Shakespeare’s Double-Dealing Comedies: Deciphering the “Problem Plays”

Shakespeare’s Double-Dealing Comedies: Deciphering the “Problem Plays”

By

Myron Stagman

Shakespeare’s Double-Dealing Comedies: Deciphering the “Problem Plays”, by Myron Stagman

This book first published 2010

Cambridge Scholars Publishing

12 Back Chapman Street, Newcastle upon Tyne, NE6 2XX, UK

British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

Copyright © 2010 by Myron Stagman

All rights for this book reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior permission of the copyright owner.

ISBN (10): 1-4438-1636-1, ISBN (13): 978-1-4438-1636-6

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Introduction...... 1

I. Parody and Mock-Sobriety Drama...... 3

A Few Examples of Shakespearean Parody...... 3 General Marks of Parody ...... 4 A Few More Examples of Shakespearean Parody ...... 5 Shakespeare Self-Parody and Subversive Sexual Quibbles... 6 Shakespearean Satire...... 7 Jacobean ‘Tragedy’ ...... 7 a) The Malcontent ...... 8 b) The Revenger’s Tragedy ...... 12 c) The Athiest’s Tragedy ...... 18 d) The White Devil...... 26 e) Bussy D’Ambois ...... 28 Conclusion to Jacobean Tragedy...... 30

II. The Two Gentlemen of Verona ...... 31

III. All’s Well That Ends Well...... 37

IV. Measure for Measure ...... 73 vi Table of Contents

V. Cymbeline ...... 97

VII. Henry V...... 109

VIII. The Tempest...... 119

IX. The Two Noble Kinsmen ...... 161

Conclusion...... 167

Bibliography ...... 169

Index...... 175

INTRODUCTION

It has been my experience with William Shakespeare that, when there is sharp criticism, Shakespeare proves right and critics prove wrong. We have failed to appreciate one aspect of his vast Achievement—ironic comedy . Here we have a shortfall, and Shakespeare’s Double- Dealing Comedies intends to demonstrate the playwright’s simply splendid sense of tongue-in-cheek humor, thus correcting the somber and censorious reactions to his zestful parody (satire in the case of “problem play” All’s Well That Ends Well ). We have been missing so much fun. Let’s have a go at the so-called “problems” to see beneath the surface in order to fathom Shakespeare’s covert comic meanings.

I.

PARODY AND MOCK -SOBRIETY DRAMA

A Few Examples of Shakespearean Parody

Shakespeare often composed parody so close to the line of sober romance and drama that they have exasperated critics, leaving them to mutter about “problem plays”. Moreover, to be frank about it, critics have never been particularly savvy when it came to refined ironic humor, even an otherwise sharp fellow like George Bernard Shaw. Take, for instance, what should be an obvious piece of comic irony: In The Two Gentlemen of Verona, Valentine's gift of his ladylove (a Valentine ’s gift) to false friend and ready-rapist Proteus. There's nothing overly elusive about irony of this kind (a parody of ideal male friendship themes in literature, particularly that of Titus and Gisippus), yet it has been repeatedly ridiculed, having been taken ever so earnestly. The parody which pervades Cymbeline, in contrast, is subtle, requiring close scrutiny (and a good knowledge of Othello ). Two of Shakespeare’s finest comedies, All’s Well That Ends Well and Measure for Measure, are often enough deemed two of his worst. The critics blame Shakespeare, but a little understanding—plus a sense of humor—would shift the blame to censorious critics. An entire field of English Literature, miraculous to say, has been created thanks to a failure to comprehend light-hearted comic irony. We call it “Jacobean Tragedy”. There does exist such a thing as Jacobean Tragedy (e.g. John Webster’s The 4 Parody and Mock-Sobriety Drama

Duchess of Malfi ), but much of what glides under that name is parody .

“Grim tragedies”, often depicting “corrupt Italy”, have been written by first class authors—William Chapman, Robert Middleton, John Webster, Cyril Tourneur, John Marston, and (if he did but change the final passages and kill someone off) William Shakespeare. Yet these murderous “tragedies" happen to be hilarious comedies, replete with mock-tragic speeches, mock-heroism, mock-evil, and mock-virtue where storybook heroines à la Cinderella utter obscene remarks right to our faces while we commiserate and commend their virtue under such trying circumstances. The real tragedy is that these clever playwrights do not reincarnate today to read our literary criticism. They could then return to their eternal homes, and laugh forever.

General Marks of Parody This type of humor can be confused with artlessness, melodrama, oddity, strange authorial values, over-enthusiasm, or serious drama. In the latter case, the more sensitive reader may feel a mite uncomfortable or suspicious now and then, but the irony can nonetheless slip by. Rule number 1: If a good writer seems surprisingly inept and has been known to be a wit or humorist, suspect parody. “Artlessness” can assume various forms: excess and exaggeration, incongruity, extravagance, melodrama, flamboyance, all-too conventional themes, irksome unreality, apparent imitation of someone or something you recognize, anything which implies that this fine writer ought to know better.

Shakespeare's Double-Dealing Comedies 5

A Few More Examples of Shakespearean Parody In Henry V , Young kisses the wounds of his dead friend and delivers a flowery oration with his dying gasps. Shakespeare meant such gruesome sentimentality no more gravely than he intended The Comedy of Errors . In The Two Noble Kinsmen, Shakespeare adopted a similar macabre-comic motif when his suppliant women describe the corpses of their dearly departed. When in I Henry VI he has Talbot terrorize a French army by throwing stones at it, one must interpret parody. How could he have written that seriously?! In Cymbeline , Shakespeare uses a deus ex machina, a classical artifice just begging for a comic twist . Read the speeches of Jupiter and the ghosts with a wary eye. Not an earnest thing is involved there.

The Duke at the conclusion of the Measure for Measure “problem-play” acts in rather the capacity of a deus ex machina , does he not? He dictates marriages that resolve everything and nothing. The Measure for Measure finale cannot be taken at face value, and—as we shall see—the same can be said for the entire play.

George Bernard Shaw blockishly panned Cymbeline’s finale, which spins out one recognition after another. Indeed, there are over 20 of them, and the whole scene thereby registers quaint parodying fun—nothing sober about it. (One must add that Posthumus’ slapping of Imogen who is disguised as a page, a seemingly pointless act, was designed to mimic Othello's slapping of Desdemona.) Big buildup and then deflation is an ironic comedy technique employed by the playful Mr. Shakespeare. For but one example, in The Two Gentlemen of Verona . The knight Eglamour, an exemplar of chivalry devoted to the memory of

6 Parody and Mock-Sobriety Drama his deceased love, escorts Silvia through the woods. One glimpse of the bandits and he leaves her high-and-dry. The cavalier Eglamour may still be running. Mock-heroic, mock- chivalric. Not "odd”.

It likewise delighted Shakespeare to parody other writers. Henry V features mock-Marlowe. The Falstaff death-scene of Henry V parodies the death of Socrates in the Phaedo. The Two Noble Kinsmen caricatures Chaucer's Knight's Tale. Speaking of that greatly underrated play, The Two Noble Kinsmen , most anyone who has read Hamlet ought to at least suspect that the Jailor’s Daughter is a comic caricature of Ophelia.

An outstanding feature of Shakespearean comedy involves ironic comic imitation of the entire tradition of romance narrative conventions, of which the Valentine-gift / Eglamour jests are samples. The Tempest and Cymbeline together hit virtually all of these targets. What they do not hit, Measure for Measure and All's Well That End's Well do. In this jovial onslaught targeting romance literature, Shakespeare affords us much mirth that has gone unappreciated. Once we have distinguished between Appearance and Reality, the “problems” end and Shakespeare receives his due.

Shakespearean Self-Parody and Subversive Sexual Quibbles We should remark two special characteristics of Shakespeare’s ironic comedy. First, Shakespeare spoofs Shakespeare, mocking his own plays. The Tempest does this wholesale to Macbeth, and contains humorous allusions to

Shakespeare's Double-Dealing Comedies 7

Julius Caesar, Antony and Cleopatra, and The Comedy of Errors. Cymbeline does a grand job on Othello , and The Two Noble Kinsmen mimics Hamlet . Bottom and the mechanicals obviously parody Romeo and Juliet. So, when Shakespeare cunningly alludes to Shakespeare, this signals danger to non- ironical, solemn interpretations of the play at hand. Sexual quibbles (puns, play-on-words) covertly uttered by precious-and-pure heroines call for an immediate revision of viewpoint. We see this pre-eminently proven in Measure for Measure, Cymbeline, and The Tempest.

Shakespearean Satire The previous sentence portends the fall of three heroines. They drop from parody. Shakespeare loaded All’s Well That Ends Well with as much irony as the above comedies, but this comedy is dark satire, meant to bite—a smashingly ironic work.

Jacobean "Tragedy" In all likelihood inspired by Shakespeare, the genre receives such notices as “obsessions” with “death and sexual passion”, “death and physical decay”, “hatred”, "corruption”, “murder” and “insanity”, “lust”, “adultery” and “sexual sin”. Jacobean revenge tragedy is “the tragedy of blood”. The Revenger's Tragedy , emblem of the sardonic, salacious species, has a “dark savagery” which, "from the very first lines” plunges us into a wicked world of “uncontrolled self- seeking passion”. The Revenger's Tragedy envisions “a world of almost unrelieved bestiality” whose aim is to "frighten the sinner with a perpetual reminder of mortality”. Come with me as we cautiously, quietly approach the curtain, slowly drawing it back for a glimpse of "the tragedy

8 Parody and Mock-Sobriety Drama of blood”. Follow me, and be careful not to step in the red ooze. Follow me, and remember we enter a den of inconceivable wickedness and corruption, so hold on to your morals.

a.

The Malcontent (John Marston, c. 1603)

A touchstone of a Jacobean author's intent, whether grim and grave or clandestinely comic, is the incidence of sexual quibbling when the dialogue on the surface expresses dramatic, even deadly, purpose. Let us quote from Marston’s excellent mock-tragic comedy. The protagonist Malevole and the villain Mendoza engage in the kind of bantering, extravagant (and covert sex) talk— meant to be humorous, not sinister—which never stops in the play. (Distinguish continuous humor from comic interludes during serious drama.) (“Egistus”= Greek mythology’s Aegisthus, paramour of Clytemnestra who murdered her husband, King Agamemnon.):

Malevole. Mendoza, hark ye, hark ye. You are a treacherous villain, God bwy ye.

Mendoza. Out, you base-born rascal.

Malevole. We are all the sons of heaven, though a tripe-wife were our mother; ah, you whoreson hot-rein’d he-marmoset — Egistus, didst ever hear of one Egistus?

Shakespeare's Double-Dealing Comedies 9

Mendoza. Gistus?

Malevole. Ay, Egistus, he was a filthy incontinent fleshmonger, such a one as thou art.

Mendoza. Out, grumbling rogue.

Malevole. Orestes, beware Orestes.

Mendoza. Out, beggar.

Malevole. I once shall rise .

Mendoza . Thou rise?

Malevole . Ay, at the resurrection . “No vulgar seed but once may rise, and shall, No king so huge , but 'fore he die may fall .” I.5.19

[In English Renaissance comedy jargon, “ die ” means to have a sexual orgasm . ‘Tis very important to remember this pun.]

New Testamenting an erection and ejaculation is not a true sign of genuine tragedy or a philosophical analysis of moral issues.

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At the end of Act II, Malevole proffers a series of rhymed couplets in iambic pentameter on the subject of illicit sex. By the late 1590s, the better English dramatists understood that rhymes, when contrasted with enveloping blank verse or prose, could offer a fine instrument for irony. This type of couplet is ideal for taking the serious sting out of a discourse on the “brutish sting”:

Stick candles ‘gainst a virgin wall's white back, If they not burn, yet at the least they'll black.

I have yet to read lines like that in a sober work, and since The Malcontent at no point desists from such talk, this is no exception to the rule.

[Pietro takes his wife Aurelia to dance.]

Aurelia. Wouldst then be miserable?

Pietro. I need not wish.

Aurelia. O. yet forbear my hand . away. Fly, Fly, [fly? A double meaning in those days too?] O seek not her, that only seeks to die.

Pietro. Poor loved soul.

Aurelia. What, wouldst court misery?

Shakespeare's Double-Dealing Comedies 11

Pietro. Yes.

Aurelia. She'll come too soon : O my griev'd heart! [a double meaning for too – as well as “come ”] V.4.115

We quote part of Pietro’s speech in Actus quarta, scena tertia, a symptom of what Marston has assayed in this comedy, and so successfully. Extravagant language to convey common thought, together with the evident mimicking of Hamlet , has "parody" clearly stamped on it.

[Horatio, in the First Act of Hamlet : But look, the morn, in russet mantle clad, Walks o'er the dew of yon high eastward hill.] Pietro. Now had the mounting sun's all-ripening wings Swept the cold sweat of night from earth's dank breast ...

The difference between “dew” and “cold sweat” represents the distance between what Marston appeared to be doing and what Marston in fact did. In sum, The Malcontent does not present a "moral position" or “righteous indignation”. It most assuredly “has affinities with the old morality tradition”, but as a burlesque of it. A critic opines: “... much deliberate moralizing, which tends to become stiff and contentious; and a comparison between Malevole's meditations on lust (II.v.141ff) with Leantio's ( Women Beware Women III.i.95ff ) shows the comparative limitations of Marston's dramatic technique.” On the contrary, this comment shows the limitations of the critic. Marston did just fine.

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b. The Revenger's Tragedy Originally believed to have been written by Cyril Tourneur and now usually attributed to Thomas Middleton, written about 1605, The Revenger’s Tragedy is mock-revenge tragedy at its ultimate. Mock-Morality play, mock-Italianesque, and mock-Hamlet , it was written around the time of Ben Jonson's Volpone (1605-6). Comedy in the same setting as Volpone but uproarious parody rather than satire, Revenger's shares the blatant name-symbolism of Jonson's play. The latter gives us “Volpone” (fox), “Mosca” (fly), “corvine” and “corbaccio” (raven and crow). Middleton serves up “Vindice” (vengeance), “Lussurioso” (lechery), “Castiza” (chastity), “Spurio”, “Ambitioso:,” and the enchanting “Supervacuo”. From the dramatis personae one might already suspect The Revenger’s Tragedy to be comedy. Middleton, after all, was not a medieval allegorist. Lussurioso has lines reeking with grave Italianate corruption, such as:

I am past my depth in lust And I must swim or drown. I.3.90

That was a forerunner of the hardcore to come. In Act III, sc. 1, Vindice delivers a soliloquy in blank verse, so depraved and past most anyone's depth in sexual innuendo, that I am reluctant to quote it for fear I shall offend. And shall not, to your relief.

Shakespeare's Double-Dealing Comedies 13

Mock-Hamlet 1. In Act II, sc. 3 we have the splendid farce of the Duke's son, Lussurioso, bursting into the Duchess' bedchamber with drawn sword. (He thinks his bastard brother is in bed with his mother, but he need not bother, for she is in bed with his father.) Gaze upon this ‘tragic’ dialogue (but first, Hamlet for comparison in the Claudius-at-prayer scene :

Hamlet. Now might I do it pat, now ‘a is a-praying. . . . 'A took my father grossly, full of bread, With all his crimes broad blown , as flush as May. And how his audit stands who knows save heaven? Am I reveng'd to take him in the purging of his soul, When he is fit and season’d for his passage? No. Up, sword, and know thou a more horrid bent. When he is drunk asleep, or in his rage; Or in th’ incestuous pleasure of his bed ... no relish of salvation in’t ... [Also recall Gertrude's role in Shakespeare's play.]

Lussurioso [bursting into the bedroom, à la Hamlet’s fantasy, with drawn sword]. Villain, strumpet—

Duke. You upper guard defend us—

Duchess. Treason, treason.

Duke. —Oh take me not in sleep,

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I have great sins , I must have days, Nay months, dear son, with penitential heaves, To lift 'em out, and not to die unclear. O thou wilt kill me both in heaven and here .

Lussurioso . I am amaz’d to death.

Duke. Nay villain, traitor, Worse than the foulest epithet, now I’ll gripe thee E’en with the nerves of wrath, and throw thy head Among the lawyers. Guard! [Among the lawyers!! What a great line.]

Enter Nobles and Sons.

Duke. This boy that should be myself after me, Would be myself before me, and in heat Of that ambition bloodily rusht in Intending to depose me in my bed.

2 Noble. Duty and natural loyalty forfend! [A line like this is what we call "camp”.]

Duchess. He call'd his father villain; and me strumpet , A word that I ab hor to file my lips with. [ab-whore!]

Ambitioso. That was not so well done, brother. II.3.26

Shakespeare's Double-Dealing Comedies 15

Much more mock-Hamlet can be uncovered in Middleton’s spoof:

2. Enter Vindice, with the skull of his love drest up in Tires [head-dress, including mask]. This scene (III.5) takes off on Hamlet-and-the-skull in the Graveyard-scene , features Vindice's “famous address to the skull” and co-stars “the bony lady” (“Sh'as somewhat a grave look with her.”) (118, 134) Vindice poisons the lips of the skull for the Duke to kiss . (Hamlet holds the skull of Yorick, jester of his boyhood. “Here hung those lips that I have kiss'd I know not how oft.”)

Another terribly tragic line, grim and reeking with death and corruption: Vindice . See ladies, with false forms / You deceive men, but cannot deceive worms. (97)

3. Gertrude’s Closet-scene with Hamlet (Gertrude: “What wilt thou do? Thou wilt not murder me?”):

Enter Vindice and Hippolito, bringing out their Mother [Gratiana], one by one shoulder, and the other by the other, with daggers in their hands.

[She's up on a morals charge: pandering off their sister, her daughter Castiza, Chastity.]

Gratiana. What means my sons? what, will you murder me?

4. Lussurioso . ‘Twixt my stepmother and the Bastard, oh, incestuous sweets... IV.1.22

16 Parody and Mock-Sobriety Drama

[Hamlet: “O, most wicked speed, to post with such dexterity to incestuous sheets . . .”]

5. Polonius (the slick minister who was buried, in Claudius’ words, “in hugger-mugger”): Vindice. Show him the body of the Duke his father, and how quaintly he died, like a politician in hugger-mugger . V.1.16

6. Is the following not Hamlet’s “The time is out of joint.”?

Lussurioso. Farewell to all, He that climbs highest has the greatest fall. My tongue is out of office. V.3.78

Middleton knew his Hamlet, and other Shakespearean tragedies. Do you recognize this one?:

Vindice. Wet will make iron blush and change to red: Brother it rains, ‘twill spoil your dagger, house it.

Try, Othello.

Keep up your bright swords, for the dew will rust them. I.2.59

Or, Lussurioso's “Talk to me my Lords, Of sepulchers, and mighty emperors’ bones.” (V.2. 140)

Shakespeare's Double-Dealing Comedies 17

Richard II: “Let's talk of graves, of worms, and epitaphs.”

7. Enough for the spoofing given Shakespeare. Mock-moral indignation-and-divine-justice:

Vindice (Aside ). Has not heaven an ear? Is all the lightning wasted? . . . . . Is there no thunder left, or is’t kept up In stock for heavier vengeance? ( Thunder ) There it goes! IV.2.153, 193

8. Mock-Morality play ends the Fourth Act (note the rhyme):

Gratiana. O happy child! faith and thy birth hath sav'd me; ‘Mongst thousand daughters happiest of all others, Be thou a glass for maids, and I for mothers.

The mother acting as bawd to her virtuous daughter: perhaps also an allusion to Polonius as a “fishmonger”, i.e. pandering his daughter Ophelia.

9. The mock-tragic, indeed mock-poetic-justice finale finds Vindice unnecessarily admit to murder, his beneficiary Antonio condemning him to execution. The ensuing 27 lines which end the so-called tragedy are in tell-tale rhyme , including “he, me”, “brass, ass”, “slipp'd, clipp’d,”, “true, adieux” and “season, treason”.

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The Revenger’s Tragedy is an outstanding comedy. Rarely (ever?) performed today, I strongly recommend that it be made into comic opera. It already is comic opera but lacks the music and critics' comprehension. Set it to music, and bill it as comic opera. The average modern audience, given such warning, will understand the sexual quibbling (such as Vindice’s “box-and-cuff” soliloquy), and some of them can explain the innuendo to the literary critics in their midst.

c.

The Atheist’s Tragedy (Cyril Tourneur , 1608) Uncomprehendingly called “inferior” and, by T. S. Eliot, disparaged as “more regular verse, more conventional moralizing, more conventional scenes”, this play puts in a lower key and on a more elevated plane what The Revenger’s Tragedy rollicked and frolicked in. The Atheist’s Tragedy is sophisticated, often delicate and always delightful in its light- hearted knavery. Cyril Tourneur has given us high camp, camp of the highest order. Its characters as unrealistic as its language is extravagant and ethereally ridiculous, Atheist’s achieves its effects through the Italianata of mock-Neo-Platonism and—here it is again—mock-Hamlet . The comedy begins with a parody of Neo-Platonism, shows us plenty of Hamlet and Gertrude, then ends with mock-Spanish Tragedy and a rousing clown’s joke. Well done, Cyril. Neo-Platonism with a hint of unPlatonic love :

D’Amville, the Villain . Then if death casts up

Shakespeare's Double-Dealing Comedies 19

Our total sum of joy and happiness, Let me have all my senses feasted in Th’abundant fullness of delight at once, And with a sweet insensible increase Of pleasing surfeit melt into my dust.

Borachio. That revolution is too short me thinks. If this life comprehends our happiness, How foolish to desire to die so soon! [Remember that “ die”, “death ”, in a comic context, can mean a sexual climax .] And if our time runs home unto the length Of Nature, how improvident it were To spend our substance on a minute’s pleasure , And after live an age in misery! [Surely the last line refers to syphilis .] I.1.30

Something similar, but more “substance” than in the opener, and as unctuous a piece of metaphysical sleaze as you will read:

Charlemont [the hero to the heroine, Castabella]: Within this habit which thy misinform’d Conceit takes only for a shape, live both The soul and body of thy Charlemont.

Castabella. I feel a substance, warm, and soft, and moist subject to the capacity of sense . III.1.83

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If that seems “regular” and “conventional” and “moralizing”, well . . .

Neo-Platonist slapstick. (Tourneur plays on the metaphysical dichotomy of “spirit” and the “senses”, “body” and “soul” throughout the comedy):

Charlemont had been reported dead. Enter Charlemont.

Sebastian . What art thou? Speak.

Charlemont. The spirit of Charlemont.

Sebastian. The spirit of Charlemont? I’ll try that. (Strike, and the blow return’d.) ‘Fore God thou sayest true, th’art all spirit. III.2.25

Charlemont is a forbearing hero who eschews revenge to let nature take its just course. Given the abundant Hamlet ian parody in the play, one might suppose that this basic attribute of the protagonist takes off on Hamlet’s procrastination. The following Neo-Platonist camp speech by Charlemont involves the revenger’s non-vengeance:

Charlemont. No Sir. I have a heart above the reach Of thy most violent maliciousness; A fortitude in scorn of thy contempt Since Fate is pleas’d to have me suffer it; That can bear more than thou hast power t’inflict.

Shakespeare's Double-Dealing Comedies 21

I was a baron. That thy father has Depriv’d me of. Instead of that, I am Created king. I’ve lost a signory, That was confin’d within a piece of earth; A wart upon the body of the world. But now I am an emp’ror of a world, This little world of man.

[Is this not Hamlet’s “confines, wards, and dungeons … I could be bounded in a nut-shell, and count myself a king of infinite space.” ? Certainly appears so.]

My passions are My subjects; and I can command them laugh, Whilst thou dost tickle ‘em to death with misery.

More Mock-Hamlet : Enter the Ghost of Montferrers.

Montferrers [Charlemont sleeps and the Ghost speaks to him]. Return to France; for thy old father’s dead; And thou by murther disinherited . [the Hamlet storyline] Attend with patience the success of things; But leave revenge unto the King of kings . [Exit.

(Ghost of Hamlet pere , to Hamlet: “Taint not thy mind, nor let thy soul contrive / Against thy mother aught; leave her to heaven .”)

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Charlemont ( starts and wakes ). O my affrighted soul! (Hamlet , to the Ghost’s revelation of murder. “O my prophetic soul!”)

Charlemont waxes anti-feminine à la Hamlet upon hearing that Castabella has married while he was gone:

Marry’d! Had not my mother been a woman, I should protest against the chastity Of all thy sex. How can the merchant, Or the mariner, absent whole years Promise themselves to find their sheets Unspotted with adultery, at their Return, when you that never had the sense Of actual temptation, could not stay A few short months? III.1.106

(Hamlet : “And yet, within a month … a little month …”)

The Atheist’s Tragedy has a graveyard scene with the melancholic, meditative hero (Hamletian):

D’Amville. Sad melancholy has drawn Charlemont, With meditation on his father’s death, Into the solitary walk behind the church.

Borachio [D’Amville’s henchman; his name implies “drunkard”]. The churchyard? This the fittest place for death. Perhaps he’s praying. Then he’s fit to die, We’ll send him charitably to his grave.

Shakespeare's Double-Dealing Comedies 23

IV.2.17

That pointed to the Claudius-at-prayer scene.

Charlemont has a graveyard meditation: “This grave— Perhaps th’inhabitant was in his lifetime the possessor of his own desires…. [as Hamlet on the inhabitants therein ] To be lower than a worm is to be higher than king!” Charlemont and Borachio fight in the Churchyard. Borachio falls and Charlemont has an interesting soliloquy which seems a rather witty commentary on Hamlet’s inner conflict, suicide talk, and self-recriminations:

What? Have I kill’d him? Whatsoe’er thou beest I would thy hand had prosper’d. For I was Unfit to live, and well prepar’d to die. What shall I do? Accuse myself. Submit Me to the law, and that will quickly end This violent increase of misery. But ‘tis a murther to be accessory To mine own death. I will not. I will take This opportunity to ‘scape. It may be Heav’n reserves me to some better end. IV.3.32

Then comes the camp scene in the charnel house where the Villain tries to rape the Heroine amidst the skulls and bones, but the damsel-in-distress is saved in the nick-of-time by the Hero:

Charlemont. Now Lady! with the hand of Charlemont, I thus redeem you from the arm of lust, — My Castabella!

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Castabella. My dear Charlemont!

The distracted Villain finally has the opportunity to speak one of Hamlet’s lines:

I could now commit A murder, were it but to drink the fresh Warm blood of him I murder’d . (233)

(Hamlet : “ ‘Tis now the very witching time of night, when churchyards yawn, and hell itself breathes out contagion to this world. Now could I drink hot blood .”)

We have slighted the Villain and must give him a few more lines: D’Amville (to a Servant’s, “He’s dead.”):

Dead be your tongue. Drop out mine eye-balls, and let envious fortune play at tennis with ‘em.” [What a line!] II.4.27

This charnel house affair probably takes off on the Romeo and Juliet charnel house scene.

[Finale]

We proceed to the furious finale which takes place in a Court of Law, Charlemont accused of murder. The hero (addressing the villain), “to show with what light respect I value death and thy insulting pride”, Leaps up the scaffold. Castabella leaps after him .