighe Jove, as regnes shall be flitted Fro folk in folk, or when they shall be smytted,

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Gan pulle awey the fetheres bright of Troie Fro day to day, til they ben bare of joie. (5.1541-47)

Moreover, Fortune threatens the very ties that bind: "For, as hire list, she pleyeth with free and bonde" (1.840). In the comic movement of the poem, Fortune is complicit with the other forces that conspire in the lovers' joy (see esp. 3.617ff.). She grants them "a tyme" (3.1714) to experience "As muche joie as herte may comprende" (3.1687). But even as this comic movement comes to a close, Pandaras cautions them to make the most of their time, to preserve it carefully. For worldly joie halt nought but by a wir. That preveth wel it brest al day so ofte; Forthi nede is to werken with it softe. (3.1636-38)

Nevertheless, however careful they are, the lovers cannot stem the revolution of Fortune's wheel. The distraught narrator begins the Proem to Book Four thus: But al to litel, weylaway the whyle, Lasteth swich joie, ythonked be Fortune, That semeth trewest whan she wol bygyle, And kan to fooles so hire song entune, That she hem hent and blent, traitour commune! And whan a wight is from hire whiel ythrowe, Than laugheth she, and maketh hym the mowe. (4.1-7)

The first blow that Fortune strikes is the agreement to exchange Criseyde for Antenor. Troilus indulges himself in bitter complaint against Fortune, whom he interprets as being not merely capricious but vindictive, a version of Nemesis, punishing him for some unknown offense (4.260-87). He petulantly demands how the God of Love could suffer the repeal of his and Criseyde's bond (4.288-94). The sympathetic Pandaras characterizes Fortune as untrustworthy, for "hire yiftes ben commune" (4.391-92). But that is precisely the point: If a man cannot trust in Fortune, who rales this world, what can he trust in? Troilus despairs of the gods. He sees no dynamic but blind fate, predestination (4.958ff.). Gradually, however, Troilus trusts in trouthe itself. First, in response

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to Pandarus's libertine ethic of endless supplementarity (there are lots offish in the sea, 4.393ff.), Troilus refuses "To traysen hire that trewe is unto me" (4.438): "syn I have trou the hire hight, / 1 wol nat ben untrewe for no wight" (4.445-46). Second, in response to Pandarus's suggestion that he seize Criseyde and escape, Troilus responds that the world has had enough ravishing of women, as their immediate setting ought to remind them (4.547-50). Furthermore, he refuses to break his father King Priam's word, either by force or by petition (4.551-60). Finally, part of his trouthe to Criseyde is to uphold her name, not slander it (4.561-71). That this section of the poem is a trial of trouthe can best be seen by the contrast here between Troilus and Pandaras. Although the narrator attempts to mitigate the callousness of Pandarus's out-of-sight-out-of-mind advice by maintaining that he spoke such words merely "for the nones alle, / To help his frend, lest he for sorwe deyde" (4.428-29), he nevertheless portrays Pandaras as rigorously persisting in advising Troilus to seize the time, to seize Criseyde, who really wants to be ravished (4.593-606). Making an incredibly ironic analogy to Paris (4.608-9), Pandaras strips away the thin veneer of chivalry to expose the thoroughgoing pragmatist, devoid of belief in the code of the word. Forthi tak herte, and thynk right as a knyght, Thorugh love is broken al day every lawe. Kith now somwhat thi corage and thi myght; Have mercy on thiself, for any awe. (4.617-20) Finally manipulating Troilus through the bond of their friendship, Pandaras gets him to agree to await Criseyde's decision whether to ran away together (4.624-38). But by now the reader is convinced that Pandarus's idea of trouthe is the very limited one of male camaraderie. We remember, after all, that, amidst all his protestations of trouthe to Troilus, Pandaras has pledged to help him even if the object of his desire were Pandarus's own "suster" (1.860), even if she were "Eleyne / That is thi brother wif" (1.677-78). In other words, he is ready to serve Troilus in adultery (and a legally incestuous one at that), one that would recapitulate the original adultery that has catapulted their world into disastrous war. Even if we are to view Pandarus's words as mere rhetoric, Chaucer has defined trouthe by means of contrast with an antithetical code we have seen in all the libertines throughout this study.

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Meanwhile, Criseyde goes off the deep end herself for a while, concluding: Endeth thanne love in wo? Ye, or men lieth! And alle worldly blisse, as thynketh me. The ende of blisse ay sorwe it occupieth.

(4.834-36) Nevertheless, after she and Troilus indulge their tears a spell, she begins to counsel against despair. Fortune may part them awhile, but they can transcend her adversity: Fortune can change external circumstances, but she cannot alter human will (4.1586-89). Hence, for honor's sake, Criseyde counsels against flight and repeatedly and most solemnly plights her troth to remain faithful to Troilus and to return to him in ten days. Reminding him that it was his "moral vertu, grounded upon trouthe" that first made her love him (4.1672) and beseeching him to preserve that trouthe, she reiterates one last time that she belongs to him, a possession he may keep in spite of Fortune: "And this may lengthe of yeres naught fordo, / Ne remuable Fortune deface" (4.1681-82). Thus, Troilus and Criseyde can transcend Fortune through trouthe. And thus, however much the narrator may conflate the figures of Fortune and Criseyde (4.8-14; 5.469; 5.1134), the mutability of the world per se is not the enemy to their love but, rather, human betrayal.2 The real tragedy of the poem is not that Troilus put his trust in an unworthy object. Criseyde is eminently worthy. The tragedy is that she is frail, "slydynge of corage" (5.825), and does not keep her word. The world of the poem is fraught with instances of and allusions to such betrayal, from Helen's original cuckolding of her husband and Paris's inconstancy to Oenone, to Calkas's desertion of his city, to Antenori future treason.3 When Pandaras protests to Troilus that he has no desire to supplant him in his bed (1.715-21), we are reminded that such supplanters, however much they may appear in our dreams and literature as bestial boars, are simply monstrous doubles for our twin selves. Cassandra's disbelieved explication of Troilus's dream of the boar that has supplanted him in Criseyde's arms comprises a legend of envy and revenge that ends in the mutual killing of the twins Polynices and Etiocles in the War of Seven against Thebes (5.1457-1510). Now Diomedes, whose sign is the boar, pursues Criseyde, whom he suspects of having a Trojan lover. That his is mimetic desire is indicated by his boasting that Greeks are as "trewe" lovers as Trojans (5.124-

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26) and that the Greeks shall ultimately avenge the rape of Helen (5.890-96). Of course, as Diomedes utters these words, he himself is another Paris who has no respect for Criseyde's bonds but instead considers him who can break them a mighty "conquerour" (5.794). In the midst of all this betrayal, Troilus, the narrator, and the reader, as well, all long for a fidelity in love that will not fail. Few scenes in literature are as moving as Troilus's vigil on the walls of Troy or his poignant apostrophe to Criseyde's "paleys empty and disconsolate like Donne's Elizabeth a figure for what Derrida calls the absence of Presence (Of Grammatology et passim), the loss of the transcendent object of desire (5.540-53). Shee, shee is gone and with her Presence. The secondary metaphors, comparing the empty palace first to a "lanterne of which queynt is the light" (5.543) and then to a "ryng, fro which the ruby is out falle" (5.5.549), call to mind first the extinguishing of the sanctuary light signifying the Divine Presence in medieval churches and second the loss within this literature of other circular signs of constancy: the sincfset in Beowulf, the Round Table, the Holy Grail. Yet despite all Troilus's pitiable excuses for Criseyde's tardiness, despite his desperate hope that somehow she "wol come ayeyn and holde hire trouthe" (5.1586), Criseyde falls prey to "The wordes of this sodeyn Diomede" (5.1024). Despite her own repeated intention to return to Troilus, she fails, and Chaucer magnificently underscores through his imagery the undoing of her bonds. But God it wot, er fully monthes two, She was fui fer fro that entencioun! For bothe Troilus and Troie town Shal knotteles thorughout hire herte slide; For she wol take a purpos for t'abyde.

(5.766-71) The denouement of the poem is an untying of knots, of betrothal noeuds, indeed. (And Criseyde's precipitate two-month slide anticipates that of Hamlet's mother.) The failure of Criseyde's trouthe is the tragedy of the poem. It is virtually the sole subject throughout Book Five. Criseyde laments, "Alias! for now is clene ago / My name of trouthe in love, for everemo!" (5.1054-55). Troilus interprets her betrayal as the death blow to all promises, all trouthe, as he utters a pitiable refrain that epitomizes the

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threat to the code of the word as we have seen it unfold throughout this study: "Who shal now trowe on any othes mo?" (5.1263, 1681). Troilus's loss of trust extends to the gods, whom he curses throughout Books Four and Five as he repeatedly despairs. Finally he prays: "0 God," quod he, "that oughtest taken heede To fortheren trouthe, and wronges to punyce, Whi nyltow don a vengeaunce of this vice?" (5.1706-8) What good is betrothal, what good are sacred oaths unless the gods vindicate them? But Troilus is denied his vengeance against Diomedes and dies wreaking his bitter disappointment on "thousandes" of Greek warriors (5.1802). Pandarus, for all his libertine ethic and cavalier attitude toward the vicissitudes of Fortune, considers Criseyde's change not as the acceptable libertine quest for variety but as "tresoun" (5.1738), for which he "wol hate hire evermore!" (5.1733). In light of his response we can interpret his nonchalant philosophy as a defense against mutability and betrayal. At the end, in the face of profound loss, Pandarus is silenced and retires. Troilus is silenced and seeks only destruction. And the narrator takes refuge in another defensive posture, contemptus mundi. Troilus arises out of the realm of mutability, looks back, and laughs at the vanity of human wishes, reducing his great love for Criseyde to mere "blynde lust" (5.1824). The world is false, the narrator preaches to young lovers, the pagan gods are false; therefore, put not thy trust in either, but loveth hym, the which that right for love Upon a crois, oure soules for to beye, First starf, and roos, and sit in hevene above; For he nyl falsen no wight, dar I seye, That wol his herte al holly on hym leye. And syn he best to love is, and most meke, What nedeth feynede loves for to seke? (5.1842-48) In the face of such poignant loss as the poem portrays, such recourse to what Derrida calls a transcendental signified, a final, immutable, absolute object of desire that will never betray nor desert us, is

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understandable. And for all we know, Chaucer is being serious and sincere. Nevertheless, the very power of this poem resides in the portrayal of a love that is not merely vain or "feynede" but that ennobles and binds two human beings together, allowing them to participate in the very Life Force of the cosmos. Human love involves risks, but as the narrator has said earlier, "in this world no lyves creature / Withouten love is worth" (3.13-14). To dismiss that love in a pious fit of contemptus mundi is the understandable—but nonetheless petulant—response of a poet who is as crushed as Troilus and the reader at Criseyde's betrayal (cf. Winthrop Wetherbee, Chaucer and the Poets, whose entire book is a defense of this final movement). Still, not all women betray their lovers, the narrator reminds us in his references to Penelope and Alcmena (5.1778). The reader must resist the a fortiori reasoning of Troilus and the narrator, too. Troilus himself has proved that not all human love is false. If we all embraced only "celestial" love, the world would cease to exist. This great poem laments the failure of trouthe and the prevalence of betrayal but still insists that it is better to have loved and trusted and been betrayed than never to have loved at all.

Hamlet, Prince of Denmark Hamlet pledges his "word" to the ghost of his father that he will "remember" his "commandment" to "Revenge his foul and most unnatural murder" (1.5.110-11, 102, 25). Hamlet urges the Ghost to inform him of the specifics "that I, with wings as swift / As meditation or the thoughts of love, / May sweep to my revenge" (1.5.29-31), and when the Ghost departs, Hamlet appears to intend swift compliance: "Now to my word: . . . I have sworn't" (1.5.110-12). Yet Hamlet delays his revenge for what even he takes to be an unconscionable period (2.2.534ff.; 4.4.32ff.), and the Ghost must return to "whet" his "almost blunted purpose" (3.4.112). Why does Hamlet delay? The question has haunted criticism of the play. Perhaps the most provocative (and infamous) interpretation has been Ernest Jones's expansion of Freud's reading, Hamlet and Oedipus, that Claudius has simply done what Hamlet himself desired to do, kill his father and marry his mother. Whether Dr. Jones is right, Hamlet is certainly obsessed with his mother, even before his encounter with the Ghost. And it is this obsession that prevents him from keeping his word to avenge his father.

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Hamlet's obsession is obvious. Although the King and Queen interpret his melancholy as mourning, Hamlet's first soliloquy concerns not his father's death nor even his uncle's usurpation of his presumptive right to the throne (see 5.2.65) but his mother's o'erhasty marriage. She who used to hang on his father "As if increase of appetite had grown / By what it fed on" has after his death—and Hamlet keeps foreshortening the time, "two months," "A little month," "Within a month"—after weeping for him "Like Niobe," "Ere yet the salt of most unrighteous tears / Had left the flushing in her galled eyes, / She married" (1.2.138-56). The tears must have been "unrighteous," false, hypocritical, for her to "post / With such dexterity to incestuous sheets!" (1.2.156-57). What then must her love have been? To Horatio, who, Hamlet says sardonically, must have come to Elsinore to see his "mother's wedding" rather than his "father's funeral," Hamlet complains, "Would I had met my dearest foe in heaven / Or ever I had seen that day" (1.2.176-83). After the Ghost departs from him and Hamlet swears "by heaven" to remember his injunction, the first object of his thinking on the content of the Ghost's narration is not his "villain" uncle but that "most pernicious woman," his mother (1.5.104-6). When the actors arrive, he asks to hear lines depicting Priam's slaughter but urges the Player, "Say on; come to Hecuba" (2.2.489), for he is unconcerned at Pyrrhus's "Aroused vengeance" (2.2.476) and prefers instead the theme of the faithful, mourning wife. However much Hamlet proclaims "The play's the thing / Wherein I'll catch the conscience of the king" (2.2.590-91), he himself designs it primarily to catch the conscience of the Queen. His bawdry before the play seems as much directed toward his mother as toward Ophelia. When Ophelia accuses him of being "merry," Hamlet responds sarcastically, "What should a man do but be merry? For look you how cheerfully my mother looks, and my father died within's two hours" (3.2.116-21). That the Queen's forgetfulness is paramount in his mind is again evident in Hamlet's aside to Ophelia that the Prologue is as brief "As woman's love" (3.2.145). Since Hamlet has requested to insert "some dozen or sixteen lines" into the dialogue itself (2.2.526), we should pay particular attention to the places where he interrupts that dialogue with asides, for he is probably punctuating his own sentences. The Player King anticipates death and begins to counsel his queen to marry again. The Player Queen responds in three speeches totaling sixteen lines. Hamlet interrupts after the first.

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Player Queen. 0, confound the rest! Such love must needs be treason in my breast. In second husband let me be accurst! None wed the second but who killed the first. Hamlet, [aside] That's wormwood. (3.2.169-73)

The lines are a bitter herb Hamlet obviously hopes will catch in his mother's throat. What they reveal is that Hamlet suspects his mother of being complicit in the murder of his father. Later, in her closet, he says of his accidental slaying of Polonius, "A bloody deed—almost as bad, good mother, / As kill a king, and marry with his brother" (3.4.29-30). The Ghost has given him no direct warrant for this suspicion, although he does describe Claudius's seduction of Gertrude before he describes the murder (1.5.42-80). We ourselves never know for sure whether the Queen was complicit, though Shakespeare may give us a hint by having the poisoner court the Player Queen after the murder in the dumb show (3.2.s.d.l29). Moreover, the Queen never seems to choke on these particular charges, though she finally does respond to Hamlet's other accusations. Hamlet himself seems to be most concerned with these other accusations, and they are thus the keystone in his motivations and in the play itself. After Hamlet's first interruption of the play within the play, the Player Queen continues: The instances that second marriage move Are base respects of thrift, but none of love. A second time I kill my husband dead When second husband kisses me in bed. (3.2.174-77)

The word "thrift" suggests these lines were written by Hamlet, because it picks up Hamlet's sarcastic explanation to Horatio why his mother's wedding "followed hard upon" his father's funeral: "Thrift, thrift, Horatio. The funeral baked meats / Did coldly furnish forth the marriage tables" (1.2.179-81). To Hamlet, there is no excuse for his mother's second marriage. The reason becomes clear in the Player Queen's third response to the Player King's counsel, a counsel that sounds like Chaucer's Pandaras lecturing on the mutability not only of the world but of human will: "Purpose is but the slave to memory"

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(3.2.180) and, alas, even spouses forget. The Player Queen responds with a solemn vow. Nor earth to me give food, nor heaven light, Sport and repose lock from me day and night, To desperation turn my trust and hope, An anchor's cheer in prison be my scope, Each opposite that blanks the face of joy Meet what I would have well, and it destroy, Both here and hence pursue me lasting strife, If, once a widow, ever I be wife!

(3.2.208-15) May all her hopes, may her trust (in God? in an afterlife?) be destroyed. Like Macbeth's murder of Duncan, Gertrude's remarriage, as Hamlet sees it, destroys trust itself. Hamlet interrupts again to exclaim aside, "If she should break it now!" (3.2.216). When the dialogue is over momentarily, he turns not to Claudius to catch his conscience but to his mother to catch hers. Hamlet. Madam, how like you this play? Queen. The lady doth protest too much, methinks. Hamlet, [with unmitigated sarcasm] 0, but she'll keep her word.

(3.2.221-23) Hamlet cannot "remember" the Ghost's injunction because what takes precedence is the memory—"Heaven and earth, / Must I remember?" (1.2.142-43)—of his mother's forgetting, the significance of which becomes manifest in the closet scene. When the Queen demands to know what she has done to warrant Hamlet's rudeness, he drops the accusation of murder and focuses on the deed that has cracked both his heart and his brain. She has fallen off from "Hyperion to a satyr" (1.2.140). She has been inconstant to her husband and Hamlet's father. To him she has thus performed Such an act That blurs the grace and blush of modesty, Calls virtue hypocrite, takes off the rose From the fair forehead of an innocent love, And sets a blister there, makes marriage vows As false as dicers' oaths. 0, such a deed As from the body of contraction plucks

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The very soul, and sweet religion makes A rhapsody of words! (3.4.41-49)

Hamlet's reasoning is a fortiori. Since his own mother has broken her word, she has made a travesty of all marriage vows, of all contracts, and even of religion, which is supposed to sanctify all such oaths and vows, to underwrite them with divine sanctions. How can Hamlet keep his word to his father's ghost when his mother has invalidated all such words, turned them into an empty "rhapsody"? Moreover, in a certain sense, Hamlet is not altogether responsible for his obsession with his mother, for his father's ghost is also preoccupied with her, as if he were more wounded by her than his brother.4 The Ghost no sooner mentions Claudius's serpentine murder than he launches on a diatribe against him not as a murderer but as an "incestuous" and "adulterate beast," a diatribe that is quickly deflected onto the Ghost's "most seeming-virtuous queen" who fell off from his noble attributes to "prey on garbage" (1.5.39-57). Extremely significant is the Ghost's characterization of his own love for his queen: it was "of that dignity / That it went hand in hand even with the vow /1 made to her in marriage" (1.5.48-50). His love was tied to his vow in an image of the hand-in-hand mutual constancy the marriage vow is supposed to secure. King Hamlet himself was, then, absolutely constant, and yet his queen betrayed him to his own brother. Just how deeply this preys upon the Ghost's mind is revealed in his final injunctions to Hamlet. His last imperative, "Remember me" (1.5.91), does refer back to his injunction sixty-seven lines earlier, "Revenge his foul and most unnatural murder." But in between both the diatribe on Gertrude and the description of the murder intervene. The Ghost concludes with these injunctions: "If thou hast nature in thee, bear it not" (1.5.81), the "it" referring most obviously to the murder. But even that reference is complicated, because the Ghost concludes the murder's description in the following manner: Thus was I sleeping by a brother's hand Of life, of crown, of queen at once dispatched, Cut off even in the blossoms of my sin, Unhouseled, disappointed, unaneled, No reck'ning made, but sent to my account With all my imperfections on my head. 0, horrible! 0, horrible! most horrible! (1.5.74-80)

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The "it" can refer to fratricide, regicide, incest, or denying shrift—or all of the above. But what the Ghost himself seems to focus on is the incest, because he continues with an injunction that narrows the range: "Let not the royal bed of Denmark be / A couch for luxury and damned incest" (1.5.82-83). At the same time, the Ghost commands Hamlet to leave his mother "to heaven / And to those thorns that in her bosom lodge / To prick and sting her" (1.5.84-88). Such a parting injunction seems a weak dam to hold back the raging resentment his own rhetoric has exacerbated. Further exacerbating Hamlet's resentment against his mother and his tendency to generalize it into misogyny—"frailty, thy name is woman" (1.2.146)—is Ophelia's refusal to see him. Like his father's, his love seems to go hand in hand with his vows, his constancy, as he expresses it in his letter to Ophelia. Doubt thou the stars are fire; Doubt that the sun doth move; Doubt truth to be a liar; But never doubt I love. (2.2.116-19)

Hamlet identifies his constancy with certainty itself. But both Laertes and Polonius insist that Hamlet's protestations of love are "not permanent," "not lasting," "mere implorators of unholy suits / Breathing like sanctified and pious bawds, / The better to beguile" (1.3.8, 12931). Thus, when Ophelia, compelled by her male protectors' radical distrust (Polonius distrusts his own son so much as to spy on him and impugn his character, 2.1.1-74), denies Hamlet access, he visits her in disarray (2.1.77-100), gazing upon her as if he transfers to her his animosity toward his mother, or rather as if she has joined the figure of his mother in his mind. Misogynistically, he warns Polonius not to let his daughter walk in the sun, for that which can "breed maggots in a dead dog" can certainly impregnate her (2.2.181-86)—as if no woman can or would remain chaste. This misogyny is brutally reinforced by Ophelia's response to Hamlet when she is loosed to him by her spying father and the King. Having just vented the agony of his soul in his contemplation of suicide, Hamlet turns to the entering Ophelia in accents of appeal for some balm to heal his distraction: "Soft you now, / The fair Ophelia!—Nymph, in thy orisons / Be all my sins remembered." Instead, she who has refused to see him or answer his letters incredibly asks,

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"Good my lord, / How does your honor for this many a day?"—the decorous equivalent of, "Hey, how ya doin, haven't seen y'around, where ya been?" No wonder Hamlet answers with stunned reserve, "I humbly thank you, well, well, well." No wonder, when she tries to return his gifts, he claims he never gave her "aught." No wonder, when she accuses him of having proven "unkind," he exclaims in incredulous dismay, "Ha, ha! Are you honest?" She has confirmed his a fortiori reasoning that, since his own mother is inconstant to his father, then all women are inconstant and unchaste. Hence, he launches into his own diatribe against her and all women. "Beauty" and "honesty" are incompatible, and the former will dominate the latter sooner than vice versa; women's painting is the sign of their hypocrisy. Sex breeds only "sinners"; marriage breeds only cuckolds. Therefore, Ophelia should go to a "nunnery"; there should be no more sex, no more marriage. "Go to, I'll no more on't; it hath made me mad" (3.1.88-149). Women's inconstancy has become for Hamlet, as it has nearly become for the ghost of his father, the sign of the radical inconstancy of the world. If one's mother is unfaithful, then how can there be faith? The extent of Hamlet's loss of faith can be seen in his response to Polonius's question, "What do you read, my lord?": "Words, words, words" (2.2.190-91). The implication is that all words are mere words. His responses to Rosencrantz and Guildenstern reinforce the interpretation: "there is nothing either good or bad but thinking makes it so" (2.2.247-48). Hamlet has become a nominalist. The ringing Renaissance descriptions of man and the cosmos have become to him mere rhapsodies of words (2.2.294-305). Indeed, Hamlet's generalization seems justified, for he is surrounded by proliferating examples of faithlessness: As if the death of King Hamlet vitiates previous covenants, Fortinbras claims the lands his father legally ceded to Hamlet's father as the right of conquest (1.1.80-107); the people of Denmark capriciously switch their allegiance to Claudius (2.2.355-58) and later to Laertes (4.5.102-8); Hamlet's friends Rosencrantz and Guildenstern betray him to the King; the King distrusts him and orders him, the Crown Prince of Denmark, murdered in England; attempting to goad Laertes to revenge, the King warns against procrastination, for time effaces memory "And nothing is at a like goodness still" (4.7.109-22). The political implications of this falling off are evident in some of Hamlet's comments toward the end of the play. In response to the gravedigger's equivo-

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cation, Hamlet exclaims, "By the Lord, Horatio, this three years I have taken note of it, the age is grown so picked that the toe of the peasant comes so near the heel of the courtier he galls his kibe" (5.1.129-32). Of the ostentatious Osric, Hamlet concludes, "Thus has he, and many more of the same bevy that I know the drossy age dotes on, only got the tune of the time and, out of an habit of encounter, a kind of yeasty collection, which carries them through and through the most fanned and winnowed opinions" (5.2.180-84). The peasantry threatens to supplant the aristocracy; the fop threatens to supplant the well-bred gentleman. Ironically, through the "golden words" of two more such flatterers (5.2.129), Shakespeare indicates the source of the disorder, of the falling off from faithfulness: rationalizing their compliance with the King's fear of Hamlet, Rosencrantz speaks for Guildenstern as well, laying on the King this flattering unction: The cess of majesty Dies not alone, but like a gulf doth draw What's near it with it; or 'tis a massy wheel Fixed on the summit of the highest mount, To whose huge spokes ten thousand lesser things Are mortised and adjoined, which when it falls, Each small annexment, petty consequence, Attends the boist'rous ruin. Never alone Did the king sigh, but with a general groan.

(3.3.15-23) As in Macbeth, the killing of the king, especially by his own brother, has brought with it the curse of Cain and destroyed the bonds that hold the society together. But Hamlet turns the political tragedy into a personal, domestic one. He resents his public task: "The time is out of joint. O cursed spite / That ever I was born to set it right!" (1.5.188-89). He ends the scene of the play-within-the-play ostensibly contemplating his bloody task: "Now could I drink hot blood / And do such bitter business as the day / Would quake to look on" (3.2.375-77). But first Rosencrantz and Guildenstern and then Polonius have given him the message his mother awaits him in her closet, so he changes his mood: "Soft, now to my mother" (3.2.377). Has he changed his intention here? Apparently not, for his bloody motivations persevere. They are directed not at the King but at the Queen.

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0 heart, lose not thy nature; let not ever The soul of Nero enter this firm bosom. Let me be cruel, not unnatural; 1 will speak daggers to her, but use none. My tongue and soul in this be hypocrites: How in my words somever she be shent, To give them seals never, my soul, consent! (3.2.378-84)

Clearly, Hamlet's resentment is so strong he desires to kill not Claudius but his mother. He welcomes the excuse not to kill Claudius (3.3.73-95), even though the "Mousetrap" has caught his conscience too (3.2.229ff.). When in her closet, Hamlet assaults his mother so violently that she is afraid he will "murder" her and thus cries out for help (3.4.22). He indeed speaks "words like daggers" to her (3.4.96), but apparently even the Ghost feels that either the verbal daggers might be fatal themselves ("Conceit in weakest bodies strongest works" [3.4.115]) or that Hamlet might convert them to real daggers, for he looks upon Hamlet in such a way as to provoke a pity Hamlet is afraid will "convert" his "stern effects": "Then what I have to do / Will want true color—tears perchance for blood" (3.4.128-31). This is the crucial moment in the play. Based upon all his thoughts and actions so far, Hamlet appears to have only two courses of action, both violent—revenge or suicide. Faced with a faithless world, Hamlet wants either to free himself from it or strike out against its central symbol, his mother. At this point in the play, however, Shakespeare snatches Hamlet out of the action by having him sent to England, as if to allow us the leisure of examining the consequences of both of Hamlet's apparent choices. Laertes is an obvious double for Hamlet, without his reservations. He thus reveals the anarchic nature of reciprocal violence. How far would Laertes go to satisfy his revenge? "To cut his throat i'th'church" (4.7.125). He would act not only against all the religious safeguards instituted against endless vendettas, he would violate the entire code of the word. To hell allegiance, vows to the blackest devil, Conscience and grace to the profoundest pit! I dare damnation. To this point I stand, That both the worlds I give to negligence,

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Let come what comes, only I'll be revenged Most throughly for my father. (4.5.131-36)

With such disregard for all the bonds of society, Laertes comes on like a flood tide that threatens established order. A messenger informs Claudius: The rabble call him lord, And, as the world were now but to begin, Antiquity forgot, custom not known, The ratifiers and props of every word, They cry, "Choose we! Laertes shall be king!" (4.5.102-6)

Revenge threatens to destroy the props of the system of word as bond. Tragically, Laertes pursues his lawless revenge to the death not only of Hamlet but of himself: "The foul practice / Hath turned itself on me" (5.2.306-7). The implication for the audience, if not for Hamlet, seems clear: It would be meaningless for Hamlet to keep his word to the ghost in an action that by its nature denies the code of words. On the other hand, Laertes's sister and Hamlet's lover, Ophelia, commits a metaphorical if not a literal suicide. She despairs of the meaning of life since its words seem irrevocably broken. Throughout her whistful and pathetic songs she confuses the figures of her dead father and her lost lover. She mourns one who is "dead and gone," but she calls him her "true-love" (4.5.23-40). Then she sings a Saint Valentine's Day song whose theme is a Don Juan seduction and violation of vows. The second stanza goes thus: By Gis and by Saint Charity, Alack, and fie for shame! Young men will do't if they come to't. By Cock, they are to blame. Quoth she, "Before you tumbled me, You promised me to wed." He answers: "So would I 'a' done, by yonder sun, And thou hadst not come to my bed." (4.5.58-66)

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Upon her second entrance in this fourth act, Ophelia gives flowers of appropriate significance to the different characters. Most tellingly, she apparently gives to the Queen "rue" for repentance plus a "daisy" for dissembling and comments, "I would give you some violets [symbol of faithfulness], but they withered all when my father died" (4.5.17983). Not only her father and Hamlet but faithfulness itself has withered and will "not come again" (4.5.188). For Ophelia, the world has lost its animating Presence and nothing remains but to "Go to thy deathbed" (4.5.191), as she tragically does. Her response to faithlessness is despair, the ultimate faithlessness. Hamlet finally chooses neither of these faithless courses of action. But his turning point seems to be not the famous sea change he undergoes, as many eminent critics have argued. He has turned around earlier. His most crucial moment comes during the closet scene. He has already rashly killed Polonius. And he seems on the verge of killing his mother. He begs the Ghost not to infect him with pity lest he exchange tears for blood. Yet his mood does change. He ceases his role of "scourge" and becomes "minister" instead (3.4.176). No longer battering his mother with violent language, he implores her, "for love of grace. . . Confess yourself to heaven, / Repent what's past, avoid what is to come" (3.4.145-51). No longer tempted to despair or suicide, he has reestablished his faith in the word/Word. He reestablishes trust with his mother and with heaven. And when you are desirous to be blest, I'll blessing beg of you.—For this same lord [Polonius], I do repent; but heaven hath pleased it so, To punish me with this, and this with me. (3.4.172-75)

Not that Hamlet's sea change is not important. Before he leaves for England, he is still impatient with himself for not carrying out his revenge (4.4.32-66). What he learns is that one must submit to the control of God, Who will employ him as He will. Our indiscretion sometime serves us well When our deep plots do pall, and that should learn us There's a divinity that shapes our ends, Rough-hew them how we will— (5.2.8-11)

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As he demonstrates in the graveyard scene, he has learned that even if wicked deeds are not avenged in this life, Death itself is a leveler and afinaljudge for word-breakers from "Adam" and "Cain" to a contemporary "politician . . . that would circumvent God" to a flattering "courtier" to a vain "Lady Worm" to a word-twisting lawyer; even the ambitious Alexander the Great and Caesar are leveled into clay that ignominiously plugs holes (5.1.71-203). Hamlet asks Horatio if it be not "perfect conscience" for him to kill Claudius for all his crimes (5.2.63-70), but he seems willing to let Heaven pick the time and place, to be "ordinant" as It was at sea when Hamlet discovered the plot against him, turned it against Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, and then was carried away by pirates (5.2.12-55). Hamlet's great trust in Horatio throughout this last act indicates Hamlet's renewed faith in the bonds of the word. He also seems to have made his peace with his mother, for he directs no ire or rancor toward her, while she intercedes for him with Laertes, drinks to his health during the fencing match, and wipes his face with her napkin. That he allows her to do so indicates a rapprochement and suggests, perhaps, that Hamlet believes his ministrations have had their desired effect, that his mother is indeed a penitent worthy to wear rue without a daisy. That Hamlet has embraced faith in the Word is best evidenced, as many other critics have noted, by his direct Biblical allusion in affirming his patient deferral to Heaven: "We defy augury. There is special providence in the fall of a sparrow. If it be now, 'tis not to come; if it be not to come, it will be now; if it be not now, yet it will come. The readiness is all. Since no man of aught he leaves knows, what is't to leave betimes? Let be" (5.2.208-13; cf. Mat. 10:29). In other words, Hamlet has been taught, first by the Ghost, then by Heaven Itself working in strange ways, that his mother's loss of faith does not vitiate all faith, that there is still a Word upon which man can rely, a Word which will both punish the recalcitrant and save the penitent. By the end of the play, all the wicked in whatever degree have been punished in that signal fashion of Christian literature: they have been destroyed by their own treachery. Polonius is killed being a busybody and a spy. Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are "Hoist" with their own "petar" (3.4.208). Laertes is stabbed with his own poisoned sword, "justly killed with mine own treachery" (5.2.296). The King is killed both with the poisoned sword he helped Laertes provide and

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with the poisoned cup he provided himself for Hamlet. The Queen is poisoned by the cup she mistakenly drinks from, just as she had been poisoned by Claudius's enchanting words. And Hamlet is killed by the son of the man he killed. The clear implication is that all this poetical justice is providential. Heaven has finally allowed the "Foul deeds" to "rise" (1.2.257) into public view, so that Hamlet might be Its scourge in a public, not a private, revenge. Laertes proclaims at the King's death, "He is justly served" (5.2.316). At the same time, there seems room for redemption. The Queen dies appealing, "0 my dear Hamlet!" and he bids her, "Wretched queen, adieu!" (5.2.298, 322). He does not curse or vilify her. Perhaps, if she has followed Hamlet's advice, she has earned atonement. More clearly, Laertes seems to merit redemption, for he confesses his guilt and petitions, "Exchange forgiveness with me, noble Hamlet. / Mine and my father's death come not upon thee, / Nor thine on me!" Hamlet prays in response, "Heaven make thee free of it" (5.2.318-21). We are led to believe that "flights of angels" will indeed sing Hamlet—if not Gertrude and Laertes too—to his "rest" (5.2.349). In other words, the ending of the play restores words to their meaning, restores faith in the code of the word, ratified by the Word.5 Out of the depths of Hamlet's personal tragedy, his loss of faith because of his mother's radical breaking of the word, emerges a restoration of order based upon words. "Murder, though it have no tongue," has spoken "With most miraculous organ" (2.2.579-80), and now Horatio begins to tell Hamlet's story, which will vindicate his name, articulate the crimes, and reveal Heaven's judgment—much as Shakespeare's play has just done. Moreover, with his "dying voice" Hamlet casts his vote for Fortinbras in order to secure the peaceful transition of order (5.2.344-46). Not only does Fortinbras have "some rights of memory in this kingdom" (5.2.378), he has those rights precisely because he has learned not to try to seize them by force. He has learned to honor his father's "sealed compact / Well ratified by law and heraldry" (1.1.86-87), to "obey" his king, Old Norway, and to "vow" not to invade Denmark (2.2.68-71). The loss of Prince Hamlet is great and heartfelt. But the soul of contraction has been returned to the body politic.

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All for Love; or, The World Well Lost Dryden's version of the story of Antony and Cleopatra begins with Antony in "black despair" after the Battle of Actium (Works, 13:25 [1.1.61]). To no one in particular he rails at unnamed forces that "rais'd" him like a "Meteor" only to "cast" him "downward / To be trod out by Caesar" (1.1.206-9). He later complains to Ventidius that he himself caused these forces, which he now names, to desert him. I was so great, so happy, so belov'd, Fate could not ruine me; till I took pains And work'd against my Fortune, chid her from me, And turn'd her loose; yet still she came again. My careless dayes, and my luxurious nights, At length have weary'd her, and now she's gone, Gone, gone, divorc'd for ever. (1.1.303-9)

Like that of most characters in English drama, Antony's metaphysics is not very sophisticated, and his use of the term "Fate" here, because it is illogical, can perhaps best be interpreted as mere hyperbole. But his use of the term "Fortune" makes more sense, for the Roman goddess Fortuna is consistently portrayed throughout the play as a personification of capricious chance. Of course, she retains her traditional, patriarchally imposed character of inconstant woman. The Roman point of view, best represented by Ventidius and Octavia, associates Cleopatra with this female figure of inconstant Fortune. To them, she is the force that has ruined him, a word they use throughout the play to describe his plight. To her face, Octavia maintains that Cleopatra cannot really love Antony, for "you have been his ruine" (3.1.451; see also 3.1.437)). With the force of Roman law behind her, Octavia can claim that Cleopatra has seduced Antony into violating his marriage vows to her and thus destroying his fortunes. When Cleopatra insists that Antony "grew weary of that Houshold-Clog," a wife, and chose her "easier bonds" (3.1.424-25), Octavia triumphantly exclaims: I wonder not Your bonds are easie; you have long been practis'd In that lascivious art: he's not the first For whom you spread your snares: let Csesar witness. (3.1.425-28)

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Octavia passes the Roman judgment that Cleopatra is nothing but an inconstant "Strumpet," a "faithless Prostitute" (4.1.250, 389). When Ventidius witnesses Cleopatra's feigned reception of Dolabella's courtship, it simply confirms his estimation of her character. He calls her "Every Man's Cleopatra," who is now merely providing "against a time of change" by taking a new lover (4.1.298-302), and he commands Alexas to verify her infidelity, because: You are of Cleopatra's private Counsel, Of her Bed-Counsel, her lascivious hours; Are conscious of each nightly change she makes. (4.1.321-23)

In an hypothesis reminiscent of Leontes, Ventidius asserts, "If Heav'n be true, she's false" (4.1.315). And in a misogynistic generalization reminiscent of Hamlet, Ventidius exclaims, "Woman! Woman! / Dear damn'd, inconstant Sex!" (4.1.126-27). Describing the Egyptian fleet's desertion to Octavius's navy, the high priest Serapion identifies the fleet's behavior with the "fawning Strumpet," "Fortune" (5.1.85). Again, the Romans substitute Cleopatra for Fortune and interpret the desertion as Cleopatra's final betrayal of Antony. Ventidius excoriates her once more: "The Nation is / One Universal Traitor; and their Queen / The very Spirit and Extract of 'em all" (5.1.156-58). To the Romans, Cleopatra is the very sign of inconstancy. She is another Eve, another Criseyde—a metonymy for faithlessness. In what the Romans would call Antony's soberer moods, he agrees with their appraisal of Cleopatra. He berates her for her inconstancy to him when she became Julius Caesar's mistress and to Rome when she failed to provide support for Antony's campaign in Cilicia (2.1.262-73), and he blames her, in effect, for his fatal "unkindness" to Fulvia, his infidelity to Octavia, and his "shame" at Actium (2.1.292-312). Now he accuses her, by retaining him, of wanting to "multiply more ruins on me" (2.1.316). When he believes Cleopatra and Dolabella have dallied together, the enraged Antony banishes them, for they have attacked the ethical system of constancy at its very heart. I can forgive A Foe; but not a Mistress, and a Friend: Treason is there in its most horrid shape,

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Where trust is greatest: and the Soul resign'd Is stabb'd by its own Guards. (4.1.543-47, italics mine)

Finally, believing she betrayed the fleet to curry favor with Octavius, Antony rails against her as a fair-fortune lover (5.1.208-13). In other words, throughout the play the Roman point of view embodies traditional patriarchal Western morality, and with it the very code of the word we have been studying. Ventidius, Dolabella, Octavia, and Antony and Octavia's children win him back to that morality with successive titles that represent Antony's public duty, his social bonds: "Emperor!" "Friend!" "Husband!" "Father!" (3.1.361-62). Dolabella defends his own attraction to Cleopatra by contrasting it with Antony's. But yet the loss was private that I made; 'Twas but my self I lost: I lost no Legions; I had no World to lose, no peoples love. (3.1.199-201)

Antony is bound by his word, both explicit and implicit, to his wife and family, his friends and his "loyal" legions (1.1.349), his country and its people. And Cleopatra, like all those other darjc women and foul temptresses of the literature we are examining, appears to have seduced him away from his manly, patriarchal tasks and, arch-Inconstant herself, to have made him a troth-breaker. Dryden's Cleopatra is not "Every Man's Cleopatra," however, nor is she every other poet's Cleopatra, certainly not Shakespeare's (with whom Dryden invites comparison on the title page of his play, where he announces that it is "Written in Imitation of Shakespeare's Stile"). Dryden has removed all the ambiguity in Shakespeare's Cleopatra that keeps us wondering whether she is courting favor with Octavius, whether she isn't feathering her nest for the next in her covey of Great Men upon whose backs she has risen to the pinnacle of ambition (not to say pleasure). Dryden's Cleopatra defends herself against the charge of promiscuity. Dryden is indebted to the historian Appian of Alexandria, as he suggests in his preface (p. 10), at least for one important particular. Appian is the only ancient historian to suggest, and Dryden the only Renaissance playwright (that is, from 1542 to 1677) to maintain that

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Antony and Cleopatra met and fell in love in 55 B.c. when Antony, serving under Gabinius, returned Cleopatra's father to his throne in Alexandria (2.1.262-65). Antony complains that, while he left Cleopatra to "ripen," Caesar stepped in and "Pluck'd" her first, though he deserved her (2.1.266-71). Dryden's obvious reason for the innovation is, despite appearances, to make Cleopatra constant to Antony from the beginning. 6 When given the chance to retort to Antony's attack on her, she responds: You seem griev'd, (And therein you are kind) that Csesar first Enjoy'd my love, though you deserv'd it better: I grieve for that, my Lord, much more than you; For, had I first been yours, it would have sav'd My second choice: I never had been his, And ne'r had been but yours. But Csesar first, You say, possess'd my love. Not so, my Lord: He first possess'd my Person; you my Love: Cxsar lov'd me; but I lov'd Antony. If I endur'd him after, 'twas because I judg'd it due to the first name of Men; And, half constrain'd, I gave, as to a Tyrant, What he would take by force. (2.1.346-59) Like the modern figure of the Whore with the Golden Heart, Cleopatra's soul and love have remained inviolate. She claims she cleared herself of Antony's charges in Cilicia (2.1.274). She denies she "betray'd" him at Actium, insists she fled out of "fear," and implies that if it were a betrayal she would have fled not to Egypt but "to th'Enemy" (2.1.375-76). She admits that, because she loved him, she welcomed him to her arms in his flight from his wives, but she denies that she thereby "design'd" his "ruin" (2.1.361-72). Throughout the play, Cleopatra repeatedly demonstrates that she is a "Mistress true" (Prologue 18), from her refusal of Caesar's offers to her suicide. Alexas comments concerning those refusals: 0, she dotes, She dotes, Serapion, on this vanquish'd Man, And winds her self about his mighty ruins, Whom would she yet forsake, yet yield him up,

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This hunted prey, to his pursuers hands, She might preserve us all. (1.1.76-81) As Aubrey Williams has recently argued ("The Decking of Ruins"), the image of Cleopatra's winding about Antony suggests the traditional image of the vine winding around the elm tree, an emblem for marriage. Moreover, the word "ruins" is important here, because it picks up the Roman estimate of what constitutes ruin—loss of honor, fame, and fortune—and prepares us for the contrast with Cleopatra's estimate, for whom the loss of Antony is ruin (passim). Showing Antony a letter from Octavius offering terms if she "forsake" his "fortunes," Cleopatra protests: You leave me, Antony; and, yet I love you. Indeed I do: I have refus'd a Kingdom, That's a Trifle: For I could part with life; with any thing, But onely you. O let me dye but with you! Is that a hard request? (2.1.399-404) When Alexas, interpreting Antony's rapprochement with Octavia, exclaims to Cleopatra, "You are no more a Queen; / ¿Egypt is lost," she responds, "What tell'st thou me of Mgyptl / My Life, my Soul is lost! Octavia has him" (3.1.395-97). When Alexas then advises her to attempt to retrieve Antony from Octavia by making him jealous, she resists, affirming that her love is "so true" that she "can neither hide it where it is, / Nor show it where it is not" (4.1.89-91). Even though she tries to flirt with Dolabella, she faints when he paints Antony as coldly inconstant to her and wakes lamenting her return to "Th'abode of Falshood, violated Vows, / And injur'd Love" (4.1.174-75). Yet her "one minutes feigning" she fears has ruined her "whole life's truth" (4.1.521-22), for Antony banishes her. Still, at this crux she rises above the possessiveness of her love in one of her grandest moments, saying, "I love you more, ev'n now you are unkind, / Than when you lov'd me most" (4.1.582-83). When the wounded Antony implores Cleopatra to promise him she was not false, she responds, "'Tis now too late / To say I'm true: I'll prove it, and die with you" (5.1.374-75). Unlike Shakespeare's, Dryden's audience

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knows that Cleopatra has indeed been true, and there is no hesitation here before she kills herself, protesting that she goes to "knit" her and Antony's "Spousals with a tie too strong / For Roman Laws to break" (5.1.417-18). Thus, however antithetical to conventional morality, Cleopatra's love for Antony is absolutely constant. Dryden dissociates her from "Fortune," who has denied Cleopatra the title of "Wife" and "made a Mistress" of her, whereas she was meant by "Nature" to be "A Wife, a silly harmless houshold Dove" (4.1.91-94). Though earlier she appears to contemn the word "Wife" as describing "That dull insipid lump, without desires, / And without pow'r to give 'em" (2.1.82-84), at the end of the play Cleopatra appropriates the title of "Wife" after all (5.1.413-14). And Dryden sets up the play to suggest that Cleopatra deserves that title more than Octavia not only because of the superiority of her love but precisely because that superiority manifests itself in absolute constancy of soul. When Cleopatra responds to Octavia's charges that she has ruined Antony, she asserts: Yet she who loves him best is Cleopatra. If you have suffer'd, I have suffer'd more. You bear the specious Title of a Wife, To guild your Cause, and draw the pitying World To favour it: the World contemns poor me; For I have lost my Honour, lost my Fame, And stain'd the glory of my Royal House, And all to bear the branded Name of Mistress. There wants but life, and that too I would lose For him I love. (3.1.457-66)

The fact that she honors her boast argues its sincerity and the legitimacy of Cleopatra's claim. Moreover, Dryden contrasts Octavia's behavior with Cleopatra's. However much Octavia claims to love Antony (3.1.329-30), it is she, not Cleopatra, who is finally faithless to him, for in her Cornelian pride and jealousy she deserts Antony, saying petulantly, "My Lord, my Lord, love will not always last" (4.1.416). Maybe hers will not, but Cleopatra's will. Thus, in the value system of the play, Cleopatra does "deserve" Antony "more" (3.1.450). Dryden has granted her claim priority on both chronological and value scales. Hence (contradicting himself by reverting to the traditional account of Antony and Cleopatra's first meeting at Tarsus on the Cydnos River in Cilicia), Dryden has Cleopatra describe her final wedding to Antony

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as if it were a renewal of previous marriage vows. She decks herself out in the same trappings she wore when she impersonated Aphrodite on the barge (5.1.458-62).7 Cleopatra's constancy stands out in contrast to the inconstancy not only of Octavia but of others. Her own Egyptians remain faithful to Antony only to save their country but eventually do betray his fleet. Alexas, not Cleopatra, is "the very Spirit and Extract of 'em all," who has no loyalty and would "betray" Antony if he could thus save his own neck (5.1.110). His lies, not Cleopatra's, provoke Antony's suicide. But other Romans are guilty of inconstancy too, the very charge they lay on Cleopatra and the Egyptians. Antony's dear friend Dolabella proves "Unfaithful" and betrays Antony's trust by courting Cleopatra (4.1.57). Antony himself became one of the Triple Pillars of the World after avenging Roman patricide. And Octavius is portrayed as a pragmatic opportunist, the "Minion of blind Chance" (2.1.110) and thus the one to be associated with Fortune. But, of course, Antony himself is the most inconstant character in the play. Ironically, he says if Cleopatra "took another Love" he would be heartbroken (4.1.38-39)—even while he is deserting her again, as he has done all his life. After falling in love with her and awakening her love for him at a time when Dryden suggests they were both free to marry, he left her to "ripen," as he says (2.1.266), and she subtly upbraids him for it: "For, had I first been yours, it would have sav'd / My second choice" (2.1.350-51). It would have saved Antony's second choice too, for during Caesar's affair with Cleopatra Antony married Fulvia. After Philippi, Antony left Fulvia for Cleopatra only to desert her again and marry Octavia, only to desert her and return to Cleopatra, whom twice within Dryden's play he is prepared to desert again. Antony's tragedy, then, is his vacillation, the very human inability of this putative demigod to make a choice once and for all, a choice based upon proper evaluation (cf. John A. Vance, "Antony Bound"). Dryden emphasizes the importance of values and of proper evaluation by all the language of commerce in the play. The motif crystallizes into one set of opposing images, toys versus jewels. Ventidius describes Antony as "Unbent, unsinew'd, made a Womans Toy" (1.1.177), and later he uses the word to describe Cleopatra, as he desperately and disdainfully demands of Antony, "And what's this Toy / In ballance with your fortune, Honor, Fame?" (2.1.428-29). Antony responds that "it out-weighs 'em all" (2.1.430), and he exclaims:

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Give, you Gods, Give to your Boy, your Csesar, This Rattle of a Globe to play withal, This Gu-gau World, and put him cheaply off: I'll not be pleas'd with less than Cleopatra.

(2.1.443-47) Despite this boast, despite his earlier statement that Cleopatra "deserves / More World's than I can lose" (1.1.368-69), and despite his later ironic protestation, "When I forsake her, / Leave me, my better Stars; for she has truth / Beyond her Beauty" (3.1.232-34), Antony still vacillates and only comes to realize the full value of Cleopatra when it is too late. (One is reminded of Dryden's subsequent rendering of Troilus and Cressida, wherein he reverses tradition and makes Cressida true and Troilus deceived; the subtitle of Dryden's play is Truth Found Too Late.) Cleopatra's value is underscored by imagery of jewels and precious treasure. Jewels are associated with her from the beginning, first negatively when Ventidius says she "new-names her Jewels" taxes and provinces (1.1.363-65). Then, Alexas brings jewels to Antony's commanders, and it is a "Ruby bracelet, set with bleeding hearts" which symbolically does "bind" Antony to Cleopatra as he is about to leave (2.1.199-200). Dolabella is the first to realize Cleopatra's full value, which, echoing Othello, he describes in terms of precious stones. My Friend, my Friend! What endless treasure hast thou thrown away, And scatter'd, like an Infant, in the Ocean, Vain sums of Wealth which none can gather thence.

(4.1.203-6) Like Desdemona, Cleopatra is a jewel worth more than all her tribe. Having banished his mistress and his friend, Antony picks up the imagery and shows that he has a proper sense of values at heart, though he has not really followed it and is therefore himself responsible for his loss: "I'm like a Merchant, rows'd / From soft repose, to see his Vessel sinking, / And all his Wealth cast o'er" (5.1.206-8). When he thinks Cleopatra has killed herself to prove her constancy, however, he seems finally to mean his declaration of contempt for all the things of the world—with one exception: "Let Csesar take the World,— / An Empty Circle, since the Jewel's gone / Which made it

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worth my strife" (5.273-75). He repeats the image to Cleopatra as he is dying. Cleopatra. How is it with you? Antony. 'Tis as with a man Removing in a hurry; all pack'd up, But one dear Jewel that his haste forgot; And he, for that, returns upon the spur: So I come back, for thee. (5.1.365-69)

Dryden beautifully completes the image pattern by having Cleopatra don her "Crown and richest Jewels" before she dies (5.1.437), and as the curtain closes upon her and Antony sitting in state, we are left with an emblem of the value for which the world is well lost, a jewel of great price, to purchase which one should go and sell all that he has. Had Antony done so at the beginning, he might have had Cleopatra and the world too, at least for a while longer. If not, he at least would have had a jewel worth all the world. His final evaluation is conclusive: his parting kiss is "more worth / Than all I leave to Caesar·" (5.1.401-2). Dryden's final dissociation of Cleopatra from Fortune is the implication that the love of Antony and Cleopatra is "Immortal" (5.1.467) and thus transcends the mutable world governed by Fortune. Though the Egyptians and the Romans both desire Antony to seize "Fortune" again (1.1.48; 1.1.333), in his heart Antony knows "Fortune is Cxsat's now" (3.1.149). From the opening imagery of extreme flux and the ghost's cry "dSgypt is no more" (1.1.28),8 we are reminded that we are in Fortune's world and that it is her nature to be inconstant. Thus the pervasive imagery of ebb and flow, storms and shipwrecks and sinking, ripeness and rottenness, loss and ruin, "Time and Death" (1.1.450). 9 Fortune, not Cleopatra, is the real "fawning Strumpet" of the play. Therefore, one must find something of permanent value that transcends her, and the jewel imagery suggests that the constant Cleopatra contains such value and that Antony has finally grasped it for eternity. In his dying breath Antony exults: What Ages have we liv'd! And now to die each others; and, so dying, While hand in hand we walk in Groves below,

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Whole Troops of Lovers Ghosts shall flock about us, And all the Train be ours. (5.1.393-97)

Cleopatra believes in the same afterlife, for she prepares to convey her "Soul" to Antony and to "knit" their "Spousals with a tie too strong" for not only "Roman Laws" but for Fortune's power "to break" (5.1.488, 417-18). After momentary bewilderment as she is dying, Cleopatra confidently utters these final lines: "Csesar, thy worst; / Now part us, if thou canst" (5.1.500-501). Unlike Shakespeare (see the section on Antony and, Cleopatra below), Dryden does not undercut Antony and Cleopatra's assertion of transcendence as mere rhetoric.10 Instead, Dryden allows Serapion, the admirable and honorable high priest, who has acted as a choric character throughout, the analogue to Shakespeare's (and Plutarch's) soothsayer, to pass the final judgment of the play. See, see how the Lovers sit in State together, As they were giving Laws to half Mankind. Th'impression of a smile left in her face, Shows she dy'd pleas'd with him for whom she liv'd, And went to charm him in another World. (5.1.508-12)

Serapion means literally that Antony and Cleopatra appear still to be ruling the Eastern Empire, but there is nothing conditional in his statement that they have gone to "another World." The metaphoric implication, then, is that they still rule from beyond the grave the half of mankind who are true and constant lovers. And they are free at last from the forces about which Antony first complained. Sleep, blest Pair, Secure from humane chance, long Ages out, While all the Storms of Fate fly o'er your Tomb; And Fame, to late Posterity, shall tell, No Lovers liv'd so great, or dy'd so well. (5.1.515-19)

If it seems uncharacteristic of Dryden to suggest that the public world is well lost for this love, we should remember that he once said, "I never writ anything for myself but Anthony and Cleopatra."11 On the other hand, Dryden's professed moral in the preface is not totally

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irrelevant to the play. Because of Antony's vacillation, their love is never legitimized and, as Dryden says, "their end accordingly was unfortunate" (p. 10). Though Antony argues that "Heav'n did kindly to delay the storm," the implication of the metaphor is that Heaven finally did send Its justice (5.1.390). Moreover, while appearing to flaunt traditional morality, Dryden makes Cleopatra a sign of the most important value in his fictive world—constancy. Antony's inconstancy causes his—and Cleopatra's—personal tragedies. But their final reconciliation reaffirms their words, their "Spousals," and their deaths grant to the public world a peace, the famous pax of Augustus. In his other writings, Dryden indeed supports the principle that the world should "have a Lord, and know whom to obey" (5.1.280-81). Yet, he has portrayed Octavius in such a way as to suggest what he feared most: the triumph of the Hobbist pragmatist in pursuit only of his "Int'rest," the bourgeois "Usurer," " f i t . . . to buy, not conquer Kingdoms" (3.1.213-15). In that sense, the contempt for the world of Fortune that Antony and Cleopatra share at the end of the play anticipates, as we shall see in the Afterword, Dryden's greatest poem after the triumph of bourgeois power and ideology in 1688.12

To the protagonists in these works, the world proves a whore— deceitful, treacherous, inconstant. Criseyde's name becomes a metonym for faithlessness, and she is identified in Troilus's anguished mind with wanton Fortune herself, as he abandons the world and seeks a Lover eternally true. Hamlet generalizes a fortiori from Gertrude's example that the word woman itself is a metonym for all earthly frailty. And from Actium on, Antony all too readily and repeatedly succumbs to the Roman vision of Cleopatra as synonymous with the strumpet Fortune. Criseyde, Gertrude, and Cleopatra, then, are signs for patriarchal man's greatest vulnerability, his fear of being betrayed by the very lovers and mothers who lull him to restful ease. King Hamlet's rhetoric reveals that the deeper wound was caused not by Claudius's poison but by the faithless vows his queen poured in his ears. If a man's lover or a man's mother is a whore, then there are no words that bind. Nevertheless, each of these authors vouchsafes his wounded protagonist a transcendent faith to replace the transient, worldly one. Troilus and Hamlet find their transcendental signifieds in a trustworthy heavenly lover or providence. Hamlet can also firmly rely on the

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faithful Horatio to guarantee that the rest will not be total, meaningless silence. And Antony finally comes to realize the value of his jewel of great price, for whom the world—at least Caesar's bourgeois world, where a man's word is no longer his bond—is indeed well lost.13

N O T E S 1. The best treatment of trouthe in the Troilus that I know is Barbara Newman, '"Feynede Loves', Feigned Lore, and Faith in Trouthe." 2. For the most elaborate interpretation of the poem as a medieval tract on contemptus mundi, see John M. Steadman, Disembodied Laughter, 3. For several more allusions to stories of betrayal, see John P. McCall, "Troilus and Criseyde," 380-82. 4. For a good treatment of the Ghost's speech and the preoccupation of the play with cuckoldry, see Coppèlla Kahn, Man's Estate, 132-40; cf. David Leverenz, "The Woman in Hamlet," and Peter Erickson, Patriarchal Structures in Shakespeare's Drama, 67-80. For a good treatment of Gertrude, see Rebecca Smith, "A Heart Cleft in Twain." 5. Harold Fisch's "Hamlet" and the Word, while it is a provocative study, does not impinge much upon my reading except for the aspects of Providence, in which we have both been anticipated by what is now a commonplace of Hamlet criticism. Cf. also Richard P. Wheeler, '"Since first we were dissevered': Trust and Autonomy in Shakespearean Tragedy and Romance," whose general psychoanalytical thesis is only vaguely related to mine. 6. Suppressed from the play are Cleopatra's other liaisons, both historical (her marriages to her brothers) and putative (her affair with Gnaeus Pompey). Shakespeare's Cleopatra claims this last to have been with Pompey the Great (1.5.31), but Antony later corrects her (3.13.118). 7. Dryden seems simply to nod here, perhaps under the influence of Shakespeare's lines (5.2.227-29), which he is clearly imitating. Earlier, he has Antony say not only that he first met Cleopatra in Egypt but that he beheld her in Cilicia "after" her affair with Caesar (2.1.272)—that is, after Caesar's assassination and close to the battle at Philippi (42 B . c . ) . Dryden also has Antony describe Cleopatra on the Cydnos as the "first" time not he but Dolabella saw her (3.1.155ff.). But Dryden may have nodded a second time when he has Alexas say he "first" saw Ventidius at Cilicia "When Cleopatra there met Antony" (1.1.97-98), although perhaps Alexas could well have seen Ventidius there for the "first" time when Cleopatra met Antony in the sense of rendezvous. One final complication: despite his marriage to Octavia, Antony did marry Cleopatra in Alexandria in ca. 36 B.c., as Dryden would have known from Plutarch. If that is what Cleopatra is referring to, Dryden has backdated the marriage as far as he logically could, to a time when Caesar was dead and Cleopatra eligible for marriage. Even then, Dryden blinks the fact that Antony was married to Fulvia at the time. And if this is the meaning he wanted

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to suggest, he should have made more of it in the play, and he should not have called the meeting at Tarsus Antony and Cleopatra's "first." Of course, it is absurd for anyone to call this meeting their first, since Cleopatra was Caesar's mistress in Rome from 47 to 44 B.c., when Marc Antony was one of his closest associates. 8. The California Edition has the italics reversed. 9. The best treatment of this imagery that I know is Derek W. Hughes, "The Significance of All for Love." 10. It seems that Hughes, in the article cited in the previous note and in two sequels ("Aphrodite katadyomene" and "Art and Life in All for Love"), as well as Alan S. Fisher ("Necessity and Winter: The Tragedy of All for Love"), however provocative their readings, both try to turn Dryden's play into Shakespeare's. 11. See his "Parallel betwixt Painting and Poetry," in "Of Dramatic Poesy" and Other Critical Essays, 2:207. 12. Obviously, my interpretation of Octavius is more in agreement with that of Clarence Tracy, "The Tragedy of All for Lave," 196-97, than that of Leslie Howard Martin, "All for Love and the Millenarian Tradition." 13. Other illustrative examples: in the Middle Ages, the only other great personal tragedy is that of Tristan and Isolde, and I have discussed Malory's version of it to some extent; in the Renaissance, see Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet, Othello, and King Lear, Beaumont and Fletcher's Maid's Tragedy, Middleton's Women Beware Women, and John Webster's Duchess of Malfi; in the Restoration, Otway's Don Carlos and The Orphan, Nathaniel Lee's Rival Queens and Mithridates, and Dryden's Troilus and Cressida.

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EIGHT

Corrective Satire

By corrective satire I mean works which are essentially attacks on deviant behavior and which provide a standard, either explicit or implicit, by which to judge that behavior as deviant. What distinguishes satire from romance or comedy, both of which also expose deviant behavior, is the absence of some kind of harmonious closure or celebration. What distinguishes it from tragedy is the absence of some kind of healing return to order despite loss, of some kind of final transcendence of the false world. The satirist still rails, often apocalyptically, at his society; the drama breaks off with the evils unresolved, unhouseled, unanealed. The three following satires, among the best in English feudal literature, attack abuses of the word, abuses that entail violations of allegiance or fidelity or trust. The rampant troth-breaking or word-wrenching ultimately involves a radical assault upon the enabling codes of society. The standard, then, is implied in the nature of the abuses, though Shakespeare especially delineates that standard most memorably.

Piers Plowman The case for Piers Plowman1 as satire has been ably made by S. T. Knight ("Satire in Piers Plowman"). Not only does the so-called Visio defy its apparent movement toward closure with the priest's inability

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to interpret Piers's pardon and Piers's Moses-like tearing of that true document out of anger at yet another clerical abuse of power,2 but, of course, the so-called Vita frustrates its movement toward apocalyptic closure and drops us back into a world dominated by corrupt friars and backsliders from Truth. And while the Prologue and the Visio are overwhelmingly satirical in their content, Langland cannot resist his satirical bent even in the more theological Vita as he repeatedly portrays corrupt clerics and nobles, rich men and poor. Moreover, he repeatedly portrays forward progress in the quest for Truth as frustrated by backsliding. Perhaps the best-portrayed of these backslidings occurs at the end of Passus 5. Piers has just outlined the way to the House of Truth and described it in a passage similar to Spenser's description of the House of Holinesse, when instead of a climactic successful pilgrimage, the linear movement is interrupted wonderfully by the same kind of earthy words as heard at the end of the Prologue, only this time more plaintive. "By Crist!" quod a kuttepurs, "I haue no kyn jjere." "Nor I," quod an Apeward, "by au3t fiat I knowe." "Wite god," quod a waferer, "wiste I f>is for sofie Sholde I neuere ferver a foot for no freres prechyng." (5.630-33)

Even when Piers assures them all that they do have a friend in Truth's camp (Mercy), a pardoner, swearing "Bi seint Poul!" (5.639), sees only an opportunity to make money, and he sets out to fetch relics and bulls accompanied by a converted camp follower, who herself swears "By crist!" (5.641). The satiric point here, as in so much of what we have already seen, is that these backsliders swear insouciantly—and blasphemously—by the very truth they have just been taught. What Langland satirizes most often and most graphically are such abuses of words, abuses that are not just examples of loose language. Such looseness in Piers Plowman is a symptom of, a sign of more serious abuses of word as bond and of the Word Itself. In the Prologue on the "fair feeld ful of folk," Langland epitomizes his world. Aside from the few faithful folk, the plain is dominated by word-wrenchers of various sorts. First are the false minstrels, "Iaperes and Iangeleres," who, because they tell false tales, are "ludas children" and "luciferes hyne"—obviously since such tales make "fooles" out of the faithful by betraying them into falsehood (35-39). Then come tramps

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and beggars who are characterized not only by gluttony and sloth but by "ribaudie" (44). Pilgrims and palmers are characterized primarily by their "wise tales" about their travels, tales so unwise as to be more attempered "to lye. . . Jian to seye soojj" (48-52). Friars corrupt their calling by "Prechynge ^e peple for profit of J)e wombe"; they "Glosed jae gospel as hem good liked" (59-60). Like Chaucer's great con artist, a pardoner preaches that he can absolve from all sins "Of falshede of fastynge and of Auowes ybroken" (71), all for gain and nought for the salvation of souls; that is, among other things, he gives troth-breakers a false sense of security. Parsons and parish priests sue their bishops to live in London, since the plague has cut down their revenue, so that they might "syngen for symonie for siluer is swete" (86). Other clerics, from novices to bishops, pervert their calling to preach the Word instead to telling of the king's silver or the nobles' accounts, while "Hire messe & hire matyns and many of hire houres / Arn doon vndeuoutliche" (97-98). The fraternity of lawyers, meanwhile, "Pleteden for penyes and pounded Jie lawe / Ac no3t for loue of oure lord vnlose hire lippes ones" (213-14). Understandably, Langland's attack on the Court is more prudent, displaced into the parable of the rats and mice. But here, too, the implication is that the Court is characterized by its failure to live up to its bond with the people, a bond inferrable from the three Latin speeches describing the role of the king: as the king tempers justice with mercy and thus merits his office, so will his words ("precepto") bind his people to him (131-45). Apparently, the Cat (John of Gaunt), regent to the child-king Richard II, plays fast and loose with the privileges of the lords and the commons, threatening the bond of "lawe and leaute" that is supposed to unite the kingdom (122). Portraits of such word-wrenchers abound throughout Piers Plowman, so I will focus on the best. In Passus 5, Langland presents a typical medieval gallery featuring the Seven Capital Sins. Untypically, he gives very short shrift to both Pride and Lechery and then proceeds to characterize the other sins with extraordinary attention to their abuses of words. Envy seeks revenge especially through his "false tonge" (5.97). Ech a word {jat he warp was of a Neddres [an adder's] tonge; Of chidynge and chalangynge was his chief liflode [livelihood],

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WiJj bakbitynge and bismere and berynge of fais witnesse. (5.86-88) Wrath proceeds by sowing slander, thereby producing quarrels, especially among friars and nuns, quarrels that often result in combatants' striking one another "vnder jse cheke" (5.164). Thus, Wrath displaces the Book they should be following with his own "bokes," the chief law of which, "eijier despisejj oojser" (5.148-49), is antithetical to the chief law of Christianity, turning the other cheek. Covetousness, "ypli3t" apprentice to a merchant only to serve his "profit" (5.200), learns first of all to falsify accounts ("to lye a leef oujjer tweyne" 5.201). Like Volpone, he becomes successful by perverted "grace" of verbal "gyle" (205), as he transfers his loyalties from Christ and king to the mere material "eros" on the back of the coin he both clips and worships (5.241). Like Chaucer's Pardoner's vice of the same name, Langland's Gluttony enters taverns accompanied by "grete o|>es" (5.306). So Repentance accuses him of crafting evil with not only "werkes" but "wordes," and since both crimes for Gluttony constitute sins of the mouth, he will have to "Shryue" them with that same "mouf>e"; accordingly, Gluttony confesses, "I haue trespased with my tonge, I kan no3t telle how ofte" (5.365-68). A perfect sign of his displacement of proper words resides in the fact that his pissing after a debauch takes "a paternoster while" (5.341). Further apparently extraneous detail reveals that proper covenants have been replaced with a frivolous "couenaunt" governing the exchange of cloaks, the punishment for the first one who breaks his word ("repente^") being to stand a round of drinks (5.319-35). Finally, Sloth is characterized by falling asleep—especially during prayers. Such a description of Sloth is typical enough, but Langland deftly inverts the coin: when Sloth is awake, he substitutes idle ballads for prayers, for he can remember the former, whereas of the latter he knows "neiger of oure lord ne of oure lady J)e leeste {>at euere was maked." Moreover, he continues: I haue maad auowes fourty and foryete hem on f>e morwe;. . . And if I bidde any bedes, but if it be in wraj^e, That I telle wif> my tonge is two myle fro myn herte. I am ocupied eche day, halyday and oojser, Wiji ydel tales at f)e Ale and oufjerwhile in chirches. (5.394-403)

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One of the most delightful touches of this sketch is Sloth's admission that he only means his prayers from his heart when, "in wrajie," he intends them as curses. Sloth goes on to confess that he borrows and then swears he never did (5.422-24), and he also violates words as bonds in a negative way, by failing to give thanks for good deeds (433-35). It is no wonder, then, that one of the first directions Piers gives all these repentant sinners is to turn down by a brook called "bef)-buxom-of-speche" (5.566). Buxom has lost its medieval meaning of "obedient," a meaning that links it to one of the key words of Piers Plowman, leaute or lewte, as we shall see. One of Langland's most extended and most delectable portraits of a word-wrencher is the character Haukyn. Claiming to have no talent for entertaining the nobility with music and false tales (13.228-30), this garrulous baker, representing himself as the exemplar of the Active Life, soon exposes himself as a great con artist, who would be like Chaucer's Pardoner if he could only get the authorizing papers. If only he could get remedies for the plague and cancer, then he wouldn't mind sharing his bread—for then, of course, he would be so wealthy such charity would cost him nothing (13.246-54). And he already has learned the con artist's dodge. Ac if my3t of myracle hym faille it is for men ben no3t worjn To haue j>e grace of god, and no gilt of |>e pope. (13.255-56)

But Conscience and the dreamer see right through Haukyn's hypocrisy, for the coat of Holy Church that he wears is full of holes, several of which represent verbal violations: "Of pride here a plot, and fjere a plot of vnbuxom speche, / Of scornyng and of scoffyng" (13.275-76). Trying to convince others that he lives a "lele [loyal] lif," "he bostej) and braggej) wifj manye bolde of>es," but he is an inveterate "liere in soule" (13.280, 287). Like Chaucer's Pardoner, Haukyn himself confesses his word-wrenching (see esp. 13.320-24, 327, 399-402) and at the same time reveals his inner wretchedness. Or wi|) my3t of mou)) or poru3 mannes strengte Auenge me feie tymes, ojjer frété myselue wi^Inne;. . . Ther is no lif |jat me louej) lastynge any while. For tales ^at I telle no man truste}) to me. (13.328-32)

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Thus, Haukyn's false and often vicious tongue has lost him the bonds of trust with his fellow men, upon which alone, feudal patriarchy insists, can human society be built. However successful a baker, he has made himself a social outcast. And he is in danger of being a spiritual outcast as well. Most telling of all Haukyn's admissions comes when he describes his melancholy resulting from failure to gain "maistrie" over someone: his disease rages so til Jjat I despise Lechecraft of oure lord and leue on a wicche, And seye Jsat no clerc ne kan, ne crist as I leue, To jje Soutere of Southwerk or of Shordych dame Emme; For goddes word ne grace gaf me neuere boote. (13.333-40) As a result of his not only perverting words but even radically distrusting the Word, Haukyn is perilously close to "wanhope" or despair, the ultimate breach of trust (13.406). Accordingly, Langland addresses his audience especially of lords and ladies, warning them against despair and against fools and flatterers that may lead them astray—fools like Haukyn, is the implication, for such "arn Jje fendes disciples / To entice men jjoru3 hir tales to synne and harlotrie," and such "f>oru3 hir foule wordes / Leden . . . hem to Luciferis feste" (13.429-30, 454-55). Of course, Meed the Maid is the poem's major symbol of the corruption Langland attacks in his society. It is not so much the bribery she represents as the word-wrenching such bribery entails. Langland's concern with this word-wrenching is evident in many of the details of his narrative of Meed's progress in the poem. First, she is the bastard daughter of Fais "fíat hajj a fikel tonge / And neuere soof) seide βφβη he com to erf>e" (2.25-26). She is on her way to marry "oon fais fikeltonge," an offspring of the devil—and a double for her father (2.41). The marriage has been arranged by Fraud (Fauel) and Liar, and these figures, along with Guile, give Meed and her husband Falsnesse a charter "To bakbite and to bosten and bere fais witnesse, / To scorne and to scolde and sclaundre to make" (2.81-82). And their reign will be marked by, among other sins, "chaterynge out of reson" (2.85). As with Langland's other sins, Meed's loose tongue is emblematic of worse corruption. What seems worst about Meed is her ability to gather around her a retinue that includes not only liars, who are easily dispersed by the King's threat, but hypocritical lords and ladies, clerics and bishops, divine and civil lawyers and judges, and even the

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King's counselors. Conscience discerns the nature of her threat, as he accuses her before the King: She is freie of hire feijj, fikel of hire speche; She make J) men mysdo many score tymes. In trust of hire trésor she tenejj wel manye.

(3.122-24)

In other words, Meed seduces people into displacing their trust from King and Church onto her. But like Duessa, she is a false lover ("freie of hire ίθφ"). She represents all false objects of desire: the World and its transitory glories. Her "Ieweles" so dazzle, "hire floryns go so Jjikke" that she supplants "feija" itself (3.155-57), faith ultimately in the Truth of the Word, the only real and transcendent trésor. Thus, like Duessa, what Meed finally represents is infidelity, faithlessness. Accordingly, as is typical in feudal patriarchal literature, she is portrayed as a "hore" (4.166), a "baude" who is "tikel of hire tail" at the same time she is "talewis [blabbing] of tonge" (3.129-31). Whoever marries her will be "a Cokewold" (4.164).3 Appropriately, he who makes this last prediction is "leaute." The significance of this key word ought by now to be clear. Langland's world is one held together by love and law but especially loyalty.4 The Visio concentrates on secular affairs. As we have noted, the secular power is based on "lawe and leaute" (Prol. 122; cf. 126), and the King concludes the trial of Meed, "I wole haue leaute in lawe, and lete be al youre ianglyng" (4.180). Though Meed has done everything she can to defame this "lemman" of Holy Church (2.21), ironically, it is "lewte" to whom Theology refers Meed's case (2.136), and it is "leaute" who will finally come as "Iustice" to condemn Meed (2.48-49) and those who misplace their trust in her, thereby trespassing not just against the King but against the "trujie" he represents in its secular manifestation (3.293-94). Loyalty is also the proper response in the spiritual realm. It is man's proper relationship to Truth, which retains connotations of Troth. Through baptism, Will the dreamer has pledged to love Holy Church (and through her, Truth) "leelly" (1.78). As Will progresses in learning the Truth, the inveterate troth-breakers, Fortune and the friars, despise him for his "lele speche" (11.69), but immediately "lewte" as allegorized in its spiritual manifestation, loyalty to the Word of God, comes to him to continue his instruction in the proper re-

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sponse to Truth (11.84ff.). As an antidote to Haukyn's despair, Pacience teaches him to "Lyue J)oru3 leel bileue," for "Non in solo pane viuit homo set in omni verbo quod procedit de ore dei" (14.46f.). These last words of Scripture constitute perfect advice for our sinful baker: Man does not live by bread alone but by every word that proceeds out of the mouth of God. Pacience further teaches the rich the nearly impossible task of attaining heaven: they must also believe in the Word of God and in response "doon leaute" to all men (14.146). Amidst all the corruption of the world, "loue and leaute lele men sustenejj" for they firmly believe that Christ ultimately rewards his "lele liges" or liegemen (15.468; 19.60). Hence, all word-wrenching, from foul speech to "tresoun" itself (19.90), constitutes a breach of loyalty, either secular or spiritual—or both, for they are inextricably connected. Satan's cosmic Original Sin is portrayed as a breach of loyalty, for as Christ taught the angels "treujie," his first commandment was for them "To be buxom at his biddyng" (1.109-10). Lucifer "brak buxomnesse" (1.113), that is, he broke his leaute, his bond with the Lord. Even the concept of charity or love, without which Faith and Hope founder and which is the fundamental ethic of Christianity, is connected to that of leaute: for Langland, love and loyalty seem to embody the whole Law (see Passus 17), and the leaves of the Tree of Charity, the ethical analogue to the Tree of Life and the legacy of the Tree of the Cross, "ben lele wordes, }je lawe of holy chirche" (16.6). All righteous words, then, are lele wordes, signs of loyalty or faith in the Word. Appropriately, Piers's pardon consists of lele wordes from the Athanasian Creed, one of the fundamental expressions of faith in that Word. Among the most important of all the lele wordes are those of Langland himself. As we noted, the poem virtually opens with a vision of false minstrels, and bad poets are among those who want Liar to come dwell with them when the King's word frightens him away from Meed (2.230-31). Wit explains to the dreamer that since speech itself is God's own "gleman" [gleeman, as in gleeclub], "Wolde neuere |je feif) ful fader his fijjele [fiddle] were vntempred / Ne his gleman a gedelyng [vagabond], a goere to tauernes" (9.104-6). Langland himself seems in danger of falling under the indictment against frivolous poets, for Imaginatif chastizes the dreamer for meddling with poetic "makynges" (12.16). The dreamer lamely justifies his calling as poet on the grounds of the efficacy of harmless entertainment for rest and respite. Yet the

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implication of this section is far more profound. Langland's current poem itself falls under Imaginatifs further indictment. And JJOW medlest J>ee wif> makynges and my3test go seye J)i sauter [Psalter], And bidde [pray] for hem |jat 3yuejj j>ee breed, for jjer are bokes ynowe To telle men what dowel is, dobet and dobest bo[>e. (12.16-18)

Why write another book to explain the Word, when the Word is sufficient? Why indeed? And yet part of the meaning of the current poem is the need for supplementary commentary, a supplementarity that can never end, for no rendering would ever be sufficient. The dreamer answers Imaginatif somewhat petulantly. Ac if fjer were any wight J>at wolde me telle What were dowel and dobet and dobest at jje laste, Wolde I neuere do werk [that is, write more poems], but wende to holi chirche And {>ere bidde my bedes but whan ich ete or siepe.

(12.25-28) The problem is that no such Full Word is available to man. As the dreamer stumbles on from definition to definition, the inadequacy of words becomes increasingly and painfully obvious. When Clergie (or Learning) offers his explanation, he gets tangled up in the doctrine of the Trinity, one of those mysteries that "Alle Jje clerkes vnder crist" could never fully explain (10.253). "FeiJj" is necessary (10.255), and if it weren't, if reason could explain the word, everyone would automatically believe and the act of belief would be deprived of its power to discriminate, to separate the faithful, those deserving of salvation, from the infidels: " F i d e s non habet meritum vbi humana ratio prebet experimentum" (Faith has no merit where human reason proves the experiment, 10.254-56f.). If no Full Word of commentary on the Word is possible, if its mysteries seem absurd (like the Story of the Fall, 10.104-18), then one must simply "bileuejj lelly" (10.124; cf. 240). At one point, the dreamer is rebuked for asking too many questions and told to learn to hold his tongue (11.416-21). If there are already books of commentary enough, then one should remain silent. And yet Langland cannot, and slowly,

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disconnectedly, implicitly, he provides an apologia pro vita sua. The "word" spoke Creation into existence (9.32ff.), and therefore, it is good for people to know how to read, for reading gives them access to the Word not only through the Bible but through other books about It; and it is good for people to know how to write, for Christ saved the woman taken in adultery by writing on the ground (12.70ff.). If they could not read the ordinary of the mass, priests could not turn bread into the body of Christ (12.85). Without books scholars would be blind (12.99-100). And "Aljjou3 men made bokes |>e maister was god" (12.101). Admittedly, frivolous books, like those concerning natural science, never saved anybody's soul (12.133-35). But the clear implication is that this book, Piers Plowman is, however imperfect, a book of inspired commentary on the Truth. At their best, poets can be witnesses to the Word. After all, were they not summoned to His birth? To pastours and to poetes appered {je Aungel And bad hem go to Bethlem goddes burf>e to honoure And songe a song of solas, Gloria in excelsis deo. (12.148-50)

As all the many references to David and his psalms indicate, from the beginning the lele wordes of poets have participated in the Word. And yet, despite all Langland's lele wordes spent retelling the Christian truth, it seems they are more needed to write scathing satire on those who have failed that truth. Like Milton's in Paradise Lost, Langland's narrative recounts the falling away of the faithful after the founding of Holy Church. Yet he avails himself once again of the most dramatic representation of such backsliding, a dialogue that is a special mark of his satire. Invited by Conscience to come dine now that they have "laboured lelly al Jais lenten tyme," provided they have paid their debts as instructed by Piers's pardon (19.38390), the backsliders erupt into their brash, colloquial questioning (19.391-402). Rough, earthy words displace the healing words of Conscience, and again the casual oaths remind us of the standard being rejected. Langland's indictment is sweeping, for he writes that "al Jje comune" speak thus (19.391), and a simple vicar proceeds to depict the state of the church as it is in the fourteenth century, where materialistic cardinals have replaced the Cardinal Virtues, where the pope sends armies out to kill, and where the general populace replaces

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"Spiritus prudencie" with "gyle" and "gabbyng," that is, with deceitful words (19.409-58). At this point, the narrative of the Christian story takes over again, and Langland depicts the coming of Antichrist in the familiar terms of word-wrenching, of overturning "al {je crop of ίηφβ" (20.53). "Leute" is "rebuked" (20.63), and the false god of false words reigns. Conscience and the few faithful take sanctuary in the church, while Kynde (Nature) plagues the unfaithful. But the moment that, out of charity, Conscience bids Kynde refrain (as it were, after the Black Death), Fortune betrays the unfaithful again with false promises of long life and unleashes among them Lechery, who "wi|) pryuee speche and peyntede wordes," arms them in idleness and nonchalance (20.11016). Then turning on Conscience and Holy Church's teachers, Lechery aims arrows "fevered wi{j fair biheste [promise] and many a fais ίηφβ" and "Wi|j vntidy tales," while Covetousness "Wi]a glosynges and gabbynges . . . giled |se peple" (20.117-25). Covetousness, a double for Meed, corrupts the clergy and invades the King's court, where he "garte good feijj flee and fais to abide" and where he bribes nobles "wi£> many a bright Noble" (20.131-32). In one of Langland's most felicitous metaphors, he portrays Covetousness as replacing chivalric physical jousting in defense of the code of the word with verbal tilting in an assault upon that code: "He logged to a Iustice and lusted in his eere / And ouertilte al his tru^e wì|d 'tak f>is vp amendement'" (20.134-35). Finally, Covetousness supplants "lele matrymoyne" with "deuors" (20.138-39). Consequently, Life itself, considering holiness a joke and "hendenesse" (courteous words) supererogotory, transforming "leautee" to a "cherl" and "lyere" to a "fre man," exchanges his garments of faith for a suit of "harlotes wordes" and revels with his mistress, false Fortune (20.143-56). All these abuses of word-as-bond finally beget the successors of this degenerate couple, Sloth and his bride, Wanhope (Despair), herself the daughter of a judge named "Tomme two-tonge," who "neuere swoor trujje" (20.161-62). Sloth casts about him the "drede of dispair," the ultimate faithlessness, whom Eide (Old Age) can keep at bay only with the sword of "good hope" (20.164-68). Meanwhile, scores of Irish shoot "many a sheef of o^es, / And brode hoked arwes, goddes herte and hise nayles," and they almost succeed in defeating Unity and Holiness (20.225-27). Instructing Peace to guard the gates against "alle taletelleris and titeleris in ydel," Conscience becomes locked in combat with one of the worst manifestations of

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all these false words, Hypocrisy, who wounds many of the faithful (20.297-303). At this moment we seem to be at the narrative crisis and expect an apocalyptic ending, a Second Coming. After all, it was Conscience himself, as far back as Passus 3, who prophesied, Shal na moore Mede be maister on erj>e, Ac loue and lowenesse and leautee togideres; Thise shul ben Maistres on moolde trewe men to saue. And whoso trespaseb to trujje or takejj ayein his wille, Leaute shal don hym lawe and no lif ellis.

(3.290-94) But instead of the Second Coming of Christ in the form of Leaute, we get another coming of the friars. Langland drops us from the sublime to the insidiously ridiculous, from the anagogical to the tropological, the mundane, the quotidian. Needing help against the overwhelming word-wrenchers, Conscience seeks doctors who can heal the wounded faithful. But Shrift's remedies are too harsh, his penances too hard, so enter Friar Flatterer, who, with his easy penances and enchanting words, corrupts the castle from within: Contrition and Conscience's other faithful followers now lie in bed and dream, and Peace concludes, "The frere wijj his phisyk f)is folk haf) enchaunted" (20.378). But no cataclysm ensues. Calling out for Grace, Conscience merely goes on a pilgrimage to find Piers the Plowman, and the dreamer abruptly awakes. The implication is that he awakes into the daily world dominated by verminous friars and other word-wrenchers, a world in which he must make his solitary way with leaute, himself seeking Piers and the Divine Plowman he ultimately represents. And Langland the satirist leaves the reader in the same plight. He has not brought us to closure but to the open-ended necessity of supplementary commentary on not just the Word but his word as well, a word whose satiric bent vectors beyond the text to a potentially endless sequence of portraits of word-wrenchers.

The History of Troilus and Cressida Shakespeare's version of the story of Troilus and Cressida, as Oscar J. Campbell argued years ago, is satiric.5 It is satiric primarily because of the context in which it places Cressida's infidelity—a meaningless war fought over another unfaithful wife, Helen, who is not

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worth the struggle, as both sides admit. Yet the war goes on. Here we have a perfect example of what Girard calls mimetic desire. The Greeks and the Trojans fight not because of any inherent value in the object over which they contend. They fight out of a rivalry for martial glory.6 With regard to inherent value, Helen is presented as, to borrow a metaphor from Ulysses, nought but gilded dust (3.3.177-78). She is beautiful but vain and frivolous. Her one scene takes place within Priam's palace, where she and Paris loll in insouciant ease while round about them war rages and people die. Paris does not fight today because his "Nell would not have it so" (3.1.126). His domestic and familiar appellation for her contrasts ostensibly with Pandarus's repeated appellation of "queen." We are ineluctably reminded that Helen is erstwhile Queen of Sparta. And yet the dichotomous appellations tend to collapse as Pandaras continually modifies "queen" with "sweet" and "honey." The effect is bathetic. Helen is interested only in having Pandaras minister to her idleness by singing insipid love lyrics that amount to little more than "softporn." Of course, Helen really has no inherent value. Hers is entirely symbolic. She is an exchange item that has lost her value within a patriarchal system. Shakespeare's finest brush stroke in her scene is Helen's erotically playful petting of Pandarus's head as she seduces him into singing, cooing softly, "Now by my troth, sweet lord, thou hast a fine forehead" (3.1.99-100). We know what Helen does to men's foreheads. So for her to casually swear "by my troth" is the acme of irony. And if we did not get the point, Shakespeare sharpens it with Pandarus's repeated expletives—"i'faith" and "In good troth" (3.1.104 & 106)—and with Helen's charmingly salacious conclusion to Pandarus's song, "In love, i'faith, to the very tip of the nose" (3.1.117). Helen has broken her word, violated her troth, and therefore lost her right to swear by it. As Pandarus's repeated appellation subtly suggests in its lubriciousness, she has turned queen into quean. In an earlier scene, Pandaras has told a silly and apparently meaningless anecdote about Troilus intended to display his wit to Cressida. When Troilus maintained that the one white hair on his chin represents his father and the brown ones all Priam's sons, Helen asked which was Paris, her "husband," and he replied, "The forked one." Helen "blushed" and Paris "chafed" (1.2.156-59), for the dialogue is not so meaningless: if Helen cuckolded one husband, she will cuckold another—and another and another in an endless sequence of supplanters. Trying to enhance

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Troilus's worth, Pandaras outrageously protests to Cressida that "Helen loves him better than Paris"; "Then she's a merry Greek indeed," Cressida pertly and pertinently retorts (1.2.102-4). Thus Helen, no longer faithful queen and wife, has lost her significance as the emblem of cultural integrity and merits only the name of whore. And she has irrevocably transformed Menelaus from king into cuckold. As Thersites mockingly characterizes the entire Trojan War, "All the argument is a whore and a cuckold, a good quarrel to draw emulous factions and bleed to death upon" (2.3.68-70). One would expect this scabrous satyr to be so cynical, but Diomedes's indictment of Helen is more telling. In answer to Paris's vapid inquiry, "Who . . . deserves fair Helen best, / Myself or Menelaus?" (4.1.53-54), Diomedes responds, "Both alike. / He merits well to have her that doth seek her, / Not making any scruple of her soilure" (4.1.54-56). No longer being chaste, Helen has become soiled goods, her "whorish loins" unfit to "breed out. . . inheritors" (4.1.63-64). No one understands Helen's lack of worth better than Hector. The very challenge he issues is based upon his confidence that his wife, Andromache, is "wiser, fairer, truer, / Than ever Greek did compass in his arms" (1.3.275-76). It is as if the Greeks have forever lost the symbol of their cultural integrity. Thus, Troy is superior. Significantly, no Greek successfully answers this part of Hector's challenge: Agamemnon's boast is undercut by our knowledge of his wife's activities at home; Nestor's by his age, which disqualifies him as a representative of the current generation (note that Priam and Hecuba are excluded also); Ajax is in love only with himself; Achilles may be said to be true to Hector's own sister, Polixena, but, of course, he could not fight for her, will not fight anyway, and seems more enamored of his "masculine whore," Patroclus (5.1.16); finally, it is most noteworthy that the one Greek who, according to tradition, could successfully challenge Hector on this score is silent—Ulysses. Is Shakespeare suggesting that Ulysses knows better than to make such a topic the theme for battle? I shall return to that question later. Hector is surely portrayed as correctly understanding that Helen is no proper theme for war. She should be returned to Menelaus. In the great debate in Priam's palace, Hector's reasoning is invincible, for it focuses on the basis for the feudal code of marital fidelity. Nature craves All dues be rend'red to their owners. Now,

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What nearer debt in all humanity Than wife is to the husband? (2.2.173-76)

Hector's Natural Law Ethics reveals its economic and political base. A woman is a piece of property, valuable only as an item of exchange (with attendant warranties), owned by and therefore owed to her patriarchal master, her husband (see Gayle Greene, "Shakespeare's Cressida"). Because desire often threatens to violate these bonds of nature, Hector continues, governments are instituted among men (not, of course, deriving their powers from any consent of the governed women), whose most sacred and most necessary law is chastity. The Stranger in the House has violated the enabling code of aristocratic society. In order for society to avoid chaotic collapse into deadly rivalry, Helen must be restored. Nevertheless, because the Greeks value her enough to empty their households and waste their youth, Helen must be worth something after all. In an instant in Hector's speech, her significance radically changes so that she now becomes the occasion for honor and glory. However banal in reality, her tawdry affair with Paris is renamed by Hector an affair of honor, a matter of great concern to the collective "dignities" of the Trojans (2.2.193), and Troilus waxes so eloquent on the theme that Hector capitulates (2.2.194ff.). Again, the words of Diomedes undercut this gilded theme of honor. For every false drop in her bawdy veins A Grecian's life hath sunk; for every scruple Of her contaminated carrion weight A Troyan hath been slain. Since she could speak, She hath not given so many good words breath As for her Greeks and Troyans suff'red death. (4.1.69-74)

This archviolator of the word has thus discredited all the words she has ever spoken, metaphorically turning them into murderers. Cressida simply recapitulates Helen's original sin. Shakespeare portrays her as similar to Helen. She bandies charming bawdry with Pandaras (1.2.245-57) that may be no more than witty play. Shakespeare gives us no reason to consider Cressida other than chaste; he even makes her a virgin instead of a widow; and I think we must see her vows to Troilus as sincere. The point is that her comments to Pan-

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darus indicate a frail character, one that Ulysses spots immediately and exaggerates misogynistically (4.5.54-63). Cressida will not be a woman of her word because her very gestures, her very body is loosetongued. Thus Ulysses refuses to join the parade of courteous kissers. What makes Cressida's name synonymous with falsehood is that she breaks her solemn word to Troilus. Pandarus brings them together for a sexual assignation, but he himself insists that they swear "oaths" (3.2.39), interprets their exchange of words and kisses as tantamount to a formal contract ("Here's 'In witness whereof the parties interchangeably'—" 3.2.54-55), and concludes the scene of their betrothal: Go to, a bargain made; seal it, seal it; I'll be the witness. Here I hold your hand, here my cousin's. If ever you prove false one to another, since I have taken such pains to bring you together, let all pitiful goers-between be called to the world's end after my name; call them all Pandars; let all constant men be Troiluses, all false women Cressids, and all brokers-between Pandars! Say, 'Amen.' (3.2.189-96)

As the Pelican editor points out, the context demands that Pandarus say "let all inconstant men be Troiluses" (3.2.194n), but Shakespeare is foreshadowing the outcome his audience already knows (cf. Elizabeth Freund, '"Ariachne's Broken Woof'"). At this moment in the play, Troilus and Cressida are solemnly betrothed by mutual vows and therefore virtually married. Like Chaucer, Shakespeare is not at all interested in condemning their night together. As he was with Hamlet's mother, he is interested in Cressida's violation of her most profound protestations. When she learns of the exchange her father has arranged between her and Antenor, she proclaims to Pandarus: I will not, uncle. I have forgot my father; I know no touch of consanguinity— No kin, no love, no blood, no soul so near me As the sweet Troilus. O you gods divine, Make Cressid's name the very crown of falsehood If ever she leave Troilus! Time, force, and death, Do to this body what extremes you can; But the strong base and building of my love Is as the very centre of the earth, Drawing all things to it. (4.2.95-104)

'Tis deeply sworn. And yet, as Troilus himself says prophetically, between desire and performance falls the shadow: "This is the mon-

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struosity in love, lady, that the will is infinite and the execution confined; that the desire is boundless and the act a slave to limit" (3.2.74-77). There is no doubt that Cressida is a mere pawn in another system of exchange, this time one between hostages, and that she is a victim of the mutability of Fortune. Nevertheless, her renewed vows to Troilus are hurled in the teeth of circumstance. Like Dryden's Cleopatra, she insists her love has a transcendent constancy. Consequently, Shakespeare's portrayal of her capitulation to Diomedes as incredibly precipitate is savagely satiric. She posts to his sheets with a dexterity that would astonish even Hamlet. Such a portrayal may suggest that at least this play by Shakespeare embraces Thersites's misogyny, who maliciously delights in this triumph of "lechery" (5 passim). Cressida herself blames her frailty upon her sex. Ah, poor our sex! this fault in us I find, The error of our eye directs our mind. What error leads must err. 0, then conclude Minds swayed by eyes are full of turpitude.

(5.2.105-8) Troilus attempts to resist the misogyny of a Leontes or a Hamlet. Let it not be believed for womanhood! Think we had mothers; do not give advantage To stubborn critics, apt, without a theme, For depravation, to square the general sex By Cressid's rule. Rather think this not Cressid.

(5.2.125-29) Still, he is tempted to make an a fortiori conclusion that would damn all women, even our mothers. His hypotheses are as desperate as Leontes's, though slightly different. This she? No, this is Diomed's Cressida. If beauty have a soul, this is not she; If souls guide vows, if vows be sanctimonies, If sanctimony be the gods' delight, If there be rule in unity itself, This was not she.

(5.2.133-38)

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If Cressida be untrue, then beautiful women are soulless and their vows meaningless, then the gods do not care about our vows, then not only is Cressida divided but "unity itself" as a principle of order in the universe is destroyed. Nothing remains but Derrida's différance, not only radical difference but the endless deferral of reconciling unity. Instance, O instance, strong as Pluto's gates; Cressid is mine, tied with the bonds of heaven. Instance, O instance, strong as heaven itself; The bonds of heaven are slipped, dissolved, and loosed; And with another knot, five-finger-tied, The fractions of her faith, orts of her love, The fragments, scraps, the bits, and greasy relics Of her o'er-eaten faith, are bound to Diomed. (5.2.149-56) If Cressida's word is broken, then the bonds of heaven are broken too and only fragments are left us to shore up our being. The word is reduced, as Troilus despondently laments, to "Words, words, mere words" (5.3.108).7 Can the audience resist the tendency to extend the satire to all women? How are we to take Andromache? Cassandra? Is Andromache a whining wife who fails to understand the significance of a man's word when she attempts to impede Hector from keeping his to Achilles and the Greeks? Or are we to extend the satire even further to encompass everyone in this play, to encompass even the code of the word itself? When Hector insists, "I must not break my faith" (5.3.71), are we not supposed to interpret the line in the light of Cassandra's qualifier, "The gods are deaf to hot and peevish vows" (5.3.16)? Hector's pledge to meet Achilles in the field is made in the heat of anger at Achilles's insults. Moreover, Achilles does not hesitate to break his word to Hector, maintaining that he has previously sworn an "oath" to Polixena, apparently not to fight against the Trojans: "Fall Greeks, fail fame, honor or go or stay, / My major vow lies here; this I'll obey" (5.1.41-43). Actually, the language of Achilles's statement condemns it, brings it surely within the purview of Cassandra's further qualification: "It is the purpose that makes strong the vow; / But vows to every purpose must not hold" (5.3.23-24). He is guilty of placing private above public purpose. Shakespeare thus seems to distinguish between binding and nonbinding vows, a distinction clearly understood by Andromache and

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Cassandra. The best example would be Cressida's apparent vow to sleep with Diomedes on the morrow. When she protests, "I prithee, do not hold me to mine oath; / Bid me do anything but that, sweet Greek," he accuses her of being "forsworn" (5.2.25-26,21). Trying to resist his charms, she declares at one point, "I will not keep my word" (5.2.94). She means her word to Diomedes. But the audience knows that she will not keep her word to Troilus, which word alone is binding. Shakespeare's satire extends, then, to include at least Achilles, as we would know from the way Shakespeare portrays him throughout the play. And the satire extends to include all the men in one sense. They are guilty of the double standard, explicit in Thersites's character of Diomedes and implicit in Hector's challenge. Diomedes has condemned Helen for troth-breaking, but Thersites says of him: That same Diomed's a false-hearted rogue, a most unjust knave; I will no more trust him when he leers than I will a serpent when he hisses. He will spend his mouth and promise like Brabbler the hound; but when he performs, astronomers foretell it, it is prodigious, there will come some change. The sun borrows of the moon when Diomed keeps his word. (5.1.88-94)

Thersites goes on to call the Greeks and the Trojans alike "All incontinent varlets!" (5.1.97), and Aeneas's wording of Hector's challenge seems to confirm it. If there be one among the fair'st of Greece . . . That loves his mistress more than in confession With truant vows to her own lips he loves, And dare avow her beauty and her worth In other arms than hers—to him this challenge. (1.3.265-72)

The difficult comparison is built upon the shared opinion among men that their vows to women are generally false and that they almost always desert one set of arms for another. Only the women must remain absolutely true—so that men may fight over them if they are not or even if they are. Shakespeare seems to agree with Donne's impatience with such behavior in Satyre 3: "Courage of straw!" It is for this courage in the wrong cause that Hector is finally satirized. His ignominious death at the hands of Achilles and his Myrmidons is made possible because Hector has pursued a nameless gilded suit of armor, only to discover within it a "Most putrefied core, so fair

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without" (5.8.1). Yet Hector has been so entranced by that armor that, a bit like the Redcrosse knight, he has disarmed and left himself vulnerable to unheroic knaves. Or perhaps it would be better to say that, as Paris had playfully suggested earlier, Helen indeed has disarmed Hector. Knowing better, he has fought for a troth-breaker. Hence, he vainly chases what appears to be an emblem of Presence, of the Full Word of the chivalric code of honor and glory. But the gilt is nought but dust within, an Empty Word, the sign of a code not of glory but vainglory. Yet the play remains corrective rather than absurdist satire. Despite Thersites's blanket condemnations of everyone, Shakespeare affirms a standard by which the deviant behavior is to be judged, from which it has deviated. Part of the standard is the code of pledged word as bond, which Hector himself so eloquently articulates. But this ethical code is placed within the context of its political version as well, the code of allegiance from which the Greeks have deviated with disastrous consequences. The Greeks are satirized not only for waging war over a meaningless trifle but also for an insubordination that constitutes disloyalty and that leads to a deadly leveling, an erasing of the hierarchic code. Ulysses articulates this part of the play's standard with an eloquence matching Hector's. Troy, yet upon his basis, had been down, And the great Hector's sword had lacked a master, But for these instances. The specialty of rule hath been neglected; And look, how many Grecian tents do stand Hollow upon this plain, so many hollow factions. When that the general is not like the hive To whom the foragers shall all repair, What honey is expected? Degree being vizarded, Th'unworthiest shows as fairly in the mask.

(1.3.75-84) The "general," of course, in this instance is Agamemnon, who, Ulysses continues, holds a position analagous to the sun "In noble eminence enthroned" above the planets (1.3.90). With an instructive comparison, Ulysses continues: the sun's med'cinable eye Corrects the influence of evil planets,

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And posts, like the commandment of a king, Sans check to good and bad. (1.3.91-94) So also should Agamemnon's word have immediate effect on good and bad alike. But the lack of respect for his authority, beginning with Achilles, precipitates a leveling that Girard might describe as a sacrificial crisis. Ulysses anatomizes the attendant evils. 0, when degree is shaked, Which is the ladder of all high designs, The enterprise is sick. How could communities, Degrees in schools, and brotherhoods in cities, Peaceful commerce from dividable shores, The primogenity and due of birth, Prerogative of age, crowns, sceptres, laurels, But by degree, stand in authentic place? (1.3.101-8) Aristocratic social, educational, economic, genealogical, and political institutions all would crumble. Ulysses anticipates Hobbes: Take but degree away, . . . Strength should be lord of imbecility, And the rude son should strike his father dead; Force should be right, or rather right and wrong, Between whose endless jar justice resides, Should lose their names, and so should justice too; Then everything include itself in power, Power into will, will into appetite. And appetite, an universal wolf, So doubly seconded with will and power, Must make perforce an universal prey And last eat up himself. (1.3.109-24) Not only the contention over Helen out of mimetic desire but also the leveling resulting from disloyalty among the Greeks creates the deadly sinkhole of cannibalistic rivalry. And Agamemnon seems too weak to speak the commandment of a king, to reassert the Logos. In his most assertive speech, he admits that he humors Achilles and then utters a rather lame and toothless threat. He begins with a show of authority, as he tells Patroclus:

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Let it be known to him that we are here. He shent our messengers, and we lay by Our appertainings, visiting of him. Let him be told so, lest perchance he think We dare not move the question of our place Or know not what we are. (2.3.74-79)

Strong words. But Agamemnon soon softens them. When Achilles still refuses to honor Agamemnon's presence, Agamemnon fails to assert the "holy strength" of his "command" (2.3.123) but bears the insult tamely. Refusing to speak with the divine authority vested in him, he underwrites rebellion. Hence, the play satirizes Agamemnon for his failure to enforce the code of the word, and it satirizes Achilles for his pride and disloyalty, which but teach others to act the same (1.3.129-36). Moreover, Achilles is satirized for keeping his virtue cloistered. Sounding like Duke Vincentio on Angelo in Measure for Measure, Ulysses in effect lectures Achilles on Renaissance responsibility (3.3.115-33). Achilles is guilty of another failure of word. He refuses to speak his parts by his actions. He violates by omission his bond with society. Thus, Shakespeare savagely portrays him as a braggart, one whose boast is not at all his promise, as is Beowulf's. And like all braggarts, he is really a coward with no code of honor. Unable to defeat Hector in a fair fight, he gangs up on him with his Myrmidons and in effect stabs him in the back. So is Thersites correct to include everyone in the indictment of this tragical satire, including Ulysses and Nestor, whose plan to draw Achilles out of his retirement through jealousy of Ajax fails miserably? Thersites portrays them as crafty to the point of perjury but ultimately ineffective (5.4.9-16). If policy no more than majesty is respected, then no set of words can be privileged over any other. Mondo cane. But the failure of Ulysses and Nestor seems not so much a failure of wisdom on their part as a consequence of the original breach of loyalty on Achilles's part and Agamemnon's failure to rectify it. Achilles's act, like Macbeth's, in effect murders trust itself. Moreover, Thersites himself is a sign of the corruption of the word within both Greek and Trojan societies. Like Shakespeare's Lucio in Measure for Measure or Jonson's Sir Politic Wouldbe in Volpone, Thersites is satirized for loose words. Achilles's violation of the word opens

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a Pandora's box of related violations, including mockery. Ulysses describes how Achilles and Patroclus lie around their tent all day "mocking our designs:" Patroclus Breaks scurril jests, And with ridiculous and silly action (Which, slanderer, he imitation calls) He pageants us. (1.3.146-51)

Their mockery infects others, and Thersites becomes symbolic of the ultimate effect of such loose words: Ulysses complains that Ajax sets Thersites, A slave whose gall coins slanders like a mint, To match us in comparisons with dirt, To weaken and discredit our exposure, How rank soever rounded in with danger. (1.3.192-96)

Such loose lips not only sink ships, they destroy all respect for authority. Thersites may be said to be a synecdoche for all the perversions of the word in the play. Shakespeare's version of the story of Troilus and Cressida sets it in a context of a world of broken words. And instead of focusing on Troilus's poignant and tragic awareness or concluding with Troilus's cosmic perspective, Shakespeare denies us the closure of tragedy and leaves us with a bleak satiric prospect: with Troilus's vain desperate boasting that he will get revenge; with Pandarus's vicious and lubricious knowing wink at the audience. And what is worse, we know the prospect of legendary future history: the worthless Paris will kill the equally worthless Achilles; nevertheless, the Greeks will conquer and destroy Troy; even so, Agamemnon will return home to be murdered by a faithless wife and the Stranger in his house; Helen will return to Sparta, only to continue to make a fool of Menelaus; Cressida will become a beggar and a leper; two of the only decent men in the play, Ulysses and Aeneas, will be forced to wander for years before their tragedies are turned into romances; and the only two decent women in the play, Cassandra and Andromache, will suffer enslavement and violation. But Shakespeare has portrayed the cause of all this evil as neither Poseidon's nor Juno's wrath but man's—and

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woman's—breaking of their word with all the attendant consequences, a deadly rivalry with no end in sight except the virtual destruction of civilization itself.

The Medall: A Satyre Against Sedition Dryden's most Juvenalian satire is directed at, on one side of the medal, Anthony Ashley Cooper, first earl of Shaftesbury, and on the other, what the city of London metaphorically represents: Whigs, republicans, Puritans—the ascendant bourgeoisie and its attendant mob. Both sides of the coin are portrayed as fickle, inconstant, unfaithful, disloyal. Shaftesbury's very essence is inconstant to itself and thus defies the engraver's skill to capture, to fix "his ever-changing Will" (Works 2:44, vs. 24). Drawn into the Civil War by no constant principles but "Blown" thither "like a Pigmee by the Winds," he fought first as a Royalist but then turned "Rebel" and, "wildly" steered by opportunistic "Ambition," went on to become a counselor to Cromwell, whom Dryden labels "th'Usurper" (26-31). Thus, Inconstancy serves kindred Disloyalty. He tried to "cast himself into the Saint-like mould," as long as "Godliness was gain" to his career, but, exposed as a profligate, he returned to his kind (32-49), whom Dryden later identifies as "the lewd Nobles" (299). Yet, finding even here "his Fortune at a stay," since "Pow'r was his aym" and power alone his ethic, the "Wretch" hypocritically "turn'd loyal in his own defence" and at the last minute hopped on the bandwagon of Charles's restoration (46-52). Forgiven by this too generous prince and "exalted into trust" in his government, a trust such a fundamentally inconstant personality by no means "deserv'd," Shaftesbury could not remain even hypocritically loyal for long and eventually "betray'd" England by destroying the Triple Alliance (53-74). Unable to seduce Charles to the "Arbitrary sway" toward which his power ethic inevitably tended, Shaftesbury (the action switches to the present) "shifts the sayle" and "Drives down the Current with a pop'lar gale" (77-80). Hence, Dryden portrays Shaftesbury as having no real essence, as being utterly mercurial (see 263-66). His false character is like the suit of armor Hector pursues: "so golden to the sight, / So base within, so counterfeit and light" (8-9). And yet Shaftesbury paradoxically does have an essence. As Alan Roper has best shown, he is the Devil incarnate, another "Lucifer'' (21), modeling for his medal.8 When he

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finally abandons all pretense of loyalty and begins to preach sedition, blown this time by the "pop'lar gale," like Duessa he "shews the Fiend confess'd, without a vaile" (80-81). Dryden makes Shaftesbury a devil not just to abuse him personally but, as in Absalom and Achitophel, to portray him as a Satanic tempter, a Pander of the Peoples hearts, (O Crooked Soul, and Serpentine in Arts,) Whose blandishments a Loyal Land have whor'd, And broke the Bonds she plighted to her Lord. (256-59)

Here, as usual in Dryden, "Lord" means both King and God, for the King is God's anointed. So Shaftesbury's devilment is to infect the people with his inconstancy and cause them to break their word with both King and God at once (82-87). In implicit opposition to emergent Lockean social contract theory, Dryden's Shaftesbury preaches in effect that there is no mutual trust, no covenant between King and people, because to Dryden such a covenant inevitably entails the principle of "Succession" (116). Without the ability to bind posterity, such covenants are really no more than the whim of the people, exercising an inconstant, arbitrary power that Dryden associates with a radical relativism. For Dryden, without the "binding force" of the reciprocal relationship of trust signaled forth in "Coronation Oaths" (84-86), society is doomed to leap off the "headlong Steep of Anarchy" toward which "this new Jehu spurs the hot mouth'd horse," the people (11922), in effect no more than a mob claiming for itself absolute ("Papal") power (87). Shaftesbury is not only a Satan, he is a supplanter. By casting a medal and placing Shaftesbury's image on one side, the engraver reveals Shaftesbury's secret desire to displace or, rather, replace the King. Dryden draws attention to the supplanting and appears to suggest that Charles is relegated to a minor place on the reverse side of the coin (10-13). Dryden's intent is even clearer in the prefatory "Epistle to the Whigs": addressing them, he interprets the date on the medal, 24 Nov. 1681, really the date of Shaftesbury's release from charges of high treason on an ignoramus verdict, as "the Anno Domini of your New Sovereign's Coronation" (Works, 2:38). Moreover, the literal meaning of anno domini anticipates the later line in the poem where Dryden calls the medal "The Stamp and Coyn" of the crowd's "adopted Lord" (144). The new "Lord" is, of course, the

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Lord Shaftesbury. But it is also a substitute king and, even worse, finally a substitute god. In the prefatory epistle, Dryden not only calls the medals "Kings"—probably a play on crowns—but says that "many a poor Polandei•"—that is, by an elaborate joke on the very idea of the Polish elected monarchy's being for sale and Shaftesbury's putative attempt to purchase it, many a follower of Shaftesbury—"would be glad to worship the Image" (p. 38). The suggestion is a graven image, a false idol, a golden calf worshipped by an unfaithful people. In this context, Dryden's quotation of the word "Laetamur" from the medal, while in Swiftian fashion he mocks the very idea of such praise by pretending the word is "Polish" for "rejoyce" (15), releases the blasphemous implication of the medal itself. More important than its being a word the Psalmist uses in the Vulgate, Isetamur is a common word of praise in Catholic Easter services; thus Dryden can make it suggest both blasphemy and covert papism, mischievously associating (as does the word "Papal") Shaftesbury and the Whigs with the very Popish Plot they attempted to exploit to force the exclusion of James, an association strengthened by the implications of Shaftesbury's breaking the Triple Alliance and making a treaty with Catholic France. Be that as it may, the blasphemous intimations of Shaftesbury's supplanting the "Lord" are underscored when Dryden calls the date on the medal "a new Canting Holiday" (17), for holiday still carried the connotations of holyday. Finally, Dryden becomes quite explicit. Again in Swiftian fashion, metaphorically treating political and religious inconstancy in sexual terms, he portrays the pandaric Shaftesbury as having infected the people with the syphilis of his sedition (263-66). Shaftesbury is thus not only Satanic and a supplanter; he is Antichrist, preached up for God by renegades who deny the true God and his anointed representative (268-69). Now the applicability of the epigraph becomes clear: like the ambitious Salmoneus who strove to be equal to Jove, Shaftesbury has assumed "Divum Honores"·, that is, as Dryden translates the line in his Aeneis, "madly vain," he "Sought Godlike Worship from a Servile Train" (6:794-95). His assault is upon not only the word that binds king and people but the Word that lies behind and underwrites it.9 The people themselves, of course, acquiesce in this unbinding, this whoring of the "Loyal Land" into breaking "the Bonds she plighted to her Lord" and adopting a new "Lord" (258-59, 144). But they will not remain faithful to any lord, for their assault is upon monarchy itself. The extremists among them would not only, like Macbeth, murder

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kings but "Kingly Pow'r wou'd murther too" (204). They may temporarily make show of allegiance to Shaftesbury or Monmouth, but their real desire is to establish themselves as the supreme, "Papal" power. In other words, Dryden takes the republican principle of majority rule and turns it into a form of naked power politics and ultimately of blasphemy. Sounding like Shakespeare's Ulysses, the narrator mockingly asserts that right and wrong can no longer be determined by an absolute standard, but "The Most have right, the wrong is in the Few" (245). This ethic applied to politics yields a form of Hobbist de facto legitimacy that for Dryden has frightening metaphysical implications. If Sovereign Right by Sovereign Pow'r they scan, The same bold Maxime holds in God and Man: God were not safe, his Thunder cou'd they shun He shou'd be forc'd to crown another Son. (213-16)

If power not right, if will not reason be the essence of sovereignty, such would be true throughout the cosmos, and like King Charles, God (if only His power could be neutralized) could be forced by His subjects to name another heir. The last line here is pregnant with ramifications: For God to crown another son also suggests that He will have to send another to be crowned with thorns, to redeem man from a second fall. Rebellion against Charles, then, rebellion against the principle of succession, rebellion consequently against the law of the land, England's scripture, its logos, is tantamount to rebellion against God. And indeed, the people as Dryden portrays them would, like Shaftesbury, supplant God themselves. Thus, Dryden calls them "Almighty Crowd" (91), whose principle of majority rule he extends to all things. Pow'r is thy Essence; Wit thy Attribute! Nor Faith nor Reason make thee at a stay, Thou leapst o'r all eternal truths, in thy Pindarique way! (92-94)

Dryden mocks the notion that truth can ever be subject to majority rule as he painfully reminds his audience that "pow'r" is emphatically not "ever wise" (90), for crowds are fickle and have no "Faith," no constancy even to their own opinions. Dryden sarcastically attacks the fickleness of "Crowds" that first condemned Phocion, Socrates, and Charles I, then repented (95-102). If ethical and political right and

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wrong be subject to majority rule, Dryden's logic continues, why not metaphysical? The common Cry is ev'n Religion's Test; The Turk's is, at Constantinople, best; Idols in India, Popery at Rome; And our own Worship onely true at home: And true, but for the time; 'tis hard to know How long we please it shall continue so. This side to day, and that to morrow burns; So all are God-a'mighties in their turns. (103-10)

The brilliance of this last line resides partly in its reduction of Almighty God not only to an arbitrary plural but also to slang and partly in its suggestion that if there be no one god that really is almighty, then the people are It—for the moment, in their own culture, till supplanted by another faction that controls the "most." Another clear indication that the people's assault is upon not only king and monarchy but also God is their perversion of words and ultimately the Word. As long as the law and the courts are working to their advantage, then they support the system of witnesses and oaths. But when the witnesses began to testify against the Whigs during the Popish Plot, "Then, Justice and Religion they forswore; / Their Mayden Oaths debauch'd into a Whore" (152-53). Troth-breakers to their lord/Lord, they compound their crimes by perjury. What is worse, "They rack ev'n Scripture to confess their Cause; / And plead a Call to preach, in spight of Laws" (156-57). They directly assault the Logos and use it to subvert the cultural logos, the Law, in the senses both of preaching without license and attacking the law of succession. In what follows, Dryden conflates both logoi, subsuming the cultural under the Scriptural. But that's no news to the poor injur'd Page; It has been us'd as ill in every Age: And is constrain'd, with patience, all to take. (158-60)

Rebels throughout the ages, political as well as religious, have abused the Word. Dryden continues with wry irony:

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For what defence can Greek and Hebrew make? Happy who can this talking Trumpet seize; They make it speak whatever Sense they please! Twas fram'd, at first, our Oracle t'enquire; But, since our Sects in prophecy grow higher, The Text inspires not them; but they the Text inspire. (161-66)

For Dryden, such blasphemous pride is merely the logical extension of the people's infidelity. Dryden reserves his nastiest portrait for the "Fool and Knave" among the London populace (186). Here, he is characterizing the real threat against feudal aristocracy in his time, the rising bourgeoisie and its capitalist ethic. Perverters of the word and the Word, they have no fidelity at all but prey even on "each other" in an early version of Social Darwinism (191-94). And like most capitalists, they do everything they can to avoid paying taxes (195-98). Like Shaftesbury, what they infect the country with is sedition; they break their bond with the King, all in the name of the religion they pervert: "They, for God's Cause their Monarchs dare dethrone; / And they'll be sure to make his Cause their own" (199-200). That is, God's cause is relative to their "Int'rest," the real guiding principle of majority rule (89). Their only god is Self. Dryden's Jeremiad concludes with an apocalyptic vision of the future. Appropriately, those who have no faith will ultimately devour each other, despite their "mutual Cov'nant . . . against their Prince" (211-12). The logos of the law destroyed, the chaos of anarchy will ensue. The first split will occur between Shaftesbury and the Puritanical Whigs. Their gods will never long agree, Shaftesbury's being, if he have one, Epicurean (277-82), and his followers' being Calvin's sullen, gloomy "Tryant" who presides over a heaven "Fore-doom'd for Souls, with false Religion, mad" (286). In other words, these infidels believe not in the true God but in false gods that preside over faction. And all these factions eventually will destroy each other. Dryden prophesies to Shaftesbury: If true Succession from our Isle shou'd fail, And Crowds profane, with impious Arms prevail, Not Thou, nor those thy Factious Arts ingage Shall reap that Harvest of Rebellious Rage,

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With which thou flatter'st thy decrepit Age. The swelling Poyson of the sev'ral Sects, Which, wanting vent, the Nations Health infects, Shall burst its Bag; and fighting out their way The various Venoms on each other prey. (289-97) However much the following details recapitulate the history of the Civil War, Dryden invests them with a rhetorical power that makes the internecine warfare smack of Armaggedon, albeit a specifically British one. What is implicit here is that Shaftesbury and the Whigs have been wrong all along. God is not God just because of His thunder but because of the Logos, because of Reason and Law, but He eventually will use that Thunder in delayed "Vengeance" (320). He is fully capable of defending not only His "Text" but His "rightfull Monarch." For ultimately He—not the god of Lucretius or Calvin—is the "rightfull Monarch" (322) over all. Apparently displaced to the back of the medal, the King is a "mounting Sun" (13) just peeping out from behind a cloud (see the illustration facing Works, 2:43)—an image Dryden implicitly reinterprets as the dawning vengeance of both Lords. Dryden's epithet "halting" reveals his impatience with divine "Vengeance." The satirist obviously wishes God would strike down this graven image as He did those in the Old Testament. In the meantime, his function is to uphold the word between king and people, to reveal its intimate association with the Word, and all this through his own words, words of blame and occasionally of praise (for example, of the virtuous part of the London populace). Addressing London, he cries out beyond her, in effect, to the Muse of Satire, "How shall I praise or curse to thy desert!" (169). But his primary function is to "curse" and promise the "vengeance" of an "angry Heav'n" (187-90). "Without a Vision," he insists, "Poets can fore-show" the inevitable outcome of all this word-breaking (287). Unfortunately—or fortunately, depending on your point of view—his "common Sense" (288) prophetic vision was disproved in 1688—and again in 1715 and 1745. Though the intention of his Exclusion Crisis poems, as he proclaims in his preface to Absalom and Achitophel, was corrective (Works, 2:5), in this most Juvenalian satire his was a voice crying unheeded in the wilderness.

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All three of these satires portray the abuses of society as some form of word-breaking. As usual, a central symbol is a false woman: Meed the Maid; Helen and her double, Cressida; the People as unfaithful bride, whored away by the pandaric Shaftesbury. As usual, deviant behavior is portrayed as not only unfaithful, inconstant, disloyal, but also and especially loose-tongued: Langland's hawking Haukyn and irrepressibly cacophonous folk, Shakespeare's gesture-speaking Cressida and foul-mouthed Thersites, Dryden's seductively seditious leader and canting crowd. What is so different about these—and this kind of—works is their sense of an ending.10 Even when they strain out of desire for the comforting rhetoric of the Apocalypse, they present us with no Final Justice. Langland yanks us back out of the Christian narrative into the drama of daily word-wrenching. Dryden threatens his enemies with Armaggedon and a restoration to a rightful lord's—James's, Abraham's—bosom, but his threat has the air of the desperate, not of the truly confident. Shakespeare, more troublingly, more realistically, perhaps, eschews even a gesture at poetical justice. We are denied the final showdown between Troilus and Diomedes. Shakespeare leaves us in the middle of a strife that, if it is terminal, will terminate in a way we have come to expect. One of the greatest satires of the twentieth century has portrayed that way inimitably: Doctor Strangelove. Dryden leaves us on the brink of renewed Civil War. And Langland returns us to a plain full of gaggling folk and gossiping, Gospel-wrenching friars. No Costantyn, no Fortinbras, not even an Octavius appears to restore order. The endings are incomplete, and they portray a world that is incomplete, where the binding ties of words are loosed. If Justice finally comes, it will be at the cost of the annihilation of that world.11

N O T E S 1. I employ the Β Version because it is the most imaginatively rich, especially in satiric techniques. My text is the definitive Kane-Donaldson Athlone edition. 2. I agree with Robert Worth Frank, Jr., "The Visio and the Pardon Scene." 3. Cf. R. A. Shoaf, Dante, Chaucer, and the Currency of the Word, for a brilliant treatment of the relationship between false coins and false words.

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4. See P. M. Kean, "Love, Lawe, and Lewte in Piers Plowman," for the best treatment of the theme of leaute I know. 5. Comicall Satyre and Shakespeare's "Troilus and Cressida." I disagree, however, that the satire is "comicall," in Campbell's sense of the term. It seems to me tragical, as again in Timon of Athens. Other disagreements with Campbell, particularly over the relationship between Troilus and Cressida, will emerge. My reading of the play is closer to that articulated by Kenneth Muir in his Oxford edition. 6. Girard has himself recently done a brilliant reading of the play: "The Politics of Desire in Troilus and Cressida," but I have pursued my own use of his concepts and disagree with his reading of the theme of fidelity. See also Carol Cook, "Unbodied Figures of Desire." 7. The best treatments of the theme of words in the play seem to me to be T. McAlindon, "Language, Style, and Meaning in Troilus and Cressida," and Gayle Greene, "Language and Value in Shakespeare's Troilus and Cressida," though McAlindon's emphasis is more rhetorical and Greene's more epistemological than mine. 8. Dryden's Poetic Kingdoms, 87ff. At several points my interpretation agrees with Roper's; what I hope I have added to the best reading of this poem to date is the notion of the assault upon the word. For a recent reading that parallels my treatment of the law in the poem, see Anne Barbeau Gardiner, "Dryden's The Medall and the Principle of Continuous Transmission of Laws." 9. Steven Zwicker, Dryden's Political Poetry, 141, has glimpsed some of these implications concerning the Word. And Cedric D. Reverand, "Patterns of Imagery and Metaphor in Dryden's The Medall," has related the Salmoneus and Jehu passages to imagery of binding in the poem. 10. In the background of my thinking here obviously lurks Frank Kermode's Sense of an Ending. 11. Other illustrative examples: in the Middle Ages, Chaucer's Merchant's Tale and Canon's Yeoman's Tale; in the Renaissance, George Chapman's Widow's Tears and Donne's Satyres, especially numbers 1, 2, and 4; in the Restoration, John Caryll's "Hypocrite," Lee's Princess of Cleve, and Sir John Vanbrugh's brilliantly cynical Relapse (concerning which, see my treatment in "Religious Language and Religious Meaning in Restoration Comedy," 394-99).

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NINE

Absurdist Satire

Absurdist satire peels back the layers of illusion and grants us a glimpse of the abyss of meaninglessness that lies underneath man's verbal systems. It reveals as well the arbitrariness of those systems at the same time as it reveals their necessity. In English feudal literature, absurdist satire, rare as it is, discloses the code of the word as the rhetoric of desire for a Full Word, an underwriting Writing, a Transcendental Signified. Yet, such rhetoric is necessary to produce the illusion of binding words, without which perdition will catch our souls. Chaucer's work reveals the sociopolitical nature of such necessary words; Shakespeare's their aesthetic nature; and Otway's the perdition consequent upon their failure.

The Knight's Tale Chaucer's Knight's Tale is fraught with satiric irony as the career of the kinsmen Palamon and Arcite approaches its nadir.1 Their bond of knightly brotherhood goes out the same window through which they have spied Emelye. The reality of desire erupts through the thin veneer of civilization. Palamon complains at Arcite's violation of their chivalric oaths: "It nere," quod he, "to thee no greet honour For to be fais, ne for to be traitour

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To me, that am thy cosyn and thy brother Ysworn ful depe, and ech of us til oother, That nevere, for to dyen in the peyne, Til that the deeth departe shal us tweyne, Neither of us in love to hyndre oother, Ne in noon oother cas, my leeve brother; But that thou sholdest trewely forthren me In every cas, as I shal forthren thee,— This was thyn ooth, and myn also, certeyn; I woot right wel, thou darst it nat withseyn." (I[A]1129-40)

Arcite answers with witty choplogic that makes such idealism seem sophomoric: You loved her first as a "goddesse"; I loved her first as a "paramour"; therefore, since as "my brother sworn" I told you of my love, (implicitly) you are bound to support it (1153-61). Stripping away the facade, he resorts to the naked self-interest of all's fair in love and war. I pose that thow lovedest hire biforn; Wostow nat wel the olde Clerkes sawe, That "who shal yeve a lovere any lawe?" Love is a gretter lawe, by my pan, Than may be yeve to any erthely man; And therfore positif lawe and swich decree Is broken al day for love in ech degree. (1162-68)

The code of the word is as out of place in love as at court: "And therfore, at the kynges court, my brother, / Ech man for hymself, ther is noon oother" (1181-82). Arcite's calling Palamon his "brother" in the middle of the argument provides the coup de grace that reduces the code to mere words. The satire continues relentlessly. Freed by his friend Perotheus, one whose relationship with Theseus symbolizes the very ideal of friendship, Arcite can only bitterly complain at his loss of the sight of Emelye, the impossible object of his desire, as he perverts the lesson of patient trust in the "purveiaunce of God" (1219-74). Meanwhile, Palamon bitterly complains that Arcite is free to raise an army—not to rescue his brother, of course, but to capture Emelye. And he directly accuses the "crueel goddes that governe / This world with byndyng of youre word eterne" of providing no care of men, no justice (1275-1334). Instead of raising any army, Arcite breaks another oath,

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this time the "forward" between him and Theseus that, upon pain of death, he will never return to Theseus's domains (1209-15). He violates his knighthood by serving an enemy; he violates his rank by disguising himself and becoming a steward; and he assumes the ironically damning name, "Philostrate" (1428), for he has indeed prostrated himself for love. As Arcite admits, he has thus disgraced his Cadmian lineage, his country, and his gods (1545-56). Since Cadmus was the legendary originator not only of Thebes but of the alphabet, of letters and writing, he is a figure for the founding of civilization itself. Arcite represents the blind force of desire that civilization was invented to contain. He is a sophisticated version of that deadly twin, that monstrous double Girard describes, whose emergence threatens the pollution of unbridled, lawless violence (Violence and the Sacred, chs. 2 & 6). Here, his violence only subtly undermines the institutions of chivalry. Later, it will erupt into martial violence with a literal vengeance. Although Arcite attempts to displace responsibility for his lapses onto the gods—or even Emelye—the escaped Palamon, springing from his hiding place, accuses only Arcite, not merely to his face (1580-95) but also, abandoning all faith to his erstwhile brother, to Theseus when he discovers them ankle-deep in their own blood. To make sure Arcite will be punished too—and preferably first—Palamon points to him and says, in effect, "I cannot tell a lie, sir, he did it" (1723-31). Palamon and Arcite have reached their nadir, and Chaucer underscores the irony of the scene by juxtaposing their deadly passion with superficial courtesy. In the land of their "mortal enemy" (1553), the weaponless Palamon defiantly upbraids Arcite, declares himself his "mortal foo," and commands him to relinquish his love for Emelye or die (1587-95). Arcite is equally defiant, once again insisting on the primacy of desire over their "bond" and calling Palamon a romantic "fool" (1604-7). Even the narrator at this point feels compelled to comment that there really is no such thing as brotherhood in love or at court (1623-26). Yet, just as the "bond" between them seems irrevocably vitiated, Arcite readopts the language of the code and reinvests himself in the superficial cloak of courtesy, pledging his "trouthe" to bring arms to Palamon so they may fight without advantage (1608-14). The acme of complaisance, Arcite promises to bring Palamon food and bedding for the night, and the two part, having each "leyd his feith" to honor their encounter on the morrow (1622). The next day, while their complex-

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ions are turned red with the anger of Mars, while Palamon announces Arcite's advent with the words "Heere cometh my mortal enemy," while they both eschew polite greetings, Chaucer describes them nevertheless arming each other "As freendly as he were his owene brother" (1637-52). Finally, the warring brothers are satirized by Theseus himself, who points out the "heigh folye" of their situation, made fools by the love they so courteously serve, and all for a woman who does not even know them (1791-1810). The very absurdity of the situation—totally unrestrained violence over an object on whom neither has any claim and who is completely ignorant of their passion—reveals that what Theseus faces here is what Girard calls a sacrificial crisis: two virtually identical, indistinguishable brothers locked in deadly rivalry over an object of mimetic desire. Such "sociological" if not literal biological twins, according to Girard, threaten to erase all distinction, difference, hierarchy (Violence and the Sacred, ch. 2). What is at stake are the institutions created to preserve hierarchy and thus contain unbridled desire. Writes Girard in his chapter entitled "Oedipus and the Surrogate Victim," "The blows exchanged by enemy brothers may not always land on their mark, but every one of them deals a staggering blow to the institutions of monarchy and religion" (Violence and the Sacred, 71). Moreover, the conflict between the brothers is not really purposeful but radical. "Rivalry does not arise because of the fortuitous convergence of two desires on a single object; rather, the subject desires the object because the rival desires it. In desiring an object the rival alerts the subject to the desirability of the object. . . . The arbitrary nature of the prize makes it clear that the contest has no other objective than itself" (Violence and the Sacred, 145, 154). If unrestrained, such violence can lead to the destruction of the entire society: "The tragic cyclothymia would engulf an increasing number of individuals if nothing intervened to stop it and would end by plunging the whole community into madness and dissolution" (Violence and the Sacred, 155). What is it that can intervene to stop the violence in The Knight's Tale1 The answer is hinted at in the career of Theseus. At the opening of the poem he is returning from conquering the Amazons, a war he concludes with a marriage to their queen. Thus, the conflict between male and female is socialized, ritualized into patriarchy, the cement of which is betrothal. The rebellious woman is converted to an exchange

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item, establishing lasting peace through kinship. Then, Theseus's triumphant return is postponed by mourning women whose men have died fighting Thebes. But the reason for their outcry is not that the men have died but that they have remained unburied. For this violation of the sacred, for this uncleansed pollution, Thebes must be punished. After his brief description of Theseus's killing of the tyrant Creon and his leveling of Thebes, the narrator proceeds not to the story of Palamon and Arcite but to the cleansing of the pollution by "obsequies," even though he thus temporarily wrenches the chronology of his narrative (991-99). The cycle of violence is interrupted in both the Amazonian War and the war of the Seven against Thebes by ritual—a wedding and a funeral. Only then can Theseus come home, his warlike urges converted into the ritualized warfare of the hunt. Nevertheless, Theseus's job is not yet done, and his hunting is interrupted by the reemergence of the seed of violence that lay unburied outside the ravaged walls of Thebes. Theseus must now carefully and elaborately reinstitute the very basis of society by ritualizing the violence between the brothers. Claiming to sympathize with the brothers because of his own struggles with love (and indeed, though the detail is anachronistic since Theseus is now married to Hippolyta and has not yet met Ariadne or Phaedra, the Minotaur pictured on his penant at the siege of Thebes is itself a sign of the result of unbridled desire, the consequences of which will eventually destroy Theseus's beloved son Hippolytus) and responding to the lament of his wife and sister-in-law at such a waste of worth if the brothers be killed, Theseus performs the first act of resocialization. He forgives them upon their pledged word. But the promise he exacts is not that they will refrain from fighting each other but that they will refrain from fighting with him! Symbolically, the brothers represent specific as well as generalized rivalry. They represent the as yet untamed rivalry between Athens and Thebes. Hence, Theseus's next act of socialization is to ritualize the combat of the brothers into the confines of the lists—not alone but each with an hundred knights, obviously from Thebes's allies. He has begun the process of turning enemies into "freendes" (1824). In return for their pledged word, Theseus pledges his "trouthe" to reward the victor with Emelye and to be an "evene juge . . . and trewe" (1854-64). Theseus restores the pledged word to its sacred place, and

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at the same time turns the place of violence sacred, building on it an elaborate theater complete with temples to the competing deities wherein each may perform his or her "ryte and sacrifise" (1902). Honoring their "covenant" (2098), the brothers arrive with their armies, and Theseus continues to forge social bonds, richly entertaining them as guests. Chaucer's poetry on the occasion, even while he demurs from elaborate description, provides an analogue of the socializing process. The mynstralcye, the service at the feeste, The grete yiftes to the meeste and leeste, The riche array of Theseus paleys, Ne who sat first ne last upon the deys, What ladyes fairest been or best daunsynge, Or which of hem kan dauncen best and synge, Ne who moost felyngly speketh of love; What haukes sitten on the perche above, What houndes liggen on the floor adoun,— Of al this make I now no mencioun. (2197-2206)

The dancing, the hawks, and the hounds are delicate touches in Chaucer's tapestry, symbolizing medieval aristocratic socialization. And Chaucer's ornamental descriptions of the warriors, especially Lygurge and Emetrius, actually show the process of brute violence being socialized through the ritual of poetic language. In the portrait of Lygurge (2130-54) we see the elements of war being turned into those of fashion or ornament, and the attending warriors are indistinguishable from the attending hounds, implying that they too can be converted into merely sylvan warriors. With gentle irony, Chaucer describes the further ritualization of the combat into a sporting event, where spectators try to divine the outcome, as though they were betting on one side or the other (2483-2522). Having arranged the spectacle, Theseus assumes the role of "a god in trone" (2529), as if he were a divine judge, whom his people "reverence" (2531). He then takes the daring step of ritualizing the combat entirely, outlawing deadly weapons and deadly strokes, while his people praise his wisdom: "God save swich a lord, that is so good, / He wilneth no destrucción of blood!" (2537-64). And he symbolically acts to reimpose hierarchy in both the procession and the seating arrangements, where all are arranged "after hir degree" (2569-79). This is political theater at its best, affirming in spacio-

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temporal action the difference, distinction, and degree that order society by both separation and binding at once (see Clifford Geertz, Negara, as well as Girard passim). Even though Palamon and Arcite stalk each other in hopes "to sleen his foo" (2633), all the other combatants seem to honor their "forward" (2619): "of hem alle was ther noon yslayn" (2708); moreover, those overcome yield to their capture—most notably Palamon, who despite himself honors his "composicioun," his word to cease when captured (2649-51). According to that agreement, upon Palamon's capture Theseus halts the combat, decrees Emelye to be Arcite's, and, despite the latter's accident, invites the warriors back to his palace for further socializing celebration, equitably comforting and honoring "every man" (2715-18). The narrator is quick to point out that no one suffered any disgrace, that being overwhelmed by odds reflects no cowardice (2719-30). The stage is set for Theseus's last socializing coup. For which anon due Theseus leet crye, To stynten alle rancour and envye, The gree as wel of o syde as of oother, And eyther syde ylik as ootheres brother; And yaf hem yiftes after hir degree, And fully heeld a feeste dayes three, And conveyed the kynges worthily Out of his toun a journee largely. And hoom wente every man the righte way. Ther was namoore but "Fare wel, have good day!" (2731-40)

The casual quality of the last phrase actually indicates that relations have returned to normal, that is, to the restraints of manners and courtesy. Theseus has made "brothers" of his enemies and their allies. The sacrificial crisis appears to have been contained. But Girard argues that the ritualization of violence requires a sacrifice, a surrogate victim, an arbitrary scapegoat (Violence and the Sacred, ch. 3). Arcite's death provides such a sacrifice; it cleanses away the final remnants of the pollution. And it is totally arbitrary.2 Saturn, the god of capricious malevolence, and not his son the ruling Jupiter, is the god who settles the conflicting claims of Venus and Mars. Saturn pretends to give everyone what he asks for. But, of course, Emelye, who prays to Diana for a life of chastity, has already been denied her request. The apparent reason is that, throughout, Emelye

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is associated with spring and she is not allowed to frustrate her role as fertility figure. She seems to be symbolic of a natural necessity, and she does accept her lot gracefully. Still, a patriarchal solution is imposed upon her. The more egregious case is Arcite's. It is mere equivocation to say he gets "al his boone," as Saturn impishly maintains (2669). Arcite does conclude his prayer to Mars asking, "Yif me victorie, I aske thee namoore" (2420), but he believes that the way to Emelye lies through victory. And wel I woot, er she me mercy heete, I moot with strengthe wynne hire in the place, And, wel I woot, withouten help or grace Of thee, ne may my strengthe noght availle. (2398-2401) Significantly, in his dying speech to Emelye, Arcite makes no mention of having gotten what he wanted nor of being satisfied with just having won the victory. On the contrary, he complains bitterly about the denouement (2772-80). In fact, Arcite seems to be blaming Emelye for ending his life and he concludes her his "foo" (2780). The reason Arcite is dead at the end is not that he chose wrongly or was the worst offender. The solution defies justice. He is dead because one of the twins had to die to put a final stop to the violence. Chaucer put the decision into the hands of Saturn to show that it makes no logical sense, is arbitrary and absurd. But its significance can be seen in the masking mythological detail. Out of the ground a furie infernal sterte, From Pluto sent at requeste of Saturne, For which his hors for fere gan to turne, And leep aside, and foundred as he leep; And er that Arcite may taken keep, He pighte hym on the pomel of his heed. (2684-89) The "furie" symbolically displaces onto an external monster the monstrous doubling of these sociological twins and the unrestrained violence that doubling represents. So the death is socially necessary, and the most important thing about it is that Arcite seeks no reprisals (see Violence and the Sacred, 86). He is thus a single victim, substituted for all the members of the

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community (ibid., 269). And as he dies, he not only recommends Palamon to Emelye, he does so in terms of the code he once eschewed, confirming it with a sacred oath (2786-95). Emelye's shrieking at Arcite's death is also absurd, and Chaucer's placing her in the category of women mourning for "hir housbondes" is ludicrous on the face of it (2817-26). The "infinite" tears the people shed over this young man they had only known as enemy, prisoner, and temporary celebrity; the great wailing and gnashing of teeth; Theseus's inconsolability; all this seems absurdly excessive (2827-42). But the function of the mourning is purification, the ritual cleansing away of the last threat of pollution. Chaucer's extremely long description of the funeral and so many of its details is again the poetic analogue to ritual, serving to distance us from the contamination of the death of the victim. And, of course, the funeral must take place at the point of nadir of the sacrificial crisis. Theseus cuts wood for the pyre from the very grove where Palamon and Arcite had first complained then savagely fought for love (2853ff.). At the end of the funeral ritual, Chaucer comments that the party went home from "the pley" (2964), and that word gives us a clue to the function of the ritual. It is not predicated upon any metaphysical correspondence. The aesthetic and the religious are one and the same; both serve a primarily sociopolitical function, as will become clearer when we examine Theseus's last act of socialization. Because he and his Athenians decide in parliament "To have with certein contrees alliaunce, / And have fully of Thebans obeisaunce" (2973-74), Theseus sends for Palamon and forges an alliance with Thebes by means of a marriage "bond" (3094) between him and Emelye. This is not the romantic ending to a love story, nor the wish-fulfilling closure of art for art's sake. This is the final socialization of actual or still potential enemies. And it is carried out in the usual fashion, by the use of a woman as the exchange item to establish kinship relations. Nor is the ending, despite its surface meaning, a fitting metaphysical solution to the problems raised in the poem. Theseus's father's contemptus mundi ("This world nys but a thurghfare ful of wo" [2847]) does not address Theseus's pressing political concerns. His own concluding consolation of philosophy for Arcite's death is intended to produce acceptance of transience on the grounds partly that we inhabit a corruptible rank in the chain of being and partly that this chain is one of love that binds all things together and links them finally with the

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transcendental "Firste Moevere" (2987ff.). Theseus is attempting to inculcate trust in a providential divinity that shapes our ends, rough hew them how we will. The speech thus has a sociopolitical function analogous to the tournament and the funeral. At the least, it should inspire trust in the godlike lord Theseus, who presides like a divinity over his people. But Theseus's clear intent is not to minister to the souls of Palamon and Emelye but to end the violence between Athens and Thebes once and for all through kinship alliance. Besides, we have been allowed a glimpse behind the veil of Theseus's rhetoric. He rationalizes his first act of socialization, forgiving the brothers, upon the basis of showing some mercy to those "that been in repentaunce and drede" (1776), yet we know Palamon and Arcite manifest nothing of the kind. At the end, he rationalizes events in terms of a wise, omniscient, omnipotent divine providence, yet we know that it was not Jupiter but Saturn who decided the fate of Palamon and Arcite, and we have heard Saturn describe himself as anything but benevolent, although he pretends to make an exception in this case, supposedly for harmony's sake but apparently for no reason other than mere caprice (2443ff.). And we have seen depicted on the walls of their temples the usual rewards the gods distribute to their faithful. For all their "othes" and "covenantz" (1924), the only examples of Venus's servants that Chaucer names are negative ones, and he concludes of them, "Lo, alle thise folk so caught were in hir las, / Til they for wo ful ofte seyde 'alias!'" (1951-52). No heroic warriors are portrayed in Mars's temple, only murderers of various stripes (1967ff.). And none of the favorable aspects of Diana are portrayed in her temple, only negative ones; even the woman in childbirth is a picture of woe, one who has labored long and called on Lucina apparently in vain (2051ff.). In view of such glimpses into the abyss, one's faith in the ritual of Theseus's—or Chaucer's—language can only be in its sociopolitical function. As Nietzsche argues most powerfully in The Birth of Tragedy, the function of such an aesthetic is to cover the truth too difficult for humanity to face with the veil of artistic illusion. The function of such ritual expressed in myth and tragedy is to reconstitute the hierarchical differences necessary for society to survive its everpresent threat of anarchic violence. The word is restored at the end of The Knight's Tale, and Theseus's and his father's words of consolation are comforting for all their metaphysical absurdity, if only because we

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know they are all we have to wrap ourselves in against essential meaninglessness and unmitigated strife.

Antony and

Cleopatra

If Dryden's version of the story of Antony and Cleopatra posits a transcendence midst a world of flux, Shakespeare's reveals such transcendence to be the rhetoric of desire.3 The world he portrays is as mutable as Dryden's, presided over by the fickle goddess Fortuna and including fickle mobs and inconstant rulers. Octavius epitomizes the world with a magnificent metaphor that reflects the action of the Nile. It hath been taught us from the primal state That he which is was wished until he were; And the ebbed man, ne'er loved till ne'er worth love, Comes deared by being lacked. This common body, Like to a vagabond flag [iris] upon the stream, Goes to and back, lackeying the varying tide, To rot itself with motion.

(1.4.41-47) Actually, the action of the play itself is as good a visual metaphor for inconstancy as we could wish: the extraordinarily proliferated scenes change with dizzying speed. And the characters appear no more constant. Antony is inconstant first to his former self. Philo's opening speech characterizes him as "The triple pillar of the world transformed / Into a strumpet's fool" (1.1.12-13). Octavius laments the loss of the stoic Antony who endured severe hardships in his flight from the killers of Julius Caesar (1.4). Sextus Pompey hopes success for his rebellion because he believes Antony has become an absolute "libertine" (2.1.23). Even Enobarbus comes to believe Antony has lost his judgment and is no longer worthy of loyalty (3.13). And Antony himself desperately seeks to resurrect his old self: "These strong Egyptian fetters I must break / Or lose myself in dotage" (1.2.112-13). To Octavius he excuses himself as not being himself. Concerning his insults to Octavius's messenger, Antony apologizes that he "did want / Of what I was i'th'morning" (2.2.76-77). He apologizes in similar fashion for failure to send Octavius requested aid, "when poisoned hours had bound me

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up / From mine own knowledge" (2.2.89-91). Furthermore, Antony is inconstant to his better judgment, insisting on fighting at sea. And he is inconstant to his purpose when he deserts his navy to follow Cleopatra. Canidius bemoans the defeat at Actium thus: "Had our general / Been what he knew himself, it had gone well" (3.10.26-27). Antony agonizes, "I have fled m y s e l f . . . . Let that be left / Which leaves itself" (3.11.7-20). When he discovers Thidias taking liberties with Cleopatra's hand, he impotently rages, "Authority melts from me. . . . Have you no ears? I am / Antony yet" (3.13.90-93). After Thidias has been whipped, Antony continues his tirade against Caesar, who "seems / Proud and disdainful, harping on what I am, / Not what he knew I was" (3.13.141-43). At the end of this scene, Antony deludedly asserts his old self: "Where hast thou been, my heart? . . . There's sap in't yet" (3.13.172, 192), and Cleopatra flatters him accordingly: "It is my birthday. /1 had thought t'have held it poor. But since my lord / Is Antony again, I will be Cleopatra" (3.13.185-87). That it is flattery, whatever Cleopatra's intent, we know from Enobarbus's ironic commentary: "I see still / A diminution in our captain's brain / Restores his heart" (3.13.197-99). Like an ever-changing cloud, Antony "cannot hold this visible shape" (4.14.14), as his fortune and, he thinks, Cleopatra herself betray him. Then, when he learns of Cleopatra's putative suicide, he concludes in self-abnegation that he lacks even "The courage of a woman" (4.14.60). Antony attempts a similar conquest. Only then, it seems, can he escape his own mutability. But Antony is guilty of inconstancy to more than just himself. He is inconstant to others, beginning with his wife, Fulvia, as Cleopatra teasingly but tellingly points out: "Why did he marry Fulvia, and not love her? / I'll seem the fool I am not. Antony / Will be himself" (1.1.41-43). For her, his selfhood is falseness. She properly asks: Why should I think you can be mine, and true, (Though you in swearing shake the throned gods) Who have been false to Fulvia? Riotous madness, To be entangled with those mouth-made vows Which break themselves in swearing. (1.3.27-31)

Once a troth-breaker, always a troth-breaker, her reasoning goes. And, of course, she is right. All of his bonding words to her notwith-

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standing, Antony, when freed by Fulvia's death to ally himself with Octavius and thus avoid future strife, denies exchanging any vows with Cleopatra ("I am not married, Caesar" [2.2.123]) and contracts with Octavius for Octavia as exchange item (2.2.144-49). Thus, his word to a woman means nothing to Antony when he deals in the world of men. But his word to men means nothing to him either. Even as he exchanges vows with Octavius as well as with Octavia, Antony intends to violate them and return to Cleopatra: "I will to Egypt: / And though I make this marriage for my peace, / I'th'East my pleasure lies" (2.3.38-40). So he prevaricates to Sextus Pompey when he says he has reformed (2.6.50-52), and he prevaricates to Octavius when he pretends to be offended at his "distrust" (3.2.34). Ironically, then, the returned Rover blames Cleopatra for inconstancy at Actium (3.11). No sooner has he forgiven her than he distrusts her with Thidias because she has been free with her hand, "this kingly seal / And plighter of high hearts" (3.13.125-26). Moreover, he reveals that he has a concealed contempt for her because of her previous affairs with Julius Caesar and Gneius Pompey (3.13.116-22). In other words, Antony professes the double standard of sexual morality. Inconstant himself, he expects that Cleopatra be absolutely constant to him and all too easily assumes that she is not. When the Egyptian navy deserts him, he automatically concludes that Cleopatra has "betrayed" him (4.12.10), has "Packed cards with Caesar" (4.14.19), and is therefore (like all inconstant women in feudal literature, at least according to the misogynistic males) a "Triple-turned whore," a "witch" that needs killing (4.12.13, 47). Is Shakespeare's Cleopatra constant? Like Henry James's Daisy Miller, she defies Antony's—and our—certain knowledge. After he has left her to return to Rome, she appears to miss him to distraction as she envies the horse that bears him. At the same time her memory strays back to when Caesar thought she was "A morsel for a monarch" and when "great Pompey" stared at her until he nearly died "With looking"—sexual pun intended (1.5.29-34). We are forced to remember that Cleopatra has had many lovers (though Pompey the Great appears not to have been one of them but rather his son Gneius: Cleopatra is exaggerating). She is therefore an anomaly in feudal literature, for she is not portrayed as merely a whore—a Duessa or a fallen Queen who has destroyed the integrity of society—but as a tantalizing enigma. On the one hand, she appears to love Antony and remain faith-

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ful to him despite his marriage to Octavia: "Let him for ever go!—let him not!—Charmian, / Though he be painted one way like a Gorgon, / The other way's a Mars" (2.5.115-17). On the other hand, Octavius is confident she will "perjure" any vows she has made to Antony (3.12.30), and indeed she shows no righteous indignation at Thidias but rather seems to treat with him. When Antony catches the two together, she asks, "Not know me yet?" (3.13.157) and deeply swears in another of Shakespeare's desperate hypotheses concerning constancy (3.13.159-67). Is she true to her word? She appears to be hesitant about Antony's chances of success: "He goes forth gallantly. That he and Caesar might / Determine this great war in single fight! / Then Antony—but now—Well, on" (4.4.36-38). Is she secretly feathering her nest with Octavius, preparing simply to move on to the next world conqueror to preserve herself and her kingdom? Does she betray the fleet? Shakespeare never lets us know. We can only suspect—or not—along with Antony. But if she loves him, why does she refuse to risk her life to attend him while he is dying? And why does she not remain true to her purpose at the end of the fourth act and kill herself? How can we take her protestations to do so seriously when she is so obsequious to Proculeius, Dolabella, Octavius? when she appears to have tried to save a large portion of her treasure? Is she not infirm of purpose? Is she not untrue to Antony's ghost? Does she not kill herself finally only out of vanity, fearing to be made a thing of scorn in Octavius's triumph? That Shakespeare leaves all these questions unanswerable makes the world of the play uncertain indeed, one apparently without constants. Almost all Antony's followers eventually desert him, including Enobarbus. Yet Octavius gives them "No honorable trust" and even has Alexas killed (4.6.18). In his dying breath, Antony warns Cleopatra, "None about Caesar trust but Proculeius" (4.15.48), yet when she does, he betrays her to a scheming Octavius who promises much but, as Cleopatra comes to understand, merely "words" her (5.2.191). Unlike Duncan or Shakepeare's other sacred kings, Octavius is not at all "full of grace," despite Proculeius's pronouncement (5.2.24). Octavius's kind words for Antony at the end seem the luxury of a conqueror who no longer needs contend in deadly rivalry with his mimetic double. Yet arising out of all this mutability and inconstancy is there not a transcendence similar to the one Dryden portrays? Witness several magnificent speeches that would make us think so. Antony proclaims a love that contemns the world and its glories.

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Let Rome in Tiber melt and the wide arch Of the ranged empire fall! Here is my space [embracing Cleopatra], Kingdoms are clay: our dungy earth alike Feeds beast as man. The nobleness of life Is to do thus; when such a mutual pair And such a twain can do't, in which I bind, On pain of punishment, the world to weet We stand up peerless. (1.1.33-40) As they part, Antony sounds like John Donne articulating a transcendent paradox. Our separation so abides and flies That thou residing here goes yet with me, And I hence fleeting here remain with thee. (1.3.102-4) After Actium, when the weeping Cleopatra begs "pardon" for her flight, Antony grandly exclaims: Fall not a tear, I say: one of them rates All that is won and lost. Give me a kiss; Even this repays me. (3.11.68-71) Finally, when Antony no longer blames the apparently dead Cleopatra for the betrayal of the fleet, he calls to her beyond the grave: Eros!—I come, my queen.—Eros!—Stay for me. Where souls do couch on flowers, we'll hand in hand, And with our sprightly port make the ghosts gaze: Dido and her Aeneas shall want troops, And all the haunt be ours.—Come, Eros, Eros! (4.14.50-54) Of course, Antony is also calling his arms-bearer here, but his name's being Eros allows Shakespeare to punctuate this speech with implicit appeals to the god of love. Despite his inconstancy, has Antony not at last concluded the world well lost for love? Does not Cleopatra finally do the same, overcoming her feminine frailty? She begins to triumph not only over Octavius but over Fortune and mutability itself.4

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My desolation does begin to make A better life. 'Tis paltry to be Caesar: Not being Fortune, he's but Fortune's knave, A minister of her will. And it is great To do that thing that ends all other deeds, Which shackles accidents and bolts up change; Which sleeps, and never palates more the dung, The beggar's nurse and Caesar's. (5.2.1-8)

If Caesar cannot control Fortune, then he perforce is but another of her servile ministers, his world but dust, and no way to transcend it but to leave it. To this purpose Cleopatra grows constant. My resolution's placed, and I have nothing Of woman in me: now from head to foot I am marble-constant: now the fleeting moon No planet is of mine. (5.2.238-41)

Following her "Immortal longings," mocking "The luck of Caesar, which the gods give men / To excuse their after wrath," Cleopatra pursues her "Husband" into the afterlife, leaving behind a world that "is not worth leave-taking" (5.2.279-97). Even Octavius praises her as "Bravest at the last" (5.2.333). Yet what is the nature of this transcendence? The immortality Antony and Cleopatra seek is that of the Elysian Fields, where they will vie with Dido and Aeneas for followers. But is not Antony's prediction severely undercut by the fact that Dido and Aeneas are not lovers in the Underworld, that in the Aeneid she turns away from him in scorn, his inveterate enemy ("inimica" 6.472), as any schoolboy in Shakespeare's time would know? Throughout the play, Shakespeare undercuts Antony and Cleopatra's heroic diction, revealing it to be the rhetoric of desire, an attempt to acquire transcendence through language.5 Witness several more key passages. Cleopatra deflates Antony's grandiloquent exhortation, "Let Rome in Tiber melt," with the needle of her ejaculation, "Excellent falsehood!" (1.1.40). She herself describes their previous love, clothed in protestations that Antony's falsehood can divest. Eternity was in our lips and eyes, Bliss in our brows' bent: none our parts so poor

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But was a race of heaven. They are so still, Or thou, the greatest soldier of the world, Art turned the greatest liar.

(1.3.35-38) The use of the past tense is devastating. The unheroic reality simply cannot live up to the rhetoric. Cleopatra's description of their wassails reveals not heroic but bathetic behavior. That time—O times!— I laughed him out of patience; and that night I laughed him into patience; and next morn Ere the ninth hour I drunk him to his bed; Then put my tires and mantles on him, whilst I wore his sword Philippan.

(2.5.18-23) All their heroic rhetoric before Actium yields to Scarus's ignominious comparisons: they fled, she "like a cow in June" and he "like a doting mallard" (3.10.14, 20). Despite Antony's world-well-lost speech after Actium, political reality obtrudes and they negotiate with Caesar, Antony agreeing to leave Cleopatra and return "A private man" to Athens, Cleopatra agreeing to pay tribute and asking only for her crown (3.12.13-19). At the same time, Antony continues to boast as he prepares to fight the Battle of Alexandria. I will be treble-sinewed, hearted, breathed, And fight maliciously; for when mine hours Were nice and lucky, men did ransom lives Of me for jests; but now I'll set my teeth And send to darkness all that stop me. . . . . . . The next time I do fight, I'll make death love me, for I will contend Even with his pestilent scythe. . . . By sea and land I'll fight; or I will live, Or bathe my dying honor in the blood Shall make it live again.

(3.13.178-94; 4.2.5-7) This posturing is undercut not only by Enobarbus's running ironic commentary but by the manner in which Antony really dies. Denied a heroic battlefield death, he even botches his Roman way and ignominiously lies begging to be put out of his misery while one of his soldiers

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extracts Antony's sword and hies with it to Octavius. Reality further obtrudes in a manner perilously close to the bathetic when Cleopatra and her maids hoist the portly, dying hero to the window in her monument. Here's sport indeed! How heavy weighs my lord! Our strength is all gone into heaviness: That makes the weight. Had I great Juno's power, The strong-winged Mercury should fetch thee up And set thee by Jove's side. Yet come a little, Wishers were ever fools. (4.15.32-37)

Her last line characterizes all their attempts to exalt themselves into divinity. Witness Cleopatra's exchange with Dolabella: Cleopatra. His legs bestrid the ocean: his reared arm Crested the world: his voice was propertied A s all the tuned spheres, and that to friends; But when he meant to quail and shake the orb, He was as rattling thunder. For his bounty, There was no winter in't: an autumn 'twas That grew the more by reaping: his delights Were dolphin-like, they showed his back above The element they lived in: in his livery Walked crowns and crownets: realms and islands were As plates dropped from his pocket. Dolabella. Cleopatra— Cleopatra. Think you there was or might be such a man A s this I dreamt of? Dolabella. Gentle madam, no. Cleopatra. You lie, up to the hearing of the gods. But if there be nor ever were one such, It's past the size of dreaming: nature wants stuff To vie strange forms with fancy, yet t'imagine An Antony were nature's piece 'gainst fancy, Condemning shadows quite. (5.2.82-100)

Though her final reasoning strives after Anselm's ontological proofs, she merely reveals that transcendence is a function of desire in language. One must then read Cleopatra's dying speeches as her desire to write her last act as a tragedy instead of the farce Octavius threatens to inscribe. Over the abyss of meaninglessness she draws

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Nietzsche's veil of illusion, the rhetoric of the desire for transcendence in a mutable world. The very best example of such rhetoric is Enobarbus's description of Cleopatra. Shakespeare puts this description into his mouth, I think, because he is the cynical commentator, whose antiheroics constantly undercut Antony and Cleopatra's heroics. He deflates all the play's demigods. Witness especially his sardonic metaphor for the Second Triumvirate, these Triple Pillars of the world: Antony and Octavius are Lepidus's "shards, and he their beetle" (3.2.20); when he learns of Lepidus's death, Enobarbus says sarcastically: Then, world, thou hast a pair of chaps, no more; And throw between them all the food thou hast, They'll grind the one the other.

(3.5.12-14) Yet, even this satyr figure, this ironic malcontent, appreciates the value of poetry and its beautiful fictions. He says of the admittedly sunburnt and obviously aging Cleopatra (when she asks Octavia's age she is herself approximately thirty-six): Age cannot wither her, nor custom stale Her infinite variety: other women cloy The appetites they feed, but she makes hungry Where most she satisfies.

(2.2.236-39) She is the ultimate fantasy, the supreme effort of the human imagination. For her own person, It beggared all description: she did lie In her pavilion, cloth-of-gold of tissue, O'erpicturing that Venus where we see The fancy outwork nature.

(2.2.198-202) Supposedly, Cleopatra is the reality that transcends fancy, which itself had transcended nature in, say, a Titian Venus. But, of course, the Cleopatra Enobarbus describes is herself only a work of verbal art, the magnificent poetry Shakespeare and others inscribe upon the blank surface of time and death. The ultimate referent for Enobarbus's

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description is no transcendental signified but merely our own desire for Presence. Her gentlewomen, like the Nereides, So many mermaids, tended her i'th'eyes, And made their bends adornings. At the helm A seeming mermaid steers: the silken tackle Swell with the touches of those flower-soft hands, That yarely frame the office. From the barge A strange invisible perfume hits the sense Of the adjacent wharfs. The city cast Her people out upon her; and Antony, Enthroned i'th'market place, did sit alone, Whistling to th'air; which, but for vacancy, Had gone to gaze on Cleopatra too, And made a gap in nature. (2.2.207-19) The poetry itself fills the vacancy of desire and gives us the mythic mermaids of Presence that enable us to endure the inconstancy of word and world around us. The Logos manifests itself as simply the Word of the poet.

Venice Preserved; or; A Plot Discovered The satire of Otway's Venice Preserved is darker than that of The Knight's Tale or Antony and Cleopatra, its absurdity a vision not of the illusory power of language but of its total breakdown. By the end of the play, the code of the word as bond of loyalty, trust, fidelity, constancy has been destroyed, replaced by meaningless gestures, mad ravings, and nonsense.® The conflict in the play is triple sided, and Jaffeir is caught in the middle of the triangle. He has three contending loyalties: to his friend and fellow conspirators and their code of liberty and justice; to his country, its leaders, and its code of honor and humanity; and to his supposedly transcendent jewel, his wife, Belvidera. Ironically, he who articulates to the Venetian Senate the aristocratic standard of constancy in the face of adversity—"a steady mind / Acts of itself, ne'er asks the body counsel" (4.2.48-49)—manifests a most unsteady mind. The play opens in familiar surroundings. Jaffeir is the Stranger in the House who has betrayed Priuli's trust and stolen away his daugh-

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ter "like a thief" (1.1.49). Deprived of control over his progeny, Priuli curses Jaffeir and Belvidera with "A sterile fortune, and a barren bed" (1.1.53). Although, as Jaffeir reminds him, they have escaped the latter part of the curse already, for "Heav'n" has "crowned" their "faithful loves" with a child (1.1.6Ö), Priuli endeavors his utmost to implement the first part of the curse, prompting Jaffeir's creditors to foreclose and evict his own daughter. Nevertheless, convinced that by saving Belvidera's life he has purchased the right to the "nobler gratitude" of her love (1.1.27ff.), Jaffeir defies Priuli's curses and Fortune's changes, adopts a contemptus mundi, and sounding like Dryden's Antony, will "trust" his "fate no more" but concludes the "world" and its "Busy rebellion" well lost in favor of his "choicest treasure," Belvidera (1.1.382-94). Jaffeir's contemptus mundi is short-lived, however. Already he has solemnly sworn to his friend Pierre, "By sea and air! by earth, by Heaven and Hell, / 1 will revenge my Belvidera's tears!" (1.1.297-98). The same night when he boasts his defiance of the world he keeps his appointment on the Rialto with Pierre to learn more of the conspiracy against the state. Within minutes he pledges his word to rejoin the active, political world and participate in "Busy rebellion." by all those glittering stars, And yond great ruling planet of the night! By all good pow'rs above, and ill below! By love andfriendship,dearer than my life! No pow'r or death shall make me false to thee. (2.2.112-16)

He confirms his oath to the conspirators by entrusting them with "A pledge, worth more than all the world can pay for" (2.3.150). He surrenders to them his jewel Belvidera to be killed if he prove false. Thus, he subordinates his love to this greater purpose, the cause of liberty from oppression, as especially Pierre describes it: "A battle for the freedom of the world" (2.3.86). Throughout the play, this rough general Pierre has the best lines as he articulates a revolutionary's definition of villainy. To see the suff'rings of my fellow creatures, And own myself a man; to see our Senators Cheat the deluded people with a show Of liberty, which yet they ne'er must taste of. . . .

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All that bear this are villains; and I one, Not to rouse up at the great call of nature, And check the growth of these domestic spoilers, That make us slaves and tell us 'tis our charter.

(1.1.152-64) He exhorts the hesitant Jaffeir to curse his own "and the worse fate of Venice, / Where brothers, friends, and fathers, all are false; / Where there's no trust, no truth" (1.1.252-54). If trust itself has fled, then do not brave men have an obligation to restore it? Yet immediately after Pierre has concluded the first of these ringing speeches, Jaffeir comments: Oh Aquilina! Friend, to lose such beauty, The dearest purchase of thy noble labors; She was thy right by conquest, as by love.

(1.1.165-67) In other words, Jaffeir has already interpreted Pierre's real motivation to be not the altruistic saving of a people but the egoistic lashing out by one spurned in love. And without hesitation, Pierre acknowledges the justness of Jaffeir's suspicion, lamenting Aquilina's inconstancy and deeply resenting the new object of her affections, who happens to be a senator. He then rationalizes his rebellion on the grounds that the Senate's chastizing him for beating Aquilina's dotard Antonio constitutes breaking the "ties" of loyalty forever (1.1.194-204). From this point on, "revenge" becomes the key word in Pierre and Jaffeir's discourse, contaminating the idealism of their cause, as they ban "all tender human follies" from their breasts and talk increasingly of ruin rather than reformation (2.2.120-30). Similarly, the rhetoric of the other conspirators is contaminated. First, Renault in soliloquy reveals his real motivation to be "ambition" (2.3.Iff.). Then, several of the conspirators quarrel with each other, and their leader, Bedamore the Ambassador, upbraids them with pregnant words (2.3.25-32): If such men feel justified in overthrowing a corrupt regime that has, as Renault says echoing Pierre earlier, destroyed trust (2.3.69-70), must they not indeed evince implicit trust with one another? Must they not be above the rest of corrupt mankind, the elect of providence, transcendent as a jewel and therefore possessing the right "To restore justice and dethrone oppression," as Jaffeir expresses it (2.3.126)? Their very quarreling denies them such special

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status; it is a sign (in the aristocratic code) of the anarchy that ensues when men assume the right of revolution. Moreover, Renault's attempt to rape Belvidera, especially as punctuated by the incredulous Pierre's exclamation "He durst not wrong his trust!" (3.2.240), demonstrates that there can be no trust among those who, in effect, murder trust through their disloyalty and rebellion. Furthermore, the rhetoric of revolution masks the iron law of oligarchy. Renault reveals that the bonds of trust of the new order will simply be the bondage imposed on slaves by a new set of masters. He says of trustless Venice: let's destroy it! Let's fill their magazines with arms to awe them, Man out their fleet, and make their trade maintain it; Let loose the murmuring army on their masters, To pay themselves with plunder; lop their nobles To the base roots, whence most of 'em first sprung; Enslave the rout, whom smarting will make humble; Turn out their droning Senate, and possess That seat of empire which our souls were framed for.

(2.3.75-83) The last lines clarify Renault's later injunction: spare neither sex nor age, Name nor condition; if there live a Senator After tomorrow, though the dullest rogue That e'er said nothing, we have lost our ends. If possible, let's kill the very name Of Senator, and bury it in blood.

(3.2.333-38) This is class warfare of a kind, and the intent is to annihilate one ruling class only to replace it with another. Perhaps the worst aspect of the conspirators' motivation is their apparent sadistic lust for blood. As Renault's rhetoric reveals most clearly, their rebellion is an intended rape. Then sheath your swords in every breast you meet. . . . Shed blood enough, spare neither sex nor age . . . . Without the least remorse then let's resolve With fire and sword t'exterminate these tyrants, And when we shall behold those cursed tribunals,

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Stained by the tears and sufferings of the innocent, Burning with flames rather from Heav'n than ours, The raging furious and unpitying soldier Pulling his reeking dagger from the bosoms Of gasping wretches, death in every quarter, With all that sad disorder can produce To make a spectacle of horror: then, Then let's call to mind, my dearest friends, That there's nothing pure upon the earth, That the most valued things have most alloys, And that in change of all those vile enormities, Under whose weight this wretched country labors, The means are only in our hands to crown them. (3.2.321-88) The logic of this last passage is twisted and perverse. Since nothing on earth is pure and since the most precious things are the most alloyed, the contamination of our idealism by the blood of the innocent is a necessary evil that actually sanctifies (crowns?) the enterprise. So kill them all and enjoy it. Hence, words can be used to justify the worst atrocities, and such a "trust," such a rapist brotherhood, is, as Belvidera says, "hellish" indeed (3.2.107). Like Hector's golden warrior, Aquilina, Pierre's inconstant and thoroughly corrupt courtesan, is an emblem of the conspirators' whoring after false, specious ideals, rotten at their core. Even Jaffeir adopts the rhetoric of erotic slaughter (followed by erotic reward). Nay, the throats of the whole Senate Shall bleed, my Belvidera. He amongst us That spares his father, brother, or his friend, Is damned. How rich and beauteous will the face Of ruin look when these wide streets run blood; I and the glorious partners of my fortune Shouting, and striding o'er the prostrate dead, Still to new waste; whilst thou, far off in safety Smiling, shalt see the wonders of our daring, And when night comes, with praise and love receive me. (3.2.140-49) Belvidera attempts to "free" Jaffeir "from the bondage of these slaves" (3.2.110) by countering their rhetoric with that of the traditional code of implicit and explicit bonding words.

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Murder my father! Though his cruel nature Has persecuted me to my undoing, Driven me to basest wants, can I behold him With smiles of vengeance, butchered in his age? The sacred fountain of my life destroyed? And canst thou shed the blood that gave me being? Nay, be a traitor too, and sell thy c o u n t r y . . . ? (3.2.154-60)

She attempts to recall him "To eternal honor" by saving "virgins . . . From horrid violation" (4.1.4-10). Her rhetoric is equally graphic, intended to arouse not sadistic lust but loyalty and compassion by exposing their rebellion as being in effect infanticide and mother-rape (4.1.46-57). At this point, Jaffeir—and the spectator—appear to have a clear standard by which to get their bearings. In retrospect we remember that Jaffeir's first oath of revenge was "by Heaven and Hell" (1.1.297); that Pierre appeared to Jaffeir on the Rialto just when he was expecting to be tempted by the "Devil" (2.2.35); that Jaffeir has paradoxically—and blasphemously—called upon "Kind Heav'n" for curses "To kill with" (2.2.44,58); that he has, as he says, taken "a damning oath / For shedding native blood!" (3.2.270-71). As the conspirators plot their carnage, Jaffeir appropriately asks, "Heav'n! where am I? Beset with cursed fiends, / That wait to damn me; what a devil's Man, / When he forgets his nature" (3.2.302-4). And he poignantly complains, "Can there be a sin / In merciful repentance?" (3.2.271-72). But actually, Belvidera can only motivate Jaffeir to act according to this altruistic code by constant appeal to the self-interested code of revenge. Time and again she must appeal to the threatened ravaging by Renault: "Then where will be revenge, / The dear revenge that's due to such a wrong?" (4.1.67-68). Something very wrenching occurs when he responds by praising Belvidera for "prophetic truth" in her every word (4.1.69-71). The phrase clings to her last prediction, which appears to be the only "truth" that motivates him to defend the old order. And what happens to our estimate of Belvidera when she resorts to such maneuvering? Is she too not contaminated? What also works to undermine Belvidera's argument is the utter bankruptcy of the order she defends. Not only is Priuli contemptible in his inhuman wrath, but he and all the senators and the Doge himself (pace Solomon) violate the most sacred oath—"By all the hopes / Ye have of peace and happiness hereafter" (4.2.64-65)—to preserve the

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lives of the conspirators Jaffeir incriminates. Moreover, how can Belvidera apply the term "reverend blood" to "all" the "nobles"— including Antonio (4.1.46-47)? If the rebels are characterized by sadism, Antonio's perverse masochism becomes symbolic of the senators' total decadence. Meanwhile, Jaffeir, that "inconstant man," as Belvidera calls him (4.1.19), has been unable to steady his mind, to stick to any moral bearings. Instead, he resolves his conflict into a sexist dichotomy. He moans to Belvidera: Rather, remember him, who after all The sacred bonds of oaths and holier friendship, In fond compassion to a woman's tears Forgot his manhood, virtue, truth, and honor, To sacrifice the bosom that relieved him. Why wilt thou damn me? (4.1.14-20)

According to the code of honor of the rebels, which in many respects is analogous to the libertine code we have seen in the comedies, Jaffeir's listening to Belvidera's pleas is unmanly, effeminate. The rebels' attitude toward the feminine really is that of a rapist, founded upon a fundamental misogyny, as is evident in Pierre's berating Jaffeir for conversing with Belvidera after he has surrendered her. Wilt thou never, Never be weaned from caudles and confections? What feminine tale hast thou been listening to, Of unaired shirts, catarrhs and toothache got By thin-soled shoes? Damnation! that a fellow Chosen to be a sharer in the destruction Of a whole people, should sneak thus in corners To ease his fulsome lusts, and fool his mind. (3.2.221-28)

Pierre's "feminine" is the mother in whose breasts the conspirators would sheath their swords. For him, as is obvious in his comments to Aquilina, women belong at home, preferably in a supine position: "How! a woman ask questions out of bed?" (2.1.54). Jaffeir is vulnerable to this rhetoric because he shares its fundamental assumption. He exclaims of his dear jewel, "Can there in Woman be such glorious faith?" (1.1.334). Behind such a question lurks

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an essential doubt. And Jaffeir never overcomes this radical ambivalence. Even as he acts to preserve Venice, he ambiguously brands himself a "villain" (4.2.29). Immediately after he yields to the feminine, as he views it, he accuses himself of "wickedness" and "falsehood" (4.2.102-8). And he treats Pierre like a betrayed Jesus, himself a Judas. Here, not only Jaffeir but language itself begins to lose its bearings. The problem is that Jaffeir cannot have it both ways. Pierre cannot be both Jesus and the devil. So to avoid his ambivalence, Jaffeir reveres his hellish oath, his code of brotherhood with avengers, above his jewel and nearly sacrifices her for his "broken vows," contending that "Heaven must have justice" (4.2.394). By this time, such rhetoric can only be seen as delusive. Unable to kill her, unable to implement his apocalyptic rhetoric calling down the "destruction" of "all the world" (5.2.93-101), but cursing his own blessing on his marriage day as "a rash oath" (5.2.139), he parts from Belvidera forever, absurdly enjoining her to raise their son "in virtue and the paths of honor" (5.2.211). By now, what does honor mean? Jaffeir goes to honor his "oath" (5.2.217). But Otway undercuts this male brotherhood one more time. Absurdly, Pierre maintains to the priest on the scaffold: I tell thee Heaven and I are friends. I ne'er broke peace with't yet by cruel murders, Rapine, or perjury, or vile deceiving, But lived in moral justice towards all men. (5.3.6-9)

At best he is an equivocator, for he certainly intended murders and rapine; he was willing to put an entire nation to the sword out of revenge. Even more absurdly, Pierre maintains that the other conspirators "all died like men . . . Worthy their character" (5.3.53-54). Worthy what character? That of Renault? Equally absurdly, Jaffeir vows to sacrifice all of Venice to Pierre's manes (5.3.63-64), and once again he vacillates and vows his wife and child shall bleed (5.3.85-86). Finally, rather than live to face the empty posturing of their heroic rhetoric, Pierre and Jaffeir desperately seek to write their last act tragic. Jaffeir consummates their relationship with dagger strokes to each breast so that the Officer can say "Heav'n grant I die so well" (5.3.111) and the world can interpret their deaths as heroic. Behind all

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this posturing lurks the suggestion that Renault is right when he says, "Man, / Irregular Man's ne'er constant, never certain" (2.3.11-12). How can he be certain when, again as Renault says, "There's nothing pure upon the earth" (3.2.384)? What about Belvidera and the code she articulates? Whether anyone else lives up to them, are not she and her ideals pure? If so, the play provides no consolation, no divine confirmation, no validating poetical justice. When Jaffeir leaves her the last time, Belvidera resorts to apocalyptic rhetoric, sounding more like him and the conspirators than any angel, more like Job's wife than Job, as she curses all creation (5.2.222-36). And Belvidera sees no recompensing afterlife but seeks only the peace of obliteration. At the end, raving in mad delusion, she digs at the earth to join Jaffeir's ghost. No flights of angels sing her to her rest. Instead, she feels as if Jaffeir and Pierre "drag" her "to the bottom" (5.4.28). Left alone as her spokesman is no Horatio but Priuli, whose repentance and forgiveness have come too late, whose attempt to save Pierre proves a futile gesture, and who closes the play with no salvific rhetoric, no glimpse of hope, but only a desperate, self-loathing death wish. Lead me into some place that's fit for mourning, Where the free air, light, and the cheerful sun May never enter. Hang it round with black; Set up one taper that may last a day, As long as I've to live, and there all leave me; Sparing no tears when you this tale relate, But bid all cruel fathers dread my fate. (5.4.31-37)

What is worse is that someone else survives the debacle and symbolizes the utter loss of logos: Antonio. He is not at all harmless, as he might first appear. Like Dryden's Melantha—and very unlike Dryden's David—he symbolizes the emptying of words of their power to bind. He is noted for his parliamentary speeches, and as the conspirators die ignominiously, as Pierre and Jaffeir wrap themselves in meaningless heroics, and as Belvidera maniacally digs herself into her grave with her father not far behind, Antonio survives and practices a speech composed of nonsense for the preserved Senate. Most Reverend Senators, That there is a plot, surely by this time no man that hath eyes or understanding in his head will presume to doubt, 'tis as plain as the

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light in the cucumber—no—hold there—cucumber does not come in yet—'tis as plain as the light in the sun, or as the man in the moon, even at noonday. It is indeed a pumpkin-plot, which, just as it was mellow, we have gathered, and now we have gathered it, prepared and dressed it, shall we throw it like a pickled cucumber out at the window? No. That it is not only a bloody, horrid, execrable, damnable, and audacious plot, but it is, as I may so say, a saucy plot, and we all know, most reverend Fathers, that what is sauce for a goose is sauce for a gander, therefore, I say, as those bloodthirsty ganders of the conspiracy would have destroyed us geese of the Senate, let us make haste to destroy them. So I humbly move for hanging—

(5.2.10-25) He breaks off as Aquilina enters to terrorize if not kill him for voting to put Pierre to death. She explodes into heroic diction, invoking the standard of faith. Thou hast'helped to spoil my peace, and I'll have vengeance On thy cursed life, for all the bloody Senate, The perjured faithless Senate.

(5.2.58-60) But Antonio converts her ravings into sexual provocations, employing throughout the scene the moribund expletive "faith." As her fury peaks so does his sexual excitation. Dropping down at her feet, he explains his behavior in terms that deflate her rhetoric and drain the last drop of meaning from the code of the word: "Nothing but untie thy shoestring a little, faith and troth" (5.2.85). His sexual death right on the stage as she leaves enervates both codes of faith and revenge and marks the death of a culture. Adieu. Why what a bloody-minded, inveterate, termagant strumpet have I been plagued with! Ohhh, yet more! Nay then I die, I die—I am dead already. [Stretches himself out.]

(5.2.90-92) His prone figure remains on the stage during Jaffeir and Belvidera's parting scene. How does one play the part? Looking up and taking more perverse pleasure in their suffering? Reminding us with a leer of the inefficacy of all their rhetoric? Would a good director not bring Antonio onstage during thefinalscaffold scene to enjoy it? Would he not be the last to leave, an emblem, like Faulkner's Benjy or Jim

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Bond, of the collapse of a culture whose code, without divine underwriting, has been reduced to words, words, words'? Or to put it another way, this feminized, female-dominated masochist is a sign of the loss of the masculine, patriarchal, heroic—and, yes, essentially sadistic and misogynistic—Logos. O tempora! O mores! Ubi sunt? Where have all the real men gone? Et Verbum caro factum est. The Word has been made flesh with a vengeance.

What these three works demonstrate is that the world we have been examining, the world where a gentleperson's word is his or her bond and is underwritten ultimately by the Divine Word or Logos, is always underwritten only by the logos of the poet, that necessary angel of supreme fiction. The word of the poet creates the illusion that words bind, that the Word binds. Behind that illusion lurks Nietzsche's Truth of Silenus. There is no ordering Jupiter, no special providence in the fall of a sparrow, only capricious, even malicious Saturn. Our fictions serve the sociopolitical function of preserving peace and controlling people. They serve the aesthetic function of making it pretty to think so. And they are always in danger of losing the voice of the poetic falconer, of spinning out centrifugally in some mad desire—for revenge, for sex, for power. At least these are the implications of these absurdist satires, which come not at the end of some episteme (Michel Foucault, The Order of Things) but which coexist all along with its constitutive codes, its controlling fictions, its master tropes. They reveal the back side of the mirror, the blank upon which the code of the word is inscribed.7

N O T E S 1. For the best treatment I know of The Knight's Tale as satire, see F. Anne Payne, Chaucer and Menippean Satire, chs. 8 and 9. 2. For the best treatment I know of the arbitrariness both of the choice between Palamon and Arcite and Saturn's decision, see Kathleen Blake, "Order and the Noble Life in Chaucer's Knight's Tale!" 3. Attention to the ironic undercuttings of the Romantic reading of Antony and Cleopatra by Wilson Knight and others has proceeded prominently since the mid-twentieth century. See, e.g., John Russell Brown, ed., Shakespeare, "Antony and Cleopatra": A Casebook, esp. the excerpts from Franklin M. Dickey, L. C. Knights, and H. A. Mason.

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4. The best reading I know of ambiguity and mutability in the play remains Maynard Mack's introduction to the Pelican edition. 5. Recently, Peter Erickson has argued the critic's inability (at least his own inability) finally to reconcile the transcendentalist reading (represented by Robert Ornstein) with the antiheroic reading (represented by Robert B. Heilman). Erickson sees the play as an imperfect achievement of a "heterosexual androgyny" (Patriarchal Structures, 134-47). To me, the OrnsteinHeilman antithtesis can be reconciled by the concept of rhetoric of desire. Rajiva Verma, "Winners and Losers" (848-52), has no such reservations as Erickson (not to mention Heilman) but sees the play as the "least ironic of the tragedies" and as a manifestation of the virtue of "trust." 6. Previous readings closest to mine are Thomas B. Stroup, "Otway's Bitter Pessimism," Derek W. Hughes, "A New Look at Venice Preserv'd," and Michael DePorte, "Otway and the Straits of Venice." Several recent interpretations argue for positive norms in the play. For example, Harry M. Solomon, "The Rhetoric of 'Redressing Grievances'," sees both conspirators and the Senate as objects of anti-Whig satire, while the Duke represents a political (Tory) and the priest at the end an ethical norm. Kerstin P. Warner, Thomas Otway, sees Jaffeir and Pierre's code of honor as unproblematically reaffirmed (120-31). And Katharine M. Rogers, "Masculine and Feminine Values in Restoration Drama," sees the scaffold scene as a reconciliation of Jaffeir's ambivalence toward both masculine and feminine value systems. 7. I have said that this genre is rare in English feudal literature. I can think of a few other examples of absurdist satire, however: in the Middle Ages, The Tournament of Tottenham·, in the Renaissance, Beaumont's Knight of the Burning Pestle·, in the Restoration, Dryden's Amphitryon. Other critics, seeking New Critical ambiguity or poststructuralist selfdeconstruction, would find such absurdity everywhere, or at least in every "great work," which in order to be great, they contend, cannot be naive and affirm an order. Respondeo: If all works laid bare the meaninglessness of social codes, then all literature and all criticism would be tautological; there would be no Officiai Literature against which others could be marginal or subversive. Ironic readings of several works I have treated in chs. 1 - 3 have become commonplace. I find more persuasive the unironic readings, already cited, by Shoaf of Sir Gawain and by Kernan of Volpone. To them I would add the following: John D. Niles, "Beowulf": The Poem and Its Tradition; Gertrude White, "The Franklin's Tale: Chaucer or the Critics"; Anne Thompson Lee, " Ά Woman True and Fair': Chaucer's Portrayal of Dorigen in the Franklin's Tale"; Kathryn Jacobs, "The Marriage Contract of the Franklin's Tale"; and Thomas M. Greene, "Ben Jonson and the Centered Self." Recently, Michael Murphy, "Vows, Boasts and Taunts, and the Role of Women in Some Medieval Literature," offers a nice distinction between bêot and vows, but then reads the heroic tradition as diminishing after Beowulf, especially in Sir Gawain. And Peter L. Rudnytsky, "Sir Gawain and the Green Knight: Oedipal Temptation," offers a nice Freudian reading but concludes that Camelot misses (represses) the point of Sir Gawain's Oedipal shame. In both cases, the critic

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seems to lose the poet's vouloir-dire under the overlay of his preferred pattern. The acceptance of human (even Oedipal) frailty at the end of Sir Gawain seems an essential part of the poem's heroic code. In contrast, the absurdity of the works I have treated in this last chapter is part of their intentionality as well.

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AFTERWORD

There remains one question to be answered. What happened to this master trope? Why stop this study in the 1690s? Especially when the language of trust still defines virtue and vice (the loyalty of "our boys over there" in WWII; Nixon's breaking trust with the American people; Oliver North's overzealous loyalty to everything but the U.S. Constitution)? Following Raymond Williams (Marxism and Literature), I would argue that a culture cannot abolish tradition overnight, particularly one so hoary and deeply imbedded. Moreover, Western culture after the bourgeois revolutions of the seventeenth, eighteenth, and nineteenth centuries remains patriarchal. Bourgeois culture simply appropriated a good deal of the code of the word to continue to enforce political and sexual allegiance. Besides, convincing people your word is as good as your bond makes good business sense. But there are differences. Most of us now pledge allegiance to a country or its sign, a flag, rather than to a person. Patrilineal succession is still an important device to control the transmission of property, but the prevalence of divorce and such concepts as "community property" militate against its dominance. Contracts and covenants continue to be important, but words have become insufficient bonds: we have become a society dominated by lawyers, loopholes, and litigiousness. Whether the key words of the feudal code retain only residual power or whether they have been reenlisted into the service of a different master, what is astonishing is that the theme of word as bond

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virtually disappears from the center of conflict in literature after the 1690s. It remains with residual feudal vigor in the tragedies of Nicholas Rowe (as I have argued at length in Nicholas Rowe and Christian Tragedy, ch. 4, Calista's worst error in The Fair Penitent is that, as sullied goods, she contaminates her pledged vows to her husband), the comedies of George Farquhar (in the subversive Beaux' Stratagem, the con artist Aimwell refuses to violate Dorinda's trust to marry her under false pretenses, though his comrade Archer has no such scruples), and in the brilliant satire by John Gay, The Beggar's Opera (there is no honor among thieves and Don Juans, either in Macheath's underworld or Walpole's upperworld). The theme gets appropriated into the bourgeois drama of William Congreve, Sir Richard Steele, and George Lillo. The Way of the World is a social comedy about trust and distrust, but Congreve has sentimentalized the Restoration rake, siphoned off his evil side into a separate villain, and turned the threat to sexual socialization away from the Don Juan's promiscuity to the coquetry of Millamant. Steele's Conscious Lovers is a tragicomic romance in which the mutual fidelity between Bevil Junior and the perdita, Indiana, and their trust in Providence are eventually rewarded. But the play really exists to showcase the value of the rising bourgeoisie. The rich merchant, Mr. Sealand, literally and morally upstages the aristocratic squire, Sir John Bevil, lecturing him on the worth of men of trade. Sir John turns out to be the mercenary one; Sealand wants only the signs of aristocratic power: marriage with the landed gentry, genealogy, taste. The code of the word is simply part of the baggage of these signs, a bit like proper pronunciation. Lillo's London Merchant is a personal tragedy that warns of the consequences of an employee's breach of trust with his benevolent bourgeois employer. The play also celebrates the worth of merchants. And it portrays the ultimate threat as a Dark Woman, Millwood, who refuses to be socialized into patriarchal society. Again following Raymond Williams, I would term such extensions of the theme residual. It seems to me that the feudal epoch does indeed end with the Glorious Revolution and that the bourgeois epoch begins then with a new, dominant master trope. The new trope can be seen as emergent from several diverse sources,1 but I should like to propose two sources not heretofore thoroughly analyzed in this context: subversive comedy and Milton's Paradise Lost. At the opening of Book 9, Milton must change his notes to "Tragic" and tell of man's fall through the Original Sin, which he metonymically renames as "foul distrust,

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and breach / Disloyal on the part of Man, revolt, / And disobedience" (9:6-8). The sin of Eve is specifically one of distrust in that she disregards Raphael's prediction that, if they are obedient, she and Adam may eventually "turn all to spirit. . . and wing'd ascend" to heaven at will (5:493-503). Instead, Eve listens to Satan, distrusts God's intentions, and tries to take a shortcut. Adam's sin is also one of distrust, for he reasons to himself that what's done cannot be undone and that (flipping the coin of distrust to its obverse, presumption) God won't really destroy his creation and give Satan such a victory (9:926-51). Throughout the poem, Milton decries man's disloyalty to God from the catalogue of the devils in Book 1 to the recitation of Sacred History in Books 11 and 12. And " t r u s t . . . in the living God" (Samson Agonistes, 1140) is absolutely central to all his major poems. As I have argued at length in "Blessed Are the Merciful: The Understanding of the Promise in Paradise Lost," Adam and Eve, through their own mutual forgiveness, come to understand the cryptic Promise of the Redemption and regain their trust in God's mercy. Thus, it would appear that Milton's poem is no different from those we have been studying. But while Milton insists on a code of trust between God and man, he portrays Nimrod as the first monarch, a usurper of authority over others, who not content With fair equality, fraternal state, Will arrogate Dominion undeserv'd Over his brethren. (12:25-28)

In other words, it is as if Milton erases the rank of political patriarch so central to feudal hierarchy. His own political patriarchs are figures of the past, of the Old Testament. Milton's modern men are equal brothers, the ideal state "fraternal," with each individual involved in a private relationship of trust or distrust with his God. And Milton's heroes take the figure of the One Just Man—Abdiel, Enoch, Noah, Abraham, David, Jesus, Samson, Milton himself—who keeps his faith with the Lord and decries the vices of his age. Out of subversive comedy—and some satires like The Widow's Tears and The Relapse—emerges the figure of the resourceful younger brother, who, as Farquhar's Archer announces, is the figure of "intrinsic value," striking his fortune out of himself, succeeding by his wits in a system that discriminates against him (1.1.185-89). This figure moves from the margins of aristocratic to the center of bour-

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geois culture. He becomes the new culture hero, from Robinson Crusoe to Horatio Alger, the self-made man. And along with descendente of Milton's One Just Man, he figures forth a new master trope of the bourgeois epoch, Self-Reliance. If the theme of word as bond remains in residual form as I have suggested, especially in the older aristocratic form of the drama, it is not at all central to the conflicts of the emerging bourgeois form which soon becomes dominant: the novel. Let us briefly glance at novels which fill the generic categories I have been using. The great heroic romance of the eighteenth-century novel is Robinson Crusoe. Ethical fidelity is present but marginalized in the figure of Friday, as it remains through endless figures of sidekicks from Chingachgook to Tonto. Religious fidelity, as especially J. Paul Hunter has argued in The Reluctant Pilgrim, remains an important theme. But the deliverance that Crusoe continues to pray for becomes more and more the product of his own ingenuity. His last major adventure in the book is the fight with the wolves in the Pyrenees, a fight he wins because of his resourcefulness. And he signally forgets to thank God. Crusoe has become secularized into a survivalist. Bourgeois tragicomic novels delight in the trials of men and especially women. But unlike the trials of Chaucer's Dorigen or Griselda or Shakespeare's Hermione, Marina, or Imogen, the trials of the great heroines of the eighteenth-century novel are tests not of their constancy but of their merit, their worthiness to move up the social ladder into the aristocracy. The conclusion of Samuel Richardson's Pamela is as instructive as that of Robinson Crusoe·. Pamela proves her right to be Mr. B's wife because she can throw a successful dinner party. Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice focuses not on Wickham's libertine betrayal of Lydia but on Elizabeth's growing ability to make clear discriminations and to walk a verbal tightrope exhibiting her wit, taste, and grace. Therefore, she, too, merits a place in the gentry. Henry Fielding's Tom Jones is a social comedy, and it is the closest novel to the feudal tradition. Tom's inconstancy to Sophia is a theme throughout, and she thoroughly upbraids him for it at the end. But the emphasis in the novel is on Tom's irrepressible good nature. He is quite unlike Dorimant or other rakes and tricksters of the feudal tradition. If he is a rogue, he is a reluctant one. He is more guilty of imprudence than of perjury. And the ending emphasizes this bastard's meriting the displacement of the legitimate but wicked Blifil and therefore earning the right to marry within the gentry. He merits such social redemption

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because of that good nature, which even Providence is attracted to, manifested particularly in his charity toward others like the Millers and even his recalcitrant brother. Tom Jones is essentially a sentimental Bildungsroman that celebrates the development of a benevolent individual. Subversion also takes a different form in the novel. Defoe's Moll Flanders features a trickster who also survives by her wits. But though she appears to yield at last to the patriarchal superegos from the minister to the judge to God Himself, she subversively keeps her ill-gotten gains (and thus cannot be truly penitent despite all her and Defoe's protestations) and uses them to establish her matriarchal independence in America, retaining her "husband" Jemmy as a consort but never submitting herself to his authority or control. But what Moll subverts is not a system of word as bond; it is a system of economic oppression. Women are marginalized by the dominant bourgeois males, and Defoe's novel portrays their desperate struggle for survival. Richardson's Clarissa is personal tragedy. Lovelace breaks his repeated vows to Clarissa that his intentions are honorable. The emphasis is not on his troth-breaking, however, but on his cruel, ruthless, sadistic torture and eventual rape of the helpless maiden. What shocks her is not what shocks Troilus or Hamlet, not peijury but inhumanity, not only of Lovelace but of his accomplices and her own family. That's why her response must be one of exemplary charity. She relies mainly on herself to settle her accounts, give good counsel to those she leaves behind, and prepare for death. Jonathan Swift's Gulliver's Travels is corrective satire. While on the first voyage Gulliver learns to put not so much of his trust in princes (as the Psalmist might have told him) because they are not true to their words, the emphasis here has shifted toward the vice unleashed by bourgeois individualism, the incredible vanity of solipsism. From the vain contenders for public office in Lilliput to the narcissistic mathematicians and scientists in Laputa and Lagado to the hubristic Gulliver himself in Brobdingnag and Houyhnhnmland, Swift attacks the pride of the modern, new man. As I have argued in "Corruption and Degeneration in Gulliver's Travels," against the perfectabilists and progressivists Swift portrayed Gulliver as discovering only one constant throughout the remote nations of space and time, not inconstancy or disloyalty but man's progressive degeneration. The corrective standard by which we are to judge aberrant behavior is embodied

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in the cool rationality and benevolence of the Houyhnhnms, but theirs is an inhuman and thus unattainable ideal. So Swift also offers us human models, especially the six heroes the magician resurrects in Glubbdubdrib: the two Brutuses, Socrates, Epaminondas, Cato the Younger, and Sir Thomas More. All are defenders of liberty against tyrants. Perhaps the best indication of how different this heroism is from feudal heroism is Marcus Brutus's inclusion, for Dante placed him in the lowest circle of hell in Satan's mouth for the ultimate fraud, betrayal of his friend and his leader. Swift's hero appears to be the One Just Man who stands up to oppose oppression or who at least, like Lord Munodi of Balnibarbi, retires into the rural retreat of his just self. Laurence Sterne's Tristram Shandy is absurdist satire, but what it explodes is not the code of word as bond but the incredible, endless, puffed up verbal systems of solipsistic men, who go on talking indefatigably while the business of the life force proceeds ineluctably. Walter breathlessly speculates while Mrs. Shandy intrepidly gives birth. What is absurd is not the language of trust but all patriarchal linguistic erections. I have had to skip two generic categories, lyric and political tragedy. It is surprising that the novel does not yield a memorable example of the latter in the eighteenth century. The great bourgeois political tragedy of the age remains Joseph Addison's Cato. It appropriates the language of loyalty, though Cato's loyalty is not to an individual but to Rome, to the patria, or as Cato puts it throughout, thus transforming a bogeyword of the Royalists into an honorific term, to the commonwealth. Loyalty to a person tends all too often to lead not to bonds but bondage. The proper form of social organization is fraternal; the proper body to govern, the Senate. And though constancy of lovers is still important, the main constancy the play celebrates is that of mind. Cato remains true to himself and dies the One Just Man. He becomes the prototype for a series of republican patriotic heroes who regret that "we can die but once to serve our country!" (4.4.82). In lyric poetry, as John Sitter has recently argued (Literary Loneliness in Mid-Eighteenth-Century England, chs. 3 & 4), the age moves toward motifs of solitude. Among the tables of contents of three volumes of odes published near mid-century which Sitter reproduces, not one is addressed to constancy or inconstancy or any other of our key words. Thomas Gray, the best of the lyric poets, writes from the perspective of an outsider, an observer, who comments, usually with

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some degree of melancholy, on the scene, either at Eton College or the country church-yard. In one of his best poems, "The Bard," he portrays the poet as outcast and seer, the One Just Man, who decries Edward's conquest not because of breach of trust but because of oppression of liberty and poetry. The great Augustans, Swift, Alexander Pope, and even the very late Dryden, all adopt the new stance of the One Just Poet to criticize their worlds. As I have argued in "The Image of the Circle in Dryden's 'To My Honour'd Kinsman'," Dryden in 1699 wrote a poem of praise to his kinsman not for keeping his word but for keeping the centered circle of his soul whether in retirement or in active life. Dryden praises him for preserving his integrity, even to the point of never marrying, thereby trusting as little as possible—only himself—to the storms of fate. And Dryden identifies with his cousin, as if the two of them alone stand fixed between both prince and parliament. Relentlessly satirizing solipsism, especially in The Battle of the Books and A Tale of a Tub, Swift praises his friends in exile at the end of "On Poetry: A Rhapsody," and he obviously thinks of himself in the role of the exiled One Just Poet, for whom, as he writes in "Verses on the Death of Dr. Swift": Fair LIBERTY was all his Cry; For her he stood prepar'd to die; For her he boldly stood alone. (Writings, 558) Pope also praises just men, especially those in exile, men who had the courage to defy tyranny.2 In his imitation of Horace's first epistle of the second book, Pope praises not Dryden, who flattered a corrupt court, but Roscommon who refused to; Addison who gave us Cato as a model; and Swift who (as the Drapier) saved the rights of a people that the Court attacked. At the end of his imitation of the first epistle of the first book, Pope paints an ideal portrait of a figure in exile, one applicable not only to his friend Bolingbroke but to himself. That Man divine whom Wisdom calls her own, Great without Title, without Fortune bless'd, Rich ev'n when plunder'd, honour'd while oppress'd, Lov'd without youth, and follow'd without power, At home tho' exil'd, free, tho' in the Tower. (Poems, 630)

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But in a less sanguine mood, Pope concludes the first dialogue of the Epilogue to the Satires by refusing to silence his satire against the court and all its corruption. Yet may this Verse (if such a Verse remain) Show there was one who held it in disdain.

(Poems, 694) Drawing "the last Pen for Freedom," he cries out in the second dialogue: Yes, I am proud; I must be proud to see Men not afraid of God, afraid of me.

(Poems, 701-3) Thus, the literature of the eighteenth century seems to be part of a new episteme. One could perhaps argue that this bourgeois episteme itself yields to a modern, post-industrial episteme, the master trope of which is alienation of the self. Trust and Self-Reliance could both be said to be residual tropes today, part of the current politics of nostalgia.

In sum, Dryden's contention that "Britain's Basis on a Word is laid, / As by a Word the World it self was made," with which this study began, proves to be not just a trope within his own work or his own time but a master trope of feudal ideology as constituted in English literature, at least, from the Middle Ages to the Restoration. For the purpose of transmission of power and property through genealogical succession, society's basis is portrayed as laid upon words one can trust because they are underwritten by the verbum dei. The conflict in so much of this literature consists of trothplighting versus trothbreaking. Then after a millenium of remarkable continuity, the conflict dramatically shifts to the individual versus society or nature or corruption or solipsism; to Self versus Other; in short, to a master trope of Self-Reliance, where mutual trust is replaced by trust in one's god, yes, but especially in one's own will and will to power (see Tanner, "The Triumph of the Will," Adultery in the Navel, 100-112). The first light of Romanticism dawns just hours after the curtain descends on Dryden's opera and the lights dim on James II, last of the Stuarts, last of England's feudal kings.

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N O T E S 1. For some of the best recent studies, see Timothy J. Reiss, The Discourse of Modernism and Michael McKeon, The Origins of the English Novel, 1600-17W. Obviously, Thomas S. Kuhn's Structure of Scientific Revolutions is based in part upon a reading of the history of seventeenth-century science, wherein the older paradigm yields to a new paradigm, consolidated and made dominant in Newton's Principia, the publication date for which is 1687, one year before the Glorious Revolution. However scholars may disagree about exact dates for the collapse of epistemes or paradigms—obviously, I am in some disagreement with Foucault, whose concept I have borrowed (The Order of Things); less obviously, I am in disagreement with some individual readings in Reiss's companion volume, Tragedy and Truth—most of us agree that an extraordinary change was emerging during the Renaissance and that a new discourse was dominant by around 1700. What interests me about the change in literature is the way the old paradigm holds until some critical mass forces a new configuration, reflected in literature by the transformation in just a few years of the master trope of word as bond into a mere residual trace and its virtual replacement by a new master trope even in the work of such an archdefender of the old trope as Dryden. 2. Dustin Griffin has recently pursued the trope of the One Just Man from Milton to Pope (Regaining Paradise, 160-62).

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INDEX

Addison, Joseph, 318, 319 Arendt, Hannah, xiii Bakhtin, Mikhail M., 45, 91 Barron, W. R. J., 15, 44 n.3, 210 n.5 Behn, Aphra, 116 n.15,172 Beaumont, Francis, 311 n.7; and Fletcher, 247 η. 13 Beaumont, Joseph, 175 η. 10 Bethel, Slingsby (a sheriff of London), 203 Blake, Kathleen, 310 n.2 Blanch, Robert, 20 Bohrer, Randall, 44 n.l Brooks, Peter, 66 Brown, John Russell, 310 n.3 Brown, Laura S., 80 n.5 Campbell, Oscar J., 260 Carew, Thomas, 175 n.10 Carey, John, 174 n.5 Cary, Patrick, 175 n.10 Caryll, John, 280 n . l l Cavendish, Margaret, 175 n.10 Chapman, George, 280 n . l l Charles II, King of England, 209, 272-73, 275 Chaucer, Geoffrey, xiv, 64, 134, 151-56, 174, 174 n.3, 316; Franklin's Tale, 45-52, 79; Wife of

Bath's Tale, 70, 117-26, 146; Par doner's Tale, 84-90, 114, 251-53; Friar's Tale, 116 n.15; Shipman's Tale, 147 n.7; Miller's Tale, 147 n.7; Troilus and Criseyde, 21322, 224, 245; Merchant's Tale, 28( n.ll; Canon's Yeoman's Tale, 280 n.ll; Knight's Tale, 281-91 Cherbury, Lord Herbert of, 175 Cohen, Derek, 147 n.6 Cole, Carolyn Barry, xvii n.2 Compton, Henry (bishop of London), 206 Congreve, William, 117, 314 Cook, Carol, 280 n.6 Cope, Jackson I., 146 n.3 Dante, xiii, 142 DeFoe, Daniel, 172, 316-17 de Kéroualle, Louise, 209 DePorte, Michael, 311 n.6 Derrida, Jacques, xvi, xvii n.l, 66, 74, 76, 80-81 nn.7-8, 175 n.7, 220-21, 266 Dickey, Franklin M., 310 n.3 Dolben, John (bishop of Rochester), 206 Donne, John, 155, 156-65,168,170, 174, 174 nn.4-6, 220, 267, 280 n.ll, 295

Dryden, John xiv, xv, 45,179, 213, 247 n.ll, 319-20; Albion and Albanius, xi; Conquest of Granada, 32-43; Marriage A-la-Mode, 6680, 92, 96; Secret Love, 116 n.15; Absalom and Achitophel, 199210; All for Love, 235-46, 246-47 n.7, 291, 294, 301; Troilus and Cressida, 247 n.13; The Medall, 272-79; Amphitryon, 311 n.7 Dundes, Alan, 210 n.6 Elliott, Ralph W. V., 115 n.l Erickson, Peter, 80 n.4, 246 n.4, 311 n.5 Esrick, William Lord Howard of, 204 Etherege, Sir George, 104,107,11011, 114,117 Farquhar, George, 314-15 Faulkner, William, 139, 309-10 Felman, Shoshana, 116 n. 14, 143 Felperin, Howard, 80 n.4 Fielding, Henry, 316 Fisch, Harold, 246 n.5 Fisher, Alan S., 247 n.10 Fletcher, John. See Beaumont, Francis; Shakespeare, William Ford, John, 211 n . l l Foucault, Michel, xv, 116 n.15, 310, 321 n.l Frank, Robert Worth, Jr., 279 n.2 Freud, Sigmund, 186, 222; Totem and Taboo, 7,193; Interpretation of Dreams, 66 Freund, Elizabeth, 264 Fries, Maureen, 210 n.l Frye, Northrop, 6

Greene, Gayle, 263, 280 n.7 Greene, Thomas M., 311 n.7 Grierson, H. J. C., 174 n.4 Griffin, Dustin, 175 n.9, 321 n.2 Gross, Kenneth, 24 Halifax, George Savile, marquis of, 206-07 Haynes, Jonathan, 146 n.3 Hayward, John, 174 n.4 Hegel, G. W. F., xiv Heilman, Robert B., 311 n.5 Hogan, Patrick Colm, 211 n.7 Holman, C. Hugh, 46 Howard, Donald R., 44 n.4 Hughes, Derek W., 81 n.9,116 n.14, 247 nn.9-10, 311 n.6 Hunter, J. Paul, 316 Hyde, Lawrence, earl of Rochester, 207 Jacobs, Kathryn, 311 n.7 James, Henry, 293 Jones, Ernest, 222 Jones, Sir William, 204 Jonson, Ben, 142,147 n.7, 211 n.ll; Volpone, 90-104, 114, 270; Bartholomew Fair, 126-35, 146 Joseph, Gerhard, 80 n.2

Gardiner, Anne Barbeau, 280 η. 8 Gardner, Helen, 174 nn.4, 6 Gay, John, 314 Geertz, Clifford, xv, xvii n.l, 287 Giamatti, A. Bartlett, 44 n.5 Girard, René, xvi, xvii n.l, 13, 75, 77, 81 n.10, 105, 182, 186, 210 n.l, 269, 280 n.6, 283-84, 287 Goldberg, Jonathan, 211 n. 9 Golding, M. R., 80 n.l Gottfried, Barbara, 146 n.2 Gray, Thomas, 318

Kahn, Coppèlla, 246 n.4 Kaufman, Anthony, 143 Kean, P. M., 280 n.4 Kermode, Frank, 280 n.10 Kernan, Alvin B., 100, 311 n.7 Knight, S. T., 249 Knight, Wilson, 310 n.3 Knights, L. C., 310 n.3 Kristeva, Julia, 7 Kropf, C. R., 44 n.7 Kuhn, Thomas S., 321 n.l Lacan, Jacques, 175 n.7 Langland, William, Piers Plowman, 250-60, 279 Lee, Alvin, 4 Lee, Anne Thompson, 311 n.7 Lee, Nathaniel, 247 n.13, 280 n . l l Leverenz, David, 246 n.4 Lévi-Strauss, Claude, 7, 8,115 n.12 Lillo, George, 314

Index 336

Louis XIV, 209 Lovelace, Richard, 175 η. 10 Mack, Maynard, 311 n.4 Malory, Sir Thomas, 16, 80; Le Morte Darthur, 179-90, 205, 20910, 247 η. 13 Manley, Frank, 174 n.4 Maresca, Thomas E., 211 n.10 Marlow, Christopher, 211 n.ll Martin, Leslie Howard, 247 n.12 Mason, Η. Α., 310 n.3 McAlindon, T., 280 n.7 McAlpine, Monica F., 115 n.2 McCall, John P., 246 n.3 McKeon, Michael, 80 n.6, 200, 211 n.9, 321 n.l Middleton, Thomas, 147 n.7, 247 n.13 MUgate, W, 174 n.4 Miller, Robert p., 115 n.2 Milton, John, 199-201, 258, 314-16 Monmouth, Duke of, 199, 201, 275 Moorman, Charles, 210 n.2 Morgan, Joseph J., Jr., 174 n.l Muir, Kenneth, 280 n.5 Mulgrave, John Sheffield, third earl of, 199, 206 Murphy, Michael, 311 n.7 Neumann, Erich, 7 Newman, Barbara, 246 n.l Nietzsche, Friedrich, xii, 8-9, 25, 125, 290, 299, 310 Niles, John D., 311 n.7 Novak, Maximillian, 147 n.5 Oates, Titus, 204 Ormonde, James Butler, duke of, 205-06 Ornstein, Robert, 311 n.5 Ossory, Thomas Butler, duke of, 206 Otway, Thomas, 174 n.7, 247 n.13, 281, 300, 307 Patterson, Lee, 146 n.2 Payne, Deborah, 142 Payne, F. Anne, 310 n.l Plummer, John F., 210 n.4 Pochoda, Elizabeth, T., 210 n.3 Pope, Alexander, xv, 155, 319-20

Ramsey, Paul, 211 n.10 Reiss, Timothy J., 321 n.l Reverand, Cedric D., 280 n.9 Rochester, John Wilmot, Earl of, 165-74 Rogers, Katharine M., 311 n.6 Roper, Alan, 272 Rowe, Nicholas, 314 Rudnytsky, Peter L., 311 n.7 Sancroft, William (Archbishop of Canterbury), 206 Sartre, Jean-Paul, 175 n.8 Schneidau, Herbert N., 146 n.l Schwartz, Murray M., 59, 80 n.4 Sedgewick, G. G., 86, 115 n.l Sedgewick, Eve Kosofsky, 146 n.4 Seymour, Edward (treasurer of the Navy), 207 Shaftesbury, Anthony Ashley Cooper, first earl of, 201, 207, 272-75, 277-78 Shakespeare, William, xiv, 117,175 n.10, 211 n.ll, 249, 281, 316; The Winter's Tale, 52-66, 69, 79; Measure for Measure, 96, 270; Cym.beline, 98; Love's Labour's Lost, 116 n. 15; Much Ado About Nothing, 116 n.15; The Taming of the Shrew, 116 n. 15; Two Noble Kinsmen (and Fletcher), 134; Macbeth, 190-98, 209-10, 229; Hamlet, 222-34, 245-46; Antony and, Cleopatra, 237, 239, 244, 246 n.7, 291-300; King Lear, 247 n.13; Othello, 247 n.13; Romeo and Juliet, 247 n.13; Troilus and Cressida, 260-72, 275, 279 Shoaf, R. Α., 14, 50,146 n.2, 279 n.3, 311 n.7 Sidney, Sir Philip, 44 n.7,134 Silko, Leslie, 147 n.5 Sitter, John, 318 Smith, Rebecca, 246 n.4 Solomon, Harry M., 305, 311 n.6 Spearing, A. C., 14 Spenser, Edmund, 64,175 n.10; Faerie Queene, 21-32, 250 Stanley, Thomas, 175 n.10 Steadman, John M., 246 n.2 Steele, Sir Richard, 314 Sterne, Laurence, 318

Index 337

Stroup, Thomas Β., 311 n.6 Sweeney, John Gordon III, 146 n.3 Swift, Jonathan, xv, 139,172, 317-19 Tanner, Tony, 78, 181, 190, 320 Tennenhouse, Leonard, 30, 193 Thompson, James, 146 n.4 Thundyil, Zacharias P., xiii Tracy, Clarence, 247 n.12 Tupper, Frederick, 115 n.l Underwood, Dale, 116 n.14 Vanbrugh, Sir John, 280 n.l 1 Vance, John Α., 241 Vaughan, Henry, 175 n.10 Verma, Rajiva, 211 n.7, 311 n.5 Villiers, George, second duke of Buckingham, 202

Warner, Kerstin P., 311 n.6 Warnke, Frank, 174 n.4 Wasserman, Julian N., 20 Weber, Harold, 146 n.4 Webster, John, 247 n.13 Wess, Robert, 116 n.14 Wetherbee, Winthrop, 222 Wheeler, Richard P., 246 n.5 White, Gertrude, 311 n.7 White, Hayden, xv Wilhams, Aubrey, 239 Williams, David, 4 Williams, Raymond, xvi, xvii n.l, 116 n.15, 313-14 Williamson, Marilyn, 80 n.4 Wintle, Sarah, 175 n.9 Wycherley, William, 116 n. 15,147 n.7; The Country Wife, 135-46 Zimbardo, Rose Α., 108,115 η. 13 Zwicker, Steven Ν., 211 n.9, 280 n.9

Index 338