8207191 Greenwood, Kathy Lynn THE TRANSFORMING EYE: THE POETIC FICTIONS OF FALSTAFF AND CLEOPATRA The Ohio State University PH.D. 1981 University Microfilms International300 N. Zeeb Road, Ann Arbor, MI 48106 Copyright 1982 by Greenwood, Kathy Lynn All Rights Reserved PLEASE NOTE: In all cases this material has been filmed in the best possible way from the available copy. Problems encountered with this document have been identified here with a checkV mark. 1. Glossy photographs or pages______ 2. Colored illustrations, paper or print_____ 3. Photographs with dark background_____ 4. Illustrations are poor copy______ 5. Pages with black marks, not original copy_____ 6. Print shows through as there is text on both sides of page_____ 7. Indistinct, broken or small print on several pages______ 8. Print exceeds margin requirements_____ 9. Tightly bound copy with print lost in spine_____ 10. Computer printout pages with indistinct print______ 11. Page(s)___________lacking when material received, and not available from school or author. 12. Page(s)___________seem to be missing in numbering only as text follows. 13. Two pages numbered 320 Text follows. 14. Curling and wrinkled pages______ 15. Other____________________________________________________________________ University Microfilms International THE TRANSFORMING EYE: THE POETIC FICTIONS OF FALSTAFF AND CLEOPATRA DISSERTATION Presented in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree Doctor of Philosophy in the Graduate School of The Ohio State University By Kathy L. Greenwood, B.A., M.A. The Ohio State University 1981 Reading Committee: Approved By Prof* Julian Markels Prof* Rolf Soellner Prof. Robert C. Jones Advise) Department cff English VITA Kathy L. Greenwood March 8, 1949. .... B o m - Marfa, Texas 1973 ......... B.A., New Mexico State University, Las Cruces, New Mexico 1975 M.A., New Mexico State University, Las Cruces, New Mexico 1975-1981. ...... Teaching Associate, Department of English, The Ohio State University 1981 ......... Lecturer, Department of English, The Ohio State University Fields of Study Major Field: Renaissance Literature. Prof. Robert C. Jones Minor Fields: Medieval Literature. Prof. Christian Zacher American Literature to 1900, Prof. Daniel Barnes Critical Theory. Prof. James L. Battersby TABLE OF CONTENTS Page VITA ............................................ ii Chapter 1. INTRODUCTION............................... 1 2. LUNATICS, LOVERS, AND POETS ................ 13 3. "FOR EMPHASIS OF WI T " ...................... 53 4. THE HONEST LIE............................. 160 5. CONCLUSION................................. 315 BIBLIOGRAPHY .................................... 320 CHAPTER 1. INTRODUCTION At first glance, it may seem arbitrary or whimsical to yoke together the two radically different characters with whom this essay is concerned, Falstaff and Cleopatra. The purpose of my thesis, however, is to explore and de­ scribe a very important similarity between them. Both characters imaginatively and creatively transform their respective playworlds in order to resist the levelling influence of those duller minds which rule their political destinies. Other characters in 1 Henry IV and Antony and Cleopatra also transform. That is, for various reasons, they alter or distort reality as it is established for us in the plays. Some, seeking to enhance their political or personal status, alter in order to deceive someone else. Others, like Hotspur and Antony, are blinded or self-de­ ceived and cannot help distorting. Characters transform in order to cast their activities in the best possible light, to detract from the actions of their competitors, to control and give shape to their "stories," or to impose particular patterns or interpretations upon the events which comprise those stories. Several characters try to impose "interpretations" on Cleopatra and Falstaff, assign­ ing them "parts" as the cunning and dissipated seducers of other, more virtuous souls. But in our perspective, the Egyptian and the Knight resist such reductive "placing." They do not resist, however, by actually working in the playworld to counteract the designs of their opponents or to implement their own plots and schemes, as we might expect transformers to do. Rather, they reimagine their worlds and themselves, they see from a different angle, and they make us see with them. When they are transforming in this manner, they engage us in their visions and win us away from the versions of their stories forwarded by the other characters whose transforming impulses are more self- serving or harmful and, hence, disquieting to us. Almost every character in these plays alters "reality" in some fashion, but Falstaff and Cleopatra, unlike any of the others, are poetic transformers, characters who "distort," revitalize, and even remake their worlds solely in the province of the imagination. The self-conscious interest Shakespearean drama often has in itself as drama has been frequently noted. These two plays, however, go beyond a self-re£lexive concern with the power (and possible danger) of the dramatist's art, taking as one of their major subjects, and then affirming, the potency and value of poetic imagination. There are other similarities between Falstaff and Cleopatra. We can little imagine the sensuous Egyptian and Hal's jolly companion swilling sack together in the Boar's Head or chatting in the palace in Alexandria about their common problems with the politicians. Being told that he had an affinity with Cleopatra, Falstaff might protest that the comparison was unsavory, and Cleopatra would doubtlessly banish anyone who dared align her with a "fat-witted" Englishman. Still, were the two to walk the streets together in disguise, noting "the quality of the people" and eavesdropping on their conversations, they would discover just how alike the virtues and defects im­ puted to them really are, especially if they wandered into mode m critical quarters. In fact, audiences before now have thought to link them together for various reasons. "Cleopatra stands in a group with Hamlet and Falstaff," says A. C. Bradley, as a character who is "inexhaustible," and she shares one of Falstaff's weaknesses, vanity.^ According to Philip Traci, "Falstaff and what he repre­ sents are as important for Hal to experience in his growth to Henry V as Cleopatra and what she represents are to Antony's growth to dream proportions," and Walter C. Foreman, Jr., coming even nearer to the concerns of this essay, mentions in a footnote the fertility of Falstaff's* and Cleopatra's imaginations and the varying degrees to 2 which their "creative idleness" triumphs. 4 But whether critics consciously think of them together or not, the adjectives employed to describe one often crop up in descriptions of the other. For example, both are accused by other characters, as well as by the plays' audiences, of being sinners enough to "corrupt a saint," not to mention a Hal or an Antony. Falstaff is saturated with vices and follies, including cowardice, drunkenness, lying, gluttony, sloth, and vanity, while Cleopatra, wily serpent of the Nile and mistress of the "dark" arts of feminine seductiveness, is faithless and cunning, a de­ bauched and lascivious strumpet. So say their detractors. On the other hand, say even those same detractors— realizing quite rightly that not all has yet been accounted for— Cleopatra and Falstaff generate a vitality that in­ fuses their plays, a vitality that inspires Maurice Morgann's spirited defense of Falstaff from charges of cowardice, Harold Goddard's insistence that we are as deceived as Caesar if we think that Cleopatra wavers in her determination to kill herself, and most other critics' tempering of even their most intolerant stances with con­ cessions to the attractiveness of whichever "sinner" they happen to be discussing.3 Cleopatra and Falstaff, most of us agree, are inventive and witty, infinitely variable, energetic, mirthful, entertaining, possessed of a dramatic sense of life, and, in spite of their advanced years, youthful. They both occupy a great deal of the imaginative space of their plays, and they appear especially lively and life-loving when placed in the company of the priggish and disapproving politicians with whom both collide. There are, in short, apparently conflicting, or at least incompatible, signals given off by the sometimes not-quite-queenly Queen and the something-less-than-honorable Knight which cause readers, whether they essentially admire or condemn the characters, to hedge their opinions. Thus, W. H. Auden, seeking for an explanation of "why Falstaff affects us as he does," decides that, overtly, he is "a Lord of Misrule," but "parabolically, he is a comic symbol for the super­ natural order of charity. • . ."4 The issue between the "psychological and anti-psychological interpretations of Falstaff," states Robert Langbaum, who worries that we are made to admire such a scoundrel as he thinks Falstaff to be, is whether as coward, lecher, and glutton he is the butt of the comedy and deservedly outwitted in the end, or whether he is the maker of the comedy, playing the butt for the sake of the humor which he turns upon himself as well as everyone else— whether he is, in other words, victorious in all the wit combats whatever his circumstantial defeat.5 In Cleopatra's case, the hesitation to praise or damn her outright is most acute in discussions of the final scene. Though most agree that it is a stunning scene, many dis­ trust its effect. Its "power and beauty,"