The Battle of Good and Evil in Shakespeare
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Rollins College Rollins Scholarship Online Master of Liberal Studies Theses Summer 2015 The aB ttle of Good and Evil in Shakespeare Erin K. Miller [email protected] Follow this and additional works at: http://scholarship.rollins.edu/mls Part of the English Language and Literature Commons Recommended Citation Miller, Erin K., "The aB ttle of Good nda Evil in Shakespeare" (2015). Master of Liberal Studies Theses. 70. http://scholarship.rollins.edu/mls/70 This Open Access is brought to you for free and open access by Rollins Scholarship Online. It has been accepted for inclusion in Master of Liberal Studies Theses by an authorized administrator of Rollins Scholarship Online. For more information, please contact [email protected]. The Battle of Good and Evil in Shakespeare A Project Submitted in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Master of Liberal Studies by Erin Miller July 2015 Mentor: Dr. Patricia Lancaster Reader: Dr. Jennifer Cavenaugh Rollins College Hamilton Holt School Master of Liberal Studies Program Winter Park, Florida 2 Introduction Drama through the ages—from the Greeks’ Oedipus Rex to the morality plays of the Middle Ages —centers on an exploration of the human condition. In antiquity, religious celebrations to honor the gods and appeal for their favor gradually give birth to Greek theater, and these early plays, most of which are tragedies, focus on man’s suffering. What starts as the impact of fate on the life of man becomes, by the Middle Ages, a religious spectacle centered on evil’s impact on man. The Church of the Middle Ages frames the battle as a conflict of vice and virtue through stories in the life of Christ. Centuries later playwright William Shakespeare utilizes this classic structure, but goes much further to develop the concept of evil. The villains in Shakespeare’s plays are not simply the forces against which the protagonist struggles. What makes Shakespeare’s work so attractive and pertinent beyond his time period is the fact that he delves into the deep truths of humanity that echo through every generation, and such is the case with his exploration of villainy. Through the villains in his plays, Shakespeare explores the causes and costs of evil. Over the course of his career, Shakespeare evolves his portrayal of villainy and the evil that accompanies it. He builds on influences, both dramaturgical and literary, to draft his most intriguing characters. However, his depiction of evil is not stagnant; his characters become increasingly aware of the grip evil can hold on them and of the consequences of one’s battle against it. The conflict between vice and virtue progressively becomes internal, and the heroes are effectively more torn by the tension. 3 As the characters grow more conscious of this conflict, the horror and pain they express is shared to a deeper degree by the audience. What is relegated to villainous action at the beginning of Shakespeare’s career becomes a palpable internal battle toward the end. The power of this dramatic change in Shakespeare’s career is that the cost of evil is not just passively observed but profoundly felt by character and audience alike. 4 Critical Theories of Villainy As the first theorist of drama, Aristotle determined that catharsis , or purgation, is an essential element of theater. He explained that audience members must experience the emotions of pity and fear as they view the human suffering at the center of a tragedy. Centuries later, liturgical plays aim to teach stories of Christ or Christian saints, again with a focus on the audience walking away with a message, in this case religious. Similarly morality plays personify vices and virtues like Envy or Pride, hoping to communicate a lesson about such temptations on the human soul. In 1958, literary critic Bernard Spivack connected Shakespeare’s portrayal of evil in several of his villains with conventions in the morality plays of the Middle Ages. In Shakespeare and the Allegory of Evil , Spivack argues that four of the playwright’s villains represent a clear development from the Vice figure in morality plays of the Middle Ages. He critiques previous standards of Shakespearean analysis on the basis that they failed to consider the profound transition the Elizabethan stage was undergoing during the playwright’s time (Spivack vii-viii). Resources from Shakespeare’s time show that morality plays were performed in the Globe, alongside Shakespeare’s comedies and tragedies, so the playwright’s awareness of the plot, characters, and structure of such dramatic performances is without question (Spivack 60). With the purpose of moral instruction, morality plays depicted the battle between good and evil, or vice and virtue, for control of man’s soul (Spivack 63). This battle originated from the basic Christian belief of a conflict between God in Heaven and the Devil in the world (Spivack 73). Spivack argues that, while plot and characterization transformed significantly as Elizabethan drama gradually altered from 5 metaphorical to literal (254), the alteration of the Vice figure was a much slower process and that shadows of the figure can still be seen in several of Shakespeare’s villains. According to Spivack, the Vice figure was one of both farce and high moral seriousness (202). The figure deviously worked to dissolve the main character’s attachment to virtue and instead entrap him in the evil associated with the Vice figure (Spivack 170). Spivack adds that the stereotypical scene of a morality play occurs when the Vice figure successfully deludes his victim because this moment personifies the Christian view of evil, which is the corruption of man’s soul away from God (170). In Art and Artifice in Shakespeare , Elmer Edgar Stoll states that the battle between good and evil, represented by God and the Devil, is an absolute one. Thus, atheism is “not skepticism but enmity with God [and] a man had to take sides” (340). The Vice figure then is the allegorical representation of the Devil at work in the world as he vies for a man’s soul. Likewise, man has to decide to align himself with either vice or virtue, and the eternal state of his soul rests in this decision. Spivack contends that over time the Vice figure “refurbished himself with the name, the clothing, and the motives of a ‘formal man’” and, “reluctantly draping his allegorical nakedness, [the Vice figure] persisted in his allegorical function” (59). Echoes of this figure appear in villains like Titus Andronicus’ s Aaron, Richard in Richard III , Iago in Othello , and Don John in the comedy Much Ado About Nothing . Spivack traces the Vice figure to these villains because of the characters’ ability to use deceit on dupable victims for the villains’ own mirth: 6 But all his separate performances, under whatever name, in play after play are merely variations on a single theme—his dexterity in effecting, through artful dissimulation and intrigue, the spiritual and physical ruin of frail humanity; and all his particular names are enveloped within his generic title of The Vice . (Spivack 57) The analyst identifies key elements in the four villains Aaron, Richard III, Iago, and Don John that he argues trace directly back to the Vice figure. Unlike Shakespeare’s other villains, these four get enjoyment out of the criminal act itself; they do not experience a loss of humanity as a cost of villainy; their soliloquies have an art of showmanship to them as opposed to any degree of moral tension; and all four label themselves as a type, with some even proudly declaring themselves to be a villain (Spivack 39-43). At the heart of Spivack’s argument is his contention that Shakespeare views evil as far more than an act of violence or deception. Instead, he argues for a continued connection to liturgical drama in that the playwright’s portrayal of evil can be reduced to that which disturbs order: “[Evil] severs the 'holy cords' of love and loyalty, cancels and tears to pieces the great bond that holds the universe in order” (Spivack 50). Because the Vice figure has its antecedent in the Devil and his battle with God for man’s soul, evil then becomes that which acts against God and the Christian view of world order which God represents. In tracing the Vice figure through Shakespeare’s villains, Spivack identifies villains who appear to threaten order and unity simply for the sake of doing so. As a result, he argues that evil in these plays is not committed, but suffered: For the agents of evil are not moral; only their victims are. Evil is a word that describes the human and moral view of what they do. But since at bottom they are neither human nor moral, evil is for them solely an organic function and an artistic pleasure … A total euphoria leaves in them no room for the slightest shred of conscience. (Spivack 45-46) 7 Furthermore, he adds that, as the embodiment of vice and evil, the villain then comes to hate virtue and the one who represents it (Spivack 444). Perhaps no line of Shakespeare’s illustrates this theory as well as Iago’s repetition of “I hate the Moor” ( Othello 1.3.355). Because Iago represents the Vice figure to such a degree, Spivack coins the phrase “Iago’s Family of Villains” to refer to the four villains in which he sees echoes of the evolved Vice figure. Spivack’s analysis of these villains in many ways builds on Samuel Taylor Coleridge’s initial examination of Shakespeare’s villains and the playwright’s general approach to characterization. Coleridge has a very Platonic view of Shakespeare’s characterization in that he views characters, including Othello and Macbeth, as “ideal realities” and “not the things themselves, so much as abstracts of the things” (Coleridge II, 162).