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• T.HE • START-CRO -----.- -..-·- · -- • ( FAl.l , 1910=- VOLU~tE DJ) A SHAKESPEARE JOURNAL Upstart Crow Vol. 3 Digital Facsimile THE • VP.START • CR.OW Fall, 1980 Volume Ill Dr. Edward J. Boling, Presidenl, The University of Tennessee Dr. Qiules E. Smith, Chancellor, The University of Tennessee at Mmin Dr. Milton Simmoos, Vice-Chancellor for Academic Affairs, The University of Tennessee at Martin Dr. Daryl Kreiling, Dean of she School of Aris and Sciences, The University of Tcnncsscc at Mutin Dr. John McCluskey, Chairm,m, Depar1men1 of English, The University of Tennessee at Martin Clemson University Digital Press Upstart Crow Vol. 3 Digital Facsimile ~O.Bm•7fO•MARTIN'•TENNESSEE• 38237 • THE • VPSTART • CR.OW-~• Published at The University of Tennessee at Martin William E. Bennett The University of Tennessee at Martin Editor and Pttblisher Associate Editors Martha Y. Battle The University of Tennessee at Martin Michael M. Cohen MUiray State University, Murray, Ky. Walter Haden The University of Tennessee at Martin Richard Levin The University of California, Davis Peter Pauls The University of Winnipeg, Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada Paul Ramsey The University of Tennessee at Chattanooga Frank L. Windham The University of Tennessee at Martin Ron Gifford Artist Copyright 1980, William E. Benn-et/ All Rights Reserved Subscription Information (See reply ca,,ds inside back cover) Two issues - $12 Retired persons and students - $4 per year Institutions and Libraries, same rate as individuals - $12 two issues Essays chosen for publication do not necessarily represent opinions of the editor, asso ciate editors, or schools with which any contributor is assoaated. The published essays represent a diversity of approaches and opinions which we hope will stimulate interest and further scholarship. iii Clemson University Digital Press Upstart Crow Vol. 3 Digital Facsimile .About anyone so great as Shakespeare, it is probable that we can never be right ; and if we can never be right, it is better that we should from time to time change our way of being wrong. - T. S. Eliot What we have to do is to be forever curiously testing new opinions and courting new impressions. - Walter Pater Clemson University Digital Press Upstart Crow Vol. 3 Digital Facsimile BARDOLPH' S FAREWELL TO THE LATE SIR JOHN Almost, the fuel is gone that fed the fue, the pyre still smoking. But, to think he could burn down to this, this rasher of bacon striped, Shrivel'd, charred to the crisp he was, yet was not: Sir John - nay sure, this is thy hell - lirst, bobbling of "greeo liclds" Thou now manurcth, then smoking white quick tum"d to greasy tll.llow Billowing hugoly, black"ning th• ..,th and me, dubb'd "Knight of the Burning Lamp." Thou like Falstaff, falling staves, Lad of the Oldcastle quite undone From bald pat• melting down to rooking dst•ro burning. thy pitcher broke, Thy happy girdle snapp'd, a jolly world of gut$ fall'n fa r below thy knees: Above my sniveling here, methinks I yet can hear thy rib-splint'ring laugh Crackling yet, whistling, popping, spitting a volley of bright oaths 'Gainst our entwbile friend, trait'rous turncoat to use us so- ··sweet Hal," prince who'd promis'd thee the hanging of the thieves A hanging sure for me high I close espy upon yon gibbet tree. Great heart exploding, Mad Jack roiling, roist'ring carthwacd, Thy vap'rous ashes rise high enough almost to shroud these steps for me. - WALTER HADEN ,,, Clemson University Digital Press Upstart Crow Vol. 3 Digital Facsimile vii Clemson University Digital Press Upstart Crow Vol. 3 Digital Facsimile CONTENTS Bardolph's Farewell to the Late Sir John -----···---··-··----·········--·····--··-- vi by Walter Haden The University of Teooessee at Martin The Fool, Folly and the World Upside-Down in Measure for Measure_·-··- 1 by Jean Klene St. Mary·s - Notre Dame Farce as Function in Medieval and Shakespearean Drama ..........·-·······--··-······-· 11 by Josie P. Campbell University of Rhode Island From Festivity to Spectacle: The Canlerb11ry Tales, Fragment I and A Midsummer Night's Dream···········-·······-................ _... _...... .- ............... ·-···-·- 19 by James Andreas The University of Tennessee at Martin King f ohn's Bastard ······-··--····-····-····---···········-····················-·-·······-···-·-······································ 29 by Richard A. Levin The University of California - Davis The Theme of Destruction and Rebuilding in King Lear -····--···-·-·-···-·-- 42 by Nancy D. Hargrove Mississippi State University Shakespeare's Timon of Athens and Renaissance Diogeoiana -·----·--....... 54 by Peter Pauls The University of Winnipeg "Children of divers kind": A Reading of Romeo and J11lieJ ·-··-·-·-·- 67 by John B. Harcourt Ithaca College Tate's Cordelia: Bonds Broken and Rejoined .......................·-··-··-·····-···----·····-·-····- 81 by Robert F. Willson, Jr. The University of Missouri at Kansas City William Dunbar's Sultry Pre-Shakespearean Dark Lady · ····-··························-- 88 by Robert F. Fleissner Central State University Hamlet and Paternity ...................................................·-····················· ··········-········-························ 97 by Rupin W. Desai University of Delhi The 1980 Alabama Shakespeare Festival ............................................................................10 8 by Craig Wallace Barrow The University of Tennessee at Chattanooga Submission of MSS When submitting MSS, send two copies - one original and one Xerox - as we want more than one reader working at once on each MS. We can give you information on your MS sooner. Send to The Upstart Crow, P. 0. Box 740, Martin, Tennessee 38237. Ask Serials Librarians to subscribe to the Journal at $12. See cards inside back cover. ,111 Clemson University Digital Press Upstart Crow Vol. 3 Digital Facsimile THE FOOL, FOLLY AND THE WORLD UPSIDE-DOWN IN MEASURE FOR MEASURE by Jean Klene Although the good books of Enid Welsford, William Willeford, and Robert H. Goldsmith1 tell us much about the history of the fool and his con tributions to Shakespeare's plays, we still feel that much remains to be dis covered about this fascinating character. I would like to explore ways that the fool seems to be, not only an embodiment of the folly he both represents and points to, but also a kind of dynamic metaphor of the world turned upside down, a very popular idea in the Middle Ages. We can think, for example, of the witty fool Feste in Twelfth Night, who proves Olivia a fool for continually r:iou rning her brother who is ''in heaven" (l.v.52-68) ,2 of the poignantly enig matic Fool in King Lear who leads the protagonist to an awareness of his own inverted actions, of the gravediggers in Hamlet who equivocate on the play's themes of death and decay (V.i.1-170) , and of Autolycus, the clever rogue who gulls shepherds and shepherdesses with his ballads in a way analogous :o Shakespeare's gulling (?) of his audience in the tall Winter's Tale. The n2tural fools in Shakespeare's plays, those less endowed with intelligence, oiten parody by their actions the folly of the aristocrats in the same play. Consider, for example, the way Dogberry "discovers" villains Conrade and Borachio, while the "honorable gentlemen" Claudius and Don Pedro merely .:ontinue in their mistaken ideas, the way Touchstone probes the pretensions of his more romantic superiors by his union with Audrey, and the way the "devil-porter" in Macbeth suggests the hell that the protagonist has created in his own castle. Regardless of intelligence or the lack of it, any down points to folly and the inversions it produces. Regardless of genre, the action in many plars tells us that the world has gone topsy-turvy; and sometimes statements of inversions echo one another from comedy to tragedy and vice versa. Con sider, for example, two statements: "nothing is but what is not" and "nothing uu.t is so is so," the former by Macbeth (I.iii.141-42) and the latter by Feste 10 Twelfth Night (IV.i.9) . Before looking at more ways in which the idea of ID inverted world appears in many plays and especially in Measure For .\le.:iure, we should digress briefly to examine this topos, a popular medieval one which is suggested by the costume, the words, and the very being of the fool in Shakespeare's works. The idea of the world gone topsy-turvy meant many things to the Middle Ages and the Renaissance: Saturnalia and seasonal celebrations (about which C. L. Barber has written in bis well-known Shakespeare's Festive Comedy and ~likhlil Bakhtin in Rabelais and His World3 ), the "fight over the breeches" Clemson University Digital Press Upstart Crow Vol. 3 Digital Facsimile between husband •nd wife, the huntcc hunted by an ani.rrol, 6sh ffying in the iir llnd birds swimming in the sea, and the triumph, it J~st in fantuy, of the weaker over the stronger.• Curtius tells us that the world upside-down is • lament for the times and a description of the effect of disorders on the globe, a lament which iJ as old as Archilochus who, in 648 B.C., thought nothing was impossible, now that Zeus had cover«! the sun. More re<:ent scholanhip by CiuS<eppe Cocchiaro and Hedwig Kenner tells us that the motif goes back at least to two or three thousand years B.C.; and they support their assertions by illustrations from Swnerian and Egyptian ort.• Role reversals, especially between animals and men and between men and women, predomina.te in those i.Uustr.1tions. The quc:stioo of inversion .i.s cosmic audacity, serio ludtrt, nccc.ssa.ry stop-valve to revolution, and a variety of aspects essential to society occupies anthropologists and social historians, a number of whose provocative essays arc included in the book, The Rtver. sible World: Symbolic l11vtrsio11s in Ari aJld Societ7, ,-dircd by Barbara Babcock.• What we make of the devils dis· cussed by Dante and Augustine, according to the .. up" and "down" described by Aristotle, is a different, though a related question.