The Monstrous in Shakespeare by Patricia Richardson
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The Monstrous in Shakespeare by Patricia Richardson A Thesis submitted to the University of Birmingham for the Degree of Master of Letters The Shakespeare Institute School of English The University of Birmingham June 2003 University of Birmingham Research Archive e-theses repository This unpublished thesis/dissertation is copyright of the author and/or third parties. The intellectual property rights of the author or third parties in respect of this work are as defined by The Copyright Designs and Patents Act 1988 or as modified by any successor legislation. Any use made of information contained in this thesis/dissertation must be in accordance with that legislation and must be properly acknowledged. Further distribution or reproduction in any format is prohibited without the permission of the copyright holder. Acknowledgements My thanks are due to John Jowett and Russell Jackson of the Shakespeare Institute for their advice, guidance and always-constructive criticism. I am also deeply indebted to Victoria Stec, Pat O'Neill and Hazell Bedell for all their help, support and encouragement. Any remaining errors, omissions and other weaknesses are entirely my own. Abstract This thesis argues that the view of human nature which emerges from Shakespeare's plays is essentially hybrid, protean and metamorphic. Chapter I discusses various early modem theories of the self and subsequent chapters explore the transforming power of love, twins and other doubles, transvestite heroines, the relationship between actor and role and the various forms of the monstrous in The Tempest. The plays considered include early, middle and late works and examples of comedy, tragedy, history and romance. Contents Page Introduction 1 Chapter I The Monstrous Self: Hybrids, Proteans and Metamorphs 5 Chapter E Cupid's Pageant: The Metamorphosed Self 30 Chapter ffl A Natural Perspective: The Double Self 68 Chapter IV Cross-dressing Heroines: the Androgynous Self 111 Chapter V Protean Monsters: Actors and Players 148 Chapter VI Magus, Machiavel and Mooncalf: The Monstrous in The Tempest 191 Conclusion 229 Bibliography Introduction The original inspiration for this thesis was an engraving by the sixteenth- century artist, Bernard Saloman, depicting the metamorphosis of Actaeon. It shows the hero equipped like a hunter with spear and hounds, but with his head already transformed into that of a stag. The image is curiously disturbing, at once horrifying and pathetic, threatening and ridiculous, utterly strange and yet recognisably human. At the time when I first came across this picture, the media were full of stories which, like the figure of Actaeon, seemed to challenge accepted ideas about what constitutes a human person; discoveries in the field of genetics, transgenic organ transplants, the possibility of cloning, the development of artificial intelligence and the exploration of the nature of consciousness all raised the questions: what is the essence of humanity and what distinguishes one human individual from another? In the plays of Shakespeare I found a number of characters who also seemed to explore the limits of human individuality; identical twins, androgynous heroines, a fat knight with antlers, a weaver with an ass' head and, above all, the strange anomalous figure of Caliban all called into question the nature of human personality and the idea of a fixed, consistent "self. In this thesis, the term, "monstrous", is used to describe such transgressive, ambivalent figures. Paradoxically, however, I argue that in this context the 2 monstrous is not unnatural but an essential feature of human nature, and it is my contention that this perception is Shakespeare's contribution to the redefinition of the self which was taking place during the early modern period. Where I draw parallels between Shakespeare's plays and other classical or contemporary works, I do not claim that in every case he necessarily had first hand knowledge of the putative source text. I merely assume an acquaintance with certain seminal ideas which were current at the time. However, I think it is reasonable to accept Stanley Wells' conclusion that "having acquired a good grounding in the classics at school, Shakespeare also managed at some point to develop at least a reading knowledge of French and Italian, and throughout his life must have kept up his reading of English and continental literature". 1 The thesis is divided into six chapters. Chapter I considers the various theories of human nature current in Shakespeare's lifetime and each subsequent chapter addresses one of the forms of the monstrous explored in the plays: the transforming effects of erotic love, individuality and duality, confusions of gender, the relationship between actor and role and the various forms of monstrosity to be found in The Tempest. The works considered include examples of comedy, tragedy, history and romance and cover all the stages of Shakespeare's dramatic career. Every chapter begins with a detailed examination of a particular moment in one play and then proceeds to a consideration of other relevant texts, which open out and extend the argument. Before each chapter I have inserted an extract from a twentieth or twenty-first century work which touches on the subject to be discussed. These Stanley Wells, Shakespeare: A Dramatic Life, (London : Sinclair-Stevenson, 1994), p!4. 3 interpolations do not contribute directly to my main argument; rather they are intended to establish a dialogue between Shakespeare's world and our own as each addresses itself to such problematic issues as the nature of consciousness, the meaning of identity and the limits of the human. The nature of my topic inevitably entails an eclectic approach and I have made use of a wide variety of sources. However, a number of works have been particularly useful in helping me to frame my argument. I found Jonathan Bate's Shakespeare and Ovid both illuminating and inspiring, and I have adopted his technique of finding mythological parallels to Shakespearean characters and situations, though my terms of reference extend beyond the Metamorphoses. Pagan Mysteries in the Renaissance by Edgar Wind, Studies in Iconology by Erwin Panofsky and A. Bartlett Giamatti's essay, Proteus Unbound: Some Versions of the Sea God in the Renaissance were invaluable sources of evidence for Renaissance uses of mythology in literature and iconography. Renaissance Self Fashioning: From More to Shakespeare by Stephen Greenblatt shed light on the emergence of early modern theories of the self and Jonas Barish's The Antitheatrical Prejudice outlined the philosophical background to these theories. On the vexed question of the probable extent of Shakespeare's learning I am indebted to the work of John Erskin Hankins who, in Background of Shakespeare's Thought, has painstakingly traced to their origins the allusions to contemporary science and philosophy in Shakespeare's plays. Though the conclusions derived from such investigations are necessarily speculative, and some of Hankins' parallels seem rather strained, his study sets the plays in their intellectual and cultural 4 cultural context and he is scrupulous in pointing out that he is concerned with backgrounds, not sources, that is with works which Shakespeare may have known in part or indirectly, an example which I have been at pains to follow. Finally, Leslie A. Fiedler's The Stranger in Shakespeare is also concerned with Shakespeare's exploration of "the limits of the human" and I have found some of his ideas challenging and stimulating, though his examples of such marginal figures - the woman, the Moor, the "native" and the Jew - are different from mine and, in relating the plays to the Sonnets in search of Shakespeare's "personal mythology", Fiedler's approach and his conclusions differ widely from my own. All Shakespearean quotations, unless otherwise identified, are from the Oxford Shakespeare edited by Stanley Wells, Gary Taylor, John Jowett and William Montgomery. Biblical quotations are from the King James Bible. A good deal of the recent scientific work on consciousness has stressed its essentially narrative character. Antonio Damasio, for instance, in his book The Feeling of What Happens: Body, Emotion, and the Making of Consciousness, lays great emphasis on this [: ]. Human consciousness, as Damasio makes clear, is self-consciousness. We not only have experiences, we are conscious of ourselves having them, and of being affected by them. He draws attention to the paradox noted by William James, that "the self in our stream of consciousness changes continuously as it moves forward in time, even as we retain a sense that the self remains the same while our existence continues". Damasio calls the self that is constantly modified the "core" self, and the self that seems to have a kind of continuous existence the "autobiographical" self, suggesting that it is like a literary production. "Whether we like the notion or not," he says, "something like the sense of self does exist in the human mind as we go about knowing things[; ] the human mind is constantly being split [ ] between the part that stands for the known and the part that stands for the knower". David Lodge: Consciousness and the Novel Chapter I The Monstrous Self: Hybrids, Proteans and Metamorphs In Act I Scene ii of Hamlet, the Prince's fellow students, prompted by Claudius and Gertrude, try to ambush him into revealing the reason for what the King calls his 'transformation'. [Hamlet 2.25] Unable to betray the immediate cause, not merely 'his father's death and [the Queen's] o'er hasty marriage' [Hamlet 2.2.57] but also the encounter with the ghost, the revelation of Claudius' crime and the terrible burden of avenging it, Hamlet relates his malaise to a more general existential unease, arising from a sense of the contradictions inherent in human nature: I have of late - but whereof I know not - lost all my mirth, forgone all custom of exercise; and indeed it goes so heavily with my disposition that this goodly frame, the earth, seems to me a sterile promontory.