From Elizabethan Drama.
Janet Spens. London: Metheun &
Co.
Of the three types of plays
recognized in the Shakespeare First Folio -- Comedies, Histories,
and Tragedies -- the last has been the most discussed and is
clearest in outline.
1. Tragedy must end in some
tremendous catastrophe involving in Elizabethan practice the death
of the principal character.
2. The catastrophe must not be
the result of mere accident, but must be brought about by some
essential trait in the character of the hero acting either directly
or through its effect on other
persons.
3. The hero must nevertheless
have in him something which outweighs his defects and interests us
in him so that we care for his fate more than for anything else in
the play. The problem then is, why should a picture of the
misfortunes of some one in whom we are thus interested afford us
any satisfaction? No final answer has yet been found. Aristotle
said that the spectacle by rousing in us pity and fear purges us of
these emotions, and this remains the best explanation. Just as a
great calamity sweeps from our minds the petty irritations of our
common life, so the flood of esthetic emotion lifts us above
them.
In the drama of Marlowe the
satisfaction appears to depend, not on the excitement of the
catastrophe, but on the assertion of the greatness of man's spirit;
and this seems to have been the theme also of Senecan tragedy. It
will be remembered that the first part of Tamburlaine ends, not in
his death, but in his triumph, and yet we feel that the peculiar
note of tragedy has been struck. We have the true tragic sense of
liberation. Kyd also asserted the independence of the spirit of
man, if he is prepared to face pain and
death.
It is really much more
difficult than is always recognized to be sure what constituted
Shakespeare's view of the tragic satisfaction or even that he
believed in it. It is possibly true that Lear is a better man at
the end of the play than he was at the beginning, and that without
his suffering he would not have learned sympathy with his kind; but
this does not apply either to Hamlet or to Othello, and even in the
case of King Lear it does not explain the aesthetic appeal. That
depends on something more profound.
The student, after getting the
story of the tragedy quite clear, should concentrate first on the
character of the hero. Ask yourself whether his creator considered
him ideally perfect -- in which case the appeal probably lies in
the spectacle of a single human soul defying the universe; or
flawed -- in which case the defect will bring about the
catastrophe. It is true that in the Revenge Play type we have
frequently the villain-hero, but the interest there depends rather
on his courage and independence of man and God than on his
villainy. This is particularly true of pre-Shakespearean plays. It
is remarkable that the post-Shakespearean drama was apt to combine
plots involving unnatural crimes and vicious passions with a
somewhat shallow conventional
morality.
History plays seem in
Shakespeare's hands to represent the compromise of life. They may
end in catastrophe or in triumph, but the catastrophe is apt to be
undignified and the triumph won at a price. Again, we may say that
in the Histories Shakespeare is dealing with the nation as hero.
The hero in this case is immortal and his tale cannot be a true
tragedy; while on the other hand there can never be the true comedy
feeling of an established and final harmony. Apart from
Shakespeare, Histories are almost entirely inspired by patriotism,
often of a rather rabid type.
There is the greatest variety
in the section entitled "Comedy," and critics generally distinguish
sharply between Comedies and Romances in Reconciliation plays. We
are apt to expect a comedy to aim chiefly at making us laugh, but,
although there are extremely funny passages, it is clear that this
is not the main character of any but one or two early plays. The
Romances are four -- "Cymbeline," "Winter's Tale," "The Tempest,"
and the play not contained in the First Folio -- "Pericles."
"Cymbeline" [was] actually printed at the end of the Tragedies for
reasons which can only be conjectured. Romances are always
concerned with two generations, and cover the events of many years.
There is an element of the marvellous in them, and the emphasis on
repentance and forgiveness is very marked. But they are, indeed,
the natural development of the plays of the great period. "As You
Like It" deals also with two generations, with wrongs committed and
then repentance, forgiveness and restitution. In the earlier play
the stress is laid on the actions and emotions of the younger folk,
while in the later plays the older generation is most fully
portrayed.
But before Shakespeare arrived
at this conception of Comedy, he had tried various types. In "The
Comedy of Errors," founded on a translation of a Latin comedy, he
had produced an example of pure farce. The humour in a farce
generally consists of violent action provoked by misunderstanding
of a gross kind. There is an element of farce, therefore, in the
"Taming of the Shrew," though the main appeal of the play is the
stimulus of Petruchio's high spirits. Probably the original
conception of the "Merchant of Venice" was much the same. A
youthful Shakespeare was probably pleased with the outwitting of
the churlish old miser Shylock. It is the theme of youth and
crabbed age. An older Shakespeare must have revised it and seen the
story more through the eyes of Shylock and of Antonio, and the
unity of the play has been
destroyed.
"Love's Labour's Lost" and the
"Midsummer Night's Dream" are probably both Court Comedies, and
have the superficiality of emotion which for whatever reason was
associated with Court Comedy. A graceful and fanciful working up of
the occasion for which the play was produced was the special
character of a Court play, and it has been conjectured that the
"Midsummer Night's Dream" was written for a noble
marriage.
But the Shakespearean theory of
Comedy went much deeper than this, and has no classical exposition,
Meredith's "Essay on Comedy" is quite inapplicable. It may be
suggested that his intent was to present a picture of an harmonious
society in which each person's individuality is fully developed and
yet is in perfect tune with all the others. At the beginning of the
play there is always an element of discord, which is resolved
before the close. As in History the hero of the play is rather
Society as a whole than any person in it, and because of this we
get at the end a sense of "happiness ever after." In the last plays
we have generally an incorrectly reported death, and the discovery
of these mistakes gives a curious sense that "there's nothing
serious in mortality." All existence is seen as one great web of
being, so that, although in tragedy, Hamlet sickens at the
thought:
"Imperious Caesar, dead and
turned to clay,
May stop a wall to keep the
wind away."
in "The Tempest" the same
thought becomes:
"Nothing of him that doth
fade
But doth suffer a
sea-change
Into something rich and
strange."
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