WILL and LOVE: SHAKESPEARE, VOLITION, and THEOLOGICAL ROMANCE by Darren J. Dyck Submitted in Partial Fulfilment of the Requireme
Total Page:16
File Type:pdf, Size:1020Kb
WILL AND LOVE: SHAKESPEARE, VOLITION, AND THEOLOGICAL ROMANCE by Darren J. Dyck Submitted in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy at Dalhousie University Halifax, Nova Scotia January 2017 © Copyright by Darren J. Dyck, 2017 To Jen, my wife, and to John Baxter, my supervisor, for their support and especially their patience. ii TABLE OF CONTENTS ABSTRACT ................................................................................................. v ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS ................................................................................. vi CHAPTER 1: INTRODUCTION ............................................................................ 1 CHAPTER 2: THEOLOGICAL ROMANCE .............................................................. 16 2.1 Overview ........................................................................................ 16 2.2 On Terminology ................................................................................ 17 2.3 Love Moves the Lover .......................................................................... 22 2.4 Love’s Movement Does Not Diminish the Lover’s Agency .............................. 32 2.5 Love is Good .................................................................................... 46 2.6 Chaucer .......................................................................................... 62 CHAPTER 3: ROMEO AND JULIET ................................................................................... 75 3.1 “Traffic,” or Samson and Gregory, Moved .................................................. 75 3.2 Introduction ..................................................................................... 77 3.3 Petrarch .......................................................................................... 87 3.4 Images, Metaphors, and Motions ............................................................ 90 3.5 Ships and Seas ................................................................................... 99 3.6 Juliet ............................................................................................ 102 3.7 Marriage ........................................................................................ 109 3.8 Metaphysical and Physical ................................................................... 113 3.9 Love and Hate ................................................................................. 119 3.10 The End ....................................................................................... 128 CHAPTER 4: TROILUS AND CRESSIDA ............................................................................ 137 4.1 In the Beginning … and the End ........................................................... 137 4.2 Introduction ................................................................................... 141 4.3 In Love and War ............................................................................... 153 4.4 Value ............................................................................................ 157 4.5 Force ............................................................................................ 165 iii 4.6 Glimpsing the Ideal ........................................................................... 173 4.7 The Failure of the Ideal ...................................................................... 178 4.8 Blood ........................................................................................... 189 4.9 Identity and (In)Action ...................................................................... 194 4.10 In Sum ........................................................................................ 208 CHAPTER 5: TWELFTH NIGHT .................................................................................... 213 5.1 Antonio ......................................................................................... 213 5.2 Introduction ................................................................................... 215 5.3 Seeing ........................................................................................... 222 5.4 Immobility ..................................................................................... 233 5.5 Love-Melancholy ............................................................................. 237 5.6 Imagination .................................................................................... 244 5.7 Sweet-Thought ................................................................................ 253 5.8 Fancy, Folly, Madness or What You Will ................................................ 260 CHAPTER 6: ANTONY AND CLEOPATRA .......................................................................... 273 6.1 Introduction ................................................................................... 273 6.2 Value ............................................................................................ 280 6.3 Imagination .................................................................................... 292 6.4 Mutuality and Motion ........................................................................ 302 CHAPTER 7: CONCLUSION .......................................................................... 312 WORKS CITED ........................................................................................ 325 iv ABSTRACT This dissertation examines four of Shakespeare’s love-plays through the lens of the medieval tradition of theological romance in order to assess the playwright’s use of Augustinian psychology in his depiction of dramatic action. Most studies of the ‘medieval’ in Shakespeare consider only those works with clear medieval precursors or which are set in the period (i.e. the histories); those which go beyond these narrow parameters tend to focus on Shakespeare’s social, material, or historical context, seeking therein, in Helen Cooper’s idiom, the “deep structures of medieval culture” fueling his work. This dissertation hearkens after these “deep structures,” too, but seeks them in the medieval theology of soul informing Shakespeare’s concept of the human being. My first chapter traces expressions of the idea at the heart of theological romance through the writings of Augustine, Boethius, Dante, Petrarch, and Chaucer. That idea, simply put, is that love moves the lover, mysteriously, and without diminishing his agency. Each chapter thereafter offers a close-reading of a single play which reveals both the influence on Shakespeare of theological romance’s account of the soul’s motion and how the playwright’s reception of this account also means its transformation. Shakespeare makes clear his reliance on Augustinian psychology in Romeo and Juliet, ubiquitously employing metaphors of motion and engaging the Petrarchan problem of the mutual exclusivity of human and divine loves; but he also provides a Dantean resolution Petrarch never could. In Troilus and Cressida and Twelfth Night, Shakespeare interrogates that resolution. In the former text, as essential value degrades into perceived worth and love is reduced to lust, action becomes inaction, and readers are left to wonder whether any beloved is worth the love of their lover; in the latter, Shakespeare examines the difficulty posed by the imagination, which, dissociated from reason, is shown to engender immobility; and yet, the play’s conclusion suggests imagination’s essentiality to love’s movement. In Antony and Cleopatra, Shakespeare again takes up the themes of the beloved’s worth and the power of the imagination, but he also allots his mature lovers a singular mutuality of love, which can only be understood in terms of a volitional mysteriousness, and which, despite its clearly unorthodox expression as passion rather than love, hearkens back to Augustine’s own characterization of the mystery at the heart of love’s movement. v ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS I would like to acknowledge the support of the Department of English at Dalhousie University as well as the true pillars of that Department, the support staff (Pam, Carol, and Mary Beth) who helped me with, really, all number of things over the years. I am grateful to my committee members for their work on my behalf, Drs. Ron Huebert, Lyn Bennett, and Kathy Cawsey, as well as to Dr. Christina Luckyj, for reading a draft of this dissertation and providing her commentary. I would also like to thank Dr. Richard McCoy of the City University of New York for serving as my external examiner. This dissertation is the work of (too) many years, and the product of many (but not too many) conversations and classroom discussions. I would like to thank Dr. David J. Parkinson of the University of Saskatchewan for introducing me to Troilus and Criseyde; Dr. Peter O’Brien for his graduate seminar on Virgil; Drs. John Baxter and Ron Huebert for hiring me as their TA that I might learn how one reads and teaches Shakespeare; and the University of King’s College for my three-years employment as a Teaching Fellow in the Foundation Year Programme, where I learned enough about Augustine and Dante to compel me to write my first chapter. I am also grateful to Benjamin Lee for some seminal conversations about Augustine and the mystery of the will. My supervisor, Dr. John Baxter, has been a well-spring of encouragement; his praise for my ideas (when I saw little virtue in them) prompted and re-prompted me to get back to work. For this prompting, and for the example of his scholarship, which is characterized by clarity and precision of both thought