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Plato and Shakespeare: the Influence of Phaedrus and Symposium on a Midsummer

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Plato and Shakespeare: the Influence of Phaedrus and Symposium on a Midsummer Plato and Shakespeare: The Influence of Phaedrus and Symposium on A Midsummer Night’s Dream by Tahmina Begum Urmi A Thesis Submitted to the Faculty of Dorothy F. Schmidt College of Arts and Letters In Partial Fulfillment of the Requirement for the Degree of Masters of Arts Florida Atlantic University Boca Raton, FL December 2017 Copyright by Tahmina Begum Urmi 2017 ii Acknowledgments This thesis has been a possibility due to the support and guidance of many individuals in my life. I would like to express my most sincere gratitude to these specific individuals, without whom I would not have been able to achieve this major milestone in my life. I wish to express sincerest gratitude to my committee members for all the support they have shown me throughout the process of writing my thesis. I am especially indebted to Dr. Stockard, who has guided me through my thesis writing process every step of the way and shown an unbelievable amount of patience and understanding; Dr. Leeds, who has encouraged me to continue with my academics and has provided support in various other ways; and Dr. McGuirk, who has kindly agreed to be in my committee. I am also grateful to my family members who have supported me all my life, particularly, in this stage of my life. I would like to thank my family, whose love, guidance, and many forms of support, play a crucial role in everything I pursue. I want to say a special thank you to my father Mahabub Elahee for raising me to be an independent woman and showing me I can achieve anything I set my mind to regardless of the boundaries set on genders; my mother Taslima Begum for teaching me patience and resilience; and to my sister Mustari Akhi for always rooting for me and providing mental support. I could not have come this far without them and few others. iv Abstract Author: Tahmina Begum Urmi Title: Plato and Shakespeare: The Influence of Phaedrus and Symposium on A Midsummer Night’s Dream Institution: Florida Atlantic University Thesis Advisor: Dr. Emily Stockard Degree: Master of Arts Year: 2017 Many scholars who study Plato and Shakespeare together focus only on erotic love between lovers or nonsexual love between others. A closer study of A Midsummer Night’s Dream shows that Shakespeare uses Plato’s concepts of the soul in addition to the Forms, the guide, as well as staging the varieties of love that can exist between two individuals and the dangers of loving the physical more than the mind. Shakespeare takes these ideas embedded in Symposium and Phaedrus and not only crafts his play accordingly, but also creates his own versions through his unique interpretations. These alterations appear reflected in the play’s sequence of events, the characters’ actions, and the merging of the faerie and human realms. v Plato and Shakespeare: The Influence of Phaedrus and Symposium on A Midsummer Night’s Dream Introduction ......................................................................................................................... 1 I. Two Realms: Heaven and Earth, Faerie and Mortal ............................................. 10 II. Tug-of-Horse: Desire and Rationality .................................................................. 23 Love Juice as Symbol of Desire and Excess ............................................. 35 Overcoming the Love Juice: The Results .................................................. 45 III. Varieties of Love ................................................................................................... 51 The Stages of Love .................................................................................... 52 The Guides: Egeus and Oberon ................................................................ 55 Familial Love: Egeus ................................................................................ 63 Two Bodies, One Heart: Concept of Soulmates ........................................ 66 Pausanias on Love: Helena’s Dedication to Demetrius ........................... 72 Eryximachus and Nature: Faerie Love and its Effect on Earth ................ 74 IV. Demetrius: The Amalgamation of Platonic Ideas of The Lover ........................... 82 Works Cited ...................................................................................................................... 91 vi Introduction The most popular approach to the analysis of love in Shakespeare’s plays has been primarily through the field of study that analyzes the love between two or more lovers. As Arthur Kirsch suggests in the introduction of Shakespeare and the Experience of Love, the common approach to Shakespeare’s treatment of love tend to focus on emotions in relation to the lovers as the "means of understanding the profound experiences of love... and the sources of their tragic, comic, or tragicomic energy and design" (ix). Those who study love with this approach typically focus on famous romances or tragic plays like Romeo and Juliet or Anthony and Cleopatra, plays which center primarily on the romantic or erotic love between the characters. These studies focus on the love as it exists on the surface (the obvious proclamation and act of love between characters or the series of actions the protagonists take to expresses their love for his or her beloved) or on the suppressed love that characters are motivated by but do not act upon directly. Those who study Shakespeare’s portrayal of love typically focus on the Petrarchan concept of love. For example, according to Maurice Charney in Shakespeare on Love and Lust, Shakespeare seems to have written his plays by following the “conventions of falling in love that derive from Petrarch’s love poems” and that Shakespeare is “both a follower and a satirist of them.” Charney then goes on to list the conventions, which he claims start from “love at first sight” (or in other words, love that is heavily involved with the physical aspect of the lover). This, Charney explains, causes a type of love to be “spontaneous, irresistible, and absolute” (9). Eventually he states, 1 “love begins by looking—though the eyes—and that is always sexual” (13). This is the typical scope through which Shakespeare’s plays are examined. On the other hand, the other popular topic for scholarship on love in Shakespeare’s plays, which does not involve Petrarch, is the one which studies the Platonic relationships in Shakespeare’s works. However, those researchers primarily discuss nonsexual relationships that exist between the characters or focus mostly on the concept of love and beauty as laid out by Plato. There are of course many who believe that Shakespeare most likely could not have been directly influenced by Plato in the first place since he did not have the means or education for it. This is, as Amanda Mabillard explains, because, as many scholars have come to accept, “Shakespeare was removed from school around age thirteen because of his father's financial and social difficulties”; however, she continues on to say, “there is no reason whatsoever to believe that he had not acquired a firm grasp of both English and Latin and that he had continued his studies elsewhere” (“Shakespeare's Education and Childhood”). A. B. Taylor points out in “Plato’s Symposium and Titania’s Speech on the Universal Effect of Her Quarrel with Oberon” that it is highly plausible that Shakespeare had indirect access to Platonic concepts even though he was not taught Plato formally in a school setting. Taylor states that “[a]lthough there is no evidence… suggesting Shakespeare read Plato in Greek, he could read Latin and comparatively easy Latin translations of all the dialogues by Ficino or Serranus… were available. Shakespeare may have first become aware of the Symposium in his school days from compendia” (278). Because of this possibility, many scholars have recognized the influences of Plato’s writing in Shakespeare’s plays. Those researchers who do give recognition to the Platonic influences in Shakespeare focus on 2 Platonic love in Shakespeare’s plays and discusses the Platonic love they have found between friends, lovers, as well as rulers and parents, not just sexual emotions. This theme is particularly pronounced in the comedy A Midsummer Night's Dream. As Taylor suggests for Dream, “the influences of Phaedrus and Ion have been noted, but to date the Symposium has received attention only indirectly” (276). Even Harold F. Brooks, the editor of the Arden edition of the play, does not mention Plato or Plato’s concept of love as one of the sources of influences for this play. Brooks’ claims “that there are any comprehensive sources for Dream is altogether unlikely” because the play seems to have been crafted “in the first place for a private occasion,” although he does go on to list Ovid, Chaucer, and John Lyly as authors from whom Shakespeare draws inspiration (lviii). In fact, Brooks asserts “in respect of the source-materials of Dream, the subject of love fulfilled in marital union acted (one can presume) as the assembling and organizing agent” (lviii). The justification for not including Plato in that list could very well be because, as mentioned earlier, some scholars believe there was little chance Shakespeare was exposed to Plato. That is not to say that there has not been any research done on Platonic love and Shakespeare’s Dream; scholars have studied the parallels between Platonic love and Dream. However, those few studies that have looked at Platonic concepts and this play primarily focus on the Platonic treatment of the realm of imagination; such scholarship particularly focuses
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