UNCONFORMITIES IN SHAKESPEARE'S TRAGEDIES

Transcription

1 UNCONFORMITIES IN SHAKESPEARE'S TRAGEDIES

2 By the same author UNCONFORMITIES IN SHAKESPEARE'S IllSTORY PLAYS UNCONFORMITIES IN SHAKESPEARE'S EARLY COMEDIES INIURIOUS IMPOSTORS AND RICHARD III MEMORIAL TRANSMISSION AND QUARTO COPY IN RICHARD ill THE TRAGEDY OF KING RICHARD THE TlllRD: PARALLEL TEXTS (editor) POETRY AND BELIEF IN THE WORK OFT. S. ELIOT THE IMPORTANCE OF RECOGNITION: SIX CHAPTERS ON T.S.ELIOT JAMES JOYCE AND THE CULTIC USE OF FICTION KONSTFUGLEN OG NATTERGALEN: ESSAYS OM DIKTNING OG KRITIKK

3 UNCONFORMITIES IN SHAKESPEARE'S TRAGEDIES Kristian Smidt Emeritus Professor of English Literature University of Oslo Palgrave Macmillan

4 ISBN ISBN (ebook) DOI / Kristian Smidt, 1990 Soft cover reprint of the hardcover 1st edition All rights reserved. For information, write: Scholarly and Reference Division, StMartin's Press, Inc., 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, N.Y First published in the United States of America in 1990 ISBN Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Smidt, Kristian. Unconformities in Shakespeare's tragedies I Kristian Smidt p. em. Includes bibliographical references. ISBN Shakespeare, William, Tragedies. I. Title. PR2983.S '3-dc CIP

5 For Gerald Eades Bentley friend and mentor

6 Contents Preface IX Introduction 2 Lopped Limbs and Chopped Purposes 3 Star-Crossed and Stumbling 4 julius Caesar: the Making of a Diptych 5 The Mobled Queen and the Sweet Prince 6 Ironic Engagements 7 With Violent Pace 8 The Divided Kingdom 9 Double, Double, Toil and Trouble 10 I' the East My Pleasure Lies II Pride and Policy I2 Work in Progress: Timon of Athens I3 Conclusion Notes Bibliography Index I I 259 Vll

7 Preface This is the third 'unconformities' title in a series to be completed, it is hoped, with a study of Shakespeare's middle comedies and late romances, so as to cover the complete dramatic canon. The reception of the first two books, on the histories and early comedies respectively, has been sufficiently encouraging to keep me in business, though some reviewers persist in seeing my efforts as subversive and reductive. It seems I cannot overemphasise my wish to contribute to a better understanding of Shakespeare's immense genius by examining a too much neglected aspect of his works: the evidence they provide of an agile and powerful imagination feeling its way towards verbal realisations and dramatic developments not always or in every respect pre-planned, sometimes revising to introduce new matter or to cancel inconsistencies, but sometimes, too, disdaining or forgetting to make ideal adjustments. True enough, his manuscripts were subject to interference- or failure to interfere correctly- by actors, book-keepers, censors, reporters, scribes, editors and compositors, a fact which tends in some measure to obscure the marks of the author in problematic passages, usually those of local or minor importance in the plays. The spectre of collaboration has also been raised again by the authors of the imposing Oxford volume William Shakespeare: A Textual Companion (1987), following upon extensive computerised analysis of stylistic details. We may have to allow a little more room for Middleton, for instance, in the authorship of Macbeth and Timon of Athens than has hitherto been assigned to him. Nevertheless nothing has been suggested so far to make us doubt that Shakespeare was mainly responsible for both the general framework and the logical flow of the plays included in the 1623 Folio. And in any case, even definite proof of collaboration in a few scenes and passages would only provisionally affect my examination of the plays as textual artefacts. My focus is, of lx

8 X Preface course, on Shakespeare, but unconformities are unconformities however they came into being. Shakespeare may not himself have supervised the printing of any of his dramatic works, but the sheer abundance of material they present for comparative and structural studies makes it possible to follow his progress through the composition of the individual works in some detail and with a fair degree of confidence. And to see Shakespeare in the act of creation is to see his human limitations as well as his greatness and should make us all the more able to appreciate the ways in which he raises human achievement beyond a common range. To get this double perspective on his works is also an exciting experience, and I would not be sorry if some of the pleasurable sensations I have felt in my own explorations should have informed my presentation. My concern, then, is with particular features of Shakespeare's dramatic craft, and if I pay relatively little attention to other aspects of his work it is not because I underestimate their importance. It is not my present aim to expound the complexities or expatiate on the marvels of Shakespeare's plays except in so far as interpretation and evaluation are prerequisites for an understanding of the guiding visions and the creative processes reflected in the internal economy of each separate play. I do not attempt a new hermeneutic approach to them or a comprehensive view of their constitution. My concern is with unity and coherence in the various aspects and elements of the plays and with the plays as dramatic structures. The justification for this kind of study must be that a certain amount offootwork is necessary if the details that go to make up general impressions are to be closely observed and the foundations laid for more advanced judgements. And no doubt in the past there has been a certain unwillingness to consider the problematic features of the play texts-apart, of course, from obvious cruxes and accidental errors. There is fortunately at present a growing understanding of the need to recognise the experimental attitude that was part of Shakespeare's genius as a writer. The word 'unconformities' as used in the title of this book may seem a little uncouth, but it was originally chosen because of its purely factual connotations, as indicating by geological analogy the kind of breaks in continuity that are occasionally found in the

9 Preface xi development of plot, or character, or in other elements of a play. I now seem to be stuck with the word, but there is an advantage in that anyone acquainted with my previous books will recognise its intended neutrality with regard to value-judgements. Unconformities are not necessarily faults in the usual sense. The history plays dealt with in my first volume are some of them tragedies: 2-3 Henry VI, Richard III, Richard II, and, more questionably, King John. Some of the plays classified in the First Folio as tragedies are also historical, notably Julius Caesar, Antorry and Cleopatra, and Coriolanus, while Hamlet, Lear, and, with more reason, Macbeth were probably thought of as being founded in history. There is no definite distinction of genre. But the tragedies considered in the present volume are not only primarily tragical (some throughout, one or two chiefly by virtue of their endings): they also include Shakespeare's most towering achievements in dramatic art. It is all the more important that the limited aims of my investigation should be kept in mind. I am very sensible that I have had to work mainly with the texts of the plays. I have tried not to forget, however, that the texts, though written by a poet whose inspiration may have been impatient of control and who may well have wished them to be read by friends and patrons, were primarily intended for use in the theatre. The recent appearance of David Wiles's Shakespeare's Clown ( 1987) has forcibly reminded us of this fact. Wiles insists, moreover, on Shakespeare's responsibility for creating suitable parts for the various actors who were his peers in the acting company for which he worked. One of the foremost Shakespeare scholars of our time, G. E. Bentley, says in The Profession of Dramatist in Shakespeare's Time (1971): Dazzled by the genius of Shakespeare, scholars have inevitably concentrated on explications of his poetic achievements or on the misadventures of his creations in the printing houses. Both are rewarding and necessary; but, except for the often brash and generally discredited analyses of the disintegrators, most studies tend to take Shakespeare's plays out of the theatre for which they were created and to analyze them in the milieu of the lyric and philosophical poet and not in the milieu of the hard-working professional playwright devoted to the enterprise of the most successful and profitable London acting company of the time- or perhaps of any time. (p.260)

10 xii Preface It was demonstrably the requirements or wishes of the theatre which induced a number of the visions and revisions which disturbed the even flow of the poet's work, and I shall have frequent occasion to examine such disturbances. But, original adaptations apart, I am also aware that the actual performance of a play may change the spectator's impression of its quality, even of its very nature. Dr Robert Smallwood, of the University ofbirmingham's Shakespeare Institute at Stratford-upon-Avon, who, as a regular theatre-goer, has had a great deal of experience of Shakespeare productions and who has read my book in typescript, has drawn my attention to a number of places where he feels I ignore the theatrical potentials of passages and scenes. And in the case of Titus Andronicus, he suggests that my critical view of the whole play would have been basically changed if I had witnessed Deborah Warner's production for the RSC which had such spectacular success in Stratford in 1987 and at the Barbican in I can only regret that I was unable to see this production, and I am willing to allow that seeing it might have made a certain difference to my general attitude to Titus Andronicus. There are also such more specific problems as the double announcement of Portia's death in Julius Caesar or the strangely altered Prince of Denmark who appears in the last act of Hamlet, where in Smallwood's experience heightened moments can be created in the theatre without violence to the text. In such and similar cases I must beg the indulgence of the reader whose most immediate reference is to the stage and ask her/him to consider that the art of the director and the art of the actor are supplementary as well as complementary to that of the playwright and to some extent independent of it. Theatrical interpretations may vindicate passages and scenes which seem problematic in reading, because they add a live human presence which will tend to bridge gaps and conceal inconsistencies. But they are also creative and will in various degrees by means of staging and setting, lighting and sound effects, add significances not supplied by the text. And a full dimension can be added to characters such as Lear's Fool, who in the text of the play hardly comes over as a person with a life of his own, but who can be interpreted in a variety of three-dimensional ways on the stage, as most of us will have observed. A fortunate combination of theatre talents can no doubt turn an uneven play into an impressive event, and a good actor may

11 Preface xiii invigorate an indifferent part. But all this is a little beside the point if what we are considering is the text with which the director and actor are initially faced. As readers they cannot help becoming aware of gaps, redundancies and inconsistencies which they will have to tackle in the theatre by expedients proper to their own art. One may ask, too, whether, if a shakily composed play like Titus Andronicus can make good theatre, a better play might not make even better theatre. In any case, the texts of Shakespeare's plays as printed up to 1623 are the now unalterable documents for as near as we can get to an immediate acquaintance with the shaping imagination of the playwright, and directors as well as editors and readers must come to terms with them. It is on this premise and in the hope of getting a step or two nearer an ideal reading of the plays as the author may have ultimately wished them to be read that I have undertaken an analysis of some of the problems of cohesion and coherence attending their composition. I have followed in the main the usually accepted chronological order of the plays, and ifl start inauspiciously with Titus Andronicus, I can only hope my procedure will justify itself in the course of further demonstrations. Smallwood has suggested that the last chapter, on Timon of Athens, focuses the issues I am concerned with and shows the relevance of my method more clearly than any of the foregoing chapters, so that it might have been an advantage to place it by way of introduction at the beginning of the book. On the other hand, its position at the end may serve to dispel residual scepticism, and I have left it there. One can always read it first. As will now be apparent I have a great debt of gratitude to Robert Smallwood, whose careful perusal of my draft and perceptive comments have not only saved me from a number of infelicitous statements and stylistic errors, but who has alerted me to the need for the kind of caveat with regard to theatrical interpretations which I have touched on above. Any remaining faults are entirely my own responsibility. The chapter on Titus Andronicus has previously appeared in Multiple Worlds, Multiple Words I Essays in Honour of Irene Simon {University of Liege, 1987), and that on Hamlet in a shorter and somewhat different version in the Norwegian literary periodical Edda, April I am grateful to the respective editors and publishers for permission to reprint. I also acknowledge

12 xiv Preface the permission of author and editor to quote a relatively long passage from Ned B. Allen's essay 'The Two Parts of "Othello" ', published in Shakespeare Survey, 21 (1968). The new Arden Shakespeare has been used for modernised Shakespeare quotations and line references throughout.