University of Szeged Faculty of Arts Doctoral School of English and American Literatures and Cultures
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CB WSf University of Szeged Faculty of Arts Doctoral School of English and American Literatures and Cultures THE VICE-DEVICE: IAGO AND LEAR'S FOOL AS AGENTS OF REPRESENTATIONAL CRISIS PhD THESIS Submitted by Agnes MATUSKA Supervisor Dr. Attila KISS Szeged 2005 THE VICE-DEVICE: IAGO AND LEAR'S FOOL AS AGENTS OF REPRESENTATIONAL CRISIS INTRODUCTION 3 1. THEORETICAL BACKGROUND, METHODOLOGY 11 1. L THE QUESTION OF EPISTEMOLOGICAL CRISIS 12 1.2 DIALECTICAL TRAGEDY: EPISTEMIC CHANGE IN THEATRE 21 1.3 "IF ACODE IS CRUMBLING..." 25 1.4 REPRESENTATIONAL CRISIS IN SHAKESPEARE 28 2. HAPHAZARDLY AMBIDEXTROUS: THE VICE-FAMILY 35 2. L PROBLEMS OF DEFINITION 35 "YOU WILL LEARN TO PLAYE THE VICE": PROBLEMS OF INTERPRETATION 37 2.2 VICES 48 Merry Report 49 Ambidexter 52 Haphazard 56 Punisher or punished? 60 The Fool in the Vice 66 2.3. VICE-SUCCESSORS AND FOOLS 72 Intriguer villains 73 Sir John Falstaff: The Vice-Fool 77 The "corrupter of-words": Feste 81 Deceiver among deceivers: Parolles 85 Afterlife of post-vices and the common life of lago and the Fool 87 2.4. THE VICE-CLOWN ON THE SHAKESPEAREAN STAGE 91 3. METADRAMA 97 3. L METADRAMA AND THE VICE, A DEFINITION OF THE TERM 97 3.1.1 The Vice as mediator 97 3.1.2 Metadrama in Shakespeare-criticism 102 3.2 MEANING AS AN EVENT - IAGO AND METADRAMA IN OTHELLO 107 3.2.1 Commenting on drama, involving the audience 109 3.2.2 Iago's book of identity and role-playing 110 3.2.3 Plays -within - Iago as director 117 3.2.4 Representation as fiction 121 3.2.5 Iago's metadramatic effect—summary 122 3.3 METADRAMATIC ASPECTS OF THE FOOL 124 3.3.1 The Fool and his audience 125 3.3.2 "All thy other titles " 127 3.3.3 Plays of the fool -within and without. 130 3.3.4 "The mystery of things": Fiction as reality 132 3.3.5 Metadrama of the Fool-summary 135 3.4 METADRAMA: CONCLUSION 136 4. LAUGHTER AND COMEDY 142 4. L CARNIVAL AND SUBVERSION IN THE COMEDY OF THE VICE, IAGO AND THE FOOL 142 4.1.1 Elements of Vice-comeefy in Iago and the Fool. 142 4.1.2 Bakhtinian carnival laughter 143 4.1.3 Types of laughter in Medieval drama 144 4.1.4 Bakhtinian carnival and laughter in Shakespeare 151 4.2 THE COMEDY OF THE FOOL 155 4.2.1 Levelling 155 4.2.2 A pretty reason: the sense-nonsense game 158 4.2.3 Generating extra perspectives: the Fool's way of recontextualization 161 1 4.2.4 The Fool's final score 4.3 THE COMEDY OF IAGO 4.3.1 Iago's sense of humour dislodged. 4.3.2 Irony and the question of the absurd. 4.3.3 Decontextualisation 4.3.4 Iago's sense of humour - conclusion 4.4 TWO COMEDIANS: ALIKE, BUT DIFFERENT 4.4.1 The similarities between the comedy of Iago and the Fool 4.4.2 The difference in the comedy of Iago and the Fool 4.4.3 Iago as the missing fool 5 KING LEAR AND OTHELLO AS CONTEXTS OF PLAYING 5.1 MEANING AND IDENTITY IN KING LEAR 5.1.1 The king who stopped playing. The dance of Death and the Fool 5.1.2 "The tyranny of the open night": The end and beyond. 5.2 SOCIAL STRUCTURE AND MEANING IN OTHELLO 5.2.1 "Past thought!": Society and its "Others" 5.2.2 The denial of folly 5.3 MORAL CORRUPTION, AMORAL PRESENCE, OR AUTHENTICITY?. 5.4 "TARRY, TAKE THE FOOL WITH THEE": ON PROBLEMS WITH SHAKESPEARE, DERRIDEAN SPECTACLES AND THEATRE 5.4.1 Is language enough? 5.4.2 The Iconoclasts' Scourge CONCLUSION BIBLIOGRAPHY ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS God is, by definition, without dimension; it is permissible, however, for the clarity of our exposition, and though he possesses no dimensions, to endow him with any number of them greater than zero, if these dimensions vanish on both sides of our identities. We shall content ourselves with two dimensions so that these flat geometrical signs may easily be written down on a sheet of paper. Alfred Jarry: Exploits and Opinions of Doctor Faustroll Pataphysician Introduction This thesis is based on a comparison of two Shakespearean figures: the Fool of Lear and Iago from Othello. Regarding the number of the obvious differences between the Fool and Iago, a question may be raised as to the validity of such an undertaking. The characters clearly embody opposite poles of behaviour and even their function may be contrasted. It is enough just to think of the Fool who always utters the truth, while Iago is the great liar and deceiver. The Fool says things that are true but difficult to accept, while Iago tells credible lies. If we leave out the character of the Fool from the play (as he was indeed left out after Shakespeare had been ironed to fit the neoclassical taste) the play may still be called The Tragedy of King Lear, while Othello without Iago is just unimaginable. The Fool is not an intriguer, he does not have a direct effect on the events, he is rather a mere commentator, while Iago is the engine of the plot in his play. Still, in spite of all these differences, there are a number of generic, dramatic and functional similarities between them that I would like to expand. Apart from throwing light upon our ways of interpreting these two figures, my aim with such a comparison is to explore their common dramatic origin, the morality Vice figure, as well as other characters within the same generic group. In a wider context the comparison will also make it possible for us to gain new insights about the plays of the period and examine ideas that did not invite our attention because we did not have the necessary interpretative matrix for them. This matrix emerges by contextualising, on the one hand, the epistemological and representational crisis as it appeared in the culture of early modem England and, on the other hand, ideas of intellectual history and theatre history within poststructuralist theories of the sign, drama-semiotics and in general the new trends of re- reading the Shakespeare-corpus. The matrix that I use is a combination of several considerations: a historical, "archeological" approach in regarding the Vice as an inherently and uniquely complex root of the characters I examine; an understanding of Iago and the Fool as Vice-successors and thus as agents of involvement and interaction within the logic of the renaissance stage, focusing on their effect on the audience; an examination of the metadramatic consequences of such an involvement; as well as of theories on the epistemology and semiotics of renaissance plays and play-texts, with special emphasis on the problematisation of mimetic representation and meaning. Within this background the comparability of Iago and the Fool will gain its validity. A contextual outlook will also emerge, in which relevant statements can be made on other - in some sense similar - contemporary characters and their ancestors. During the analysis it will emerge, on the one hand, how a specific sense of humour typical of the Vice disappears from drama during its history, and on the other, why critics are reluctant to acknowledge this sense of humour retrospectively. An overarching idea of the examination is the Vice figure as a way to understand and analyze a crisis that I will term a representational crisis. Thus, I base my comparison of Iago and the Fool first of all specifically on their common dramatic origin in the Vice of the morality plays. I see them function similarly in their respective dramas: they are both outsiders to the networks of the other characters, both reflecting and criticising the social and the signifying systems they are set into, but first of all - and this is what I would like to 4 illustrate in my analysis - I see them both as agents of representational crisis, a crisis which concerns a disconnection between signs and their meaning, which is characterised by an experience that language is inappropriate for dealing with reality, as well as the questionability of reality itself - not only the impossibility of making meaning, but also the absence or emptiness of reality. I will position my argument within the critical discourse and explicate my main theoretical terms in my first chapter. This is where I will give a more detailed explanation of my understanding of the term "representational crisis," and of what I ultimately intend to discuss: the way it manifests itself uniquely in tragedy. Here I would like to reflect on the main assumptions and themes of my undertaking. Taking the Vice of the morality as a starting point for the comparison of Iago and Lear's Fool I see as fruitful and justified because in that character several traditions are merged, such as the fool figure of popular festivities, the devil character of the mystery plays, and even the seven deadly sins. The comic and evil Vice became a rather conventional type in the late moralities, and it went more or less out of fashion1 in Elizabethan drama, leaving its traits on a number of psychologically much more complex villain characters. In my view the two Shakespearean figures feature the original "components" of the morality Vice - the already heterogeneous prototypical figure - so that these seem to be separated again in such a way that the separation allows new forms and new characters to be bom, characters who employ modified dramatic functions as well.