SHAKESPEARE the ELIZABETHAN by Virgil K. Whitaker

SHAKESPEARE THE ELIZABETHAN by Virgil K. Whitaker Of William Shakespeare, his contemporary Ben Jonson wrote that he was "not of an age, but for all time." Some three hundred fifty years later few will dispute this dictum. But Shakespeare scholars often act as though they also believed what Jonson came close to saying but surely did not mean (for he also called Shakespeare "Soul of the agey')-namely, that Shakespeare was not of his own age. At least, they often interpret and criticize his plays, and especially his tragedies, in isolation from the drama of his age. In excellence of design his best tragedies do indeed conform to the desires and the dicta of writers from Aristotle to our own times who have philosophized about tragedy as a dramaticgenre; the tragedies of his dramatic maturity are, indeed, a prime source of modern theory. But too often we attempt to square all the later tragedies with our ideas of great tragedy, and we therefore look for what may not be in them. This paper will argue, to the contrary, that Shakespeare was often of his own time, even in his greatest plays. It will therefore be an essay in literary iconoclasm, and it will propose three theses about Elizabethan tragedy in general and about Shakespearean tragedy in particular. If these theses be granted, it will follow that major critical concerns about Shakespeare result from our expecting of him what we have no right to demand of an Elizabethan playwright-which Shakespeare indubitably was. We should read the plays as they are and not worry about critical problems of our own-or Aristotle's -contriving. For we have no right, first of all, to expect an Elizabethan, or even a Shakespearean, tragedy to have a clearly articulated plot structure; it may only tell a well-known story. Second, even if a tragedy has a unified plot, we dare not assume that such unity results from concentration upon a single tragic hero. Third, granted a single tragic hero, we still have no right to demand in this hero a definite tragic flaw or error. Each of these propositions will first be established for Elizabethan tragedy as a whole and then applied, respectively, to Antony and Cleoparra, Julius Caesar, and Hamlet.' Examining the writers upon drama known to Shakespeare's contempo- raries, from Horace and Donatus to Sir Philip Sidney, would lead us to expect that Elizabethan tragedy would have the following characteristics: Et should be based upon history and be concerned with great personages, it should 142 RICE UNIVERSITY STUDIES narrate a sequence of events ending in death, and it should provide moral exempla orat least try to draw moral lessons from the events narrated. Only Sidney mentions the unities, and it is significant that he, like the Italians, is concerned primarily with unity of time and place and has no real understand- ing of unity of action, the only one that is fundamental and is really stressed by Aristotle. As to dramatic structure, Thomas Heywood, in his ApologyJor Actors (ca. 1608, published 1612), paraphrases the standard four parts of a play derived from Donatus, who was actually writing of comedy: ". the Prologue, that is, the preface; the Protasis, that is, the proposition, which includes the first Act, and presents the Actors; the Epitasis, which is the businesse and body of the Comedy; the last, the Carastrophe, and conclu- si~n."~As to dramatic action and the tragic hero we encounter only silence. An examination of extant Elizabethan tragedies written for the popular stage shows, furthermore, that the practice of playwrights squared with the consensus of critics known to them. All this I have argued at length else- where.' What follows will concentrate upon dramatic structure. Almost all of the popular tragedies written during Shakespeare's produc- tive career were based upon history or what was regarded as such. Sometimes, as in Kyd's Solyman and Perseda or The Death of Robert Duke of' Hunring- ton, a historical character is the center of romance material; sometimes, as in Romeo and Juliet or Orhello, the ultimate source is an Italian tale that may have been regarded as historical in basis. But the plays mentioned are excep- tional. The norm isconsiderable fidelity to historical material. As a consequence of their historical source material, these plays frequently present not a tragic action but simply a tragic story; and a framework of episodes having some relationship of cause and effect that leads to the death of important characters may support various episodes or even subordinate narratives, sometimes with very little relationship to the main theme. Often the framework itself is simply a unit of history or an attempt to tie up all threads in a romantic story. All this should surprise no one who has watched the evolution of the motion picture, which has been very much like Elizabe- than drama not only in its prolific development and its tendency to imitate popular successes but also in its use of all kinds of literary materials as source narratives. Since two of the Shakespearean tragedies to be considered are based upon Plutarch's Roman lives, it will be instructive to see how Shakespeare's con- temporaries handled Roman history as material for tragedies. Among his predecessors, Thomas Lodge, in his The Wounds qqf'Civil1 War (performed ca. 1588, published 1594), presented "the true Tragedies of Marius and Scilla," but the civil war itself provided such structure as the play possesses. Late in Shakespeare's career, Thomas Heywood's The Rape qf Lucrece (ca. 1607) narrates the careers of the Tarquins until Brutus kills the son. We also get Horatius at the bridge and "severall Songs in their apt places, by Valerius, the merrie Lord amongst the Roman Peeres." Ben Jonson follows the same SHAKESPEARE THE ELIZABETHAN 143 pattern. Catiline his Conspirac:1, (161 1) narrates the full course of the con- spiracy, with due attention to Cicero, and fails as drama partly because of Jonson's pedantic devotion to his sources and partly because he makes no real attempt to construct a tragic action centering in Catiline. George Chap- man's The Warres of Pon~peyand Caesar (ca. 1613, published I63 l), subse- quently entitled Caesar and Pompe-y: A Roman Traged-v, declaring their Warres (published 1631), covers events from the initial rivalry between Pompey and Caesar to the murder of Pompey (at Lesbos) and the suicide of Cato. The reader may object that centering upon Roman plays has led to a con- sideration of second-rate drama. But Chapman and Jonson are certainly not second-rate as dramatists, and the same failure of dramatic structure due to preoccupation with full narration of source material can be illustrated from very powerful plays, for example John Webster's The White Diwl, Or The Traged-y of' Paolo Giordano Ursini, Duke of Brachiano, With the Lift and Death of Vittoria Corombona the .farnous Venetian Curtizan (published 1612), which also incIudes the death of Vittoria's brothers and the final arrest and punishment of Count Lodovico. In its combination of poetic power and dramatic confusion, The White Divel is, in fact, somewhat like Shakespeare's Antony and Clec>patra(ca. 1607, published 1623), to which it can form an introduction. There can be no question that Antony and Cleopatra tells a famous love story from history; there is very real question whether it possesses clarity of tragic action, critical encomia to the contrary notwithstanding. The best clue to Shakespeare's interest is Octavius Caesar's closing sum- mary speech, which merits comparison with similar speeches at the end of his earlier tragedies. Brutus was "the noblest Roman of them all," Othello "loved not wisely but too well," Malcolm pronounced judgment on "the dead butcher and his fiend-like queen" and promised to restore order and divine grace to Scotland. But Octavius Caesar stresses simply the fame of Antony and Cleopatra as lovers and their pitiful story. There is not a word of interpretation or of moral judgment. There is some clumsiness in making Ocravius express an estimate of his glory that would be less immodest coming directly from Shakespeare, but presumably it is intended to characterize the pitiful story, not Octavius. There is, however, no mistaking the thrust of the important lines: She shall be buried by her Antony. No grave upon theearth shall clrp In it Apair so famous: hlghevenfsas these Strike those that make them: and their story is No less inplty than hisglory wh~ch Brought them to belamented. Our army shall In solemn show attend thlsfuneral, And then to Rome. Come, Dolabella, see Hlgh order in thisgreat solemnity. (V.11.356-364) 144 RICE UNIVERSITY STUDIES Shakespeare gives us no clue to any interpretation or purpose that has gov- erned his tellingof the famous story. He neither repeats the adverse judgments of Enobarbus nor implies that for such love the world was well lost. The story itself is what matters. But the story itself, as Shakespeare tells it, is loaded with irrelevant detail if it is the tragedy of Antony and Cleopatra rather than a dramatization of Plutarch's narrative; it is also confused in the telling. Within the play the most obvious indication of Shakespeare's interest in the story for its own sake is a tendency to pursue side issues. The scene in Pompey's galley (1I.vii) perhaps helps to characterize the triumvirs and the world in which they operate, and a director can prepare for what is to come by showing Octavius coolly standing apart from the others. Menas's pro- posal that he cut the cable and carry off the guests, since it is rejected, has nothing to do with the conflict between Antony and Octavius.

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