UNCONFORMITIES IN SHAKESPEARE'S EARLY COMEDIES

Transcription

1 UNCONFORMITIES IN SHAKESPEARE'S EARLY COMEDIES

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

3 UNCONFORMITIES IN SHAKESPEARE'S EARLY COMEDIES Kristian Smidt Emeritus Professor of English Literature University of Oslo M MACMILLAN

4 Kristian Smidt 1986 Softcover reprint of the hardcover I st edition All rights reserved. No reproduction, copy or transmission of this publication may be made without written permission. No paragraph of this publication may be reproduced. copied or transmitted save with written permission or in accordance with the provisions of the Copyright Act 1956 (as amended). Any person who does any unauthorised act in relation to this publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages. First published 1986 Published bv THE MACMILLAl'; PRESS LTD Houndmills, Basingstokc, Hampshire RG21 2XS and London Companies and representatives throughout the world British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data Smidt, Kristian Unconformities in Shakespeare's early comedies. I. Shakespeare, William-Comedies I. Title 822.3'3 PR2981 ISBN DOl / ISBN (ebook)

5 For Jon and Jofrid

6 Contents Preface IX Introduction 2 Comedy of Errors? 26 3 Friends and Lovers: The Two Gentlemen of Verona 39 4 A Kind of History: The Taming of the Shrew 59 5 Love's Labour's Lost or The Revenge of the Shrews 80 6 Doth the Moon Shine that Night?: A Midsummer Night's Dream Windsor Humours So May the Outward Shows... The Merchant of Venice In Conclusion 177 Notes 185 Bibliography 222 Index 228 vii

7 Preface The present book is a sequel to my study of Shakespeare's history plays, published in The word 'unconformities', as I explained there, is taken from geology and was apparently first used in a literary context by A. P. Rossiter, writing about Richard II. In the sense in which I use the term, unconformities are recognised chiefly by breaks in narrative continuity, contradictions as to cause and effect, impossible or incredible sequences of events, or unexplained and surprising changes in the characters portrayed. They also have to do with proportion and distribution of parts and functions and with the stability of thematic concerns. Sometimes they will be signalled by formal irregularities, such as meaningless repetitions or shifts in styles of speech and the patterns of verse and prose. But it has to be remembered that the experimental quality of Shakespeare's early writing makes for such a variety of forms and styles that it is dangerous to conclude too much concerning the larger movements of his imagination from merely formal discontinuities. The term I have adopted may evoke negative associations: failure to follow up apparent intentions, faults not only in a geological but also in an aesthetic sense. And often this is actually the implication. But not always or necessarily. In fact, unconformities may add a sense of depth, of urgency, of pressure, to an otherwise smooth unfolding of drama. It has been suggested to me by a friend that there may be an analogy with Bruckner's symphonies, in which abrupt closures and transitions are elements of composition consciously exploited. I can only agree with Wylie Sypher when he says that 'a great deal of misbegotten effort goes into studying the mechanism of events in Shakespeare's plays' and that 'the evil consequences of this inquiry become apparent when questions arise about the "motives" of characters, who are then used as instruments for sustaining the logic of plot'. It is also true, of course, that there are, as he says, 'illogicalities and discontinuities in the most IX

8 x Preface intense Shakespearean experience' (The Ethic of Time, 1976, p. 46). What Professor Sypher does not say, however, is that 'the most intense Shakespearean experience' when associated with characters who would seem incapable of sustaining it, or with events weakly related to it, may serve to raise those characters and events onto a higher level of poetic vision (Claudio in Measurefor Measure, discoursing on death, is a case in point). And if it fails to do so it may still remain the most intense Shakespearean experience but it will represent an access of inspiration on a different level from its context and hence exhibit symptoms of unconformity. Sypher actually admits such an unconformity when he declares, speaking of Richard III, that 'There is nothing in Clarence's nature to warrant his lyrical sea vision.' If, as Sypher says, 'some of the most penetrating incursions into human experience are in the mouths of persons ineligible to exhibit these experiences' (p. 47), we must either read the penetrating incursions in isolation from their context and forget for the moment whose mouths they are in, or else recognise one (or several) of three possible effects of the discrepancy: that the speaker, as I said above, is raised (at least momentarily) to the level of the inspired utterance; that the unexpectedness is itself functional in that it startles us into a fuller concentration on the utterance; or that the utterance would have been even more powerful and moving if it had been in conformity with the character of the speaker and the general context. Norman Rabkin thinks that in a great deal of modern Shakespeare criticism 'we have been betrayed by a bias toward what can be set out in rational argument'. This is probably true, but we cannot, and should not, refrain from rational argument. The important thing is that the rationalism should not be the be-all and the end-all of the argument, but that we should combine it with a 'negative capability' and a striving to see 'the creation of art and the response to it as quintessentially like life, characterized by process, tension, resistance, and an ineffable sense of integrity', to use Rabkin's words again. If we cannot do this, either the work we have considered is too seriously flawed for critical redemption or we have failed to appreciate it in its totality. There may occasionally in the past have been too much hypothesising about Shakespeare's forgetfulness, or his incomplete revision, or his collaboration with other authors, or his

9 Preface Xl fitful adaptation of borrowed material, and this may have contributed to bringing certain kinds of structural analysis into disrepute. Unconformities nevertheless need to be recognised and charted, because only then can the total achievement of the dramatist be seen for what it is. What I am ultimately seeking is not a totting-up of Shakespeare's inconsistencies, much less an account of his deficiencies; and it should go without saying that I am not looking for 'realism' or 'plausibility' as they relate to anything outside the imaginary world of the plays. What I do seek is a realistic understanding of Shakespeare's methods of composition, his use of received and self-invented material, and his success in utilising or surmounting the difficulties he inevitably ran into. Fortunately there is now a more favourable climate for this kind of investigation than only a few years ago. When I carried out a detailed analysis of the Quarto and Folio texts of Richard III in the sixties, I was struck by the large number of variant readings which could be due to Shakespeare's own attempts at alternative formulation or his revision of first-shot lines and passages. I concluded that many of the variants which had been seen as corruptions could in fact be authentically Shakespearean. I also suggested in an article on King Lear that both Lear and Richard III were quite possibly 'interesting examples of plays which exist in equally authentic variant editions'. Since then the work of such scholars as Ernst Honigmann, Gary Taylor, and Michael Warren has brought about an increasing awareness of what Honigmann has called the 'instability' of Shakespeare's text and even of the possibility of different authorial versions of a complete play. I am not in the present study particularly concerned with Quarto/Folio variants - apart from the problematic case of A Shrew and The Shrew they are only of sporadic interest in the early comedies. My concern is with the indications of revision or change in the internal economy of each play, whether (and this we usually cannot tell) the resulting incongruities descend from the original 'foul papers' or appeared at an intermediate stage between first composition and printing. But it all has to do, as has the work of the scholars I mentioned and many others, with the explorative nature of Shakespeare's imagination and his willingness to review and reconsider what he set down on paper. Of the still active resistance to suggestions of hesitation and inconsistency in his work I shall have more to say in my

10 XlI Preface introductory chapter. I hope to demonstrate that this resistance is largely unjustified. In dealing with what I just called the 'internal economy' of each play I am not assuming that Shakespeare necessarily wrote his plays in regular sequence from Act I, scene i, to the end. It is no doubt natural to suppose that the temporal stream of each play usually reflected the order of composition. But the author's mind must at all times have played back and forth between finished and projected parts and held them in a sequential pattern, and unconformities are unconformities whatever method of composition produced them. Nor, of course, am I assuming that the printed texts contain all we would like to know about Shakespeare's intentions with regard to staging and theatrical interpretation. Many problems would certainly be solved if he had amplified his directions or if we had received more than a few scattered remarks on contemporary performances. Some of the apparent unconformities in the texts would probably be revealed as merely apparent. But even theatrical tradition cannot reconstitute what was done at the Theatre, or the Curtain, or Gray's Inn, or Whitehall in the l590s. Later stage history would help to illuminate the interpretations that changing times, directors, and actors have found attractive, but to apply this information would necessitate a separate study. In any case each new production of a Shakespeare play is ideally a new start and is thrown back in principle on the earliest texts. These may be cut, adapted, rearranged, rewritten, modernised in various ways, often very exciting. The scholar would ignore the experience of the theatre at his peril. But in the final resort he/she must use the closest approximation we have to the original scripts and stage them in his or her mind. And if physical or personnel conditions of the theatre are to be brought in to decide on meaning, then it is those of the Elizabethan theatre, as far as we know them, that must be invoked. In all of this it is a reassuring thought that Shakespeare relied on his dialogue to convey most of the information we need and to communicate his finest intentions. The early comedies are no exception to this rule. I began a similar study with the histories because they form a closely interrelated group of plays, belonging, with the exception of Henry VIII, to Shakespeare's early years. The Henry VI plays are probably among the earliest he wrote. But many of the

11 Preface Xlll comedies, too, belong to this early phase, and in fact three of the histories (1-2 Henry IV and Henry V) might plausibly be classed as comedies. Whether or not the chronicle plays form a genre apart from tragedy and comedy - a question I discussed in my first book - they do present certain characteristics which are not equally evident in the comedies. External conflict and the general march of events are more important than private intrigue. And dependence on sources for historical accuracy (not always observed, of course) sometimes leads to abrupt transitions or entanglements, as in the motivation for rebellion in 1 Henry IVor the confused events of 3 Henry VI. Comedies are less dependent on sources in the sense that the playwright is much more at liberty to reshape his borrowed material. So in general there is less trace of struggle between invention and faithfulness to the records than we find in the histories. On the other hand, the complication of comic intrigue creates constant possibilities of slipping up on consistency. Unlike the history plays, Shakespeare's comedies are not closely linked in theme or strung out in a continuous sequence. There is no story line which can be pursued from one comedy to another, and the only one which has characters in common with other plays, The Merry Wives, associates itself with the histories. Thus apart from the relationship of The Merry Wives to Henry IV and Henry V, there is no problem of overspill. The comedies are all fresh starts, to a great extent experimental, with no systematic progression. They are inter-related in many ways but not necessarily in orderly fashion. What they chiefly have in common is a dominant comic mood, sometimes bordering on farce, sometimes tinged by more serious concerns, and a comic teleology; which means that they may legitimately exhibit surprises and incongruities as long as these are not unrelated to or in contradiction to the general assumptions of the play in question, or the progress of its action. It also means that we must not be too solemn about breaches of dramatic principles. But it does not mean that Shakespeare abandoned his artistic integrity or forgot all he had learned about models and rules of comedy. Nor does it make it useless to analyse the continuities of these plays for a better understanding of what their author was about. As I have said, I am not interested in 'faults' as such - and they may have little enough

12 XIV Preface effect on our overall judgments - but in what they reveal. And it is the unquestioned excellence of Shakespeare's work which is the starting-point for this investigation and the initial assumption which is offered in justification of it. I have brought my study of the comedies up to The Merchant of Venice, so as to include most of those written before the building of the Globe playhouse and Shakespeare's dismissal of the more obvious fairy-tale elements of plot such as those which still linger in the casket episodes of The Merchant. Some will say that A Midsummer Night's Dream and The Merchant represent peaks of Shakespeare's comic achievement. This, of course, is a matter of taste and judgment, and it is not in comic brilliance, necessarily, that the later plays differ from the early ones. But most of the later comedies were written by a more reflective poet. I shall hope to consider them in a later work. While pursuing a somewhat different aim, Raymond Powell in Shakespeare and the Critics' Debate, published in 1980, holds views very similar to mine and makes a number of points which will usefully supplement the contents of the pages that follow. I would particularly recommend his chapters on 'Literary Criticism and Shakespeare' and 'Love's Labour's Lost' and his section on The Merchant of Venice. My thanks go to the University of Oslo for granting me a term's leave of absence and to the Governing Body of Clare Hall, Cambridge, for a Visiting Fellowship which enabled me to complete this book in a most stimulating environment. I am particularly indebted to Professor John Margeson and Dr Robert Smallwood for their careful scrutiny of my complete typescript and for offering correction and pertinent advice which for the most part I have been glad to follow. To Mr Leo Salingar I am grateful not only for what I have quarried from his invaluable book Shakespeare and the Traditions of Comedy and for his friendly encouragement, but for reading and usefully commenting on my Introductory chapter. My thanks are also due to Dr Richard David and Dr Ruth Morse for the benefit of their views on other chapters. Needless to say, none of these scholars are responsible for the shortcomings that remain in my book, nor are they necessarily in agreement with my approach and arguments. Any study of this kind must inevitably be indebted to the late Professor Geoffrey Bullough's monumental work Narrative and

13 Preface xv Dramatic Sources of Shakespeare. The Arden edition of the comedies is the main source for references and quotations throughout. The chapters on Love's Labour's Lost and The Merchant of Venice are expanded and revised versions of essays previously published in English Studies (65.3, 1984) and Historical & Editorial Studies (Festschrift for Johan Gerritsen, Groningen, 1985) respectively.