VISION AND REALITY: SHAKESPEARE'S

METHOD IN FOUR COMEDIES

T hesia for the Degree'of M. A.
MICHRGAN STAT E UNIVERSITY
TETSUJI HiRAMATSU
1974

 

 

 

ABSTRACT

VISION AND REALITY: SHAKESPEARE'S
METHOD IN FOUR COMEDIES

BY

Tetsuji Hiramatsu

Reading the text or watching the performance of
Shakespeare's comedy, we sometimes feel our responses to be
divided by two distinct impulses--to participate and to
stand aloof. To draw a brief example, we rejoice at the
union of the lovers at the end of §§_ng_£i 2 2E, and
willingly let our imagination go free to join the marriage
dance which is taking place on the stage. But our critical
awareness, which demands proportion and balance of the
whole, cannot be completely hushed, nor is it meant to be
put to silence. Such an awareness tends to cut us off from
spontaneous enjoyment and make us ponder whether the play's
vision of human happiness is established upon any sense of
confidence which can resist life's contradiction. And a
good comedy has to somehow satisfy such a question by its
own inner intensity of thought and tightly knit intellec-
tual coherency. In short, comedy is meant to present the
ideal, but at the same time it is required to satisfy the

expectations as a drama which deals with reality more or

Tetsuji Hiramatsu

less starkly. One impulse tries to concentrate on the

particular moment in time, particular group of people, and

particular sense of unity. But the other impulse is always

there to stretch meaning, to widen the perspective, and

to include the broader range of experience in its grip.
Shakespeare's early comedies, which see their con—

summation in §§_You Like it and Twelfth Night, tell us

 

most eloquently how the dramatist who is capable of
responding to such mutually opposing tendencies with
tender flexibility can produce a rewarding work of art.
The critics have tried for a long time to define the
essence of his comedies, but in many cases their conclu-
sion has been to return to the most obvious virtue--that
Shakespeare's comedy presents the most harmonious vision
of ideal human relationship and society. "Happy" is the
key word, however trite and worn out by long use the term

may appear. At the bottom of every comedy from The Comedy

 

of Errors to Twelfth Eight lies the instinct for the ideal,
or to put it in a less elevated way, our fondness of day-
dreaming, childish castle-building and wish-fulfilling
fantasy. But this also means that the play exposes the
most vulnerable part of ourselves to the ridicule and
cynicism of our more sceptical parts, which are waiting

to greet it. To see the vision of human happiness in its
most self-sufficient moment is a solemn experience, but it

can too easily degrade itself to the worst kind of

Tetsuji Hiramatsu

self-indulgent act. It requires an unusually acute sense
of balance and normative sensitivity to distinguish the
one sharply from the other, and it is a talent that can
rarely be found even among the best of the comic writers,
because it is a matter not only of technique, but of
belief and its strength, the belief that, as one modern
comic writer says, comedy is not an escape from truth, but
from despair.

This thesis, therefore, tries to explain how
Shakespeare's art, which is constantly supplied with a
knowledge of reality and organized by a qualitative rela-
tionship among different parts of the play, is seen in

the process of working successively in §_Midsummer Night's

 

Dream, The Merchant 9£_Venice, 52 You Like it and Twelfth

 

Night. The plays are discussed chronologically, and as a
consequence there will emerge some kind of development in
the dramatist's awareness of reality which takes its final

and most profound form in Twelfth Night.

 

VISION AND REALITY: SHAKESPEARE'S

METHOD IN FOUR COMEDIES

BY

Tetsuji Hiramatsu

A THESIS

Submitted to
Michigan State University
in partial fulfillment of the requirements
for the degree of

MASTER OF ARTS

Department of English

1974

Dedicated
to

my father and mother

ii

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

I wish to acknowledge my gratitude to, first of

all, Professor George R. Price for his scholarship and

invaluable advice. I am also grateful to Professor

Philip McGuire whose stimulating discussion in the

<:lass germinated the core of this thesis. Lastly, my

taincerest respect and thanks to Peter Milward, S. J. and
Itssistant Professor Tetsuo Anzai of Sophia University,

flfiokyo, for introducing me to the infinite richness of

Shakespeare and the Elizabethan drama.

iii

 

TABLE OF CONTENTS

 

 

Page

INTRODUCTION . . . . . . . . . .- . . . 1
Chapter

I. g MIDSUMMER NIGHT'S w . . . . . . 6

II. THE MERCHANT Q§_VENICE . . . . . . . 50

III. 53_ YOU LIKE I_'_r_ . . . . . . . . . . 98

Iv. TWELFTH w . . . . . . . . . . 132

NOTES . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 172

BIBLIOGRAPHY . . . . . . . . . . . . . 184

iv

 

 

INTRODUCTION

"What does it mean to Shakespeare's characters to
.belong to nature?" asks Professor Geoffrey Bush in his
EShakespeare and the Natural Condition (1956), and the ques-
1:ion seems to be of vital importance regarding Shakespeare's

(zomedy. The word "nature" has numerous implications, but

trwo chief connotations are implicit--"the nature of things

and natural things themselves."

There are the two ways in which nature is defined

in The French Academy; "When they speake generallie
of nature, they make two principall kindes: the one
spirituall, intelligible and the unchangeable
beginning of motion and rest, or rather the vertue,
efficient, and preserving cause of all things: the
other, sensible, mutable, and subject to generation
and corruption, respecting all things that have life,

and shall have end."1
UDlius, when the word "nature" occurs in Shakespeare's plays,
1L1: can mean an ideal human condition or men's spiritual
fiLJIdependence from their environment on one hand, and men's

‘C=<>rporal limitations in the world governed by the law of

1 Geoffrey Bush, Shakespeare and the Natural
<::‘<>11'ld.ition (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press,

I 9365, p. 4.

mutability on the other. It is because of this double-

edged recognition of men's basic condition that the word
"nature" functions with infinite richness in Shakespeare's
plays. His comedies written before 1600-1601 are not

exceptions. Nature in comedy is sometimes an indication

of the presence of universal order and unity beyond the
perception of the individuals, and sometimes a power which
instinctively controls the issue toward human happiness.
To depict the working of such a law or power among men is
the main staff of Shakespeare's comedy. And if the drama-
tist is loath to suspend the duty of judgement, and tries
to maintain a proportion by being consistent to the other
half of the implication of the‘ word "nature," the only
possible way is through implicit judgement and indirect

ShakeSpeare's comedy is not merely the product

It

s ta tement .

of the dramatist's amused tolerance for human folly.

also involves judgement and choice in the same sense that

ShakeSpeare's tragedies and history plays do: only the

angle has changed .

Shakespeare's comedy is called "romantic." There

is still much argument and discussion as to the validity
Of that particular title, but it at least does justice to

Shakespeare's comedy's most obvious concern-~the romantic

ideal of love and marriage. The natural condition for men

first of all presupposes that one lives in a close

relationship with others by forming a society motivated

by mutual trust and love, and the marriage relationship is
the most perfect expression of such a society. In Shake-
speare's comedy, love is chiefly described as an ennobling
emotion which finally leads to social unity. But in an
implicit manner which does not jar with the play's purpose,
there is a constant suggestion of the other aspect of love
--an irrational, disturbing element in life, which often
leads one to destruction and violence. From this angle,
love is viewed as the by-product of men's confinement in
the mutable world, which is constantly changing, fading
.and finally vanishing into the vacuum. Thus the romantic
:ideal of love is counterbalanced by the more realistic
liotion of love which questions the sublimity of the legend
of love.

Another major connotation of the natural condition
for men is one's relationship to time. In Shakespeare's
(:omedy, to borrow Miss Helen Gardner's phrase, time is
felt only as "a space in which to work things out."2 It
:Ls.an upward movement which finally sees the goal in the
iiulfillment of love in marriage. Comic Fortune is always
kuenevolent to those that are free and open, but it
Punishes the arrogant and the obstinate who refuse to admit

1:113t they are somewhere ”writ down an ass." But the

2Helen Gardner, "As You Like It," from John
<343-:Imrett, ed., More Talkin of Shakespeare (London:
121‘2111gmans, Green 8 Co., I§E9TT pp. 17‘32, rpt. in Kenneth
Vgir, ed., Shakes eare: The Comedies, Twentieth Century
lews (Englewood CIiffs, N.J.: Prentice-Hall,. 1965), p. 69.

 

 

dramatist deliberately inserts the passages or characters
that provide a different notion or perspective of time
which enlarges our vision and urges us to face the quite
objective concept of time whose account is available
almost everywhere in Shakespeare's sonnets: time as a
destroyer, a downward movement which, after passing several
stages, concludes in death and oblivion. In fact, the
process of growing and decaying is the selfsame phenomenon.
Also time is unpredictable, and the future can take what
form it pleases, often contrary to men's calculation.

The important thing is, as emphasized throughout
‘the following chapters, that these realistic elements do
riot undercut the romance of the play. As Professor C. L.
laarber observes, love becomes independent of illusions by
exposing itself to the impurities of life, and "To
emphasize by humor the limitations of the experience has

3 Likewise, pre-

become a way of asserting its reality."
sentation of the image of time as a destroyer does not
:reduce the benevolent working of time in the play. In-
stead, it contributes to the total experience, giving the
sense of immediacy and preciousness to the moment of brief

éenjoyment--"How that a life was but a flower. . . . And

ilherefore take the present time" (A3132, V.iii. 29-33),

3 C. L. Barber, Shakespeare' s Festive Comed
EEF' Study of Dramatic Form and its RéIation to SociaI
‘tlstom (Princeton: Princeton University Press, I972),

M.

 

 

or "What is love? 'Tis not hereafter,/Present mirth

hath present laughter,/What's to come is still unsure"

(2!.N. II.iii. 48-50). The discovery of the unique quality

of each moment is refreshing, because it is only by living

those moments that we can realize ourselves and our own

potential productivity. The comedy is meant to present the

image of human happiness, and therefore it is granted that
it concerns itself mainly with the aspect of nature as a

«guiding principle, an ideal condition and source of order

aand harmony. But in order to secure its place among life's

(Jontradictions, the play raises the question which makes us

face the other aSpect of nature and less pleasant facts

about life.

CHAPTER I

A MIDSUMMER NIGHT'S DREAM

Before beginning the discussion of A_Midsummer

 

Night's Dream, it is necessary to make a brief preliminary

remark on the particular problem which haunts the mind of

the critic whenever he tries to talk about the play in an

analytical manner. That is the "airy" quality of our

play. A Midsummer Night's Dream is the most fantastical

of all Shakespeare's comedies. The play shows us a tribe

of fairies in the wood of Athens, and it urges us to be-

lieve that certain herb contains magical power to alter a

lover's faith, and that a man is transformed into an ass

by magic. Today, the fairies belong to the feeble memory

of the folklore and the children's picture book. Trying

to imagine their physical outlook, we can only think of an

adolescent figure with an angelic face and a pair of silken

wings on his back. This picture of the fairies is certainly

far different from what the Elizabethans conceived them to
1

be, but it is this perverted view of the fairies that

helped to create the Operatic rendering of the play during

the Restoration and in the eighteenth century. Thousands
of artificial stars were manufactured to adorn the painted
sky, the mist crept on the wet, grassy ground, and the
fairies of the same description flew to and fro hitched by
the invisible steel wire. The audience willingly submitted
themselves to this pageantry of high fantasy, and enjoyed
the secret sensation of regaining their childhood innocence.

This way of enjoying the play is legitimate. But
the problem is that the audience are too ready to suspend
their sense of disbelief, sitting back in their chairs
indulging themselves in nostalgic reverie. Some people
still believe that the best audience are children, who are
free from all sorts of prejudices and prepared to absorb
everything without judging it hastily. But this is a
fallacy. Children are not capable of responding to the
recurrent pattern of ideas or subtly organized intellectual
statement which constitutes no small part of the total
dramatic experience. Especially in case of such a master
playwright as Shakespeare, we miss everything if we fail
to recognize such implicit judgements.

Nevertheless, even in the recent criticism of.§

Midsummer Night's Dream, we can find what might be called

 

general antipathy against trampling dreamland with the
muddy boots of critical inquisitiveness. The play has been
admired for the dramatist's skill in combining apparently

alien materials into a unified piece of drama, or because

of its poetry invoking the beauty of the native woodland
wild. The final product is marked with the sense of
finality and exquisite perfection. Some critics are reluc-
tant to dismember the living body, relishing the sweetness
of particular lines such as Oberon's "I know a bank where
the wild thyme blows," or caressing the smoothness of the
genius's technique in dramatic construction. As a result,
to borrow Professor J. R. Brown's phrase, they "take
refuge in the platitudes of praise, making large claims
which define little and explain nothing."2
The present inquiry into this play aims at isolat-
ing and describing some aspects of the dramatist's concern
with the vital issues of all times--the nature of love and
the prOper function of imagination in the course of human
activity. The attempt may involve looking at certain
emphasis of details with disenchanted eyes. This must be
done, not to satisfy one's prying habit, but to sub-
stantiate our original response to the play's particular
charm. The instinctive appreciation of the "airy" qual-
ity of the play does not contradict the analytical approach
to it. Critical method only serves for the purpose of
increasing our pleasure in attending the performance or
reading the text.

The central theme of A Midsummer Night's Dream is

 

love, as in most of Shakespeare's comedies. The first

thing that should be noticed in this regard is the absence

of a fully developed, mature female figure around whom the
discussion of love takes place. There is no Rosalind and
Viola in the play. Instead, we have two pairs of lovers
whose characters are only superficially sketched. Helena
is not far from the conventional image of a forsaken girl,
pale and forlorn. Hermia is shorter than Helena, and as
seen in her willingness to tear her opponent's face with
her fingernails, still retains the shrewishness of her
childhood when she was a "vixen." As for Lysander and
Demetrius, they are almost interchangeable.

It is easy to explain this by pointing at the
dramatist's incompetent skill in characterization. This
is the view of Professor Charlton, and he admits, with a
suggestion of regret, that "the weakest part of the play

is its characterization."3

But reflecting back on the
dramatist's previous achievement, we find many evidences
against such an opinion. Even Adriana in The Comedy of
Errors is a well-drawn character, leaving her prototype in

Plautus's Menaechmi, a mere caricature of the shrewish and

 

jealous wife,far behind in the point of "credible person-
ality." So is Katherina in The Taming of The Shrew.
Against the background of knock-about farce, the process
of her "growing up" is marked with tender emotion and sense
of dignity.

The superficial characterization of the lovers has

its own dramatic function. In other words, the realistically

10

drawn character with whom the audience can share the
sympathy would destroy the dramatist's scope. It is now
universally believed, especially after Miss Welsford's

valuable research into the topic, that A Midsummer Night's

 

Dream inherited and used extensively the conventions and
artifices of the court masque. The scholars conjecture
that the play was probably written to celebrate the mar-
riage of noble personages, and that the play's first night
was performed at Court or the private household of some
aristocrat.4 Anyway, it is undeniable that the special
qualities of the court masque came to the dramatist's aid:
symmetrical arranging of the groups of peOple, elegant
pattern of dance, compliment to the Queen in a subtly
disguised manner, pageant-like presentation of the emblem
of nature, all these helped to re-create the splendor
peculiar to such an occasion.

What chiefly concerns us here is already stated in

Miss Welsford's discussion of A_Midsummer Night's Dream's

 

structural indebtedness to the court masque conventions.

A_Midsummer Ni ht's Dream is a dance, a
movement of Badies. The pIot is a pattern, a
figure, rather than a series of events occasioned
by human character and passion, and this pattern,
especially in the moonlight parts of the play, is
the pattern of a dance. . . . The lovers quarrel
in a dance pattern: first, there are two men to
one woman and the other woman alone, then for a
brief space a circular movement, each one pursuing
and pursued, then a return to the first figure with
the position of the women reversed, then a cross-
movement, man quarrelling with man and woman with

ll

woman, and then, as finale, a general setting to
partners, including not only lovers but fairies
and royal personages as well.
This dance-like structure makes it inevitable
that the lovers should be almost as devoid of
character as masquers or masque-presenters. The
harmony and grace of the action would have been
spoilt by convincing passion.5
This makes clear that from the start ShakeSpeare intended
an effect other than depicting a conflict between credible
characters: the poet had in his mind a structural pattern
which goes beyond individual's volition, a general scheme
which in turn bestows significance and comments upon each
individual's action, whether he is aware of it or likes it.
The existence of this larger perspective is what
matters in our discussion of love as it is treated in the
play. The size of the human figures is reduced to the
minimum, and as a result love is chiefly described as a
force which suddenly strikes upon the individuals and works

upon them by its own law. The heroine of the later

comedies, for instance, Portia in The Merchant of Venice,

 

can be so self-correcting as to check her violent surge of
affection when Bassanio chooses the right casket: "0 love,
be moderate, allay thy ecstasy,/In measure rain thy joy,
scant this excessl/I feel too much thy blessing. Make it
less,/For fear I surfeit!" (III.ii. 111-14).6 In her effort
to put love under reason's control, Portia shows the sign
of maturity and self-possession. But the love which

attacks the lovers in A_Midsummer Night's Dream is blind,

 

12

irrational, and uncontrolled by reason and judgement. Our
attention is led to the presence of impersonal power
rather than to the integrity which underlies the lover's
particular action.

I do entreat your Grace to pardon me.

I know not by what power I am made bold,

Nor how it may concern my modesty,

In such a presence here to plead my thoughts.

[I.i. 58-61]

I will go tell him of fair Hermia's flight.

Then to the wood will he tomorrow night

Pursue her; and for this intelligence

If I have thanks, it is a dear expense.

But herein mean I to enrich my pain,

To have his sight thither and back again.
Hermia can only half-guess what made her so bold before
the presence of her father and the Duke himself. Helena
determines to inform Demetrius of Lysander and Hermia's
flight, hoping that she will be able to feed her eyes on
Demetrius's sight on the way to, and back from the wood.
But she is not cynical enough to take into account the
apparent possibility that "this spotted and inconstant
man” (1.1. 110) will not only despise to give her due
thanks, but leave her company for the one he loves, and
this is exactly what he does later in the wood.

The word "dote" is frequently used to describe the

sort of love which sways the lovers. Helena "dotes/

Devoutly dotes, dotes in idolatry" (I.i. 108-9) on

Demetrius who does not care for her a jot. He is instead

13

"doting on Hermia's eyes" (I.i. 230). The charm of the
love juice which later causes all the errors of the night
resides in its power to "make or man or woman madly dote/
Upon the next live creature that it sees" (II.i. 171-72).
This sense of deception implied by the word is stretched
to the furthest extreme in Titania's love for Bottom with
an ass's head. She does not hesitate to admit, at the
cost of her own dignity, how she "dotes" on this monstrous
creature (IV.i. 48). Love-madness of the lovers is always
a delight to the spectators. The essence of this cele-
brated comic encounter between Titania and Bottom is
reductio ad_absurdum of the irrational love which holds
the Athenian lovers in a tight grip. As Professor E. K.
Chambers says, "The magical love in idleness really does
nothing more than represent symbolically the familiar
workings of actual love in idleness in the human heart."7
It only accelerates love's anarchy and capriciousness.
This aspect of love which the play continually

evokes finds its compact expression in Helena's soliloquy
near the end of Act I, scene i.

Things base and vile, holding no quantity,

Love can transpose to form and dignity.

Love looks not with the eyes, but with the mind;

And therefore is winged Cupid painted blind.

Nor hath Love's mind of any judgement taste;

Wings, and no eyes, figure unheedy haste.

And therefore is Love said to be a child,

Because in choice he is so oft beguiled.

As waggish boys in game themselves forswear,

So the boy Love is perjured everywhere.
[I.i. 232-41]

14

The first two lines clearly forecast Titania's love to
Bottom. The rest of the passage is the diagnosis of blind,
irrational love to which Helena is one of the victims. We
can see how the conventional image of Cupid's blindness is
elaborated here to suggest the irresponsible, anarchic
a8pect of love. The opposition of love and judgment is
very early established in the presentation of sober Egeus,
a blocking figure who stands in the way to the fulfillment
of romantic love in New Comedy. Egeus understands his
daughter's love only as the confusion of youthful blood
wrought by amorous rhymes and love-tokens. This view is
publicly seconded by the Athenian law which gives filial
obligation precedence over socially unapproved love.
Helena's choice is an ethical one. The following exchange
between Theseus and Hermia shows the difficulty involved.

Theseus. Demetrius is a worthy gentleman.

Hermia. So is Lysander.

Theseus. In himself he is;

But in this kind, wanting your father's
voice,
The other must be held the worthier.
Hermia. I would my father looked but with my eyes.
Theseus. Rather your eyes must with his judgement
look.

The opposition and parallelism is there in such a way
that it is hardly likely that the two views could be
accommodated peacefully. In fact, according to the

Athenian law, the penalty for disobedience to the father's

will is either death or entering a convent. As Professor

15

Northrop Frye says, the harsh and irrational law which
tries to regulate sexual drive is finally "internalized"
as the part of the crystallizing of the new society around

the newly married couples.8 A_Midsummer Night's Dream

 

follows the same pattern. But at the present moment, it
is more important to understand this legal enforcement
more in its immediate context rather than in its import in
the over-all structural pattern of New Comedy. It briefly
reminds the audience of the fact that Athens in festivity
is still ruled by the workaday standard of values, involv-
ing ethical choice and moral judgement. The fact is only
suggested, but enough to drive the point home: that
passionate love can become a potential danger to the
harmony of community, and its lack of judgement sometimes
leads the person to more than a laughable folly.

But once within the wood of Athens, our serious
concern with love-judgement opposition is simply suspended.
As Professor C. L. Barber has pointed Out tentatively, the
play's transfer of location from town to green world finds
its archetypical pattern in the May Game, the native folk
custom which was widely observed still in the sixteenth
century English countryside.9 On May Day, it was the
custom for the villagers to set up the Maypole, a symbol
of holiday freedom, decorating it with garlands and haw-
thorn, country lads and lasses dancing round it. The day

often ended with the all-night revelling in the wood.

16

Following the pattern, love-madness in the play enjoys

the full license of freedom and displays all kinds of
absurdity, released from the hands of the Athenian law

and hostile father. The rational judgement upon the
lovers' behaviour is singularly out of place. The audience
enjoy the mad caper of the lovers, just as Puck enjoys the
hilarious interlude: "Shall we their fond pageant see?/
Lord, what fools these mortals be!" (III.ii. 114-15). We
are meant to laugh at them, not to sympathize. They are
no more than puppets skilfully manipulated by the super-
natural creatures, which in turn represent the unpredict-
able working of fancy.

Love's integrity and constancy is impossible in
the wood of Athens. One oath of love is quickly discarded
and soon replaced by another as in a game. Helena laments
the perjury of Demetrius:

For ere Demetrius looked on Hermia's eyne,

He hailed down oaths that he was only mine;

And when this hail some heat from Hermia felt,

So he dissolved, and showers of oaths did melt.

[I.i. 242-45]

Demetrius's change of heart has nothing to do with values.
He changes, because it is natural, as often seen in the
area of natural phenomenon: the ice "melts" before the
heat of the sun, the water runs to the lower ground, the
spring makes things grow and the winter makes things

perish. It is as simple as that. There is no space left

17

for the demonstration of human integrity. When one tries
to justify the change in terms of reason, he can be as
ridiculous as Lysander when he wakes up from his enchanted
sleep to find Helena, his new created goddess, before his
eyes:

Content with Hermia! No, I do repent

The tedious minutes I with her have spent.

Not Hermia but Helena I love.

Who will not change a raven for a dove?

The will of man is by his reason swayed,

And reason says you are the worthier maid.

Things growing are not ripe until their season.

So I, being young, till now ripe not to reason;

And touching now the point of human skill,

Reason becomes the marshal to my will,

And leads me to your eyes, where I o'erlook

Love's stories, written in love's richest book.

[II.ii. 111-22]
The audience know too well that the effect of love juice
is working on his eyes, and that what is giving Lysander
a cue is not reason but the command of irrational passion.
The fake-logic of growing up to maturity is particularly
ironical, because his every action and gesture unshame-
facedly points to the contrary.

Hermia is very slow in coming up to the rule of the
game. She cannot believe that Lysander has left her while
she was sleeping. Rather than that, she chooses to believe,
"This whole earth may be bored, and that the moon/May
through the center creep, and so displease/Her brother's

noontide with the Antipodes" (III.ii. 53-55). The hyper-

bole is extravagant and deliberately ridiculous. The last

18

thing she can accept is that Lysander can and would show
his back to her, while she can find no cause for it. The
change is too sudden, too unexpected, and with no explana-
tion at all. "Am not I Hermia? Are not you Lysander?/
I am as fair now as I was erewhile" (III.ii. 273-74). The
recognition is puzzling, and potentially dangerous as well
in its revelation of nightmare quality and the sense of
disharmony between reality and appearance. The discovery
can be developed into more serious matter if the dramatist
wants, but the play is a comedy and the issue finds another
solution.

Puppet? Why so? Aye, that way goes the game.

Now I perceive that she hath made compare

Between our statures, she hath urged her height.

And with her personage, her tall personage,

Her height, forsooth, she hath prevailed with him.

And are you grown so high in his esteem

Because I am so dwarfish and so low?

How low am I, thou painted maypole? Speak --

How low am I? I am not yet so low

But that my nails can reach unto thine eyes.
This is as comic as Lysander's rationalization. Hermia
positively refuses to be bewildered by her lover's appar-
ent perjury, and she picks up the thread of rationaliza-
tion; her rival talked contemptuously of her low stature,
and that is the cause why Lysander has left. The next
step she takes is to commit herself to the sway of vio-

lence. The action brings back the criss-cross movement

of farce, kicking aside the introspective tone. Hermia's

19

own choice of rationale invites from Lysander the verbal
parade of "Get you gone, you dwarf,/You minimus, of
hindering knotgrass made,/You bead, you acorn" (III-ii-
328-30). The lover's reasoning is a delight for the
audience in every way.

We have so far looked at the kind of love depicted
through the conduct of the lovers: a lunacy in the brain,
uncontrollable passion which refuses the correction of
judgement and sense perception. The dramatist skilfully
manipulates our reSponse so that we are delighted rather
than becoming fully aware of the serious implications.

But they are nevertheless there. As we have seen, the
nature of Hermia's choice at the start of the first act
can be a potential problem, and so is her momentary loss
of self-identification at her lover's apparent perjury.
Most important of all, the suggestion that love is "not an
integral part of life, but a disturbing element in it”10
is constantly there. It follows the course of nature that
the lovers behave in this way, but it does not necessarily
promise an all round happy ending. We have to keep in
mind Friar Laurence's warning: "These violent delights
have violent ends,/And in their triumph die, like fire

and powder/Which as they kiss consume" (Rgmgg_and Juliet,

IIOViO 9-11) 0

The chronological relationship between Romeo and

 

Juliet and A Midsummer Night's Dream has not been

 

20

established definitely, but it is now a common practice
to assign their date of composition to 1594-95, the
comedy following the tragedy immediately.11 The most
direct link which connects the two plays is their concern
with blind, irrational love. The course the lovers take

in A Midsummer Night's Dream strongly parallels the main

action of Romeo and Juliet: the lovers repudiate the duty

 

to their guardian and commit themselves to the sway of

passion. Shakespeare's choice of Pyramus and Thisbe story

 

for the mechanicals' interlude is significant in this
respect. Opposed by parents' will, Pyramus and Thisbe
steal forth from their house to meet at Ninus' tomb, and
the story ends with the double suicide acted upon the false
knowledge that the other is dead. The death both in 32222

and Juliet and Pyramus and Thisbe story is, significantly

 

 

enough, the consequence of an accident: If Friar
Laurence's letter to Mantua had not been prevented by the
plague, the tragic catastrOphe would have been easily
avoided. In the same sense, if the lion had not torn
Thisbe's mantle, and if Pyramus had not jumped to his
conclusion so hastily, their plan to meet in the orchard
would have been performed without any disturbance. It is
12

also important to notice, as Professor Dickey points out,

that Romeo and Juliet maintains the tempo and atmosphere

 

of a comedy during the first two acts, with the help of

Mercutio's humorous ridicule of love and the Nurse's low

21

jokes. The succession of violent actions in Act III
thrusts the play into the tragic current, but until then
the audience are allowed to watch the love of Romeo and
Juliet with certain detachment and light-hearted
enjoyment.

The moralizing habit of the Elizabethans found a
good illustration of the destructive power of passionate

love in the two stories. Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet

 

is a complex work which goes beyond simply moralizing on
the lovers' conduct. But the purpose of Arthur Brooke,

the author of the long poem The Tragicall Historye of

 

Romeus and Juliet (1562), from which Shakespeare has taken

 

the main action of his play, is not even thinly disguised.
In the preface attached to the story, Brooke promises the
readers a story about "a coople of unfortunate lovers,
thralling themselves to unhonest desire," conferring with
"dronken gossyppes, and superstitious friers," "abusyng

the honorable name of lawefull marriage," and finally
”hastyng to most unhappye deathe," and he hepes that the
readers may be touched by "an hatefull lothyng of so filthy
beastlynes."13 From this we can imagine how the story of

Pyramus and Thisbe was received by the readers in the late

 

sixteenth century. It is conjectured that there had
probably been a stage version of the story before 1594,14
and it is more than likely that the audience of A_Mid-

summer Night's Dream were familiar with the story, not

22

only in its aspect of Ovidian lament on the death of
true lovers, but also in its emphasis on the danger of
blind passion.

The affinity between Romeo and Juliet and A_Mid-

 

summer Night's Dream first becomes clear as early as Act I,
scene i. After the quick repartee on the subject of "The
course of true love never did run smooth," Lysander breaks
into something almost near to despair.

Or, if there were a sympathy in choice,

War, death, or sickness did lay siege to it,

Making it momentany as a sound,

Swift as a shadow, short as any dream;

Brief as the lightning in the collied night,

That, in a spleen, unfolds both heaven and earth,

And ere a man hath power to say "Behold!"

The jaws of darkness do devour it up.

So quick bright things come to confusion.
The lines capture the glimpse of love's helplessness
before natural and physical threat--war, death, sickness--
its temporary bliss and transition to darkness and nothing-
ness, with full recognition of man's mortality. This sense
of love's vulnerability is best understood, as Professor
Kermode suggests,15 when set beside a passage from Venus
and Adonis, in which Venus makes a catalogue of infirmities
within perfection of physical beauty, hoping to invite
Adonis to the temporary pleasure of flesh.

"And therefore hath she bribed the Destinies

To cross the curious workmanship of nature;

To mingle beauty with infirmities
And pure perfection with impure defeature,

23
Making it subject to the tyranny
Of mad mischances and much misery,
"As burning fevers, agues pale and faint,
Life-poisoning pestilence and frenzies wood,
The marrow-eating sickness, whose attaint
Disorder breeds by heating of the blood.
Surfeits, imposthumes, grief and damned despair,
Swear Nature's death for framing thee so fair.
"And not the least of all these maladies
But in one minute's fight brings beauty under.
Both favor, savor, hue, and qualities,
Whereat the impartial gazer late did wonder,
Are on the sudden wasted, thawed and done,
As mountain snow melts with the midday sun."
[733-50]
Lysander's lament is a variation on the same motif of
mutability in human life, conceived in terms of love. The
image of snow melting before the sun's heat has been al-
ready used to describe Demetrius's change of heart.
Venus's carpe diem argument--"enjoy yourself while you are
young"--is underlain with pessimism, and her goal is se-
duction, not the confirmation of permanent love. Every-
thing in nature changes, because constancy and perfection
are not available there. Why does not man change his
mind, of all the creatures the most unaccommodated and
helpless? The question is deadly, and the play affirms
it implicitly.

In Romeo and Juliet, Friar Laurence forebodes the

 

destructive power of human will in his soliloquy in Act II,
scene iii, and the moral of the speech has a direct

reference to our play.

24

Within the infant rind of this small flower

Poison hath residence, and medicine power.

For this, being smelt, with that part cheers each part,

Being tasted, slays all senses with the heart.

Two such Opposed kings encamp them still

In man as well as herbs, grace and rude will;

And where the worser is predominant,

Full soon the canker death eats up that plant.
The image of the canker eating the fresh petals of the
rose is familiar to the readers of Shakespeare's sonnets
as the sign of general corruption in the natural course
of human life. When we read the passage with the two
lovers in our mind, its implication is an obvious one.
If the human will and reason manage to control passion,
love can be transformed to the source of all worldly
goodness, as the Florentine Neo-Platonists believe. On
the other hand, if the lover becomes the blind prisoner
of passion, degenerating the role of will to that of a
bawd or pander to desire, then the same power turns
destructive.

Lysander's insight into the depth of love experi-
ence finds its direct echo in Juliet's lines which
express her anxiety over the rash meeting with her new
found lover.

Although I joy in thee,
I have no joy of this contract tonight.
It is too rash, too unadvised, too sudden,
Too like the lightning, which doth cease to be

Ere one can say "It lightens."
[II.ii. 116-20]

25

Love is a sudden flash, illuminating momentarily both
heaven and earth, but soon sinking under oblivion. Look-
ing back upon it, the lovers find it only a dream, a
deception, a false vision which allures the lovers with
sweet bait. Shakespeare rings out the same nuance of the
word "dream“ in his sonnet 129 which denounces the vanity

of lust.

Mad in pursuit, and in possession so,

Had, having, and in quest to have, extreme,

A bliss in proof, and proved, a very woe.

Before, a joy prOposed, behind, a dream.

[9-12]
Though in a different context and not related to the
theme of love, the dejected heart of Richard II finds
itself some ease in the same illusionary quality of
dream.
Learn, good soul,

To think our former state a happy dream,

From which awaked, the truth of what we are

Shows us but this.

[Richard II, V.i. 17-20]

This sense of dream, a deceptive vision from which, being
awaked, a man sadly creeps to reality with bitter dis-
illusionment, is opposed and finally overcome by another
kind of dream, as we shall see later. In order to
achieve the "real" sense of harmony and happiness, the

play has to solve the problem which the "seriousness" of

the play itself has raised. To borrow Professor Barber's

26

phrase, the true pleasure of comedy depends on "how much
reality it masters by its mirth."16
Nothing could be made right, unless we take

seriously the interlude of Pyramus and Thisbe and its

 

mirror-like reflectiveness within the whole structure.

The enterprise is undertaken by a group of rude mechanicals,
but this does not reduce its importance. Professor
Bullough and Professor Young think that ShakeSpeare is

17

here "parodying himself," after finishing the task of

writing a tragedy about a pair of lovers, "as a relief."18
This is a definitely wrong approach. Professor Young goes
further by saying that Shakespeare was probably satirizing
the excess of contrived rhetoric in quasi-Senecan trage-

dies, plays like Kyd's Spanish Tragedy (1586?) and Richard

Edwards' Damon and Pithias (1564-5), the first tragicomedy

 

in England. There is an unmistakable parallelism between

such passages.

0 Sisters Three,
Come, come to me,
With hands as pale as milk,
Lay them in gore,
Since you have shore
With shears his thread of silk.
(5.91.2. V.i. 343-48]

You Furies, all at once
On me your torments try.
Why should I live, since that I hear
Damon my friend must die?

27

Gripe me, you greedy grief,
And present pangs of death!
You sisters three with cruel hands,
With speed now stop my breath! 19
[Damon and Pithias, 608-15]

 

 

The same halting doggerel, the extravagant hyperbole, and
though not fully shown in the quotations, the frequent
use of heavy alliteration, are unmistakable. Professor
Young concludes: "'Pyramus and Thisbe' calls attention
to recent improvements in the dramatic arts, an evolution

«20

experienced by audience and artist alike. He finds

the meaning of the interlude only in its aspect as an
artistic failure, which, he thinks, makes a nice contrast

to the mastery execution of A Midsummer Night's Dream.21

 

Following the same criteria, he judges Bottom's lines,
"The raging rocks/And shivering shocks . . ." as "prOperly
grandiose and meaningless."22
This is a fine and coherent interpretation, but
nevertheless partial. It is also quite reasonable to
assume that Bottom and the rest of the mechanicals speak
in an absurdly mock-heroic manner simply because the
dramatist is following literary decorum. Suppose a group
of country rustics torturing their minds to devise a play
which has to please the SOphisticated taste of the
courtiers. The first thing that comes into their minds
will be very likely the memory of the plays once they

have seen at the town square or on the cart--the unfor-

tunate lovers lamenting their doom, the figure of Herod

28

"making all split" with his wild ranting. They would imi-
tate them as faithfully as possible, elevating themselves
as they think it fit for such a high occasion. They might
appear absurd to the courtiers, but they are in dead
earnest: they firmly believe in the solemnity of the
occasion and behave with a certain air of dignity and
self-importance all through their performance. They are
not imaginative, as seen in their extra-dramatic effort to
bring in the moonshine on the stage and make the lion
reveal his real identity lest the appearance of the fear-
ful beast may frighten the ladies out of their wits. The
audience know better that the play is but a play, and that
zealous endeavour to establish "reality" sometimes de-
stroys the whole dramatic illusion. But the mechanicals
have the imagination of children, who do not discriminate
between reality and fiction. Professor Barber's tribute
to the mechanicals' simplicity is a valuable lesson.

But they are not ggimaginative: on the contrary

they embody the stage of mental development before

the discipline of facts has curbed the tendency to

equate what is "in" the mind with what is "outside"

it. They apply to drama the same sort of mentality

that supports superstition--it is in keeping that

the frightening sort of folk beliefs about changelings

are for them an accepted part of life: "Out of doubt

he is transported." Because this uncritical

imaginativeness is the protOplasm from which all

art develops, the clowns are as delightful and

stimulating as they are ridiculous. Even while we

are laughing at them, we recover sympathetically

the power of fantasy enjoyed by children, who, like

Bottomé can be anything, a train, an Indian or a
lion.2

29

The adaptability, the naive belief that man can become
the moon or wall by equipping himself with a lantern, thorn
bush, a dog and "lime and rough-cast," is deeply carved in
the mechanicals' personality. They are ridiculous in their
childishness, but it is not hard to believe that such
naivety goes hand in hand with dignity and self-respect.
Professor Young forgets that the interlude is undertaken
by such people, and seems to be lavishing highly critical
awareness on the wrong place. As a result, he succeeds
in establishing a critical hypothesis which is valuable if
taken out of context, but he sacrifices for it the truth
of the drama.

Professor Young condemns Bottom's "Ercles' vein"
as "grandiose and meaningless." But there is another way

to look at it. Let me quote the full lines.

"The raging rocks
And shivering shocks
Shall break the locks
of prison gates.
And Phibbus' car
Shall shine from far,
And make and mar
The foolish Fates."
- [I.ii. 33-40]

As Professor Young indicates, the lines echo, rather
crudely, a passage from JaSper Heywood's 1561 translation

of Seneca's Hercules Furens. Probably Shakespeare was

 

familiar with Seneca's tragedy, and consciously paralleled

it. But we cannot simply dismiss the case as a parody.

30

Bottom's lines have peculiar charm, not in spite of, but
because of the combination of hyperboles and curious
images, especially because of the speaker's optimistic
defiance of Fate.

The working of Fate is evident even in our play.
Apologizing to Oberon for his mistaking, Puck strikes out
an ironical view: "Then fate o'errules, that, one man
holding troth,/A million fail, confounding oath on oath"
(III.ii. 92-93). This is another variation on the familiar
theme we have already seen: it is natural that the true
lover turns false and the false turns true, as the snow
melts before the sun. Considering that the fairy creatures
do nothing more than to accelerate the natural tendency,
we suspect that the Athenian lovers may after all change
their partners without much stimulus of the love juice.
Here inconstancy is the disguised name of Fate, the iron
law within the forest. To challenge this force like
Romeo, "I defy you, stars,” is one way to c0pe with the
difficulty as a human being. But another way is open,
and that is Bottom's: just make fun of it and ignore it.
And this is exactly what he does later in the interlude.
His death after a long leave-taking is an anti-climax.

Now am I dead,
Now am I fled,

My soul is in the sky.
Tongue, lose thy light,
Moon, take thy flight,

Now die, die, die, die, die.

31

In spite of his emphasis on the finality of death, Bottom
makes the audience suSpect, "With the help of a surgeon,
he might yet recover, and prove an ass" (V.i. 316-17).

And in fact he rises again to join the circle of Bergomask
dancers, and turns the tragedy into a country revel. He
scares death away simply by being himself, an ass.

To say that the Athenian lovers are not central to
the final vision of the play would sound pretentious, but
nevertheless it is true. Professor E. K. Chambers ob-
serves that "the most important story from the point of
view of the comic idea, and the one to which most space is

devoted, is that of the Athenian lovers."24

Admittedly
the plot of the lovers is assigned the largest space, and-
it carries the central concern of the play--love-madness.
We feel satisfaction and pleasure at the sight of the
united lovers after all those confusions and adventures.
But if we talk of the "comic idea," that is, the poetic
principle which decides the degree of unity finally
achieved, the lovers are in the background. They are the
manifestation of certain values, but they are, so to speak,
envelOped in the larger pattern or idea which expands our
consciousness and finally establishes a sense of unity out
of the wide area of human experience.

Dream and imagination conclude what fancy has

bred, and that is what happens in the last two acts of.§

Midsummer Night's Dream. Oberon signals the end of the

 

32

frantic wooing game by bidding Puck to make the lovers
fall asleep; and being once awaked, "all this derision/
Shall seem a dream and fruitless vision" (III.ii. 370-71).
Likewise, "an exposition of sleep" attacks Bottom while
he is couching comfortably upon Titania's lap, and the
next moment he wakes up, he is no longer the Fairy Queen's
paramour, and must peep with his own fool's eyes. Titania
is also brought back to her natural eyesight and recon-
ciled to her husband, though still uncertain of the cir-
cumstances how she came to dote on such a contemptible
creature. The dream vision suspends all the laws of
cause and effect, and all the victims of the night's errors
literally ”slide back" to their normal condition. But the
return to normalcy is not simply winding the clock back:
"And back to Athens shall the lovers wand/With league whose
date till death shall never end" (III.ii. 372-73). The
juice Oberon ministered on Lysander's eyes stabilizes the
lovers' proper relationship. Also the effect of love-in-
idleness is working on Demetrius's eyes, whether he's
aware of it or no. Thus dream becomes the integral part
of what we call reality, shaping and supporting the same
by its own unique design.

But the lovers naturally do not have much time
and are quick to jump to the happy conclusion without
scrutinizing its status. The play affirms their human

inconsistency and folly, cherishing the sense of happiness

33

finally achieved: "Lysander and Hermia, Demetrius and
Helena enter, laughing and talking together." They still
retain all their immaturities. But if they lack the
charm of self-possessed personality, they have the at-
tractiveness of the simpler kind--every "he" and "she,"
"Jack" and "Jill" of the country proverb. They are young,
brisk, and above all capable of pursuing their passion
unweariedly, half-blind as they are.

We may ask, "Is man no more than this?"--a puppet
deaf in its fury, incapable of constancy, rebelling
against reason and authority. But if he errs, he errs
by nature, not by pretense or sophistication. And the
minimizing of the lovers' stature strips off all kinds of
"lendings" which would otherwise prevent our insight into
the insignificance and contemptibleness of our own stature
when set against the vast landscape of nature. But the
recognition is not sceptical or sinister. Instead it
directs our attention to the healthy limitation which is
imposed upon every one of us. We are, after all, equals
under the law of nature, beyond individual idiosyncrasy,
in our vulnerability and spiritual ignorance. Therefore
when we laugh at the lovers, the laughter is in a sense
directed at ourselves. It is ”we" that play the chief
performers in this revelry of fools on a midsummer night.

As we have already noticed, the final resolution

of love-judgement opposition is simply suspended, and the

34

issue has not received the clear-cut answer. The night
of the mistake is over, and now the scene has moved to
the daylight of Athens. The play has to somehow provide
an acceptable rationalization of the past mysterious
events, lest it become merely another old wive's tale.
And the interpretation is given by Theseus in the famous

lines on the lover, the madman and the poet:

More strange than true. I never may believe
These antique fables, nor these fairy toys.
Lovers and madmen have such seething brains,
Such shaping fantasies, that apprehend
More than cool reason ever comprehends.
The lunatic, the lover, and the poet
Are of imagination all compact.
One sees more devils than vast Hell can hold,
That is the madman. The lover, all as frantic,
Sees Helen's beauty in a brow of Egypt.
The poet's eye, in a fine frenzy rolling,
Doth glance from heaven to earth, from earth to heaven,
And as imagination bodies forth
The forms of things unknown, the poet's pen
Turns them to shapes, and gives to airy nothing
A local habitation and a name.
Such tricks hath strong imagination
That if it would but apprehend some joy,
It comprehends some bringer of that joy;
Or in the night, imagining some fear,
How easy is a bush supposed a bear!

[V.i. 2-22]

The maturity of style, conceits, rhetorical articulation
is Obvious. Professor Dover Wilson proposes a tempting
hypothesis that probably Shakespeare added most of the
passage later, when he was released from the burden of
composition and with the success of the play's first night
behind him, now referring back to "the poet's eye, in a

25

fine frenzy rolling" in an amused mood. Apart from his

35

theory's credibility, this tends to turn the whole speech
into a bravura on the subject of the artist's creative
power. Yet when looked at in its immediate context,
Theseus's speech provides the focus on the discussion

of dream and imagination, giving them a clear-cut, if
limited, status.

Theseus stands at the head of the state, and his
austere philosophy spurns aside the dream and imagination
as childish nonsense. His brain is not tainted by festive
wine. Besides, he is not an imaginative man. Shake-
speare's powerful imagination working at its maximum force
should not beguile us here. We have heard the argument
that Macbeth is a poet because he speaks marvelous blank
verse. This is never true in the theatre. To suppose
that Macbeth is a poet, we have to establish on the stage
an individual busily engaged in aesthetic evaluation and
selection of diction. This is simply absurd. Every word
Macbeth utters expresses hope, anxiety, doubt, fear, but
it never gives a cue to sound the speaker's poetic crea-
tivity, which certainly belongs to the dramatist. So in
the case of Theseus. He talks of imagination and fantasy,
only as a sceptic who questions the value of those airy
nothings, not as a poet who affirms them. Therefore he
equates the lover's and the poet's imagination with the
madman's. He finally brings down the dignity of our

imaginative faculty to the level of "Or in the night,

36

imagining some fear,/How easy is a bush supposed a
bear"--mere deceptive illusion created by our fear. The
two lines are anti-climax for Professor Dover Wilson, and
with the help of textual evidence he assigns them to

earlier and immature writing.26

Admittedly there is an
obvious gap in poetic beauty between the last two lines
and the rest of the passage, but the continuity of thought
is maintained intact. The last lines conclude, in the
most prosaic and straightforward manner, that the imag-
ination is the by-product of our weaker faculties. The
sooner we get rid of it, the better. To the Stoic mind
of the Athenian ruler, imagination is a disease of the
weaker species.
Here is an explicit judgement on the value of

dream and imagination from the mouth of one whom the
play treats with reSpect. Unquestionably, he establishes
a point of view through which everything becomes coherent
and explainable. But cool reason is not the supreme
value of the play, though Professor Charlton likes to
think it is.

At once, he sees that mere survival in the world

depends upon man's ability to differentiate

rapidly and certainly between bears and bushes, and

thus perceives that the attribute of supreme value

in the world is the ”cool reason" which comprehends

things as things are: that men without cool

reason, who are the Sport of seething brains and

of the tumultuous frenzies of fancy and of

sentiment, are the victims of the world, and the

butts of its comedy. Comedy, leading its action
to a happy ending, leaving its characters at the

37

end in harmony with the world, is bound to put

its highest values on qualities which make for

worldly happiness and success. With Theseus, the

philosophy of comedy is finding its voice, and

his "cool reason" is its prevailing spirit.
”Butts“ is an unhappy choice of word, if Professor Charlton
had the lovers in his mind. Above all, what guarantees
the final happiness is not Theseus and his reason, but
the irrational power of the fairies to shape the future.

To understand the point as the dramatist has set

it, it would be necessary to re-examine Theseus's position
within the whole play. As it becomes clear during the
dispute between Oberon and Titania in Act II, Theseus has
had his own version of youthful love affairs, stealing
forth from one lover "through the glimmering night" to
others whom he finally deserts. Most important of all,
the play does not end in the way Theseus has designed.
After the courtiers retire to their beds, the troop of
fairies led by their king and queen sweep into the cham-
ber, chanting the blessing hymn on the lovers' marriage
bed. Oberon again prophesies that no physical deformity
such as mole, hare-lip, or scar shall visit the issue
of the lovers. Theseus and Hippolyta are no longer the
rulers in this larger order, but only a pair of lovers
as Lysander and Hermia, Demetrius and Helena are.
PrOperly viewed in this general framework, Theseus and

the authority of reason he embodies submerge to second-

ary importance. Or to put it in another way, he still

38

occupies the foreground, but our attention is led to the
background landscape which surrounds and enfolds him
from every direction, transforming the whole picture into
an entirely different kind.

Theseus understands the lovers' experience only
as the fruitless vision created by imagination: they
have encountered a bush, and supposed it a bear. And in
some respect, Theseus is correct, for the lovers saw
things through the distorted glass all through the play.
For instance, when the lovers were in the wood, we
glimpsed quite another image of the wood in Demetrius's
speech when he suggested, half-mockingly, the danger of
a solitary maiden in the forest (II.i. 214-19). It is a
dark, vicious place, miles apart from the town, not un-
like the wood "Fitted by kind for rape and villany" in
Titus Andronicus (II.i. 116). But this negative image of
the wood is quickly discarded when Hermia contradicts it,
presenting another picture produced by love's imagination:
"Nor doth this wood lack worlds of company,/For you in my
reapect are all the world./Then how can it be said I am
alone/When all the world is here to look on me?" (II.i.
223-26). Love is a disease, but at the same time it
brings an improvement upon reality and makes it bearable
by its strong power of imagination. However Theseus may
object with all reason and common sense on his side, the
lovers can live the consequence of their imagination with

ease. As Professor G. K. Hunter observes, "where the

39

imagined facts hang together with inner logic and con-

sistency, as of a world that could be lived in, then the

28

imagination may have some claim to truth." In other

words, "By being prepared to live the visions that have

appeared to them they make them true.»29

We find the most effective witness of the power
of imagination in no other than Bottom the weaver. Here
I firmly Oppose Professor E. K. Chambers' opinion that

"In the story of the handicraftsmen, the central idea

30

does not find any direct illustration." If we can

assume that the play's ultimate concern rests with the
discussion of dream and imagination, we cannot miss
Bottom's somewhat troubled speech after he wakes from the

magical enchantment.

I have had a most rare vision. I have had a
dream past the wit of man to say what dream it
was. Man is but an ass if he go about to expound
this dream. Methought I was -- there is no man
can tell me what. Methought I was -- and methought
I had -- but man is but a patched fool if he will
offer to say what methought I had. The eye of
man hath not heard, the ear of man hath not seen,
man's hand is not able to taste, his tongue to
conceive, nor his heart to report, what my dream
was. I will get Peter Quince to write a ballad
of this dream. It shall be called Bottom's Dream,
because it hath no bottom, and I will sing it in the
latter end of a play, before the Duke. Peradventure,
to make it the more gracious, I shall sing it at
her death.

[IV.i. 208-24]

The echo from the Bible, "Eye hath not seen, nor ear

heard, neither have entered into the heart of man the

4O

thing which God hath prepared for them that love him"

(I Corinthians, ii, 9 ff.) is apparent. It is interesting
that St. Paul is here speaking of the way God's secret
wisdom is revealed to man, "in words not taught by human
wisdom but taught by the Spirit." What Bottom is strug-
gling with is the uncommunicable nature of his vision. He
accepts the mystery quite offhand, and frankly admits the
limitation of his understanding. We welcome his reaction,
because we also sense the existence of mystery at the
bottom of the play, as our understanding of reason and
imagination, actuality and illusion fails us in our own
uncertainty and ignorance. We may laugh at Bottom so com-
pletely lost and unable to c0pe with his wonder, but, as
Professor G. K. Hunter warns us, ”Here among the muddled
roots of humanity it is dangerous to laugh too loud, for
Shakespeare makes it clear that it is ourselves we are

laughing at."31

Besides, Bottom is not a man who is
troubled long with arguing. He flies back to the rest of
the mechanicals lamenting the wreckage of their plan due
to the loss of their star actor. We are not quite sure
whether he will impart his experience to his friends:

"Not a word of me. All that I will tell you is that the
Duke hath dined. Get your apparel together, good strings
to your beards, new ribbons to your pumps” (IV.ii. 34-37).

As Professor Barber remarks, "there is something splendid,

too, in the way he exuberantly rejoins 'these lads'

41

and takes up his particular, positive life as

Athenian.'"

a 'true

Metamorphosis cannot faze him for long. His
imperviousness, indeed, is what is most delightful
about him with Titania: he remains so completely
himself, even in her arms, and despite the outward
change of his head and ears; his confident, self-
satisfied tone is a triumph of consistency, per-

sistence, existence.32

Bottom's problem is also ours, because at the very

end of the play the dramatist asks us to take

the whole

dramatic experience as a dream. Puck pleads to the

audience:

If we shadows have offended,

Think but this, and all is mended,

That you have but slumbered here

While these visions did appear,

And this weak and idle theme,

No more yielding but a dream,

Gentles, do not reprehend.

If you pardon, we will mend.

And, as I am an honest Puck,

If we have unearned luck

Now to scape the serpent's tongue,

We will make amends are long,

Else the Puck a liar call.

So, good night unto you all.

Give me your hands, if we be friends,

And Robin shall restore amends.
[V.i.

There is always an unmistakable pathos in the
of Shakespeare's comedies, spoken at the time

theatrical illusion mingles with reality: we

430-45]

epilogues
when the

can see

through the half-slipping off disguise the face of an

actor now covetous of applause. But more than

this, here

42

the dream vision is not simply a device to make an indi-
vidual part reconcile with the other: it concerns the
whole play.

This kind of attempt to link the dramatic experi-
ence with a dream vision had already been done by John
Lyly, a master playwright of the court. For instance, in
the prologue written for the court production of his play

Sapho and Phao, we read:

 

Whatsoeuer we present, whether it be tedious
(which we feare) or toyishe (which we doubt)
sweete or sowre, absolute or imperfect, or
whatsoeuer, in all humblenesse we all, & I on
knee for all, entreate, that your Highnesse
imagine your self to be in a deepe dreame, that
staying the conclusion, in your rising your
Majestie vouchsafe but to saye, And gg'ygg
awakte.33 _—_

Or in the prolOgue of another play The Woman ig_the Moone:

 

 

Ovr Poet slumbring in the Muses laps,
Hath seene a WOman seated in the Moone,
A point beyond the auncient Theorique. . . .

This, but the shadow of our Authors dreame,
Argues the substance to be neere at hand:
At whose appearance I most humbly craue,
That in your forehead she may read content.
If many faults escape in her discourse,
Remember all is but a Poets dreame,

The first he had in Phoebus holy bowre,

But not the last, vnlesse the first displease.34

Also in the prologue to his play Endimion, Lyly says:

 

"Wee present neither Comedie, nor Tragedie, nor storie,

nor anie thing, but that whosoeuer heareth may say this,

«35

Why heere is a tale of the Man in the Moone. Lyly's

43

gesture of submitting himself lowly before the presence
of the Queen and courtiers is elegant, and it is quite
natural that he should point beforehand at the unreality
of his play whose public purpose is but a compliment to
the Queen, unquestionable source of authority and grace.
His play must be a dream, a fiction, when the ultimate
reality is there to watch it embodied in human figures.
We can find the same element of meek humbleness and the
gesture of self-denial in Shakespeare's epilogue. But
parallelism ends at this point, and the further comparison
only serves to illustrate how Shakespeare absorbed a cer-
tain court play convention and at the same time overcame
its limitation.

Dream vision in Shakespeare is not simply a
dramatist's gesture, but a unifying symbol which re-
organizes the past events and dramatic oppositions into
a coherent picture of life. Aided by the distance now
created between them and the play, the audience see the
whole play, with its flickering, shadowy creatures, its
loud laughter and parade of human follies, as something
near to the composite expression of truth about human
life. For instance, the play's explicit judgement is
given by Theseus, who values reason and sanity above
passion and imagination. But the play's implicit judge-
ment, strOngly felt through the treatment of the lovers

and Bottom, puts imagination above reason. The play

44

does not give us a definite answer, but we are not invited
to feel a sense of ambivalence. Instead, the dream vision
helps to maintain a kind of "comic equilibrium” which

Professor Kermode Speaks of.36

The play consists of
numerous and sometimes mutually opposing component parts,
but the final product refuses to be resolved back to
them, but somehow transcends them.

A_Midsummer Night's Egggm is a "serious" play in
the sense that it does not distort nature in order to end
in a happy conclusion. What makes the play so complex and
rich in meaning is the dramatist's constant awareness of
human beings in the natural condition--always under the
control of invisible force, hedged with numerous limita-
tions, rebelling against the authority of higher reason.
This might sound too sceptical to fit in the over-all
impression of the play. But as we have seen in the play's
relationship to Rgmgg'ggg_Juliet, we cannot completely get
rid of this undertone which lurks at every corner and
suggests the possibility of a quite different ending. But
the manner of its existence is modest and is not powerful
enough to threaten the balance of the comic design accom-
plished through the use of dream vision.

Some would like to call the play artificial,
because the sense of unity is in one sense imposed upon
the experience rather than reached at through the pro-

gression of dialectics. Especially comparing the play

45

with the maturity of the later comedies, we partly admit

that the unified picture of A_Midsummer Night's Dream is

 

beautifully, and at the same time too easily obtainable.
However, we should not take this kind of opinion too
seriously, for it only occurs during the leisured specula-
tion in one's study and not in the theatre where, at least
in an ideal one, a mass of people feel the sense of belong-
ing to a temporary community through sharing the common

experience. Among Shakespeare's comedies, A_Midsummer

 

Night's Egggm particularly stimulates this deep-rooted
impulse among the audience to participate in theatrical
activity, as eloquently witnessed by Peter Brook's recent
production of the play.

Then why does this happen? I believe, with the
help of Miss Welsford's chapter "Hymen" in her book Th3

Court Masgue, that A_Midsummer Night's Dream has succeeded

 

in dramatizing, not only the Specific conventions and
artifices, but the most essential spirit of Hymenaei, a
distinct form of the court masque usually associated with
Hymen, the god of marriage. In the last act of our play,
Oberon and Titania unambiguously play the roles of the
priest and priestess of the marriage rite. They dance
and sing in the chamber illuminated by the tapers, and
Oberon prophesies the future prosperity and the eternal
unity of the lovers, very much in the manner of Hymen

himself.

46

Now, until the break of day,
Through this house each fairy stray.
To the best bridebed will we,
Which by us shall blessed be,
And the issue there create
Ever shall be fortunate.
So shall all the couples three
Ever true in loving be,
And the blots of Nature's hand
Shall not in their issue stand--
Never mole, harelip, nor scar,
Nor mark prodigious, such as are
DeSpised in nativity,
Shall upon their children be.
[V.i. 408-21]

At the beginning of Ben Jonson's early court masque
Hymenaei, Hymen with "his head crowned with roses and
marjoram, in his right hand a torch of pine tree" leads
the group of pages "attired in white, bearing five tapers
of virgin wax," who dance around the bride and bride-

groom, singing:

Bid all profane away;

None here may stay

To view our mysteries

But who themselves have been,
Or will in time be seen

The self same sacrifice.

For Union, mistress of these rites
Will be observed with eyes

As simple as her nights.

Fly then, all profane, away,
Fly far off, as hath the day;
Night,her curtain doth display,
And this is Hymen's holiday.3

The most important thing about Hymen is that he
is not simply the god of marriage but also "a mystic
symbol of national unity or of the harmony of all men

with one another."38 Jonson often has Hymen praise the

47

social unity of England, thus paying a homage to the bene-
volence and power of James I in presence. The idea is
fundamentally political, but the immediate sensation of
participating in the revelry was much more spontaneous, as
partly guessed from the court masque's particular aim to
invite the audience from their seats to dance among the
performers. Those who join the circle of dancing become
aware of the group, "not as his party to be upheld in
Opposition to the other man's party, but as something to
be enjoyed without ulterior motive, something that lifts
him out of himself."

Revelling springs from high spirits, and when

it develOps into a solemn social function

it naturally represents the community, not

as an association founded through fear, not

as a necessary or unnecessary evil to be

perpetually attacked or changed, but as a

society of which the essential principle

is harmony and the chief object the supplying

of the individual with a fuller draught of
life and experience.39

What the audience of A Midsummer Night's Dream get at the

 

end of the play is very similar to this court reveller's
experience. Married life lies always at the center of the
community, because it promises the society's continuity
through procreation. Therefore, its celebration gives
every member of the community a chance to confirm mutual
fellowship. This notion of marriage as communal activity

is strongly evident in Spenser's Epithalamion, eSpecially

 

in such lines as these:

48

But most of all the Damzels doe delite,
When they their tymbrels smyte,
And thereunto doe daunce and carrol sweet,
That all the sences they doe rauish quite,
The whyles the boyes run vp and downs the street,
Crying aloud with strong confused noyce,
As if it were one voyce.
Hymen io Hymen, Hymen they do shout,
That euen to the heauens theyr shouting shrill
Doth reach, and all the firmament doth fill,
To which the people standing all about,
As in approuance doe thereto applaud
And loud aduaunce her laud,
And euermore they Hymen Hymen sing, 40
That al the woods them answer and theyr eccho ring.
[133-47]
The ”strong confused noyce" of the town's peOple becomes
”one voyce" through the chorus of "Hymen io Hymen." Here
even nature itself echoes back the joy among the mortals.
But Shakespeare is not a leader of Hymenaei, and
we are not the members of the marriage feast. The parti-
cular circumstance in which Hymenaei could fulfil its
original function--the presence of the monarch, felt
existence of the social unity, a banquet hall brightly
lit by candles, gorgeous architecture on the stage--all
these are lost in the public theatre. If the dramatist
tries to convey the same sensation, he has to somewhat
recapture the quintessence of the event by the sheer
power of his imagination. The enterprise involves a great
difficulty, because composing a drama is a more complex
task than giving a cue to the revellers. The dramatist
has to bring into his work an objective viewpoint which

the reveller certainly feels no need for. Puck asks us

49

to take the whole dramatic experience as an insubstantial
pageant enacted by shadows. But if the dramatist points

to the unreality of his play, he must also point to the

reality of his play, as Professor G. K. Hunter observes.41

Or else, the play has to deny its claim of holding the

mirror up to nature.

When art is cut loose from actuality, its content
as well as its form begins to change. To the
ritualist fellowship is a stable possession, to
the reveller a source of immediate enjoyment, but
to the dramatist it is a difficult achievement,
often endangered and disturbed, sometimes
destroyed. For when the dramatist steps outside
the circle of revellers, he glances at their
environment and loses the blithe assurance of the
'dancing courtiers.’ He sees that conflict, the
threat to harmony, is inseparable from drama,

and conflict is set in motion not only by faults
of character but also by circumstances over
which the human will has no control. . . . But
always the dramatist looks to see how the environ-
ment affects the drama.42

Miss Welsford's :remark.clarifies the point I have tried
to call into attention throughout the course of discussion:
comedy is meant to convey the sense of happiness and

unity, but at the same time it is an imitation of life,
not in the restricted sense of depicting man's behaviour

and idiosyncrasy, but in its interest in human frailty,

limitation and our existence in the natural condition.

CHAPTER I I

THE MERCHANT 9;: VENICE

Harley Granville-Barker and J. Middleton Murry both
judged The Merchant g£_Venice as a fairy tale. "There is
no more reality in Shylock's bond and The Lord of Belmont's
will than in Jack and the Beanstalk"1 is Granville-Barker's
view. Middleton Murry clarifies the implication of
Granville-Barker's statement by saying that the play "makes
its secular appeal to that primitive substance of the human
consciousness where folk tales took their origin," and is
an “almost perfect example of the art-form which being
prior to art itself, most evidently and completely satis-
fies the primitive man in us all."2 Shylock is an ogre
incarnated, and Antonio and Bassanio embody what is noble
and affirmative in human nature. We should not ask too
ardently why the white is white and the black is black,
because the antagonism between the good and the evil is
here self-explanatory.

'Both critics' comments on the play's basic setting
help to steer our understanding of the play along the

right track. Expecially, they effectively warn those

50

51

readers who try to read intellectual and psychological
coherence where the dramatist did not have the slightest

intention to create it. Nevertheless, The Merchant gf

 

Venice is not a fairy tale in the sense that A Midsummer

 

Night's 2£23m_is. The whole dramatic action and the
general scope of the latter play is motivated by the
specific impulse to celebrate the idea of marriage and
the sense of unity it brings, and the dream vision serves
as a superb means to knit the individual parts into a
well-organized piece of dramatic work. But in 222.
Merchant gg Venice, the dramatist is aiming at another
kind of comedy. The ever green world of Belmont is
matched with historic Venice with its lively turmoil and
cosmopolitan atmosphere. Love's consummation becomes
possible only after Portia appears at the Venetian law
court and proves her life-principle superior to that of

a bloodthirsty Jew. Besides, we can find numerous ele-
ments which do not easily conform to the calculated
scheme, be it Antonio's melancholy or Bassanio's some-
times lamentably easy going manner or Lancelot Gobbo's
low jokes which here and there acquire the intensity of
sarcasm. Above all, Shylock's presence remains disturbing
even after we have checked our sympathy based on the long
humanitarian tradition which instinctively guards itself

against racial prejudice.

52

It is easy to conclude, with the aid of these
evidences, that Th2 Merchant g: Venice is not a genuine
comedy and that it has a split purpose. This is the view
of Professor Charlton and Professor E. K. Chambers.
Professor Charlton, concentrating on Shylock and his
dramatic life, concludes that "there can be no doubt that
the wooing of Portia by Bassanio is not the main stuff
of the play. . . . The Bond story, not the tale of the

caskets, is the backbone of The Merchant g_f__Venice."3

 

Professor Charlton does not attempt to provide an answer
to the obvious question: Then what kind of play is $23
Merchant 2; Venice, if its chief interest lies in other
than romantic courtship? Professor E. K. Chambers, though
he admits that the play is dominated by Portia's wit and
her sunny hair, concludes that the play as a whole is a
tragicomedy. He finds two kinds of dramatic interest, the
drama of ideas and the drama of emotion, Operating side by
side to the effect of dividing our responses: "For such
emotional or romantic comedy, as distinct from comedy
prOper, 'tragicomedy,‘ which the Elizabethans themselves
sometimes used, is perhaps the happiest term."4
We do not have enough space here to discuss the
status of this ambiguous literary genre "tragicomedy,"
but it is certain that the Elizabethans and their critics
did not use the term to indicate a kind of ambivalence

suggested both by Professor Charlton and Professor E. K.

Chambers. Sidney's "mongrel tragi-comedy" is simply a

53

pejorative term for the pOpular plays which mingled kings
and clowns shoulder by shoulder, and should be understood
as an expression of critical frustration rather than as a
term for a definite literary form. Generally Speaking,

the mixing of tragic and comic tones in the Elizabethan
drama reflects the pOpular fondness for diversity for its
own sake, and, as Miss Doran points out, "It is the success
of the blending that entitles it to be called a form."5
Above all, according to the definition of the Italian

critics and playwrights, notably by Guarini, the author of

the representative tragicomedy Pastor Fido (1580-89),

 

tragicomedy shared its ultimate aim with comedy: to purge
melancholy and to delight the audience. "But the purga-
tion, which is the architectonic end, exists only as a
single entity, restricting the mixture of the two quali-
ties to one aim: the freeing of the listeners from
melancholy."6 The association of tragicomedy with the
"problem play" with its unresolved irony is of modern
birth, and it causes unnecessary barriers for the true
appreciation of a play like ghg_Merchant 95 Venice. The
play is a comedy, or else there is no point in the last
act's presentation of universal harmony within the rich
atmosphere of poetry and music. If the existence of
Shylock is too menacing to fit into a sort of comedy
Shakespeare has previously written, we should understand
that he is now attempting a different sort of comedy

which tries to establish the sense of happiness and

54

unity, not by closing the play's channel to reality, but
by inviting an intruder and letting the lovers meet his
challenge. This is a technical difficulty, but the
overcoming of the difficulty results in a maturer comic
vision.

It is a valuable practice to examine the first
scene of Shakespeare's play carefully, either tragedy or
comedy, because it quite often sets the basic atmosphere
and the important idea of the whole play. The marriage
festivity of Theseus's court strikes the key note of A_
Midsummer Night's Egggm, and the frozen platform before
the castle, with armed soldiers fearfully whispering,
decides the entire mood of Hamlet. Likewise, the opening
scene of The Merchant gf Venice is worth a close look.
First of all, the casual dialogue between Antonio,
Salarino and Salanio gives us the vivid picture of the
particular society the play uses as the pole opposite to
the romantic world of Belmont: a mercantile society where
the reference to one's "venture" and "traffic" provides
a daily tOpic for conversation on the street. The
activity of the merchants is to buy goods cheaply there
and sell it dearly here, and their interest is always
Opened toward the wide sea and the land beyond it. In
such a society, wealth and its maintainance depends upon
luck, and cannot reach the stability found in an agri-

cultural society. Fluidity is its master-principle, and

55

the life-pattern of its members is formed accordingly.
We are never introduced to the interior of Antonio's or
Bassanio's house, and the whole action in Venice, except
at the trial scene, takes place on the street where people
are constantly coming in and going out. Salarino and
Salanio depart from Antonio with "I would have stayed till
I had made you merry/If worthier friends had not prevented
me" (I.i. 60-61), meaning the approach of Bassanio,
Gratiano and Lorenzo. Antonio knows that it is only an
excuse: "Your worth is very dear in my regard./I take it,
your own business calls on you,/And you embrace the
occasion to depart" (1.1. 62-64). There is no intention
of irony on the part of Antonio. To be busy with trade
is an indication of health for the merchants, and here
Antonio is only paying a compliment in a civilized manner.
The chief means of maintaining communication between
acquaintances is to make a promise to meet at such and
such a place, at such and such a time, and this occurs to
a degree which never happens in any other of Shakespeare's
plays, perhaps except Thg_Comedy 2; Errors, which depicts
the same kind of commercial society and has a certain
kinship to our play.

This lively society has its own image of wealth,
and it is aptly expressed in Salarino's speech referring

to Antonio's merchandise abroad.

56

Your mind is tossing on the ocean--

There where your argosies with portly sail,

Like signiors and rich burghers on the flood,

Or, as it were, the pageants of the sea,

Do overpeer the petty traffickers

That curtsy to them, do them reverence,

As they fly by them with their woven wings.

[Isis 8.14]

Our modern sensitivity is accustomed to conceive wealth
as a heap of bank notes. But the Renaissance fondness for
pageantry and visual spectacles could easily turn the
image of riches into the fascinating picture of sea navi-
gation. Here, wealth is no longer a static property
possessed by an individual, but something that could be
used for social and ceremonial purpose, impressing the
onlookers with the pleasure of watching the flourish of
human luxury at its most self-sufficient moment. Also
notice the use of personification which metamorphoses the
argosies into "signiors" and ”rich burghers” who ”fly"
"with woven wings." In such a ceremonial occasion, even a
ship can boast of life and panache.

This life-enhancing image of wealth makes a sharp
contrast to Shylock's image of wealth. His wealth con-
sists of hoarded money, and it has already lost its most
elementary function--to buy something which supplies our
want and makes living more comfortable. Shylock's belief
that money breeds money leads to nothing--on1y piling up

riches in the dark counting-house. C. S. Lewis's shrewd

Observation, "The real play is not so much about men as

57

about metals" points to this distinction between two kinds
of wealth--wealth for social use and wealth for its own

sake.

The important thing about Bassanio is that he

can say, 'Only my blood speaks to you in my
veins', and again, 'all the wealth I had Ran

in my veins'. Sir Walter Raleigh most unhappily,
to my mind, speaks of Bassanio as a 'pale shadow'.
Pale is precisely the wrong word. The whole
contrast is between the crimson and organic
wealth in his veins, the medium of nobility

and fecundity, and the cold, mineral wealth in
Shylock's counting-house.7

The comparison of Shylock with Barabas in The Jew g:
Malta (Ca. 1588) is generally helpful and indeed one can
find a close parallelism in their vocabulary and behaviour}3
But what strikingly separates Shylock from Barabas is that
he is not allowed to pose in the atmOSphere of luxury.
Marlowe's play Opens with the same kind of description of
adventurous navigation, but it is assigned to the villain
Barabas.

So that of thus much that return was made:

And of the third part of the Persian ships,

There was the venture summ'd and satisfied.

As for those Samitoes, and the men of U2,

That bought my Spanish oils and wines of Greece,

Here have I purs'd their paltry silverlings.9

[101. 1-6]

In our play, this worldly traffic is the occupation of
the Christians, and our rich Jew shrinks from the idea of

venture because of its risk. Shylock's maxim is "Fast

bind, fast find" (II.v. 54), and he makes life intolerable

58

for his daughter Jessica with gloom and restriction.
Shylock is never given to merriment and hates the idea of
relaxing himself with music and game.

What, are there masques? Hear you me, Jessica.

Lock up my doors, and when you hear the drum

And the vile squealing of the wry-necked fife,

Clamber not you up to the casements then,

Nor thrust your head into the public street

To gaze on Christian fools with varnished faces,

But stop my house's ears, I mean my easements.

Let not the sound of Shallow fOppery enter
My sober house.

[II.v. 28-36]
Before he is a Jew and a challenger of Christian morality,
Shylock is a born enemy of comedy which loses the basis
of its existence if all the people embrace extreme
sobriety, and despise the idea of letting themselves go
from time to time. As Professor Barber suggests, Shylock
is like churlish Christmas who appears in Nashe's inter-

lude Summer's Last Will and Testament (1592-3). He is a

 

miser and stubbornly opposes festivity. To Summer's
"Christmas is god of hospitality," Christmas replies:
"So will he never be of good husbandry. I may say to
you, there is many an old god that is now grown out of
fashion. So is the god of hospitality," or "Aye, aye,
such wise men as you come to beg at such fool's doors as

we be."10

Shylock's life-principle is thrift and hus-
bandry. His pose is always on guard against possible
calamity in future, and as a result he is perversely void

of flexibility. Time is only a succession of safeguarded

59

but monotonous repetitions of the present, and its pro-
gression means nothing but maturing of bonds and increas-
ing of interest. He cannot observe the timeliness of
occasion, and fails to enjoy his share of humanity. Such
a kill-joy figure is doomed to become the butt of comedy.
Bassanio has a foreboding that he would be fortu-

nate at Belmont (I.i. 173-76), and what he lacks is only
money to furnish himself with. Admittedly, Bassanio's
idea of money is that of a child: it springs before his
eyes whenever he needs it. He is a prodigal who has shown
more "swelling port" (I.i. 124) than his income could
allow, and the tale of two arrows he employs to beg another
loan from Antonio cannot persuade us that what is involved
is no more than "pure innocence" (I.i. 145). But he is
not "predatory" as Professor Quiller-Couch would like to
think.11 Bassanio is good luck incarnated, and it is at
this point that the play's fairy tale setting should be
accepted in itself. Antonio's money is meant to be con-
sumed for such a purpose. Bassanio describes Portia using
the image of high flourish we have found in Salarino's
speech.

Nor is the wide world ignorant of her worth,

For the four winds blow in from every coast

Renowned suitors. And her sunny locks

Hang on her temples like a golden fleece,

Which makes her seat of Belmont Colchos' strond,

And many Jasons come in quest of her.
[I.i. 167-72]

60

The mythical allusion and the image of navigation searching
for riches ring out the key note of Bassanio's courtship to
Portia. Furnishing himself richly with the money he has
borrowed from Antonio, Bassanio can appear at the door of
Portia's mansion as a worthy competitor, even making her
servants spend "such high-day wit" (II.ix. 98) in praising
his forerunner whom we have all reasons to assume to be
clad in costly habit and laden with valuable gifts: "A
day in April never came so sweet,/To show how costly
summer was at hand,/As this forespurrer comes before his
lord" (II.ix. 93-95). The money is thus properly changed
to the medium of translating one's worth into an exterior
form which can be seen and appreciated by others. In
Belmont, there is no distinction between wealth and
civility: "To wit, besides commends and courteous breath,/
Gifts of rich value" (II.ix. 90-91). Portia makes clear
later that Bassanio's possessing of her love naturally
includes her property.

Myself and what is mine to you and yours

Is now converted. But now I was the lord

Of this fair mansion, master of my servants,

Queen o'er myself. And even now, but now,

This house, these servants, and this same myself

Are yours, my lord.

[III.ii. 168-73]

Enjoying one's love means enjoying one's wealth.

The idea of love as a kind of wealth, or a commerce

between man and woman is also evident in Shakespeare's

61

sonnets, especially in the sequence 1-13. In these
sonnets, Shakespeare tries to persuade his friend who is
unwilling to give himself to any woman to marry so that
his beauty and nobility may live in time by creating an
heir. Here the usury has a sexual meaning. It is "Making
a famine where abundance lies" (1. 7), and to withhold
one's love is to make "waste in niggarding" (1. 12).
Usury is a name given to sterile self-love, and it is
distinguished from love's "use”: "That use is not for-
bidden usury,/Which happies those that pay the willing
loan" (6. 5-6). The basic idea which underlies the whole
association--usury and self-devouring selfishness, love's
use and realization of one's potential productivity--is
the notion that one's resources are only leased to those
who are ready to Spend them in an apprOpriate way. This
is the theme of sonnet 4.

Unthrifty loveliness, why dost thou spend

Upon thyself thy beauty's legacy?

Nature's bequest gives nothing, but doth lend,

And being frank, she lends to those are free.

Then, beauteous niggard, why dost thou abuse

The bounteous largess given thee to give?

Profitless usurer, why dost thou use

So great a sum of sums, yet canst not live?

For having traffic with thyself alone,

Thou of thyself thy sweet self dost deceive.

Then how, when nature calls thee to be gone,

What acceptable audit canst thou leave?

Thy unused beauty must be tombed with thee,
Which, used, lives th' executor to be.

What gives the poem its special sense of immediacy is

the poet's anxiety over physical and worldly gift's

62

vulnerability before the law of nature, the fleeting time
which digs wrinkles upon the smooth brow of youth. "Since
brass, nor stone, nor earth, nor boundless sea/But sad
mortality o'ersways their power“ (65. l-2), physical per-
fection "Whose action is no stronger than a flower"

(65. 4) is destined to corruption and decay. If the
youth, like a usurer, does not give himself away to
others, he is abusing his true self which is potentially
capable of living beyond this world. On the other hand,
those that are "free" and have "traffic" with others
conquer time's incessant assault by preparing an "accep-
table audit," a child. To get a child is only a meta-
phorical expression of one medium to transcend time's
working, and what is most important is man's capacity to
commit himself entirely and unselfishly to the good of
others, without expecting any recompense.

It is within this context that Antonio's devotion
to Bassanio, and the later casket scene, should be under-
stood. Salanio tells us that Antonio only loves the
world for Bassanio (II.viii. 50), after Salarino des-
cribed the touching scene of the friends' parting at the
port. There is no distinction between "mine” and "thine"
in Antonio's idea of perfect friendship. He does not
Show any sign of hesitation in standing surety for
Bassanio and thus walks into the fatal trap set by

Shylock. Even when the bond is forfeited and his life is

63

in danger, Antonio's kindness suffers no change, his
care being always on Bassanio's well-being.

The nature of Antonio's melancholy has been the
target of speculation for a long time. The scarcity of
information doubles the difficulty. We only know that he
has changed marvelously very lately (I.i. 76), and that
he is neither troubled about the prospects of his busi-
ness (1.1. 41-45), nor in love (I.i. 46). Antonio himself
does not know where and how he has got the melancholy he
is now troubled with (I.i. l-7), and thinks that the world
is but a stage and the role he is assigned to is a sad
one (I.i. 77-79). Professor Dover Wilson proposes in the
notes of the New Cambridge Edition: "Is not the secret of
his melancholy the fear that this lady may rob him of his
dear friend?" and he concludes that it "scarcely admits

of any other interpretation,"12

recognizing in the play
the same kind of love-friendship opposition as typically

found in The Two Gentlemen g£_Verona. Professor E. K.

 

Chambers invites our attention to Shakespeare's auto-
biographical sketch of his own unrequited love. Antonio's
melancholy was not intended for the audience, but "rather
the intrusion of a personal note, an echo of those dis-
turbed relations in Shakespeare's private life of which
the fuller but enigmatic record is to be found in the

13

Sonnets." Professor Mark Van Doren regards it as'an

elegant and graceful pose, "a beautiful sadness of that

64

sort which it is the highest pleasure not to explore"14

Professor Traversi thinks that Antonio's melancholy con-
fines him to "an existence which excludes the decisive
act of self-surrender, of free dedication to the claims
and opportunities which life offers and which constitute
its supreme justification."ls Professor Traversi sees
much of the importance of free dedication in the play,
but his explanation of Antonio's melancholy itself is
somewhat unsatisfactory, because the gloomy mood, as he
sees it, exists only to be discarded by Antonio's action
to relieve Bassanio's predicament. But Antonio's gloom
hovers around him even after the action, as is obvious
from his farewell speech to Bassanio at the trial scene.
Such a diversity of Opinions is puzzling, but each

of them could probably be justified in its own interest
and aim. However, if we look at the case as the specimen
which suggests how much reality Shakespeare has encom-
passed within this play, Middleton Murry's observation
cannot be dismissed.

I am persuaded that Shakespeare intended

Antonio's melancholy to be motiveless and that the

half-line was deliberate. Shakespeare was taking

advantage of that part of Antonio's character .

which was free to introduce a depth into his

character, and still more a feeling-tone into

the play, which he felt the play could bear, and

which would enrich it. . . . Antonio would remain

a presence in the responsive imagination, a

character whose nature was not wholly expressed
in the acts required of him.

65

Middleton Murry does not state in what sense Antonio's
melancholy enriches the play, but his explanation is
sound and hits the target. Antonio is a full member of
the Venetian society, but Shakespeare makes it sure that
he is at the same time out of it due to his melancholy
which does not square with the jocund atmOSphere of his
surroundings. We feel behind this solitary figure a

vast landscape which is essentially unexplored in the
play. This is confirmed whenever he speaks in his
characteristic sober and sad manner: "I am a tainted
wether of the flock,/Meetest for death. The weakest

kind of fruit/DrOpS earliest to the ground, and so let
me" (IV.i. 114-16). In Shakespeare, the ripe fruit fall-
ing from the branch is the image of inevitable working of
time. The process of maturing and decaying is one and
the selfsame phenomenon. Later, Touchstone in A§_Ygg
Like It gives the idea a compact expression: "And so,
from hour to hour, we ripe and ripe,/And then, from hour
to hour, we rot and rot,/And thereby hangs a tale”
(II.vii. 26-28). In the same manner, Richard II comments
on old Gaunt's death: "The ripest fruit first falls, and
so doth he./His time is spent, our pilgrimage must be"
(II.i. 153-54). Ironically, Richard's fortune begins to
decline exactly at the moment when he ascends to full
command over his kingdom after the banishment of two

influential lords and death of chiding Gaunt. Richard

66

remains inactive until the very last moment, and he

literally "pines away" like a herb past its prime. His

lament is "time hath set a blot upon my pride" (III.ii. 81).
The working of fortune and man's forced adjustment

to it are not entirely absent in The Merchant g£_Venice.

 

Antonio's farewell speech to Bassanio is pierced with
the note of quiet resignation and acceptance of his
fortune.

Give me your hand, Bassanio. Fare you well!

Grieve not that I am fallen to this for you,

For herein Fortune shows herself more kind

Than is her custom. It is still her use

To let the wretched man outlive his wealth,

To view with hollow eye and wrinkled brow

An age of poverty, from which lingering penance

Of such misery doth she cut me off.
Antonio prepares for death, not with the aid of religious
consolation, but with the Humanistic contempt of the
'world. Life is a constant declining movement, destined
to death and oblivion. Why travail to prolong misery by
clinging to life? This is the advice of the Duke to
death-sentenced Claudio in Measure for Measure: "Be
absolute for death." The Duke makes a catalogue of in-
evitable misfortunes which accompany life, preaching that
death is a happy escape from all earthly calamities. Men
are but made of "many a thousand grains/That issue out of

dust" (III.i. 20-21), ”Servile to all the skyey in-

fluences” (III.i. 9), and man is but a "death's fool"

67

(III.i. 11) who strives in vain to outrun the doom. In
short, "Thou hast nor youth nor age,/But, as it were, an
after-dinner's sleep,/Dreaming on both" (III.i. 32-34).
The ultimate reality belongs to death and its eternal
Sleep, and what we regard as precious in life--riches,
nobility, valour--all are deceptive illusions. Even
friendship is not lasting, and the children curse the
diseases for not ending their aged parents' life sooner
(III.i. 28-32).

This recognition of human frailty and limitation
within the larger framework of natural condition was evi-

dent in A Midsummer Night's Dream. But in The Merchant

 

 

2; Venice, its presentation is more immediate and less
laughable, as it is embodied in the credible human figure.
We are not meant to concentrate on Antonio's melancholy
at the cost of losing the prOper balance of emphasis, but
to ignore its serious implication is to do wrong to the
text. Antonio is melancholy, because the dramatist meant
him as a man that can live outside of the comic sphere
where fortune always smiles on the patient and the bene-
volent. His pose of melancholy and self-abandonment makes
him capable of adjusting himself to the turn of fortune
from good to bad. He might be grieved or frightened at
the sudden visit of misfortune, but he is always ready to
accept it without confusion. Antonio is utterly opti-

mistic about the prospect of his ship's return: "My

68

ships come home a month before the day" (I.iii. 182). This
is quite unlike the saying of a prudent merchant. He is
forgetting to take into account the apparent possibility
that the wind may change and at least delay the ship's
return, not to say it might be wrecked by the storm or
other accident. A good merchant always counts on the un-
predictable nature of the future. It is for nothing that
the wind suddenly changes on the night Bassanio intends a
feast, hastening his departure to Belmont. Antonio chides
Gratiano who is costumed for a masque being ignorant of
the change of plan.

Fie, fie, Gratiano, where are all the rest?

'Tis nine o'clock. Our friends all stay for you.

No masque tonight. The wind is come about,

Bassanio will presently go aboard.

I have sent twenty out to seek for you.

[II.vi. 62-66]

There is no point in this sudden change of plan, unless
the dramatist intended to suggest the arriving of the
future in an unexpected form. Several men promised to
meet at certain place and on certain time, and some have
purposed a masque which they thought would surprise the
guests. But the wind has changed, and the meeting is can-
celled. The gentlemen's straying around the city in the
disguise of a mask only increases Antonio's pain to

locate them. The future can take what form it pleases,

often contrary to men's calculation.

69

The mutual faith of Antonio and Bassanio is con-
stant and firm. There is no doubt about this. But beyond
the basic fairy tale setting, there is a slight suggestion
of the contrary concerning Bassanio's to Antonio. Gratiano
and Salarino are waiting for Lorenzo's approach before
Shylock's house, and they fall into a casual conversation

to fill the vacant minutes.

Salarino. Oh, ten times faster Venus' pigeons fly
To seal love's bonds new-made than they
are wont
To keep obliged faith unforfeited!
Gratiano: That ever holds. Who riseth from a feast
With that keen appetite that he sits down?
Where is the horse that doth untread again
His tedious measures with the unbated fire
That he did pace them first? All things
that are,
Are with more spirit chased than enjoyed.
How like a younker or a prodigal
The scarféd bark puts from her native bay,
Hugged and embraced by the strumpet wind!
How like the prodigal doth she return,
With overweathered ribs and ragged sails,
Lean, rent, and beggared by the strumpet
. wind!
[II.vi. 5-19]

The topic has nothing to do with the immediate context,
and there is no sense unless we take it as referring to
the important idea or vieWpoint which illuminates some

aSpects of the play, as Hero's talk in Act III, scene i

of Much Ado About Nothing, about over-flourished honey-

 

suckle which clearly points to the bastard Don John. In
general, the quoted passage says that people usually do

not show so much zeal in observing the obligation and duty

70

afterwards as once they have shown in pursuing their
pleasure. The references like "bonds," "keep obliged
faith unforfeited," or "a prodigal" remind us instantly
of Bassanio's relationship to Antonio. If we take the
passage as forecasting future events, it has no point,
because later in the trial scene Bassanio Shows all signs
of constant fidelity by doing everything he can to save.
Antonio's life. We should understand that the passage's
real function is to point to the negative aSpect of human
relationship that cannot be fully resolved in a comedy,
but can enrich it by supplementary suggestion of things
as they really are outside its gate. In this sense, the
effect is more than providing a foil to increase our
favourable reSponse to Bassanio's kindness. When we lift
the fairy tale settings aside, Antonio's devotion 239 be
disappointed by his friend's treachery. Love is not so
pure and ethereal as the idealists would like to think.
Trivial interests are often mingled with the rarest
affection, and perjury is old as Cupid's history.
Friendship often reveals its limitation before another
kind of obligation. The present writer is not perfectly
convinced of this, but it is rather bothersome that
Bassanio does not act precisely as he says in the court
scene. He encourages doomed Antonio by his "The Jew
shall have my flesh, blood, bones, and all/Ere thou

shalt lose for me one drOp of blood" (IV.i. 112-13).

71

I do not take this as "a lie" as Professor Coghill does,17

but, only on reflection, it is rather against his credit
that Bassanio does not leap the railing to stab the Jew
at the critical moment and afterwards submit himself to
the law. Miss Bradbrook thinks that discontent of this
kind is out of place with the play's artificiality in its

. . 18
meliorative sense,

and her opinion has much reason.

In the last six lines of the passage quoted above,
Gratiano uses the consistent image of sea navigation.
In the first three lines, he describes the departing of
a gorgeous argosy from the native port embraced "by the
strumpet wind," and in the following three lines he pre-
sents the almost twin picture of the same argosy's return,
now miserably damaged by the same "strumpet wind." The
simple method of juxtaposition emphasizes that it is the
same wind that alternately cheers and does harm to the
vessel. The lines effectively express the anarchic work-
ing of natural power, under whose domination growth and
decay, luck and misfortune are inseparably knit together.
Dramatically, this view offers an excellent counterpoint
against Antonio's Optimism. Later in the play, the same
wind that has brought him prOSperity suddenly turns to
malicious power and destroys his hOpe; his ship is
wrecked on the Goodwins ”where the carcasses of many a
tall ship lie buried" (III.i. 4-5). This harkens back

straight to Salarino's Speech in the Opening scene.

72

My wind, cooling my broth,

Would blow me to an ague when I thought

What harm a wind too great at sea might do.

I should not see the sandy hourglass run

But I should think of shallows and of flats,

And see my wealthy Andrew docked in sand

Vailing her high top Iower than her ribs

To kiss her burial. Should I go to church

And see the holy edifice of stone,

And not bethink me straight of dangerous rocks,

Which touching but my gentle vessel's side

Would scatter all her spices on the stream,

Enrobe the roaring waters with my silks--

And, in a word, but even now worth this,

And now worth nothing?
The whole Speech is about a kind of hazard and sense of
risk which accompany worldly ventures. The last two
lines epitomize it in an immediate manner: "but even
now worth this,/And now worth nothing?" The merchants
draw profit out of the mouth of danger. To make a hazard
means to challenge the unpredictable future by committing
something dear to its working. One might lose everything,
but the way to an inestimable wealth is also open. The
high flourish of the Venetian society is in fact matched
implicitly with this sense of risk all through the play.
Antonio's commitment to Bassanio is a venture in terms of
human relationship. He could have denied Bassanio's suit
without marring their friendship in any way: Bassanio is
one of those civilized Venetian gentlemen who are well
aware that asking someone to stand surety is different

from asking a simple favour. He is finally rescued from

his predicament by Portia's hand, but his fall implies

73

that to love someone is to stand at odds with the world,
making a man like Antonio vulnerable before the irrational
hate embodied in Shylock. Love is a noble emotion, but

a lover must somehow cope with the problem that it often
restricts him with disadvantages, because by living in
close relationship with others, he exposes himself to the
dangers and uncertainties of the world to an extent he

has never dared in his more self-sufficient moments.
Shylock does not risk anything, and he is eternally safe
in his counting-house.

We have so far discussed the topics centered in the
Venetian society and its inhabitants. And it is now the
time to turn to Belmont and the casket story. The pre-
ceding part of the essay will serve to illuminate the
importance of the casket theme which is mightily under-
rated by some critics. The episode is based on such
abstract meanings as the distinction between ornaments
and reality, and the manner of Bassanio's choosing the
caskets is ritualistic more than anything in the play:
he is no longer a prodigal so much as a Greek hero attempt-
ing the rescue of a sacrificed virgin. Professor Tillyard
proposes to "read the play as we have to read Spenser,"19
perhaps with Bassanio and Portia at the casket scene in
his mind. But if there is any allegory intended, and if
it is related to the central theme of comedy, consummation

of love and realization of its power, then the allegory

74

is an obvious one, because the dramatist here has elabora-
ted the scene in order to direct our attention to the
prOper emphasis, ”'cause' of the play" as Miss Bradbrook
calls it.20
The most important implication of the casket scene
is that the choice of Bassanio involves risk and danger.
Morocco and Arragon were created to choose the wrong
caskets. But the manner of their act partakes of some
ceremonious and solemn elements we see later in Bassanio's.
Morocco has no scruple about his merit, but he is sensible
enough to be disturbed by fear of Fortune's interference:
Hercules may be easily beaten by Lichas in the game of
dice, "And so may I, blind fortune leading me,/Miss that
which one unworthier may attain,/And die with grieving"
(II.i. 36-38). Arragon, Pride incarnated, asks senten-
tiously "for who shall go about/To cozen fortune, and be
honorable/Without the stamp of merit?" (II.ix. 37-39).
The question is how men's merit, if there is any at all,
can survive the arbitrary working of fortune who like a
strumpet smiles on anyone as she pleases. However a man
may boast of his sincerity and self-integrity, fortune
can confound him with the tip of her fingers. Bassanio
cannot enjoy Portia's love unless he overcomes fortune's
power by his sheer intuition derived from love's
imagination. He has to somehow extend his inner desert

by translating it into the exterior form unmistakable as

75

daylight--pointing at the right casket with his finger.
Portia expresses her honest fear that Bassanio may miss
the right casket, and tries to delay his hazard, though
her inner feeling is almost choked with passion: "And
so, though yours, not yours. Prove it so,/Let fortune
go to Hell for it, not I" (III.ii. 20-21). Bassanio
gains our sympathy partly because he is capable of ad-
mitting his treacherous misgiving: "None but that ugly
treason of mistrust/which makes me fear the enjoying of
my love" (III.ii. 28-29).
While Bassanio is advancing toward his choice,
Portia commands her servants to play the music which
effectively creates a pause before Bassanio's first line,
"So may the outward shows be least themselves" (III.ii.
73).
"Tell me where is fancy bred,
Or in the heart or in the head?
How begot, how nourished?
Reply, reply.
It is engendered in the eyes,
With gazing fed, and fancy dies
In the cradle where it lies.
Let us all ring fancy's knell.
I'll begin it.--- Ding, dong, bell."
All. "Ding, dong, bell."
[III.ii. 63-72]
Professor Dover Wilson believes that the song points to
the casket which contains Portia's counterfeit, with its
21

rhymes "bred," "head" and "nourished" -- "lead." But

I favour Professor Barber's opinion, "The dramatic point

76

is precisely that there is no signal."22 Portia herself
says that she would be forsworn if she gives out any Sign
(III.ii. lO-ll). The audience can be benefited by the
trick Shakespeare has rather playfully elaborated, but we
are meant to assume that Bassanio does not notice its
implication, or else the meaning of hazard of this scene
loses its seriousness. Above all, the song is a dirge for
Fancy, and in this connection it has an enormous implica-
tion. The term Fancy points at a kind of love we have

abundantly seen in A Midsummer Night's Dream--irrational,

 

blind passion. What Bassanio challenges is in fact the
limitation of such an inferior emotion which cannot insist
on its validity beyond corporal finiteness. In A_Mig-
summer Night's Dgggm, the dramatist purposely dispensed
with the fully realized character who was capable of under-
taking such a challenge. But Portia and Bassanio are meant
from the start to conquer the difficulty with their own
hands. They have somehow to be convinced of their master-
ship over chance before they can live with each other in
confidence. The task involves a kind of ritual death of
Fancy. During his long speech on distinction between
ornaments and desert, Bassanio refers to the image of
golden hair which is already familiar to us. But this time

it is the symbol of rottenness and squalor.

77

So are those crispéd snaky golden locks

Which make such wanton gambols with the wind

Upon supposed fairness, often known

To be the dowry of a second head,

The skull that bred them in the sepulcher.

[III.ii. 92-96]

The association of the referred golden hair with Portia's
is almost inevitable, but it is no longer the sunny hair
which has attracted many princes, but the wig made with
the hair plucked from the dead woman's skull. The same
image appears in sonnet 68, where the deceptive charm of
ornament is anatomized: "To live a second life on second
head,/Ere beauty's dead fleece made another gay" (7-8).
As an object of distant admiration, Portia's image as a
golden fleece was adequate. But now the play has entered
the different stage, and Bassanio has to prove that his
love derives its justification from other than sense per-
ception to which golden hair is naturally pleasing. The
essential stimulus is not Fancy "engendered in the eyes,/
With gazing fed." Therefore, Bassanio's denunciation of
ornament has to include Portia's physical beauty which is
after all subject to decay. The particular image would
have been disgusting if it had not occurred during this
ritual moment when what is spoken refers to an abstract
idea rather than to an actual person. After the ordeal
is done, Bassanio can go back again to "We are the Jasons,

we have won the fleece" (III.ii. 244). Portia's hair is

still beautiful, but something has changed after we have

78

seen the negative aspect of it: we are no longer sur-
prised by the information that the myth of the golden
fleece has another aSpect, where Medea avenges Jason's
perjury by killing her two sons and his new mistress.

But the entire ceremony is not yet over. The
ordeal of the knight for the sacrificed virgin is immedi-
ately followed by a process which is less romantic and
more practical, because it concerns their future. Portia's
speech by which she gives herself to Bassanio is touchingly
girlish in its pose of surrender. The important thing is
that it speaks about the necessary sequel of courtship:
marriage relationship. They are no longer a Jason and a
golden fleece, but husband and wife.

But the full sum of me
Is sum of something which, to term in gross,
Is an unlessoned girl, unschooled, unpracticed,
Happy in this, she is not yet so old
But she may learn. Happier than this,
She is not bred so dull but she can learn.
Happiest of all is that her gentle spirit
Commits itself to yours to be directed,

As from her lord, her governor, her king.
[III.ii. 159-67]

23 the

The Speech is, as Professor Traversi points out,
repetition of Katherina's long bravura on obedience near

the end of The Taminggf The Shrew, though the speaker's

 

individuality is now more strongly felt than before.

Thy husband is thy lord, thy life, thy keeper,
Thy head, thy sovereign, one that cares for thee,
And for thy maintainance commits his body

To painful labor both by sea and land,

79

To watch the night in storms, the day in cold,
Whilst thou liest warm at home, secure, and safe;
And craves no other tribute at thy hands
But love, fair looks and true obedience,
Too little payment for so great a debt.
Such duty as the subject owes the prince,
Even such a woman oweth to her husband.
[V.ii. 146-56]

In both speeches, the marriage relationship is identified
with that between the sovereign and the vassal. The

quarrel between them is a "war" (The Shrew, V.ii. 162),

 

and peevish wife is a "graceless traitor" (The Shrew,

 

V.ii. 160). Among Shakespeare's five comedies supposedly

written before The Merchant gf Venice, this concern with

 

the marriage relationship proper was evident in The Comedy

 

g; Errors and The Taming gf The Shrew. Both plays are

 

 

incidentally of the sort whose dramatic aim is to make
best of slap-stick farce with little element of romantic
courtship, which is abundantly seen in such plays as
Love's Labour's Lost or The Two Gentlemen g£_Verona. .A
Midsummer Night's Dream deals with the idea of marriage,
but has very little to say about the marriage in practice.
The Merchant g£_Venice is Shakespeare's first comedy which
reconciles courtship and marriage in a single fable, or

to put it in another way, for the first time it shows us
eloquently that romantic courtship is necessarily followed
by the lovers' toil in maintaining the stable relationship

in marriage. Marriage heralds the beginning of a new life,

80

which is in one sense more vulnerable and needs a good
care by husband and wife.

The quality which helps to maintain the marriage
relationship is not always the same quality which was
valuable during the stage of wooing. Very often, something
quite other than enthusiastic gesture and mild smile is

required. The Merchant gf‘Venice is also a study of the

 

value of wit in a married condition, and Portia gladly
and charmingly demonstrates her gift. To borrow the phrase
of Professor E. K. Chambers, Portia is Shakespeare's first
"questing heroine."24 What differentiates her from the
heroines of the previous comedies is her ease in recon-
ciling within a single personality yielding girlishness
and strong confidence in her self-integrity. She is at
one time presented as a virgin who entirely commits her-
self to her lord's directions, and at another time is
found in a relaxed posture, enjoying herself with every
woman's privilege--gossiping. The important thing is that
these different aspects of her personality are not simply
juxtaposed only to be accepted as another instance of the
Elizabethan dramatists' fatal malady, disregard of "con-
sistency in characterization," but have a definite rela-
tionship to the play's maturer comic vision.

The function of her wit is mainly displayed in
the ring episode. The critics' response to the episode

varies from neglect to Professor Traversi's "the incident

81

parallels in a broadly comic key the central moral of
love as consisting of accepted risk, of the Spontaneous
gift of self."25 Professor J. R. Brown thinks: "The
whole episode is a light-hearted reminder that Portia has
saved Antonio's life, and that the claim of generosity

must always rank as high as that of possession."26

Both
critics' attitude is to connect the episode with the main
issue of the play, and their interpretation is sound and
just. But it tends to become too literate, and does not
completely square with the episode's humour and light
quality. The real implication of the episode should be
taken in the sense Professor J. R. Brown states in the
passage immediately following the already quoted one.

The bawdy talk, which the misunderstandings pro-

voke, also serves an important purpose; hitherto

Bassanio and Portia have conducted their courtship

and love in unsensual terms, almost as if the body

was always a quietly acquiescing follower of the

mind and spirit, but the manner in which they

weather the disagreement about the ring shows that

their love is appropriate to the world as well as

to Belmont, the 'beautiful mountain' of a fairy-

tale.27
The episode is the source of laughter, and that is what
matters chiefly. We see in Bassanio's confusion a sign
of healthy human inconsistency which adds a credit to
Bassanio the average man. Portia takes all the advantages
of the stage convention that the disguise is impenetrable,

and she can adapt it for a Special purpose: to see herself

from the viewpoint of others. Thus Portia borrows the

82

mouth of a lawyer who is entitled to scorn the jealousy
of Bassanio's wife on the basis of his work at the trial.

An if your wife be not a madwoman,

And know how well I have deserved the ring,

She would not hold out enemy forever

For giving it to me.

[IV.i. 445-48]
The Portia who gave the ring to Bassanio with "I give
them with this ring,/Which when you part from, lose, or
give away,/Let it presage the ruin of your love" (III.ii.
173-75) is thus counterpoised by the rival portrait of a
more relaxed, flexible kind. Neither of them loses any
credit, and the process is more than mere correction of one
by another. We now recognize Portia as a full human figure
who is capable of posing both as a devoted lover and as a
mature woman who can condemn her own jealousy with ease,
and the agent of this double recOgnition is her wit.
Portia is quite aware that marriage relationship

is after all one of the many which a man has to maintain
during his course of social life. Friendship is one of
them. Antonio asks Bassanio to give the ring to the
lawyer by reminding him of their past friendship: "Let
his deservings and my love withal/Be valued 'gainst your
wife's commandment” (IV.i. 450-51). Bassanio has a debt
of one kind to the lawyer, one of another kind to
Antonio. He has sworn to keep the ring for the marriage

oath's sake. But a man must face such a dilemma quite

83

often, and it is sometimes both inevitable and reasonable
that he should give the other obligation the first place.
The important thing is that Portia is present at the same
scene and that she approves the unwelcomed fact implicitly.
Later back in Belmont, she can be a jealous "mad woman"
who accuses her husband's betrayal with all the heat and
coil of any woman: "Nerissa teaches me what to believe./
I'll die for't but some woman had the ring" (V.i. 207-8).
It is only a gesture playfully imitated, but it at least
gives utterance to her disappointment as a woman made of
irrational instincts and strong emotional urge. She
knows, perhaps with a tint of sadness, that a man's oath
of everlasting love cannot be taken literally, and that
Bassanio ESE disappoint her again in the near future,
despite the oath spoken through the borrowed mouth of
Gratiano: "Well, while I live I'll fear no other thing/
So sore as keeping safe Nerissa's ring" (V.i. 306-7). It
is not a pleasant thing to recognize the limitation of the
marriage status, but both Portia and Bassanio must somehow
cope with the fact to keep a stable and lasting relation-
ship with each other. There is something especially
charming in the way in which Portia seizes the Opportunity
to monopolize her husband's attention by hinting at the

possible love affair with the imaginary handsome lawyer.

84

Let not that Doctor e'er come near my house.

Since he hath got the jewel that I loved,

And that which you did swear to keep for me,

I will become as liberal as you.

I'll not deny him anything I have,

No, not my body nor my husband's bed.

Know him I shall, I am well sure of it.

Lie not a night from home, watch me like Argus.

If you do not, if I be left alone,

Now, by mine honor, which is yet mine own,

I'll have that Doctor for my bedfellow.

[V.i. 223-33]

The passage is set in the verse form, but it has the best
quality of Shakespeare's witty, cri3p prose Spoken by
Beatrice and Rosalind. The vigour of competent womanhood
is Sparkling, and the gesture of childish naughtiness is
delightful more than anything else. We know quite well
that Portia is only joking. But taking advantage of that
point, the passage manages to convey to us that Portia
can be attractive to other men and that Bassanio's
puzzled face at Portia's "No, not my body nor my
husband's bed" could be a little more sour.

I have refrained until now from giving a full
treatment to Shylock, because it was necessary to estab-
lish beforehand the central theme of the play to avoid
misunderstanding him. According to how we interpret his
presence, we can easily turn the play into a "problem"
comedy with its tragic overtone. Shylock's voice of
humiliation and provoked anger is so strongly felt that

the lovers' plea for free dedication is sometimes

obscured. But there is no need to underplay the part.

85

Shylock's menacing quality was surely meant by the drama-
tist to contribute to the over-all effect of the play as

a comedy. To present him as a perfect comic butt with his
tottering steps and exaggerated heavy Jewish accent is as
wrong as turning him into a martyr or a tragic hero from
the viewpoint of the nineteenth century humanitarianism.
What matters is not his Jewishness, but his actuality,

and the fact that he is a challenger of certain values with
an alternative of his prOposal on his side--”spirit of
calculation,"28 accounting principle, legalism, self-
sufficiency on the basis of absolute refusal of fellowship.
What is crucial is that we 323 live by these principles
”conveniently" and "comfortably,“ whatever the content of
such a life might be, protected safely from perils and
unhappiness which can possibly accompany the lovers' way
of life. The play presents before our eyes these two
life-principles, and rejects one in favour of the other,
not because the latter is more comfortable or profitable,
but simply because it is irrationally and inexplicably
"good." Portia's excuse about the shedding of blood is a
clever trick, and we enjoy its cleverness and the sudden
reversal of the situation it brings. But it does not
prove logically that Shylock's demand is either out-
rageous or inferior in any way: the issue stood in an
equilibrium, and the next moment the lovers triumph and

the Jew is shattered to the ground. This never happens

86

in our life, where legal obligation and "reasonableness"
are the supreme command of society. The play is arti-
ficial, but it is because the play has its own vision of
"good" life: it mildly forbids us to take "happiness"
as synonymous with "ease," ”safety" or even "comfort."
Shylock embodies Hate, which refuses any

rationalization. Instead of giving a definite answer to
the Duke's question why he is thus following his "losing
suit" against Antonio, Shylock tries to dissolve the
issue in the area of one's likes and dislikes, "humours"
to which legal mechanism has nothing to say and is nat-
urally helpless before its demand. Shylock has shown us
explicitly why he hates Antonio: because he is a
Christian (I.iii. 43), because he has lent money without
taking interest (I.iii. 44-46), because he has abused
him on the Rialto and even Spat at him (I.iii. 107-14).
But his hate, like that of Iago to Othello, cannot be
satisfactorily located in specific motives. It is quite
important to see the way in which Antonio describes
Shylock's unmovable antagonism.

I pray you, think you question with the Jew.

You may as well go stand upon the beach

And bid the main flood bate his usual height,

You may as well use question with the wolf

Why he hath made the ewe bleat for the lamb,

You may as well forbid the mountain pines

To wag their high tops and to make no noise

When they are fretten with the gusts of heaven,

You may as well do anything most hard

As seek to soften that--than which what's harder?

His Jewish heart.
[IV.i. 70-80]

87

Professor Burckhardt complains of the poor workmanship of
the passage compared to Shylock's concrete and tough pas-
sage beginning with "You'll ask me why I rather choose to
have" (IV.i. 40-62). Antonio's Speech is "flaccidly
oratorical" and "pedantic," and he concludes: "True,

the burden of his speech is resignation; but it is feeble
rather than noble, a collapse from over-statement into

helplessness."29

But the dramatic purpose of Antonio's
lines is not to Show us anything of the speaker's inner
state, but to point at the nature of the antagonist's
hate. There is nothing outstanding or beautiful about
this poetry, but the repetitious reference to natural
phenomenon is unmistakable. Shylock hates Antonio, as
the sea changes her height and the wind blows upon the
mountain pines. It is something that has to be faced as
it is. There is no room for retreat or looking for the
chance of escape. Reality is nakedly there, and its pose
is a challenge. The one possible response is ready in
Antonio's resignation, and the play affirms its validity
at least in a suggestive manner.

The meaning of Portia's Speech on mercy is only
too apparent. It is a kind of "'thematic' appendix"30
which tells us how to interpret the action. As Professor

Kermode says, "only by a determined effort to avoid the

obvious can one mistake the theme of The Merchant gf
"31

 

Venice. The conflict between justice and mercy, the

88

Old Law and the New Law of the Gospel is unmistakably

there:

Duke. How shalt thou hope for mercy, rendering none?
Shylock. What judgement shall I dread, doing no wrong?
[IV.i. 88-89]
It is important to notice that Portia speaks to those
parts of morality which Shylock shares with the Gentiles.
Therefore, Jew,
Though justice be thy plea, consider this,
That in the course of justice none of us

Should see salvation. We do pray for mercy,

And that same prayer doth teach us all to render
The deeds of mercy.

As Professor J. W. Lever points out, the speech is the
expression of "the broadest monotheism": "It is based on
the principles held in common by Christians and Jews--
belief in God and the after-life--and deliberately passes

over the distinctions between the two faiths."32

"None
of us," "we," "us" emphasize the point. What Shylock is
required to do is to check his justice from the viSWpoint
which sees something more valuable and precious above
social dictates. Shylock once insisted upon his humanity
on the basis of his vulnerability: "Hath not a Jew

eyes? . . . subject to the same diseases, healed by the
same means, warmed and cooled by the same winter and

summer as a Christian is?" (III.i. 61-66). Beyond

religious beliefs, social customs, races and individual

89

idiosyncrasies, all men are brothers under the natural
law which precedes "temporal power" (IV.i. 190) and
"sceptered sway" (IV.i. 193). The play does not exclude
Shylock from this fundamental territory, and allows our
sympathy to move toward him at some moments. But as
Professor Barber tells us convincingly, Shylock claims
"only a part of humanness, the lower part, physical and
passional:"

The Similar self-pitying enumeration which

Richard II makes differs significantly in going

from "live with bread like you" to social responses

and needs, "Taste grief,/Need friends" (5.11 III.ii.

175-176). The passions in Shylock's SpeecH—are

conceived as reflexes; the parallel clauses draw

them all towards the level of "tickle . . .

laugh.”33
Shylock has to Show the sign of his ability to render the
deeds of mercy so that his claim to justice and the right
as a common man could be "seasoned" by something-for-
nothing whose Spontaneous observance completes one's
humanity. "Humanness" as the play sees it is not again
synonymous with "self-sufficiency" or "self-righteousness."
”Gentleness" would be the best word from the play's context.
The word "gentle" occurs fourteen times during the action
of the play. It is sometimes used for the meaning of the
Christians (e.g., II.vi. 51), and both Portia and Jessica

are often referred to as "gentle" (e.g., II.iv. 20; III.ii.

165, 255). The Duke can only expect a "gentle answer" from

9O

Shylock, as the matter stands outside of his authority
(IV.i. 34), and Portia's mercy is the "gentle rain"
(IV.i. 185). The word is full of rich variety of mean-
ings, and it is impossible and also unnecessary to
extract one final meaning from the play's use of the word.
The point is rather that the word "gentle," having nothing
to do with one's beliefs and moral principle, points to
those qualities which help to create a smooth and pleasant
human relationship beyond such disagreements as caused by
the difference in one's background and beliefs: those who
ideologically belong to rival schools can nevertheless be
"kind,” ”courteous" and "generous" to each other, and
that for their mutual profits. It is the quality which
we are too ready to dispense with for the pursuit of our
own content and ease. Shylock is not an exception. Being
offered a chance to show "gentleness" to the one who has
surrendered to his mercy, Shylock despises to respond to
the opportunity properly and as a consequence he abuses
his own humanity. It is because ShakeSpeare is an
Elizabethan that he takes it for granted that "gentle"
also means "of noble birth" and "being a Christian," and
we regret it for the sake of Shylock.

Some modern readers and audience may sense a nasty
taste in the mouth, when they see Shylock utterly crushed
by the court's decree which forces him to become a

Christian and to give up half of his property to the

91

state's coffer, with the other half destined to Lorenzo
and Jessica. We no longer share the Elizabethans'
optimism that to convert a Jew is a favour and a charity.
There is a slight suggestion of ironic view in Lancelot
Gobbo's answer to Jessica's "I shall be saved by my
husband. He hath made me a Christian."

Truly, the more to blame he. We were Christians

enow before, e'en as many as could well live,

one by another. This making of Christians

will raise the price of hogs. If we grow all

to be pork-eaters, we shall not shortly have a

rasher on the coals for money.

[111. v. 23-28]

But Gobbo's remark is too poor to change or readjust our
attitude toward the main issue of the play, and his exist-
ence is as incompetently vague as his Moor mistress whom
the play mentions only once, with no apparent purpose.
Our reaction to certain cruelty in Shylock's fall might
be the specimen of what the dramatist did not intend, but
somehow emerged due to the change in moral and ideological
background. However, Shylock defied the values the play
cherished, and he must stand for the consequence. The
conflict at the trial resembles the instinctive resistance
of any living organism, either herb or man, to the harmful

influences which threat its life and continuance from

outside.

92

Life is teleological, the rest of nature is
apparently, mechanical; to maintain the pattern

of vitality in a non-living universe is the most
elementary instinctual purpose. An organism

tends to keep its equilibrium amid the bombardment
of aimless forces that beset it, to regain
equilibrium when it has been disturbed, and to
pursue a sequence of actions dictated by the need
of keeping all its interdependent parts constantly
renewed, their structure intact. Only organisms
have needs; lifeless objects whirl or slide or
tumble about, are shattered and scattered,

struck together, piled up, without showing any
impulse to return to some pre-eminent condition
and function.34

This passage quoted from Mrs. Langer's book Feeling and

 

£25m (1953) does not have a direct relationship to our
play, but it illuminates the archetypal meaning of the
conflict between the lovers and Shylock: Shylock is an
intruder with his plague, and the lovers' society main-
tained by the impulse of free give and take has to purge
the infection in order to live. The conflict is fierce,
and the enemy must be defeated thoroughly and completely.
Antonio shows us quite another face when he spits upon
Shylock's Jewish gabardine, and Portia who presents one
penalty after another to dispirited Shylock is different
from the gentle lady of Belmont. Professor J. R. Brown
justly comments on this aspect of the play: "The trial
scene shows that the pursuit of love's wealth does not
necessarily bring with it a universal charity, a love
which reaches even to one's enemies."35 To achieve one's

happiness is not an easy task and something quite other

93

than warm heart is required to beat down such an opponent
as Shylock. The crisis must be strongly felt if the
sense of victory is to be engrafted in the audience's
mind with any actuality. The lovers have "fought blindly"36
in one sense, but we cannot condemn them as hypocrites who
preached on mercy, but in practice rendered one only in
the limited scale. The comedy is not after all an irre-
sponsible game played by cherubim. It is the magic of
the play that even the lovers' limitation adds a credit to
their "humanness" as we feel it from the whole dramatic
structure.

In the last act, we return to Belmont and to the
fairy tale world, with our mind released from intense
moral conflict and legal debate. We are reminded of Shy-
lock by Lorenzo's description of "The man that hath no
music in himself" (V.i. 83-88), but it is no longer felt
as a threat because of its distance. Surrounded by night's
silence and sweet melody that creeps from the house, any
disturbing thought loses keen edge. For the first time
in the play, we are invited to the orchard where, Sitting
on the grassy bank, we can breathe the fresh air and look
up at the night sky with its glimmering "patines of bright
gold." In Venice, we'have encountered only with "humanized
nature," so to speak: nature adorned by human artifice,
framed within the rich tapestry for the pleasure of the

viewers. In Belmont, we have never been encouraged before

94

to lift the window-pane and see what it feels like to
be outdoors in this dreamland where the trees are surely
greener and the moon is surely brighter. Here for the
first time, we have the poetry of nature as an object of
admiration and contemplation.

How sweet the moonlight sleeps upon this bank!

Here will we sit and let the sounds of music

Creep in our ears. Soft stillness and the night

Become the touches of sweet harmony.

Sit, Jessica. Look how the floor of heaven

Is thick inlaid with patines of bright gold.

There's not the smallest orb which thou behold'st

But in his motion like an angel sings,

Still quiring to the young-eyed cherubins.

Such harmony is in immortal souls,

But WhilSt this muddy vesture of decay

Doth grossly close it in, we cannot hear it.
The last two lines hint at our corporal limitation, but
the recognition is deprived of immediacy and only serves
to add an exquisite pathos to the whole poetry. The
crucial thing is, as Professor Barber points out, to
notice certain "openness” in the whole scene: "The
openness to experience, the images of reaching out towards
it, or of welcoming it, letting music 'creep in our ears,‘
go with the perception of a gracious universe as Portia's

mercy speech invoked."37

The ordeal is done and the enemy
is defeated. It is now the play's turn to let us experi-
ence how one feels amid the peOple who live by free give
and take and are eager to commit a hazard for the sake of

others. And such a way of life necessarily involves

95

certain openness toward nature and universal harmony
implied through its beauty. We have seen hostile aspects
of nature--dangerous rocks, unpredictable wind, and in
the wide sense, Shylock's hate which was identified with
natural phenomenon. But the dramatist sees to it that
we feel no impediments in regarding nature as completely
beneficent as far as this brief scene is concerned. The
lovers can Open their mind freely without busily looking
around for the ominous approach of an unknown enemy.
There is no need to search for the subtle implications
supposedly weaved among the sugary poetry for the pleasure
of highly inquisitive readers.' Instead, what is required
is to give our imagination full rein and recapture with
the aid of poetry's power the Elizabethans' rapturous
sensation when they looked up toward the night sky which
was full of revelations, though eliminated later by
modern astronomy.

Whatever else a modern feels when he looks at

the night sky, he certainly feels he is looking

out--like one looking out from the saloon

entrance on to the dark Atlantic or from the

lighted porch upon dark and lonely moors. But

if you accepted the Medieval Model you would

feel like one looking in. The Earth is 'outside

the city wall'. When EHe sun is up he dazzles

us and we cannot see inside. Darkness, our own

darkness, draws the veil and we catch a glimpse

of the high pomps within; the vast, lighted

concavity filled with music and life. And, looking

in, we do not see, like Meredith's Lucifer,

'the army of unalterable law', but rather the
revelry of insatiable love. We are watching the

96

activity of creatures whose experience we can

only lamely compare to that of one in the act of
drinking, his thirst delighted yet not quenched.38
The 'Silence' which frightened Pascal was, according
to the Model, wholly illusory; and the sky looks
black only because we are seeing it through the

dark glass of our own shadow. You must conceive
yourself looking up at a world lighted, warmed,

and resonant with music.

The whole play ends at the moment of suspension
when everything is eternally present and satisfied. There
is nothing superfluous or lacking, and in this sense, the
play is a perfect example of comedy as the medium of wish-
fulfilment. If we are not satiated with its "happiness,"
it is because we have abundantly seen the suggested serious
aSpects which could have easily changed the direction of
the play. Even in the last scene, Portia wittily tells
us that her husband may disappoint her again despite his
fervent oath. Antonio has not learned to be "clever" after
all those dangers, and again willingly stands surety for
Bassanio: "I dare be bound again,/My soul upon the for-
feit, that your lord/Will never more break faith advisedly"
(V.i. 251-53). Here is an old Antonio still, with his free
devotion and disregard for his own safety. He is quite
unaware that his love makes him vulnerable in the world,
being unconscious of the danger of his commitment. But

this time it is not Shylock that seals the bond with him,

but gentle Portia: "Then you shall be his surety"

97

(V.i. 254). Portia is not in earnest, and Antonio will
receive only mild rebuke from her when he forfeits. The
dramatist dissolves the issue in jokes and laughter, but
we are somewhat aware that Antonio's virtue can someday

betray his master to the enemy.

CHAPTER I I I

as YOU LIKE IE

 

A§_Ygg Likg IE is the most delightful of Shake-
speare's comedies. The first act economically presents the
Oppressing circumstance in which the hero and the heroine
of romance stand at odds with their seniors in power.

Then the play quickly moves to the forest of Arden, where
eternal spring rules and the people "fleet the time care-
lessly, as they did in the golden world" (1.1. 124-25).

In this idyllic world nothing can be a real threat.
Rosalind is first compelled to put on doublet and hose,
but later in the forest she makes use of her disguise in
playing a "holiday foolery" (I.iii. 14) with Orlando. The
play's cynics, Touchstone and Jaques, do not break the
comic equilibrium though they are sceptical of the lovers'
values. Touchstone joins the marriage dance taking the
hand of Audrey, and Jaques gives a blessing on the head

of each of the newly married couples. Two evil characters
are miraculously converted by encountering human kindness

and unworldly wisdom in the forest. We welcome their

98

99

conversion with the same readiness with which we affirm
the existence of the mysterious hermit who hovers around
the forest, probably giving a contemptuous glance at
Orlando's bad love poems nailed to the bark of the trees.
The comic vision which the play finally offers is com-
plete, and there is not even a suggestion of evil force
which may interfere with the joyous celebration of four
marriages.

But "joy" does not always mean "confidence," and
the play is not after all mere "May-morning frolic pro-
longed into a lotos-eating afternoon."1 Even the forest
of Arden is not exempt from cold wind and rain which cool
the hot cheeks of the enthusiastic "voluntary exiles."
Act II Opens with Duke Senior's speech which heroically
rejects court life in favour of rustic life in Arden.
But its content is given a subtle twist, compared to a
passage in similar vein from the folk play of Robin Hood
from which it has borrowed the basic pose of idyllic
contentment.

Now, my comates and brothers in exile,

Hath not old custom made this life more sweet
Than that of painted pomp? Are not these woods
More free from peril than the envious Court?
Here feel we but the penalty of Adam,

The seasons' difference, as the icy fang

And churlish chiding of the winter's wind,
Which, when it bites and blows upon my body,
Even till I shrink with cold, I smile and say
"This is no flattery. These are councilors
That feelingly persuade me what I am."

Sweet are the uses of adversity,
Which, like the toad, ugly and venomous,

100

Wears yet a precious jewel in his head.
And this our life exempt from public haunt
Finds tongues in trees, books in the running brooks,
Sermons in stones, and good in everything.
I would not change it.
[II.i. 1-18]

Marian, thou seest, though courtly pleasures want,

Yet country sport in Sherwood is not scant;

For the soul-ravishing delicious sound

Of instrumental music, we have found

The winged quiristers with diverse notes

Sent from their quaint recording pretty throats,

On every branch that compasseth our bow'r,

Without command contenting us each hour.

For arras hangings and rich tapestry

We have sweet nature's best embroidery.

For thy steel glass, wherein thou wont'st to look,

Thy crystal eyes gaze in a crystal brook.

At court a flower or two did deck thy head,

Now with whole garlands is it circled.

For what in wealth we want, we have in flowers,

And what we lose in halls, we find in bowers.2
The court-country antithesis is the "cause" of both
speeches, but the attitudes of the two writers toward it
are different. The latter writer's assumption is quite
naive, and secure in its belief that country pleasure is
greater than courtly pleasure even in its quantity: "At
court a flower or two did deck thy head,/Now with whole
garlands is it circled." It does not pause to reflect the
difference in qualities between the two kinds of living.
On the other hand, the Duke's passage tells implicitly that
in spite of the charms and beauty it possesses, country
life is something that was forced to be taken by necessity,
and not exactly an ideal life of everyone's heart's desire.
Adversity is sweet to the tough-minded Duke, but its fangs

are keen and, apart from its "precious jewel," it is still

101

an ugly toad. It needed the aid of "old custom" in order
that the Duke and his party might be adjusted to the spare
life in the forest. After all, as Touchstone honestly
remarks, the life in the city provided such a thing as
domestic comfort: ”Aye, now am I in Arden, the more fool
I. When I was at home, I was in a better place. But
travelers must be content" (II.iv. 16-18). To which tired
Rosalind can find no answer but "Aye, be so, good Touch-
stone" (19). The Duke's passage allows us to discount
some of the Speaker's heroic gesture, while at the same
time it invites our admiration. And in fact, the figure
of a man shrinking from cold, and yet welcoming it with a
smile because it is not tainted by the corruption of the
court is comic, especially from the vieWpoint of such a
cynic as Jaques. The following remark by Amiens allows a
Space for plural interpretations: "Happy is your Grace,/
That can translate the stubbornness of fortune/Into so
quiet and so sweet a style" (II.i. 18-20). Amiens probably
means it with best honesty, but his chattering teeth can
betray the truth without shame.

It is interesting to notice that, in spite of the
fame of the forest of Arden for its pastoral beauty, there
are not more than ten lines of description which acquaint
us with the visual details of the forest.3 This is extra-
ordinary, especially when we think of the abundance of

such passages in A_Midsummer Night's Dream. Instead, we

 

102

are here encouraged to see the forest through the views
of the play's characters. For Jaques, the forest is but
an extension of the human society which the Duke has left
behind. At least society's cruel mechanism is kept
intact in the law of men's survival at the cost of others,
not men but deer this time: "we/Are mere usurpers, tyrants,
and what's worse,/To fright the animals and to kill them
up/In their assigned and native dwelling-place" (II.i.
60-63). Duke Senior was banished from his kingdom by his
usurping brother. But if we readjust our point of view,
he is a usurper and intruder in the kingdom of deer. But
Jaques is not an animal lover. A flock of deer pass by
their wounded companion without giving him any notice,
and Jaques does not miss the Opportunity to rail on the
selfishness of ”fat and greasy citizens" (II.i. 55). The
forest and its inhabitants are no more than the reflection
of his humorous feeling.

For Touchstone, a "material fool," the life in
the forest is tedious "in reSpect it is not in the Court"
(III.ii. 18), and "as there is no more plenty in it, it
goes much against my stomach: (III.ii. 20-21). But above
all, Orlando's first impression of the forest gives us the
best illustration of the relativity of the forest's image.
For him, the forest is not at all the golden world which
abundantly yields honey and nectar. The first problem is

to hunt the food for hungry Adam. The forest is a desert

103

(II.vi. l7; II.vii. 110), and its inhabitants are all
savages (II.vii. 107). He rudely makes his way to the
food on the Duke's banquet table, with a naked weapon in
his hand: "Forbear, and eat no more" (II.vii. 88). To
the doubtful eyes of a hungry youth, the Duke's men appear
no finer than a bunch of outlaws who do not know the taste
of nurture and civility. At this brief moment, words
like "inland" and "gentleness" as opposed to "desert"
and "savagery" ring sweetly in the ear, reversing the
process of pastoral criticism of corrupted civilization.

If ever you have looked on better days,

If ever been where bells have knolled to church,

If ever sat at any good man's feast,

If ever from your eyelids wiped a tear

And know what 'tis to pity and be pitied,

Let gentleness my strong enforcement be.

[II.vii. 113-18]

The Duke's response is to repeat each item in the affir-
mative: "True is it that we have seen better days . . ."
There is an unmistakable pathos in this exchange due to
the reCOgnition of the truth which the Duke's praise of
country life at the beginning of Act II has omitted. It
is in town-life that civilized and humane living is
available--worship in the church on Sunday, lively con-
versation and glowing faces around the dinner table, life
filled with compassion and kindness--they are embodiments

of positive values which supplement and counterbalance

the negative aspect of human society symbolized by the

104

corruption in the court. The Duke's men's way of life

is nearly the fulfilment of pastoral ideal--departure from
the noise of the metropolis to the quiet, contemplative
life in the country, feeding on what nature yields. But
from another point of view, to "Lose and neglect the
creeping hours of time" (II.vii. 112), which is charac-
teristic of such a life, is nothing but atautological
excuse for idleness and digression from normalcy. This is
to put the point too severely, and in fact the play does
not go further than suggesting it. But through this
process of "placing" one set of values against another,
our selectivity is prevented from its limited working,

and we are allowed to reSpond to the court-country
antithesis in a more complex and dynamic way.

The discussion of the forest of Arden inevitably
leads to Shakespeare's use of pastoral convention in the
play. The important thing about pastoral convention is,
as Professor Kermode says, "that it is an urban product."4
It presupposes that there is an obvious gap between the
two modes of living, city's and country's, and also that
the poet is living in the noise of the city. This urbanity
was at the heart of the sixteenth century vogue of pastoral
in England. Under this particular circumstance, the
philOSOphical discussion of Nature and Art could be
treated with subtle complexity which was not allowed to

satire, another urban "kind." Both genres were used as

105

the poet's weapon to criticize the shallowness and the
moral degeneration of the present society in contrast to
the age of innocence in the past, but pastoral alone
offered a chance to exalt Art and civilization above
Nature in its association with primtiveness and an age

before Grace.

And always at the back of this literary attitude
to Nature is the shadow of its opposite; the
knowledge that Nature is rough, and the natural
life in fact rather an animal affair; by long
cultivation men have improved the natural breed,
and the difference between the cultivated and the
natural is the difference between a Ferdinand and
a Caliban. It is surely inevitable that in such a
situation the poet should allow his complexities
to colour his talk of the rustic subject, as the
Epic poet projected his intellectual tensions on
to the hero. Sarpedon appeared as a man of extra-
ordinary sensibility; the shepherd appears as
philOSOpher and poet.5

Corin in Aleou Like It_is a true natural philOSOpher,
but hardly a poet. He is utterly satisfied with seeing
his ewes graze and his lambs suck, and is not meant to

sustain the dramatist's "intellectual tension." Shake-

speare's method in Ag You Like It_was to create the two

 

characters, Touchstone and Jaques, who criticize the
pastoral ideal by reminding its devotees of the other
half of the truth. Jaques is the mightier of the two,
because Touchstone, as Miss Helen Gardner observes, is a
parodist and "The parodist must love what he parodies."6

Touchstone loves the country life immensely in Spite of

106

his pride as a courtier and the rudeness of shepherd's
life. The nearest point he comes to the criticism of
pastoral ideal, apart from scattered brief remarks, is
his conversation with Corin in Act III, scene ii. But
even then his interest lies more in displaying his wit
by ridiculing simple Corin than in pointing out the dis-
advantages of shepherd's life from a reasonably acceptable
vieWpoint. We enjoy his sharp wit, but apparently our
sympathy moves to Corin's natural philosophy: "Sir, I
am a true laborer. I earn that I eat, get that I wear,
owe no man hate, envy no man's happiness, glad of other
men's good, content with my harm, and the greatest of my
pride is to see my ewes graze and my lambs suck" (III.ii.
77-81). The scene discovers Touchstone's lack of commit-
ment to any definite way of living and his distance from
a life in which labour is still the source of one's pride.
Jaques is the real critic of the play. He is a

mocker of idyllic contentment, and unlike Touchstone, he
is not bored but active in seizing the chance to manifest
his principle. The pretty song of Amiens is easily turned
to a nonsense song worthy to be placed at the end of a
sottie. Amiens Sings:

Under the greenwood tree

Who loves to lie with me,

And turn his merry note

Unto the sweet bird's throat,

Come hither, come hither, come hither.
Here shall he see

No enemy

But winter and rough weather.
[IIOVO 1-8]

107
Jaques' version goes:

If it do come to pass

That any man turn ass,

Leaving his wealth and ease

A stubborn will to please,
Ducdame, ducdame, ducdame.

Here shall he see

Gross fools as he,
An if he will come to me.

[II.v. 52-59]

The Duke's patience is only a "stubborn will" and those
who gladly accept the invitation to the forest's life
are just as much fools as the Duke's men who think their
exile an improvement. This is of course a distortion,
and wilfully neglects the element of Christian humility,
brotherliness and unworldiness which such a critic as
Professor Barber finds in the folly of going to Arden.7
Jaques' alien notion of things among the rest of the
Duke's party and the "country copulatives" (V.iv. 57-58)
is most clearly illustrated in his famous Speech on the

seven ages of man.

All the world's a stage,
And all the men and women merely players.
They have their exits and their entrances,
And one man in his time plays many parts,
His acts being seven ages. At first the infant,
Mewling and puking in the nurse's arms.
Then the whining schoolboy, with his satchel
And shining morning face, creeping like snail
Unwillingly to school. And then the lover,
Sighing like furnace, with a woeful ballad
Made to his mistress' eyebrow. Then a soldier,
Full of strange oaths and bearded like the pard,
Jealous in honor, sudden and quick in quarrel,
Seeking the bubble reputation
Even in the cannon's mouth. And then the justice,

108

In fair round\belly with good capon lined,

With eyes severe and beard of formal cut,

Full of wise saws and modern instances,

And so he plays his part. The sixth age shifts

Into the lean and slippered Pantaloon

With spectacles on nose and pouch on Side,

His youthful hose, well saved, a world too wide

For his Shrunk shank, and his big manly voice,

Turning again toward childish treble, pipes

And whistles in his sound. Last scene of all,

That ends this strange eventful history,

IS second childishness and mere oblivion,

Sans teeth, sans eyes, sans taste, sans everything.
The most important thing about the Speech is that it pre-
sents the different notion of time which makes a sharp
contrast to the sense of time we feel from almost every-
where in the play. Such phrases as "fleet the time care-
lessly," "willingly could waste my time in it" (II.iv. 95)
or ”Lose and neglect the creeping hours of time" are
essential to the relaxed outlook of pastoral life. Miss
Gardner remarks: "In Shakespeare's comedies time goes by
fits and starts. It is not so much a movement onwards as
a Space in which to work things out."8 If we consult
Rosalind who thinks "Time travels in divers paces with
divers persons" (III.ii. 326-27), for those who are out
of the routine of workaday world time moves with jocund
ambling. Against this "lazy foot of time" Jaques' speech
presents a span of life, a history with its start, inter-
mediate sections and the final goal. Time does not move

by fits and starts as it is felt by an individual, but it

moves forward steadily and mercilessly according to the

109

predestinated scheme. Man is but a player when he is
located in this cold mechanism, fulfilling one role after
another, and then finally dropping headlong into oblivion.
The essential idea is the notion of time as a destroyer
which is the recurrent theme of Shakespeare's sonnets,

and we have partly seen both in A Midsummer Night's Dream

 

and The Merchant g£_Venice. What the speech tells us is

 

simple as Touchstone's "And so, from hour to hour, we ripe
and ripe,/And then, from hour to hour, we rot and rot,/

And thereby hangs a tale" (II.vii. 26-28): our life does
not last forever and the process of growing ends in death.

The nineteenth century critics tried to connect the philo-

sophy of the speech to the speaker's personality.9 The

recent critics, though they are generally doubtful of the
nineteenth century criticism's method, are still eager to
point out what Jaques' speech omits. For instance,
Professor Frederick Turner, who discusses ShakeSpeare's

plays from the metaphysical idea of time, remarks:

This celebrated passage is oddly hypermetropic:
Jaques is longsighted, and cannot see the trees

for the wood. The statistical studies of
sociologists frequently give the same impression

of selective blindness. The individual is de-
valued, exceptions are discounted, particulars
yield to trends, freedom and significance are

made to seem absurd or irrelevant. . . . Yet time
is seamless. It has no stages. And it is in

this intimate connection of each moment of time
with the next that the possibility of being one
person, not just an infinite sequence of stages,
can exist. If one takes an individual out of his
temporal context at various stages of his develOpment,
as Jaques does, one will inevitably falsify as well
as omit much of what he is.10

110

This is a coherent and clear-cut diagnosis of Jaques'
"Objective" time, and as Professor Turner convincingly
points out, the play rejects it in favour of the lovers'
"subjective” time. And as if to illustrate the point, as
soon as the Speech is finished, old Adam who has actually
lost his teeth in service (I.i. 87-88) is carried on the
back of kind Orlando, and the Duke receives the old man
with "Welcome. Set down your venerable burthen,/And let
him feed" (II.vii. 167-68). An old age is not senility,
but venerableness, when the society protects its weaker
members on the basis of broad spirit of fellowship.
Adam's presence defies eloquently more than anything else
the falsehood of Jaques' "second childishness and mere
oblivion." One memory which is still clear in the present
writer's mind is the reaction of one actor who impersonated
Jaques to old Adam's entrance. His good humour was
suddenly cooled and he stared at the old man with sour
disgust on his face, as if stinking dirt was thrown on
the banquet table. He remained at the corner of the stage
until everybody else had retired. Then he sat on one of
the empty stools under the half-cut, dim light, and
imitated Adam's greedy eating with exact mimicry of
paralyzed hands and obscure eyes, and finally gave out
a desperate, hollow, half self-mocking laugh.

But after all is said and affirmed, one cannot

help but feel that our unfavourable reaction to Jaques'

111

seven ages of man speech has been given a too heavy

emphasis, just as we feel that Jaques in A§_You Like It

 

is a more agreeable person than the critics try to per-
suade us. While agreeing to Professor Turner's criticism
of Jaques' sense of time, we are never sure how far our
own cautiousness against the evils of the twentieth
century mechanization and statistic analysis is affecting
our reSponse. Such a thought would probably have not
troubled the mind of the Elizabethans who did not know the
"subjective time" of Marcel Proust and Thomas Mann.

Modern critics tend to miss the point, but it seems legi-
timate to say that Jaques' presence creates a reliable
source of one kind of confidence upon which the entire play
stands. Professor R. A. Foakes, who, as I take it,
attempts a correction at the excessively intellectual

appreciation of the part, comments on Jaques' "maturity."

What Jaques represents here is a voice of
maturity. It is not that he is 'right';

indeed, he is no more right than others, and

all the perSpectiveS on time are authentic.

The point is rather that, although he is

mocked on all sides as 'Monsieur Melancholy',
Jaques carries a curious authority of voice,

an authority derived from the sense he conveys

of being mature, of being able to look at what

is around him with a humorous detachment, of
Offering the voice of experience. He has been

a sensual libertine at some time, if we can believe
Duke Senior, and has evidently outgrown this, to
act a part not listed in the roles he describes
in his speech, that of intelligent, sometimes
satirical, and generally compassionate observer,
not so clever as to avoid mockery himself, nor so
satirical as ever to suggest bitterness, but sane
and reasonable.11

112

Miss Gardner remarks: "What Jaques has left out of his
picture of man's strange eventful pilgrimage is love and
companionship, sweet society, the banquet under the boughs
to which Duke Senior welcomes Orlando and Adam."12 True,
but is the speech meant to bear any kind of finality and
completeness? IS it not possible to assume that the
speech had to leave out any reference to human kindness
in order to accomplish unambiguously the dramatist's aim
to establish an anti-comic viewpoint which cuts through
the fabric of the play? Miss Gardner comments later that
if Jaques were not there to give expression to "a certain
sour distaste for life,“ "we might be tempted to find the
picture of life in the forest too sweet."13 Cannot we
raise this facet of the speech from such a supplementary
position? A
Jaques' speech is the reworking of a commonplace
in medieval and Renaissance literature, and.we do not
have to inquire into its metaphysical implication too
earnestly. The important thing is the familiarity which
does not fail to be recognized as soon as the first
several lines are delivered. The key note of the speech
is Humanistic, and can be easily transferred into the
sermon which recommends detachment from worldly affairs as

a crucial virtue. Any Elizabethan probably did not miss

that by a Slight push the argument could be advanced to

113

the radical Protestantism of Fulke Greville's fierce

lines which depict the Day of Judgement.

Whenas man's life, the light of human lust,

In socket of his earthly lanthorn burns,

That all this glory unto ashes must,

And generation to corruption turns,
Then fond desires, that only fear their end,
Do vainly wish for life, but to amend.

But when this life is from the body fled,
To see itself in that eternal glass,
Where time doth end, and thoughts accuse the dead,
Where all to come is one with all that was,
Then living men ask how he left his breath,
That while he lived never thought of death.14
[Caelica, 87]

Time can end, and the comedy cannot insist on its vision

of human happiness in the region where "thoughts accuse

the dead,” and "all to come is one with all that was."

Medieval romance and the tradition of courtly love invented

the Religion of Love in order to expel the annoying

shadow of religious commandment, but after all it was
"temporary truancy." Professor C. S. Lewis Speaks of
limitation of the Middle Age's concept of Amor before

rival, religious piety.

It may be solemn, but its solemnity is only for
the moment. It may be touching, but it never
forgets that there are sorrows and dangers before
which those of love must be ready, when the

moment comes, to give way. . . . The authors are
all going to repent when the book is over. . . .
We hear the bell clang; and the children, suddenly
hushed and grave, and a little frightened, troop
back to their master.15

the

its

114

Shakespeare's comedy is apparently the distant heir of
the medieval courtly love tradition, though the process
is disintegrated by the replacement of adultery by a
romantic ideal of marriage. The religious implication
cannot be successfully brought into comedy, unless its
aim is other than depicting the fulfilment of romantic

love in marriage. Measure for Measure is obviously

 

enriched by its deep interest in the religious attitude
toward life, but the play's main stuff is not the wooing
of the lovers. Jaques' seven ages of man Speech is not
religious in its tone, but it is also quite unprotected
by humour. This sense of exposure and independence from
the context ensures the Speech's function to point at a
remote, but insistent presence of a sceptical idea which
the comic writers are too willing to ignore. From there,
it takes just a few steps to reach the religious abso-
lutism of Fulke Greville. It is interesting that Sir
Walter Ralegh who wrote the poem "On the Life of Man,"

in which he compares man's life to a play ("What is our
life? A play of passion,/Our mirth the music of divisionb/
Our mothers' wombs the tiring houses be,/Where we are
dressed for this shOrt comedy;/. . . Only we die in

earnest, that's no jest"16

), was also a sincere Anglican.
It is important to notice that the play's Optimistic
notion of time presupposes its Opposite as expressed in

Jaques' speech. The song which the two pages sing for

115

Touchstone in Act V, scene iii gives a composite expression
to the play's characteristic idea of timeliness and the

carpe diem motif.

 

And therefore take the present time,
With a hey, and a ho, and a hey nonino,
For love is crowned with the prime,
In the spring time, the only pretty ringtime,
When birds do sing, hey ding a ding, ding.
Sweet lovers love the Spring.
This notion of love as the child of spring and man's
appreciation of one moment as Opposed to another derives
its justification from the recognition of life's limitation:
"How that a life was but a flower" (V.iii. 29). "Prime"
implicitly reminds us that there are decline and decay
following at close intervals. As Professor Barber rightly
remarks, "Holiday affirmations in praise of folly were
limited by the underlying assumption that the natural in
man is only one part of him, the part that will fade."17

Thus Jaques' speech is not in opposition to the carpe diem

 

motif of the play, but gives it the sense of immediacy
and preciousness. The two words, "temporal" and "tempo-
rary," point to a kind of limited Span of time, if we
forget the range of awareness which differentiates them.
As the former word is concerned with the wider awareness
and enlightened by the knowledge that human consciousness
is actually an isolated point upon the vast, nonhuman
region, Jaques' speech creates a perspective which helps

our total response to become inclusive as well as

116

concentrated. It is crucial that the process does not
involve any kind of cynicism. AS "seriousness" and
”humour" are reconciled through the use of wit, judgement
and feeling do not contradict each other in a comedy.

The pastoral ideal needs many assumptions to stand
on its feet, and is quite vulnerable to a blow from the
hostile attitude which it has dispensed with. Thus
Marlowe's pastoral poem, "The Passionate Shepherd to His
Love," which idealized the lover's Arcadia where no
amorous pleasure was wanting, met the difficult reaction
of Sir Walter Ralegh in his "The Nymph's Reply to the
Shepherd." Ralegh paraphrased Marlowe's lines in the
spirit of parody and discovered the artificiality of
idyllic grandeur. Ralegh's method was to insert the somber
observance of nature's destructive force in the midst of
pastoral landscape: "Time drives the flocks from field
to fold/When rivers rage and rocks grow cold" (5-6), or
"The flowers do fade, and wanton fields/To wayward winter
reckoning yields;/A honey tongue, a heart of gall,/Is
fancy's spring, but sorrow's fall" (9-12).18 But in Ag
Z22.E£5§.£E the presentation of the pastoral ideal is
already tried by such an argument, and the play can easily
include it as the part of its whole dramatic experience.
To the sceptical eyes of Ralegh, the wanton lovers who
spend their days in singing ditties and dancing in the

field are "In folly ripe, in reason rotten."19 However,

117

the comedy offers the chance to master one's folly by
laughing it away. To explore this aspect, we have to
turn to the play's idea of love and its folly centered
on Rosalind.

The forest of Arden is in the heyday of love's
folly. It is no wonder that the most headstrong of
love-deSpiser is converted at first sight of a handsome
stranger. The tyrannical Phebe easily melts to fruitless
sighs and tears, and the wooing of Oliver and Celia is as
brief as Caesar's battle: "I came, saw, and overcame"
(V.ii. 33-34). But in the play's source, Lodge's prose

romance Rosalynde (1590), it is a different story.

 

Ganymede and Aliena are attacked by the robbers, and
Saladyne (Oliver) succours the ladies and Rosader
(Orlando), who was wounded in the fight. Shakespeare
omits this scene. Miss Gardner observes: "Maidens
naturally fall in love with brave young men who rescue
them. But Shakespeare needs to find no 'reasons for
loving' in this play in which a dead shepherd's saw is
quoted as a word of truth: 'Whoever lov'd that lov'd not

at first sight.'"20

Irrationality of love is infecting
everyone, and no one is ashamed of his disease or tries
to hide it. The extraordinary thing is that foolish
behaviour is regarded as the Sign of a true lover. Love-

stricken Silvius implores the attention of somewhat

half-minded Corin: "How many actions most ridiculous/Bast

118

thou been drawn to by thy fantasy?" (II.iv. 30-31). And
his conclusion is: "If thou remember'st not the slightest
folly/That ever love did make thee run into,/Thou hast
not loved" (II.iv. 34-36).

Orlando even advertises his folly by running
around the forest with a knife ready in his hand, carving
the name of "unexpressive she" (III.ii. 10) on every tree.

He comes straight out of A_Midsummer Night's Dream in the

 

sense that he is completely committed to love's passion
holding nothing in reserve. His posture as a devoted
slave to his mistress is heroic, but at the same time

we are not asked to take his breathless adoration too
seriously, as his verse is clearly the work of an amateur
and compounded of adolescent innocence and mediocrity.
Rosalind herself can be as ridiculous as Orlando when
She lets her loving woman's part go ahead of her role as
a lady incognito: "Alas the day! What shall I do with
my doublet and hose? What did he when thou sawst him?
What said he? How looked he? Wherein went he? What
makes he here? Did he ask for me? . . . Answer me in
one word" (III.ii. 231-37). To which Celia answers in
an appropriately mocking tone: "You must borrow me
Gargantua's mouth first. 'Tis a word too great for

any mouth of this age's size" (III.ii. 238-40). If
there is anything in the play which transcends the

court-country antithesis, love's folly is the most

119

powerful one, because it strikes its root into a deeper
place than particular social settings which are used as
the vehicles of pastoral contrast. Touchstone's remark
is illuminating in this respect: "We that are true lovers
run into strange capers, but as all is mortal in nature,
so is all nature in love mortal in folly" (II.iv. 54-56).
To which Rosalind replies: "Thou Speakst wiser than thou
art ware of" (II.iv. 57). The lines are cloaked in the
speaker's pretended air of casualness, but they bear a
serious import as they relate love's folly to the general
sense of corruption and finiteness implied by the word
"mortal." Folly is not an attribute of inferior emotions
possessed by the country rustics who do not know the
meaning of "honour" in love, but a sign of our common
doom which is imposed upon everyone of us, regardless of
age, sex, social status and individual creed.
Touchstone's solution for coping with love's folly
is as unambiguous as it could be. He mocks away all the
romantic nonsense about love and takes what remains--
instinct. Professor J. R. Brown is somewhat generous in
his understanding of Touchstone's affection for Audrey,
believing that "Yet once Touchstone finds Audrey his
attitude changes; the desire to possess involves him, by

21 But this is

degrees, in the mutual order of love."
surely to sentimentalize Touchstone's churlish, but

consistent attitude toward love. He camouflages his

120

motive of marriage by decorating it with the monstrous
exaggeration of the old joke about the horn (III.iii.
48-63), but we know that the sexual drive is in fact
what hastens him to the door of marriage: "We must be
married or we must live in bawdry" (III.iii. 99). Touch-
stone can step out of love's folly, but cannot completely
part with his need of a woman. "As the ox hath his bow,
sir, the horse his curb, and the falcon her bells, so
man hath his desires; and as pigeons bill, so wedlock
would be nibbling" (III.iii. 80-83). This is the part
of the truth, as Jaques' seven ages of man speech is
about the part of man's "erring pilgrimage." But as
Professor Barber points out, it is a necessary part.

But to assume that only one girl will do is,

after all, an extreme, an ideal attitude: the

other half of the truth, which lies in wait to

mock sublimity, is instinct. . . . The result

of including in Touchstone a representative of

what in love is unromantic is not, however, to

undercut the play's romance: on the contrary,

the fool's cynicism, or one-sided realism, fore-

stalls the cynicism with which the audience

might greet a play where his sort of realism

had been ignored. 2
Love is not a matter<xflife and death, but the wanton
child of Spring. Touchstone is too ready to don a holiday
jacket in which he can stretch himself comfortably,

forgetting for a moment the vexing disputes about

marriage obligation and its status.

121

It may sound too ingenious to say that the play's
core as romance is expressed by frail and ineffective
Silvius, but careful reading of the part confirms the
impression. He is a simple shepherd and has never been
to court, but as even Phebe admits ("But since that thou
canst talk of love so well" III.v. 94), his devotion is
continually expressed by the exact diction and sentiment
of the Petrarchan love poems. His is essentially the
pose of a court lover who humbly and exuberantly kisses
the toe of his cruel mistress. At one point Silvius asks
gentleness from Phebe, reminding her that even the bloody
"common executioner" does not chop off the victim's head
without asking pardon (III.v. 3-7), and another time he
complains how he is suffering by the "wounds invisible/
That love's keen arrows make" (III.v. 30-31). All these
faithfully follow the pattern of conventional complaints
of an unrequited lover who appears so often in the fif-
teenth and the sixteenth century English secular love
poems. What makes Silvius ridiculous is that the object
of his adoration is a Phebe rather than a Stella, but if
we forget this for the moment, his passion reflects the
intense feeling that we might find in Rosalind's love to

Orlando, or vice versa. But Rosalind scarcely expresses

 

her emotion in a formal manner, and we are never invited
to fathom the depth of Orlando's affection. Silvius'

simplicity is the best vehicle to convey indirectly the

122

solemn and noble emotion which stirs the heart of our
heroine. Rosalind speaks through the mouth of Silvius
what is made difficult to say because of her disguise
and the company of keen-eyed critics.

So holy and so perfect is my love,

And I in such a poverty of grace,

That I shall think it a most plenteous crOp

To glean the broken ears after the man

That the main harvest reaps. Loose now and then

A scattered smile, and that I'll live upon.

[III.v. 99-104]

None of this poetry's conceits and phrases has anything

remarkable about it, but the speaker's humbleness and

faith directly hit us. Ag You Like IE is a comedy of

 

encounters between various persons--Rosalind and Orlando,
Rosalind and Jaques, Orlando and Jaques, Jaques and
Touchstone. However, as Professor Harold Jenkins points
out, the encounter which does not occur has its signifi-
cance as well: "Touchstone is only once, and Jaques never,
allowed a sight of Silvius before the final scene of the
play. Silvius has not to be destroyed or the play will

"23 Orlando can stand

lack something near its center.
Jaques' ridicule and even makes his opponent look absurd.
But Silvius' simplicity admits no space for witticism,
and he is an easy prey for the cynicism of either Touch-
stone or Jaques. Professor G. K. Hunter observes that
"We may see the formality of Hymen as only the emergence

of a subdued current which has run through the play."24

123

Rosalind gives herself to Orlando with "I'll have no
husband, if you be not he" (V.iv. 129), and we realize
for the first time that the sentiment which has stirred
Rosalind was in fact much more awe-inspiring than we were
allowed to know. But also our Silvius plays not a small
part in sustaining the same sentiment in his solitary
nook sheltered from the noise of the crowded avenue.

In the midst of this tumult stands Rosalind, and
her weapon to cope with besetting problems is her wit.
Touchstone is no Touchstone beside Rosalind. He ridicules
Rosalind who appears reading Orlando's verse which she
has found on a tree. She still does not know that the
author of the verse is Orlando, but she obviously feels
pity for this forlorn lover and is more than displeased
by Touchstone's parodying of the verse: "If a hart do
lack a hind,/Let him seek out Rosalind./If the cat will
after kind,/So be sure will Rosalind. etc." (III.ii.
107-10). To Touchstone's "Truly, the tree yields bad
fruit" (III.ii. 122), Rosalind retorts: "I'll graff it
with you, and then I shall graff it with a medlar. Then
it will be the earliest fruit i' the country, for you'll
be rotten ere you be half ripe, and that's the right
virtue of the medlar" (III.ii. 123-28). The fruit of the
medlar tree usually bears late in the season, but if it is
graffed with the yew (i.e., "you"--Touchstone), it will

be already rotten in the middle of the season because of

124

25 Medlar is also used

the forwardness of Touchstone.
here with a quibble on "meddler." In other words, Touch-
stone's cynicism is a virtue for those that love the
half-rotten flavour of medlar, but it is a vice when it

is graffed with, say, an orange tree whose fruit attracts
the eaters with fresh smell and "ripe" taste. It is a
difference between Jaques' love of affected singularity
and Rosalind's love of normative temperament, between
Touchstone's instinctive idea of love and the play's
romantic idea of marriage.

Jaques is another butt for Rosalind's wit. Her
poise is impressed in our minds by her criticism of
Jaques' guise of melancholy: "Those that are in extremity
of either are abominable fellows, and betray themselves
to every modern censure worse than drunkards” (IV.i. 5-7).
In Spite of Jaques' careful definition of his melancholy
(10-20), Rosalind goes straight into those part of his
which are rarely shown to the audience: "A traveler!"

For a brief moment, Jaques is identified with much sati-
rized English traveler who has picked up every kind of

vice from all over the Continent. Indeed, Jonson and the
other Jacobean comic writers would be tempted to find the
caricature of a country fOp intoxicated by the luxury of
city life in such a passage: "I fear you have sold your

own lands to see other men's; then, to have seen much and

125

to have nothing is to have rich eyes and poor hands"
(IV.i. 22-25). It is characteristic of Jacobean satiric
comedy that the fop has inherited a large sum of money
and land from his rich father, but the estate is usually
mortgaged or leased out to others, and actually he is
penniless. This aspect of Jaques' shallowness and arti-
ficiality is not meant to stay in our mind. It finishes
its function after it has aided to readjust our attitude
toward this well-experienced critic. But most important
of all, this brief scene provides Rosalind with a chance
to subordinate, not Jaques himself, but also his "sundry
contemplation" which otherwise would remain as a potential
danger to the play's sense of harmony because of its
isolated distinctiveness.

Rosalind was, like Beatrice in Much Ado About

 

Nothing, born under a dancing star, and her lively wit
cannot be neatly contained within an ordered verse form.
As her feeling is wild and unpredictable, free prose which
allows quick movement and sudden change becomes the

superb means of her expression. Prose in ShakeSpeare's
earlier comedies was chiefly assigned to the country
rustics and household servants, and though their "russet
yeas and honest kersey noes" sometimes functioned as a
silent criticism of their betters' linguistic affectation,
it was still the language of lower intellect and could

not serve for highly imaginative purpose. But when

126

Euphuistic wit gives it the ground to stand upon, it

can be used as a competent vehicle to express the
speaker's self-sufficient gaiety and alert intellect
which manipulates pun, alliteration and quibbling. The
most important function of Rosalind's wit is to suggest

a distance which exists between the speaker's inner state
and what is actually Spoken. What Professor G. K. Hunter
observes of Much Ado About Nothing is also applicable to
our play: "Shakespeare uses the detachment of the person
speaking from the thing Spoken, which is an essential
feature of zip, to limit our sense of these characters'
irrevocable psychological involvement in the attitudes

they deploy. Comic exaggeration of one's own standpoint

26

is one obvious way of doing this." We have numerous

examples of this comic exaggeration in Rosalind's
speeches. For instance, the following lines from Act IV,
scene i, where Rosalind tells Orlando the absurdity of

dying for love, are a good specimen.

No, faith, die by attorney. The poor world is
almost six thousand years old, and in all this
time there was not any man died in his own
person, videlicet, in a love cause. Troilus had
his brains dashed out with a Grecian club, yet
he did what he could to die before, and he is
one of the patterns of love. Leander, he would
have lived many a fair year, though Hero had turned
nun, if it had not been for a hot midsummer night;
for, good youth, he went but forth to wash him
in the Hellespont and being taken with the cramp
was drowned. And the foolish chroniclers of that
age found it was "Hero of Sestos." But these are
all lies. Men have died from time to time and
worms have eaten them, but not for love.

[IV.i. 94-108]

127

Rosalind's feigned purpose is to cure Orlando of
his love madness, and to that end she makes the famous
lovers of the Western literature look absurd by monstrous
exaggeration. On the pretended level where Rosalind is
a doctor and Orlando is a patient, "Love is merely a
madness,” and "deserves as well a dark house and a whip
as madmen do" (III.ii. 420-22), and man is constant only
when he is "in" (III.iv. 30). The old chroniclers elevated
the heroic death of Leander. But death is not essentially
heroic or even distinctive, but can be mockingly casual.
Above all, how can love which is no other than an acci-
dental outburst of irrational passion change the physical
details of dying? Certain it is that men have died and
worms have eaten them, and before the presence of this
irrevocable cycle of birth and death, it appears rather
trivial to discuss whether one has manifested his integrity
in love until the point of death. As far as these lines
are concerned, Rosalind is looking at things through the
dark glasses worn by Jaques. But this takes place on
the feigned level and we know that what is actually Spoken
does not exactly echo the speaker's real sentiment. Broadly
comic key and comfortably relaxed situation make the
impression a firm one. After all, Rosalind is only playing
a part with relish, and as any romantic heroine desires,
she wants to see her lover swimming across the stormy

Hellespont even risking his life. It is just as we see

128

her exalted face behind her pretended mask when Orlando
positively rejects her prOposal to cure him: "I would not
be cured, youth" (III.ii. 446). But an important thing
is to notice that playing or feigning a part is also a
mode of existence. Professor Barber's phrase, "leaving
the judgement free to mock what the heart embraces,"27
explains the crucial virtue of Rosalind's wit.
Love has been made independent of illusions
without becoming any the less intense; it is
therefore inoculated against life's unromantic
contradictions. To emphasize by humor the limita-
tions of the experience has become a way of
asserting its reality. . . . the humor functions
in the play as a whole to implement a wider aware-
ness, maintaining prOportion where less disciplined
and coherent art falsifies by presenting a part
as though it were the whole. 8
In some places, Rosalind's wit works into another,
slightly different, direction, though the double-edged
function of wit is kept no less intact. We have seen the

discussion of the marriage relationship through Portia's

witticism in The Merchant gf Venice. Rosalind shows a

 

great deal of interest in that field. To Orlando's oath
to have Rosalind "Forever and a day" (IV.i. 145) after

he is married to her, Rosalind expresses a doubt.

Say "a day," without the ”ever." No, no,
Orlando. Men are April when they woo, December
when they wed. Maids are May when they are
maids, but the sky changes when they are wives.

I will be more jealous of thee than a Barbary
cock pigeon over his hen, more clamorous than a
parrot against rain, more newfangled than an ape,

129

more giddy in my desires than a monkey. I will
weep for nothing, like Diana in the fountain,
and I will do that when you are disposed to be
merry. I will laugh like a hyen, and that when
thou art inclined to sleep.

[IV.i. 146-57]
Here, Rosalind's disguise allows her to talk like a "saucy
lackey,” and taking that advantage, She can talk about the
problems which might appear in the future after she is
married to Orlando. Orlando cannot quite grasp the
point, believing that his future bride is the paragon of
all feminine virtues: ”But will my Rosalind do so?"
(IV.i. 158). To which Rosalind playfully replies: "By
my life, she will do as I do" (159). There is an apparent
gap between the two Speakers' awareness. While Orlando
is confined within the romantic love convention which
believes its heroine to be virtually flawless, Rosalind
steps out of the convention and sees herself as an ordi-
nary woman, jealous as a Barbary cock pigeon, more
clamorous than a parrot, giddy and newfangled in her

desires. Benedick's conclusion in Much Ado About Nothing

 

was that "man is a giddy thing" (V.iv. 109), and that
particular foible served as a happy rationale for the
play's all round ending. But human inconsistency is not
always a welcomed element eSpecially when a pair of male
female is permanently living under the same roof. They
have to somehow find a way to cope with each other's

failings and trivial interests which the romantic love

130

convention usually omits rather inevitably. Even "brave"
Orlando, who dared to try a combat with a lioness, freely
shows human trait of unpunctuality: he is twice late for
an appointment. Naturally he might not feel a boiling
enthusiasm for meeting a shepherd boy whom he is only
assuming to be Rosalind, and he is late the second time

by reason of the battle with a lioness. But his unpunc-
tuality implicitly tells us something of his foibles which
might appear when he steps out of the role as a hero of
romance. Rosalind swears by "all pretty oaths that are
not dangerous" (IV.i. 193-94) that a lover who arrives
even one minute behind the promised time is a ”most pathe-
tical break-promise" (196). She is, as usual, just feign-
ing a part, but at least it is a part near the center of
her heart. She is quite aware of the unpredictable nature
of time ("Well, Time is the old justice that examines all
such offenders, and let Time try. Adieu" (IV.i. 203-4),
but her loving woman's part can easily occupy the central
place, pushing aside her prudent reservation: "Alas,

dear love, I cannot lack thee two hours!" (IV.i. 183).

We laugh at Rosalind's folly, but she too laughs at her
own folly with us. And amid this pleasant whirlwind of
laughter, we are somewhat assured that this couple will
make a successful marriage life in spite of difficulties

and obstacles which might beset them.

131

Thus, Rosalind's wit is of central importance
when we try to see how different attitudes or ideas are
reconciled and made to contribute to a more complex
statement. Among all characters in the play, Rosalind
alone is appointed to provide a focus for the various
views of things without marring their truth in any way.
And at the same time, as she is involved in romance as
its heroine, the ultimate impression which the audience
get from the entire picture projected through that par-
ticular focus must be an affirmative and pleasant one.29
Both Jaques and Touchstone have no such responsibility to
the whole, and they can Speak out their store of wisdom
as much as they like. But what the play demands is not
wisdom which throws light on a part of life's meaning,
however correct and piercing it may be. Rosalind's wit
stands in antithesis with wisdom in the sense that wit
is inclusive while wisdom which is possessed either by
Touchstone or Jaques, or even Corin, is exclusive and
justifies itself by the negation of other "wisdom."
Therefore, what the play finally recommends is not a par-
ticular set of values so much as normative temperament
and the sense of proportion which can use wisdom to make
out one's happiness. This might sound like "climbing the
house-top to unlock the little gate,"30 but comedy is

after all the medium to confirm the commonplace and the

obviouS.

CHAPTER IV

TWELFTH NIGHT

Twelfth Night marks the conclusion of Shakespeare's
early career as a comic writer. Several materials are
now generally acknowledged as the possible sources--the

anonymous Sienese comedy, "gl'Ingannati, Bandello's

 

Novelle (1554), and Barnaby Riche's Apolonius and Silla

 

(1581). But as Professor Harold Jenkins thinks,1 it is
reasonable to assume that Shakespeare repeated the devices

and interests of his earlier comedies, notably The Comedy

 

9: Errors and The Two Gentlemen g£_Verona. The romantic
story of the twin's separation by the shipwreck and their
subsequent reunion is already told in Thg_Comedy g£_ErrOrs,
originally borrowed from Menaechmi of Plautus, and the
"error" which is caused by the likeness of the twin forms
the farcical core of our play in the mock-duel between
Aguecheek and Viola. The Two Gentlemen g; Verona has

told the episode of disguised Julia playing a go-between
for Proteus, the one she really loves. Such an exchange
between Silvia and Julia, "How tall was She?" "About my

stature" (T.§.!. IV.iv. 162-63) finds its direct echo in

132

133

the delicate conversation between Orsino and Viola: "But
died thy sister of her love, my boy?" "I am all the
daughters of my father's house,/And all the brothers too.
And yet I know not" (II.iv. 122-24). There are also
several echoes from the other comedies. Olivia's
illusionary love for Viola is sketched less poignantly
in Phebe's love to Rosalind in 52.XEE.EEEE.£EI and
Viola's description of her imaginary sister who ”pined
in thought," never daring to give her love utterance, is
hinted at rather obscurely in Katherine's lines which
tell how Cupid made her sister die in despiar for her
love (h.h,h. V.ii. 13-15). And in one sense, Malvolio's
self-love and inadequate earnestness partake some of
Shylock's anti-comic attitude, making him the perfect
target of festive abuse. Indeed, Twelfth highh is "a
masterpiece not of invention but of recapitulation."2
Upon these basis, we naturally expect some kind
of thematic interests are also transferred from the
earlier comedies and given a final, conclusive form, for
as Professor Quiller-Couch observes, Twelfth E1225 is
the dramatist's "Farewell to Comedy."3 The next time we
meet the dramatist's attempt at comedy, it is in the

different area of experience of All's Well That Ends Well

 

and Measure for Measure. Evidences which support such a

 

thesis are not lacking. For instance, the notion of

extreme self-deception as a kind of madness, which has

134

been so broadly illustrated in h_Midsummer Night's Dream,

 

underlies the play's treatment of some characters and
scenes. Olivia's maidenly decision to wear mourning weeds
all the rest of her life cannot completely control what
actually she is--a healthy woman ready for a proper
wooer--and she soon finds herself entangled in the irra-
tional passion which, without her knowing, leads to the
absurdity of falling in love with a maid in page's attire.
When Malvolio, another victim of wild imagination which
releases fancy from all kinds of rational restrictions,
appears in yellow stockings and with cross-gartered legs,
Olivia gives a cry which is characteristic of the play:
"Why, this is very midsummer madness" (III.iv. 61).

But, generally speaking, the belief that Twelfth
E1322 says something conclusive and final about Shake-
speare's idea of comedy finds its strongest support in our
broad, less critical, and somewhat undefinable knowledge
that the play stands at the extreme brink of the comic
world, beautifully poised between feeling and judgement,
artifice and spontaneity, and that to advance it a few
steps further in the same direction is either to invite
surfeit or to face another system of coherency which
gives no promise to agree with human happiness. "Autumnal"
or "mellow" are both used quite often as the epithets
which define the spirit of the play in short term. They

suggest the image of richness and softness, but at the

135

same time they imply a shade which forms a dark fringe
around brightness. Some critics are tempted to view

this shade as "tragic" elements in the play, meaning
Malvolio's humiliation, which troubled the mind of
Charles Lamb, and Feste's kinship to the Fool in 532E.
2325, Apart from the misuse of the term "tragic" which
applies to the dramatic structure and is not a name for
merely sad and pitiful episodes, this is to distort the
important point: the Shade forms only the fringe, and it
only serves to give assurance to the central brightness
which is the unmistakable feature of the whole. Despite
the critics' voice of doubt and anxiety, Twelfth highh_is
a pleasant and at some moments a most hilarious comedy.
The graver aspect of the play ultimately takes origin
from the dramatist's acute awareness of reality which has
continually increased in its inclusiveness and depth Since

it saw the first consummation in h Midsummer Night's Dream.

 

Shakespeare never repeats success. Twelfth Night departs

 

sharply from §§.XQE.EEES.£E in dramatic form and manner
of construction, and the way in which the sense of critical
exposure is balanced against the play's vision of human
happiness is unparalleled by any preceding comedy and
indicates the peak of one kind of art form.

The play begins with Orsino's invocation of music,
and the audience realize that they have stepped into a

rather gloomy place compared to sunny Belmont and the

136

forest of Arden. In the center of the stage lies a
desperate man in love, locked within melancholy, frus-
trated, calling for music in which he finds something
like a temporary ease, only to discover that it is not
what he sought.

If music be the food of love, play on.

Give me excess of it, that, surfeiting,

The appetite may sicken, and so die.

That strain again! It had a dying fall.

Oh, it came o'er my ear like the sweet sound

That breathes upon a bank of violets,

Stealing and giving odor! Enough, no more.

'Tis not so sweet now as it was before.

0 spirit of love, how quick and fresh art thou!

That, notwithstanding thy capacity

Receiveth as the sea, naught enters there,

Of what validity and pitch soe'er,

But falls into abatement and low price,

Even in a minute! So full of shapes is fancy

That it alone is high fantastical.

[Isis 1-15]

The dominant effect of the poetry is languor and exquisite
lyricism, but underneath it lurks the image of "surfeit"
and the pose of self-abandonment. The comparison of love
to "appetite" is characteristic of Orsino who later refers
contemptuously to woman's capacity for love as mere appe-
tite, "No motion of the liver, but the palate" (II.iv.
101). His love for Olivia cannot find a way of expression
but in fruitless lament and solitary contemplation, and
it has only a degrading effect on his qualities as a noble-
man. The world esteems him to be "of fresh and stainless

youth;/In voices well divulged, free, learned, and

valiant;/And in dimension and the shape of nature/A

137

gracious person" (I.v. 278-81), but his passion works

upon him only to dim these qualities. He cannot even find
a constant voice of truth in any object, helplessly watch-
ing the things changing, dissolving and slipping off into
unimportance. He likes to make an analogue of his huge
capacity for love to the sea's. But it is not the sea of
Juliet's "My bounty is as boundless as the sea,/My love as
deep; the more I give to thee,/The more I have, for both
are infinite" (II.ii. 133-35). His sea is the image of
loss and meaninglessness, a hungry monster which devours
every drOp of rain, never being content, always gaping its
mouth for another. It is the Opposite of Bassanio's love
which dares to hazard anything and is eager to give rather
than to receive. Orsino hotly importunes the access to
Olivia using messenger, ring and letters, but he does not
risk anything and is eager only to receive. The peak of
his emotional outburst is not the statement of his faith,
but the imaginary vision, a daydream: "When liver, brain,
and heart,/These sovereign thrones, are all supplied, and
filled/Her sweet perfections with one self king!" (1.1.
37-39). AS Professor L. G. Salingar suggests, Orsino's
love resembles that of Troilus, in its vulnerability and-

"its graSping after the infinite."4

I am giddy, expectation whirls me round.
The imaginary relish is so sweet

That it enchants my sense. What will it be
When that the watery palates taste indeed

138

Love's thrice repured nectar? Death, I fear me,
Swounding destruction, or some joy too fine,
Too subtle-potent, tuned too sharp in sweetness,
For the capacity of my ruder powers.
[Troi. III.ii. 19-26]
The ineffectiveness of Orsino is often pointed
out by the critics in a manner to discount his affected
pose as a devoted romantic lover. He is a "moony Duke"
and a "thistle down amorist" who has fallen in love with
being in love. Professor E. K. Chambers remarks:
He deliberately cultivates his sentiment, stimulating
it with music and flowers and poses of languishment.
He pleases himself with the pomp and circumstances
of courtship, sends embassies of love to a cruel
mistress, and is rightly punished by the irony which
makes his mistress promptly fall in love with the
ambassador.5
Clearly, Orsino's obsession with the creature he loves
is the Specimen of the play's concern with self-deception
and its absurdity, and in this sense we are entitled to
a laugh or two, especially at such a moment as when Orsino
cries, "Husband!" to Olivia's "Whither, my lord? Cesario,
husband, stay" (V.i. 146). But we have to be careful not
to emphasize the point too far. He is involved in passion
so completely that he cannot see that his language tends
to become hyperbolical. But he is not absurd in the same
sense that the mad Athenian lovers are. Orsino is not
meant as a self-controlling, mature figure, but surely he

is meant to carry the main action with all the traits of

noble diSposition and broad understanding which the part

139

requires. And we feel far from laughing at his "deliber-
ate effort to cultivate his sentiment," when we listen to
his invocation of music.’ He expresses himself in resonant
blank verse all through the play, and the sentiment which
underlies it is always delicate and arouses our serious
interest, as here our sympathy apparently moves toward
the sense of agony and frustration which colours the whole
speech. In the later scene, Orsino calls for Feste from
Olivia's house and bids him to Sing an ancient song once
chanted by "The spinsters and the knitters in the sun/And
the free maids that weave their thread with bones" (II.iv.
45-46). The song is about a man who died of his passionate
love for a cruel mistress.
Come away, come away, death,
And in sad cypress let me be laid.
Fly away, fly away, breath,
I am slain by a fair cruel maid.
My shroud of white, stuck all with yew,
Oh, prepare it!
My part of death, no one so true
Did share it!
Not a flower, not a flower sweet,
On my black coffin let there be strown.
Not a friend, not a friend greet
My poor corpse, where my bones shall be thrown.
A thousand thousand sighs to save,
Lay me, oh, where
Sad true lover never find my grave,
To weep there!

The sentiment is quite solemn, and the song effectively

reminds us that the unrequited passion can end by death.

140

Orsino shows a strong attachment to the song, as obviously
it points to one possible catastrophe of his relationship
with Olivia. Olivia shows no Sign of changing her mind.
We cannot regard her denial as the coy gesture of a
courtly lady or as reflecting a sort of adolescent per-
versity such as we find in Phebe's cruelty to Silvius.
Olivia makes clear that she is none of that kind, and
even gladly praises the uncommon virtues of Orsino (I.v.
276-81), "But yet I cannot love him." When for the first
time Orsino realizes that Olivia's affection is directed
at someone else, his words become harsh and bitter, calling
Olivia "the marble-breasted tyrant" (V.i. 127), and even
suggest a violent action: "Why should I not, had I the
heart to do it,/Like to the Egyptian thief at point of
death,/Kill what I love?" (V.i. 120-23). Olivia's love
to Viola is a cunnic irony, as long as it is accompanied
by our understanding of Viola's true sexual identity and
our knowledge that the time of dénouement is approaching
near at hand. But the violent language and confusion at
the middle of the last act, with raging Orsino and be-
wildered Olivia, somewhat rmanage to convey that the same
kind of Situation could be the highlight of the more
poignant kind of drama where a page does not always turn
out to be the disguised heroine. Th2 Duchess 2£.§2l£i is
not a very good example, but Orsino's accusation of

Viola's treacherous act, "0 thou dissembling cub! What

141

wilt thou be/When time hath sowed a grizzle on thy case?"
(V.i. 167-68), could be uttered by indignant Ferdinand

to the face of Antonio. As a matter of fact, such an
implication does not trouble the mind of the audience very
much, as the play is a comedy: the more furiously Orsino
rages, the more outrageous is our pleasure. The confusion
is soon to be hushed by the entrance of Sebastian, and
from that point the process of resolution is almost
mechanical until it finally sees the happy pairing of

the lovers. But somehow the audience are keenly aware
that the dénouement has been brought by the purely happy
turn of fortune, and that the idea of providential reward
for human integrity has nothing to do with it: there is

no sense of inevitability in happiness. Professor L. G.
Salingar, comparing our play's dénouement with those of

Bandello and Gl'Ingannati, states as follows:

 

At the same time, however, Shakespeare enlarges

the role of her twin brother and gives unprecedented
weight to coincidence in the dénouement, which in
both Italian stories is brought about more rationally,
by the deliberate action of the heroine and her

nurse; so that ShakeSpeare's Viola is also unique in
that her happiness is due to "good fortune" more
than6"long patience", and to "good advice" not at

all.

The right person arrives just in time when he is needed,
and "nature to her bias drew in that" (V.i. 267). The
force which instinctively follows the way to order and

unity has controlled the issue of the play, and almost

142

everyone is benefited by it, but no one has made a posi-
tive contribution to it. It is merely a happy coincidence.
Upon this knowledge, we do not take too seriously the
implausibility of Orsino's suddenly sprung affection to
Viola as a female. The play concludes happily, and the
sense of "wonder" at this rarest occasion of encounter and
revelation accelerates our joy. But on afterthought, we
come to a rather chilling question: "What might happen,

if nature did not draw to her bias? What if such a
controlling force did not exist at all?"

We sense the same kind of happy manoeuvre and
contrivance when we follow Olivia's love to Viola to its
resolution. Olivia is a well-drawn, charming lady who
combines in herself aristocratic poise and strong emo-
tional capacity. The play's two locations, Orsino's
court and Olivia's household, make a sharp contrast,
because while Orsino's court is disorganized and infected
by the languorous air of its master, Olivia's household
is neatly and discreetly managed by its mistress' flexible
discipline, and punctuated by the brisk, lively rhythm of
life. The whimsicality of Feste and frivolity of Sir
Toby have their places in this ordered atmosphere. We
are in fact surprised by Olivia's first entrance with
"Take the fool away" (I.v. 42), as we have imagined the
pale-cheeked, dejected lady in black from Valentine's

description: "But, like a cloistress, she will veiled

143

walk/And water once a day her chamber round/With eye-
offending brine" (I.i. 28-30). But actually she is well
disposed enough to play a catechism with Feste and sharp
enough to rebuke Malvolio for self-love (I.v. 97-104).
And her Speedy and discreet management of household
affairs strongly impresses Sebastian (IV.iii. 16-20).
Therefore, when she falls in love with Viola, we appar-
ently watch the issue with something other than pure
amusement with which we watched Phebe's love to Rosalind.
Passion attacks Olivia as suddenly as Helena's
eyes struck down Demetrius, and she is helpless as a child
before the anarchic force of love. And also it is true
that Olivia's unwillingness to surrender herself to any
man's courtship is, according to Shakespeare's doctrine
of "love's use," a "forbidden usury" which makes waste in
perverse withholding of one's beauty. Viola's female
instinct is quick in detecting what is wrong with this
lady: "Most certain, if you are she, you do usurp your-
self; for what is yours to bestow is not yours to reserve"
(I.v. 198-200). But, as Viola continues "But this is
from my commission," the point is not developed further
than its minimum implication, and the dramatist seems to
have no great care in turning it to the major interest of
the play. Instead, he seems to be absorbed in giving
shape and colour to the quivering emotional waves which

underlie the conversation between Olivia and Viola. Their

144

first meeting in Act I, scene v begins with rather mocking
note, each, to her credit, playing the part of the proud
mistress of the house or the outspoken, churlish messenger.
This is one of the few places where Viola is allowed to
show her talent for witticism. But as the scene develops,
Olivia's mask begins to slip off, and the relaxed air of
superiority which marked her Speeches in the earlier part
of the scene is now deserting her. Her words become short,
and against her will they betray her emotional involvement
with this saucy page: "Why, what would you?" (I.v. 286),
"You might do much./What is your parentage?" (295-96), "Let
him send no more,/Unless, perchance, you come to me again/
To tell me how he takes it" (299-301). Being left alone,
she is free to tell us how Viola has snared her heart, but
we also perceive that even at such a moment She shows a
Sign of noble resistance: "Not too fast. Soft, soft!"
(312). And we are allowed to watch closely the fearful
expectations stirring her to the irrational conduct of “I
do I know not what" (327). Our attention is led, not to
the inhuman force which controls her, but to this lady's
internal capacity to respond to the cue in so delicate
and complex a manner.

Next time she meets Viola, Olivia is discreet
enough to be ashamed of her trick in sending a ring in
chase: "So did I abuse/Myself, my servant, and, I fear

me, you" (III.i. 124-25). The important thing is that

145

Olivia is quite aware of her folly which makes her vul-
nerable in the world, and that to declare her irresistible
passion is to risk her honour: “What might you think?/Have
you not set mine honor at the stake/And baited it with all
the unmuzzled thoughts/That tyrannous heart can think?"
(III.i. 128-31). She exposes herself completely with
admirable boldness. But Viola's disguise enables her to
see the matter more coolly.

Disguise, I see thou art a wickedness,

Wherein the pregnant enemy does much.

How easy is it for the prOper-false

In women's waxen hearts to set their forms!

Alas, our frailty is the cause, not we!

For such as we are made of, such we be.

[II.ii. 28-33]

Disguise works here as the medium of reveleation, and it
brings to Viola the knowledge of women's vulnerability to
fair appearance. As characteristically in the play, the
knowledge is directly presented to us, without the soften-
ing of humour or wit. Olivia responds to love in rich
terms, but at the bottom of the scale her love is not
completely severed from inferior emotion which goes by
haps, being caught in the eye, and servile to time and
decay. In 133 Yo_u 231:3 _I_1_:_, such a negative aspect of love as
makes it an irresponsible, disturbing element in life was
allowed existence in the play only to strengthen the total

effect of the experience by adding different perspective

of things: the audience are always assured what Rosalind

146

is driving at deSpite her feigned gesture. But here the
knowledge is exposed and isolated in the comic context, and
no visible way of connecting it to the whole is suggested.
It is a revelation which enlightens, but its channel to
action is closed, because there is so little that both
Olivia and Viola can do to get out of this labyrinth of
disparity between reality and appearance, where the girl
who loves her master plays a go-between to woo a lady who
falls in love with her.

The way out is found in the Plautine convention
that the heroine has a twin brother who looks exactly the
same. Olivia is rescued from the possible sad Spectacle
of watching herself pine in love thoughts as Viola's
imaginary sister did. But the final resolution does not
completely square with the preceding complication which
appeared to be struggling with the intensity of feeling to
which comedy can promise no successful answer. This is
not to say that the dénouement fails to convince us. We
follow-the entire action with the expectation that we will
be finally "tricked," and Sebastian's entrance is surprise
enough to dissolve the issue in laughter and wondering.
The point is that while enjoying the dénouement for all
its worth, we are somewhat aware that we are in fact
appreciating the fictional quality of the scene whose
implausibility is the very life of our amusement. The

exchange between Viola and Sebastian is deliberately slow

147

in tempo and formal in style: usually it does not take
33 lines for brother and sister to recognize each other.
But this becomes understandable when we realize that what
the scene is trying to come to terms with is not the
one's emotional reaction to the other, but something which
transcends and manipulates the individuals. This is why
Viola does not jump into the bosom of her long lost
brother.

If nothing lets to make us happy both

But this my masculine usurped attire,

Do not embrace me till each circumstance

Of place, time, fortune, do cohere and jump

That I am Viola.

[V.i. 256-60]

What Viola is instinctively trying to reverence is the
notion of timeliness, the idea that one moment in time
can create an unified relationship among men while another
cannot. At the play's crucial moments, Viola and Olivia,
or even Sebastian, postponed their decisive action in the
hope that time will shape out what their small capacity
to read the future cannot: "0 Time, thou must untangle
this, not I!/It is too hard a knot for me to untie!"
(II.ii. 41-42), "Fate, Show thy force, ourselves we do
not owe./What is decreed must be, and be this so" (I.v.
329-30). We know that their commitment to time's bene-

volent working is not strictly speaking their deliberate

choice; they did not have any choice but to accept what

148

time could serve them. The total effect is the comfortable
relief that things came off happily as far as these
particular people and this particular moment are concerned,
but it also encourages the speculation, at least im-
plicitly, that things might not turn out the same way if
we shuffle the cards and re-start the story from the
beginning. If Orsino and other creatures are devoid of
feeling and psychological depth, belittlement can result
no otherwise but in laughter. But as they are what they
are, the fictional quality of the last scene becomes all
the more evident.

Our heroine, Viola, is a radical change from her
predecessors whom the dramatist seems to have explored
with particular relish. Portia-Beatrice-Rosalind, the
obvious association is the image of a competent, mature
female who needs no guiding hands but her own to get what
she wants. The image culminates in Rosalind who is the
unmistakable center of the play and in perfect control
of herself and her environment. The next time Shakespeare
creates his heroine, he abandons all he has achieved and
depicts before our eyes an entirely different female
figure--less resourceful, of intense feelings but lacking
the capacity of wit which neutralize them, and helplessly
dependent on Chance. The only time Viola makes a positive
decision to act is her rather abrupt "I'll serve this

Duke" (I.ii. 55). She is quick in planning the part she

149

has to play, but as to the result of her dnguise, she
is quite nonchalant: "What else may hap to time I will
commit" (I.ii. 60). This initial action leads her to
the labyrinth of desperate relationship with Orsino and
Olivia, and henceforward she is deprived of every means
to act by her own volition. When she goes on a love's
embassy to Olivia, she speaks rather like Rosalind,
drawing from amused Olivia, ”Are you a comedian?" (I.v.
193). But it is a feigning for feigning's sake and
remains as something forced upon her: "I can say little
more than I have studied, and that question's out of my
part" (I.v. 189-90). She is obliged to live her poten-
tialities rather than her deed. Act II, scene iv, in
which Orsino and Viola exchange a delicate conversation,
is well known for its poetic beauty, but it is also another
place where the play presents the image of contradiction
between reality and appearance, knowledge and action.
Orsino Speaks to Viola in his usual manner--unrequited

lover suffering from passion.

Come hither, boy. If ever thou shalt love,
In the sweet pangs of it remember me;
For such as I am all true lovers are,
Unstaid and skittish in all motions else
Save in the constant image of the creature
That is beloved.
[II.iv. 15-20]

But soon he begins to talk in a different, less
formal tone, his cautious mask slipping off, relieved by

the Secure privacy of honest man-to-man talk.

150
Viola. About your years, my lord.
Orsino. Too old, by Heaven. Let still the woman take
An elder than herself, so wears she to him,
So sways she level in her husband's heart.
For, boy, however we do praise ourselves,
Our fancies are more giddy and unfirm,

More longing, wavering, sooner lost and worn,
Than women's are.

[II.iv. 29-36]
Orsino does not realize his self-contradiction, but his
pose as a perfect court lover is somewhat discounted by
this cheerless fact about man's giddiness in his fancy.
It is a humiliating fact for a romantic lover that a fre-
quently exercised solution to maintain a peaceful marriage
relationship is to choose a younger wife so that she can
"sway level in her husband's heart." The idea is a com-
promise, but however it might appear discouraging to the
romantic idea of love, it has its own voice of truth in
exercise, especially for those who have less idealized
notions of love. Time will sooner or later wash off
radiant colour from his mistress' cheek, and if love is
no more than something caught in the eye, what can a man
do but delay the inevitable process? Orsino observes,
"For women are as roses, whose fair flower/Being once
displayed, doth fall that very hour" (II.iv. 39-40).
"Therefore take the present time," which is usually uttered
in the next breath, is out of place in this melancholic
atmOSphere. Orsino's remarks sink into Viola's intro-
spection, and find an echo there: "And so they are. Alas,

that they are so--/To die, even when they to perfection

151

grow" (II.iv. 41-42). The effect is the Opposite of
Rosalind's "Men are April when they woo, December when
they wed. Maids are May when they are maids, but the sky
changes when they are wives" (531323 IV.i. 147-49), though
speaking on the semantic level they amount to the same
meaning--maids are not always maids and man's fancy is a
giddy thing. In §§.XEE.££EE.£EI such a recognition is a
necessary premise, but here we are shown no legitimate way
of connecting it to the total effect of the play as a
comedy. Instead, we let it sink in our consciousness,
free to evoke whatever association and irony are available
there. The play's dénouement dissolves the issue, and we
soon forget that we had such a dark moment. The strongly
fictional quality of the last scene makes it look absurd
to speculate on the future marriage relationship between
orsino and Viola. But it also means that the play has no
intention of convincing us of this couple's capacity to
make an enduring, successful marriage. The dramatic
emphasis is on the beneficent working of time and nature's
bias, and Viola is not meant to provide a focus for the
whole dramatic experience. The insight which Viola has
acquired into the negative aspects of love is left at its
fragmentary status, still free to reSpond to our imagina-
tion without the restrictions from any master design. And
in one sense, this encourages one implicitly to ask the

question: "What happens if things do not come off happily?

152

What, if such a controlling force did not exist or was a
malignant one?" Viola is time's child. In the next
moment we remember with regret that many of Shakespeare's
tragic heroes cry "I'm Fortune's fool" in the face of
invisible force which invites them to destruction and in-
significance. Though unconscious of it, Viola and the
rest have walked upon a narrow rOpe, for tragic Fate is
here implicit in comic Fortune.

We have so far followed the action of the main
plot with our attention on three important characters and
have seen in each case how the final resolution is wrought
in a different manner from that in any of the previous
comedies. One question seems to be asked for clarifica-
tion's sake: "How should we reconcile our critical re-
sponse with our Spontaneous enjoyment? For example, if
the final scene's dramatic emphasis is upon the beneficent
working of time, how Shall we come to terms with the be-
littlement of the central creatures who, according to such
an interpretation, are no more than the fools of time?

Are we not troubled by such a thought, and does it not
mar our pleasure in some way or other?" One way to answer
the question is to say that our critical awareness is put
to temporary silence once one sits in the theatre and
allowed to resume its function only when one goes back

to one's study. But this is not true. The keen spectator

does not miss the serious implication of the play, or even

153

if he missed it the first time, he does not miss it the

second, and Twelfth Night is the kind of play which in-

 

creases in its Sheer amount of pleasure as one's experience
with the play's stage productions advances. The real
answer seems to lie in the fact that drama can reconcile
the Opposites in a way which is impossible in real life,
and the dichotomy between critical and spontaneous re-
sponses is too poor and incompetent a method to be applied
to such a complex play as ours. The flawless comic vision
of §§.XEE.EEEE.£EI so to speak, stands on impossibility,
because the play contains Jaques' scepticism which ques-
tions the very same vision. The total experience is the
composite of numerous elements, but it refuses to be
identified with any of those elements. Likewise, the
knowledge that people in Twelfth highh are more or less
time's servants, that the intense feeling of the lovers

is not fully resolved at the end, does not jar with our
pleasure. Strictly speaking, we do not even feel that
Viola and Olivia are belittled. Viola is in so harmonious
and close relationship with time, that we feel we are not
invited to compare her stature with that of the invisible
force which guards her. Admittedly, the play's dénouement
is artificial, but, importantly, the dramatist seems to

be aiming at nothing less. What matters is not plausi-
bility, but contrivance which adds a Special sense of

vulnerability to the play's vision of human happiness. At

154

this moment, I borrow the mouth of Professor Clifford
Leech, who seems to be struggling with the same question,
though here he appears to have the action of the subplot

more in his mind:

To see Twelfth Night is to be reminded of occasions
when we are makIfig merry with those who are closest
to us in sympathy and affection, and yet, though

the pleasure is keen and genuine, we are fractionally
conscious that the formula is not quite right, so
that we cannot quite keep it from ourselves that

an effort is needed for the contrivance of harmony.
On such occasions the moment comes when we look
coldly on the merry-making and the good relation-
ship and see the precariousness of our tolerance for
one another, the degree of pretence in all socia-
bility. But that moment of disillusioned insight
does not invalidate the experience of brief
rejoicing that is possible in human encounters.
There is an important sense in which any goodness

in life is an artifact. Illyria, with the events

it frames, is Shakespeare's image for this contrived
thing: it impresses us the more deeply because

from time to time Shakespeare seems deliberately

to make us aware of the contrivance.7

 

The play as a whole is much more good humoured
and gay than suggested by the main action, and this
impression is produced by the action of the subplot which
rocks with the lively rhythm of "good life." Samuel
Pepys thought that the content of the play is "not
related at all to the name or day,"8 but if we listen to
such critics as Miss Welsford or Professor Leslie Hotson,
we cannot but think that the play is clearly related to
Twelfth Night festivity, also called the feast of

Epiphany, which was celebrated as the closing day of

155

Christmas festivity. The most remarkable feature of
Twelfth Night is the custom of the Lord of Misrule,
otherwise called the Abbot of Unreason, the Prince of
Fools. The custom has a long history on the Continent,
eSpecially in France, believed to have stemmed from
Kalends or Saturnalia of pagan Rome. The Lord of Mis-
rule is the mock-king who has been elected very often
by such means as picking up a coin or bean contained in
a large cake served at dinner, and during the temporary
period he ruled over the topsy-turvy world where the
fools are exalted and the wise are abused. Here is a
typical passage which illustrates the particular feeling
which pervaded such an occasion:

O, we shall have his Saturnalia, his days of

feast and liberty again: where men might do,

and talk all that they list -- slaves of their

lords, the servants of their masters. . . .

Time's come about, and promiseth all liberty -- nay,

license. We shall do what we list!9
The custom of temporary liberty and license found biblical
justification in "He hath put down the mighty from their
seat and hath exalted the humble and the meek," and was
much observed in the churches in France and Germany during
the Middle Ages, despite the voice of reformation from
Rome. After the custom was expelled from the churches,
it found hearty welcome in towns, law-courts and uni-
versities. In England, the custom flourished mostly in

Court and among the students of the Inns of Court. At

156

Court, the Lord of Misrule, distinguished from the Master
of Revels who is a permanent official responsible for

the entertainment for the foreign ambassadors and other
practical arrangements, is a temporary court official
appointed to provide an entertainment during the
Christmas festivity. At the court of Henry VII and Henry
VIII, the Lord of Misrule was elected annually, and the
custom took the most elaborate form under Edward VI, with
pageants, masquerade, mock-combats and other ingenious
devices. But as Miss Welsford observes, "After the death
of Edward VI, the Lord of Misrule makes no more appear-

ances at the English court,"10

and in spite of his
vigorous investigation into the buried documents con-
cerning the occasion of our play's first performance by
the King's Men, when the Queen entertained Don Virgino
Orsino, the Duke of Bracciano, at Whitehall on Twelfth
Night, January 6, 1600/1, Professor Leslie Hotson does
not discover any facts which indicate that the Lord of
Misrule custom was observed in the court of Elizabeth
with the same flourish as her royal predecessors had
used.

But the quintessence of the Lord of Misrule
custom is kept intact in our play. Sir Toby is the
temporary king of cakes and ale, and his fake-logic of

"To be up after midnight, and to go to bed then, is

early, so that to go to bed after midnight is to go to

157

bed betimes" (II.iii. 7-9) is the expression of the
authorized Misrule of holidays. Feste, the licensed
fool in Olivia's household, naturally becomes the leader
of the rest, as the fool was the reverenced center of
the Feast of Fools in the medieval churches and uni-
versities. Feste's preoccupation with the fool's wisdom
and the wise man's folly, as Miss Welsford points out,11
has something of the spirit of sottie, a crude dramatic
form motivated by the Misrule impulse, in which the
philosopher, the sage and the clergy all turn out to be
wearing motley under their solemn costume and robe.

Those who take themSelves too seriously and do not admit
that they are somewhere "writ down an ass" are doomed

to become the butt of the others. Festive abuse is
almost indistinguishable from the spirit of the Misrule,
and Malvolio's air of self-importance, his arrogance,

and his hostility against merry-making make him the
perfect target. Malvolio does his job properly as a
steward, advising Sir Toby and the rest of the members
of midnight carousal to have a reSpect of place, persons,
and time (II.iii. 92-99), but Sir Toby's retort is more
in harmony with the play's relaxed atmOSphere: "We did
keep time, Sir, in our catches. Sneck up!" (II.iii.
100). Sir Toby wilfully mistakes the meaning of "time,"
implicitly telling Malvolio that the only meaning of

time relevant to the occasion is the rhythm in catches.

158

Observance of timely conduct and proper occasion for
certain things is a commendable virtue in workaday life.
But here the situation is different. During the period
of the Misrule, all the social norms are tumbled upside-
down, and time is only the space cut from its continuity
to be devoted exclusively for one's enjoyment and merry-
making. Respect of persons and places dissolves into
spontaneous fellowship and care-freeing laughter. Malvolio
is a sober and reasonable creature, much trusted by Olivia
as a steward. But this trait of his is exactly what makes
him inadequate in this society of care-free creatures, just
as his affectation and self-love give Maria a cue for her
excellent trick which finally leads him to the humiliation
of confinement in the dark room as a madman. Malvolio
thinks so nobly of the soul that he cannot accept Pythag-
oras' Opinion that "the soul of our grandam might haply
inhabit a bird" (IV.ii. 56-57). More's the pity that
Malvolio takes Feste's question too literally and cannot
answer the catechism in "holiday foolery.“ The point of
Feste's bringing up the tricky question is not to fathom
Malvolio's beliefs about mankind, but to Show the audience
that his seriousness must make him play a fool as far as
he is in this society which is maintained by different
life-principles, essentially alien to him.

It is a pitiful labour to draw a moral from such

a good-humoured custom as the Lord of Misrule, but

159

nevertheless to distinguish it from mere irresponsible
game or foolery, we have to turn to its other aspect.
If the Lord of Misrule serves any social function at all,
it is that of the safety valve which releases the unquiet
tension and frustration among society's members by giving
them the privilege of freedom from time to time. And
this is the explanation of the authorities of both
churches and universities during the Middle Ages for
allowing their friars and students a brief period of
relaxation once a year around Christmas.

A Doctor of Auxerre explained that wine barrels

break if their bung-holes are not occasionally

Opened to let in the air, and the clergy being

'nothing but old wine-casks badly put together

would certainly burst if the wine of wisdom were

allowed to boil by continued devotion to the

Divine Service'. . . . 'some sixty years since,

in the University of Cambridge it was solemnly

debated betwixt the Heads to debarre young

schollers of that liberty allowed them in

Christmas, as inconsistent with the Discipline

of Students. But some grave Governors mentioned

the good use thereof, because thereby, in twelve

days, they more discover the dispositions of

Scholars than in twelve months before.'12
As clear from these statements, the continuity of worka-
day life is broken only to be resumed more effectively
and smoothly: the monks dance round the sacred altar in
the motley and coxcomb on their heads only to be able to
kneel before the same with more tranquil mind, and the

students mock Aristotle and Socrates only to clear out

of their minds the disturbing thoughts which might hinder

160

their concentration on the philosophers' words of wisdom.

The merry-making is the more hilarious, as one recognizes

the temporary nature of the game. Significantly, Twelfth

Night belongs to the latest period of Christmas festivity.
The next day is Saint Distaff's or Rock Day, the day when

the maids go back to their work of Spinning: "Give Saint

Distaff all the right,/Then bid Christmas sport good

night."13

Those who are well aware of the limitations of
their pleasure can enjoy themselves prOperly. But for
those who try to extend the days of license beyond its
alloted span, some kind of crush and disillusionment
become inevitable. It is at this point that the Lord of
Misrule motive in the subplot comes to bear thematic
parallelism with the main plot in its manner of presenting
the most cheerful picture of human happiness together with
the suggestion that it is not the whole. The play depicts
the most self-sufficient moment of "good life," but it
does not forget to remind uS, as Professor Clifford Leech
has said, "the moment comes when we look coldly on the
merry-making and the good relationship and see the precar-
iousness of our tolerance for one another, the degree of
pretence in all sociability."

The crush comes in Act III, scene iv with the
entrance of Antonio. Before his entrance, we are assured

that nobody could be possibly hurt in the mock-duel between

Sir Andrew and Viola, who are both equally willing to let

161

the matter pass. But Antonio is not a member of the Misrule
society, and his earnestness can become the source of
violence and disorder when he tries to force himself into
the midst of the scene. Sir Toby challenges Antonio with
"Nay, if you be an undertaker, I am for you" (III.iv. 349),
and the duel is going to be a real one. But it is inter-
rupted by the officers' entrance and followed by Antonio's
arrest. Antonio's disappointment at Viola's ingratitude

is based on mistake, but his harsh reproof is persuasive

and even disturbing. It is no coincidence that the drama-

tist named this man of faith Antonio. In The Merchant g;

 

Venice, Antonio's fidelity was requited by Bassanio's con-
stancy and Portia's succour. But the suggestion that un-
selfish devotion makestfluaone who gives it vulnerable in

the world becomes nearly a reality in Twelfth Night. We

 

admire, and at the same time, fear Antonio's love to
Sebastian, whom Fortune has treated badly. Antonio's
devotion is too pure, too unworldly, to cope with the
impurity and contradictions of life. Antonio dismisses
Sebastian's advice ("My stars shine darkly over me. The
malignancy of my fate might perhaps distemper yours, there-
fore I Shall crave of you your leave that I may bear my
evils alone" 11.1. 3-6), and risks the danger of exposing
himself in his enemy's country. He is arrested, and worst
of all, meets ingratitude in his dearest friend. The play

dissolves the issue through the unravelling of the mistake

162

in the last scene, and Antonio silently steals away,
unnoticed. The audience are too glad to forget him,
because, as Professor Salingar says, they know that "The
comedy has no answer to his problem of sincere devotion
given to a false idol."l4
Sebastian strays into Olivia's garden, and the
entrance is soon followed by violence. Sir Andrew tries
to strike Cesario with a more vigorous blow than before,
but this time he is soundly beaten. This foolish knight
is now compelled to see himself as actually he is--an
ineffective would-be-lover that imagined himself to be a
brave knight flattered by Sir Toby and Fabian. He needed
not to fear losing face by assuming the valour he had not:
"An't be any way, it must be with valor, for policy I
hate" (III.ii. 32-33), because his bragging could not
lead him before no less than Viola. But the pain on his
head makes him more sensible, and he determines to avenge
his humiliation by policy which he once so despised: "Nay,
let him alone. I'll go another way to work with him.
I'll have an action of battery against him, if there be
any law in Illyria" (IV.i. 35-37). Even Sir Andrew senses
the change in the air. When Olivia appears to stOp the
fight between Sir Toby and Sebastian, it is clear that
she is no longer ready to dismiss Sir Toby's conduct as
another holiday foolery: "Will it be ever thus? Un-

gracious wretch,/Fit for the mountains and the barbarous

163

caves,/Where manners ne'er were preached! Out of my sight!"
(IV.i. 51-53). Sir Toby slinks off, as he knows that it
is an unadvisable thing for him to do to offend his niece
further, being anxious to keep the same roof over his head.
At one point of the play, Sir Toby confesses his fear that
they have gone too far in their Sport of gulling Malvolio:
"I would we were well rid of this knavery. If he may be
conveniently delivered, I would he were, for I am now so
far in offense with my niece that I cannot pursue with

any safety this sport to the upshot" (IV.ii. 72-76). But
he is a little too slow in catching up with the change
which is taking place around him, and his extra-trick,
humiliation of Malvolio by putting him in the dark room,
makes it impossible for the matters to come off as "con-
veniently" as he wanted. The yellow stockings are a kind
of joke we can laugh at and forget. But to lock someone

in the cage and mock him as if he were a madman is a
slightly different matter. If Sir Toby were prudent enough
to resist the temptation of watching his deadly enemy
mocked by the fool, we would not have to sense the sour
distaste in the mouth at Malvolio's exit with "I'll be
revenged on the whole pack of you" (V.i. 386). This is
not to say that Sir Toby is entirely reSponsible for

this discordant effect. Responsibility is partly ours,

and disillusionment must be Shared by the audience who

have laughed so heartily at this poor steward.

164

The humiliation of Malvolio is the price that

one pays for practical jesting: one cannot

strip the self-important and the puritanical

without sharing their embarrassment at naked-

ness. To put Malvolio on a tragic level is to

disregard the general effect of his appearance

on the stage: rather, he is one of those comic

figures at whom it is too easy to laugh, so easy

that, before we know it, we have done harm and

are ashamed.15

But Sir Toby pays for his sport in some form or

other. The second time he challenges Sebastian, he loses
blood. Appearing on the stage with bandaged head, he
calls for a surgeon, but Feste's answer is that the doctor
is drunk and his eyes are "set at eight i' the morning"
(V.i. 205). The time of drinking and jest is over, and
Sir Toby feels in his pain the disillusionment of one
who has gone too far in his sport. It is rather brutal
of Sir Toby that he does not take kindly Sir Andrew's
offer "I'll help you, Sir Toby, because we'll be dressed
together": "Will you help? An asshead and a coxcomb
and a knave, a thin-faced knave, a gull!" (V.i. 210-13).
This is true enough, but the audience wish that Sir Toby
had not said it. The harsh words from the mouth of one
whom he believed to be a bosom friend crushes the heart
of this fragile, but incredibly good natured knight, and
he retires without making any sound, probably going back
to his home where he Should have been all the time, never

dreaming of becoming a wooer. Sir Toby, Sir Andrew, Maria,

Malvolio and Antonio cannot be seen on the stage at the

165

last moment of the play, and their absence makes the
scene unable to initiate the marriage dance. As Orsino
prOphesies, the golden time will convent when the three
couples are formally united and laugh at the past strange
events. But it is not now: memory of injury and humil-
iation must be first wiped out.

Twelfth Night is a kind of comedy which Miss

 

Welsford refers to when she says that comedy is the

16

expression of the spirit of the Fool. Both The

Merchant g£ Venice and hleou Like Eh find the most

 

 

powerful Spokesman of their essential spirit in Portia
and Rosalind. Touchstone occupies a vital place in the
latter play, but compared with that of Rosalind, it is
almost of secondary importance. But Feste has no Rosalind
to beat him down. As a consequence, his wise remarks
are looked on as something authoritative and superior to
others', and his effort to dissolve the issue in irony
and jokes meets no rival effort to overcome it by estab-
lishing a final, coherent view of the whole. Feste puts
question after solemnity and heroism, and the play im-
plicitly adopts his attitude as its own by not judging it.
All through the play, Feste remains as a cool
observer who stands out of the action, save when he visits
Malvolio as a curate Sir TOpas. He is free to move between
Olivia's house and Orsino's court, and unlike Touchstone,

he earns his living by his Sheer talent for singing, and

166

shows casual aloofness to Maria's warning that he will be
forced out of Olivia's house if he does not behave himself
properly: "Many a good hanging prevents a bad marriage,
and for turning away, let summer bear it out" (I.v. 20-22).
We get the impression that Feste is not deeply rooted in
this society, and we do not feel difficulty in imagining
him packing his bauble and coxcomb to go forth to find a
better place than Illyria. Indeed, "Foolery, sir, does
walk about the orb like the sun. It shines everywhere"
(III.i. 43-44). Even Maria, who is expected to be "in"
as to the whereabouts of the members of the household,
cannot tell where Feste has been for a considerable period
of time (I.v. 1-4). This sense of his freedom from the
environments which surround him is deliberately stressed,
as pointed out by Professor G. K. Hunter, by the fact
that Feste has no personal history of his own to tell us.

Feste (unlike Touchstone) has no history, and

this affects his function in the play. I have

already quoted Touchstone's use of his own

experience, past and present, of Jane Smile in

the past and Audrey in the present to make

points about love and pastoralism. Feste

has no personal life to use as a 'stalking

horse'; there is no self-parody in his state-

ments; his gaze is fixed relentlessly on the

temperaments and actions of others, with a

clear eye for their foibles and weaknesses,

for the self-indulgent melancholia of Orsino.l7
Feste is quick in detecting what is wrong both with

Olivia and Orsino, and his wit makes them look ridiculous

for their obsessions which, quartered, are but one part

167

noble, and ever three parts absurd. As to Olivia, Feste
reminds her that "virtue that transgresses"--i.e., her
determination to mourn for her dead brother for the rest
of her life--"is but patched with Sin" (I.v. 47-58). And
as to Orsino, Feste warns him rather distantly that his
trip of fancy is nothing but "a good voyage of nothing"
(II.iv. 75-80). His far-reaching eyes do not miss any
Slight trait of affectation and vanity, and his witticism
is always effective in depriving the proud and the arrogant
of their self-valued importance. Feste is also quite
strict with himself. Feste is the most unshamefaced
money-beggar among Shakespeare's clowns, and he has no
illusion about it. He deliberately alludes to Pandarus'
service in bringing Cressida to Troilus in order to beg
another coin from Viola, and when she praises his skill in
begging, Feste flatly rejects it: "The matter, I hope,
is not great, Sir, begging but a beggar. Cressida was
a beggar" (III.i. 61-62). Begging is not an honourable
business, and Feste wants to keep the point straight.

After everyone has retired from the stage, Feste
is left alone, to provide whatever he can devise for the
epilOgue of this most strange and eventful comedy. He
begins to sing:

When that I was and a little tiny boy,
With hey, ho, the wind and the rain,

A foolish thing was but a toy,
For the rain it raineth every day.

168

But when I came to man's estate,
With hey, ho, the wind and the rain,
'Gainst knaves and thieves men shut their gate,
For the rain it raineth every day.
But when I came, alas! to wive,
With hey, ho, the wind and the rain,
By swaggering could I never thrive,
For the rain it raineth every day.
But when I came unto my beds,
With hey, ho, the wind and the rain,
With tosspots still had drunken heads,
For the rain it raineth every day.
A great while ago the world begun,
With hey, ho, the wind and the rain,
But that's all one, our play is done,
And we'll strive to please you every day.
The song is apparently a nonsense song, depicting a
drunkard's progress through time. But being placed in
this particular place and moment, it serves for a special
purpose--a farewell to the time of merry-making, a knell
for the Misrule society. Significantly, time which the
song presents is a declining movement, or a series of un-
interesting moments which finally lead to the sober fact,
"for the rain it raineth every day." The image of the
rain incessantly falling upon the ground, making it too
wet to lie down and sleep upon, effectively conveys the
repetitious, monotonous nature of life. The time has
been when the meaning of time was no other but rhythm in
catches. But the scale is soon going to be put upside-

down, and the festive ideals have to give place to harsher

facts about life. In this approaching new society, it

169

will be Malvolio, not Sir Toby, that will control the
pattern and principle of life. Looking at the song's
content through Feste's eyes, we notice particularly
touching pathos, because Feste himself is counted among
the drunkards and merry-makers that are kicked out of
the door into the wet street: the fool no longer leads
the revel. The song resembles Jaques' speech on the
seven ages of man in the sense that both depict man's
progress through time. But here, where there Should be
an oblivion and a destined end, we find a blankness, the
expected conclusion being cunningly switched to "But
that's all one, our play is done." It is as if to say,
as Professor G. K. Hunter observes: "don't look for
causal connections; a play is a play and not a treatise."
Professor Hunter continues:

In its illogicality and its bitter-sweet sense

of the need to submit to illogicality, the

song is a fitting conclusion to a play in which

happiness itself is seen as illogical and chancy.

. . . The comedy ends with happiness for some,

but the happiness has no inevitability, and the

final song sounds perilously like a tune whistled

through the surrounding darkness.18
But the effect of the song is neither sinister nor bitter,
and this impression owes a great deal to the fact that the
passage is sung instead of spoken. As Professor Clifford
Leech notes, "There has, after all, been song at Illyria's

departure from us."19

170

Twelfth highh's joy is the most vulnerable kind
that comedy can ever afford to give. The abyss of mis-
fortune and suffering is successfully avoided, but we
do not forget the grim visage of reality as it was
glimpsed through a chasm of the play's bright texture.
"Confident" is the last word we apply to the play's
vision of human happiness. It is because of a different
quality that the play succeeds in drawing our warmest
and most hearty response. The dramatist creates before
our eyes the most harmonious relationship of man with
his fellow creatures, his environments, and time. At
the same time, he inserts beside this vision the constant
suggestion that things needed elaboration and contrivance
in order to rest in the form which they are taking now.
We feel that we are invited to gaze and wonder at this
most subtle architecture, and afraid that it will collapse
to grey ashes if we touch it with our hands. The play
is extremely fragile because it has abandoned from the
start all the efforts to forestall and satisfy our sus-
picion. As a result, we feel free either to embrace or to
criticize, laugh with the people on the stage or laugh at
them for their utter ignorance. Our choice is instinc-
tively made, not for any Specific reasons, but only
because informed that by doing so we can keep ourselves
sane and challenge any tendency or force which tries to

belittle our statures and destroy our beliefs in human

171

dignity. At the present moment, I cannot think of a
better way of closing this ragged discussion of Twelfth
EEEEE than quoting from the book of Miss Welsford, also
to express my respect for this judicious scholar and
critic whose insight into the nature of comedy has been
an indispensable guiding hand throughout my attempt at
writing something about Shakespeare's comedy. The way
in which artifice is turned to the means of confirming

men's aSpiration toward the ideal in Twelfth Night could

 

be experienced by a court lady "watching the masque with
a prim yet wistful pleasure." Miss Welsford quotes

Fuller's description of her sensation:

'Though pleasantly affected, she is not
transported with Court-delights: as IE EHEir
statelIe Masques and Pageants. . . . He is no
friend to the tree, that Strips it of the bark;
neither do they mean well to majestie, which
would deprive it of outward shews, and State-
solemnities . . . however, our Lady by degrees
is brought from delighting in such Masques, onely
to be contented to see them, and at last (per-
chance) could desire to be excused from that also.

Egg in her reduced thoughts she makes all the
Sport shE_hath seen earnest hg_hg£ self. . . .
When she remembreth how suddenly the Scene in the
Masque was altered (almost before moment it self
could take notice of it) she considereth, how
quickly mutable all things are in the world. . . .
The lively representing of things so curiously,
that Nature her self might grow jealous of Art,
in outdoing her, minds our Lady to make sure
work with her own soul. . . . But all is quickly
ended: this is the spight of the world, if ever
she affordeth fine ware, She always pincheth it
in the measure, and it lasts not long: But oh,
thinks our Lady, how glorious a place is Heaven,
where there are joyes for evermore.’20

 

 

 

 

 

 

NOTES

NOTES

CHAPTER I

1Miss Latham's book, The Elizabethan Fairies: The
Fairies of Folklore and the Fairies of ShakESpeare (New___
York: COIumbia University Press,fil930) is still the best
study on the subject. She argues that the irresponsible
fairies of h Midsummer Night's Dream were a departure
from their pOpular image, which often associated them
with witches and devils, and assumed that they were of
human size.

 

 

 

 

2John Russell Brown, Shakespeare and His Comedies
(London: Methuen & Co., 1962), p. 12.

 

3H. B. Charlton, ShakeSpearian Comedy (New York:
Macmillan & Co., 1938), p. 104.

 

4In his book, William Shakespeare: h_Stud 9:
Facts and Problems (Oxford: The Clarendon Press, 930),
I, 358359} Professor E. K. Chambers cites the catalogues
of such weddings. For instance, marriage of William
Earl of Derby and Elizabeth Vere at Greenwich on 26
January 1595, or Thomas Berkely and Elizabeth Carey at
Blackfriars on 19 February 1596. He also points to the
reminiscence of the entertainment provided for Queen
Elizabeth's sake at Kenilworth in 1575, and by the Earl
of Hertford at Elvetham in 1591, in Oberon's description
of."a fair vestal thronéd by the west" (II.i. 158),
whom Cupid's arrows could not hurt. Professor John Dover
Wilson has much more to say about these matters in his

Shakespeare's Ha Comedies (London: Faber & Faber,
I PP- 1" -

5Enid Welsford, The Court Masgge: h_Study $3
the Relationship between Poetry and the Revels
(Cambridge: Cambfidge University Press, I927), pp. 331-32.

 

 

 

172

173

6All quotations from Shakespeare are from G. B.
Harrison, ed., Shakespeare: The Complete Works (New
York: Harcourt, Brace & World, 1968).

 

 

 

7E. K. Chambers, Shakespeare: h Survey (London:

Sidgwick & Jackson, 1935), p. 84.

 

8Northrop Frye, h Natural Perspective: The
Development of Shakespearean Comed and Romance New
York: Harcofift, Brace & World, I§§5I7‘pp. 73-74.
Chapter III, "The Triumph of Time," discusses the
general structural pattern of Shakespeare's comedy.

 

 

 

9C. L. Barber, Shakespeare's Festive Comedy.

The book has a chapter on h_Midsummer Nl Ht's Dream,
but the description of the May Game wi a so He found
in Chapter II, "Holiday Custom and Entertainment,"

pp. 18-24.

 

 

10E. K. Chambers, Shakespeare: h Survey, p. 80.

 

llProfessor E. K. Chambers states as follows,

discussing the possible date of Romeo and Juliet: "I
should put it in 1595, preferably Befo§E_Midsummer-
Night's Dream, as its theme seems to be parodIed in that
of Pyramus and Thisbe, and its wall (ii.I, 2) in

Snout's wall" (William Shakespeare, I, 345).

 

 

12Franklin M. Dickey, Not Wisely But Too Well:
§hakespeare's Love Tra edies (San Mariho, CaIifornia:
The Huntington LiErary, ), pp. 63-88.

 

l3Geoffrey Bullough, ed., Narrative and Dramatic

Sources gh Shakespeare (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul,
I ' ZgJ-gs s

 

 

14E. K. Chambers, The Elizabethan Stage (Oxford:

The Clarendon Press, 1923), II, 283.

 

 

15Frank Kermode, "The Mature Comedies," J. R.
Brown and Bernard Harris, ed., Early Shakespeagg, Shake-
Speare Institute Studies (New York: Schocken Books,
1966). p. 215.

 

 

174

16C. L. Barber, Shakespeare's Festive Comedy,

 

p. 157.

17David P. Young, Something of Great Constancy:
The Art 9_f_ "é. Midsummer Ni ht’s Dream" (New Haven: Yale
University Press,7I966), p. .

 

 

 

18Geoffrey Bullough, Narrative and Dramatic
Sources 2: Shakespeare, I, 376.

 

 

19Joseph Quincy Adams, ed., Chief Pre-Shakespearean
Dramas (Cambridge, Massachusetts: Houghton Mifflin
Company, 1924), p. 584.

 

20

David Young, Something 3: Great Constancy,
pp. 47-48.

 

 

211bid., p. 105.

221bid., p. 36.

23C. L. Barber, Shakeppeare's Festive Comedy,

 

p. 151.

24E. K. Chambers, Shakespeare: h_Survey, p. 81.

 

25Arthur Quiller-Couch and John Dover Wilson,

eds., A Midsummer Night's Dream, The New Cambridge Edition
(Cambridge: Cambridge UniverSity Press, 1969), pp. 80-86.

26Ibid., pp. 141-42. Professor Dover Wilson

cites R. G. White's "Would Shakespeare, after thus reaching
the climax of his thought, fall a-twaddling about bushes
and bears? Note too the loss of dignity in the rhythm."

27H. B. Charlton, Shakespearian Comedy, p. 122.

 

28G. K. Hunter, John Lyly: The Humanist ii
Courtier (Cambridge, Massachusetts: HarvardIUniversity

Press, 1962), p. 328.

29Ibid., p. 328.

 

175

 

30

E. K. Chambers Shakespeare: A Survey

pp. 85-86. ' ‘ '
31

. G. K. Hunter, Shakespeare: The Late Comedies,
Writers and Their Work, No. I43 (London: Longmans, Green
& Co., 1962), p. 20.

 

 

32C. L. Barber, Shakespeare's Festive Comedy,
p. 157.
33 .
R. Warw1ck Bond, ed., John L l : The Com lete
Works (Oxford: The Clarendon Press, 150%), II, 372.
34

Ibid., III, 241.

351bid., III, 20.

36Frank Kermode, "The Mature Comedies," p. 216.

37Stephen Orgel, ed., Ben Jonson: Selected

Mas ues (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1970),
pps "50s

38

 

Enid Welsford, The Court Masgue, p. 397.

 

39Ibid., p. 399.

4°J. C. Smith and Edward De Selincourt, eds.,
Spenser: Poetical Works (London: Oxford University
Press, 1963). p.—581.

 

41G. K. Hunter, John Lyly, p. 308.

42Enid Welsford, The Court Masgue, pp. 400-401.

CHAPTER II

1Harley Granville-Barker, Prefaces pg Shakespeare
(London: Sidgwick & Jackson, 1930f: Second Series, p. 67.

 

 

2J. Middleton Murry, "Shakespeare's Method: The
Merchant of Venice" from Shakespeare (London: Jonathan
Cape, 1938T, pp. 188-211, rpt. in Kenneth Muir, ed.,
Shakespeare: The Comedies, Twentieth Century Views
TEnglewoodICliffg, N.J.: Prentice-Hall, 1965), p. 33.

 

 

 

176

3H. B. Charlton, Shakespearian Comedy, p. 125.

 

4E. K. Chambers, Shakespeare: h_Survey, p. 111.

 

5Madeleine Doran, Endeavors g£_Art: h_Stud 2:
Form i2 Elizabethan Drama TMadison: The UniverSlty of
Wisconsin Press, 1954), . 189.

 

 

6Ibid., p. 207. Translated from Guarini's
Cogpendio, first published separately in 1601, then as .
an appendix to 1; Pastor Fido in 1602.

 

7C. S. Lewis, "Hamlet: The Prince or The Poem?"
Walter Hooper, ed., Selected Literar Essa 3 (Cambridge:
Cambridge University* Press, 1969), p. 96.

81n her book, Shakespeare and Elizabethan Poetry:
A Stud of his Earlier Work in Relation to the: Poetr
3f t e Time (London: Chatto— & Windus, 1965T__p. I71,
Miss M. C. Bradbrook points out a verbal parallelism
between such passages:

 

 

 

 

I learn'd in Florence how to kisse my hand,

Heave up my shoulders when they call me dogge,

And ducke as low as any bare-foot Fryar,

HOping to see them starue upon a stall,

Or else be gather'd in our Synagogue;

That when the offring-Bason comes to me,

Euen for charity I may spit intoo't.
[gg!_g£_Malta, II. 784-890]

 

Shall I bend low and in a bond-mans key

With bated breath and whiSpring humblenesse,

Say this: Faire, sir, you Spet on me on Wednesday
last;

You cald me dog: and for these curtesies

Ile lend you thus much moneys. .
[I.iii. 124-30]

9C. F. Tucker Brooke and Nathaniel Burton Paradise,
eds.,En lish Drama: 1580-1642 (New York: D. C. Heath &
Co., I993), p. 196.

 

10Quoted in C. L. Barber's Shakespeare's Festive

Comedy, p. 164.

 

177

llArthur Quiller-Couch and John Dover Wilson, eds.,
The Merchant gh Venice, The New Cambridge Edition
(Cambridge: CamEridge University Press, 1969), Intro-
duction xxv.

 

 

12Ibid., pp. 122-23.

13E. K. Chambers, Shakespeare: h_Survey, p. 117.

 

l4Mark Van Doren, Shakespeare (New York: Doubleday
& Co., 1953), p. 80.

 

15Derek Traversi, Shakes eare: The Early Comedies,
Writers and Their WOrk, No. I29 iLondon: Longmans,
Green & Co., 1969), p. 36.

16J. Middleton Murry, "Shakespeare's Method: The
Merchant g: Venice," p. 45.

 

l7Nevill Coghill, "The Basis of Shakespearian
Comedy: A Study in Medieval Affinities," Essays and
Studies, 3 (1950), p. 16.

 

18M. c. Bradbrook, Shakespeare and Elizabethan
Poetry, p. 178.

19E. M. W. Tillyard, Shakespeare's Early Comedies
(London: Chatto & Windus, 1965), p. 184.

 

 

20M. C. Bradbrook, Shakespeare and Elizabethan
Poetry, p. 178.

21The New Cambridge Edition, pp. 149-50.
Professor Dover Wilson also remarks: "Furthermore, the
sound of the tolling bell and the reference to Fancy
dying 'in the cradle where it lies' both hint at the
lead which ribbed the 'cerecloth' in the obscure graves
of those times. After all this the dramatic purpose of
the song is not likely to be questioned."

 

22C. L. Barber, Shakespeare's Festive Comedy,

 

p. 174.

23

 

Derek Traversi, The Early Comedies, p. 38.

178

24E. K. Chambers, Shakespeare: h_Survey, p. 107.

 

25Derek Traversi, The Early Comedies, p. 43.

 

26J. R. Brown, Shakespeare and His Comedies,

 

27Ibids’ pps 69-70s

28The phrase is quoted in Professor Kermode's
"The Mature Comedies," p. 222, but it is originally
R. B. Heilman's in his discussion of the errors of
Lear: "The Unity of King Lear" Critigpes & Essa s in
Criticism 1920-1948, ed. R. W. StaIlman (1949), -_'
pp. 154-61.

 

 

29Sigurd Burckhardt, "The Merchant of Venice:
The Gentle Bond," Journal of Eninsh Literafnyistory,
29 (1962), pp. 239-62, rp T_in John Wilders, edi,
Shakespeare: The Merchant of Venice, Casebook Series

(London: MacmilIan & Co., I969), p. 210.

30Frank Kermode, "The Mature Comedies," p. 224.

 

 

 

 

32J. W. Lever, “Shylock, Portia and the Values of
Shakespearian Comedy," Shakespeare Quarterly, 3 (1952),
p. 386.

 

33C. L. Barber, Shakespeare's Festive Comedy,

 

p. 182.

34Suzanne Langer, "The Comic Rhythm" from

Feelin and Form (New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1953),
pp. 326-507'rpt. in Robert Corrigan, ed., Comed : Meanin
and Form (San Francisco: Chandler Publishing Co., I965),
567 126-21.

35J. R. Brown, Shakespeare and His Comedies,

 

36Ibid., p. 74.

179

37C. L. Barber, ShakeSpeare's Festive Comedy,

 

p. 188.

38C. S. Lewis, The Discarded Imagg: hh Intro-
duction E2 Medieval and Renaissance Literature (CamBridge:
Cambridge University Press, 1971), pp. 1183I9.

 

 

39Ibid., p. 112.

CHAPTER III

lHarold Jenkins, "As You Like It," Shakespeare
Survey, 8 (1955), pp. 40-51, rpt. in Jay L. Halio, ed.,
As You Like It, Twentieth Century Interpretations
TEnglewoodCIiffs, N.J.: Prentice-Hall, 1968). P. 33.

 

 

2The passage is from The Downfall of Robert,
Earl g: Huntihgton (Quarto 1601, licensed 1598. By
Munday and Chettle. Acted 1598, altered for court,
Nov. 18, 1598). Quoted by A. H. Thorndike, "The Relation
of hs X 2 Like It to Robin Hood Plays," Journal 2: English
and Germanic PhiIOlogy, 4 (1902), p. 63.

 

 

 

3In her book, Shakespeare's Imagery and What It
Tells Us (Cambridge: Cambfidge University Press, I968YT
p. 2787—Miss Caroline Spurgeon remarks: "It has been
pointed out, that although there is, in the play, a
peculiarly vivid feeling of outdoor country life, there is
very little nature description, indeed only two short
passages, one of the sheepcote 'fenced about with olive
trees,‘ and one of the oak 'whose boughs were mossed with
age.'" Miss Spurgeon also leads our attention to the
frequent use of Similes and metaphors related to nature,
and "an unusual number of animal Similes, the highest in
any of the comedies" (p. 279).

 

4 .
Frank Kermode, ed., English Pastoral Poetry:

From the Beginnihg £2 Marvell London: George G. Harrap &

C677'I932), p. 14.

 

 

51bids’ pps 17-18s

6Helen Gardner, "h§_You Like 15," p. 69.

 

180

7C. L. Barber, Shakespeare's Festive Comedy,

 

p. 227.

8Helen Gardner, "hs You Like £5!" p. 63.

9A New Variorum Edition cites the following
remark of Macdonald (The Imagination, 1883): "But what
do we know about the Character of’Shakespeare? How can
we feel the inner life of a man who has uttered himself
in dramas, in which of course it is impossible that he
should ever speak in his own person? No doubt he may
Speak his own sentiments through the mouths of many of
his persons; but how are we to know in what cases he does
so? At least we may assert, as a self-evident negative,
that a passage treating of a wide question put into the
mouth of a person despised and rebuked by the best
characters in the play is not likely to contain any
cautiously formed and cherished opinion of the dramatist.
At first sight this may seem almost a truism; but we have
only to remind our readers that one of the passages
oftenest quoted with admiration is 'The Seven Ages of
Man', a passage full of inhuman contempt for humanity
and unbelief in its destiny, in which not one of the
seven ages is allowed to pass over its poor sad stage
without a sneer; . . ." (pp. 416-17).

 

loFrederick Turner, Shakespeare and the Nature
2: Time: Moral and PhilosophICal Themes in Some PIsys
shg_Poems of WilIIEm Shakespeare (Oxford:-—The Clarendon
Press, I97IT) pp. 33—36.

 

 

 

 

11R. A. Foakes, "The Owl and the Cuckoo: Voices
of Maturity in ShakeSpeare's Comedies," Malcolm Bradbury
and David Palmer, eds., Shakespearian Comedy, Stratford-
Upon-Avon Studies, 14 (Londbn: Edward Arndld, 1972),
p. 125. '

 

12Helen Gardner, "hs_You Like 23]" p. 67.

13Ibid., p. 70.

14Robert M. Bender, ed., Five Courtier Eoets g:
the En lish Renaissance (New York: WaShington Square
Press, )' pps 544-45s

 

 

15C. S. Lewis, The Allegogy s£_Love: 5 Study i2
Medieval irradition (OxfOrd: Oxford University Press,

 

 

 

181

16Robert M. Bender, ed., Five Courtier Poets g:
the English Renaissance, p. 626.

 

 

17C. L. Barber, Shakespeare's Festive Comedy,

 

p. 10.

18Robert M. Bender, ed., Five Courtier Poets g:
the English Renaissance, pp. 613-14.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

19Ibid., p. 614.

20Helen Gardner, "hs You Like l3!" p. 60.

21J. R. Brown, Shakespeare and His Comedies,
p. 152.

22C. L. Barber, Shakespeare's Festive Comedy,
p. 232.

23Harold Jenkins, "hs You Like 13," p. 38.

24G. K. Hunter, Shakespeare: The Late Comedies,
p. 41.

25The New Penguin Shakespeare Edition, ed. H. J.
Oliver (Harmondsworth: Penguin Books, 1968), p. 168,
cites Matthew 7. 17-18: ". . . a corrupt tree bringeth
forth evil fruit. . . ."

26G. K. Hunter, Shakespeare: The Late Comedies,

 

 

27
p. 223.

C. L. Barber, Shakespeare's Festive Comedy,

 

28Ibid., pp. 236-37.

29Professor G. K. Hunter's interpretation of wit
in John Lyly's works as a capacity which reconciles
the Humanistic learning and the courtly sophistication
throws light on how hs You Like Eh gives a solution to
the dilemma of its heroIHE. Consult John L 1 : ghs
Humanist ss_Courtier, Chapter I, "Humanism an Courtship,"
pp. I-35.

 

 

182

30H. B. Charlton, Shakespearian Comedy, p. 296.

 

CHAPTER IV

lHarold Jenkins, "Shakespeare's Twelfth Night,"
Rice Institute Pamphlet, 45 (1959), pp. 19-42, rpt. in
Kéfineth Muir, ed., ShakeSpeare: The Comedies, Twentieth
Century Views (Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice-Hall,
1965), pp. 73-75.

 

 

 

 

2Arthur Quiller-Couch and John Dover Wilson,
eds., Twelfth Ni ht, The New Cambridge Edition
(Cambridge: CamEridge University Press, 1971),
Introduction xvii.

3Ibid., Introduction xi. Professor Quiller-Couch
also states: "--this Twelfth Night, analysed in the
study, becomes a texture or tissue of shadows, of after-
thoughts, the ghostlier the more poetical. Arden, with
its greenwood sunshine, has faded into Illyria, perilously
near fading into Elysium. The mirth abides; but it
reaches us from a distance, its dgsmatis personae move
in the beams of a lunar rainbow. They move to music, but
to music with 'a dying fall' as a fountain in a garden
at night, and it has changed from the robust note of
'Love is crownéd with the prime' to 'Youth's a stuff will
not endure'--a very slight change, but subtle, delicate,
if we listen" (Introduction xxvii).

 

4L. G. Salingar, ”The Design of Twelfth Night,"
Shakespeare Quarterly, 9 (1958), p. 124.

 

 

5E. K. Chambers, Shakespeare: h_Survey, p. 175.

 

, 6L. G. Salingar, "The Design of Twelfth Night,"
pp. 121-22. "Good fortune," "long patiencé,fiiand
"good advice" to which Professor Salingar refers, will
be found in the following passages from Gl'Ingannati:
"Two lessons above all you will take away withiyou: how
great is the power of chance and good fortune in affairs
of love; and how great too in them is the value of long-
enduring patience accompanied by good counsel" (Geoffrey
Bullough, Narrative shg Dramatic Sources 2: Shakespeare,
II, 288). Also:I_'I truly believe it is God's will, who
has had pity on this virtuous maid, and onnursoul that it
may not go down into perdition" (Bullough, II, 337).

 

 

 

 

 

183

7Clifford Leech, Twelfth Night and Shakespearian
Comed (Toronto: University of Toronto Press,’l968),

pps -43s

 

8Horace Howard Furness, ed., Twelfth Ni ht, A New
Variorum Edition (New York: Dover Puincatlons, 64),
p. 377.

9From Ben Jonson's masque, Time Vindicated,
quoted by Leslie Hotson, The First Ni ht g£_Twelfth

 

 

 

 

Night (New York: Macmillan & Co., , p. I58.

10Enid Welsford, The Fool: His Social and
Literary History (London: FaEer & FaBer, I968), p. 212.

11Ibid., p. 251.

12Ibid., pp. 202-13.

l3Leslie Hotson, The First Night s£_Twelfth Night,
p. 163.

14L. G. Salingar, "The Design of Twelfth Night,"
p. 131.

15Clifford Leech, Twelfth Night and Shakespearian
Comedy, p. 44.

16Enid Welsford, Ehs Fool, p. 320. Miss Welsford
remarks: "The serious hero focuses events, forces issues,
and causes catastrophes; but the Fool by his mere presence
dissolves events, evades issues, and throws doubt on the
finality of fact. The Stage-clown therefore is as
naturally detached from the play as the Court-fool is
detached from social life, . . . " (p. 320).

 

 

17G. K. Hunter, Shakespeare: The Late Comedies,

 

 

p. 44.

181bid., p. 55.

19Clifford Leech, Twelfth Night and Shakespearian
Comedy, p. 55.

20

 

Enid Welsford, The Court Masque, p. 406.

 

 

 

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ummmmmt mumuumm fl )1! Mai)?! ITS

 

425