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A Moral Idea of Language in Shakespeare's the Tempest

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A Moral Idea of Language in Shakespeare's the Tempest A MORAL IDEA OF LANGUAGE IN SHAKESPEARE'S THE TEMPEST by LOTTE TROUPP A thesis submitted to the Faculty of Arts of the University of Birmingham for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy School of English Faculty of Arts University of Birmingham Birmingham B15 2TT England May 1992 University of Birmingham Research Archive e-theses repository This unpublished thesis/dissertation is copyright of the author and/or third parties.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. SYNOPSIS Against the background of the creationist world picture and biblical beliefs about language - shared by Shakespeare and his audience this thesis elicits the idea of language which Shakespeare deliberately presents in The Tempest. The theme of language is attached to Shakespeare's search for a definition of man in this 'mankind* play. A triple language experiment is plotted, given that the concept of language in the Renaissance includes non-verbal communication and that language was believed to mirror the speaker's mind. The first experiment isolates the unique human ingredient, defined by its absence at the demarcation lines of the human: both the spirit Ariel and the demi-devil Caliban lack an identification with the feelings of others. Thus they lack 'the very virtue of compassion' which leads to caritas. Charity is the repair of Babel's confusion of tongues through pride, and is the content of the disciples' pentecostal language, the true communicative language of individuals and societies. A second experiment contrasts morally the speech of two children grown up together in isolation in the controlled island environment, enabling a distinction to be made between good and bad natures and the speech that reveals them. This leads into a linguistic virtue and vice characterization of all the dramatis personae. Thirdly the play is metadramatic, defining itself as an agent of the 'virtue-causing delightfulness' claimed for literature by Sidney. Prospero's magic engages with contemporary linguistic methods of achieving knowledge of nature, predicated on God's creative Word and Adam's Eden language. His rejection of magic is paradoxically the wiser political action, through mercy and prayer. The Tempest calls on many now nearly obsolete moral traditions familiar to Shakespeare's audience: Christian repentance doctrine, the morality drama code, traditions of the cardinal virtues, vices, sins of the tongue, the providential interpretation of nature and history, the meaning of the elements, the divine right, the millenium, the moral precepts of the rhetoricians, and a host of other literary, dramatic and interpretative modes. NOTE Unless otherwise stated, I have used the following editions throughout this thesis: For all quotations from Shakespeare's The Tempest, I have used The Tempest, edited by Stephen Orgel, The Oxford Shakespeare (Oxford, 1987). For quotations from other Shakespeare plays and poems I have used The Complete Works of William Shakespeare, edited by Peter Alexander (London and Chicago, 1951, reprinted 1990). For Bible citations I have used the Bishops' Bible of 1588. In quotations, with some deliberate exceptions, I have modernized the u/v, i/j and s/f spellings, as well as underlining where this was arbitrary. CONTENTS INTRODUCTION......................................................i-xxvii CHAPTER 1 AUDIENCE RECOGNITION OF THE LANGUAGE OF VIRTUE AND VICE CHAPTER 1A: SOME MORAL TRADITIONS ACTIVE IN THE TEMPEST............... 1 i. Fallen Language ii. Aspects of the Morality Drama Code iii. The Language of Vice in Act II, Scenes 1 and 2 iv. The Rhetoric of Persuasion to Vice v. The Vocabulary of Virtue CHAPTER IB: EMBLEMATIC SHIPWRECK, ALLEGORICAL DROWNING............... 76 i. Emblematic Shipwreck ii. Allegorical Drowning CHAPTER 2 THE TRUTH OF FICTION CHAPTER 2A: SHAKESPEARE'S APOLOGY FOR THE DRAMA..................... 107 i. Sidney and Gnosis ii. The Moral Context of Sidney's Apology for Poetry iii. The Tempest as Metadrama: Shakespeare's 'Apology for the Drama 1 iv. Ideals and Dreams CHAPTER 2B: THE EPILOGUE............................................ 157 CHAPTER 3 EDEN THEMES............................................. 173 i. Christian Concepts of Rule ii. Building the Ideal State iii. Time and Labour iv. Sacred Empire and the 'Score of Kingdoms' v. Images of Sacred Joy vi. Jonson's Masque of Queens and The Tempest: Some Common Ground CHAPTER 4 LANGUAGE AND NATURE..................................... 221 i. Nature and Providence ii. Element Theory: The Play and the Masque iii. Caliban's Language iv. Prospero's Books v. Prayer 'Pierces' and 'Assaults' CHAPTER 5 LANGUAGE TRUE AND FALSE CHAPTER 5A: 'A VERY LANDFISH, LANGUAGELESS, A MONSTER'.............. 277 i. Caliban as Monster ii. Caliban and Stage Apes CHAPTER 5B: THE RHETORIC OF TEARS................................... 291 i. Contrastive Moral Language: Curses and Tears ii. The Poetics of Tears iii. Ut Pictura Poesis CHAPTER 5C: 'HEAR MY SOUL SPEAK 1 .................................... 321 i. Language in Contemporary Contexts of Love ii. The Eloquence of Beauty iii. 'Hear My Soul Speak' iv. Pastoral Contrasts: Court Gallant and Nature's Child BIBLIOGRAPHY......................................................... 348 ILLUSTRATIONS All pictures are photocopies, from modern editions reproducing emblems from sixteenth- and seventeenth-century books. In most cases the long explanatory epigrammes which complete each emblem page in the originals have been omitted here. Figure 1 facing page 85 The gallante Shipp...is swallowed in the wave' Emblem from Geffrey Whitney, A Choice of Emblems and Other Devises (London, 1586), The English Experience, 161, facsimile reprint (Amsterdam and New York, 1969), p. 11. Figure 2 facing page 85 'The shippe...obtaines the wished coaste' Emblem from Geffrey Whitney, p. 137, see full reference above. Figure 3 facing page 90 'Where ever he go agaynst hym is the wynde 1 Emblem from Alexander Barclay, translator, The Ship of Fools (1509), edited by T.H. Jamieson, 2 vols (Edinburgh, 1874, reprinted New York, 1966), II, 249. Figure 4 facing page 97 The alchemical process in its circular course...' Emblem XXXVI from H.M.E. De Jong, Michael Maier's 'Atalanta Fugiens'; Sources of an Alchemical Book of Emblems, Janus Supplements, 8 (Leiden, 1969), p. 412. Figure 5 facing page 97 'As coral grows under the water, and exposed to air, gets hard, so also the stone' Emblem XXXII, from H.M.E. De Jong, Michael Maier's 'Atalanta Fugiens', p. 408, see full reference above. Figure 6 facing page 98 'Rex natans in mari' Emblem XXXI, from H.M.E. De Jong, Michael Maier's 'Atalanta Fugiens', p.407, see full reference above. INTRODUCTION The purpose of this introduction is to give a theoretical account of what may loosely be termed a biblical idea of language, and to indicate some of the ways in which The Tempest relates to it. The question of a biblical idea of language in Shakespeare's other plays is briefly raised, as well as the problem of a 400-year culture gap between Shakespeare and ourselves. The aim of my thesis is to identify a moral idea of language in The Tempest, and to describe aspects of the play in terms of this idea. The Tempest calls upon a wide range of moral traditions and contexts current in the Renaissance period. To identify these, I have mainly referred to printed texts ranging from roughly 1500 to 1700, and to Shakespeare's works as a whole, for purposes of illustration, analogy and contrast. I have referred to classical texts in modern English translations and occasionally also in English versions of the period. Underlying The Tempest is an idea of language, now obsolete, which one may loosely call a biblical idea of language. This idea of language was tacitly shared by Shakespeare and his audience as a number of unquestioned - and by the audience perhaps unexamined - beliefs. These beliefs, being taken for granted, are not often explained in texts of the time, though they may be referred to or implied. In Henry IV, Part 1 Shakespeare spends a small scene expounding this idea of language, for dramatic purposes which will be clarified below. For the modern reader or spectator there are puzzles in The Tempest which an understanding of this body of beliefs and attitudes clarifies. But, secondly, language is at the same time an overt theme in The Tempest, a part of the play's main strategies of characterization and meaning. These build on this accepted biblical idea of language, but the play's exploration of language engages with these concepts in a creative and living way. One may therefore say that the biblical idea of language must be understood as active in the play, but at the same time the play itself enriches and illuminates these abstract concepts. In order to understand the strategies of the play, one must at the outset make a distinction between some modern connotations of the word 'language' and those current in Shakespeare's day, when language is neither neutral nor purely verbal. A neutral view of language is typified by such statements as Saussure's closing remark in the Course in General Linguistics: From the excursions made into regions bordering upon linguistics, there emerges a negative lesson, but one which...supports the fundamental thesis of this course: the only true object of study in linguistics is the language, considered in itself and for its own sake this italicsX Such an empirical approach is alien to the sixteenth and earlier seventeenth centuries, where all concerns of life are moralized, including language, in so far as most writers look for ways of integrating their subject with the current dominant Christian concepts.
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