THE AGE OF SHAKESPEARE: DRAMA WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE (1564-1616)

William Shakespeare's Life
"William Shakespeare was born on or about the 23rd April, 1564, at Stratford-on-Avon, Warwickshire. He was the son of a prosperous tradesman of the town, who a little later became its High Bailiff or Mayor. Though there is no actual record of the fact, it is practically certain that, like other Stratford boys of his class, he went to the local Grammar School, an excellent institution of kind, where he was taught Latin and Arithmetic. Financial misfortunes presently overtook his father, and when he was about fourteen, he was taken from school that he might help the family by earning money on his own account. Of the nature of his employment, however, we know nothing. In his 19th year he married Anne Hathaway, a woman eight years his senior, the daughter of a well-to-do yeoman of the neighbouring village of Shottery. This marriage was hasty and ill-advised and appears to have been unhappy. Three children were born to him : Susannah, and the twins, Judith and Hamnet. Tradition says that meanwhile he fell into bad company, and that a deer-stealing escaped in the woods of Charlecote Hall obliged him to fly from home. There may or may not be truth in this story—we cannot tell. It is certain that a few years after his marriage—roughly, about 1587—he left his name town to seek his fortunes in London. At this time the drama was gaining rapidly in popularity through the work of the University Wits. Shakespeare soon turned to the stage, and became first an actor, and then (though without ceasing to be an actor) a playwright. An ill natured reference to him in a pamphlet written by Greene on his death-bed, shows that in 1592 he was well known as a successful author. He remained in London upwards of twenty years after this, working hard, producing on an average a couple of plays a year, and growing steadily in fame and wealth. He became a shareholder in two of the leading theatres of the time, the Globe and the Black friars, and purchased property in Stratford and London. But the years which brought prosperity also brought domestic sorrows. His only son died in 1596; his father in 1601 ; his younger brother Edmund, also an actor, in 1607 ; his mother in 1608 Then between 1610 and 1612 he retired to Stratford, where he had bought a house—the largest in the town—known as New Place. His elder daughter had already (1607) married Dr. John Hall, who was later celebrated as a physician, on February 10, 1616, Judith became the wife of Thomas Quincey, whose father had been one of the poet's closest friends. By this time Shakespeare's health had broken down completely and he died on 23rd April of that year.”
His Work
The period of Shakespeare's liteary activity, which spans twenty-four years (1588-1612) is divided into the following four sub-periods:
(i) The First Period (1588-96): It is a period of early experimentation. In this period Shakespeare first retouched and revised Titus Andronicus and the First Part of Henry V/. Love's Labour Lost (1589-90) is the first of his original plays. It is a social extravaganza. It was followed by The, Comedy of Errors (1592), a rollicking farce, The Two Gentlemen of Verona (1591), a sentimental romance, and A Midsummer Night's Dream (1594-95), a fantastic romance.
Shakespeare's first love tragedy, Romeo and Juliet (1592) is rich in youthful imagination but lacks in the grandeur and breadth of later tragedies. He was also influenced by the patriotic feeling represented in Marlowe and Peele, and under this influence he began his great series of historical plays with Richard II and Richard III. His first period came to an end with King John about 1596.
Shakespeare's early verse—The Rape of Lucrece and Venus and Adonis — also belong to this period.
Shakespeare's early dramatic work is markedly immature. It has little depth of thought or characterisation. The blank verse is stiff and rime is prominent in the dialogue. However, these plays bear the mark of genius that came to full flowering in the subsequent periods.
(ii) The Second Period (1596-1600): It is a period of rapid growth and development. Shakespeare wrote his great comedies and chronical plays during this period. The works of this period are The Merchant of Venice in which Shakespeare attained entire mastery over his art, The Taming of the Shrew, a pure comedy full of wit, The Merry Wives of Windsor, another fine comedy, a trio of famous love comedies —Much Ado About Nothing, As You Like It and The ,Twelfth Night; Henry IV, Parts I and II, and Henry V, the two historical plays. All these plays show more careful and artistic work, better plots, greater knowledge of the world and the human nature, greater freedom and flexibility in blank verse, and deeper and more penetrating knowledge of human character and humour.
(iii) The Third Period (1601-08): It is a period of Shakespeare's supreme masterpieces, a time characterised by the full maturity of his dramatic talent, and by gloom and depression. The gloom and sadness which pervade this period are attributed to "some personal experience, coupled with the political misfortunes of his friends, Essex and Southampton". Shakespeare is preoccupied with the darker side of human experience. It is a period of great tragedies-Hamlet, Macbeth, King Lear, Othello and Julius Ceasar, and of bitter and sombre comedies —All's Well That Ends Well, Measure For Measure and Troilus and Cressida. Stopford A. Brooke writes about this period: "The darker sins of men; the unpitying fate which slowly gathers round and falls on mistakes and crimes, on ambition, luxury, and pride; the avenging wrath of conscience, the cruelty and punishment of weakness; the treachery, lust, jealousy, ingratitude, madness of men, the follies of the great and the fickleness of the mob, are all, with a thousand other varying moods and passions, painted, and felt as his own while he painted them, during this stern time."
(iv) The Fourth Period (1608-1613): Shakespeare's last period opens with Antony and Cleopatra, a love tragedy which shows weaker dramatic grip than its immediate predecessors. Coriolanus, Timon of Athens, Henry VIII and Pericles were also written during this period.
What distinguishes Shakespeare's last period is the reawakening of his first love romance in Cymbeline, The Tempest and The Winter's Tale. These three plays known as the dramatic romances are full of "the gentle and loving calm of one who has known sin and sorrow and fate, but has risen above them into peaceful victory". Hudson writes: "In these last plays the groundwork is still furnished by tragic passion, but the evil is no longer permitted to have its way, but is controlled and conquered by the good. A very tender and gracious tone prevails in them throughout. At the same time they show very fully the decline of Shakespeare's dramatic power. They are often careless in construction and unsatisfactory in characterisation, while in style and versification they will not bear comparison with the work of the preceding ten years."
Shakespearean Comedy
Shakespeare, the crown of English dramatists, was the first to write romantic comedies in English drama. His comedies are classified into the following three categories:
(i) The Early Comedies: They are The Comedy of Errors, Love's Labour Lost and The Two Gentlemen of Verona. These plays show signs of immaturity, the plots are less original, the characters are less finished and the style is also less vigorous. They are full of humour and funs, but the humour lacks the wide human sympathy of his mature comedies.
(ii) The Mature Comedies: Shakespeare's comic genius finds finest expression in Much Ado About Nothing Twelfth Night, The Merchant of Venice and As You Like It. These plays are full of love and romance, vigour and vitality, versatility of humour, humanity and well-developed characters.
(iii) The Sombre Tragedies: All's Well That Ends Well, Measure For Measure and Troilus and Cressida belong to the period of great tragedies. So, these comedies have a sombre and tragic tone. Edward Albert writes: "They reflect a cynical,-disillusioned attitude to life, and a fondness for objectionable characters and situations. In them Shakespeare displays a savage desire to expose the falsity of romance and to show the sordid reality of life."
Characteristics of Shakespearean Comedy
Shakespearean comedy is preeminently romantic. In writing his comedies Shakespeare was obviously influenced deeply by Peele, Greene and Lyly. Love's Labour Lost shows the influence of Lyly, Rosalind is the child of Greene's imagination as well as of Shakespeare's. The blank verse of these comedies reechoes melodies already devised by his university predecessors and contemporaries. The main characteristics of Shakespearean comedy are given below:
(i) Romantic Element: Shakespearean comedy is romantic. The classical unities of time, place and action are not observed in it. Nicoll says: "All these comedies are bound together by a common bond of romantic treatment. Characters and scenes alike are viewed through magic casements which transform reality." The settings are all imagi­native. The action takes place in some remote, far-off land, and not in the familiar English surroundings. Shakespeare transports his readers and audiences on the viewless wings of poesy to an unhistorical France, pastoral surroundings of the forest of Arden, to the enchanted shores of Illyria, to Messina, to ancient Venice or to an ancient forest in Greece. According to Raleigh the Shakespearean comedy is a "rainbow world of love in idleness". In these romantic and pastoral surroundings the inhabitants spend their time in love making.
(ii) Romance and Realism: What distinguishes Shakespearean comedy is the fine and artistic blending of romance and realism. All his comedies are related to real life. There are contemporary figures and contemporary fashions in Love's Labour Lost. Bottom and his companions exist with fairies; Sir Toby Belch and Sir Andrew are companions of Viola and Olivia; Dogberry and Verges of Hero and Beatrice. The union of realism and fantasy is the cardinal characteristic of Shakespearean comedy. The secret of Shakespeare's deft and artistic juxtaposition of such conflicting characters lies, in the words of Nicoll, "in that particular form of humour which dominates these plays as well as more riotously comic Henry IV. This humour, a union of intellect and emotion, irradiates both the characters and scenes, making romantic the ordinary things of life and making realistic the most imaginative and improbable characters and events. Through it the Forest of Arden becomes for us as actual as Epping Forest; through it Bottom is seen revealed in a halo of imagination which makes him a fit companion for the delicte fairy queen". Nor are his comedies all laughter; being true to life, they are full of mirth in funeral and dirge and in marriage.
Shakespeare's characters are real. His dramatic personages are ordinary human beings, and incidents are such as occur in common every­day life. The romantic main plot and the realistic subplot are harmoniously put together in As You Like It, Twelfth Night and A Midsummer Night's Dream. Charlton writes: "Shakespearean comedies are not satiric, they are poetic. They are not conservative, they are creative."
(iii) Love in Shakespearean Comedy: Romantic comedy is mainly a comedy of love ending with the ringing of the marriage bells. Wooing distinguishes it from classical or Roman comedy. "Shakespeare and his fellows were Romantic in the strict sense that they clamoured for fuller draughts of the spirit of Romanticism. As Roman comedy concerns itself with sexual appetite rather than with love, it is necessarily far less limitedly occupied with young men and girls than is romantic comedy. The Latin type is realistic, earthy, Shakespeare's poetic, sentimental, romantic. Plautus is full of sex, Shakespeare is full of love. Plautus weaves plots of cunning intrigues, Shakespeare chooses cunning talks of wooers and their wooing."
The entire atmosphere in Shakespearean comedy is surcharged with love. Not only are the hero and heoine in love, but all are in love. The play ends not with the celebration of one marriage but with many marriages. The hero and the heroine fall in love at first sight, as Bassanio and Portia, Orlando and Rosalind, Beatrice and Benedick, Viola and the Duke.
Shakespeare has vividly exhibited varied manifestations of love in his comedies. In As You Like It he has described the love at first sight between Orlando and Rosalind, thoughtful love between Celia and Oliver, pastoral love between Silvius and Phebe, Touchstone and Audrey. The sentimental love of Duke Orsino for Olivia, who does not love him, and the foolish fascination of Malvoho for Olivia are presented in Twelfth Night.
Love in Shakespearean comedy is a test by which weaker mortals reveal their weakness, grosser ones their grossness, and foolish ones their folly. It is Rosalind who reprieves the poor Shepherd Silvius for following Phebe like foggy South puffing with wind and rain:
it is such fools as you
That make the world full of ill-favoured children.
True love in Shakespearean comedy ennobles mankind. Rosalind, Viola and, to a less extent, Beatrice, are Shakespeare's images of the best way of love. "They, and in whom they insprie love, are Shakespeare's representation of the office of love to lift mankind to a richer life." The men and women who love truly have become superb' representations of human nature. True love is spiritual. It is a union of minds and hearts.
His Heroines. The characters of a Shakespearean comedy are kindly, light-hearted and humorous. They are lovable creatures, who win our sympathies so that we share their joys and sorrows and wish them all success. The women specially are winning and charming. They dominate the action and are always in the front. An array of glittering heroines, bright beautiful and witty, enlivens the world of the comedy of Shakespeare. The remark of Ruskin, "Shakespeare has only heroines and no 'zeroes" is certain­ly true of his comedies. In this connection Gordon writes: "All lectures on Shakespeare's comedies tend to become lectures of Shakespeare's women, for in the comedies they have the front of the stage".
The world of a Shakespearean comedy is world made safe for women, a world in which a girl may be happy and come to full flowering, in which the masculine element drops its voice. "It is woman, woman all the time". She wins and puts the man in the right place; no more charming, witty, rebellious and level-headed young women ever danced on the stage. Raleigh is all praises for these brilliant heroines of Shakespeare: "They are the sunlight of the plays, obscured at times by clouds and storms of melancholy and misdoing, but never subdued or defeated". They are the spirits of happiness. From Cleopatra to Miranda, he is equally at home. He has the whole range of feminity at his command. His young men may be fine and handsome, but when any real business has got to be done, it is always the woman who does it.
The Popularity of His Comedies. Shakespearean comedy has been loved and enjoyed in every age and country. Its charm is as fresh as ever even-to-day. Its sunny atmosphere, its idyllic nature, its spirit of kindliness, its humanity etc., have all combined to endear it to all his readers.
(iv) Disguise: The use of the dramatic device of disguise is common in all the comedies of Shakespeare. In The Two Gentlemen of Verona, Julia, disguised as a boy, is employed by the man she loves, as Viola is employed by Orsino. In The Merchant of Venice, Jessica disguises herself in "the lovely garnish of a boy" and Portia and Nerissa likewise don masculine attire. In Much Ado About Nothing, apart from the masked ball, Margaret poses as hero and Hero poses as her cousin. In As You Like It Rosalind and Celia become Ganymede and Aliena. In All's Well That Ends Well Helena passes herself off in bed as Diana and in Measure For Measure Marrana takes Isabella's place.
For women to disguise themselves as boys may have been suggested by the fact that there were no actresses on the Elizabethan stage. In disguise the boy actors could easily and naturally play female roles. Secondly, the disguise enabled Shakespeare to symbolise one of his favourite themes, the contrast between appearance and reality.
(v) Humour: Humour is the soul of Shakespearean comedy. It arouses thoughtful laughter. It is full of sympathetic, kindly and humane laughter. The French drew their laughter from situations, the English, at their best, from its characters. Shakespeare's comic characters, Falstaff and his fellow men illustrate this spirit of joy and joviality. He can laugh at human follies, faults and failings, but such laughter is by no means heartless, callous or cynical. Shakespeare's comic muse is good-natured and magnanimous. His wit lacks malice and his mockery has no bite. Brilliant wit mingles with kindly mirth and genial humour. Wit comes from the head, humour from the heart. Shakespeare's wit while it ranges from word play to wisdom, is not only astounding, it is also healthy and joyous; it may dazzle but it may not blind, it may sharpen but it never wounds.
Shakespeare's humour is many sided. He can employ different kinds of humour with equal ease and equal command. He can arouse laughter from the mumblings of a drunkard and the intelligent repartees of the leading women. The alert wit and bright good sense of a Rosalind arouse exquisite pleasure. His all pervasive spirit of mirth gains much from the presence of the Fool. Bottom and his companions, Feste, Sir Andrew, Sir Tohy, Touchstone, Dogberry, Verges and Falstaff are memorable fools in Shakespearean comedy, who not only create humour and laughter, but they also interlink the main and the subplots, and provide a running commentary on character and action. Nicoll writes that this "quality of humour is seen nowhere more plainly than in the character of Falstaff-- The delineation of Falstaff reveals well the peculiar sympathy which is inherent in this mood of humour. Falstaff is a braggard, perhaps a coward, certainly a disreputable old sinner, yet there is hardly anyone who does not feel for him and sympathise with him. If we regard him in the cold light of reason we are bound to shun and to condemn him, but no audience ever could regard Falstaff in the cold light of reason because of the intangible sympathy which Shakespeare has transferred into his pages. The humour of the man is so broad; he, like the characters of purely romantic comedies, can laugh not only at others, but at himself. His intellect is so acute, his sense of fun so highly developed, that we cannot but take him to our hearts. It is the fact that Shakespeare has presented Falstaff in The Merry Wives of Windsor without this humour which makes the majority of readers feel that the latter is an inmeasurably weaker and less interesting play."
(vi) Blending of the Comic and the Tragic Elements: Shakespearean comedy differs from the classical comedy in the sense that in it the comic and the tragic elements are commingled. However, the tragic note does not dominate and the play ends on a note of joy. For example, The Merchant of Venice is pervaded by the tragic element from the signing of the bond to the end of the trial scene. Ultimately the play ends happily, as Antonio, whose life has been threatened by Shylock, feels happy at heart as his life has been saved.
(vii) Music and Song: Since "music is the food of love," Shakespearean comedy is intensely full of music and songs. Twelfth Night opens with a note of music which strikes the keynote of the play. Several exquisite and romantic songs are scattered all over A Midsummer Night's Dream, Twelfth Night, As You Like It, Much Ado About Nothing etc.
(viii) The Holed Fortune in Shakespearean Comedy: "The course of true love never runs smooth." The path of true lovers is beset with difficulties. Misunderstandings take place. Lovers have to face the hostilities of parents, friends, or relatives; and consequently, there are much tears and sighs, before the final union takes place. But all these complications and difficulties are unexpectedly removed by the benign power of Fortune. As in the Tragedies, so in the Comedies, Fate takes a human hand in the action. Raleigh says; "Fate, in the realm of comedy, appears in the milder and more capricious character of Fortune, whose wheel turns again and again, and vindicates the merry heart." Dowden remarks that this Fortune of the comedies or circumstance or the mirthful God, is a kindly and sympathetic being who only enjoys a bit of fun, like Puck or Ariel, at the expense of poor mortals, but is never unfavourable to them.
(ix) Message of Shakespearean Comedy: Shakespearean comedy radiates the spirit of humanity and broad vision of life. It is large-hearted in its conception, sympathetic in its tone and humanitarian in its idealism. Shakespeare's comedies "do not seem to succeed by reorganising our responses to life, but by helping us to a richer experience The richness may derive from the width of Shakespeare's vision, the liveliness and familiarity from his power to represent human nature; the whole seems to enhance our experience of life." It is useless to read a philosophy in Shakespearean comedy. He neither preaches, nor teaches; he only illuminates. He enriches our experiences of life. Shakespeare is a good observer of good and evil, making no judgement and proposing no reform. His comedies exhibit his vision of life, which is "to show virtue her own face, scorn her image".
1. The Theme of the Tragedies. The theme of a Shakespearean tragedy is the struggle between Good and evil, resulting in serious convulsion and disturbances, sorrows, sufferings and deaths. Says Dowden. "Tradedy as conceived by Shakespeare is concerned with ruin or restoration of the soul and of the life of man. In other words, its subject is the stntxle of Good and Evil in the world." It depicts men and women strnggling with Evil, often succumbing to it, and brought to death by it. Through their heroic struggle we realise the immense spiritual potentiality of man. It is for this reason that Charlton calls Shakespearean tragedy "the apotheosis (or glorification) of the soul of man." It is also for this reason that it never leaves behind a depressing effect. It soothes, consoles and strenghtens.
The Melodramatic Element. Before we proceed further with the consideration of the different characteristics of his tragedies, it would be well to remember that our dramatist wrote for the stage and not for our arm- chair reading. He strove to depict "themes essentially stirring and often melodramatic, and that his primal thought was dramatic effectiveness" (A Nicol). In his tragedies, he presents a rich series of excitements that is likely to rouse the most apathetic audience. The themes of all the four great tragedies are sensational. For example, Macbeth has its witches, its ghosts and apparitions, its murder in a darkened castle, its drunken tipsy porter, and its thrilling sight; of Lady Macbeth walking in her sleep. In Hamlet, we have the ghost and the grave-diggers, and in Othello night alarms and sword-fights. But every one of his tragedies is an expression of some human passion or failing and its disastrous consequences. Any discussion of his tragic vision must be primarily concerned with this inner or higher tragedy, which is the soul or essence, and not with the external framework of sensationalism.
The Tragic Hero. Shakespearean tragedy is pre-eminently the story of one person, 'The hero's or at most of two, the hero and the heroine. It is only in the love tragedies, Rwrzeo and Juliet and Antony and Clepatra, that the heroine is as much the centre of action as the hero. There are, no doubt, a number of other persons, but the attention is concentrated on the main figure. A typical Shakespearean tragedy is single star. The story leads unto and includes the death of the hero—at the end the stage is often litered with corpses. "It is essentially a tale of suffering and calamity conducting to death" (Bradley).
A Conspicuous Person. The tragic heroes are all conspicuous per­sons who "stand in a high degree." They are either kings or princes, or great military generals indispensable for the state. Thus Hamlet is a prince, Lear is a king, Macbeth belongs to the royal family, and is a trusted kinsman and general, and Othello is a great warrior and brave general. These exalted personages suffer greatly; their suffering and calamity is exceptional. Their suffering is contrasted with their previous happiness. The hero is such an important personality that his fall effects the welfare of a whole nation or empire, and when he falls suddenly from the height of earthly greatness to the dust, his fall produces a sense of the powerlessness of man and the omnipotence of Fate. This is one of the ways in which the playwright introduces an element of universality in his tragedies.
An Exceptional Person—Tragic Flaw. The tragic hero is not only a person of high degree, he also has an exceptional nature. He is built on a grand scale. He has some passion or obsession which attains in him a terrible force. He has a marked one sidedness, a strong tendency to act in a particular way. They are all driven in some one direction by some peculiar interest, object, passion, or habit of mind. Bradley refers to this trait as the tragic flaw. Thus Macbeth has "vaulting ambition", Hamlet "nobel inaction", Othello credulity and rashness in action, and Lear the folly and fondness of old age. Owing to the fault or flaw of his character, the tragic hero falls from greatness, He errs, and his error joining with other causes brings on him ruin. In other words, his character issues in action, or action issues out of his character It is in this sense that "character is destiny" is true of a Shakespearean tragedy. The character of the hero is responsible for his actions; and from this point of view they appear to be instruments shaping their own destiny.
2. Tragic Waste: In Shakespearean tragedy we find the element of tragic waste. All the exceptional qualities of the protagonists are wasted. At the end of the tragedy, the Evil does not triumph; it is expelled but at the cost of much that is good and wholly admirable. The fall of Macbeth does not only mean the death of evil in him, but also the waste of much that is essentially good and noble. It is for the welfare of society that Iago be punished, but it also leads to the ruin of good represented by Othello and Desdemona. In Hamlet and King Lear the good is also destroyed along with the evil. There is no tragedy in the expulsion of evil; the tragedy is that it involves the waste of good.
Some Complicating Factors
As a matter of fact, the actions issuing from the character of the hero are complicated by the following three additional factors:
(a) Some abnormal condition of mind as insanity, somnambulism, or excitable imagination resulting in hallucinations. Thus King Lear suffers from insanity, Macbeth has hallucinations, and Lady Macbeth walks in her sleep.
(b) The supernatural, ghosts and witches. The supernatural element is not a mere illusion of the hero. The witches in Macbeth and the ghost in Hamlet have an objective existence as they are seen by others also. Further, the supernatural does contribute to the action, and is often an indispen­sable part of it. But it is always placed in closest relation with character. It gives a confirmation and distinct form to the inner workings of the hero's mind. But it is merely suggestive; the hero is quite free to accept the suggestion or to reject it. The hero follows its suggestion because it 'squares with the evil within his own bosom. It is in this way that the supernatural hestens the downfall of the hero.
(c) Chance or accident. In most of the tragedies chance plays a prominent part, as it does in life itself. Such chance happenings always work against the hero and quicken his downfall. Macbeth is the only tragedy of Shakespeare from which chance events are conspicuously absent. The dramatist makes only a sparing use of such accidents, for any large admis­sion of it would weaken the causal connection between character and action, and so spoil the tragic effect. It is for this reason that accidents occur only when the action is well advanced and the impression of the casual sequence is too firmly fixed to be impaired.
The Conflict-Internal Internal and External. The action of a Shakespearean tragedy always develops through conflict. This conflict is both external and internal. It may be between two persons, or groups of persons, representing opposing interests. The hero is one of the two persons, or belongs to one of the two groups. This is the external conflict. There may also be an internal struggle in the mind of the hero between two opposite ideas or interests which pull him in different directions so that the hero, torn and divided within himself, suffers the agonies of hell. As the dramatist's art matured, the conflict became more and more internalised. In this way, the soul of the hero is laid bare before us. This spectacle of suffering is terrible and heart-rending, and arouses the emotions of pity and terror—the two tragic emotions according to Aristotle. A Shakespearean tragedy is truly Kathartic, i.e., it purges the readers of the emotions of self pity and terror.
The Calm and Serenity in the End. It may also be noted at this place that, though the tragic hero cannot be saved from ultimate doom, he is granted just before the end a glimpse of what might have been, a conversion in outlook which enables him to die with a sane and cleansed mind. "A true conception of their own actions, painful as that may be, sheds light into their soul." They form a fresh attitude towards life which banishes a part of the evil in their beings. Macbeth, villian though he maybe, realises a new beauty in existence, when he thinks of all that might have been—the friends, the esteem and the sincerity which by his own actions he has lost. Othello regains some of his former nobility and dignity just before the end. A sort of calm descends on the tragic hero right in the manner of the greatest Greek tragedies. It is owing to this serenity at the end that the readers are never left crushed or pessimistic, despite the tremendous waste involved.
The Ultimate Power in the Tragic Universe. For the one definite and clear impression which a Shakespearean tragedy creates is that in­dividuals, however great they may be, are not the makers of their destiny. We constantly feel that there is some ultimate power working through the tragic hero, influencing him from within and without, making him act in a particular manner, and driving him to his doom. Shakespeare never defines this power exactly and cleary, and this intensifies the impression of some fearful mystery surrounding human life, produced by his tragedies.
Its Moral Nature. But one thing Shakespeare makes quite clear— that this order or ultimate power is moral. It is just. Its justice may be terrible, but still our sense of justice is always satisfied. Of course, there is no Poetic Justice in a Shakespearean tragedy. Poetic Justice means that prosperity and adversity are distributed in proportion to the merits of the agents. The tragic heroes suffer more, infinitely more, than is merited or deserved by their faults. The good and the virtuous are often ruined and they do not get that prosperity which they fully deserve. Lear and Othello suffer terribly out of all proportion to their faults; and Desdemona and Cordelia are wholly good. "Poetic Justice" is not a fact of life and so Shakespeare, the realist, does not introduce it in his tragedies.
Its Sense of Justice. The ultimate power is just and moral in the sense that it shows itself favourable and partial to good and inimical to evil and that evil is always destroyed in the end. All disturbances and convul­sions are produced by the evil; the ultimate power reacts against it violently and relentlessly. "Tragedy on this view is the exhibition of that convulsive reaction". The evil against which the moral order reacts is not something outside it; it is within it and a part of it. It has engendered it along with the good. When its is expelled and destroyed, the moral order expels and destroys a part of itself. But together with evil it also destroys, as we have already noted above, a part of the good which is so dear to it. But why should this be so? Why should the ultimate power generate evil and then expel it? Shakespeare provides no answer to this riddle of life. He was writing tragedy, and tragedy would not be tragedy if it were not a painful mystery.
(i) Catharsis: Shakespearean tragedy is also cathartic, that is, it has the power of purging and thus easing us of some of the pain and suffering which are the lot of us all in this world. Compared to the exceptionally tragic life of the hero before our eyes, our own sufferings begin to appear to us little and insignificant. In a Shakespearean tragedy the spectacle of the hero's suffering is terrible and heart rending, and it arouses the emotions of pity and terror. It is truly cathartic, as it purges the readers of the emotions of self-pity and terror.
(ii) Moral Vision: Shakespearean tragedy is not depressing. It elevates, ennobles and exalts us. Shakespeare shows in his tragedies that man's destiny is always determined to a great extent by his own character. He is an architect of his own fate. The tragic hero suffers because he errs. He is not just the plaything of fate. It always reveals the dignity of man and of human endeavour over the power of evil, which is ultimately defeated. Shakespearean tragedy ends with the restoration of the power of the good. In the words of Irving Ribner: "Shakespearean tragedy translates a moral vision into dramatic form, and, thus, it is a way of knowing." It contains the vision of the possibility of man's redemption from evil. Ribner adds that "....the Shakespearean tragic hero through the process of his destruction may learn the nature of evil and thus attain a spiritual victory in spite of death. This does not mean that all Shakespeare's tragic heroes attain salvation, for they do not, and it is not necessary that they should. Hamlet or Lear may undergo redemption, but Richard III or Macbeth is unequivocally damned, and the reconciliation experienced by the audience need be no less complete.
Tragedy is a social art form, and reconciliation must take place within the audience and not within the actors. The damnation of Macbeth, no less than the salvation of Lear may serve to affirm the feeling of a moral order in a purposive universe upon which tragic reconciliation depends. In spite of the fate of the tragic hero, society at the end of each tragedy must undergo a symbolic rebirth; there is always a Fortinbrass, Edgar or Malcolm ready to begin life with a renewed hope in the future, and in this hope the audience imaginatively participates."
Shakespeare's Historical Plays
The historical plays were immensely popular for the Elizabethan audiences who were intensely patriotic and very proud of the achievements of their ancestors on foreign fields. The historical drama owed its popularity to the fervour of Armada patriotism. The newly awakened spirit of patriotism and nationalism enable the people to take keen interest in the records of bygone struggle against foreign invasion and civil disunion. Marlowe had set the example of writing historical play in Edward II before Shakespeare. He followed Marlowe's example.
(i) The Chronological Order of Shakespeare's Historical Plays: Shakespeare's historical plays stretch over a period of three hundred and fifty years of English History—from 1200 to 1550. He treats in his historical plays the tumult and confusion, the peace and confusion of this period. Shakespeare wrote ten historical plays which are divided into three groups: (i) the first group consisting of Henry VI, Parts I, II and III deals with the reign of Henry VI; (ii) secondly, Richard II, Richard III and King John are studies on kings and kingship; (iii) and thirdly Henry IV, Parts I and II and Henry V represent Shakespeare's ideal of kingship. His last historical play Henry VIII was completed by Fletcher.
Shakespeare's historical plays are a link between the process of his development of comedy and tragedy. In between the period of the comedies and tragedies come the historical plays and these plays serve their own purpose.
(ii) His Treatment History: Shakespeare’s concept of history, as developed in the plays is old fashioned and old dated.
His Concept of History. Shakespeare's concept of history, as developed in the plays, is old-fashioned and out-dated. He was not a man born in advance of his times, one who could anticipate the thoughts of the future generations. In one sense, he was a man purely of his age, sharing the views and prejudices of his contemporaries and moving with the times. The modern historian devotes his chief attention to the social, economic and political changes of the period he deals with. He is more concerned with the life of the nation and the spirit of the times, than with the fortunes of rival-sovereigns. The achievements of the nation during peace are often of more interest to him than periodic wars and upheavals. But in the age of Queen Elizabeth the history of England was the story of the doings and sufferings of the royal house, and more specially of its wars at home and abroad. This is exactly the story which is unfolded by the English Histories of Shakespeare.
Commenting on Shakespeare's treatment of history Sir Walter Raleigh writes: "He very early turned his hand to them, and the exercise that they gave him steadied his imagination, and taught him how to achieve a new solidity and breadth of representation. By degrees he ventured to intermix the treatment of high political affairs with familiar pictures of daily life, so that what might otherwise have seemed stilted and artificial was reduced to ordinary standards, and set against a background of versimilitude and reality. His comedy, timidly at first, and at last triumphantly, intruded upon his history; his visioin of reality was widened to include in a single perspective of courts and taverns, kings and highwaymen, diplomatic conferences, battles, street brawls, and the humours of low life. He gave us the measure of his own magnanimity in the two parts of Henry IV, a play of incomparable ease, and variety and mastery. Thence, having perfected himself to his craft, he passed on to graver themes, and with Plutarch for his text book, resuscitated the-world drama of the Romans, or breathed life into those fables of British history which he found in Holinshed. He revived dead princes and heroes, and set them in action on a stage crowded with life and manners."
Shakespeare's concept of history, says John Bailey is "more royal than national, more personal than political". His histories are pageants of kingship in war and peace. In Richard II he is concerned with the quarrels of Richard II and his uncles, and practically ignores the Black Death and all its political and social consequences.
(iii) Patriotism: Shakespeare's historical plays are suffused with the spirit of patriotism. The aim of historical plays was to make Englishmen more patriotic and to make Englishmen proud of being Englishmen. Can there be anything more patriotic or more likely to make Englishmen proud of their country than the following words of the dying John of Gaunt in Richard II?
This royal throne of England, this scptred isle,
This earth of majesty, this seat of Mars,
This other Eden, demi paradise,
This fortress built by Nature for herself
Against infection and the hand of war.
The worship and glorification of the king is a powerful manifestation of patriotism in Shakespeare's historical plays. Kingship is strongly idealised to divine proportions. Mark the idealisation of kingship in the following lines
Not all the water in the rough rude sea
Can wash the balm off from an appointed King;
The breath of worldly men cannot depose,
The deputy elected by the Lord.
(iv) Characterisation in Historical Plays: In historical plays Shakespeare has provided nice portraits of English kings. In the-characters of King John, Richard II and Henry VI, Shakespeare presents the weaknesses of English kings. Henry IV, Henry V and Richard III are studies of kingly strength. Dowden writes in this connection: "John is the real criminal, weak in the criminality; Henry VI is the royal saint, weak in his saintliness. The feebleness of Richard II cannot be characterised in a word, he is a graceful sentimental monarch. Richard III, in the other group, is a royal criminal, strong in his crime. Henry IV, the usurping Bolingbroke, is strong by a fine craft in dealing with events, by resolution and policy, by equal caution and daring. The strength of Henry V is that of plain heroic magnitude, thoroughly sound and substantial, founded upon the eternal Verities. Here, then, we may recognise the one dominant subject of the histories, viz., how a man may fail and how a man may succeed in attaining a practical mastery of the world." These plays are, as Schlegel has named them, a "mirror of kings".
Shakespeare portrayed his kings only as kings and not as human beings. Although Henry V embodies Shakespeare's ideal of kingship, it would be a complete mistake to suppose that he embodies the author's ideal of manhood. Indeed, Shakespeare's kings are not great men, not even Henry V, but they are kings. Pater in his essay Shakespeare's English Kings has expressed the vital truth: "Shakespeare's kings are not, nor are meant to be, great men; rather, little or quite ordinary humanity, thrust upon greatness, with those pathetic results, the natural self-pity of the weak heightened in them into irresistible appeal to others as the net result of their royal prerogative."
Dowden has rightly observed that the one dominant subject of the histories is how a man may fail, and how a man may succeed in attaining a practical mastery of the world. He writes: "The characters in the historical plays are conceived chiefly with reference to action. The world represented in these plays is not so much the world of feeling or of thought, as the limited world of the practicable. In the great ttagedies we are concerned more with what man is than with what he does...... The histories, like the tragedies, are for the reader a school of discipline, but the issues with which they deal are not the infinite issues of life and the feeling which they leave in us is that of a wholesome, mundane pity and terror, or a sane and strong mundane satisfaction."
Shakespeare takes a personal interest in creating his lower characters in historical plays. His minor characters are the raw stuff of humanity. Falstaff in Henry IV is an immortal creation of Shakespeare. There is no one who will deny his kingship with Falstaff. We delight in him because he can pour the whole of himself into speech and reveal all mankind in revealing himself. "With him Shakespeare turned the chronicle of kings into a picture of human life, filled out the peace and war pageantry of history with the reality of the life of ordinary men and women which is always going on by its side."
(v) Conclusion: Shakespeare's historical plays show his love for authority and discipline. He considers law and authority necessary for civilized life, he fears disorder for it leads to chaos. Raleigh remarks: "He extols government with a fervour that suggests a real and ever present fear of the breaking of the flood gates; he delights in government, as painters and musicians delight in composition and balance." The change of social and political institutions did not interest him. S. A. Brooke writes: "Shakespeare desired to combine all the plays into a whole. In completing the moral and political philosophy of good or bad, govern­ment comes in as a necessary part of the conception, but its lessons were not directly but indirectly given. His true aim was to represent human life in action and thought within the limits which history set before him."
Shakespeare's Last Plays or Shakespeare's Dramatic Romances
Shakespeare's last plays, known as dramatic romances, form a class apart. His last four plays—Pericles, Cymbeline, The Winter's Tale and The Tempest—are neither comedies nor tragedies. All of them end happily, but all fetch happiness to shore out of shipwreck and suffering. These last plays have a lot in common and it is appropriate to call them "dramatic romances" or "tragi-comedies". They contain incidents which are undoubtedly tragic but their end is happy. Shakespeare was distinctly influenced by Beaumont and Fletcher in writing these dramatic romances. We find the following characteristics in Shakespeare's last plays:
(i) The Tragicomic Note: The last plays of Shakespeare are the transitions from tempest with its lightnings and thunderings to a wide illumined calm. The wrongs of life and how they may be transcended, trials of affections, triumphs of fortitude and patience, magnanimous self-possession under suffering, love purified by grief, wisdom of the intellect at once with the moral wisdom, the radiant joy of pure and radiant heart—these are the themes of Shakespeare's last plays. The spirit of these plays is that of serenity which results from fortitude, and the recognition of human frailty; all of them express a deep sense of the need of repentance and the duty of forgiveness.
These plays are marked by unending optimism. The tyrannical father, the stepmother, the devoted wife, the credulous lover, the loutish rival, the wanton maid of honour, the faithful servant — all play their parts. They belong to the formulae not of life, but of romance. These plays are rightly named tragicomedies, because they have no concern with the undying pessimism of the tragedies. They are a mixture of good and bad, sorrow and joy, tears and smiles, pessimism and optimism, separation and union, but, finally they are lighted with a ray of hope.
The last plays of Shakespeare mark a distinct transition from the period of great tragedies—Macbeth, Lear, Othello and Hamlet. The unanswered cosmic problems are now laid aside, or take on new light colours in the light of a regained faith. Life, which the purged eve once scanned with a splendid despair, is now seen only through a golden haze of sentiment. A great and gracious peace descends upon the autumn of thought. The universe, which, but a moment ago, he reviewed and judged to be chaos now spreads itself out before his eyes as the ordered and sunlit garden of God. The transition "from the tragedies to the romances is not an evolution but a revolution".
There is tragic material in plenty, and there are also some high-wrought tragic scenes; but the tension is soon relaxed. Imogen and Hermione are deeply wronged like Desdemona; Prospero like Lear is driven from his inheritance; yet the forces of destruction do not prevail, and the end brings forgiveness and reunion. These plays end happily but "there is no reversion," says Raleigh, "to the manner of the comedies, the new found happiness is a happiness wrung from experience, and, unlike the old high-spirited gaiety, it does not exult over the evil-doer. All-embracing tolerance and kindliness inspires these plays."
(ii) Redemption, Reconciliation and Forgiveness: These plays breathe a spirit of philosophic calm, of a robust faith in the possibility of happiness, and redemption of wrong doers through love and forgiveness of the wronged. They are stories of restoration, reconciliation, and moral resurrection and regeneration. Their purpose is to teach forgiveness of wrongs, not vengeance for them, to give the sinner time to repent and amend, not to cut him off in his sin. The keynote of these plays is sounded by Prospero in The Tempest:
Through with their high wrongs I am stuck to the quick,
Yet, with my nobler reason, against my fury,
Do I take part; the rarer action is,
In virtue than in vengeance, they being penitent,
The soul drift of my purpose doth extend
Not a frown further.
Dowden is of the opinion that these plays "are all concerned with the knitting together of human bonds, the reunion of parted kindred, the forgiveness of enemies, the atonement for wrong—not by death but by repentance, the reconciliation of husband and wife, of child and father, of friend with friend." Raleigh says: "An all-embracing tolerance and kindliness inspires these plays." Reconciliation and reunion of husband and wife, of parents and child, of friend and friend form an integral part of their denouement. Mariana, supposed to be drowned, is restored to Pericles; Perdita who had been cast out of her country in childhood meets Leconctes; and Cymbeline is united with his sons; Prospero is restored to his lost kingdom.
(iii) The Romantic Atmosphere and Supernaturalism: The last plays of Shakespeare are remarkable for the mellowed romantic atmosphere. He writes freely, unhampered by any laws of logic or dramatic causation. These plays are fanciful like dreams. His imagination knows no restraints and all sorts of impossibilities are conceived, and many absurdities creep into the plots. The romantic atmosphere of these plays is further heightened by shifting the scene to a remote, enchanted island across "perilous seas, in fairylands forlorn" or to the equally remote mountains of Wales or to the sheep walks of Bohemia, where the life of the inhabitants is a peaceful round of daily deeds and rural pieties. The beautiful scenes of the mountains and sea are particularly romantic. The prominent scenes are laid on the sea-coast. The scenes exist in the dramatist's imagination. It would be futile to describe their geographic position, for the poet was giving a local habitation and name to the airy nothings.
The island in The Tempest is enchanted. It has all the plenty and loveliness of nature. The luxuriance of nature has the quality of inducing sleep and dulling the critical faculty. The goodesses Juno and Ceres, various spirits, especially Aerial mix freely with human beings and govern human destiny.
The power, call it Destiny or Providence, is not a ruthless force in these plays, "but a benevolent Providence which after leading through great trials, intense sufferings and grievous wrongs resolves at last all dissonance into a harmony, clear and rapturous, or solemn and profound."
(iv) Characters: Shakespeare portrays women characters with charity and kindliness. In the tragedies he shows no charity for the fair sex. Ophelia is ill-treated and suffers from madness. Innocent Desdemona is ruthlessly strangled; Cordelia dies as a prisoner. In dramatic romances they are treated gently and kindly. Women are rejudged and tenderly vindicated. Miranda and Imogen, the finest female portraits, represent the idealisation of womanhood. Mrs. Jameson says: "Of all his women Imogen is the most perfect; Miranda is the perfection of maidenliness and Perdita of devotion." These women are virtuous, generous and believe in forgiveness. All forgiveness is divine but kindness and forgiveness that Hermione or Imogen extends is rare indeed in this workaday world.
The young people play an important role in these plays. Forgiveness and reconciliation, which is the main theme of these plays, is invariably brought about by the young people. Perdita and Florizel, Miranda and Ferdinand, Guiderius and Arviragus, all make amends for the faults and misfortunes of their parents. Prospero and Alonso become friends through the love of Ferdinand and Miranda. The sins of fathers are not visited on the children. Perdita is happily united with Florizel, Miranda with Ferdinand, Imogen with Posthumus and Mariana with Pericles.
(v) Symbolism: The last plays of Shakespeare, especially The Tempest, are rich in symbolism. Perdita and Miranda symbolise the fertility and continuity of Nature. Caliban symbolises brute natural force. He also represents the eternal slave as well as the dispossessed native, and according to this view Prospero becomes a coloniser. He has been called the symbol of Destiny, the personification of Wisdom, and the Eternal Teacher. He also represents an inspired artist, who is ever absorbed in the pursuit of his art and neglects his social duties, and so is rejected by society.
(vi) The Role of the Sea: The sea plays a prominent role in these plays. Quillercouch remarks: "…Pericles begins and ends on ship­board. Even Bohemia has its own sea-coast on which the waif Perdita is cast. At the critical point in Cymbeline —Heaven knows why—every character in the play has all sail set for Milford Haven; and The Tempest is The Tempest. In this again we may suspect an improvement in mere stage mechanism as well as catch a hint of a great wise mind voyaging out for a shore somewhere within the ring of the "still-vex'd Bermoothes", where all this evil is composed."
(vii) Style of the Last Plays: "The style of these last plays," says Raleigh, "is a further development of the style of Tragedies. The thought is often more packed and hurried, the expression more various and fluent at the expense of full logical ordering. The bombasted magniloquence of the early rhetorical style has now disappeared. The very syntax is the syntax of thought rather than language; constructions are mixed, grammatical links are dropped, the meaning of many sentences is compressed into one, hints and impressions count for as much, as full blown propositions." It seems that during the last years thoughts came so fast to Shakespeare's mind that the pen could not keep pace with the rush of those thoughts. As an inevitable result, the construction of sentences became often involved and the meaning ambiguous.
(viii) Songs, Music and Dance: Songs, music and dance abound in these plays. They contribute to enchantment and romance which distinguish these plays.
(ix) Conclusion: The romances belong to Shakespeare's literary autumn, and according to some, show decline of his dramatic genius. To quote the opinion of Sir Walter Raleigh: "That he turned at last to happier scenes, and wrote the romances, is evidence, it may be said, that his grip on the hard facts' of life was loosened by fatigue, and that he sought refreshment in irresponsible play." This is perhaps true. Technically there is a loss of mastery, an apparent relaxation of the grip on the means to the end. His characters are no longer individual, but stock types. We may speak highly of Imogen, Perdita and Miranda but these women have not the same sharp individuality as their elder sisters — Portia, Rosalind, Viola, Ophelia, Desdemona and Cordelia. Shakespeare is evidently growing tired. He repeats himself again and again. There is an atmosphere of impossibility and improbability in these plays. Artificiality breathes over the whole. The fact is that there is no lack of vitality or slackening of mental power. Shakespeare had always been a romantic poet, but here the romantic seems to take on a larger and higher meaning. The poet turns away from the heartbreaking realities of the actual world to a world of pure and serene imagination of which he alone is the creator and potent lord. Legouis refers to the last four dramas of Shakespeare as "plays which were the supreme accomplishment of this prosperous actor."
Shakespeare's Universality
"Soul of the age !
The applause; the delight, the wonder of our stage."
— Ben Jonson.
To this day Shakespeare remains the Prince of Poets, and the King of Dramatists, not only of England, but of the whole world. He has been acknowledged on all hands as the glory of the English stage, the Proteus of the drama who changes himself into every character and enters into every condition of human nature, as well as the expression of the genius of English race. The stream of time which has been continually washing the dissoluble fabrics of other poets, passes without injury of the adamant of Shakespeare.
1. Common Possession of the Whole Human Race: Shakespeare, in the words of Ben Jonson, "was not of an age, but of all ages. Shakespeare is eternal. Shakespeare is universal. The whole world has adopted Shakespeare. In Germany he is as widely read and acted as in England. Russia and Poland, Italy and Spain, even India have excellent versions of Shakespeare's plays. In fact, there is hardly any language in the world in which Shakespeare has not been translated. He is the common possession of all ages and of all nations.
2. A Dramatist of Life in its Totality: Shakespeare's subject matter is life in its totality. This is the secret of his universal appeal. Although Shakespeare has powerfully expressed the spirit of the age, he is distinguished by his contemporaries for the expression of those human emotions of love, hate, jealousy, sorrow, sympathy, longings and aspirations, smiles and tears, passions and prejudices, which are eternal. He stands secure through all eternity transcending the boundaries of time and space, class and race, religion and sex. His men and women are not merely superficial studies of contemporary society, they are true to the eternal facts of human nature. He loved to present the eternal truths of human heart and invested them with such a touch of nature as to reveal the kinship of the entire world.
Shakespeare had a mind reflecting "ages past" and present, all the people that even lived are there. Human tastes and values change. Literary fashions and tendencies change, but Shakespeare has not been lost into oblivion, due to the faithful presentation of life in all its totality. Shakespeare's stage is the world, his characters are types of universal mankind, his subject is the human soul; and he himself is the very genius of humanity. He is "the prophetic soul of the wide world dreaming of the times to come." S. T. Coleridge writes about his universality: "The greatest genius that perhaps human nature yet produced, our myriad-minded Shakespeare." In his almost infinite variety there is truly "God's plenty". He is the very "epitome of mankind". His language fits all times, and his thought all places. No part of human existence, no depth of universe, no problem of human existence, no variety of character, seems outside his range.
Shakespeare is a dramatist of man and of human life. Prince Hamlet sings of the glory of man:
What a piece of work is man ! How noble in reason ! How infinite in faculty, in form, in moving, how express and admirable in action ! How like an angel ! In appehension how like a God ! The beauty of the world ! the paragon of animals !
Miranda also sings:
O, wonder !
How many goodly creatures are here !
How beauteous mankind is ! 0 brave new world
That has such people in it !
3. Variety of Human Characters: Shakespeare "painted all characters from kings down to peasants with equal truth and equal force", writes Lytton Strachey, "If human nature were destroyed and no monument left to it except the works of Shakespeare, other beings might know what man was from those writings." Shakespeare is above all writers the poet of nature, the poet that holds up his readers a faithful mirror of man and his environment, manners and life. His characters do not belong to this country or that, one country or the other, but come from all lands and all walks of life. They are the rightful progeny of common humanity, such as the world will always supply and observation will always find, unaffected alike by the vagaries of fashion, the accidents of custom and the changes of opinion. Shakespeare's persons are not only individuals, they are a species eternal and true, taken from nowhere in particular, though met here, there and everywhere. No other author had ever been so copious, so bold, so creative. Shakespeare was endowed with a perfect and flawless knowledge of the passions, humours and sentiments of mankind. Shakespeare has a friendly approach to man with all its baseness and limitations. He has embraced man with all his faults and imperfections. Mariana in Measure For Measure says:
They say, best men are moulded out of faults
And for the most, become much more the better,
For being a little bad.
It is this large-hearted tolerance that has made him immensely popular all over the world.
4. Conclusion: In all the fields of poetic and dramatic literature, Shakespeare reigns supreme, because "he created by principle while others manufactured by rules." "He was the man," says Dryden, "who of all the modern and ancient poets, has the largest and most comprehensive soul." He is highly praised for his originality. Pope wrote: "If ever any author deserved the name of originality, it was Shakespeare." His poetry is inspiration indeed. In the words of Ben Jonson:
Nature herself was proud of his designs,
And joy'd to wear the dressing of his lines.
Shakespeare's dramatic poetry has an enduring quality. His vision of life, his wonderful characterisation, his broad humanity, his sense of humour and tolerance, his catholicity of outlook, and the excellence of his dramatic art have all found an eloquent expression in his magnificent poetry. G. B. Shaw had to admit: "I wish I could write a beautiful play like Twelfth Night." No one has written a better tragedy than King Lear. Matthew Arnold pays a glowing tribute to Shakespeare's universality of appeal:
All pains the immortal spirit must endure,
All weakness which impairs, all griefs which bow,
Find their soul voice in that victorious brow.
Shakespeare's Dramatic Art
William Shakespeare was one of the greatest literary geniuses born on earth. The extent, variety and richness of his plays are quite bewildering as one approaches them. Yet he never invented the plots of his plays, which are based on Plutarch's Lives, Holinshed's Chronicles, or other popular translations. Still he shines to us through the intervening darkness of over three centuries with a radiant light. What is the secret of his unrivalled superiority which is so universally recognised today ?
1. His Immense Variety and Mastery of Human Nature: Shakespeare, first of all, combined together all the great dramatic gifts. He commingles Marlowe's pathos and sublimity, Webster's terrible atmosphere of grief and terror, the lyrical intensity of Fletcher and Dekker in his plays. While they tended to be stale and stereotyped, Shakespeare is ever changing, ever becoming different from what he was before. Legouis writes: "His flexibility was marvellous. He adapted himself to the most diverse material and seemed to use-all with equal ardour and joy."
Shakespeare's remarkable power of penetrating deeply into human nature and human character imparted rare dignity to his dramatic art. Dowden writes: "Shakespeare cast his plummet with the sea of human sorrow, and wrong, and loss. He studied evil. He would let none of that dark side of life escape from him. He denied none of the bitterness, the sins, the calamity of the world. He looked steadily at Cordelia in the arms of Lear, and he summoned up a strenuous fortitude, and stoical submission to make such a spectacle endurable. But at the same time he retained his loyalty to good; over against Edmund and the monstruous sisters, he saw the invincible loyalty of a Kent, the practical genius of an Edgar in the service of good, and the redeeming ordeal of Cordelia. Rescuing his soul from bitterness, he arrived finally at a temper strong and self-possessed as that of stoicism, yet free from the social attitude of defiance; a temper liberal, gracious, charitable, tender, yet strenuous calm."
2. Plot Construction: According to Aristotle plot is the soul of drama, character comes next. But this classical doctrine was not observed during the Renaissance, because the matter which the praywrights usually took came from story books of romance. The exclusion of the comic and the tragic elements, which distinguished classical drama, and the three dramatic unities of time, place and action, were disregarded during the Elizabethan drama. Economy, compression of material, selection and concentration distinguish classical drama. Aristotle warned that a playwright should not attempt to construct a tragedy upon an epic plan. Shakespeare, the gifted representative of the romantic drama, is akin to the method of epic poet or romance writer, since like them he follows his plot through a succession of minor scenes in which he directly exhibits transitional movements which the modern playwright would give in the form of explanatory notes.
Romantic drama was based on complex plots. It is a federation of several stories, any one of which would have made a whole plot for an ancient classical dramatist. In Shakespeare's plays also there are two or three or four plots running together. Shakespeare's dramatic skill lies in weaving these different plots into a harmonious design. He did not tie himself to any theory. His first care was to get hold of a story that would succeed. He sought first for the story. His plots are perfect in their own ways. They have a good beginning, a good middle and a good end.
Shakespeare did not invent stories. He took up popular stories, and by his genius transformed them into great dramas. What is prominent in Shakespearean drama is the interweaving of different stories that move side by side like the four parts of musical harmony. He shaped a bare outline of a story by clever manipulation of plot and under plot, and varied relief, by interweaving plot and character, by recreating original characters, by giving life-like impassioned dialogue, and by such qualities as humour, pathos, passion and poetry.
Shakespeare starts every dramatic story with a conflict. All his plots possess the initial exposition, the rising action or complication, the climax or the turning point, the falling action or denouement, and the conclusion or catastrophe in which the conflict is brought to a close.
In The Merchant of Venice two main stories, taken from distinct books of romance, have been harmoniously blended together to create impression of oneness. The plot of The Twelfth Night is a complex story of love. Three love stories are made to clash together into a common entanglement, due to the mistaken identity of the girl taken for a page. The Merry Wives of Windsor too is an illustration of such a complication.
3. Characterisation: Shakespeare surpasses all his contemporaries and rivals in the art of characterisation. Edward Albert writes: "In sheer prodigality of output Shakespeare is unrivalled in literature. From king to clown, from lunatic and demi-devil to saint and seer, from lover to misanthrope—all are revealed with the hand of the master."
Shakespeare's art of characterisation is marked by objectivity. In the words of Albert, "He seems indifferent to good and evil; he has the eye of the creator, viewing bright and dismal things alike, provided they are apt and real. In his characters vice and virtue commingle, and the union is true to the common sense of humanity. Thus the villain Iago is a man of resolution, intelligence and fortitude; the murderer Claudius shows affection, wisdom and fortitude; the peerless Cleopatra is narrow, spiteful and avaricious; and the beast Caliban has his moments of ecstatic vision."
Shakespeare's characters have a vital force. They are individual figures; who live, move and utter speech. They are entire, rounded and capable. At his creative breath the dead rise from their graves, heroes gain victories, lovers murmur in accents which still moves our hearts. From the dust of chronicles he draws the rough clay out of which he fashions his own character and as soon as the character leaps from his hands it is alive, fights, speaks, is crowned with laurel or myrtle, or is dashed down in some awful catastrophe. His characters are not people on the stage, they are people in real life. His characters are not puppets. Shakespeare's characters, whether good or bad, whether moving among realities of history or among the most romantic happenings, have an unfailing humanity which makes them plausible and keeps them within the orbit of our sympathy. "His characters are so much Nature herself," writes Pope, "that it is a sort of injury to call them by so distance a name as copies of her." Hazlitt also writes: "His characters are real human beings of flesh and blood; they speak like men, not like authors." His characters are the rightful progeny of common humanity. Lear, Hamlet, Macbeth, Falstaff, Shylock, Portia, Prospero etc. are now parts of the world's mythology. Every single character of Shakespeare is as much an individual as those of life itself: it is impossible to find any two alike. His characters are neither paragons nor monsters. They act with reason and have motives. Lady Macbeth reminds us that she is a woman: "Had he not resembled my father as he slept, I had done it." His characters act from within Jonson's characters are broad types, Shakespeare's are complex individuals. Shakespeare could raise characters from their particular circumstances and could give them universal traits. There is an exquisite blending of the general and the particular, the ideal and the real, which makes his characters types as well as individuals. Shakespeare's characters are dynamic and static. We see them in the course of their development. They grow and unfold themselves before our eyes. Lear at the end is an entirely different man from what he was at the beginning. So are Macbeth and Othello. His characters have to our mind a past and a future as well as a present. What Shakespeare loves as an artist is power and intensity in human character. Splendid and puissant personalities are the primary material of his tragedies; giants of wit or silliness of his comedies. Yet his characters, splendid or extreme as they are, are never extravagant or abnormal in their nature.
Shakespeare was an unrivalled master of human psychology. His characters, said Goethe, are like watches with dial plates of transparent crystal, they show the hour like progress to others, and the inward mechanism is also visible. Shakespeare's psychology, his perfect insight into human nature that has made him the great creative artist that he is, has enthroned him as the universal master of dramatic art. His men and women interest us more by what they are then what they do. It is not the outer history but the inner history of the mind and the soul— the psychological struggle of Othello, Macbeth, Lear and Hamlet—that fascinates us.
Shakespeare has also created many fascinating female characters — Desdemona, Ophelia, Cordelia, Imogen, Hermiane, Perdita, Miranda, Viola, Rosalind, Portia etc. Heroines play a dominant role in Shakespearean comedy. Ruskin remarked: "Shakespeare has no heroes, he has only heroines." This is true about the comedies, not about the tragedies. Man in the king of tragedy, woman is the queen of comedy. Shakespeare's tragic protagonists as Hamlet, Macbeth, Lear and Othello have a subtler intellect, a more penetrating imagination, a more irresistible passion. Their personality is a mass of mighty forces out of equipoise, they lack the balance of a durable spiritual organism. His women are often witty and daring. Their wit is quick and searching, but it is wholly at the command of their will, and is never employed to disturb or destroy. In the comedies women are the spirit of happiness, in the tragedies they are the only warrant and token of ultimate salvation, and the last refuse and sanctuary of faith.
Shakespeare portrayed his villains psychologically. They meet their well-deserved doom. A villain while plotting the ruin of a good man, is yet able to recognize the good in him. Even Iago, the blackest of Shakespeare's villains, recognises the good in Othello: "The moor is of a fine and constant nature. Shakespeare's villains, intellectually alert, though morally repulsive, are clever and crafty. The villain is always punished and the punishment is of a reformative or retributive type.
Shakespeare's fools are a tribe apart. He allowed the fool to appear both in his comedies and tragedies. He makes the fool a kind of popular philosopher who utters many wise and practical things in the garb of stupidity. The clown takes various forms in Shakespeare's plays. Sometimes he is affectionate and kind like Launce, or Touchstone, or Lear's Fool. Sometimes he is a foolish craftsman like Bottom, the weaver. Sometimes he is a policeman like Dogberry or Verges. The Fool creates innocent humour in comedies and provides comic relief in tragedies.
Shakespeare's supernatural creations—his witches, ghosts and fairies — do not come uncalled. They are dealt with psychologically. They are the shadows and reflections of the human mind.
Shakespeare's dramatic art is matchless in the entire range of dramatic literature. W. J. Long writes: "Two poets only, Homer and Dante, have been named with him; but each of them wrote within narrow limits, while Shakespeare's genius included all the world of nature and of men. In a word, he is the universal poet. To study nature in his works is like exploring a new and beautiful country; to study man in his works is like going into a great city, viewing the motley crowd as one views a great masquerade in which past and present mingle freely and familiarly, as if the dead were all living again. And the marvellous thing, in this masquerade of all sorts and conditions of men, is that Shakespeare lifts the mask from every face, lets us see the man as he is in his own soul, and shows in each one some germ of good, some "soul of goodness" even in things evil."
4. Humour: Shakespeare is the greatest humorist in English literature. Dowden writes about his humour: "In the first place the humour of Shakespeare like his total genius is many-sided. He does not pledge himself as a dramatist to any one view of human life Shakespeare abounds in kindly mirth; he receives an exquisite pleasure from the alert wit and bright good sense of a Rosalind...... But Shakespeare is not pledged to deep-dyed, ultra amiability. With Jacques he can rail at the world, while remaining seriously aloof from all deep concern about its interests this way or that. With Timon he can turn upon the world with a rage no less than that of Swift, and discover in man and woman a creature as abominable as Yahoo. In other words, the humour of Shakespeare, like his total genius is dramatic."
Shakespeare's humour is generally impartial, objective, genial, human and humane, refined and noble. When the occasion demands he can also be grim and satirical, ironical and morbid. But his humour is never divorced from humanity.. "A woman is dearer to Shakespeare than an angel; a man is better than a god."
Shakespeare's humour is more than a laughter producing power. It is a presence and a pervading influence throughout his mom earnest creations. In his earliest period Shakespeare had a keen sense of humour. Although he had not yet attained the depth of thoughts and emotions, his humour is unmistakably genial and human. He does not laugh at the misfortunes and weaknesses of individuals. He found the objects of his mirth in the follies and fashions of the time, as in The Two Gentlemen of Verona, Love's Labour Lost and The Comedy of Errors. There is also light and airy satire in Love's Labour Lost. Even at this early stage the comic and the serious elements coexist but they do not interpenetrate. Two sets of characters represent the comic and the tragic respectively. Speed, the professed wit, disappears from the comic stage after playing his brief part, but Launce incarnates himself in the naive, comic Touchstone, with his mingled instinct for sense and nonsense, Hotspur and Mercutio, Falstaff and the Fool in Lear. Bottom in A Midsummer Night's Dream, which combines fancy and humour, is an example of absurdity.
During the second period of his development Shakespeare was getting a sure and firm grasp on the facts of life. This is the period of historical plays. Keeping in view the dignity of historical drama, Shakespeare held his humour aloof. In Richard II there is no humorous scene. In Richard III there is a certain grim humour, which in part of the demonic personality of Richard III. During this period Shakespeare created his greatest comic creation Sir John Falstaff in the two parts of King Henry IV.
During the second period Shakespeare wrote his mature and sunny comedies As You Like It, The Twelfth Night, The Merchant of Venice in which his humour attains the highest point of comic perfection.
In the third period, the period of great tragedies, Shakespearean laughter is more than pathetic. "Shakespeare," a German poet has said, "inoculates his tragedy, with a comic virus, and thus it is preserved from the great disease of absurdity." In Hamlet the humorous figures of the court — Polonius, Osric, Rosencrantz and Guildernstern — are all a little contemptible, and serve as irritants to stimulate Hamlet's dissatisfaction with living and impatience of the world. "The grave-diggers have a grim grotesqueness .....each a humorous jester in the court of death ...... a connoisseur in corpses, a chronicler of dead men's bones." The knocking scene in Macbeth has a grave significance. The knocking at the gate after the commission of the crime indicates that the human has made its reflux upon the fiendish, the pulses of life are beginning to beat again. The comic scenes in Shakespearean tragedy provide us with the comic relief.
In the last plays of Shakespeare humour is jovial but thoughtful. It is free from malice and contempt. Here he smiles at human love and human joy. It is Prospero's smile upon seeing the new happiness of youthful lovers:
So glad of this as they I cannot be,
Who are surprised with all, but my rejoicing
In nothing can be more.
5. Style and Versification: Shakespeare's style is individual and all his own. So we call him Shakespearean. Edward Albert remarks: "It is a difficult, almost an impossible, matter to define it. There is aptness and quotability in it, sheaves of Shakespeare's expressions have passed into common speech. To a very high degree it possesses sweetness, strength, and flexibility; and above all it has a certain inevitable and final felicity that is the true mark of genius."
Shakespeare's greatest poetic achievement was that he took the current rhetorical verse of the stage and sublimated it till it became individual, precise, strong, highly poetical, and capable of expressing the depths of all human emotions. His command over English language was unsurpassable. He used 15,000 words, and he wrote pure English. He discovered special skill in using verse and prose, measured and unmeasured language at just the most appropriate times. Shakespeare was endowed with a rare skill of expressing his teeming fertility of fine thoughts and sentiments in an apt, majestic and heart-touching style. All notes and all stops were at his command—from the majesty "This royal throne of England, this sceptred isle" to the moving cadence of "we are such stuff as dreams are made of, our life is rounded with a sleep", from the bravery of "I dare do all that may become a man" to the dramatic pathos of "Finish, good lady, the bright day is done, we are for the dark"; from the whispered dread of "that undiscovered country from whose bourn no traveller returns" to the sweet music of "Night's candles are burnt out and jocund day stands tiptoe on the misty mountain tops." Play after play shows the inexorable wealth of his brain.
Shakespeare, a gifted and versatile dramatist and stylist, artistically and deftly gave "a local habitation and a name" to "airy nothings". He brilliantly concretises the purely imaginative phenomenon through vivid, visual images. The style lends itself to the serenely ecstatic reverie of the sage:
Our revels are now ended. These our actors,
As I foretold you, were all spirits and
Are melted into air, into thin air
And like the baseless fabric of this vision,
The cloud-capped towers, the gorgeous palaces,
The solemn temples, the great globe itself,
Yea, all which it inherit, shall dissolve,
And, like this insubstantial pageant faded,
Leave not a rock behind. We are such stuff
As dreams are made of, and our little life
Is rounded with a sleep.
Shakespeare had a magic power over words. They come winged at his bidding and seem to know their places. His epithets and single phrases are like sparkles thrown off from the imagination fired by the whirling rapidity of its own motion. His language translates thoughts into visible images. He is remarkably precise and succinct. There are often two or three metaphors in a single sentence. When Lady Macbeth reproaches him for his inconstant mind, her scorn condenses itself in what seems to be, but is not, a mixture of metaphors:
Was the hope drunk
Wherein you drest yourself.
The vivid quality of Shakespeare's imagination causes him to be dissatisfied with all forms of expressions which are colourless and abstract. He makes sonorous use of the Latin vocabulary to expound and define his meaning, and then he adds the more homely figurative word to convert all the rest into picture. His words are often paired in this fashion, one gives the thought, the other adds the image. Shakespeare, by his freedom and spontaneity, and resource has succeeded, perhaps better than any other writer, in giving a voice and a body to those elusive movements of thought and feeling which are the life of humanity.
Shakespeare had various distinct styles, corresponding to the different stages of ripeness in his works. We may speak of them under threefold distinction of earlier, middle and later styles taking Richard II, As You Like It and Coriolanus, as representing the three distinct divisions. In the earliest plays the language is sometimes as it were a dress put upon the thougbt — a dress ornamented with superfluous care. In the middle period there seems to be a perfect balance and equality between the thought and its expression. In the latest plays the balance is disturbed by the preponderance or excess of ideas over the means of giving them utterance. The sentences are close, packed.
"The vivid pictorial quality of Shakespeare's imagination," writes Raleigh, "causes him to be dissatisfied with all forms of expression which are colourless and abstract." Imagery is resolved into simile and metaphor — simile being an expanded metaphor and metaphor being a condensed simile. Something very like this mixing figures of speech occurs in the following lines of Hamlet:
Blest are those
Whose blood and judgement are so commingled
That they are not pipes for fortune's finger
To sound what stop she please.
Shakespeare makes poetic as well as dramatic use of imagery. He makes his imagery emphasise character as well as atmosphere.
It is always Shakespeare's practice to mix both prose and verse together in his plays. In the early comedies verse preponderates over prose. In the middle period, especially in mature comedies, there is a proper blending of prose and verse. In his later plays prose is put to the highest use. The following forms of prose may be found in Shakespeare's plays. First, we have the prose of formal documents as in letters and proclamations in the historical plays and state formalities. Secondly, we have the prose of low life and of comic characters. Thirdly, we have colloquial prose of dialogue and matter-of-fact narratives. Fourthly, we have the prose of high comedy — vivacious, sparkling, and flashing with wit and repartee. Fifthly, we have the prose of abnormal mentality as in the case of Lear and Hamlet. And lastly, there is the highly wrought poetical and rhetorical prose so conspicuous in Hamlet, Macbeth and Lear.
7. Conclusion: Shakespeare, writes S. A. Brooke, "was yet in all points, in creative power, in impassioned conception and execution, in truth to universal human nature, in intellectual power, in intensity of feeling, in the great manner and matter of his poetry, in the welding together of thought, passion and action, in range, in plenteousness, in the continuance of his romantic feeling—the greatest dramatist the modern world has known." Dryden rightly pointed out: "He was the man, who of all modern, and perhaps ancient poets, has the largest and most comprehensive soul."