'5‘ W'ILSOIN {(NEGHT
AND
THE LAST PLAYS OF SHAKESPEARE

Thesis For the Degree a! 'Ph. D.
MICHIGAN STATE UNIVERSETY

John Emory Van Domelen
1964'

THESIS

This is to certify that the
thesis entitled
G. WILSON KI‘IIGHT [SID TIE
LAST PLAYS OF SIMKESPEAP'?

presented by

John Emory Van Domelen

has been accepted towards fulfillment
of the requirements for

Mdegree in Enclish

 

    

Major profes 1'

Date Iii-13’ 15L 1-964

0-169

LIBRARY

Michigan State
University

 

ABSTRACT

G. WILSON KNIGHT
AND
THE LAST PLAXS OF SHAKESPEARE

by John Emory Van Domelen

This dissertation is an attempt to define and
appraise G. Wilson Knight's contribution to contemporary
Shakespearian criticism, and it includes an intensive
study of Knight's "spatial" approach to Shakespeare's
last five plays-«Pericles, Cymbeline, 222.Winter{§_2§lg,

 

 

 

$22 Tempest, and EEEEZ.XIEEP This study reveals that
Knight finds in.Shakespeare's last plays certain mythic
patterns and that he interprets these patterns and the
dominant imagery in.metaphysical terms. An examination
is made of Knight's literary interpretation, beginning
with his first published article, a note onszrdsworth's
'Immortality' Ode in.222 Adelphi (September, 1926), and

ending with Knightfs estimate of Scrutiny in Essays 53.

 

Criticism (January, 1964).

 

Knight's article, 'The Poet and Immortality,"
outlining his thesis concerning Shakespeare's last plays,
appeared in the September and October, 1928 issues of
Z§g_Shakespeare Review. _This was published the following
year in.§y£h;§nd Miracle, which was in.turn later incor-
porated in.ghg,Crown.2£_£i£2_(19%?)9 Knight has written

 

18 books of literary interpretation, among which is a set

of books concerned with Shakespeare. This set includes

John.Emory Van.Domelen
The Shakespearian Tempest, The Sovereign.Flower, and 222
Mutual glans. However, all of Knight's work is at least
in part concerned with his Shakespearian theories.

A comparison.of Knight's interpretative work with
other recent Shakespearian scholarship which has appeared
since the publication.of A. C. Bradley's Shakespearian
Tragedy in.l90# reveals that what distinguishes Knight
from other recent ShakeSpearian.scholars is not a tendency
to 'Christianize' Shakespeare, for there are many scholars
recent and past who have attempted this; moreover, Knight's
theory of a Power-Love, Christ-Eros synthesis in.Shake-
spears would make him a somewhat eccentric ally, unlikely
to be acceptable to the more orthodoxly inclined Christian
humanists. It is rather his interpreting ShakeSpeare as
a romantic: Knight sees the synthesizing Coleridgean
imagination.as sovereign in.ShakeSpeare. A close reading
of Knight's ShakeSpearian works with special attention
paid to his The Starlit 2222, a volume on.Wordsworth,
Coleridge, Shelley, and Keats, reveals that Knight's
quest is for the eternal: the immortality of Wordsworth's
ode and the immortality Knight finds in.the birth and
rebirth patterns in the last plays of Shakespeare are
both fitted by Knight into his private metaphysical scheme.

Copyright by
JOHN EMORX VAN DODEIEN
1965

G. WILSON KNIGHT
AND
THE LAST PLAYS OF SHAKESPEARE

BY

John Emory Van Domelen

A THESIS

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

DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY

Department of English

1964

ACKNOWLEDGMENT

I wish to thank Mr. G. Wilson Knight for his will-
ess to answer numerous questions and for his genero-
sity in furnishing me with much of his work-«some of it
unpublisheda-u-that I otherwise would not have had the
Opportunity to read.

ii

TABLE OF CONTENTS

CHAPTER

I.

II.

THE POSITION OF G. WILSON KNIGHT IN
CONTEMPORARY SHAKESPEARIAN SCHOLARSHIP.......

IntmduOtioncocooocooocoocc000.000.000.000...

Enumeration.of Knight's books and
discussion.of their relevance to

this BtUdYOoooocooe0000000900000...00000000

Knight's departure from the Bradley”
school of character-analysis...............

Knight's emphasis upon theme, pattern,
and symbolic imagery, discussed in
relation.to the work of other contemp-_
orary scholars who have emphasized
these elements.............................

Knight's rejection.of traditional
scholarship...............................o

Knight's estimate of the Last Plays:.
A departure from both the views of
E. Dowden and Lytton.Strachey..............

Knight's disagreement with the histor-
ical critics and the I'disintegrators"......

Knight's abstracting of themes, and
images in order to find a coherent
pattern.in.Shakespeare's plays.............

Summary......................................

AN ANALYSIS OF KNIGHT'S METHOD OF
INTERPRETATION AND THEORY OF POETIC DRAMA....

Knight's Principles of Interpretation........

Knight's theories of art and the creative

artistOOOOOOOOOOODOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOC00......

Knight's “Spatial" method of
Interpretation.............................

The similarity between Knight's theory, '
Of art and that Of COlin,Stilleoeocccocoooc

Knight's Theory Of Poetic Drama..............

Summary......................................

iii“

PAGE

15

25

29

36

41

1&5
1+8

50
50

62

72

89
92
97

D I
A u
I Q
l a
Q Q
Q ‘
I I

O C

I...

I.“

D

'0‘.

CHAPTER

III. KNIGHT'S APPLICATION OF HIS

IV.

V.

WODNSHAKEPEAE...‘.‘QQOOOOQQOQOQOO...
Introduction.....‘...........................

Knight's arguments for the coherence
of Shakespeare's work in its

entiretyOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO00.0....0.0.0.0....

Knight's romantic conception of
Shakespeare...............................

The fallacy of regarding Knight as .
an.orthodox Christian merely because
he employs religious terminology..........
Knight's stressing of the imagination.......

Summary.....................................

AN ANALYSIS AND CRITICISM OF
KNIGHT'S INTERPRETATION OF THE
LAST PLAYS...OOOOOOOOCOOOOOOOOOOOOOO0..0....

Review of recent criticism of
the Last Plays............................

The Significance of the Last Plays
in.Knight's 'Shakespearian Progress"......

The Individual PlayS........................

Pericles..................................

The Winter's T313000...00000000000000.0000

 

Cymbeline.................................
The Tempest...............................

Henry VIIIocooooooocooooo000000000000coco.

 

Summary.....................................

EVALUATION OF KNIGHT'S CONTRIBUTION
TO SHAKESPEARIAN SCHOLARSHIP................

Knight's influence on.other critics.........
The originality of Knight's

contribution.to ShakeSpearian
1nterpretat10n............................

iv

PAGE

99
99

101

116

126
138
144

146

146

148
153
154
166
175
184

193
203

208
208

208

O‘.’Qlll\fi‘dl1.bfl'.'.’l

VOI-o‘konulllllvdocnitdu

acacdoouescc.

'0'07‘

CHAPTER

Other critics' debt to Knight
in.their estimates and interpretations
of Shakespeare's plays, especially the
Final PIBYScooooooe‘oocco‘oee‘ccco‘oooocoococo

Decay of Knight's_critical powers...........
Summary of Knight's contribution and
its relation.to other contemporary
Shakespearian SOhOlarsooooc00000000000000.

COHClUSlOnooooo000.000.000.000.0900000000000

PAGE

211
214

217
220

CHAPTER ONE

The purpose of this chapter is to relate G. Wilson
Knight's interpretation.of Shakespeare to the Shakespear-
ian scholarship which has appeared since the publication
of A. C. Bradley's ShakesPearian.Tragedy in.l904. First,
I shall enumerate the books of G. Wilson.Knight as they
appeared chronologically and indicate which ones are
relevant to a study of Knight's interpretation of Shakespeare;
afterwards, I shall attempt to indicate: 1) where Knight
departed from the dominant critical theory of his time and,
ii) where Knight was in substantial agreement with various
contemporary critics who, like Knight, challenged the pre-
vailing critical orthodoxies by introducing new methods of
criticism or of interpretation. Later chapters will show
that much of Knight's work which was taken at the time of
its appearance as a radical new departure is in reality
only a logical extension of what had already been going on
in.Shakespearian scholarship, some of it since the time
of Coleridge.

G. Wilson Knight's first published article, which
appeared in.Th§ Adelphi, September 1926, was a note on
Wordsworth's “Immortality Ode." In the Shakespeare

 

Review, September and October 1928, appeared Knight's

article, "The Poet and Immortality," which outlined his
thesis concerning Shakespeare's last plays. This essay
was published the following year in Knight's first book,

 

2
£122.322 Miracle. Knight's constant concern with immor-
tality, the centrality of the last plays of Shakespeare in
his scheme of interpretation, and the romanticism of his
interpretation.of Shakespeare are thus significantly re-
vealed in the very first of Knight's writings. All three
of these points will be treated later, when it will be
demonstrated that even the most extravagant or eccentric
of Knight's later books is merely a further carrying out
of what was implicit in.his work from the start.

The Wheel of Fire, the book which has done the most

 

to establish Knight's reputation.as one of the major modern
Shakespearian critics and which has exerted the most influ-
ence upon such scholars as D. A. Traversil, J. F. Danbyz,
R. Walker3, S. Bethellu, and L. C. Knightss, appeared in

1930. Since its first appearance, The Wheel gprire has

 

 

 

1
See his Scrutiny essays; for example, "Troilus and
Cressida,‘I Vbl. VII (I938-9), 301-19. In.a footnote on
p. 301 he acknowledges Knight's influence.

2J.F. Danby, Shakespeare's Doctrine of Nature
(London, 1949) and Poets on?FortunETE'HIIIKIBnEon, I952).
There is no mention.of anght in.eitheFT-Ehough both in
his book on.Lear and in the essays on the final plays
Knight's ianfiEfice is patent.

3Roy Walker, The Time is Free: A Study of Macbeth
(London, 1949). w ' ""'" "' '— " '—"'" _ ""

nS.L. Bethell, The Winter's Tale: A Study (London,
n.d.). There is no menEIon of KnIgHE. ‘-

5For example in.his Scrutiny essay, "Prince Hamlet,n
Vol. IX(1940-l), ins-6o, whe“"‘"""'re on p. 150 he acknowledges
the achievement of Knight in his two Hamlet essays in
The Wheel of Fire.

 

 

3
gone through five editions. The Scrutiny critics, whose

reaction to Knight's later writing is, for the most part,
unfavorable6, acknowledge the profound influence and the

brilliance of many of the essays contained in The Wheel

 

_o_i: Fire.

 

Th§_1mperial Theme, published in 1931, is concerned
with further interpretations of ShakeSpeare's tragedies,
including the Roman plays. The Imperial Themg_appeared
the year after Caroline Spurgeon's first pamphlet, Leading
Motives 32:223 Imagery of Shakespeare. Her Shakespeare's

 

Iterative Imagery came out in the same year as The Imperial

 

Theme. Stanley Hyman.in.The Kenyon Review(w1nter, 1948)
has argued that from The Imperial Theme onwards Knight
owes a debt to Caroline Spurgeon. In.reply to Hyman's
assertion, Knight maintained that ''wherever any detail of
her discovery lay within.the area of my own rapidly unfold-
ing interpretations, I tended to see it...as a debt. This
was the more natural, since our relations were most friendly."7
In 1932 Knight's growing tendency to build a meta-
physical scheme out of his Shakespearian.interpretation
became increasingly apparent with the publication of his
The Shakespearian Tempest. Knight's close analysis of the

imagery in Shakespeare had led to his concluding that the

 

6

See, as examples, F. R. Leavis's review of The
Christian Renaissance, Vol. II(1933-4), 208-11; R.GTUT
WIERIEFTE—FEEIéfi—ET—The Burni Oracle, VIII(1939-4QL
233-6; and R.G. Cox'E'VIn erpreté?’5?'bracle?' (review of
The Crown 2: Life), x1v (1946-7), 317-20.

7The Imperial Theme, 3rd ed., corrected reprint,
1961, p. in. '”' ""

 

o‘

4
two fundamental categories of the Shakespearian schema
were tempests and music (Tempests he equates with chaos
and music he identifies with harmony). Knight attempted
to establish a polarity between tempests and music and in
this way to obtain a coherence uniting the whole of Shake-
speare's work. In what I believe a Just summary of Knight,

'H. C. Bradbrook, reviewing the book for Scrutiny, concluded

 

that 'Mr. Knight provided Shakespeare with a philos0phy
which, while wholly idealist in.its tendency, is strictly
dualist in.its organization."8 It is apparent that Knight
was not long content to treat imagery without subordinating
it to some unifying principle. I shall later show that
Knight used British destiny as the unifying theme of
Shakespeare's history plays-~including S9231 Elm-and

that other polarities besides the tempest-music Opposition
are introduced by Knight into his Shakespearian interpre-
tation.

The Christian Renaissance, containing Knight's

 

interpretations of Dante, Shakespeare, and Goethe, appeared
first in 1933; a revised edition.came out in.England in
1961 and in the following year in the United States. It

is in.TEE_Christian Renaissance that Knight's affinity

 

with J. Middleton.Murry first becomes apparent. Like
Murry, Knight is unwilling to remain a mere literary critic
but instead assumes a prophetic or apocalyptic role. As

with Murry, there is no mincing matters: on the first page

 

8Scrutiny, I(March, 1933), 396.

 

5
of the text in.The Christian Renaissance Knight maintains

that: I'It has been evident that my interpretations of
Shakespeare must eventually be related to Christianity.“
It is not the purpose of this writer to examine Knight's
somewhat private brand of Christianity; it is sufficient
to emphasize that neither the author's intention.nor his
achieved result is primarily literary.

The following year, 1934, saw the publication of
the pamphlet, Shakespeare ang_Tolstoy, which is Knight's

 

reply to Tolstoy's essay, Shakespeare and the Drama,“

 

 

which had appeared in England in 1926 in.a book published
by the Oxford University Press, Tolstoy 92:533. The pam-
phlet is important in forming an estimate of Knight's
Shakespearian interpretation.because it reveals much of
what Knight rejects of the nineteenth century approach to
Shakespeare. To summarize briefly: Knight sees Tolstoy's
estimate as understandable but wrong-headed because of
Tolstoy's insistence upon the importance of psychological
naturalism in.eva1uating poetic drama, which, according to
Knight, should not be judged by the same criteria as the
novel. In other words, Tolstoy is trying to measure poetry
by the standards of prose-fiction, and at a time when
realism was an important standard of judgment. Likewise,

9

Rebert Bridges , whose somewhat moralistic arguments

 

9Robert Bridges, "The influence of the Audience on
Shakespeare's Drama," Collected Essays, Vol. X, London,
1927. '

 

6
against Shakespeare Knight also refutes in the pamphlet,
is wrong in Objecting to certain of Shakespeare's characters
as being inadequately motivated. He, too, according to
Knight, is seeking psychological realism in poetic drama,
where it need not be.
Two years later, in 1936, Knight published his

Principles g£_Shakespearian Production?”O as well as his

 

 

imaginative and autobiographical Atlantic Crossing. A
sequel to Atlantic Crossing, The Dynasty 2: Stowe, was

 

published in.l945. A third autobiographical work concerning
part of Knight's life prior to that covered in.Atlantic
Crossing has been.written but is not yet published.11

The Principles 23 Shakespearian Production, on

 

 

the other hand, is valuable for three reasons: i) it
contains much of Knight's literary theory; ii) it contains
much of Knight's view of Shakespeare's last plays; and
iii) it contains some sound sense, of use to anyone wishing
to free stage-productions of Shakespeare from the tyranny
of realism and the various technical gimmicks which Knight,
rightly I believe, condemns for diverting attention.from
the poetry.

. In.1939 The Burning Oracle was published; and though
Knight in.this book admits that Shakespeare's concern was

 

10Scheduled to reappear sometime in 1964, revised
and enlarged.

11Referred to in.The Dynasty of Stowe, where The
Dynasty of Stowe is spokéfifbf (p.77 §§"Efié_third pert-er
assessabragrssfireei trilogy of which the second has already
appeared and the first, though written, has yet to be
published.‘I Mr. Knight has informed me that it has not
yet been published.

7

primarily humanistic rather than naturalistic or super-
naturalistic and sees Shakespeare's main issues being
"fought out in.terms of a humanistic conception setting man
between.subhuman tempests of nature and a superhuman music
blending with the universe and thence the divine,"12 it is
evident that he is by this time mainly intent upon making
Shakespeare the creator of a satisfying synthesis between
the various Oppositions which Knight believes to exist in
Shakespeare's plays. Some of these Oppositions are:
remantic emotion versus critical cynicism, order against
disorder, soldierly honor Opposed by feminine devotion,
life struggling with death, and tempests symbolically
countered by music. Even more important, this book drives
home hard the growing tendency on the part Of Knight to
yoke together violently Opposed literary figures who in
fact have very little in common. With the mere excuse of
a few superficial similarities in subject-matter, Knight,
in.The Burning Oracle, compares the following writers:
Spenser, Shakespeare, Milton, Swift, POpe, and.Byron.
Moreover, in.his effort to show "the slow transmutation of
volcanic and destructive into creative energies, together
with the substitution.for the power of the sword of the power
of Christ, the sun,"13 Knight groups Tennyson, Browning,
Hardy, Arnold, Eliot, Sean.O'Casey, John.Cowper Powys,
Francis Berry, and G. Wilson Knight (in his own Atlantic

Crossing, 'my own.attempt at a modern.art-form of concentric

 

12 13

The Burning Oracle, p. 30. Ibid., p. 292.

8
circles, with discursive views on the general situation....").lLL
It is thus apparent, and I shall return to this later, that
Knight is not now concerned either with the ordinary tasks
of literary criticism or with those of literary scholar-
ship; rather, he is pressing into his service writers of
the most diverse interests and styles--who Often did not
even work in.the same literary form-~in order to bolster
his metaphysical theories.

The works which Knight wrote about British destiny
during the Second World War or shortly thereafter will be
described briefly; they all contain.varying mixtures of
patriotism and Knight's private metaphysical system. Most
of them could be called 'apocalyptic.‘ They are: Thig
Sceptred Igle(194l), Th§_Chariot g£_W£§th (1942), 223.91112
and th§_§wgrd (1944), Hiroshima (1946), and Christ and.

 

Nietzsche (1948). There is little matter here that is

 

directly to our purpose, except that the Shakespeare who
emerges from these books is a Shakespeare with an apoca-
lyptic vision of British destiny. Indeed, Knight would
have Shakespeare see England as the world's future Spiritual
hOpe, the heir and successor of Rome. The only matter in
Knight's books on.British destiny that need concern us is
his use of Repay YEEE'

The Starlit Dome, which reappeared in an enlarged

 

edition in 1959, first came out in 1941. Though the book

is concerned with Wordsworth, Coleridge, Shelley, and Keats,

 

luLoc. cit.

O C 5 ‘

9

it is important for my argument because of its concern
with immortality and Knight's own kind Of romanticism.

The book, which its author regards as a companion piece to
ThegBurning Oracle, shares both the preoccupations and the
weaknesses of the other book. In addition to the manifest
difficulty of treating four such diverse poets coherently,
there is a continual drafting of unlike literary works by
dissimilar writers to serve the preconceived purpose of

the author. The four poets dealt with in.this book are all
shown "making a blend of instinct with sanctity and of

15 When

power with the grace to make a golden.humanism....'
WOrdsworth proves himself recalcitrant, Knight observes
disapprovingly that in.Wordsworth's poetry "there is a
failure in face of erotic powers."

But with Coleridge it is an altogether different
matter. Knight, who himself sees poetry as a balance be-
tween the natural and the transcendent, Observes approvingly:
"Coleridge‘s ever-present itch for transcendence in three
main divisions: (1) natural, (ii) human, and (iii) divine.
But the groups intershade and each poem is at once natural-
istic, psychological, and religious."17

The Starlit Dome, moreover, reveals how much of

 

Coleridge's literary theory there is in G. Wilson Knight's
work. I hOpe to prove that Knight has accepted Coleridge's
view of the imagination.in;tgtg; that Knight regards the
imagination.as sovereign not only in the creation Of art

but also in its interpretation; that Knight depends upon

 

1?
151mm, p. 158. 16Ib1d., p. 82. Ibid., p. 97.

not.

10
the synthesizing imagination.to unite his myriad dualities
or Oppositions; that Knight accepts the formula

The crown : The sovereign imagination
Tfie state Art, the mind, or tfie'Interpretation of art;

 

and that if one were to carry Knight's pronouncements to
their logical conclusions, the synthesizing imagination
would ultimately be the same in Knight's metaphysical
scheme as divine grace is to orthodox Christianity.

The most important single volume for our purpose is

The Crown of Life, which contains essays interpreting Shake-

 

speare's final plays. Though this book, which appeared in
1947, was regarded by its author as the conclusion of his
work on.Shake3peare, it has, in point of fact, been succeeded
by two other books primarily concerned with ShakeSpeare,

The Mutual Flame (1955) and The Sovereign Flower (1958).

 

The Crown of Life contains as its first essay

"Myth and Miracle, " which had, as we recall, appeared in

 

1929 as Knight's first published statement of Shakespearian
interpretation. It is in the Preface to the original edition
that Knight states his long-considered Opinion that "those
two binding principles of Shakespearian unity, the tempest-
music Opposition and Elizabethan nationalism, are vital

to any full appreciation of Shakespeare's last, and per-

haps supreme, phase; so too, is the study of the romantic
poets."18 This statement is doubly significant for our
purpose: 1) it indicates the importance that the last plays

occupy in Knight's final, comprehensive, estimate of

 

18The Crown.2£ Life, vi.

 

11
Shakespeare; and ii) it hints at what is, in essence,
Knight's romantic view of Shakespeare. This dissertation
rests primarily upon two arguments: i) that the totality
of Knight’s Shakespearian interpretation can best be com-
prehended through an intensive analysis Of his interpreta-
tions of the last plays, and ii) that a proper understanding
of Knight's treatment of the final five plays is the key
to an understanding of Knight's own peculiar variety of
romanticism.

At the same time, however, the quotation.in the
preceding paragraph betrays Knight's attempt to find prin-
ciples Of coherence in what are otherwise plays dealing in
vastly different ways with widely diverse subjects. Indeed,
I hOpe to prove that Knight's search for unity or coherence
at the price of an abrogation of esthetic judgment and an
ignoring Of the differences in the tone and texture Of the
poetry is an ever-increasing threatto his stature as an
interpreter of Shakespeare. R. G. Cox, reviewing Knight's

The Crown.of Life in Scrutiny, offers an excellent criticism

 

 

of Knight's work that I believe is still valid. He asserts
that "it is the peculiarity Of Mr. Knight's analysis that
it improves in direct ratio to the strength of the text."19
The closer Knight adheres to the text, the better the
criticism; it is when Knight departs from the Shakespearian
text in his metaphysical speculations or when he deals with

writers whose work he does not know as intimately as that

Of Shakespeare that the results are unfortunate.

 

19
"Interpreter or Oracle?", Scrutiny, XIV, 320.

12
The three published works which deal with Byron lie,
for the most part, outside of the range of this study.
They are: Byron's Dramatic 23233 (1953), a short pamphlet
published by the University of Nottingham; £939: B2292:
Christian Virtues, which appeared in.the same year; and

Lord Byronis Marriage (1957), in which Knight develOps

 

his somewhat bizarre thesis that the root cause of Byron's
emotional and marital difficulties was his unacknowledged
homosexuality.

Among the many Oppositions into which Knight divides
the cosmos is that of sex; the homosexual, or the seraphic
temperament, as Knight usually calls it, is an.intermediate
sex, 3.3., a synthesis or resolving Of the conflicts that
arise between the sexes. This bisexual theory with all
its metaphysical ramifications becomes increasingly prom-
inent in his later work. As well as in.the above-mentioned
books on Byron, Knight treats homosexuality in most Of his
later works--Christ and Nietzsche, The Golden Labyrinth,

 

 

and 222 Mutual Blame. It is in the lastanamed that he is
applying this theory to Shakespeare, concentrating almost
exclusively upon the Sonnets.

Knight's book, RZESELEES.ShakeSPeare' has not yet
been,published.

The Laureate 2£_Peace (1955) is primarily of use in

 

this study because it contains a partial explanation of
Knight's "Spatial" method. As an interpretation of Alex-
ander POpe it leaves much to be desired. The wrenching of

POpe out Of his time and place is best illustrated by a

13
quotation.from the book itself: “POpe Offers what is per-
haps the most valuable Of all insights: a coherent romant-

20 Another unfortunate tendency is the forced com-

icism."
parison.between the neO-classical satirist and the Eliza-
bethan dramatist: "Notice in the assay- 93 Min (1) the
reference Of human evil to earthquakes and tempests, as
in the Shakespearian.symbolism; and (ii) the preliminary
forgiveness of all evil which we may suppose to be at the
back of Shakespeare's work."21 Tone, texture, and context
all go by the board in an effort to prove similitudes where
differences greatly predominate.

Most Of G. Wilson Knight's fiction-~Klinton.Tgp,
TE Shadow 9_f_ 933, and The 9r_e_en Mazurka, all novels-~
is unpublished and today exists only in typescripts. A
author at the University, Leeds, in 1954. The play was
produced by the Little Theatre Players of the Sheffield
Educational Settlement, Sheffield, under the direction of
Arnold Freeman, on 25 October, 1954. It is a three-act
play and the action.takes place in Peru in.1532-33. This
is not the place for a criticism of the play, which is,
after all, relevant only because of two things: Valverde,
one of the Spaniards, echoes a sentiment which we shall
encounter at various points in Knight's Shakespearian.work;
Valverde declares that "whoever enters the arena Of action,

in that choice engages in evil, inevitably and irrevocably.

 

20 21 '
The Laureate of Peace, p. 46. Ibid., p. 44.

 

14
That is what we mean by calling man a fallen creature."
The other relevant point is Atahualpa's being portrayed
as a sacrifice, a Christ-figure. Knight finds many such
Christ-figures among the Shakespearian characters. I am
making no case for either the originality or the validity
of Valverde's statement: one need go no further than
Robert Penn Warren's All_'ghg King's Men to find a modern
application of this idea. But it is of interest that the
same view occurs both in Knight's interpretative work and
in his creative effort. Indeed, Knight apparently makes
an.inadequate distinction.between literary creation and
literary interpretation, since he sees both of them as
governed by the imagination.

The Sovereign Flower, published in 1958, adds much

 

to our understanding of the author's conclusions about

Shakespeare. In.The Sovereign Flower there is an.interest-

 

ing return to the nineteenth century way Of seeing ShakeSpeare
the man.in.the works of Shakespeare the artist. For example,

Knight asserts that: "Here [In.Timon.g£_Athen§] Shakespeare

 

sets his soul on.paper as perhaps in no other work, not

even Hamlet."22 There are two very important essays in

The Sovereign Flower: one is the recently anthologized23
"The Shakespearian Integrity," which had already appeared

in.The Burning Oracle,and the other is "The Third Eye,"

 

22The Sovereign Flower, pp. 53-4.

23In.Shakespeare Criticism, 1935-1960, ed. Anne
Ridler (World's CIassIcs).

 

15
a perceptive essay on.A11's Well That Ends Well. Moreover,

 

there is additional matter on.Henry VIII, which Knight

 

regards as being loaded with "orthodox Christian feeling."2)+

It is also in this book that Knight recapitulates his view
Of the final plays as the conclusion or culmination of
the Shakespearian progress.

The last two works by Knight to appear, both in
1962, are Ibsen (Writers and Critics series) and The Golden

Labyrinth. These two books simply continue to reflect the

 

prevailing concern of their author with various dichotomies
or dualities, such as the Christ-Dionysus Opposition, the
antithesis between virtue and virility. There are scattered

bits of information in The Golden Labyrinth relevant to

 

our concern with Knight's theory of poetic drama. It is

interesting that Kenneth Muir in his Last Periods 23

 

Shakespeare, Racine, and Ibsen (1961) has alsO--as Knight
does in.his Ibsen--called our attention.to certain similar-

ities between the last periods of Shakespeare and Ibsen.

Knight's Shakespearian interpretation will next be
related to the various schools Of contemporary Shakespearian
scholarship. The first of these to demand our attention
will be the enormously influential Bradley-school of char-
acter-analysis. With this school will be included RObert
Bridges and Leo Tolstoy, both of whom, according tO Knight,
interpreted Shakespeare's plays largely in terms Of psycho-

logical realism. Another very important school of interpretation

 

2“The Sovereign Flower, p. 73.

 

16
to be discussed is the one which concentrates upon the
study of imagery and symbolism. With this school are to
be associated the Scrutiny critics, C. Spurgeon, and
Knight himself. Attention will also be given to the lit-
erary historians, the realistic school Of E. E. Stoll and
L. L. Schdcking, and the "disintegrators" who attribute
ShakeSpeare's work to other authors. Various Shakespearian
scholars will be introduced into the discussion.in order
either to indicate their influence upon Knight or to indi-
cate the agreement or disagreement that exists between
Knight's conclusions and their findings.

The most profound difference between the Shakespear-
ian criticism of A. C. Bradley and of the nineteenth cent-
ury and what has followed the appearance Of Knight's
The_Wheel of Fire (1930) and C. Spurgeonfis pamphlet,

 

Leading Motives in the Imagery of Shakespeare, is the shift

 

from character-analysis to an intensive study of imagery
and symbolism. F. R. Leavis has, in the recently reissued
photographic reprint of the long-scarce Scrutiny, 25 perhaps
claimed more credit for the Scrutiny writers in effecting
the dislodgement of the Bradley-Archer school of character-
analysis than they deserve. He asserts in."Scrutiny:

A Retrospect" that "it lScrutiny] did indeed effect the
relegation of Bradley...."26 He goes on.to maintain that
"Scrutiny will be credited in literary history with having

effected a reorientation in ShakeSpeare criticism."27 But

 

zsscrutiny, reissued in 20 vols., with an.Index and
Retrospect 5y F. B. Leavis, Cambridge, 1963.

26 27

Scruth, V010 XX, 12. Ibid., 12-130

17

a simple glance at the chronology of the appearance of Knight
and Spurgeonis work and at that of Scrutiny, which did not
come into being until 1932, will refute this assertion.
Moreover, all of the significant Shakespearian essays in
Scrutiny--those of D. A. Traversi, for example28--did not
appear in the first year of its life. A sharing of credit,
if not an acknowledgment Of influence is, I believe, in
order.

The fact that many younger writers-~F. R. Leavis,
D. A. Traversi, L. C. Knights, for examples-—did shift
their attention from the study Of character to that of
imagery and symbol and began to regard Shakespeare's plays
as poetic and symbolic drama instead Of as dramatized fic-
tion.subject to the same criterion.of psychological realism
as the nineteenth century novel, does not mean that other,
often Older, critics did not continue to follow the lead of
A. C. Bradley.29 Such scholars as L. L. Schacking,30
H. B. Charlton,31 and J. Dover Wilson32 remained unre-
constructed and unregenerate Bradley men.

However, there are many Shakespeare scholars whose
contributions are concerned primarily with neither characters

nor symbols. One should not ignore the excellent insights

 

28Traversi's first Scrutiny essay, "Coriolanus,"
did not appear until 1937 In VOI. VI, 43-58.

29Prefatory Note to the 1947 ed. Of The Wheel of
Fire, pp. v-vi. "'

3

 

0
Character Problems in ShakeSpeare's Plays, London, 1922.

 

 

31ShakeSpearian Tragedy, Cambridge, 1948.

32m 2 131.8133“. Cambridge, 1944.

18
of Harley Granville-Barker, who Saw ShakeSpearian drama
primarily in terms Of stage-presentation. Then, too,
there was the important contribution by Ashley Thorndike;33
whether or not one agrees with his conclusion that Shakes-
peare imitated Beaumont and Fletcher in his final plays.

The Influence Of Beaumont and Fletcher on Shakespeare was

 

a perceptive study of possible influence. Nor should one

34

forget such literary historians as A. Harbage and G. B.

Harrison.35 Moreover, the contemporary preoccupation with

"themes" in Shakespeare, as reflected in the writings Of

36 J. F. Danby,37 W. C. Curry,38 and John

40

L. C. Knights,
vyvyan39 was prefigured by such writers as Colin.Still,
Msgr. F. C. Kolbe,”l and R. Moulton,“2 who could not fairly
be categorized either as Bradley disciples or as apostates

to the Bradley creed.

 

' 33The Influence of Beaumont and Fletcher on.Shakes-
peare, Worcester (Mass.')- INCL—'— — "'"""'—""'" ‘5—

BhShakespeare and the Rival Traditions, New York, 1952-

 

 

3SShakespeare at Work 1592-1603, Ann Arbor, 1958.

 

 

36Some Shakespearian Themes, Stanford, 1960.

 

37Shakespeare's Doctrine of Nature, London, 1949.

 

38Shakespeare's PhilosOphical Patterns, Baton Rouge, 1937.

 

39The Shakespearian Ethic, London, 1959.
40

ulShakeSpeare's Way, London, 1930.,

 

 

Shakespeare's Mystery Play, London, 1921.

 

 

quhakespeare as a Dramatic Artist, 3rd ed. rev.
and enlarged:-"""""' """

 

19
The reaction Of G. Wilson Knight to the Bradley-
Archer school of character-analysis is best formulated in
Shakespeare End Tolstoy (1934). This essay first appeared
as Pamphlet No. 88 of the English Association, but in 1947

it was included in,a later edition of The Wheel gleire,

 

which contains most of the remainder Of Knight's criticism
of character-analysis. Shakespeare and Tolstoy is concerned
with far more than Tolstoy's hostility toward, or failure

to appreciate, Shakespeare. Nor does the addition of Knight's
analysis of Robert Bridges's adverse criticism completely
define the purpose Of this essay. What Knight is doing
here is to expose the weaknesses and deficiencies of the
nineteenth century tendency to concentrate exclusively

upon "characterization." Bradley, Bridges, and Tolstoy

were simply representatives of the movement which sought

to apply rigid standards of psychological realism to the
wrong art-form, that of poetic drama.

Since Tolstoy and Bridges were too intelligent,
sensitive, or discerning to be satisfied with Shakespeare
on the basis Of his "unreal" character-creations, they
attacked him for his failure to achieve the right degree
of verisimilitude in his characters. Knight begins his
essay by granting that:

The Shakespearean world does not exactly
reflect the appearances of human or nat-
ural life. The events in his world are
often strange to the point of impossi-
bility. Whoever knew the sun go out?
What man has ever acted as did King Lear,
what woman as Hermione? Now Shakespeare

has been praised to excess for his 'charac-
terization'. The term is vague. But, if

20

we take it in its most usual and pOp-
ular sense, as photographic verisimil-
itude to life, depending on clear dif-
ferentiation Of each person.in the
play or novel, we find 'characteriza-
tion! not only not the Shakespearean
essence, but actually the most pene-
trable spot to adverse criticism thfig
may be discovered in his technique.

Knight goes on to summarize his estimate of ShakeSpeare
and the fallacious views of Bridges and Tolstoy: "Shake-
speare is a great poet. We have, misled by nineteenth-
century romantic criticism, regarded him rather as a
great novelists-L“+

Knight excuses the misguided strictures of Bridges
by assuring the reader that: "Writing when he did, Bridges
could not be expected to read the deeper meanings in
Shakespeare."u5 Here Knight is subjecting Bridges to the.

transience of time, a thing which he never does with

 

Shakespeare. Indeed, Shakespeare is always treated
"spatially"; his imagery is detached from its context, since
it possesses a "vertical" quality, which Knight associates
with eternity. Imagery, regarded by Knight "spatially"
as a permanent structure, need not be submitted to temporal
consideration, which Knight refers to as "horizontal."
Knight's "spatial" approach will be dealt with more thoroughly
in.a later chapter.

Expecting to find the familiar faces Of surface
reality, Bridges and Tolstoy see only blurred outlines
and distortions. The reality experienced in Shakespeare
is, Knight rightly maintains, much more profound:

 

“BShakespeare and TolstOy, The English Association
Pamphlet No. 33, IpriI'I933, p. .

45

Loc. cit. Ibid., p. 11.

21
Again, the Shakespearian world is not the
world we habitually see. But it is the
world we experience: the poignant world
of primal feeling, violent subterranean
life, and wayward passionate thought, cone
trolled, denied, hidden often, then up-
gushing to surprise ourselves; the inner world
we experience, the world we live and fear, but
not the world we normang see; nor the world
we think we understand.
It is the poetic vision.that is primary; and.imagery is
the best means to realize this vision, while human realism
is strictly subordinated to this poetic vision.

After attacking realistic criticism for blinding
Bridges and Tolstoy to the power Of Shakespeare‘s sym-
bols, Knight further asserts that this school of criticism
(the one advocating psychological naturalism and the im-
portance Of verisimilitude) soon metamorphosed itself into
the school of the "disintegrators," "such pseudo-realism
and pseudo-scholarship, if carried far, being essentially
disintegrating and destructive.”7 Now it is manifestly
unfair to make J. M. Robertson the logical product of the
Bradley school; Robertson with his rationalistic and
skeptical speculations upon the authorship of what had
been regarded as the Shakespeare canon needed more in his
intellectual ancestry than A. C. Bradley, himself the
natural product of the romantic preoccupation with character

begun.by that archromantic Coleridge.

 

In his Character and Characterization (1962) Leo

 

 

Kirschbaum, in,a critical aside, warns that though there

has been much excellent work undermining the critical

 

”61bid., p. 16. u7Ibid., p. 24.

22

assumptions of Bradley's Shakespearian Tragedy, yet Bradley's

 

work"is not quite the simple target most Of the avant garde

 

Shakespeare critics take it to be."“t8 Knight is, I be-
lieve, one Of the modern critics who has perhaps done more
than.any other one interpreter Of Shakespeare to establish
the current dictum that Shakespeare wrote poetic drama and
not naturalistic drama.

Let us examine first Knight's criticism Of the
Bradleyite "character" school and then his qualification

of his own criticism. In The Wheel of Fire (p. 9),

 

Knight declares that: "In the following essays the term
[Echaracterj is refused, since it is so constantly entwined
with a false and unduly ethical criticism." Again, on the
following page, Knight has the criticism Of Bridges,
Tolstoy, and Bradley in.mind when he states that "ethical
terms, though they must frequently occur in.interpretation,
must only be allowed in so far as they are used in absolute
Obedience to the dramatic and aesthetic significance: in
which case they cease to be ethical in the usual sense."
Many modern critics welcome the shift away from the ethical
preoccupation, but few--barring John Middleton Murry--
would endorse Knight's pronouncement that (p. 11) "inter-
pretation.must be metaphysical rather than ethical." It

is precisely his growing Obsession with metaphysics that
causes critics who would otherwise acknowledge their debt

to Knight to keep silence.

 

usCharacter and Characterization, p. 1.

 

 

23

One could continue to cite instances from The Wheel

 

SEMESEE of Knight's running attack upon.Bradleian "charac-
ter" analysis--or upon most of the other recognizable schools
of criticism that flourished at the time the book was writ-
ten. But the mellower Knight of 194?, secure in.his own
accomplishment, can afford "to clear up certain misunder-
standings." Knight concedes that: "My animadversions as
to "character" analysis were never intended to limit the.
living human reality of Shakespeare's people. They were,
on the contrary, expected to loosen, to render flexible
and even fluid, what had become petrified. Nor was I at
all concerned to repudiate the work of A. C. Bradley."u9
Knight repudiated the Bradleian.position.as summar-
ized by Bradley himself in his Shakespearean Tragedy (1904):
"The centre of the tragedy, therefore, may be said with
equal truth to lie in.action issuing from character, or in
character issuing in action."50 For Knight, symbol and
pattern replace character and plot. But the Bradley who
wrote Oxford Lectures 22 Poetry (1909) shows us the Bradley
who wrote, in.addition to his classic "The Rejection of
Falstaff," the essay "Poetry for Poetry's Sake," in.which
he introduces a distinction between art and life that is
certainly one Of Knight's tenets: "The one [Eiféa touches
us as beings occupying a given position.in.space and time,

and having feelings, desires, and purposes due to that

 

l‘9The Wheel of Fire, p. v.

5°shake3pear1an Tragedy, reprint Of 2nd ed. (1905).
New York, Igng, p. I2.

 

24

position; it appeals to imagination, but appeals to much
besides. What meets us in poetry has not a position in
the same series of time and space...."51 Poetry, he con-
tinues, is addressed only to the imagination. Knight not
only accepts this but adds a questionable corollary of his
own: interpretation too is addressed solely to the imagi-
nation.

One unconverted Bradley man, H. B. Charlton, has
voiced his dissenting views of the assault upon Bradley

in his Shakespearian Tragedy (1948), and one cannot doubt

 

that he has G. Wilson Knight in mind when.he refers to those
who attack Bradley because "he takes ShakeSpeare's dramas
as plays and not as poems; he accepts the persons of them
at their value as semblable men and women, and not as
plastic symbols in an arabesque of esoteric imagery, nor

as rhythmic ripple, intoned in.a chromatic ritual."52
Furthermore, Charlton.touched upon the weakest point of
those who emphasize the importance of symbolic imagery in
Shakespeare when he saw the principal shortcoming Of this
mode as its lacking syllogistic universality: "One man's
imaginative sequences are not another's: for each one, the
ultima 33119 is personal, individual and autonomous."53
When Knight adheres to the Shakespeare text his interpre-
tation possesses some Objective validity, but much of his

later interpretation.would deserve Charlton's criticism.

 

512§£2£2.LeCtures EELEESEEZ! London, 1919, p. 6.

52W seen. I». 1- 53.1mm. p. so.

 

25
In.Knight's early work on Shakespeare, he relied
upon a close scrutiny Of the text and a heavy emphasis
on.the significance of imagery. Also apparent in.hyth and
Miracle and 222 Wheel 2: Fire is his brilliant handling of

 

 

mood or atmosphere, themes and patterns. The later work,
in which Knight pays less attention to the text, distressed
F. R. Leavis and various Scrutiny reviewers, who see Knight
as deserting the rightful tasks of literary criticism to
fashion a nebulous system Of metaphysics.

Knight has sometimes been grouped With the 'Cambridge'
school Of literary criticism,5u which has been said to
include such diverse figures as T. S. Eliot, I. A. Richards,
and F. R. Leavis; but this is somewhat misleading, though

Eliot's introduction.to The Wheel of Fire would seem to

 

 

 

lend itself to this view.

It is the emphasis upon theme, pattern, and symbolic
imagery—~Knight sometimes sees_an.entire play as an expanded
metaphor55--that Knight shares, in varying degrees, with
such writers as F. R. Leavis, D. A. Traversi, L. C. Knights,
Colin.Still, Caroline Spurgeon, Maud Bodkin, and Msgr.

F. R. Kolbe.
The best work Of Knight, contained most abundantly

in.The Wheel of Fire, though also, to a lesser extent, in

 

The Imperial Theme and The Crown.2£ Life, is characterized

 

 

 

suSee Kenneth Muir, "Changing Interpretations of
Shakespeare," The Age of ShakeSpeare, ed. Boris Ford,
Pelican, 1955.737 293;-50Wmt's reaction to this
kind Of grouping, The Imperial Theme, 3rd ed. London, 1951, p. vi.

55

 

Shakespeare and Tolstoy, p. 17.

26

by a close exegesis of the text and what may be called the
inductive method. What Knight is doing in these books,
essentially, is devoting a rational method to a romantic
end. Much Of Knight's work contains a strange amalgam Of
precise analysis and vague and nebulous apocryphal specu-
lations.

But employment of the inductive method to literary
interpretation.was not original with Knight. Knight himself
directed my attention to Msgr. F. C. Kolbe's excellent

though short book, Shakespeare's way: A_Psychological

 

 

Study (1930) in which the author uses the inductive method
in finding the themes and significant imagery in a selec-
tion of Shakespeare's plays. Kolbe, in turn, acknowledged

the influence Of R. G. Moulton, who in his Shakespeare E3

 

2 Dramatic Artist (1906) lays down the principles of induc-

 

tive criticism. It is interesting that Moulton.points out
the association of Ariel, with the upwardtending elements
of Air and Fire and the higher nature of man; and that of
Caliban with the downward-tending elements Of Earth and
Water and the lower nature of man. Colin.Still, whose
Shakespeare's Mystery Play (1921) Knight regards as

'disciplined speculation',56

incorporates this theory in
his elaborate attempt to show that The Tempest contains
the pattern found in.pagan.initiation.rites and is indeed
"an.account of the spiritual redemption of man." Colin

Still will receive more consideration.when I treat Knight's

 

56The Imperial Theme, p. V.

27
method of interpretation and theory Of poetic drama in
Chapter II and again in Chapter IV when I examine Knight's
interpretation of The Tempest.

The Wheel of Fire, like Spurgeon's Leading Motives

 

and Kolbe's ShakeSpeare's Way, advanced a similar thesis:

in Shakespeare's plays there are significant coherences

that can be discussed without being subjected to plot and
character; in.other words, there are key themes and patterns
in Shakespeare that are not part of plot or character.
However, Spurgeon emphasized only the importance Of imagery
while Kolbe gave equal attention to images, ideas, and things.
That Knight's own concernp-at least in.his later work--

is not confined to imagery is asserted in the preface to

the third edition.(195l) of his The Imperial Theme:
"'Imagery' by itself is--in so far as we make such distinc-
tions at all-~always a minor accompaniment, and by itself
as likely as not merely to modify, even sometimes, in the
way of art, to tend to contradict the central interest,

as with the pastoral similes in Homer and Virgil."57 This
is as good a statement as any to distinguish between the
differing degrees of importance attached to imagery by
Knight and Spurgeon. To Spurgeon, imagery was largely

a statistical matter and a means Of reconstituting Shake-
sPeare the man; to Knight it is just one means among several
of securing a degree of coherence, whether in an individual

play or among the entire Shakespeare canon.

 

57Ibid., p. ix.

28 .

In his Image and Experience (1960), Graham Hough
suggests that "Wilson Knight expresses himself in tradi-
tional moral and metaphysical terms, but his discovery of
symbolic patterns in drama, underlying and partly differ-
ing from the overt pattern of character and incident,
could hardly have been made without the habits of thought
to which psychoanalysis has accustomed us."58 Precisely:
and both Maud Bodkin and Colin Still could easily be sub-
stituted for Knight in.the above quotation. It was only
a few years after the appearance of Knight's first books

that Bodkinis Archetypal Patterns in Poetry (1934) appeared.

 

In 1936 Colin Still published his The Timeless Theme, which

 

is really only his Shakespeare's Mystery Play with an

 

elaborate critical theory added, a theory I shall later
show to be most congenial to Knight's own theory of lit-
erary interpretation. Knight, however, never insists
upon establishing as elaborate a relationship between the
patterns he discovers in.Shakespeare--that Of immortality
in the last plays, for example--as Colin Still attempts
in.his Shakespeare's Mystery 3131. Knight is usually
content to regard the archetypal pattern as Maud Bodkin,
following Gilbert Murray, chooses to denominate it: that
which "leaps in response to the effective presentation.in
poetry of an ancient theme."59 Still's book may be regarded

as the extreme mythic approach beyond which one cannot go.

 

58Graham Hough, Image and EXperience, London, 1960,
p. 124. "‘ ' "‘ ""“““'

'59Maud Bodkin, Archetypal 33.122222 1n £22211»
London, 1934. Po “0 '_-

29
Knight never attempts an elaborate comparison of a symbolic
work either with pagan ritual, as Still does, or with the
medieval Christian tradition, as Johnvyvyan6o has attempted.

Knight has been attacked for lacking the historical
sense, 61 refusing to acknowledge the validity of tradi-
tional scholarship (literary history and philology),62
declining the task Of literary evaluation,63 and substitut-
ing subjectivistic interpretations of esoteric symbols for
character-analysis. This last charge, we will recall, was
that made by H. B. Charlton, but since it was dealt with
earlier it need not concern us now.

One could handle all the criticisms at once by re-
plying that they are all valid. They are: but it is nec-
essary that we discover why Knight rejects the more orth-

odox scholarly methods and what he substitutes for them.

 

A summary explanation would be that Knight sees a transcene
dental rather than an immanent ShakeSpeare; that he believes
literature should cast light upon its age and not the re-
verse; that he repudiates philology because of the triv-
iality of its concerns and the insignificance of its achieve-
ments; that he is continually distinguishing between the

rational faculty of the critic, whose duty it is to evaluate,

 

6oThe Shakespearean.Ethic, London, 1959.

61See Rene Wellek and Austin Warren, Theory of

Literature, New York, 1956, p. 200.

 

621s ms, XIV (1933), 9-10.

63By M. Bradbrook in Scrutiny, I, 397-8.

 

30
and the imaginative faculty of the interpreter, whose func-
tion it is to see the work in its wholeness; and that the
interpretation of symbolic imagery is a truer key to the
themes and patterns that unite the plays of Shakespeare
than the study of character.
In his somewhat discursive autobiographical book

Atlantic Crossing, Knight gives his view of the more orth—

 

Ode modes of literary scholarship: "Shakespeare disclosed
shafts of rich ore, and hidden veins Of stratified and
variegated tints like the foothills below Persia. This
was the beginning of the ascent, red-gold riches of thought
and symbol passed by centuries of desert commentary."6l+

Elsewhere he becomes more eXplicit. In The Wheel of Fire

 

 

the first essay is entitled "On the Principles Of Shakes-
peare Interpretation." Much of the content Of this essay
rightly belongs to the next chapter, which will discuss
the theory of Knight's technique. But it also contains
much Of the "why" for Knight's rejection Of other kinds Of
literary study.

Knight first repudiates the school that seeks to
judge the work Of art by the artist's intentions: ”There
is a maxim that a work of art should be criticized accord-
ing to the artist's 'intentions': than which no maxim
could be more false."65 On the next page Knight declares
that his essays will "say nothing new as to Shakespeare's

intentions'" and "attempt to shed no light directly on

 

64Atlantic Crossing, London, 1936, p. 40.

65
The Wheel 93 Fire, p. 6.

 

31

66 'Six years after the Wheel of Fire

ShakeSpeare the man."

 

 

was published, J. Dover Wilson in the Robert Spence Watson
Memorial Lecture for 1936, The Meaning 2£_'Thg'Tempest',
asserted that: "The Tempest was his EShakespeare'E] Offi-
cial congé; and if not in truth his last word, was intended
Esicg to be so. It is the intention [916.] that matters
and gives significance to the tone of the play."67 Knight's
implicit belief that the imagination should be sovereign

in literary interpretation.is apparent when he states that:
"'Intentions' belong to the plane Of intellect and memory:
the swifter consciousness that awakens in poetic composi-
tion touches subtleties and heights and depths unknowable

by intellect and intractable to memory,l68

Knight's
constant and unwavering emphasis upon.the primacy of the
imagination should be remembered when we attempt to evaluate
Knight's literary contribution in the concluding chapter

of this study.

Knight's anti-rationalistic bias also goes far to
explain his rejection Of the usefulness of source-study:
"Both [Eources and intentionE] try to explain art in.terms
of causality, the most natural implement Of intellect."69
Thus both intentions and sources are rejected because Of
their subservience to intellect. Knight, who regards art-

istic creation.as a marriage between the material and the

spiritual, i.g., an incarnation,70 sees sources as being of

 

661b1d., p. 7. 67

68

The Wheel 23 Fire, p. 7. 69Loc. cit.

 

70
Ibid., p. 8.

32
greater use to the artist than to the interpreter71 for
the artist must find a body for his intuition, but the
interpreter must only extract the intuition from the body.
Thus a study of sources would be of little use to the inter-
preter.

Granville-Barker's knowledge of stagecraft does not
win.Knight's approval, either: "Nor will a sound knowledge
Of the stage and the especial theatrical technique of
Shakespeare's work render up its imaginative secret."72

In.the prefatory note to the 1947 edition of The Wheel of.

 

Fir: Knight was to remain firm in his 1930 criticism of
Granville-Barker: "I would not regard the well-known
commentaries of Harley Granville-Barker as prOperly within
this central, more imaginative and metaphysical tradition."73
It is significant that this "more imaginative and meta-
physical tradition," in which Knight places himself, also
includes Coleridge, Hazlitt, and Bradley, romantics all.
Knight also rejects the scholarly tradition that
studies the influence of an artist's milieu upon his work:
"Much as I respect the learning of such justly eminent
scholars as Professor Dover Wilson.and Mr. C. S. Lewis,
I maintain.that no such learning drawn from outside the
poetic world of Shakespeare weighs anything when balanced
against that world."7u For, as Knight elaborates later

on.in the same essay, "it may be positively dangerous to

 

721bid., p. 13.

7uIb1d., p. 338.

71Loc. cit.
73Ibid., p. vi.

33
read a great writer in the light of his age; it is safer,
to my mind, to read the age in the light of the great
writer."75

With the standard biographies of Shakespeare Knight
was apparently unhappy: in.The'Shakespearian.Tempest
Knight is convinced that "from a careful study Of the plays
will surely emerge a William Shakespeare as different from
that smug mixture of platitudinizing moralist and beery
yokel which is our conventional "Bard Of Avon! as any Lord
Bacon or Edward de Vere might be from 'Shaksper'."76 SO
many of the conventional nineteenth century biographies of
Shakespeare would fall under this censure that it is impos-
sible to know at whom in particular Knight is directing
this attack.

The Schdcking-Stoll group of realistic critics is
coupled by Knight with the Bradley-Archer school, weighed,
and found equally wanting: "The older critics drove
psychological analysis to unnecessary lengths: the new
[in.l93é] school Of 'realistic' criticism, in.finding
faults and explaining them with regard to Shakespeare's
purely practical and financial 'intentions', is thus in
reality following the wrong vision of its predecessors."77
It will be recalled that Knight regarded J. M. Robertson
as the logical product of the same school of psychological

naturalism that produced A. C. Bradley. But there are

 

76The Shakespearian Tempest, p. 4.

75Ibid., p. 343.
77222 Wheel 22 Fire, p. 13

 

34
greater differences than similarities between.Bradley and
E. E. Stoll, or Bradley and L. L. Sohdcking.
Knight's animadversions upon the more conventional
modes of literary scholarship would undoubtedly fall on

Ashley Thorndike also, since he wrote The Influence of

 

Beaumont and Fletcher on Shakespeare, which concerns it-

 

self with a theory of causality-~which Knight rejects--

in literary history. The same would be true for A. Harbage
and G. B. Harrison, the former concerned with moral
matters—awhich Knight repudiated when he rejected the
nineteenth century legacy of Robert Bridges and Leo Tolstoy
--and the latter with relating Shakespeare's work to its
own time and trying to prove the topicality of much of
Shakespeare's work.

Harbage, who sees ShakeSpeare's plays as possessing
moral homogeneity,78 evidently thinks no more highly of
Knight's accomplishment than Knight does of his: '...we
must let them [bur young students and scholaré] see in
Shakespeare a little less of Frazer and Freud, and a little
more of Erasmus. There would be less religiosity in the
criticism, less moralizing without reference to any identi—
fiable morality, less of the confusedly edifying, if there
were more reSpect for Renaissance principles as such and

more trust in.Shakespeare's own wisdom and tact.'79

 

78.93 They Liked E, New York, 1914,7’ p..x11.

 

 

79Shakespeare and the Rival Traditions, New York,
‘ 1952, pp. 2: v-xv. ""' — "'"'"""

 

35
Knight is of course, aware of the objections that

are raised by his interpretative method. In an essay,

'The PrOphetic Imagination,‘ contained in.The Christian

 

Renaissance, Knight answers one such objection: 'A usual

 

complaint asserts that I do not consider Shakespeare in
relation to his time or to his personal intentions. Why
should I? It is poetry, not history or biography, that

I wish to interpret, and with the greater writers we
instinctively make what minor historical allowances may
be necessary."80 Knight's insistence upon the autonomy

of the work of art he goes on to state even more clearly:
'I regard any great work that has survived the centuries
as independent of its generation: it is precisely this
independence that is the condition of literary greatness,
since we habitually and naturally consider as less signi-
ficant those works which the race is content to forget.'81
Thus Knight endorses another tenet of the so-called New
Criticism. Like the New Critics-~who are actually following
practices of great antiquity-~Knight often believes that

he sees each work of art as independent of all others and

as free in all ways from its time and place as well as its

creator. But we shall observe that Knight often departs

from this view in practice and sometimes even lapses into

 

nineteenth century biographical criticism.82
80 81
The Christian Renaissance, p. h. Loc. cit.,

 

82For example, in The Sovereign Flower, pp. 5 -4,
where Knight declares that—there [in.Tifififi'BT'Athens
Shakespeare sets his soul on paper as‘psrfiaps' n.no ther
work, not even.Hamlet.'

36
Evidently Knight still felt in 1955 that he had not
convinced the Opposition of the validity of his inter-

pretative method, for in The Laureate of Peace he refers

 

to "those who most rigorously Oppose my refusal to limit

my studies to discussions of biography, sources, technique
and the manipulations of language."83 But many have been
influenced by Knight, though they often fail to acknowledge

it.

In 1906 Lytton.Strachey directed his very influential
essay, "ShakeSpeare's Last Period," against the view of
the final plays that Dowden had advanced as early as 187%

in his Shakespeare: £133 {[213 and 533. Before one can
preperly understand the significance of G. Wilson.Knight's
rejection.of Strachey's view it is necessary to examine
Strachey's essay; and before one can understand what
Strachey was repudiating, it is necessary to know a little
about the prevailing view-~which Dowden perhaps more than
any other one scholar did to advancee-that Shakespeare
wrote the last plays "On the Heights," in a final period
of serenity and reconciliation after the stormy period of
the tragedies.

In Shakespeare: H_i_§ 11.1.29. and £32, Dowden declares

that Shakespeare's final period is one of "large, serene,

wisdom," and "in the light of the clear and solemn vision

 

83The Laureate 2: Peace, p. 8.

 

37

of his closing years all his writings shall be read."8u
Strachey might agree with Dowden that "Shakespeare's inter-
est in his art was less intense than previously it had been,"85
but he could not stomach Dowden's assertion that "after
exhibiting the absolute ruin of a life and of a soul,
ShakeSpeare closed the wonderful series of his dramatic .
writings by exhibiting the noblest e1evation.of character,
the most admirable attainment of heart,of intellect, of
will, which our present life admits, in.the person of
Prospero."86 Strachey's reply was that "if Prospero is
wise, he is also self-Opinionated and sour, that his grav-
ity is often another name for pedantic severity, and that
there is no character in.the play to whom, during some
part of it, he is not studiously disagreeable."87

But what is more important is that Strachey sees
that underlying a theory such as Dowden's--that the plays
show a develOpment of Shakespeare's mind--is "the tacit
assumption.that the character of any given drama is, in
fact, a true index to the state of mind of the dramatist

composing it."88

And this assumption has never been.proved.
Yet Strachey himself, to quote the most-often quoted

passage of his essay, does not reject this assumption:

 

8”Edward Dowden, Shakspere: His Mind and Art (187“),
New York, 1918, p. 358.

85Ibid., p. 360. 86Ibid., p. 67.

'87Lytton.Strachey, "Shakespeare's Final Period"
(190s), Books and Characters, 1922, p. 68.

88Ib1d-o , P0 520 e

 

38

"Is it not thus, then, that we should imagine him [Shakespeara
in the last years of life? Half-enchanted by visions of
beauty and loveliness, and half-bored to death; on the
one side inspired by a soaring fancy to the singing of
ethereal songs, and on the other urged by a general dis-
gust to burst occasionally through his torpor into bitter
and violent speech? If we are to learn anything of his
mind from his last works, it is surely this.'89

Though Knight does not regard "character" as the
binding element in Shakespeare's plays, and though he,
unlike Dowden, does not see Shakespeare as a Jekyl-Hyde
combination of practical man of the world and passionate
idealist, he does accept the underlying assumption that the
plays reveal a spiritual and artistic progress; in "Myth
and Miracle" Knight writes that: "The Tempest is at the
same time a record of ShakeSpeare's progress and a state-
ment of the vision to which that progress has brought him.
It is apparent as a dynamic and living act of the soul,
containing within itself the record of its birth: it is
continually re-writing itself before our eyes."90 Knight's
acceptance of Dowden's view is later in the same essay
stated explicitly: "The progress from Spiritual pain and
deSpairing thought through stoic acceptance to a serene and
mystic Joy is a universal rhythm of the Spirit of man."91
We shall find that what distinguishes Knight from Dowden

 

89_Ib_1ldl'1 p0 650

902313 Crown 31: 222: P. 27. .9lIbid., p. 29.

 

39

and those who endorse Dowden's view of Shakespeare's last
period is not whether or not Shakespeare was "On the
Heights"--for they agree that he was-~but is rather their
differing evaluations of the last plays themselves.

What Knight rejects of Strachey he also rejects of
Dowden,gand that is the view that there was artistic de-
cline apparent in the last plays. Strachey notices the
"singular carelessness with which great parts of them [fine]

92 and Dowden states

final playé] were obviously written,"
that: "The impression that Shakspere's interest in his

art was less intense than.previously it had been is cone
firmed by the circumstance that he now contributed portions
to plays which are completed by other hands in an infer-
ior manner."93 Dowden.goes on.to add that "in.§§nfy_yggl,
all artistic and ethical unity is sacrificed to the vul-
gar demand for an occasional play and for a spectacle."9u
Now Knight sees no such decline in the last plays; more-

over, Knight regards Henry VIII as ShakeSpeare's crowning

 

achievement,95 aesthetically coherent,96 and entirely

Shakespeare's.97

It is interesting that Middleton Murry, in his

 

92Strachey, op. cit., p. 6b.

93Dowden, op. cit., p. 36.

941100 _001t

95The Olive and the Sword, p. 76.

96"Henry VIII and the Poetry of Conversion," The
Crown of LIfe, pp .256-336.

97The Olive and the Sword, p. 76.

 

no
earlier work accepted Strachey's view of the tired and
bored Shakespeare; in.his TQ_EEE,Unknown.ggd_(192b) Murry
wrote that "after playing half-wistfully with figures of

his imagination, in the Winter's Tale, in Cymbeline, in

 

that part of Pericles that is indisputable his, after
creatnng Perdita and Imogen and Marina, he gathered his
strength together and conquered his own.weariness to

.98

prOphesy in The Tempest. However, by 1936, when his

Shakespeare appeared, Murry had changed his mind. For

 

there he writes that "I have let myself be half-persuaded
by Lytton Strachey's suggestion of "tiredness and boredom";
but I have looked for the evidences, and found none."99
That Murry should at one time have held Strachey's view

is curious, for it is Murry more than.anyone else who has
provided Knight with an apocalyptic and prOphetic ShakeSpeare.
For already in 192# Murry was writing that "I believe that
The Tempest is the most perfect prephetic achievement of

the Western mind,"100 and that: "As Shakespeare is pro-
phetic of the last, modern era of the Western.consciousness,
Christ was prOphetic of the whole epoch, of which this

.101

last modern era is the culminating part.

A brief enumeration of a few other critics who have

 

98Middleton.Murry, To the Unknown God, pp. 184-5.
99Middleton Murry, Shakespeare, p. 380.

 

1°°To the Unknown God, p. 185.

lolIbid., p. 191.

#1

seen.Shakespeare's creative powers declining in the last

plays f0110WS.. Frederick Boas,102 103

h .
F. E. Halliday,10 E. K. Chambers,105 and Allardyce Nicoll,

H. B. Charlton,
106

all subscribe, for various reasons, to this view. E. M. W.

107 and Kenneth Muir,108 however, do not. In

Tillyard,
his interesting book on early seventeenth century liter-
ature, Patrick Cruttwell subscribes to the view only inso-
far as "the loosening of the bonds (both geographical and
financial) which had tied Shakespeare to his Bankside
theatre had resulted in.a comparative indifference to that

109 Knight and other contempor-

theatre's requirements."
ary Shakespearian critics who regard the plays as poetic
drama dominated by symbolic imagery are not confronted
with the necessity of providing reasons why the characters

or plots in.the later plays are not realistic.

The "historical" critics, such as E. E. Stoll and
L. L. Schacking, members of a school that had its heyday

 

'lozAn Introduction.to the Readin of Shakespeare.
London, 1927} Po ”30 '__ ‘_-

 

 

103Shakespearian Comedy, New York, 1938, p. 267.

lonShakespeare and his Critics: London, 19u9' 9' 136'

 

1°5shakespeare: A Survey, London.(l925), 1955. Po 293-
106

107

Shakespeare, London, 1952, p. 164.

 

Shakespeare's Last Plays, London, 1951, p. 3.

108Last Periods of Shakespeare, Racine, Ibsen,
Detroit, 1951, p. 37 "‘

109

 

The Shakespearian Moment, London, 195%, p. 95.

 

#2
in the 1920's and 1930's, and the “disintegrators" of the
Shakespeare canon, whose most outstanding advocate is
J. M. Robertson, are both rejected by G. Wilson Knight.
Knight does so because he sees the plays of Shakespeare
forming a coherent whole, though in.his assertion that
tempests in Opposition.with music "form the only principle
of unity in.Shakespeare,"110 he does violence to the tone
and context of the plays from which he abstracts these
symbols. The early Shakespearian.plays, culminating in
King Henry E, Knight sees as united by the common theme
of nationalism; the plays following Henry !_are part of a
coherent pattern because they fit into what Knight regards
as Shakespeare's spiritual progress, culminating in.King

Henry VIII, which is the final nexus of all the diverse

 

elements in Shakespeare. Knight regards the play as one
possessing both national purpose and a vital religious
concern which reconciles the various oppositions he finds
in.Shakespeare.

Since Knight regards EEEEZ.!£EE.33 Shakespeare's
crowning achievement, it is obviously necessary that he
defend the integrity of the play against critics like J. M.
Robertson, who attribute much of the play to other hands.
Knight also assumes the Shakespearian.suthorship of such
things as the Hecate scene of Macbeth, the early acts of
Pericles, and the Jupiter scene of Cymbeline. This he

 

 

110The Shakespearian Tempest, p. 6.

 

43
does, I believe, not because he is aesthetically obtuse
but because he has adOpted the view that the Shakespeare
canon.is a unified whole; since "character," after the
"realistic" work of Stoll, Schacking, Bridges, Tolstoy and
others, is no longer acceptable as a principle of dramatic
unity, and since the more obvious reading of Shakespeare
the man.into the work-as illustrated by Dowden-uhas been
more or less discredited, Knight sees the uniting bond in
symbolic imagery and in various metaphysical dualities.
Committed as Knight is (like Dowden?) to the view that the
plays reveal the growth of the poet‘s mind, it is most
important that the plays upon which his case rests so
heavily-~the last plays, for example-~be regarded as Shake-
speare's own work.

In.his introduction to The Wheel g£_Fire (1930),

 

T. S. Eliot evidently gives some support to Knight's crit-
ical position.when he asserts that: "To take Shakespeare's
work as a whole, no longer to single out several plays as
the greatest, and mark the other only as apprenticeship

or decline-~13 I think an important and positive step in

ShakeSpeare interpretation."111

Furthermore, Eliot
endorses Knight's method of seeking unity in ShakeSpeare
when he states that "Mr. Wilson Knight has shown insight
in.pursuing his search for the pattern below the level of

"plot" and 'character'."112 In short, Eliot thinksa-at

~

111Introduction to The Wheel of Fire, p. xviii.

 

llZLOO. Cite

44

least at the time of the first appearance of the Wheel of

 

Fires-that "Mr. Knight, among other things, has insisted
upon the right way to interpret poetic drama."113
To anticipate what I shall treat more fully in.a
later chapter--Knight"s theory of interpretation-~I shall
quote the principle of interpretation.that Knight has form-
ulated to handle the "historical" critics and the "dis-

integrators." On p. 14 of his The Wheel of Fire he insists

 

 

that: "Before noticing the presence of faults we should
first regard each play as a visionary unit bound to obey
none but its own self-imposed laws." For Knight believes
that what impels critics to assume a decay in the artistic
powers of the later Shakespeare or assume pernicious contem-
porary influence is their failure to understand a play in
its totality. Knight lumps the moralistic critics with

the historical critics when he states (P. 11) that: "But
today there is a strong tendency to "criticize" Shake-
speare, to select certain.a3pects of his mature works
and.point out faults. These faults are accounted for in
various ways: it is said that Shakespeare, though a great
genius, was yet a far from perfect artist; that certain
elements were introduced solely to please a vulgar audience;
or even, if the difficulty be extreme, that they are the
work of another hand."

One of the most outstanding features of Knight's

 

113Ibid., p. xix.

[V

t

45
method is his substitution.of "interpretation" for criticism.
By excluding judgment from his method Knight is much freer
to find whatever significant patterns he so desires in
Shakespeare's work. By erecting a scheme with the benefit
of possibly non~Shakespearian elements, and without the
task of evaluating the different parts of the Shakespeare
canon, it is far easier for Knight to stress various plays-~
especially the final plays-ass heavily as he does. He
wants coherence on a grand scale: the entire Shakespeare
canon.must illustrate the growth of the poet's mind.
Knight wants to free the works of ShakeSpeare from time and
place, but he does not want to free them from a pattern
reflecting the author's spiritual growth. This not only
reveals the essentially romantic nature of Knight's work
but also what I believe to be its greatest single weakness:
Knight is creating a chimerical Shakespeare because of his
insistence upon using parts which might not be Shakespeare's
own. Knight confesses, in an essay entitled "The Pro-
phetic Imagination" which appeared in.The Christian

 

Renaissance, that "I accept what fits, and reject what

does not fit, my sense of significance."114 This is

 

individualism or reliance upon.the Inner Light with a

vengeance.

In order to find a coherent pattern in.Shakespeare"s

jplays, Knight has run the risk of abstracting themes and

_‘

lluThe Christian.Renaissance, p. 13-

 

46
images without taking tone and context into account. It
has been difficult for Knight to resolve his conflicting
loyalties: in the early work he is loyal first to the

text, but from The Imperial Theme on his devotion to larger

 

 

schemes outside the works themselves has triumphed. At
first it was his ideal of a Shakespearian unity, but later
it became a metaphysical dualism involving Opposing cosmic
forces the resolution of which has been the task of all
the greatest poets in.all their greatest poems. Only this

explanation can account for The Christian Renaissance and

 

most of his work which has appeared since.

Knight, however, is not alone among contemporary
Shakespearian scholars in his tendency to abstract themes
and patterns. W. C. Curry, J. F. Danby, L. B. Campbell,
and L. C. Knights have all engaged in.the same activity
in.various ways. The practice is far more widespread
today, however, than it was when Knight wrote his £122,922.

Miracle and The Wheel g£_Fire. ‘Indeed, Danby and Knights

 

both owe Knight an Obvious debt.

The process Of abstracting themes was not Original
with Knight, nor does he anywhere claim that it was. What
he has done, however, is to develOp further what R. G.
Moulton and Msgr. F. R. Kolbe had already been about.

The difference between Knight and Moulton or Kolbe is his
applying their method to all of Shakespeare. What Knight
did was to abstract the themes by an intensive analysis of
the imagery in Shakespeare; but unlike C. Spurgeon, he

assigned a much greater symbolic value to the images:

4?
Spurgeon"s work with imagery was essentially prosaic while
Knight's was imaginative.

Knight does not deny that what he is about is the
abstraction of themes and symbols; nor is it unusual, when
we hear him echoing R. G. Moulton: "I work...at a.new
science Of poetic interpretation."115 The quality of any
"science" is its tendency to abstract, and Knight else-

where in The Christian Renaissance tells us what science

 

he has in.mind: "My interpretations of Shakespeare bear
the same relation.to their original as does the science of

Christian theology to the Bible. In.hoth dominant symbols

 

are abstracted to further our understanding."116 [italics

 

 

mine] T. S. Eliot has provided us, in his introduction to

The Wheel of Fire, with a useful insight into what Knight

 

is about when.he states that "Bradley's apothegm that
"metaphysics is the finding of bad reasons for what we
believe upon instinct; but to find these reasons is no

less an instinct;" applies precisely to the interpretation.‘
Of poetry." Eliot goes on to maintain that: "TO interpret,
then, or to seek to pounce upon the secret, to elucidate
the pattern and pluck out the mystery of a poet's work,

is "no less an.instinct"."117 Eliot, unlike Knight, does
not regard imaginative interpretation as a substitute for
literary creation: "Interpretation.is necessary perhaps

only in.ao far as one is passive, not creative, oneself."118

 

115Ibid., p. 4. lléIbid., p. 35.

117The Wheel of Fire, p. xvii. 118Ibid., p. xviii.

 

48

In the final chapter Of this study an evaluation Of Knight"s
contribution will reveal that Knight is included among
those whom Eliot regards as "imperfect" critics; Knight
would find himself in.the category Of those who fail in

the critical task because they insist upon competing with
the creator, the artist: their criticism is not prOperly
such, but rather something lying in limbo between art and

criticism.

In.this chapter, I have tried to indicate that
Knight"s work is consistent to his method throughout, and
that the later work is prefigured in the earlier. I have
also attempted to show that Knight is "modern" in his insis-
tence upon the importance Of symbolic imagery and the pres-
ence of patterns in.Shakespeare"s plays, patterns that are
revealed on deeper levels than those Of character and plot.
Modern but not original, since Kolbe and Moulton.had anti-
cipated much Of Knight"s method and Spurgeon.was working
with imagery at the same time as Knight. Knight has rejected
character-analysis, source-study, philology, the historical
method, the "disintegration" theory, and the nineteenth
century preoccupations with ethics and psychological
naturalism. Knight has retained the Coleridgean romantic
view that ShakeSpeare"s work forms a coherent whole, and
he believes in.the primacy of the imagination in literary
interpretation. In.addition, Knight accepts the nineteenth
century romantic view that there is a real spiritual develop-

ment Of the poet revealed in Shakespeare's work. There is

49
at least a congeniality Of outlook between Knight and
J. Middleton Murry, if not a real influence of Murry upon
Knight.

It remains for the later chapters to examine Knight"s
method of interpretation and theory Of poetic drama (Chapt.
II), to Observe his application of that method and theory
to ShakeSpeare (Chapt. III) to analyze and criticize Knight"s

interpretation of the last plays-~Pericles, Cymbeline, The

 

Winter's Tale, The Tempest, and Henry VIII (chapt. IV),
and finally, to evaluate Knight"s contribution to Shake-

spearian scholarship (Chapt. V).

CHAPTER TWO

As early as Myth and Miracle (1929), G. Wilson
Knight was already making his distinctions between criticism
and interpretation, and by the time he wrote The Wheel of

 

Fire (1930), he had fully develOped his interpretative
theory.1 According to him, the critic is governed by judg-
ment and attempts to Objectify the work of art. The inter-
preter, on.the other hand, is ruled by imagination and tends
to immerse himself in the poem. Unlike criticism, inter-
pretation.is not concerned with evaluation: to the inter-
preter there is no division between "good" and "bad."

The interpreter, unlike the critic, starts his task
from within.the poem itself: he accepts the poem on its
own.terms and attempts to work out from what Knight refers
to as "a centre of consciousness near that Of the creative
instinct Of the poet."2 It then becomes necessary for the
interpreter to divine the "creative instinct" of the poet,
which is perilously close to seeking his "intentions,"
though it is on the level of the imagination and not that
Of intellect or memory that Knight seeks to surprise the
poet. The interpreter, Knight believes, does not seek
merely to amass facts in order to come to a conclusion

about the poem but rather tries to get at the wholeness

 

lThe interpretative theory is thoroughly discussed
in.Chapter I, "On.the Principles Of Shakespeare Interpre-
tation," pp. 1—16. See also p. 26 of "Myth and Miracle,"
reprinted in.The Crown.2£ Life.

2

 

 

Wheel 2£_Fire, p. 33.

 

SO

51

of the poem through "the quality of the original poetic
experience."3

Interpretation, as Knight visualizes it, must be
metaphysical rather than.ethical.4 What Knight here means
by "metaphysical" is clear when he declares that: "Creation
is...born Of a union between "earth" and "heaven," the
material and the Spiritual."5 Poetry then.becomes an in»
carnation, a marriage Of time and eternity. We shall notice
later how Knight takes the symbolic imagery in.poetry to
form a permanent structure, which he refers to as the poem"s
"spatial" quality.

Knight regards each play Of Shakespeare as "a
visionary whole, close-knit in personification, atmospheric
suggestion, and direct poetic-symbolism: three modes of

6

transmission, equal in their importance.". It is by con.
centrating on the third of these, however, that Knight has
made his own abiding contribution.to ShakeSpearian.inter-
pretation. By "visionary whole" Knight means that the
poem has imaginative coherence, though he later sees poetry
Or the poet as "visionary" in the sense of "prOphetic";

the first chapter of The Christian.Renaissance (1933)

 

reveals this most strikingly: it is entitled "The PrOphe-
tic Imagination." By "personification" Knight is thinking
of symbolic character: Chapter XII Of The Wheel of Fire

 

 

 

is apprOpriately enough named "Symbolic Personification,"

 

31bid., p. 7. “Ibid., p. 11.
51bid., p. 8. 6Ibid., p. 11.

52

and he there asserts that Timon is "first a symbol, second
a human being."7 Since "atmospheric suggestion" can.hardly
exist apart from, and is determined by, symbolic character,
symbolic imagery, and symbolic action, it is evident that
the "three modes of transmission" are not "equal in their
importance," and that it is the interpreter"s finding
symbolic meanings in the imagery, character, and action
that determines what kind Of a "visionary whole" he finds
the play to be. Since religious ritual is itself realized
by one"s assuming the role of a symbolic character, speak-r
ing in symbolic language, and performing a symbolic action,
it is not at all unusual that Knight ultimately finds all
great poetry to be profoundly religious.8

In.his essay "On the Principles of ShakeSpeare

Interpretation" in.The Wheel of Fire, Knight formulates

 

what he takes to be "the main.principles Of right Shake-
spearian interpretation." The first Of these principles
is: "Before noticing the presence Of faults we should

first regard each play as a visionary unit bound to Obey

none but its own self-imposed laws."9

On the same page
he adds that "we should attempt to preserve absolute truth
to our own imaginative reaction," and that "we should at

all costs avoid selecting what is easy to understand and

 

71bid., p. 250.

8The Christian Renaissance, p. 252: "...All poetry
is ChrisEIEn:"" ” '

 

9Wheel 22 Fire, p. 14.

 

.53
forgetting the superlogical." Thus the play is unique,

imaginatively coherent, and subject only to whatever inn
herent qualities contribute to the overall reaction of

the interpreter. Furthermore, one should eschew the obvious
meanings and not hesitate to seek psychological or meta-
physical implications. The uniqueness of the play obviates,
and even renders impossible, the task of evaluating the

 

work of art. By stressing fidelity to one"s imaginative
reaction, Knight would appear to be Opening the door to
impressionistic criticism. But his fidelity to the text
is sometimes enough to forestall the lapse into complete
subjectivism.

The second principle is that: "We should be pre-
pared to recognize what I have called the "temporal" and
the "Spatial" elements."lo By "temporal" Knight is refer-
ring to the time-sequence Of the action in the play; and
by spatial he here means the "atmosphere, intellectual or
imaginative, which binds the play." The "Spatial" elements
are the metaphors which do SO much to create the atmosphere;
Knights goes so far as to see each play Of Shakespeare as

11

an expanded metaphor. It is important that Knight see

atmosphere as being sometimes intellectual, sometimes
imaginative, because on occasione- in.Troilus and Cressida,12

for examplen-he finds that the appeal is primarily to the

 

11 '
1°Ibid., pp. 14-15. Ibid., p. 15.

12£E£2., "The PhilOSOphy Of Troilus and Cressida,"
PP. 47-72. —---- —— _—_———

q

54
intellect rather than to the imagination. Moreover, in
his interpretation of Othello in The Wheel of Fire, "The

 

Othello Music," Knight concedes that: "Othello is a story
of intrigue rather than a visionary statement."13 That
Knight"s theory is not rigidly applied is apparent through—
out the Othello essay. It is in this essay that he finds
a play in.which the "dominant quality is separation, not,
as is more usual in Shakespeare, cohesion."lu Furthermore,
Knight in this essay allows that "metaphor is not essen»
tial to intensest Shakespearian power."15
Knight"s third principle Of Shakespearian inter-
pretation is that "We should analyse the use and meaning
Of direct poetic symbolismu-that is, events whose signifi-
cance can hardly be related to the normal processes of
actual life."16 But symbolism is not here confined to
imagery alone, but also includes purely aural effects:
Knight cites the discharge of cannon in.Hamlet and Othello
and the sound of trumpets in Measure for Measure and I_(_i_n_g

1?

Lear. This early reference to symbolic music is signifi-

 

cant, since Knight in.a slightly later book, The Shakespear-
ian.Tempest (1932), asserts that tempests in Opposition

with music "form the only principle Of unity in Shake-

spears."18

 

13Ibid., "The Othello Music," Chapter V. pp. 97-119-
4 l
1 Ibid., p. 98. 5Ibid., p. 101.
16 1

Ibid., p. 15. 7Loc. cit.

18The Shakespearian Tempest, p. 6.

55

The fourth and last Of Knight"s principles will be
deferred until the next chapter, where I discuss Knight"s
application Of his method to Shakespeare; it states that
the plays from Julius Caesar to The Tempest fit into a
significant sequence, which Knight calls "the ShakeSpeare
Progress".l9

Knight sees The Christian Renaissance as following

 

logically after his earlier work on Shakespeare, and he
devotes the first five chapters20 to the theory behind his
imaginative interpretations. It is in the first Of these,
"The PrOphetic Imagination," that he refers to his work as
"a new science Of poetic interpretation."21 It is here
too that Knight defines the imagination.as a blending of
emotion and intellect, the blend resulting in,a faculty
which transcends and controls both its constituent parts.22
Moreover, Knight attributes an element of love to all
imaginative apprehension.23 The next claim Knight makes
for the imagination is that it is sovereign and has a
hereditary claim to this sovereignty, though most peOple

24

today refuse to recognize it. Knight"s final claim for

the imagination clearly echoes Shelley; Knight maintains

 

lgWheel of Fire, p. 15.

zoNames Of titles: "The PrOphetic Imagination",
"Symbolism", "The ShakeSpearian Art-Form", "The New Test—
ament as an Art-Form", "Creative Newness".

21

 

The Christian.Renaissance, p. 4.

 

zzIbid-O. PP. 5-60 ZBIbid-O. Po 6.

2”Loo. cit.

56
that: "Imagination is always prophetic; it is prOphetic
because it is creative; and it is creative because one of
its parents is love."25 If imagination.is prOphetic,
then the poet is a prOphet; if the imagination.is sovereign,
then the poet is a king; and if the imagination.is a med-
iator between the eternal and the temporal, then the poet
is a priest; thus the poet has assumed the functions that
orthodox Christianity reserved for Christ: the poet is
prOphet-priest-king; it is hardly surprising, then, that
Knight goes on to make such large claims for poetry or that
he is continually making Christs out Of his poets-~Byron
and ShakeSpeare, for examples.26 Both Knight"s inter-
pretative method and his metaphysics rest completely upon
one thing: the sovereign imagination, and without it
neither would be possible.

Knight sees a vital relationship existing between
his interpretations Of Shakespeare and the Christian.theo-
logian"s exegesis of the Bible: "My interpretations of
Shakespeare bear the same relation to their original as
does the science of Christian theology to the Bible."27
This assertion.is not necessarily so astoundingly arrogant
as it at first might seem: Knight"s best work is the inter-
pretations in which he offers a close reading of Shake—

Speare that is analogous to a theologian"s exegesis Of

 

25Ibid. , p. 20.

26Lord Byron's Marriage, p. 282.

 

27The christian Renaissance, p. 35.

 

57

scriptures. This assertion.by Knight also explains why
at times one might suspect Knight of applying the Old
fourfold method of interpretation with a vengeance: one
sometimes feels that the allegorical and the anagogical
levels have gotten completely out of hand. Sometimes,
however, as in his essay "Measure £23 Measure and the
Gospels,"28 Knight"s finding allegorical meanings in the
symbolism is fruitful even if not objectively verifiable.

Interpretation to Knight is not Simply literary
creation.thrown in reverse gear: "If interpretation were
to extract from the art-form only the thought or emotion
put into it deliberately and consciously by the poet,
together with any other essences that pro—existed or in
some other way were independent of the creative act, it
would be valueless."29 Furthermore, Knight goes on to
say: "Interpretation does not aim to extract what was
originally integrated. It does not try to reverse the
creative process but rather receives the whole creation
as a unique reality pointing to the future, and then does
the best it can.to interpret in whatever terms seem most
adequate this magical and mysterious reality."3o An
interpretative method that involved only the extraction
Of the thought would surely lead back to the nineteenth-
century attempts to make Shakespeare a moralist or phil-

OSOpher. The extracting of emotion would be a return to

 

28Wheel g£_Fire, pp. 73-96..

 

29The Christian Renaissance, p. 67. 30Loc. cit.

 

58

the romantic preoccupation with ShakeSpeare the man. The
"essences that pre-existed " are the materials which source-
hunters are interested in. Any interpretative method that
simply breaks down the work Of art into its component parts
Knight rejects. Knight regards the work of art as an
indivisible entity that must be understood in its whole—
ness or not at all. Furthermore, he finds that the work
of art is greater than the sum Of its parts: "Creation
is a multiplication of elements rather than an addition,
and you cannot solve the mystery of poetry by a subtrac-
tion sum."31

The task Of the producer Of a ShakeSpeare play is,
according to Knight in.his Principles 2: Shakespearian
Production.(l936), essentially that of interpretation.

 

Though Knight prescribes that the producer begin.first

with a close intellectual analysis of the play,32 yet the
ultimate Objective of the producer is not intellectual

but imaginative: "The producer's business is not trans-
lation, but recreation."33 If there is any doubt as to
Knight"s meaning an.imaginative "recreation," he resolves
any such doubt later in the same book when he urges that

"the first duty of film and stage alike is interpretationo'Bu
I have already demonstrated that for Knight the imagination

and not the intellect is sovereign in his interpretative work.

 

jlnid.’ p. 68.

32PrinciplesBEShakespearian Production, p. 49.

33Ibid., p. 52. Bulbid., p. 215.

 

59
AS late as The Sovereign Flower (1958) Knight,

 

restating his principles of Shakespearian interpretation,
reiterated his belief that "we must start our interpre-
tation from the thing to be interpreted."35 Yet he some-
times deviates from this in practice, and he is aware of

it. In.Chariot_2f EEEEE.‘19&2)' Knight found that his
method of close textual exegesis was inadequate to explain
Milton's work fully. After admitting that his own inter-
’pretation Of Milton"s work has been "something of a re-
creation," Knight went on to modify-~though not to retract--

his strictures on Paradise Lost that had appeared in The

 

Burning Oracle: "Adverse criticism Of great literature
must always remain provisional. Where direct interpre-
tation proves impossible, our method must be indirect. We
have therefore turned on Milton's later poetry full know-
ledge of his life and times, together with three centuries
of national experience."36 This was after he had earlier
asserted in the same book that "our reading;[§f Paradise

Lost cannot be a pure, artistic, receptivity, as with

 

Shakespeare. My usual method of neglecting considerations
Outside the statement of the art-form itself breaks down."37

It Should be kept in mind, though, that in The Chariot of

 

Wrath Knight was more concerned with applying Milton.to

 

 

35The sovereign Flower, p. 2550
36chariot 2: Wrath, p. 169-
37Ibid., p. 121.

6o
contemporary problems than he was in interpreting Milton's
poetry as art.

In.another of his wartime publications, The Olive

 

and_thg_§wgrd (1944), Knight defends his interpretations
Of various symbols in.the following way: "But you may
say, neither the works Of Shakespeare, nor our Britannia
and Saint George symbolisms, no, nor the Crown,,need
necessarily possess those meanings I attribute to them,
nor exert those compulsions I urge. NO-they need not.

Poetic perception, like religious faith, 15 no passive

 

 

truth concerned being dynamic and needing, as does the
actor's art, a lively reSponse for its realisation."38

The italics are mine, since it is important we notice that
the "poetic perception" is not that of the creative artist
but rather that Of the interpreter. Moreover, Knight"s
constant and continual relating Of religious faith and the
imaginative faculty-~here in.the form of poetic perception»-
supports my assertion that in the final analysis Knight"s
concept of the imagination takes the place in.his meta-
physical scheme that grace occupies in the orthodox Christa
ian scheme. In Knight"s scheme it is the sovereign, pro-
phetic, synthesizing, reconciling imagination that is God's
greatest gift to man.39 Without asserting that the

 

38The Olive and the Sword, p. 100.

39Loc. cit.; in.a paraphrase Of a biblical passage
Knight goes SO far as to maintain that "where there is no
imagination, the peOple, sooner or later, perish."

61
interpreter actually collaborated with the creative artist
in the composition of the work of art there is nothing more
that Knight can.claim for the interpreter than he claims
in.the above quotation. The interpreter, as Knight
indicates at the end of the italicized passage, enters
into a vital relationship with the creative artist. The
artist is thus dependent upon the poetic perception of
his interpreter. A sensitive imagination is undoubtedly
valuable, but there is nonetheless a decided difference

between poetic creativity and poetic receptivity. It is

 

interesting that Knight, in Spite of his identification

of the imagination.with religious powers and faculties,
-nevertheless makes a sharp division in his own.work between
his imaginative interpretations and his personal beliefs;

in.the Preface to Christ and Nietzsche (1948), Knight

 

states that "my own writings in this kind are, however,
always imaginative interpretations: my own religious
beliefs, as opposed to the impersonal imagination, are
seldom to be found in them."l"o

Enough has been.revealed of Knight"s theory Of poetic
interpretation to permit a few generalizations. It should
be apparent that Knight regards each poem-and a Shake-
Speare play he treats as a poem-~as an organic structure
that must be considered in its uniqueness. Knight regards
the imagination.not only as the faculty which creates the

poem but also as the best means for its interpretation.

 

uoChrist and Nietzsche, p. 9.

 

“Lid...

62
The poet and the interpreter, both employing the impersonal,
creative imagination, actively OOOperate in order that the
poem may realize its full potentiality. The most Obvious
weakness in this theory is that the tasks of the creative
artist and the interpreter become confused, resulting in
interpretative work that is neither creative art nor liter-
ary criticism. As long as Knight"s ideal interpreter
remains faithful to the text, there is a check upon his
imaginative flights. But when Knight himself in practice
deviates from his principles of interpretation, then all
sorts Of political, metaphysical, futuristic, and apoc-
alyptic Speculations take the place of literary inter—
pretation. Knight"s concept Of the imagination embraces
both the synthesizing imagination Of Coleridge and the
prOphetic imagination of Shelley. Everything that Knight
has ever written either implicitly or explicitly reveals
his often-stated belief in the supremacy of the imagina-
tion. It is this that most emphatically puts Knight on

the side of the romantics.

From Knight"s concept Of interpretation.and the
ideal interpreter let us turn to his theory of art and the
creative artist. Already in.Myth and Miracle (1929),
Knight was relating art and religion.by means of the imag-
ination, which he sees as common.tO both. He asserts that
"art is an extraverted expression of the creative imagines

41

tion.which, when introverted, becomes religion." When

 

41
Crown.2£ Life, pp. 22-23.

 

1‘

63
Knight goes on to maintain that "the artist, in process
of growth, may be forced beyond the phenomena of actuality
into a world of the spirit which scarcely lends itself to
a purely artistic, and therefore objective, imitation,"b'2
he is referring to the occasional inadequacy Of what T. S.
Eliot has called the "objective correlative". In all fair-
ness to Knight, we should keep in mind the context in which
these quotations occur: Knight is discussion the final
plays of ShakeSpeare and is trying to explain away certain
technical imperfections which critics have found in them--

the "crude anthrOpOmorphism" in the Jupiter scene of

Cymbeline, for examplen-by emphasizing the increasing

 

inwardness of the poet's intuition and the consequent
difficulty he had in Objectifying his mystical vision.
Again we should note that Knight"s regarding great art

as mystical visions is present in his work from the begin-
ning: Knight emphasizes the anagogical and allegorical
levels of meaning throughout his work, and it is not sur-
prising that ShakeSpeare"s last five plays, which do lend
themselves to this treatment, should be regarded as the
greatest art, Knight valuing The Tempest as "at the same
time the most perfect work of art and the most crystal

act of mystic vision in our literature."L"3

In The Wheel of Fire Knight claims that "the work

 

Of a great poet, when it reveals a rhythm of spiritual

 

"21bid., p. 25.
“31bid., p. 28.

64
develOpment across a Span of years, is Of extreme interest
and value, not alone to the man of letters, but to the meta-
physician and the theologian; for the poetic faculty is
exactly this-uthe power to express with clarity the dark-
est and deepest truths of the mind or soul. In prOportion
as we admit Shakespeare to be a great poet, we must admit
his works to be a revelation, not Of fancy, but Of truth."uu
Certainly a lofty concept Of poetry, but one that just as
certainly leads away from the poetry itself. The Spiritual
develOpment in Shakespeare that Knight finds culminating
in.the final plays is here erected into a general law
equally applicable to other great poets. Even if one
accepts Knight"s dictum that this "rhythm of Spiritual devel-
Opment" is of interest to the metaphysician and the theo-
logian, he need not accept the unwritten corollary that the
man of letters concern himself with metaphysics and theo-
logy. Knight is again claiming the poetic imagination to
be the avenue to the profoundest truths, those of psychology
and religion. For Knight the highest art thus becomes an
objectively realized expression of the poet's religious
experience.

Yet elsewhere in The Wheel of Fire, Knight sees

 

all art as a bridge linking the world of Spiritual essences
with the mundane world: "All art is a means Of relating

the higher, beyond-thought, super-state to the lower, normal,

 

uuWheel 2i Fire, “p. 214'“.

 

65
consciousness of society."u5 Poetry to Knight is nothing
less than the Word Made Flesh; in Myth and_Miracle he
refers to the "Divine Logos of Poetry." The context of
this reference is the concluding paragraph of Myth and
Miracle, in.which Knight is indicating, but not developing,
a comparison between the parts Of Dante's Divine Comedy--
Hell, Purgatory, and Paradise-aand the three groups of
ShakeSpeare"s greater plays, the Problems, Tragedies, and
Myths. The work of Dante and the work of ShakeSpeare
reflect, according to Knight, "the incarnation in actual-
ity of the Divine Logos of Poetry: the temptation in the
desert, the tragic ministry and death, and the resurrec-

tion of the Christ."46

Thus it is evident that already
in 1929 Knight was preoccupied with metaphysical, none

literary, matters. It is, as he states in The Christian

 

Renaissance(l933), the "futurity about high poetry"l"'7 that

 

he wishes to emphasize.
The prominence of symbolic imagery in his interpre-

tative work is again.indicated when Knight in The Christian

 

Renaissance defines poetry as "words inflated by mind, if

we allow "mind" to cover emotion and thought alike."48 It

 

is the fusing of a concrete image with a Spiritual meaning

that produces the poetic metaphor. But Knight does not

 

u51bid., p, 303 ("Hamlet Reconsidered").

Crown.2£ Life, p. 31.

 

4?

usIbld-Q, p. 25.

The Christian Renaissance, p. 6.

 

66
restrict poetry to concrete imagery, for he regards all
language as metaphoric, when powerfully used.’49 For poetry
is a "fusion of the subjective mind with words to create

"50 and abstract nouns too

a potent and living utterance,
may be used poetically. The influence Of Coleridge is
patent throughout Knight"s theory Of art.

The influence of psychoanalytical theory is also
present in Knight"s work. For example, he asserts that
"the artist works in terms Of repressed and sublimated

.51

instincts. Elsewhere in.The Christian Renaissance

 

Knight sees the main.statement Of poetry as "life and love,
the erotic quest."52 Knight develops the well-known theory
that art derives from the tension.between desire and real-
ization, and that the need for art would not be present
were human existence as harmonized as that Of animals.

Art, according to Knight, not only derives from such
insufficiency but also exists to remedy it. Knight"s
theory Of art as sublimated instinct is evident when he
writes that: "It appears then that in SO far as the artist
satisfies his desires he can dispense with art; in SO far
as he is forced to repress and sacrifice them, he will tend
to liberate them by artistic expression, surrendering them
to marriage with words, images, stories."53

In spite of Knight"s seeing the instinctual biological

 

“999.2: 212- 5011". mo. 13- 26- 511mm, p. 31.

521bid., p. 212. 53Christian Renaissance, p. 31.

 

67
drive as motivating the artist, he does not long keep this
theory free of religious implications. He relates morality
and artistic technique as follows: "Whether in art or life,
submission and control are necessary: technique is the
morality Of art, just as morality is the technique of life."5h
Furthermore, "Art is an earnest of heavenly riches. And
it is highly moral: for art is the surrendering of inn
stincts to a material medium and universal purpose, with
all that that implies; and morality is the surrendering
Of instinct to an end sanctioned by a judgment which re-
gards the future as well as the present, the community as
well as the individual."55 Knight identifies the moral
will with form in art and sees both concepts ultimately
vanishing: perfectly harmonized instincts and an art that
expresses form throughout the "organic whole" no longer
require external controls. The essentially romantic
Knight is here Obvious. The romantic antipathy for exter-
nal controlu-whether artistic or mora1--is thus presented
in its classic form. Knight can be said to be an extreme
individualist: discipline is made an internal matter
ultimately indistinguishable from the organic wholeness
of the work of art or the harmonized instincts of the in-
dividual. Knight"s conclusion is that: "The harmonies
of art are thus born from and induce a harmony of being:

art and morality converge."56

 

5uE9-. Cit. 55113151., p. 32.

 

561.100. 011:.

68

With the premises that Knight starts from-~that art
is sublimated instinct that not only derives from but
serves to harmonize our discordant instinctual selves--
it is logical that he should deem "the making of a symbol
or of poetry" to be "not only a fine way of expressing
difficult things" but also " highly moral act": "The
only immoral art is bad art."57

Since Knight sees the highest art and the great-
est fact of religion.as Incarnations, it is not surprising
that he should see evil as a disuniting force separating
Spiritual significances and material forms. If we concene
trate upon the material fact, we have science. If we con-
centrate upon Spiritual significances to the exclusion of
facts, we have philOSOphy. Now it would seem that Knight
would have the highest praise for the writers who fused
the material and the Spiritual so perfectly that they are
no longer distinguishable or separable. But Knight does
not say this. Categorizing literary artists by their
ability to fuse the material fact and the spiritual essence
he states that: "We have accordingly three types of lit-
erary artist: the Dantesque, where philOSOphy and narra~
tive seem fairly distinct; the Chaucerian or Tolstoyan,
where the one is SO perfectly incarnated in the other that
no distinction seems possible; and the Shakespearian, set
between the two, where we watch the process of marriage and

resultant incarnation continually being acted before us,

 

57.1129.- 9.1.2.-

69
the philOSOphy appearing to vary according to the work in
hand."58 Since Knight sees the dualism resulting from
the separation.of fact and spiritual significance as the
root of all evil, and since all symbolic creations—which
to Knight includes both religion.and poetry-uis concerned
with uniting material fact and Spiritual essence, he de-
cides that "the most important works are those which may
be felt reintegrating the two worlds that have fallen
asunder."59 Therefore the supremely great art is that
best represented by Shakespeare's plays, where this inte-
grating process is, according to Knight, continually going
on before our eyes. Shakespeare thus becomes "the great
poet of incarnate life," since Knight feels that in.Shake-
6O

speare ""Naked Spirit" is...all but correlevant to evil."

But Knight elsewhere in.The Christian.Renaissance states

 

that "all evil is to be regarded as an imperfect incar-

nation.of instincts."61

It would appear that Knight is
not quite clear about this matter; evil would seem to be
of three kinds: that which separates, the state Of separa-
tion, and any imperfect attempt at integration Of Spirit
and matter.

The inconsistency in Knight"s theorizing is else-

where apparent: at one time in.The Christian Renaissance

Knight writes that: : "The plays Elf ShakeSpeare] are vivid

 

experiences, to be lived through and judged not as life-

 

581b1de, Fe 399 59?;20 E2.
6° 61Ibid., p. 48.

Ibid. , p. “’30

70
memories but as life, not as a distillation of experience

62 At another he states that: "we

but as experience."
may regard poetry as an abstraction from life; a more per-
fect, because more concrete, abstraction than factual
narrative on the one side and_philOSOphy on the other, but
still an abstraction."63 Now, Knight regards Shakespeare"s
plays as poems; either he is tacitly exempting Shakespeare
from his statement about poetry"s being an abstraction

from life or he is contradicting himself.

Knight in The Christian Renaissance is attempting

 

to reconcile Eros and Agape, and it should not be surpris-
ing that he notes approvingly that: "Medieval literature
with its elaborate Christian allegorization and romantic
feeling often approaches the marriage of poetry and Christ-

6“ But

ianity which it is my present purpose to forward."
Knight sees a wide chasm yawning between the poetic state-
ment and that of Christianity: "The main.statement of

poetry is life and love, the erotic quest; the main.state-
ment in.the New Testament is also life and love, universal

65

love." Knight would seem to be approaching a vitalis-

tic view when he argues: "But whether expressed in human
marriage, social work or art, the erotic instinct is pri-
mary; it is the life-instinct."66 Knight concludes that:
"NO art, no religion, is to take precedence of life it-

self."67 But in.Spite of the Opposition.between Eros and

 

62

Ibid., p. 37. 631b1dl , .p. “'9. 6nIb1do, AP. 185.

65113.12" P- 212- 661b1d-. p. 217. 67Ibid.. p. 223.

71

Christ that Knight sees threatening modern civilization,
he is still able to claim that "all poetry is Christian,"
for two reasons: 1. The task of poetry, the harmonizing
of our instinctual lives, is an essentially religious and
hence Christian task; and 2. the central doctrine of .
Christianity, the Incarnation, is, according to Knight,
essentially poetic.68 Knight goes so far as to declare
that the Renaissance poets attain to Christian grace by
means Of their erotically-inspired art.69

In.many of Knight"s later writings he alters his
esthetic theory in order to account for the homosexual
tendencies he sees in certain great artists, such as
Shakespeare and Byron, and in order to find a means of
reconciling one of his dualisms, that of Power and Love,
the masculine and the feminine. Knight discusses this
matter in.an essay he added to the later editions Of The

Christian.Renaissance, "The Seraphic Intuition," as well

 

 

and The Golden Labyrinth, (1955, 1957, and 1962 reSpective-

 

1y) for examples. His argument goes as follows: art
exists to resolve the tension between the masculine and
feminine elements in the human psyche. Sometimes the
masculine predominates in the individual, and sometimes the
feminine. The Uranian personality exists when.a feminine

temperament is yoked to a masculine body, or, which is

 

68

69Ib1de, PO 255.

Ibid., p. 252.

72
rarer, a masculine temperament is yoked to a feminine
body.70
inwardly integrated, able to understand far more than

The Uranian, or Seraphic, personality is often

either a wholly masculine or a completely feminine indivi-
dual. Since the Uranian, or bisexual, personality seeks
love among members of his own sex there is no possibility
of resolving the sexual tension.in the natural way on the
biological plane. Knight sees much great art-~that of
Shakespeare and Byron, for example-as motivated by energies
that have been diverted from their usual sexual expression.
However, the seraphic temperament need not always seek ful-
fillment in art: the perfectly integrated seraphic temp-
erament-~Christ, as Knight finds him to beu-will substitute
a universal love for the more frequently encountered erotic
variety. But in any event, Knight concludes, it is nec-
essary for the continuance of civilization that all ener-

gies are not to be directed to biological fulfillment.

Before entering into a discussion of Knight"s
theory of poetic drama we should examine his celebrated
"Spatial" method of interpretation. Like many Of Knight"s
theories and methods this too has been with him from the
start and is still employed, though on.occasion, as in his
interpretation of Milton in.Chariot 9£_Wrath, Knight de-

viates from it in practice.

 

'70339 Edward Carpenter"s The Intermediate Sex,
London, 1908.

 

73
In The Wheel 2: Fire Knight writes that "one must

 

be prepared to see the whole play of ShakeSpeare in

Space as well as in time."71

By the temporal element of
drama Knight means the story-interest, the action, the
sequence of events that unfold as the plot develops. By
the Spatial Knight means a permanent symbolic structure
composed of imagery,,themes, and patterns. Sometimes he
refers to the Spatial qualities of a play as its atmos-
phere, but always he means something independent of the
time-sequence. At one time the spatial quality might re-
veal itself in.a permanent ideological Oppositions—the
intuitionpintelligence Opposition in Troilus and Cressida,
for example; at another timeit is the relationship
existing between the Othello, Desdemona, and Iago concep-

tions.72

Ultimately the distinction between the temporal
and the Spatial is the difference between the elements
in.poetry that Knight sees as subject to time and those
that reveal the dimension of eternity. As Knight states
in.The Christian Renaissance, "the constituting elements
[éf all poetry] grow out of date in.a year, an hour, a
minute, but the eXperience symbolized is dateless."73 It
is this permanent element which,reveals the Spiritual
essence, the eternal quality of art, that Knight calls

"Spatial." The dynamic quality of art is of the temporal

 

 

71Wheel of Fire, p. 3.
72Loc. cit.
73

Christian Renaissance., p. 96.

74
order, while the static, changeless quality is Spatial.
The Spatial quality of a poetic drama is the embodiment of
its Spiritual essence, which is the imaginative, intuitive
experience or insight for which the poet seeks an Objec—
tive equivalent.

The Spatial quality Knight also defines as the struc-
ture that reveals "that burning core of mental or Spirit-
ual reality from which each play derives its nature and
meaning."7u Knight"s Spatial element has much in common
with what Eliot Offered the literary world as the now-
famous "objective correlative." The resemblance is even
more pronounced when one recalls that both Knight and Eliot
were seeking to escape the nineteenth-century preoccupation
with plot, character, story-interest, and the photographic
representation of reality. What resemblance an Eliot poem
has to reality comes not in the temporal sequence of events
but in the imagery, drawn from actuality but charged by
the poet with symbolic meanings. In his "On the Principles
Of ShakeSpeare Interpretation," Knight declares that "we
Should not look for perfect verisimilitude to life, but
rather see each play [bf ShakespearE] as an expanded meta-
phor, by means Of which the original vision has been.pro-
jected into forms roughly correspondent with actuality,
conforming thereto with greater or lesser exactitude accord-

ing to the demands of its own nature."75 Drama by its very

 

7“'WheeliagFire, p. 14.

 

75Ibid., p. 15.

75

nature is more external than.any other form of literature;
it is Knight"s insistence upon the importance of the poetic
vision Of Shakespeare's plays to the exclusion of the ele-
ments of plot and character and various tOpical concerns
that is at once his major contribution to Shakespeare
scholarship and his major weakness. It is this that
brought upon.Knight criticisms such as that of Charlton
that I quoted in.the last chapter.

If poetry is an ideal fusion of Space and time,

then it partakes of eternity; in Laureate 22 Peace, Knight

 

declares that: "Space-time is eternity, and art an approxi-
mation to its expression."76 Thus it is easy to under-
stand what Knight means when he writes that "Space-time
seeing has about it a certain forwardness, a prophetic
element."77 There are certain Obvious similarities be—
tween some Of the statements in S. Alexander's S2232,

2222! End Deity and Knight"s theory of art. Alexander
writes that:w "Time is the mind of Space and Space the

body of Time."78 Knight, like Alexander and Oswald

 

with the intellect and Space with structure.

There is another statement-~Knight denies having

 

76Laureate 2: Peace, p. 81.

 

77Christian Renaissance, p. 12.

8

7 S. Alexander, Space, Time, and Deity, London,
1920, 2 vols.; Vol. II, BET-III'_UfiapE. 2, p. “38.

79

1927, p. 122. —

 

 

76
read Alexanderégin Alexander's two-volume work with which
Knight‘s esthetic theory has obvious affinities: ""Thus
in.the beautiful object, whether of art or nature, one
part is contributed by the mind, and it is relatively a
matter of indifference whether the mind in question is
that of the person who creates the work of art or that of
the mere Spectator, who follows in the artist's traces."81
When.one recalls Knight's view that the interpreter and
the artist cOOperate to realize the full potentialities
of the work of art, one can see the resemblance. Or when
we recall that the interpreter's principal task, according
to Knight, is to imagine himself into the original poetic
experience, we can.again see the resemblance. The impor~
tance of the imagination, which is the mind‘s contribution,
again shows Knight's affinity with Coleridge and the
romantics.

Poetic imagery is most important in Knight's spaces
time scheme, for the ability to see significant patterns
in the space-time world is what makes the poet a "seer"
or a prOphet. The imaginative sight itself, according to
Knight, is not ordinary Space-sight, but is a mental real~

ity only-82

Poetic imagery becomes important because it
is only in that form that imaginative sight can.be expressed

in.visual or aural terms. In order to capture the Spiritual

 

. 80
3, 196a.

81Alexander, Vol. II, p. 291.
82

In.a private letter to this writer dated January

Christian Renaissance, p. 13.

 

77

essence of a poem one must be able to hold the images in
a significant pattern while at the same time letting them
go by sequentially in the temporal flux: "We must see a
poem first as a rapid series of complex pictures; next,
keeping the whole in our memory, try to possess its images
in.one expansive view without forgettnng the series."83
Certainly no easy task, when.we recall that poetic drama
takes hours to view and that the early imagery fades out
of consciousness as the later appears. It would seem that
only the cloistered scholar and the man with a phenomenal
memory would be able to construct the metaphoric structure
of a play in.his mind and keep it there while later waves
of action continue to assault his sensibility. But this
apparently is what Knight would have.

Knight's "Spatial“ theory is at odds with the esthe—
tic theory of Lessing, who in his Laccoon (1766) discussed
the limits of painting and poetry. Painting is primarily
concerned with figures and colors in Space while poetry is
largely realized by means of articulate sounds in time.
The two art-forms approach each other, since painting can
imitate actions (which occur in temporal sequences), but
only through bodies (which exist side by side in Space);
and poetry can imitate painting, but only through actions.
G. Wilson Knight's "spatial“ theory of course assumes the
necessity of capturing the imagery as it occurs in the temp-

oral sequences of poetry and constructing out of it a

 

83Ib1d., p. 1n.

78

mind—structure. Lessing rejects the theory that Knight
refers to as his “Spatial" theory. First he presents the
kind of objection.to his own theory that Knight's view
would raise: ”But some will object, the signs or characn
ters which poetry employs are not solely such as succeed
each other; they may be also arbitrary; and, §§_arbitrary
535259.E§EZ.E 2 certainly capable of representing bodies

Just as they exist inispace. We find instances of this

 

 

in Homer himself, for we have only to remember his Shield
of Achilles, in.order to have the most decisive example
in.how detailed and yet poetical manner some single thing
can be depicted, with its various parts side by sideo'au
[Italics mine] Lessing demolished the "spatial" theory
in.the following way: "I do not deny to Speech in general
the power of portraying a bodily whole by its parts:

Speech can do so, because its signs or characters, although
they follow one another consecutively, are nevertheless
arbitrary signs; but I do deny it to Speech as the medium
of poetry, because such verbal delineations of bodies fail
of the illusion on which poetry particularly depends, and
this illusion, I contend, must fail them for the reason

that the co-existence of the physical objectcomes into

collision with the consecutiveness of speech, and the form

 

mer being resolved into the latter, the dismemberment of
the whole is made uncommonly difficult and not seldom im-
;possible.'85 Therefore Lessing concludes that: ”It still

_

8M'Gotthold Ephraim Lessing, Laccodn, Nathan the Wise

and Minna von Barnhelm, London, 1914-9, p. 5 e

 

 

 

 

85Ibid., p. 63.

79 ‘
holds good; succession in time is the Sphere of the poet,
as Space is that of the painter."86

The spatial elements in Shakespearian drama Knight
allows to be both the imaginative design and the philoso-
phic significance of the play, while the temporal may be
both the story and the plot. It is the incarnated thoughts
and feelings of the poet that form the “spatial' element.87
Elsewhere Knight calls the Spatial quality an.'emotional
field'.88 Here he calls the temporal sequence the "hor-
izontal time-stream“ and makes the spatial quality “verti-
cal“. The vertical dimension is the world not of time
but of immediate eXperience, the world of immortality.89
Thus we see that what began as a metaphoric structure has
become a tower of Babel designed to scale the heights of
heaven. The rapidity with which Knight converted an inter.
pretative device, good within its limits, into a metaphysi-
cal scheme is indicative of the quick shifts-foreshadowed
in his earliest work-nfrom literary interpretation to meta-
physical Speculation. The Spatial method, which began
with a metaphoric structure ends with a metaphysical one.

Later, in.his The Starlit Dome, (19u1), Knight
applied his spatial method to four of the romanticsu.
Wordsworth, Coleridge, Shelley, and Keats-wand we again
find the Spatial or vertical dimension leading to eternity

or immortality: 'Art is born from a Jerking of consciousness

 

861bid., pp, 5n-65. 87Christian Renaissance, p. 37.

881b1do, P. 182. 8910C. Cit.

80
outside and above itself, throwing responsibility on to

a higher centre, and technical structures are the medium

 

through which this other domination.i§ conjured into exisp

 

 

 

 

22222.,90 The italics are mine because I wish to empha—
size Knight's use of a metaphoric structure to suggest
permanence, immortality, eternity. With the poetry pro-
viding a view of eternity it is not then unusual that Knight
refers to Wordsworth, the creator of such poetry, as 'a
lonely prOphet of the eternal.'91 We will recall that
Knight's first published article, which appeared in.The
Adelphi in.1926, was a note 0n,Wordsworth's Immortality

Ode and that his ”The Poet and Immortality,“ which appeared
the following year in.Thg_Shakespeare Review, outlined

his thesis concerning ShakeSpeare's last plays. Therefore
it need not seem surprising that Knight is The Starlit
Dome should state that: 'Wordsworth's ode, like Shake.

 

speare's Pericles or Shelley's Prometheus, is a vision of
92
I

 

immortality or life victorious. When we remember that
Knight sees immortality as a vertical dimension.completely
free from the horizontal, temporal, dimension, it is not
odd that he goes on to add that Wordsworth's ode "need
have nothing to say about life-after-death. It is rather
a vision of essential, all-conquering life.,"93 For life-

after-death would be a continuation of the temporal sequence

 

90Starlit Dome, p. 38.
91

93

Ibid., P. 12. gzlbid.’ p. 39.

L00. cit.

81

unchecked by death, which Knight never sees immortality
as being. The Iall-conquering life" is another reference
to Knight's vitalistic gospel, which sees the erotic
instinct as at least equal with the universal love of
Christ. When Knight Judges that in the poetry of Words-
worth ‘there is a failure in face of erotic powers,'9u he
is again manifesting his vitalistic belief.

Knight's desire to see art as a blend of time and

eternity is apparent throughout The Starlit Dome and the

 

title itself is indicative of its author's central pre-
occupation. In this work it is Coleridge who best fits
Knight's purpose, possibly because Coleridge has, ultimate—
ly, exerted a more profound influence upon Knight than.any
other literary figure. Knight in.The Starlit 2222 perhaps
succeeds best with Coleridge because he sees so much of
himself in.that great romantic poet and metaphysician,
who, like Knight, lost himself in endless metaphysical
speculations and who, like Knight, used the sovereign
imagination as a means of harmonizing so many of the dis-
cords of life. Consequently Knight finds that in.The

Garden of Boccaccio Coleridge “feels literary art as, pre—

 

eminently, a fusion of the fluid and statuesque, of sequence
and pattern, content and form: which indeed, it is, all
poetry aiming to blend, as it were, the river and dome of

Kubla Khan.'95 Even Coleridge, though, lends himself to

 

gulbid., p. 82._
95Ibid., p. 117.

82
Knight's purposes only within certain limits, limits which
are not reSpected when Knight writes that: 'Whatever his
confessed beliefs and religious acceptances, Coleridge's
genius when given to full-length and complex dramatic

creation obeys a poetic law functioning similarly £3

 

Shakespeare, Byron, and Nietzsche, and his designing here

 

 

implicitly charges our religious heritage with a certain
decadence, a loss of contact with power-sources and heroic
virility...."96[§talics miné] As he did in Laureate of_
‘22222 with POpe, and in.Th§_Burning Oracle with diverse
literary figures, Knight is here doing with Coleridge:
he is violently forcing a literary figure into a preconn
ceived patternnoKnight calls it “obeying a poetic lawfaa
in order to serve his own private, somewhat eccentric,
metaphysical ends. But from Knight's vieWpoint we should
regard Coleridge as being greatly honored: he has been
favorably compared with members of Knight's pantheon,
Shakespeare, Byron, and Nietzsche, men.in whose work
Knight finds a ”blend of instinct with sanctity and of
power with the grace to make a golden humanism.oo.“97
Knight is forever dragging in transcendental cate-
gories; in.Thg_Starlit 2222 he writes that: “Eternity is
the obJective view of subjective experience: hence the

importance of poetry."98 And later in the same work he

 

96Ibid., p. 158.
97122- 212.-
981.1119.. p. 203.

\ IfOi

Q
C
C
I
.
Y
t ( K
.C"
O
1 I (b
A U

83
asserts that: "Each poem is a unique whole, with its own
way of introducing us afresh to transcendental awareness.n99
One last quotation, this time from the Appendix to the 1959
edition of The Starlit 2223: ''From the ancient world down,
from Homer and Aeschylus to Byron.and Hardy, the business
of great literature may be defined as the interweaving of
human affairs with spiritualistic appearances....'loo This
should be enough to indicate that Knight's primary concern
is not with literature as literature but with literature
as prOphecy or philOSOphy, or religious statement, or an
embodiment of eternal spiritual essences. What Thomas Hulme
accuses the romantics of forever doing-«of always 'drage
ging in.the infinite'-Knight is also continually doing,
and on his own admission.in.LgEd'Byronfis Marriage: “In
one form or another, transcendental categories continually

.101

invade our discussion. If one asks for evidence of

Knight's obsession with the infinite from his interpre-
tations of Shakespeare instead of from books such as The

Christian Renaissance or The Starlit Dome, neither of which

 

is concerned with Shakespearian interpretation.(though The

Christian Renaissance contains much theory), I refer him

 

to The Wheel of Fire, where Knight declares that:'The

 

grandeur and essential optimism of the true Shakespearian

 

991b1d., p. 314.

looThe Starlit Dome (1959 ed.), p. 316.

101Lord Byron's Marriage, p. 261.

DII'

8h
tragedy is due to these two elements: passion and death.
And both equally 'bring in.the infinite'.'102 But the
infinite came in very early in Knight's work: it was
present from the time of his first published article on
Wordsworth's Immortality Ode and present in his Shake-
speare interpretation from the time of his first published

statements in The Shakespeare Review. What happens in

 

Knight's later work is not that he becomes romantic, or
that he becomes increasingly preoccupied with the infinite;
he was a romantic preoccupied with immortality from the
start. What he does do iS turn from ShakeSpeare, whom he
knows intimately, to other writers whom he knows less
well; he discovers nationalism; he becomes acquainted with
Nietzsche's work; he modifies his erotic esthetic to
account for the homosexual artist; he becomes a Spiritual—
ist; he ceases to pay attention to the integrity of the
individual work of art or even the individual writer; he
starts seeing everything in terms of Hegelian Oppositions;
and he begins to repeat himself.

There is another element in Knight's esthetic theory.
that owes something to the romantics. Poetry is expression,
but not Just the personalistic, peculiarly private, utter—
ance of the individual poet. In The Wheel 2E.El£§.Kn13ht

 

finds poetry to be “largely a revelation.of 'soul' or
Ispirit'.'1°3 (The experiences of the poet that his work

 

1°2whee1 2; Fire, p. 2H5.

 

1°3Ibid., p. 286.

85
mirrors are not Just his private emotions or subJective

feelings; in.The Christian Renaissance Knight declares

 

that: "All great poetry mirrors our experiences, our
immortality.'lou Furthermore, there is a universality of
spiritual experiences: whether the poet is Shakespeare,
Dante, or Goethe, 'our greater deathless selves are all
alike," and the poet's life-work is always 'a record of
his own and our own immortality'.lo5

Elsewhere in The Christian Renaissance Knight shows

 

yet another instance of romantic theory: I'The poet sees
with the romantic vision. He does not write actually sat-
urated in its fire, but recreates his eXperiences in.pass-

.106

ivity. This obviously goes straight back to Words«

worth's Preface to the Lyrical Ballads. In his Principles

 

of Shakespearian Production Knight again refers to the cream

 

tive process: “Whatever personal distresses and conflicts

of his day the artist bodies forth, the resulting still»

 

 

ness makes a significant wedge into life exposing light
107
II

 

for other generations with other conflicts. Italics
mine] This resulting stillness is in the product, but it
had its origin in the process: “The germ of composition
is an intuitive perception of stillness of some sort, an

idea or quality."108

 

lo“Christian Renaissance, p. 198. loSLoc. cit.

 

106Ibid., p. 202.

107Principles of Shakespearian Production, p. no.
108

 

 

Ibid. ’ p. “'1.

86

This brings us back to Knight's "spatial" quality:
the "stillness” in the creative process in the eternal,
Spiritual essence, not itself subJect to time, but which
comes upon the poet in his receptive passivity. True to
his theory that the work of art is an incarnation possess-
ing a “body" and a "soul," Knight believes that "we must
suppose there to be always a moment of conception during
the early stages of composition, when the essential nature
of the work to be is first prOperly apparent.“109 The
"stillness“ in the creative product is the permanent meta-
phoric structure, which Knight calls “spatial“ and which

he throughout The Starlit Dome is comparing to architec~

 

ture, the dome eSpecially, with its static, fixed quality.
Referring to the performance of a ShakeSpeare play, Knight

in Principles 2: Shakespearian Production states that

 

 

'a performance is...not simply a sequence but architectonic,

and makes a mind-building."110

Knight has sometimes111 referred to William James's

The Varieties of Religious Experience but nowhere112 in

 

 

his work does he refer to James's Human Immortality (1898).

 

I mention it in passing because there is so much there—n

as there is in The Varieties of Religious Experience--that

 

 

Knight obviously is in agreement with. For example, one

 

l09Loc. cit.

110Principles of Shakespearian Production, p. #2.

 

 

111Wheel of Fire, p. 240, in "Shakespeare and Tolstoy,“

112In the letter dated January 8, 1964, Knight denies
having read James's Human Immortality.

 

87
of the theses of Human Immortality is that though thought

 

 

is a function of the brain, it need not necessarily be

only productive function: "We are entitled also to con-

 

sider permissive or transmissive function."113 Knight

 

 

has asserted that: 'I am myself conscious not so much of
thinking out ideas as of receiving thoughts that come
either from within or without, in meditation or converu

sation. II 111+

Knight, who sees a universal spirit-world
behind our everyday reality, would obviously accept the
statement of James that “idealistic philosophy declares

the whole world of natural experience, as we get it, to

be but a timeumask, shattering or refracting the one in-
finite thought which is the sole reality into those millions
of infinite streams of consciousness known to us as our
private selves.'115 The resemblance in outlooks is start~
ling when James goes on to illustrate his statement with

a domeuimage from Shelley's Adonais, much like what Knight

draws from Keats's Byzantium to use as the title of his

 

The Starlit 2222.1“ order to illustrate his spatial theory;
James quotes the following lines: "Life, like a dome of
many-colored glass,/Stains the white radiance of eternity."116
The only approach to the subject of the brainfls having a

transmissive function in The Varieties of Religious Exper-

 

 

ience occurs early in the first lecture where James in

 

 

 

113William James, Human Immortality, Boston,
1898 , p. 15.
114

Christian Renaissance, p. 12.

 

115 116Ibid., p. 16.

Human Immortality, pp. 15-16.

 

 

/‘

 

88
passing mentions that: 'If there were such a thing as
inspiration from a higher realm, it might well be that the
neurotic temperament would furnish the chief condition of

117

the requisite receptivity." Knight, who sees literary

creation as something of a "mystery,"118 has simply brought
the old belief in poetic inspiration up to date.

But there is no need to insist upon Knight's having
absorbed his view of poetic creation from William James;
he has acknowledged119 the influence of John.Masefield's

Shakespeare and Spiritual Life, and there we find much

 

 

from which Knight has probably drawn; one such statement

in that: 'Imagination is controlling and using the energy
of which we are made. Those who succeed in this have
access, through their partial energies, to all energy.

The thoughts of these men have the divinity of all energy:
they do not die."120 Recalling Knight's vitalism and
spiritualism and remembering his stressing of the sovereign»
ty of the imagination, the eternity that is present in art
through its "Spatial" qualities, and the immortality-
visions he finds present in much poetry, we can see to
what degree Knight's views are in harmony with Masefield's.
One more quotation from Masefield's book--which originated

as the Romanes Lecture for l92b at Oxfords-should prove

 

117varieties 23 Religious Experience, New York, 1936.
118 "

 

 

Principles of Shakespearian Production, p. 41.

 

119prefatory Note to Wheel of Fire, p. 1X.

120Johnnasefield, ShakeSpeare and Spiritual Life,

Oxford, 1924.

 

 

89
beyond a doubt the essential agreement between the two
men: “Thought and image in these states of energy are one;
together they make poetry; that mixture of idea with
language that lives."121 Now Knight has asserted that
poetry is a "fusion of the subjective mind with words to

122 Recalling Knight's

create a potent and living utterance."
insistence that the work of art is a "visionary whole“ we
can conclude that Knight would subscribe to H. D. F. Kitto's
view that "the connexion between the form and the content

is so vital that the two may be said to be ultimately

identical. ~123

Colin Still's interpretative study of The Tempest,

Shakespeare's Mystery Play, appeared in 1921, long before

 

Knight's first work appeared. But the expanded version

of this book, The Timeless Theme, was not published until

 

1936. What distinguishes the later book from.its predecessor
is the addition of a sweeping critical theory. The appli-
cation of the theory, which is what ShakeSpeare's Mystery

 

Play is, thus preceded the formulation of the theory it
illustrated by several years. The book is an.amazing
example of a complete critical theory applicable to all
art emerging from an interpretative study of one play,

which is merely an example of one literary form in one

 

1211100. Cit.

122

' 123H.D.F. Kitto, Form and Meaning in Drama, London.
1956’ p. v. _

Christian Renaissance, p. 26.

 

90

of the arts. But I am not introducing The Timeless Theme

 

in order to criticize it but rather to point out where
G. Wilson Knight's esthetic theory leads when it is carried
to its logical conclusion.
In.the first place, Still divides all art into
two classes: 'A work that belongs to the lower type of

imaginative art is a 'reflection.g£ realities peculiar to.

 

 

the individual consciousness', while ''a work that belongs

 

to the higher type of imaginative art is a 'reflection.g£_
12h

 

realities existing $2;the universal consciousness.“

 

 

Notice that art as personal SXpression is the lower kind,
while art created by the impersonal imagination is the

higher. Recalling Knight's statements (made in.The Wheel

 

of Fire and The Christian Renaissance, both of which were

 

 

published before The Timeless Theme) about the passivity

 

of the artist and his access to eternal Spiritual essences
we can see that Knight and Still are in substantial if
not total agreement in their esthetic theorizing.

Knight's view that a study of the artist's intentions
is irrelevant and that the process of artistic creation is
largely an unconscious, nonnintellectual activity is re-
peated by Still: 'The whole difficulty of this question of

'intentions' lies in the fact that genuine imaginative art

 

is the result of an unconscious process whereby expression

 

 

is given to perceptions of which the artist may or may not

 

be conscious.'125 I wish to emphasize at this point that

 

 

12”Colin Still, The Timeless Theme, London, 1936: P“ 6'

125
Ibid., p. 7.

91

Still did not necessarily get his ideas from Knight:
both men are simply setting up an esthetic that had been
stated more or less coherently by the great romantics--
Wordsworth, Shelley, but preeminently Coleridge-uand re-
formulated throughout the nineteenth century. I also
wish to emphasize again the essential romanticism of all
of Knight's theory and practice.

Knight, we may remember, regards art as both a revel-

ation.and a mystery; Still writes that 'every work of imag-

 

"126 Knight has seen the interpreter's

in effect a mystery.
function in relation to literature as being analogous to
that of the theologian's with holy scriptures; Still sees
the critic of imaginative art as "a reader 23riddles.‘127
We may also recall Knight's coupling the esthetic experience
with the religious (the religious being merely the artis—

tic turned inward); Still states that: "the realities of

 

which a work of imaginative genius is the reflection are

 

 

 

 

 

 

same kind of mystical experience; and his indirect and

 

 

 

enigmatical expression'9£_ the [work of art], has a close

 

 

affinity with what the theologians call a religious mystery."128

 

 

Still echoes Knight's view of the interpreter's function

when he concludes that: "In this capacity as_interpreter,

 

 

 

l261mm, p. 8.
127Ib1dg, p. 90 lZBIbidg, p. 12.

92

the Biblical soothsayer stood to the dreamer of dreams.

 

Indeed, the critic 2£_imaginative art is essentially an

 

 

interpreter of dreams.129 One last quotation should prove

 

beyond a doubt Just how much Still's theory is a paraphras-
ing of what had already appeared in Knight's work: "In.

tive genius are mystical enigmas akin.in character and sig—

 

 

 

nificance to the religious mysteries; and they can.be

 

 

 

 

 

EEEEHSE genius.“130 Thus it is apparent that Still is
like Knight even down to the weakest point of his theory,
which is his failure to distinguish prOperly the creative
task from the critical one. The total subjectivity of such
an esthetic theory, the extreme individualism, the insis-
tence on making the imagination the be—all and end-all,

the arrogant or naive assumption that he, G. Wilson Knight,
or he, Colin Still, possesses the requisite Inner Light,
and the final plunge into mysticism are shared by these
two latter-day romantics. In Chapter IV, where I analyze
the last five plays of Shakespeare and Knight's interpre-
tation of them, Colin.Still's work on.ihe Tempest will

again enter our discussion.

What remains to be discussed of Knight's views of

.art pertain to his theory of poetic drama, though I shall

 

13o

129Ib1d., p. 13. Ibid., p. 1n.

93
defer its application to Shakespeare's plays until the next

chapter. Each play, Knight claims, should be regarded as
"a visionary whole, close-knit in personification, atmos-
pheric suggestion, and direct poetic-symbolism...”131
Knight is simply claiming for poetic drama the same esthe-
tic qualities that are present, he believes, in all great
poetry. The essential meaning of poetic drama, according

to Knight in.The Wheel of Fire-~and here he is referring

 

 

Specifically to Shakespeare--cannot be captured through an
examination of its stagecraft. Knight claims that the
deeper meaning of poetic drama resides in the poetry, not
the drama: 'But the dramatic nature of a play's origin
cannot be adduced to disprove a quality implicit in the
work itself.'132 To Knight, the qualities that differ-
entiate a play from an epic or an ode are important only
as 'the grammar of dramatic structure“ in which the poet
expresses his vision.133

Though drama is usually taken to be the most imper-
sonal and externalized form of literary art, Knight harks
back to the romantics in his insistence that the poet
[ShakeSpeare in this case is present in a particular
dramatic personage: “But in the single figure of Hamlet
he has attempted to reflect the totality of his creating
mind, and it is in respect of this that Hamlet himself

more truly mirrors the personal--that is, the whole--

 

131WheelogFire, p. 11.
132Ibid., p. 13. 133Loc. cit.

 

IO.

 

94
creative mentality of the poet than any one of the other
tragic heroes or villains I have noticed in this paper.'13u
"This paper" happens to be the essay "Symbolic Personifi-

cation! in.The Wheel of Fire, which is significant for our

 

purposes because it reveals that Knight from the outset

of his career saw Shakespeare revealed in his work, though
he does distinguish between Shakespeare's "creative
mentality,“ which he sees in Hamlet, and Shakespeare the man.

Knight in his Shakespeare and Tolstoy (1934) attria

 

butes religious significance to great dramatic poetry, and
deplores the fact that much modern drama has sadly strayed
fromnits religious origin:

The drama has, indeed, fallen from its
high origin. The problem is crucial to-
day, and depends on our understanding of
ShakeSpeare. Whilst Shakespeare's plays
are allowed to stand insouciantly re-
gardless of all ultimate questions, then
we can safely continue to deny any nec-
essary religious content to the greatest
dramatic poetry; since no one will read-
ily deny to Shakespeare at least an
honourable place in dramatic history.
Once, however, we see Shakespeare is an
artist fit to stand by Dante in point of
religious apprehension, then the case
for the religious message and pugpose of
the drama becomes unanswerable.

In Principles of Shakespearian Production Knight states

 

that: 'Great drama is something more than entertainment.
Rather I would call it a ceremony in which actors and

audience share in the formal unfurling of some deeply

 

13“Ib1d.. p. 255.

135Shakespeare and Tolstoy, p. 26.

 

1“

95

'136 One can see how Knight is taking

significant pattern.
drama back to what he regards as its origin in religious
ritual: what is the “formal unfurling of some deeply
significant pattern" if not a religious ritual? When Knight
wonders about the relation.of the Shakespearian play to

the Christian Mass,137 he has not only taken modern drama
back to what he assumes to be its source but also betrayed
his own complete disregard for history.

The action in drama is not, according to Knight,
superficial: I'it is rather'sacramental.'l38 This states
ment is not surprising: Knight has elsewhere claimed that
all poetry is ultimately Christian, that poetry is a kind
of Incarnation, that poetry reveals Spiritual essences and
possesses an eternal dimension, and that poetry is pro-
phetic and futuristic. Only one who has an imperfect
knowledge of historyn-both religious and secular-—and an
almost incredible confusion of purposes could identify
art and religion as totally as Knight does. Throughout
his work there is every indication that to Knight art has
no prOper function of its own but serves the same end as
religion, a religion of the vaguest, most nebulous, and
untraditional kind, a religion that sometimes depends upon
a dimension of spiritual essences and at other times on a

glorified natural instinct or eroticism.

 

136Principles of Shakespearian Production, p. 2170

 

 

1371b1d., p. 232.

138The Burning Oracle, p. 20.

96
Sometimes Knight sees poetic drama as a means of

expressing deep psychological truths; he at one time refers

to "the unveiling and re-expressing of hidden psychic depths

.139

that characterize all poetic drama.... But most re-

cently, in The Golden Labyrinth (1962) Knight sees all drama

 

as containing a Nietzschean conflict between Apollo and
Dionysus: "Though Apollo remains our ideal, he is perpet—
ually challenged by Dionysus. This is the archetypal con-
flict from which all our dramatic conflicts derive; and the
desired end is union.."lLLO Knight's later passion for see~
ing everything in terms of oppositions is evident in his
estimate of medieval drama: "The root dramatic conflict
of the Middle Ages is the conflict of (i) the sadistic
instinct, reflected in the Crucifix and the torments of
the Mystery plays; and (ii) the seraphic. We may call it
an Opposition.of power and love."141 Two more quotations

from The Golden Labyrinth should suffice to provide some

 

idea what Knight's most recent theory of drama is; the
Spiritualistic Knight is apparent in the following: "we .
discover its [Erama's] essence whether tragic or comoedic,
in.a tension between normal eXperience and another order
of being."1u2 In conclusion, Knight sees drama's one pur-
pose as "the marriage of the Dionysian energies of

Apollonian forms....";u3

 

1”Ibid., p. #9.

inc ' 1A1

The Golden Labyrinth, p. 5. Ibid., p. 39.
1A2 143

Ibid., p. xii. Ibid., p. 392.

 

C...

97
In summary, Knight has devised an interpretative

method that was objective only in its early application

to Shakespeare's plays, where his interest in themes,
images, and patterns was dominant. The method is imagina-
tive and subjectivistic in theory, and with the rejection
of the critical intellect Knight knowingly forsook the task
of criticism for that of interpretation. Knight fails,

I believe, to make an adequate distinction between the
creation of art and its interpretation: indeed, the task
of the interpreter, according to Knight, is the "recrea—
tion" of the work of art.

In.hrief, Knight's "spatial" method is the abstract-
ing of imagery from its context in order to create meta~
phoric structures that he sees as revealing the spiritual
essence of the poem. The structure should, according to
Knight, be retained in the mind's eye, though this is
manifestly difficult, since poetry-~and poetic drama-
are temporal arts that reveal themselves in a time-sequence.
Moreover, poetic drama is presented in a series of actions,
and no matter how symbolic these actions may be, it is
extremely difficult to hold them in a static relationship
in the mind as the drama continues to unfold.

All great art to Knight is futuristic, prophetic;
art he sometimes regards as externalized religion, some-
times as an objectified intuition of eternity, and somen
times as sublimated instinct. Art to Knight is profoundly

religious, ultimately even Christian. All art is seen by

98
Knight as an Incarnation, a union of the Spiritual and the
material, the temporal and the eternal.

Poetic drama is envisioned by Knight as revealing
its deepest secrets through its poetry, not through its
plot, character, or stage-worthiness. Poetic drama he
finds to be profoundly religious: he sees it as religious
ritual in which symbolic characters engaged in symbolic

actions speak in symbolic language.

CHAPTER THREE

G. Wilson Knight has developed a theory of inter-
pretation that attributes an essential unity to the whole
of Shakespeare's work; but he has not, as I hOpe to prove
later, by any means taken into full account all of Shake-
speare's plays; he has not, as I shall try to indicate,
obtained equally successful results in applying his inter-
pretative method to the various plays individually; and he
has not, as I shall attempt to demonstrate, been consis—
tent in what he believes to be the unifying elements.

His earliest Shakespearian interpretations, in.hyth and.
Miracle (1929), were concerned with four of the final

plays, Pericles, Cymbeline, The Winter's Tale, and The

 

Tempest. It is noteworthy that EEEEX.K££E had not yet
assumed its later significance in Knight's scheme at
this time. These essays were followed by his interpre-
tations of various tragedies in.Thg'Wheel’gf’Eise (1930)
and by Thg_lmperial Theme (1931), which dealt with the
Roman plays.

During the Second World War, Knight published his

1

interpretations of the earlier history plays which he saw

as culminating in Henry V, the hero of which is taken to

be Shakespeare's ideal king; his story, according to Knight,

v

1This Sceptred Isle (l9uo), Chariot of Wrath (l9h2) '
The 01ivé‘Efid‘ffiE‘SfiBrd_TI9uh), The‘Uyfi5§fy'6f'Sfofie (1945 ,
mm mun,“ Christ and Nietzsche—(1793877 the-dates
of composition are, In the order already listed: 19uo,
l9hl, 19uo, 19h2—3-h, 19h5, and 1939.

 

99

 

l I! In!

100
marks the high point in ShakeSpeare's plays of British

destiny until the appearance of Henry VIII, which Knight

 

claims to be the crowning achievement of ShakeSpeare's
entire work. Knight has said little about the comedies,
and what he has found in the early history plays is pri-
marily nonpliterary, since it is concerned with the appli-
cation of Shakespeare's supposed view of British destiny
to the religious and political problems of today, nor has
he said much of the plays as dramatic poetry. Knight's
books about the history plays were motivated by the Second
World War, when England was fighting for her survival,

and possess little literary value.

Knight's best work, I shall try to prove, is the
interpretations of the plays beginning chronologically
with Julius Caesar and ending with EEEEZHZEEEP My inclu-
sion of Knight's estimate of Henry VIII does not mean that

 

I accept his evaluation of the play or that I endorse the
position he assigns to this decidedly inferior work in
what he refers to as the Shakespeare Progress.

The Crown of Life (19b?) is Knight's return to the

 

last plays, and this time Henry VIII is included. The

 

Mutual E1223 (1955), a book devoted to Shakespeare's
sonnets, possesses little literary value but does reflect
the later Knight's preoccupation with homosexuality and
Spiritualism, and also assigns great importance to the
sonnets by claiming them to be central to Shakespeare's
work, of great importance to his spiritual development,

and possessing important similarities with certain plays.

101

 

 

The Sovereign Flower (1958), like The Crown of Life,

is a return to an earlier interest: The Sovereign Flower

 

restates many of Knight"s views that had appeared as war-
time prOpaganda based more or less on Shakespeare's history

plays. Here again his later estimate of Henry VIII,

 

is much in evidence; he now thinks it to be the culmina-
tion of Shakespeare's life-work, the play in which Shake—
speare‘s early concerns with romantic love and patriotism,
which Knight saw as culminating in.H§nry Z, and his later
tragic and mystical insights are all finally joined in an
esthetically and metaphysically satisfying synthesis that
is in essential harmony with Christianity.

At the time Knight wrote EXE§.EEE Miracle he had
not yet concluded that all of the Shakespeare canon possessed
an organic unity objectified in a tempest-music Opposition,2
but he had decided already at this time that there was a
Shakespearian progress beginning about the middle of Shake-
speare's writing career and culminating in the Final Plays.3
At this time he saw the plays from Julius Caesar on as
falling into three groups; the first is that of the problem

plays, where Knight sees "mental division: on.the one side

an exquisite apprehension of the spiritual-~beauty, romance,

 

2Though he was already moving in that direction; Cf.
p. 23 of Crown of Life, where he writes that "The recurrent
poetic syEBEI—of‘tFEgEdy in.ShakeSpeare is "storm" or "temp-
eat"." And on p. 24 of the same book: "The predominating
symbols [in the Final PlayE] are loss in tempest and re—
vival to the sounds of music."

3CrowneELife, p. 9.

 

102
poetry; on the other, the hate themeu-loathing of the in-
pure, aversion from the animal kinship of man, disgust at
the decaying body of death. "u The second group is that of
the tragedies, where Knight sees this dualism being re-
solved.5 The third group transcends the tragic intuition
with one of immortality.6 The plays of these three
groups, the plays written from 1599 to 1611, Knight in
m 5135 Miracle finds culminating in The Tempest, which
is the conclusion of- Shakespeare"s spiritual pragress.7
This view recurs in 1133 Wheel 2: Fig: as the fourth of

 

Knight"s principles of Shakespeare interpretation. Later
we shall find m XIII substituted for The Tflest.
But at the time Myth and Miracle was written Knight could
say that: "The Tempest is at the same time a record of
Shakespeare's spiritual progress and a statement of the
vision to which that progress has brought him. "8

We should recall the romantic insistence upon a
coherence in Shakespeare" 3 work, a coherence that is given.-
the work by the pattern that the work reveals of the man's
spiritual growth. This romantic insistence we found in ’
Dowden, who exemplifies the nineteenth century view of
Shakespeare—immanent-in-his-work. Knight is manifesting
his essential romanticism-sand his kinship-with Dowden-

when he asserts that: "The progress from spiritual pain

 

“Ibid., p.23. ‘ . 51.22. cit.,
6Ib1dg' pp. 23‘2”. 7Ib1do. p. 26.
8

Ibid., p. 27.

103
and despairing thought through stoic acceptance to a serene
and mystic joy is a universal rhythm of the spirit of man."9
It was Dowden.who put the Shakespeare of the last plays
"on the heights," and Knight keeps him there.

The first element that Knight finds unifying Shake-
speare’s plays is thus the artist himself, though it is
not his individual problems as much as his universal
spiritual experience that is evident in.the plays. Con-
sequently in.Thg_Whggl.g£_§i£g, Knight can.write of Troilus
SEE Cressidas "The creating mind of the poet seems to
have been obsessed in.the writnng of this play by the con.
cept of tine...."10 This romantic concern with art as

process instead of product is also apparent in.an essay
on.nacbeth in.the same book: "The Macbeth universe is

 

woven tn a texture of a single pattern. The whole play
is one swift act of the poet's mind, and as such must be
interpreted, since the technique confronts us not with
separated integers of "character" or incident, but with
a molten welding of thought withhthought, event with
event."11
It is Knight the romantic"s assumption.that Shake-
speare's spiritual and artistic maturity are more or less
coterminous that accounts for his assertion.in one of the
Leg essays in The 31°91... 25 Egg that the "ghoulish horrors"

found in.Lear are "the very stuff of the Lear of Shakespeare's

 

guide, Po 29o. .
11 ‘
Ibid., p. 1&1.

10%601 22 Fire. p. 66.

 

loll

s."12 Many scholars have pointed

youth, Titus Andronicu
out elements in Shakespeare" 8 early work that prefigure
elements of his later work, but seeing Titus Andronicus

 

as an immature £921; is probably one of the kindest things
that has ever been said for that bloody potboiler, the worst
play Shakespeare ever wrote. In 1h: Burning Oracle (1939)
Knight maintains that: "Shakespeare's work develops
through a reorganizing and repenetration rather than a
change of material. In his last period favourite poetic
impressions tend to present themselves as dramatic actual-
ities: as persons, or events, or both."13 Furthermore,

in The Crown gt; Life he states that "Shakespeare is con-

 

tinually at work splitting'up and recombining already used
plots, persons, and themes, weaving something "new and
strange" from old material. "1"

In an essay in The Wheel g_f_ Fire where he compares

 

Tolstoy's spiritual experience with that of Shakespeare,
Knight adheres to the romantic view that art is the object-
ified experience of the artist and that it is the artist
himself who provides the principle of unity to his work.
After maintaining that "Hamlet inaugurates the period. of

pained thought in the sequence of Shakespeare's plays’il5

 

121bid., p. 170.,

13m Oracle. p. 55.

14
Crown 2!; Life, p. 2039

 

Ismael 9!- Fire. p. 2&0.

105

Knight defends the view that Shakespeare's work is a record
of its author's spiritual experience: "Now, even though
it could be proved that Shakespeare was not suffering from
a conscious melancholy during the writing of Hamlet, that
he was not in a state of conscious mystic vision when he
wrote Th_e_ Te est, the significance of the series bounded
by these plays would in no sense be impaired. "16 After
all, Knight goes on to assert, "they might reflect a pre-
vious rhythm of spiritual experience rising from the "un-
conscious mind"; or they might be divinely inspired.'17
Knight does not say 32! the work as a whole M reflect
any "rhythm of spiritual experience" at all; but his theory
of artistic creation, which we discussed in the last chap-
ter, provides Knight's answer. The creative task, we
recall, Knight considers an involuntary, unconscious one
in which the intellect"s role is a purely negative one.
A spiritual essencelmust be present in all works of art,
according to Knight, or it is not art. This spiritual
quality is provided by the poet's soul, which the imper—
sonal imagination provides with a material body in the form
of words possessing symbolic meanings. Thus the soul-
experiences of the poet enter into his artistic creations
whether he knows it or not.

Hany Shakespeare critics have debated how much of
Shakespeare there is in Hamlet and v_i_g_e_ 339.3" Knight at

one point in "Symbolic Personification," an essay in

 

1511nm, p. 2&1. 171.00. cit.

. 106
The Wheel gf_Fire, asserts that "in.the single figure of

 

Hamlet he [Shakespeare] has attempted to reflect the total-
ity of his creating mind, and it is in respect of this
that Hamlet himself more truly mirrors the personal-nthat
is, the whole-creative mentality of the poet than any
one of the other tragic heroes I have noticed in this
paper. . 18
Knight sees the poet's mind as accommodating a tri-
angular relationship whose members are roughly analogous
to mankind, diabolical cynicism, and the divine principle
(Posthumus-Iachimo-Imogen and Othello-Iago-Desdemona, for '
examples): "in the all inclusive statement of TES.Tem est,
the three figures are seen to be three modes of the poet's
mind: there Prospero has mastered, and controls, both‘
Ariel and Caliban."19
A few more examples should prove conclusively that

Knight throughout his work-«and not only in.The Wheel of

 

Fire and Myth.and Miracle, from which I have been.quoting~-

 

consistently sees the plays as records of Shakespeare's
spiritual experiences. In Principles 2: Shakespearian '
Production.Knight writes that: "Macbeth is, as it were,
a solid of which the length may be a Holinshed story but
the height a Christian.philosOphy of grace and evil, and
the breadth Shakespeare's own.emotional experience."20

In The Burnigg Oracle Knight assumes that: "Iago is

 

131bid., p. 255. 191bia., p. 256.

20Principles 22.5hakespearian.Production, p. 1?.

 

10? ,...
certainly part of Shakespeare's mind...."21 And in Chariot
2: Egg 2 Knight declares that: "Samson Aggnistes reflects
Milton's own.etory as surely as Th: Tempest reflects

Shakespeare's."22 Furthermore, in The Olive and the Sword

Knight finds that in.§ing;£g§5 "we may notice Shakespeare's
early feeling for England's true strength...."23 It is
Shakespeare's own, personal, patriotism that Knight sees

an the early history plays, and he asserts that Shakespeare's

royalism is most apparent in.aichard 22.2“ In.The Olive

 

;sn_d £29. s_wg_r_g Knight maintains that: "Here En m 93
Athené] Shakespeare sets his soul on paper as perhaps in

no other work, not evenHamlet."25 Further proof of Knight"s
reading a personal view of the poet into his work is the
following: "the rights Shakespeare ultimately believes

in are only those which themselves derive sanction from

this cosmic source, which becomes, at the limit, as with
26

the English king in.Macbeth, divine grace." Here Knight
is identifying the erotic and the religious instincts,
which he ultimately regards as identical with divine grace.
.Elsewhere it is the crown and the imagination, which he

equates, that he identifies with divine grace.

 

21Burning Oracle, p. #7.

 

22Chariot g wrath, p. 83.
23Olive and Sword, p. 12.
2‘! l— __

25

Ibid,’ p. '48.

261b1d0' p. 60.

‘OQO

a...

108
But when Knight interprets §e_n_1_'y_ V_I_I_I_ there is little
attempt to distinguish the view of G. Wilson Knight from
that of Shakespeare (whatever it was): "He [Shakespeare].
feels England now as inheriting the great destiny of Home,
with new strength incorporated from the centuries of
Christendom."27 Another quotation from The Olive and the

 

M should prove beyond a doubt that Knight has retained
an interest in the "intentions" of the artist, in epiteof
his early repudiation of this fallacy: ‘ "but, generally,
we can say that Shakespeare is trying to incorporate the
full riches of the erotic instinct in afinal inviolable

28 This is another statement made in reference

integrity."
to £2311. my we shall notice in the next chapter what
Knight is trying to make out of Henry's illicit love.

There is little to distinguish Knight from Dover
Wilson when Knight writes that: "The Tempest was planned
to capture the essence of his total poetry."29 [Italics
mine] And in T23 Sovereign Flower Knight is perilously
close to seeking the poet's intentions when he writes that:
"All Shakespeare's work aims variously at controlling,
fighting, or, at the best, using, the "beast" in 111811330
This is certainly looking at a work of art from the artist"s
real or imaginary intentions. In the next chapter, where
I analyze Knight"s interpretation of the last five plays,
we shall notice how much of Shakespeare Knight sees in

those plays.

 

27Ib1d0, P0 71. 281b1d.’ p..?l". ngbidQ, p. 96.

30The SovereiE Flower, p. 57.

109

Though he has never applied his interpretative method
to the early work of Shakespeam--apart from the history
plays, which are not so much analyzed as drama as viewed
as pure prephecy of British destiny-u-Knight in The SovereiE
Flower extends his early theory of a Shakespeare Progress
to include the entire work of Shakespeare. Knight sees
the work of Shakespeare as falling into two sequences,
the second more profound than the first. The first se-
quence begins with the early comedies and culminates in
m E, the story of the ideal monarch; the second se-
quence runs from Julius Caesar through 31311:! E, which
is to Knight the crowning achievement of Shakespeare's
artistic career. In _T_h_e_ Sovereie Flower Knight writes
that: "This. sequence [the early histories] together. with
the comedies, whose resolvinglaction, always in its way a
definition of essential peace, is usually'played out across
a background of war and civil disturbance, makes up the
first half of Shakespeare's work. The second half is a
replica of the first, with a similar conclusion."31

In a footnote on page 55 of the same book, Knight
answers a possible objection that might be asked: Why
should Shakespeare repeat himself? Knight handles it in
the following manner: "Shakespeare does not so much dis-
cover new thoughts in his .later work as make changes of
emphasis and distribution."32 One last quotation from _

The SovereiE Flower should prove conclusively that Knight

 

311bid., p. 46. 321bid., p. 55.

t

llO

regards Shakespeare" s entire output as forming one coher-
ent whole: "The organic indissolubility of ShakeSpeare"s
art may be seen from the way his lifework expands the‘pat-
tern of a single Shakespearian tragedy: from realism,
through. impassioned imaginative conflict, to mystic intiu-
nations, for of these each tragichero in turn had his
share; and finally, in Hing 112;, a ritual conclusion.
Such is the organic harmony, resembling rather the works
of nature than.the works of man.-33

Enough examples have been provided of Knight"s
view that ShakeSpeare the artist or Shakespeare the recorder
of universal spiritual experience was himself a unifying
element in his work to permit some generalizations and
criticisms. In the first place, Knight has never adequate-
1y accounted for Shakespeare the creator of romantic comedy:

aside from what he has said of The Merchant 23 Venice and

 

Twelfth Night in his Principles 93 Shake-spearian Production,
he has never attempted to apply his interpretative method
to any comedies earlier than the problem playseeheasure

for Measure and Ali's Well That Ends Walla-where he is

 

 

 

 

more interested in finding universal religious significances
than he is in analyzing the plays as comedies. My first
objection, than, is that Knight"s Shakespeare is a limited
one because he is largely formed from certain of the later
piano-m, Hamlet, and Th_e_ Temst, for examples; this
is assuming for the time being that a poet's spiritual

 

33Ibia., p. 2&1.

I

lll
progress can be recreated from his work. Knight came to
the history plays-«and this includes Henri Elf-after he
had already established a theory that upheld the integrity
of ShakeSpeare"s work, a theory that was based upon his
close analyses of the last four plays--not counting m
E“! . the later tragedies-em 25 Athens, Hamlet,
Othello, Kigg HE" and Macbeth-u, . and two of the problem
plays, Measure £31; Measure and Troilus and Cressida.
Knight"s essay on él_]_._"_s_ Well, "The Third Eye," did not
appear until the publication of T_he Sovereign Flower.

 

The, cornerstone of Knight"sShakespearian edifice,
H2131 VIII, did not assume its crucial position in Knight"s
published work until the appearance of The Olive and the

 

§_w_o_r_d- (191m). In Myth _a_nd_ Miracle, The; FEES}. 23 Fig,
_T_h_e_ Shakegpearian Tempest, and even The Christian Renais-
;_sange_, Knight considered The Tmest as Shakespeare's
final, most profound, summarizing, mystical statement.
In E Christian Renaissance, 31.9211 113; is taken by Knight
to be a Christian work, but it has not yet displaced Th2
Tflest as the crowning achievement in Knight"s scheme of
Shakespeare interpretation.

There are two reasons why Knight would exalt m
22:; in spite of its obvious dramatic deficiencies; one is
that it is patriotic. It was in his wartime propaganda
that Knight first glorified H_e_nr_y VIII. The other reason
is its ritualistic and religious elements. The play is
more a pageant than a drama, and in spite of the unsatis-
factory and unsavory character of Henry VIII the play does

112
end with the king's adultery producing the infant Eliza-
beth, the great Gloriana. Since Knight throughout his war-
time writings was seeking a satisfactory fusion of Church
and State-the goodness of the former with the power of
the latteruuhe welcomed the support of a play in which the
hero was a king in whose person both the political and
religious powers were united. Then, too, the "prophetic"
quality of the play would attract Knight, though one
wonders how he could find delight in.the cheap dramatic
trick of making stage-characters prOphesy after the pro-
phecy has in point of historic fact already been fulfilled.
Moreover, if significantly large sections of §2§£!.!Ell
are not even Shakespeare's, than.an interpretative theory
that sees a spiritual progress in.pseudo-Shakespearian
work is of dubious value. Therefore my second Objection
to Knight"s Shakespeare Progress is his heavy stressing
of plays that contain.passages of questionable authorship-
Pericles, Cymbeline, ESEEZNXEEEV‘and his equally heavy
reliance upon Timon 9_f_‘_ Athens, which perhaps reveals
ShakeSpeare"s state of mind but hardly reveals artistic
mastery of his subject.

My third criticism is that Knight in his later work
simply extracts from Shakespeare the views that he wishes
to find there: at one time it is a nationalistic and
patriotic Shakespeare. Knight never adequately accounts
for the strong anti-nationalistic and anti-patriotic
sentiments in Shakespeare; the payment of tribute to Home

at the conclusion of Cymbeline and the character of Falstaff

 

113
are two examples. The patriotic Shakespeare Knight con-
ceived during modern England's wartime crisis. At other

times--from The Christian Renaissance onn-it is a Christian

 

Shakespeare. Knight"s repeated admissions that Shakespeare
was primarily and pro-eminently a humanist poet do not
‘prevent his continually finding Shakespeare to be pro-
foundly Christian at the core of his work. This Shakespeare
he discovers as he himself becomes more preoccupied with
religious and metaphysical matters. The objection I
raise, then, is that there is more of G. Wilson.Knight in
the Shakespeare he presents us than the text warrants.
Another possible objection.would question.the
likelihood of finding the artist"s spiritual progress re~
corded in drama, which is much more impersonal than lyric
poetry; one could also Object to Knight"s identifying the
author with specific characters. From the romantics on,
art--all art--has been considered the preper place for
self-revelation. But whether one considers this self to
be a purely individual one or a depersonalized one that
has undergone spiritual experiences of universal validity,
it is somewhat questionable to seek to surprise the indivi-
dual poet in an impersonal art-form written before the
view that art is self-expression.had become the dominant

literary theory.

There are other elements by which Knight tries to
secure cohesion.in addition to the recorded progress of

Shakespeare's spiritual pilgrimage. I have already in

11“
this chapter indicated that the central thesis of Knight"s
The Shakespearian Tempest (1932) had been prefigured in
his Myth e_n_d; Miracle (1929). In The Shakespearian Tempest,
Knight maintains that "the true ShakeSpearian unity" con-
sists of "the Opposition, throughout the plays, of "tempests"
and "music"."34 He goes so far as to assert that: "Tempests
are...all-important. $2592 _i_n_ omsition with 93113 they
form the 9_n_1y_ principle of unity 91 Shakespeare."35 Ettalics

 

mine] Yet later, in Principles 9}; Shakespearian Production,
Knight writes that: "Kingship is central to Shakespeare's
life-pattern."36 If one objects that Knight does not here
mean to include the whole of Shakespeare's work in his

reference to Shakespeare's, "life-pattern", let me refer him

m VIII, "the two principles 2}; unity igShakespeare-c-

 

his tegpests and his nationalislum-converge...."37 Ettalics

 

mine] One more quotation should suffice; in Laureate 9_f_
Page Knight writes that: "Shakespeare's main symbols,
corresponding roughly to our two divisions, human and trans-
cendental, are (i) the King, or the Crown, and (ii) Tempests
and Music."38 This should be enough to indicate that Knight
has altered his theory, or changed his mind, about the co.

hering elements in Shakespeare's work.

 

3"Shakespearian Tempest, p. 1.
35Ibid., p. 6.

36mm 1.. 2.1:. W Promotion. p. 221.
37

38

 

Olive and Sword, p. 102..

Laureate _o_i: Peace, p. 83.

115

The music-tempest Opposition that Knight finds
endemic to ShakeSpeare"s work does not occupy so unvaryingly
important a position.in.sll the plays that Knight is justi-
fied in.asserting that "in the Shakespearian system, we
shall be forced to regard either the sea in all its varia-
tions or the tempest-music opposition...as fixed; and we
shall say that plots are built round tempests-or, to be
more exact, round the tempest-music appositionperather .
than that tempests are inserted into plots. Plots vary,
tempests persist. It is always the same tempest; and in»
deed, it is continually given.almost exactly repetitive
phrases in description. '39 It is absurd to make such a
generalization.applicable to the whole of Shakespeare's
work. It is true that in the later plays--some of the
tragedies and the final plays--tempests and music are
prominent; it is also true that they are loosely associated
with chaos and order, evil and good. But to assert that
the poet sought plots to build around a tempest-music .
Opposition.is patently absurd. This is giving the symbols.
an.independent life of their own, unmodified by the uses
to which they are put. The poet is far more likely to
have taken tempests, which.were traditionally associated
with disorder-awhether of nature or of man's passions--
and music, traditionally symbolizing ordera-whether a
divine one or a natural one-and to have exploited these
traditional associations, perhaps giving them additional

 

39The Shakespearian.Tempest, pp. 15-16.

' 116
significances of his own, in.order to produce the dramatic
or poetic effect desired. Moreover, if, as Knight fre-
quently enough asserts, it is the Spiritual experience of
the poet himself with which the creative artist starts,
then it is no better to assume that music and tempests
come first to mind than it is to assume that a plot is
invariably the starting point. In the later plays it would
be just as easy to maintain.that a_particular theme-that
of reconciliations-is the constant, or that a particular
familial relationship constituted the peculiarly symbolic
plot that would repeatedly present itself in modified forms

to the poet.

Knight finds Shakespeare to be simultaneously a
naturalist, a humanist, and a supernaturalist. Shakespeare
is variously seen as a great romantic poet of erotic inn
sights, as a fundamentally Christian poet, and as a great
humanist poet occupying a sort of as. £29.13. between super-
naturalism and naturalism. underlying all of this is the
assumption.on the part of Knight that Shakespeare is a great
philosophic poet. In his pamphlet Shakespeare 322 Tolstoy
Knight declares that: "Shakespeare is an artist fit to
stand by Dante in.point of religious apprehension."u°'

The remainder of the chapter will concern itself with
Knight"s finding Shakespeare a romantic, by which Knight
usually means a mystical kind of naturalist; a supernaturalist

 

uaShakespeare and Tolstoy, p. 26.

117
when Knight‘sometimes sees approaching Christianity; and
a humanist whose central concern is man, poised between
subhuman.and superhuman forces.

At one time Knight emphasizes Shakespeare's pre-
occupation with immortality, which he sees Shakespeare
sharing with WOrdsworth; at another time it is Shakespeare's
revealing a spiritual pattern.of develOpment in.his art,
which is in accord with an essentially romantic theory of
art; at yet another time it is the infinite which enters
the Shakespearian drama through love and death, both of
which transcend the temporal order of existence.

But there are many more instances in which Knight
claims ShakeSpeare as a romantic. In an essay in.Thg’:
Wheel of Fire, "The PhilosOphy of Troilus gng_Cressida,"
Knight sees the Opposing forces, the Greek and the Trojan,
as standing for cynical intellect and romantic intuition,
reSpectively,h1 The romantic Knight trying to fabricate
a romantic Shakespeare is here evident; Knight declares
that: "In the usual Shakespearian.fashion, the problem of
the main.theme--the rational untrustworthiness in conflict

with the intuitive validity gf_romantic sight-~is reflected

 

throughout the play.”2 [Italics mine] Now this is an.
obvious falsification.of the play"s impact-eneither the
Greek intellect nor the Trojan intuition is held up for
our admirationp-and the victory does not go to the "rom-

antic" Trojans. It is true, as Knight maintains, that

 

#2

1‘1le .2: Fire’ p. ”'8. :00. Cit.

 

118
"it is a world_of value and vision ruled by murderous and
senseless time,”3 but the policy of Ulysses is better
proof against the onslaughts of time than the sentiment of
the Trojans. Far from regarding Troilus and Cressida

 

as a defense of romanticism, I should rather think the

play a devastating satire upon its self-deceptions and
limitations. Whether or no there is a romantic Shakespeare
behind this play deploring the harshness of reality, the
artist did see clearly what kind of an outcome awaits a
contest between intellect and emotion. If Knight had

paid more attention to Hotspur and Antony as other Shake-
spearian romantics who lose to "policy," there would have
been less likelihood of his failing to see that Shakespeare
was aware of the weaknesses inherent in.romanticism.

The powers of cynicism that Knight rightly associ-
ates with the Greeks he also associates with his "hate-
theme," which he sees as "turbulent throughout most of
these plays [?ulius Caesar to The Tempest] : an especial
mode of cynicism toward love, disgust at the physical
body, and dismay at the thought of death; a revulsion from
human life caused by a clear sight of its limitations--
more especially limitations imposed by time."uu

It is in this essay on Troilus and_Cressida that
Knight attributes to Shakespeare "two primary values,
love and war."u5 It is puzzling that Knight has never

 

“amid-O, P0 719

“fluid-e, P0 150 “511316.03 P0 “'79

119
regarded these two values as forming an element of co-
herence--thematic, this time-~in.the total work of Shake-
Speare. Then, too, it is in this essay that Knight not
only finds that Troilus and Cressida is "more peculiarly
analytic in language and dramatic meaning than.any other

1+6

work of Shakespeare," but also discovers that "Troilus

and Cressida induces and appeals to a consciousness of

 

sensitive poetic activity which is yet not independent of
the forms of abstract conceptual thought nor of the close
reasoning of the philosopher."u7 Taking our cue from the
last word of the preceding quotation, we may observe that
Knight in.this essay states his view that Shakespeare is
a great philosOphic poet: this play. he writes, "is an
interesting antidote to the commentary that observes no
original philosOphic thought in.ShakeSpeare.'u8

In the essay "Measure for Measure and the GOSpels",

also contained in.The Wheel 2; Fire, Knight sees Angelo

 

as evil because he, like the Greeks in.Troilus and Cressida,
is intellectual rather than intuitive: "Angelo is the
symbol of a false intellectualized ethic divorced from the

"F9

deeper springs of human instinct." Here we can.antici-

pate what is coming in.The Christian Renaissance: when

 

Knight goes on.in the later work to formulate a Christ-
Eros antithesis, we can see that it is Angela's failure

4-

“Log-gig. “7113159; P9 71.

“81315.0, Po 520 ”guide, Po 89.

120
to recognize his duty to Eros that leads to his evil-
doing. Again.we find that Knight interprets a character
with the assumption that Shakespeare was a romantic who
distrusted the intellect and relied upon the intuition.or
the emotions. I would not claim that Shakespeare was a
rationalist: but I would with just as good reason.decline
seeing Shakespeare's accepting the imagination, the intui-
tion, or the emotions as an exclusive alternative. The
characters in.Shakespeare who follow their emotions or
who let their imaginations alone direct them are among,
those who end disastrously. Hotspur, Romeo and Juliet,
Antony and Cleopatra, Troilus and the Trojans, all reveal
that Shakespeare was aware of the consequences of living
lives dictated by romantic qualities.

Othello, like Troilus gnd_Cressida.and Measure {23
Measure, and most of the plays from Julius Caesar to The
Tempest, Knight regards as revealing the hate-theme, which,
curiously enough, he never preposes as a theme unifying
the whole of Shakespeare's work. The hate-theme in
Shakespeare Knight generally associates with the intellect,
the rejecting reason, cynicism, and Machiavellian.policy.
Indeed, I readily agree that many of Shakespeare's villains
are intellectual-ulago, Edmund, and Richard III, for
examplese-but the characters in.ShakeSpeare who let their
emotions, sentiments, or passions triumph are not treated
any more kindly. If there are Shakespearian heroes they
are those who, like Theseus, the Duke in.Measure £23 Measure,

and Prospero, are able to acquire and preserve a balance

121

between intellect and passion. In Othello Knight finds the
theme to be that of "the cynical intellect pitted against
a lovable humanity transfigured by qualities of heroism _
and grace."50 Here it is Othello who is a sentimentalist,
a man who, Knight concedes, has a "slightly strained
emotionalism."51 Thus Knight believes that there is an
opposition in all of Shakespeare's greater plays between
the cynical intellect and a romanticized natural goodness;
coupling this view with his theory that in artistic crea-
tion the negative judgment is totally divorced from the
creative imagination, it is easy for us to see how he can
conclude his Othello essay by declaring that "we have the
spirit of negation set against the spirit of creation. "52

My objection is not to Knight"s seeing an Opposi-
tion in various plays between intellect and passion-«that
is certainly present-abut rather to his identifying Shake-
speare the artist too closely withthe romantic heroes.
Of course, Knight sees the cynical, intellectual villains
as revealing part of Shakespeare's mind or spiritual exper-
ience, too; but the general impression one gets from
reading Knight"s interpretations is that these characters
dominated by intellect bear about the same relation to the
passionate, romantic mind of Shakespeare as an evil spirit
does to the soul of the person whom it is possessing.

Knight"s own romantic propensities are evident in his own

 

5°Wheelfi2£,Fire, p. 112. ..
51Ibid., p. 117. 52Ibid., p. 119.

4‘

 

 

122
obvious preference for the great romantic characters
in.Shakespeare--Antony, Othello, and Timon, to cite a
few examples.

Another romantic quality in.Knight"s Shakespearian
interpretation.is his continually seeking in the play for
the soul-experiences, the revelation of the psychological
profundities of the characters. In.his interpretation of
of his intuitive leaps and declares, while interpreting .
Isabella's defiance to her brother (III. 1. lul), that
Isabella "knows now that it is not all saintliness, she
sees her own.eoul and sees it as something small, fright-
ened, despicable, too frail to dream of such a sacrif’ice."53
This is a kind of inspired guessing, that might be right
if one only knew how Shakespeare had Isabella deliver her
lines, or, if one objects to this intrusion of the inten.
tional fallacy, how best Isabella might deliver these
lines. Making the assumption.he does, Knight proceeds to
write that: "Isabella, like Angelo, has progressed far
during the play"s action: from sanctity to humanity."5u
If Knight truly saw the characters of Angelo and Isabella
as purely symbolic, or as he states, if "Isabella stands 1
for sainted purity, Angelo, for Pharisaical righteousness,
the Duke for a psychologically sound and enlightened

55

ethic" and so on, then there would be no possibility of

his visualizing the characters as undergoing a development

 

531131110, P0 93 e

 

5‘23. 933. 55Ib1d.. p. 71+.

123
in.the progress of the play, or of his divining a very
real and human fear in.the speech of Isabella; Knight has
in.this instance-~and there are many others--conveniently
forgotten his theory of interpretation.as he in.a very
Bradley-like way proceeds to treat Isabella and Angelo as
real human.beings who experience real emotional crises and
who undergo a psychological change as the result of their
very real experiences.

Moreover, by claiming that characters in.Measure
£25 Measure "stand for" various abstract qualities, Knight
is either indicting Shakespeare of artistic failure or
else does not understand the nature of drama as Shakespeare
wrote it, since Shakespeare never has characters who merely
"stand for" something. ‘

Another instance of Knight"s attributing a romantic
quality to Shakespeare is in his "Macbeth and the Meta»
physic of Evil"; in accounting for the pervasive sense of
evil in.Macbeth Knight writes that: "Macbeth shows us an
evil not to be accounted for in.terms of "will" and
"causality"; that it expresses its vision, not to a criti-
cal intellect, but to the responsive imagination.'56
This is a direct application of Knight"s principle that
each play must be regarded as a visionary whole, and his
belief that the interpreter"s task is to seek the quality
of the original poetic experience. It is again.apparent
that Knight has completely discarded the judgment in favor

 

5611914., p. 158.

 

 

O

, 124 .
of the imagination, which is, if anything, the most_pro-
found change effected in esthetics by the romantics.
Throughout Shakespeare's work Knight finds another
romantic preoccupation, the infinite, continually intruding
itself. In his essay in The Wheel _o_f_ Fire on Tim-gn- 2f

 

 

Athens Knight asserts that: "The contrast between the first
and second parts E§f TimgéJ is clearly a contrast of the
sense-world and the finite with the spiritual and the
infinite."57 ‘Timon.himse1f becomes a romantic who is
"pure passion, a naked rhythmic force, a rush and whirl of
torrential energy loosed from any contact or harmony with
temporal and confining things."58 Earlier in the same
essay Knight declares that: "Timon is a universal lover,
Apemantus a universal cynic."59 Timon is thus analogous
to Othello, Lear, and Troilus, as Apemantus is analogous
to Iago, Edmund, and Thersites.

In his essay "Shakespeare and Tolstoy," Knight
extends his romantic preoccupation.with the infinite to
include all the great Shakespearian tragedies: "The grandeur
and essential Optimism of the true Shakespearian tragedy
is due to these two elements: passion.and death. And
both equally "bring in the infinite"."60 Death Knight
associates with war and the hate-theme. Love he associates
with Shakespeare's erotic intuition. It is puzzling to
explain.why Knight did not explicitly develOp the Mars-

 

572323? p" 223'. jalbidos P0 2220
6°Ib1d-. p. 21.5.

5911218., p. 212.

125
Venus dualism as a principle organizing all of Shakespeare"s
work.

If Knight is capable of asserting that the Spiritual
patterns of Shakespeare and Byron are similar,61 that
Alexander POpe, who is credited by Knight with having pro-
duced a coherent romanticism,62 has profound affinities
with &n.kespeare,63 then it should not surprise us that he
should also maintain.that: "Shakespeare"s art uniquely
blends classic dignity with a romantic naturalism,"6'+
and that: "IOu could accuse ShakeSpeare of an aristocra-
tic romanticism."65 Knight ends up with a Shakespeare who
looks suspiciously like Walt Whitman: "Shakespeare"s
universe is fundamentally poetical, not philOSOphical;
nor, in.our usual but limited sense, exactly dramatic.

In it we finally meet no negation, but listen rather to
a vast breathing, a rhythmic pulse, the surge and sob of

a great ocean...."66

By the time Knight wrote The Burning
Oracle, he had come out with a vitalistic, life-embracing,
naturalistic, Whitmanesque Shakespeare:v "Though Shakespeare"s
world is crammed with all kinds of evil, loathing, horror,
it is not itself evil, because ordered; and could not have

been ordered without first being, all of it, understood

 

61Lord Byron"s Marriage, p. 38.

62Laureate‘gf Peace, p. #6. 63Ibid., p. 39.

 

6“Principles‘93:Shakespearian Production. PP. 107—8.
65The Burning Oracle, p. 23.
66Ib1dg, p. 58.

 

C'I‘

126
and therefore loved; and could not have been loved if it
were not, in.essence, vital and therefore good."67 And
in.Principles g£_Shakespearian Production.Knight writes

 

that the difference between Shakespeare and Jonson.is one
"which marks the difference between a mind of quivering
creative sensibility and receptivity and one of formalized

and rigidly dogmatic intelligence."68 It is only by

accepting what fits his preconceived romantic theory of

what Shakespeare is that Knight can arrive at such cenclusiens.

It would be easy to regard Knight as a 'Christian»
izer' of Shakespeare, if Knight meant by Christianity
something more traditional and orthodox. Though Knight's
variety of Christianity is somewhat unhistorical and unorth-
odox, there is nothing very original about it; it is, if
one charitably overlooks the many oversimplificatiens and
inconsistencies, a kind of romantic naturalism, a vitalism
that rests ultimately on biological drives. Both.art and
universal-as opposed to erotic-ulove are merely sublimated
instinct. The sovereign imagination working on.the animal
instincts transcends.the natural life-cycles and the limit-
ations of time and produces both art and religien. The
imagination would seem to be the regulative principle in
Knight's metaphysical system. In.apite of the large
number of dualisms or oppositions that Knight is continually

 

671bid., p. 47. . .
682:}2gggigg'gg.ShakeSpearian Productien, p. 25.

127
discussing in.his later books, his metaphysical theorizing
assumes the ultimate goodness of everything in the universe;
the frequency in his writings-the later books especially-
of such words as 'blending' and 'merging' betray the later
Knight's spiritualistic belief that there is, finally,
no clearcut distinction.between.the spiritual and the
material.

Though Knight is forever talking of the passivity
of the creative artist and the artist's access to another
'dimension," he never attempts to define this realm of
spiritual powers and essences. The artist's insight into
this other realm according to Knight, is firmly rooted in
his own biological makeup. With Knight's frequent refer-
ences to psychological profundities, it would seem that
this other realm of consciousness is really only our subcon-
scious minds, where the seething passions and primal urges
are supposed to originate. The imagination.would seem to
be the faculty which gives coherence to the otherwise
incoherent forces of the Id. Knight the romantic, whose
romanticism, like many romanticisms, often lapses into
naturalism, is a humanist who would give our subconscious
selves their share of recognition.and authority. Knight
can.be considered a humanist because he differentiates
man.from the rest of the brute creation by his sovereign
imagination. Instead of man as essentially a rational
animal, Knight finds man essentially an imaginative animal.
The other dimension, that of eternity, is passive in
Knight's scheme. It would seem to be a static realm of

128
spiritual essences not dissimilar to that of Plato's
Ideas. Christ in.Knight's scheme is a universal lover who
possesses the I'seraphic" intuition and whose love is
universal instead of erotic only because he is psychologi-
cally an integrated personality who has no desire to fulu
fill himself on.the biological level. When Knight in his
later books changes his theory so that art and universal
love are the products of homosexuality rather than simply
an.ObJectified and sublimated sex-urge, he ends up with
the theory that art, religion, and civilization are the
products not of frustrated desire but of perverted desire.

Shakespeare, according to Knight, began.as a romantic
poet but soon.deve10ped into a Christian one: 'Like
Goethe's £2252, Shakespeare's work develops through the
romantic ideal to a Christian,symbolism."'69 This state-
ment occurs in The Christian.Renaissance, but Knight had

 

even earlier indicated Shakespeare's relation.to Christian»
ity. In w and Miracle, Knight was already relating
Shakespeare's insight into a romantic immortality with
other, more explicitly religious insights into immortality:
I'Neither the Book of £22 nor the Final Plays of Shakespeare

 

are to be read as pleasant fancies: rather as parables

of a profound and glorious truth. The one attempts a
statement of the moral purpose of God to man...; the Final
Pdays of Shakespeare...display plots whose texture is

 

69The Christian.Renaissance, p. 121.

 

129 .

soaked in the quality of romantic immortality.'7°

But Knight does not see-che never does-Shakespeare
as adepting Christian.dogma: he always sees Shakespeare
as having access to the same mystic truth from which this
dogma also springs: “And what are bothIfiante's Divine
Comedy and Shakespeare's greater plays, Julius Caesar to
The Tempest but reflections in the work of the two great-
est minds of modern Europe-cchildren respectively of the
Middle Ages and the Benaissance--of that mystic truth
from which are born the dogmas of the Catholic Church..."71
At no time does G. Wilson Knight describe Shakespeare ask.
a Christian.apologist; even in.ggn£y 222;, which Knight)
regards as Shakespeare's most explicitly Christian work,
life itself, according to Knight, takes precedence over
religious doctrines. In what I regard, and hope to prove
in.the next chapter, as an.unsuccessful attempt to exons
erate Henry VIII of any possible guilt arising from his
amorous intrigue, Knight writes that "we forgive the King
what is a grave lapse causing terrible suffering to the
good Katharine, whilst recognizing that his fault is some—
how a virtue; that men, or at least kings, cannot live by
morals alone; that all ethical rules and religious doctrines
are, in the last resort, provisional; that only in.oreation
itself and its inscrutable glories, the glistering might
of its purposes and wonder of its achievement, is God

 

7°Crown9£ Life, p. 30.

 

711b1d. , pp. 30-31.

'I.‘

/“

130
finally revealed; in.life itself as a sacrament, love its
medium and the King its symbol."72

If Knight were truly consistent in regarding drama-
tic personages as purely symbolic characters, then.this
defense would be unnecessary. This is a superb example of
Knight's own rather rhapsodic romanticism and vitalistic
gospel. It also refutes the notion.that Knight is a
Christian apologist. Knight is a kind of mystical natural-
ist. At no time does he advocate-the view that Shakespeare
was an apologist for traditional, orthodox Christianity;~
his view is that by tapping the same sources of power it
is only natural that Shakespeare's insights should some-
times reinforce the insights of which Christian dogma is
another objectified statement.

Sometimes, however, Knight finds that the poetic
atmospheres of particular Shakespeare plays are orthodox;
in.writing of Measure for Measure he asserts that its
“poetic atmosphere is one of religion and critical moral-
ity. The religious colouring is orthodox, as in.Hamlet.'_'73
The Duke in.Measure for Measure Knight finds to be the up-
holder of an enlightened ethic which is really the Gospel
ethic.7u Knight at one point regards the Duke as resembling
God, Just as Prospero does,75 while later in the same essay
the Duke is seen to resemble Jesus in his ethical attitude

and actions.76 In.the concluding paragraph of the essay

L h '

72mm" p. 317. 731M961, ggFire. po 7‘“.

7"?!20 2E. 75%.. P0 790 7613316... p. 82.

 

O

'

131

Knight declares that "the play must be read, not as a
picture of normal human affairs, but as a parable, like
the parables of Jesus.'77

Other plays of Shakespeareare taken by Knight to
be visionary statements. Macbeth, £223., and Antony and
Cleogtra Knight compares to Hell, Purgatory, and Paradise.78
This Dantesque pattern is apparently a favorite of Knight,
for he used the same comparison in m and Miracle with
the later plays of Shakespeare, the Problems, Tragedies,
and Myths ,_and in _T_h_e Starlit 2222, where he views Coleridge's
Christobel, The Ancient Mariner, and Kubla Khan; as forming

 

such a group. Lear is also compared to the Book 23 Job.79

 

By viewing plays as parables, allegories and moralities
Knight occasionally returns to the nineteenth century
habit of extracting moral lessons from art: in writing of
E Knight states that: 'The story of the play indeed
suggests that wrongful action first starts the spreading
poison of evil; and that sin brings inevitable retribu- A

80

tion.‘l But it is only in Measure for Measure and Lear.

 

that these lessons are seen Operating on the moral level-
Usually Knight prefers metaphysics to ethics and morality.
Ethics and morality he associates with an excessive con-
cern for character-study, and by denigrating character-
study Knight simultaneously placed less value on ethical

or moral problems in Shakespeare's plays. The thorough-

A;

78Ibid., p. 179.

8°Ibid., p. 194.

7711311'? Do 96!.
791b1do, p. 191.

132
going naturalism in.£ga£ is sufficient to keep Knight from
superimposing a transcendental metaphysical scheme on the
play: he has to admit that: 'Here the emphasis is every-
where onnaturalism,‘I and that “imaginative transcendence
grows out of the naturalism, is not imposed on it.'81

Even.Timon.2£_Athens, which some critics have taken

 

to be a Shakespearian cri 22 coeur, but which few critics

have regarded as a great work of art, Knight sees as a

82

parable or allegory which includes within it the sub-

stance of Hamlet, Troilus and Cressida, Othello, and King
Lear.83 Moreover, Knight declares that 'it includes and

.84

transcends them all.... The reason.for Knight's extra-

ordinarily high-ufar too high-oestimate of Timon is that

 

it fits a preconceived scheme of Knight's: that of his
hate-theme. Since there is more hate-albeit somewhat inco-
herently expressed--in.this play than in the preceding

ones, Knight concludes that Timon, in.a Christlike gesture,
takes on himself all the venom of hate and thus frees
Shakespeare's mind from this obsession.85 After all,

Knight visualizes Timon.as a Christlike figure possessing
universal love.86 The embarrassing fact that Timon is
presented in.preeminently humanistic terms, with no refer-

ence to any powers beyond the human, does not trouble Knight.

 

812L151." 1’0 205- 822239.. p. 220. 831‘b1d.._p. 236.

8l‘Loc. cit.; elsewhere (p. 253) in the same book,
however, KEIghE writes that I'Hamlet, in fact, contains the
essence of all these later plays.!'

8510c. 23. 86mm" p. 212.

U ' O l

133
His done 25 machine is at hand: he simply invokes the sea,

 

a symbol of eternity. The great convenience of a subjective
symbol is here apparent: a symbol can be summoned to free
the imaginative interpreter from even the most difficult
position. I believe that Knight's essay on.Timgn’illus-
trates the dangers of employing a preconceived thematic
pattern and the weakness or limitation.of a too subjective
interpretative method.

Poets and dramatic characters Knight frequently
describes as Christlike, but on at least one occasion he
introduces an extra-literary standard of comparison from
the outside: in his “Hamlet Beconsidered' (written.in
l9h7), which appeared in the fourth edition.of Thggghegl
22.2i52! Knight writes that I'we are Judging him [hamlet]
by a very high standard; by the standard, indeed, of Christ."87
A comparison of the prOphetic or apocalyptic preoccupations
of this essay published in.19h7 with the original essay

on Hamlet published in The Wheel 35 Fire in 1930, "The

 

Embassy of Death: An Essay on Hamlet,‘ will reveal that

the later essay has almost nothing to say about Hamlet

as literature. An excerpt from the later essay--and this

is exemplary of all the later work of Knight--should reveal

how far Knight has departed from strictly literary concerns:
For what is involved, [In Hamlefl? No

less than the attempt to lift the old
revenge-theme, rooted in drama from

—!_

87Ibid., p. 316.

13u .

Aeschylus to O'Neill, rooted too in

our ways of life, in.our courts of Jus-
tice and international relationships,
indeed, in the very structure of our
thought, beyond its stark Oppositions;
to heave over human affairs from the
backward time-consciousness of Nietzsche's
avenging mind" into the creative inflow.
Such an attempt involves finally the
will to fuse Church and State, the
Sermon on the Mount with international
action; it is a will towards a

Nietzsch synthesis, Ibsen's "Third

Empire"."

A brief enumeration of additional Shakespearian
characters who are seen as Christ-figures may serve to
illustrate to what extent Knight sees Shakespeare as a
religious poet; one such figure is Theseus, whom Knight
regards as "almost a Christ-figure possessing the Christ-
harmony."89 Elsewhere in.Thg_Christian Renaissance

 

Knight asserts that: "Each of our tragic heroes in.turn
endures a miniature Gethsemane,"9o and in The Burning
Oracle Knight writes that "Portia is almost a Christian

symbol."91 In.Principles 22 Shakespearian Production

 

Knight states that: "Christianity has all the time been
implicit in.Shakespeare"s work: and the two today form a
necessary and most futile commentary on.each other. Each

of Shakespeare's tragic heroes is a miniature Christ."92

 

881hid., p. 325.

89Christian.Renaissance, p. nu.

 

901bid0, p. 52. .

91333135 9.5222- 1» 29- w . .
92Principles 3; Shakespearian Production, p. 231.

 

135

But even when.Knight expressed this view he still did not
identify Shakespeare with orthodoxy: "The genius of
Shakespeare returned at the last to orthodoxy: but the
movement was probably nearer to a natural recognition
than.an acceptance of revelation."93

However, it is in this book that Knight suggested
that: I'In.the world of Shakespearian tragedy this unique
act of the Christ sacrifice can, if we like, be seen as
central."9h Knight goes on to make one of his most speci-
fic comparisons between Shakespearian tragedy and Christian
ritual: "Shakespearian tragedy is a vast tree, splaying
out, the Christian Mass we can call its central trunk....'95
One last quotation.from Principles of Shakespearian.§:gr-
duction should indicate why the last plays of Shakespeare
are doubly important in.Knight"s scheme, doubly important
because they lend themselves both to his romanticism and
to his transcendental theorizing: "Shakespeare's final
plays celebrate the victory and glory, the resurrection and
renewal, that in the Christian story and in its reflection
in Christian ritual succeed the sacrifice."96

Knight again.attempts to relate Shakespeare to
Christianity in.The Burning Oracle: "Yet the Christian

values and sentiments are found often.more sensitively and

inwardly conceived then.by professional propagandists.

 

9"Ib1d., p. 23#.

93Ib1d., p. 232.
95522- 211: 969.29.- 2.12.

 

.IOI

136
Friars dominate action, and love, as in Lyly, is religiously
haioed.-97 Furthermore, Knight finds that in the matter
of human dignity: "Shakespeare is profoundly Christian:
though it is important to remember the total acceptance
conditioning such integrity. Many passages and many persons,
especially Friar Laurence and Cerimon, tone with traditional
religion. Moreover, Shakespeare shows preperly no con-
flict of the sexual and the Christian: indeed, Christian
sanctities are consistently invoked in the cause of drama-
tic love: which is, however, conceived as an enduring
emotion. His ladies are allied continually with Christian
associations. New Testament references and half-conscious
reminiscence often.witness a coincidence of the human with
the archetypal and Christian...."98 The next quotation
from The Burning Oracle should free Knight from the charge
of Christianizing Shakespeare, at least as this is tradi—
tionally understood: "A relation.to the Christ-tragedy is
sometimes suggested: but, in.a deep sense, always embed- ‘
dad-anot so much by direct, or even unconscious, influence,
but because the same piece of work is being done according
to the laws of the same universe....'99 The last quotation
from The Burning Oracle on.Knight"s relating Shakespeare
to Christianity, will indicate the importance of the final
plays in.Knight's scheme: "This whole last series corres-

 

97322 Burning Oracle, p. 29.
98113154 s P9 ",3 9
99Ib1d., p. 53.

II".

slit

137
ponds to the tragedies as the resurrection to the crucifi-
xion in.Christian.belief."loo

Even.when.writing of the last plays in The Crown of

 

Life, Knight does not claim Shakespeare as an apologist of
orthodox Christianity:

But a warning is necessary. ThOugh Shake-
speare writes, broadly speaking, from a
Christian standpoint, and though christ~
ianized phraseology recurs, yet the poet
is rather to be supposed as using Christ-
ian.concepts than.as dominated by them.
They are implemental to his purpose; but
so too are "great Apollo" and "great‘
nature", sometimes themselves approachu
ing Biblical feeling (with Apollo as
Jehovah), yet diverging also, espec-
ially later, into a pantheism of such
majesty that orthodox apologists may
well be tempted to call it Christian
too; but it is scarcely orthodox.. The
Winter's Tale remains a creation.of'tfie
HEEEIEEEnEET'that is, of the questing'
imagination, firmly planted, no doubt,
in.medieval tradition, but not directed
by it. There is a distinction here of
importance." 0

Precisely: this quotation, substituting G. Wilson.Knight
himself for Shakespeare, would be a remarkably apt descrip-
tion of Knight"s Shakespearian interpretation.ar esthetic
and metaphysical theories: he uses the words of Christian
orthodoxy-Christ, the Incarnation, the Trinity, God-n

but replaces the traditional concepts underlying these
words with meanings from his own.peculiar, mystical, vit-
alistic, naturalistic, romanticism.

 

loomide, P0 570
lolcrown 93; Life. pp. 96-7.

 

138 _

Shakespeare, according to Knight, is most profoundly
influenced by Life itself: "Orthodox tradition is used,
but it does not direct; a pagan naturalism is used too.

The Bible has been an influence; so have classical myth

and Renaissance pastoral; but the greatest influence was
Life itself, that creating and protecting deity whose
superhuman.presence and powers the drama labours to define."102
A quotation from one of Knight"s later books, The Sovereign
Flower, should demonstrate that in.the last analysis, both
Knight"s Christianity and his romantic conception.of Shake-
speare are merely parts of his mystical vitalism: "In

both Christianity and Shakespeare you have a central
humility and passivity violently creative, radiating action,
a process, as it were, of continual incarnation; and both
finally reach, through this,_the farthest death illumi-
nations of the Western world."103 Yet Knight"s concept

of Christianity and his view of Shakespeare do not lapse
altogether into naturalism, since man.does possess the
imaginative faculty, which, coupled with the ability of

the poet-found preeminently in.Shakespeare--to obJectify
his spiritual intuitions, distinguishes imaginative man

from the brute creation.

Knight"s humanism-ewhich is the same as that which
he attributes to Shakespeare-rests on the imagination,
upon which both art and religion are dependent; Knight

 

1°21b1d., p. 128 103Sovereign Flower, p. 226.

139

implies this in.the following quotation from The Sovereign
Flower: "we do Christianity itself little service by
regarding Shakespeare's plays as no more than.pendants to
the religious tradition, since in so doing we inevitably
end by slighting that human insight and spiritual pene-
tration through which alone the Shakespearian impact
exists and what might be called the corroboration of
Christian truth in Renaissance terms is accomplished."lou
"Renaissance," as Knight uses it, implies the freeing of
the erotic instinct and the poetic imagination from eccles-
iastical control. But in making a case for Knight as a
humanist one must reckon with an occasional inconsistency;
in.Thg.Sovereign‘Flower Knight at one point refers to
"Shakespeare"s rooted naturalism and refusal to make any
final distinction between man.and the rest of God's
creation."105

There are, however, many statements throughout the
published work of Knight that reveal his view that Shake-
speare is, as shown.in his work, a humanist, though there
are also many statements that would make Shakespeare a
naturalist or a supernaturalist. In.writing of £225 in

The Wheel 22 Fire Knight states that: "The gods here are

 

more natural than.supernatural; the good and bad elements
in humanity are, too, natural, not, as in.Macbeth, super-

 

natural."1°6 This can.cnly mean that Shakespeare"s work
10
10“Ibid., p. 251. 51bid., p. 252. a
106

Wheel-2: Fire, p. 187.

 

. lho
is sometimes naturalistic, sometimes supernaturalistic.
And in.writing of Timon.in.the same volume, Knight mentions
that: "If this transcendent love can be bodied into shapes
and forms which are finite; if the world of actuality and
sense does not play Timon false-~then humanism can thrive
without religion, and an earthly paradise is no deceiving

dream..107

Timon.af course fails, but other Christ— .
figures--Prospero and the Duke of Measure {25 Measure,

for examples-~in.Knight succeed, indicating that the earthly
paradise is regarded as no deceiving dream by Knight,

who is continually in his later books making prOphets of

a paradisiacal future out of various poets.

A series of short quotations, starting with some of
Knight"s earlier writings and coming down to the present,
should prove that Knight has always viewed Shakespeare as
variously a naturalist, humanist, and supernaturalist.
In.The Imperial Them: Knight writes that: "In Shakespeare
"creation" is the result of two blending elements: the
divine and earthly."1°8 In.The Shakespearian.Te st,
the author states that "though Shakespeare"s world is
primarily a world of men, yet his primary symbols, tempest '
and music, are things unhuman: the one an effect of nature,
subhuman; the other reaching out to infinity and speaking
divine accents, superhuman."109 Knight writes in.The

Christian Renaissance that: "Shakespeare steers a middle

 

 

108

1°7Ibid., p, 212. Imperial Theme, p. 57.

logshakespearian.Tempest, p. 280.

lhl

course.. Whereas Dante stresses the divine and Goethe the
natural, ShakeSpeare as certainly stresses the human."110
A few years later, in Principles of Shakespearian Produc-
‘Eign, Knight maintained that: 'Poetry is metaphoric; its
essential purpose to blend the human and the divine. So
those poets who aim primarily at God, do so in terms of
man; and Shakespeare, speaking with the accents and intri-
cacies of great poetry of man, speaks accordingly of God."111
In.The Burning Oracle Knight declares that: "Shakespeare"s
stress is primarily on.man. His wider universe is natural-
istic-a science of elements in.ascending grades is some-
times explicit in.statement and continually implicit in
imagistic management--and angelic hierarchies play a part."112

But in Chariot gf’firath_Knight asserts that:
"Shakespeare"s main.indictments are levelled against mans
faced by the apparent inaustice of Providence, he never
rises beyond a semioagnostic accusation of "the gods'."113

Moreover, in The Olive and the Sword Knight maintains that:

 

"ShakeSpeare ultimately has a greater trust in man.as man

than many a more obviously daring interpreter....'1luy

Moving in the other direction, toward supernaturalism,

 

0 .
11 Christian Renaissance, p. 116.

111Principles 2: Shakespearian.Production. P" 17‘

112Burning Oracle, p. 29.

113Chariot gt; wrath, p. .92.
11h

 

Olive and Sword, p. 93.

 

.pvs'

 

1h2
Knight writes in The Crown of Life that: "The Tragedies

 

culminating in W 93 Athens and The Tempest (for man)
and Antony fl Cleopatra and the remaining Final Plays
(for woman) have developed the Shakespearian humanism to
its limit, though with no severing of Christian contacts.
Here we face the limits of even that, purified, humanism."115
In Laureate of P_e_a_c_e Knight sees "man dramatically inter--
locked with a great mesh of natural and cosmic energies,
as in Shakespeare. "116
Yet Knight found in The Sovereign Flower that "the
emphasis [in Shakespeare"s plays is not on any intellectual
concept, scheme, or system, but is rather, in the way of
great poetry, specific, human, and localised, with full
dramatic immediacy and contemporary impact...."117 The
final quotation in this series, from The Golden Labyrinth,
is reminiscent of Wordsworthian romanticism in its
interrelating of man and nature and goes as follows: ~ "All
coheres. En Shakespeare; Man and his. society are in close
interaffective relationship to'nature, to flowers and the
seasons, the sea, sun and moon, the cosmos; and also to
abysmal evil and to the divine."118
Knight"s Shakespeare is one who takes man as the

nexus of the divine and the natural, as both the Middle Ages

 

llScrown gt; Life, p.295.

116laureate of Peace, p. 9..

ll'ISov’ereiE Flower, p. 253.

118Golden Labyrinth, p. 66.

 

 

I...

1u3
and the Renaissance did; in.Knight"s metaphysical system
Shakespeare would appear to have been continually moving
toward supernaturalism: in the early plays Knight sees
a Shakespeare by and large content with romantic love;
in the problem plays there is disgust with the animal
nature of man, and the hate-theme prevails; in the tragedies
the humanistic Shakespeare is most evident; and by the time
Shakespeare reached the final plays the visions of immor-
tality and the symbolically divine music had moved the
balance in favor of supernaturalism. It could be, and has
been, argued that Shakespeare was primarily a naturalist,
a humanist, or a supernaturalist; but to have him all
three, simultaneously, as Knight would have him, is diffi-
cult to accept. Ignoring all historical or literary
explanations for Shakespeare"s writing different kinds of
plays at different times, and assuming that the spiritual
progress of Shakespeare is evident in his plays, Knight
can easily assume that the plays variously reveal Shake-
speare to be a naturalist, humanist or supernaturalist.
He never adds "Opportunist" to these three. He wants a
kind of continum from naturalism at one end to supernatural-
ism at the other in which Shakespeare moves, but he will
never admit that at a particular point in.time, in.a part-
icular period of his writing, Shakespeare was merely a
naturalist, purely a humanist, or totally a supernaturale
ist. All three must be present in the work at all times.
Knight sees Shakespeare attaining mystical insights from
an.erotically-inspired art. Perhaps it is not difficult

144
for the romanticist Knight to visualize Shakespeare"s
art as a kind of organic growth rooted in nature, growing
through the peculiarly human and eventually touching the
supernatural.

Thus we find that the Shakespeare who emerges from
Knight"s interpretative work is a romantic whose erotic
perception eventually outgrew both its naturalistic and
humanistic stages though without rejecting them and attained
to an insight into the eternal. The Shakespearian.universe
is one in which the principal opposition.is between.tempests
and music, though nationalism is also taken.to be a OOH!
stant concern of the poet.

The spiritual progress of the poet, which Knight
assumes to be revealed in.the plays, is generally in the
direction of the supernatural, though Shakespeare, accord-
ing to Knight, gains his visions of immortality from what
originated as erotic perceptions; at all times, Knight
believes, Shakespeare was primarily concerned with man.-
Shakespeare is a Christian, by Knight"s definition of the
term, only insofar as he corroborated the insights of
orthodox Christianity with his own mystical visions.

It is significant that Knight"s earliest work began
with the last plays, and also significant that EEEEZQZEEE'
did not figure prominently in.Knight"s interpretative
scheme until after the growth of his interest in.British
destiny during the war years. Knight has never dealt at
any great length with ShakeSpearian.comedy, the early
plays, or even the history plays (with the exception.of

, 1&5
EEEEZfZEEE)" in spite of the many books that interpreted
their relation to kingship or nationalism.t His greatest
success has been with plays of a parabolic, allegorical,
symbolic, or mythical nature, of which the last plays are
admirable examples. The next chapter will analyze Knight"s
interpretation.of the final five plays. The last plays,
which Knight regards as visions of immortality, are cru-
cial to his interpretative scheme for several reasons:
1. they lend themselves best to his "spatial" approach;
2. they have occupied their crucial position in his inter-
pretative scheme since his earliest work and have continued
to do so through the present; 3. they show Knight in.a
classic romantic stance that reveals the eccentricities of
his work in.embryonic form; and 4. together with his
interpretations of the major tragedies, Knight"s interpre-
tations of the last plays have had the most profound influ»

ence on subsequent Shakespearian interpretation.

CHAPTER FOUR

The final five plays of Shakespeare have generated
a great diversity of opinion.as to their authenticity,
their significance, and their respective merits as works
of art. By authenticity one means authenticity of author-
ship; the first two acts of Pericles, the Jupiter scene of
Cymbeline, and various speeches in M £2 have all been
attributed to other writers. On the other hand, some of
those who advocate unity of authorship have posited the
theory that Shakespeare returned to unfinished plays of
his youth and thus blame the supposedly inferior lines--

of Pericles, for example-«upon the author"s own earlier

 

immaturity of style. Still others accept the genuineness
of Shakespeare"s work but, following the nineteenth century
lead, assume a later decay of Shakespeare"s ability, or a
later indifference to characterization.and dramatic form,,
usually accompanied by an increased interest in pure
poetry, or a later relaxation of effort because of various
reasons, such as financial independence and the pleasures
of country life. .
Critics have also shown a wide range of views about
the plays" form. The plays have been seen as little more
than Shakespeare's effort to adapt a pOpular new literary
form, the romance, to the stage. They have been seen.as
Shakespeare"s attempt to capitalize on.a new dramatic form
which.BeaumOnt and Fletcher had originated: the old pro-

fessional exploiting a form which his young rivals had
1h6

147
first successfully introduced. Those who see Shakespeare
exploiting the romance in drama or imitating his younger
rivals usually minimize the significance of the last plays.
The last plays have been thought to lack the dramatic ten»
sion.of the great tragedies that preceded them; they have
been thought to be little more than "escape" literature.
Though various commentators have argued for the

topicality of certain of the last five plays-ugh: Tempest,
preeminently-omost literary scholars see them as farther

removed from actuality than the preceding-35 Midsummer

 

Night's Dream the notable exceptionnuand they try in.dif-

 

ferent ways to account for this unreality. Shakespeare
is variously seen as returning to pure poetry, his first
love; as adopting a literary form, the romance, that is by
its very nature unrealistic and undramatic; and, more
recently, as deliberately experimenting with symbolism.
Since the romantics The Tempest has been subjected
to allegorical interpretations, and from the same time
supposedly autobiographical elements have aroused much
interest. Thg_Tempest has for a long time been regarded
as Shakespeare"s final farewell to his art, and Prospero
and the poet have been frequently equated. Ariel and
Caliban have been subjected to various allegorical inter-
pretations. With no record of Shakespeare's inner life
and only the scantiest of his physical existence, there
have been virtually no checks upon the imaginative flights
of various commentators. Moreover, the intrusion of the

supernatural in.the final plays lends itself to the symbolic

~148
and allegorical approaches.

The last plays have frequently been remarked upon
because of their air of unreality, their serenity or lack
of dramatic tension, the poet's creation of characters
supposedly inferior to the great comic and tragic charac-
ters of the earlier plays, the repeated use of the same
romantic plot, the suspected allegorical or symbolic
meanings, the suSpected autobiographical entent (in
The Tempest), and various stylistic differences.

Now Knight"s interpretative method is ideally suited
to the final plays-cindeed, one could perhaps argue that
the method was formulated and codified 3222: it had been
successfully applied to these plays, with the exception of
EEEEZ.XEEEf'and to the great tragedies, but before Knight
had taken.the trouble to discover whether or not his
method was equally applicable to all of Shakespeare. There
are reasons for its success. Knight"s method minimizes
the strictly dramatic elements of the play and concentrates
upon the poetry: many critics have remarked upon Shakespeare"s
apparent concern in the last plays for the purely poetic
and his lack of interest in.the strictly dramatic. Knight
assumes that character is primarily symbolic and only
secondarily human. Therefore the rather perfunctory
characterization in.the last plays is not a flaw but part
of the symbolic design. Action, plot, and language are
also valued by Knight principally for their symbolism.

Thus the repetition of the separationnreunion.plot or the
use of gnomic utterances fits admirably into Knight"s

149
scheme. The serenity of the last plays becomes in Knight"s
scheme a mystic intuition of eternity that is no longer
caught in the toils of the natural world or the tragically
human. The air of unreality becomes the difficulty the
poet experiences in.objectifying his mystical visions of
immortality in.dramatic art. Knight accepts the assumption
that The Tempest is an autobiographical statement, but it
becomes not so much a record of Shakespeare the man as the
record of Shakespeare the great romantic artist objectify-
ing his universally valid spiritual experiences in.drama-
tic poetry.

One of Knight"s unpublished writings, Thaisa,‘
written even earlier than "The Poet and Immortality",
which.was printed in.The Shakespeare Review in.October,
1928, contained Knight"s central thesis concerning the

last plays.1

This argument appeared again.in.Myth and
Miracle in 1929. Knight"s view is essentially this:' the

last plays-«at first confined to Pericles, Cymbeline,

 

The Winter"s Tale, and The Tempest, but later including
EEEEZHXEEET‘are the culmination of a spiritual progress
that began about the middle of Shakespeare's literary
career. The final plays, according to Knight, are the
inevitable conclusion.of a spiritual pilgrimage that had .
previously passed through the stages of the Problem Plays,
which reflect the "sick soul", cynical and disgusted with

 

1Perhaps as early as 1927, according to Knight in
a letter to me dated 27 February 196“. Thaisa is how in
the Shakespeare Memorial Library at Birmfi'g'fi'm', England.

150

natural life; and the great tragedies, which dealt with
human destiny in.a grand and.noble manner. Thus the pest
is no longer content with the tragic intuition but is push-
ing beyond to mystical visions of immortality; the last
plays are accordingly regarded as visionary statements
that have transcended the natural world or the essentially
human and have touched a permanent spiritual realm.

By regarding the last five plays as the culmination
of the Shakespeare Progress—ewith Hengy‘VIII as the crowning

 

achievement-Knight is assuming the greatest significance
for the last plays. Instead of failing to continue the
tragic vision of the preceding plays the last five plays

are seen.as transcending them with.a mystic vision.of
immortality. Once Knight assumes that there is such.a
Progress he is committed to the belief in.a continuity and
coherence in.the whole of Shakespeare's work (at least

from 1599 on). Moreover, this assumption also determines
Knight"s view of the authenticity of certain questionable
passages; the later Knight accepts more of the passages

of doubtful authorship as genuine Shakespeare than.the early
Knight did. Furthermore, Knight"s estimation of the esthetic
merits of the plays is determined by the crucial position.
he assigns them in.the record of Shakespeare"s spiritual
develOpment. When.we evaluate Knight"s interpretations

of the individual plays we shall observe how highly he
valued.Thg Tempest when he thought it the final summary

of Shakespeare's artistic career and how extravagantly he
valued Henry Ellliwhen.he came to see it as the final

 

151
synthesis of Shakespeare's central concerns. The fallacy
would seem to lie in Knight"s assumption that Shakespeare"s
spiritual progress is coterminous with his artistic pro-
gress: what else could account for Knight"s high estimates
of Timon.g£ Athens and.Henry XIII? Knight, who would

 

 

seem to assume that Shakespeare began with animal spirits,
went through the human spirit and on up into the Holy
Spirit, would also seem to assume that the more of Shake—
speare there is in.a play the better the play-~again
m of Athens is an ideal example.

Yet there are many reasons why Knight"s method is
admirably suited to interpret the last plays. Many have
felt the power of the final p1ays-notably The Tempest and
The_Winter"s Talgeuonly to find that the conventional
methods of interpretation are inadequate to explain.it.
Realism is obviously not their strength; their historical
significance, their topicality, fails signally to explain
them; there is no real dramatic tension comparable to that
of the great tragedies; and there are certainly more fully
develOped, more memorable characters in.the earlier plays.
They are too complex to lend themselves to a straight-
forward allegorical approach; critics have tried it,
especially with.Thngempest, only to find there is little
agreement in their various allegorical interpretations.
However, there are recurring patterns in.the plays, notably

in Pericles, The Tempest, The Winter's Tale, and Cymbeline;

 

there are recurring themes; the atmospheres are similar;

and the note of reconciliation.and forgiveness is present

152
in.them all. There are many characters, elements, and
situations which lend themselves to symbolic handling.
In.addition, there are archetypal patterns that have led
various interpreters to seek parallels in.Christian tradiu
tion.and pagan mythology. In short, since the last plays
suggest in.eo many ways that their most profound signifi-
canoes lie not on the literal levels-uin.the story, the
action, or the characters-«Knight"s spatial method is far
better suited to interpret these plays than Bradley's
method of psychological analysis or the literary historian"s
concern.with influences, which are quite problematical, or
topical allusions, which are rather scarce in these plays.
The recurring music and tempests do seem to possess symbolic
significance in the last plays; Knight was wrong in.trying
to make them the sole unifying elements of the whole of
Shakespeare's work, but they do loom very large indeed in
the final plays. Furthermore, Knight"s insistence that
each play be regarded first as poetry does seem to gain.some
empirical support in.the last plays. How many critics who.
have attacked the last plays for various inadequacies have,
like Lytton.Strachey, acknowledged the greatness of their
poetry?

Almost all critics acknowledge the remarkable simil-
arities Shakespeare"s last plays have to one another--
EEEEXHXEEE having the fewest resemblances, though there
are still enough to group it with the others--but none
has been able to explain.them better than Knight has

through his concentration on the symbolic elements. The

153
remainder of this chapter will be devoted to Knight's

interpretation.of the last five plays, each taken.indivi-
dually, and the next chapter will indicate how Knight's
success in.interpreting the final plays “spatially" has
influenced many younger writers to treat Shakespeare's
work as poetry, each play symbolically structured and the

whole organically coherent.

Knight has suggested, though he has never develOped
written.even later than Pericles and that there are various
sililitudes between All's Well and the last plays that
deserve attention.2 John Livingston.Lowes has speculated
that All's Well was finally revised somewhere around

 

 

1606-1608,3 which would place it around the prObable date
of Pericles, which is usually taken.to be 1608. Knight
has an essay on 5133 Well. in The Sovereig Flower, "The
Third Eye,‘I but even there he did not develOp the theory
that Allis Well is a late play in.many respects similar to
the other final plays. Consequently é§$l2.32li.'111 not
be discussed, since Knight's speculations about the play

appeared late in.his work and have never been develOped.

 

20f. pp. 74 and 127-8 of The Crown of Life. Hence-
forth all references to The Crowfi'fif‘flfi'e 171 ffi'f's’ chapter
will be incorporated in.E53"EEEE:"Kh§'?§ferences to this
book will be indicated simply by the page numbers in.par-
entheses in.this manner: (PP. 74 and 127-8).

36. K. Hunter, Introduction.to the New Arden edition
of All's Well That Ends Well, p. xxii.

 

 

 

 

lsu
The first play to consider, then, is Pericles. In
Eythgand Miracle Knight points out the obvious similarities
between Pericles and The Winter's gels, and, while conceding

 

that The Winter's Tale is the more perfect work of art,

 

declares that The Winter's Tale 'lacks something of the
paradisal radiance of Pericles.'(p. l6) When.Knight pub-
lished The Crown.g£ Life he inserted a footnote to repud-

 

iate his earlier view that Thg_Winter's 22$2.13 the less
vital piay(p. 17). Knight's coupling of Pericles and 2132
Winter's Tale as similar immortality visions, similar tri-
umphs of the reality of love over the illusion of death,
is found scattered throughout his interpretative work.“
All of these were anticipated in EZEE and Miracle, where
he asserts that: "Pericles and The Winter's Tale show us

 

 

the quality of immortality in terms of victorious love
walling up in.the beautiful plot of loss and reunion."5

In his essay on.Pericles in.The Crown of Life

 

 

Knight does all he can to minimize the case agarnst the
authenticity of the questionable partso-principally the
first two acts-nof the play. After arguing in.the beginning
of his essay (pp. 32-#) for the organic wholeness of the
story, the imaginative coherence of the early scenes,

and the ease with which it fits into the pattern of the

later work, Knight moves that we tentatively accept the

 

”For example, pp. 189-190 of The Christian Renaissance;
p. 55 of The Burning_ Oracle; and p. 63-h? The UIIve an
the Sword. . “" "‘

 

Snyth and Miracle, p. 21.

155

questionable passages and see where it leads us. At the
conclusion of the essay (pp. 7u-5) he attempts to explain
away the inferior parts of the play. The bad lines may
be due to a bad text or the lack of revision; the use of
weaker rhymed passages may be due to the experimental
nature of the play; and a copyist or compositor can be
blamed. But Knight's own.theory is that "the obvious con.
clusion is that some much earlier play, either of Shakespear-
ian or other authorship, shows through, mainly in the first
half, but that it has been so modified by incorporation
that we need not, from an interpretative view, be seriously
disquieted" (p. 75).

The advantage of Knight's interpretative method-
assuming that finding the play a coherent imaginative
whole reflecting the poet's spiritual progress is an.advan»
tage-cis evident in the conclusion, where Knight finds that
"the various imagistic correspondences, cutting across
divergences of style, knit the narrative into a unity"(p. 75).
If Knight is to be able to regard the play as a record of
Shakespeare's spiritual development, it is imperative that
he minimize any threat to the authenticity, and hence the
integrity, of the play: "Whatever we think of certain
parts, the whole, as we have it, is unquestionably dominated
by a single mind;‘ that mind is clearly Shakespeare's;
and Shakespeare's, to, in.process of an advance unique in
literature" (p. 75).

In his interpretation of Pericles Knight emphasizes

those elements which lend coherence to the play. One is

156
the tempest; another is music. Knight assumes that the
play is essentially an extended, enlarged metaphor; the
story, Knight believes, is subordinate to the central
symbolism: "Being at a loss, he Shakespeare] chooses a
story that gives full rein.to his poetic passion for
voyages, tempests and wrecks" (p. 36). Moreover, Shake-
speare is visualized as aiming to "compose a morality
play around his own poetic symbolism as dogma" (p. 36).
The play is thus essentially poetry, not drama: "For
poetry is now eXpected to make, rather than to bind and
harmonize, the story. The quality which formerly inter-
penetrated the story now is the story" (p. 36). It is
obvious that a play that had frequently been declared
weak in plot and dramatic interest has much to gain under
an interpretative method that sees the essential unity in
image, idea, and event.

Knight, who accepts the integrity or coherence of
the whole of Shakespeare's work, very effectively ties
Pericles to the plays that preceded and followed it.
Pericles" knowledge of the incest of Antiochus and his
daughter is compared to Hamlet's knowledge of his mother
and uncle's guilt (p. #0). Pericles is compared to Post-
humus (p. #7); Simonides' sentiments on.bonor are likened
to those of the King in.Alllg We}; (p. #8); the play itself
is seen in various ways resembling 113132 93 Athens (p. #8);
the rewarding of Pericles" humility is thought to forecast
the fortunes of Cranmer in m XE; (p. 51); Cerimon is

regarded as both a descendant of Friar Lawrence in.aomeo

 

l5?
and Juliet and a forebear of Prospero in The Tempest (p. 5#);
the whole vision.of love triumphant over death is seen to

be prefigured in.Antony and CleOpatra (p. 57); Dionyza.

 

and Philoten are seen to forecast the Queen and Cloten,

respectively, in Cymbeline (p. 58); Lysimachus is compared

 

to Bertram in.All's Well (p. 60); Marina's curing of
Pericles is likened to Helena's of the King in.All's Well

 

(p. 63); and so on. Knight builds a remarkably good case
for Pericles as a piece of Shakespearian work bound by an
extraordinarily large number of likenesses both to the
plays that came before and those that came after.

In his analyses of the characters in Pericles
Knight is, I believe, less successful. Pericles' experience
with Antiochus and his daughter undoubtedly involves a gain
in.know1edge of evil and the correSponding loss of inno-.
cause, but there is no evidence that Pericles has sinned,
and consequently there is no action on his part that would
deserve the suffering which he experiences. Yet Knight
maintains that: "Our hero's adventure is a plunge into
sin.and death closely associated with ravishing desire.
He has not actively sinned, except in.giving way to a lust-
ful and cheating fantasy, but the result is immersion into
an experience of evil with accompanying disgust and danger.
It is a fall in the theological sense" (p. 38). There would
appear to be no evidence in the text to Justify any conclu-
sion other than that Pericles suffers the fate of mortals
ity simply because he is human. Like Belarius, Prospero,

Hermione, Buckingham, and Katharine, Pericles is an innocent

158
suffering the consequences of others' guilt.

Indeed, the final plays are filled with characters
who suffer for sins not their own. In.Pericles Marine
undergoes ill-treatment at the hands of depraved human
beings, Thaisa suffers at the hands of nature, and Pericles
himself endures evil both of the moral and natural kinds.

In Cymbeline the King is imposed upon.by the evil Queen

 

and is the instrument of evil toward Posthumus and his
daughter Imogen as well as toward Belarius. Posthumus is
reported a noble and worthy, though poor, gentleman.whose
sense of honor is attacked by Iachimo. In.The Winter's

Tale Camillo, Paulina, and Hamillius, in.addition.to'

 

Hermione, suffer innocently. Abused Innocence might be .
regarded as a theme common to all of the last five plays.

It might be argued6 that the theme of growth from
Innocence into Experience is present in.all of the last
five plays. However, it would be incorrect-~and there is
no textual warrant-ato maintain that Pericles is suffering
the universal human experience of growth into knowledge
of good and evil. Pericles flees Antiochus for self-
preservation and not because of a first shocking awareness
of evil:

Murder's as near to lust as flame to smoke.

Poison.and treason.are the hands of sin,

Ay, and the targets, to put off the shame: .

Then, lest my life be cropp'd to keep you clear,

By flight I'll shun the danger which I fear.
(I. 1. 139~l#3)

 

6And has been, in."The Tempest" by Derek Traversi.
This essay appeared in.ScruEEny; XVI (June 19#9), pp. 127-157.

159
Moreover, it is not judging Pericles too precisely to mainp
tain.that he can.bardly be innocent, i.e., ignorant, of
evil if he is capable of interpreting the riddle no matter
how ridiculously transparent the riddle is.

Knight's misinterpretation.of Pericles is largely
due, I believe, to his desire to see Pericles as a kind of
Hamlet: "After escaping to Tyre, Pericles is struck down
with melancholia. He has had a blasting experience, not
unlike Hamlet's, both suffering through knowledge of in,
cest in one they love and falling into a mysterious gloom..."
(p. #0). Knight goes on to assert that: "He seems to
feel guilt, yet is uncertain.how far the offence is his
own (I. ii. 92)" (p. #0). Yet Knight completely overlooks
several lines in.Act I, Scene 2, lines which indicate that
Pericles' melancholy is not caused by a brooding sense of
sin or evil so much as a noble solicitude for his subjects:

With hostile forces he'll o'erspread the land,

And with the ostent of war will look so huge,

Amazement shall drive courage from the state,

Our men.be vanquish'd ere they do resist,

And subjects punish'd that ne'er thought offence:

Which care of them, not pity of myself 8-

use am no mere But as the tops‘bf frees '

Which fence the roots they grow by and defend them,--

Make both my body pine and soul to_languish,

And punish that before that he would punish.

(I. ii. 25-3#) @talics ming
The fallacy in Knight's conception.of Pericles is his view-
ing Pericles as an.introspective and self-centered figure
reminiscent of the romantic conception of Hamlet. ,Pericles
is far more external and far more a symbol of the good
ruler concerned for the welfare of his subjects than.Knight

is apparently aware of. Pericles' rank as a Prince is

160
obviously not in.Knight's mind when.he writes that "He
[Pericles] is at the best 'a country gentleman' (II. iii.

33), regarded rather as is Posthumus in Cymbeline....'

 

(p. #7). It is incredible that Knight should use Simonides'
estimate of Pericles in this manner, when the reader or
viewer of the play is obviously better informed of Pericles'
high rank than Simonides is. It would again.appear to be
that Knight is over-anxious to link Pericles with other
characters of Shakespeare, at one time Hamlet, at another
Posthumus. Knight would seem to be carried away by his
wide and profound knowledge of the totality of Shakespeare's
work and his desire to place Pericles in.a significant and
coherent sequence. Pericles is better seenn-in.the first
two actso-as an ideal ruler in.contrast to the tyrant
Antiochus; Pericles himself tells Helicanus, when.he is
delegating his princely authority to this lord, that

The care I had and have of subjects' good

0n.them I'll lay, whose wisdom's strength can bear it.

I'll take thy word for faith, not ask thine oath;

Who shuns not to break one will sure crack both.

But in.our orbs we'll live so round and safe,

That time of both this truth shall ne'er convince,

Thou show'dst a subject's shine, I a true prince'.

(I. ii. 118-12#)

In.addition.to being a parable of Patience? Pericles-the
first two acts-ncould also be regarded as a parable of the
Good Ruler in Adversity: the first two acts are loaded
with explicit moralizing on.kingship and tyranny.

Knight is correct, I believe, in.finding Pericles'

adventures a kind of parable of human fortune: "We are

 

 

701'. J. F. Danby, Poets 92 Fortune's Hill, pp. 101-2.

‘

O

0 fi

 

 

<1

161
watching something like a parable of human fortune, with
moral import at every turn" (p. 52). Or, as he suggests
on.p. 70; "Pericles might be called a Shakespearian
morality play."

Knight is more successful in his estimate of
Cerimon, who is rightly compared to Friar Lawrence, Pros-
pero, and even Timon (p. 5#). Cerimon, does, as Gower
says at the end of the play, represent "the worth that
learned charity aye wears," but the play does not quite
justify Knight's finding Cerimon."an.almost superhuman
figure living out a truth expressed throughout the New
Testament...' (p. 55). Cerimon could more easily be called
"allegorical" than "superhuman"; indeed, Gower's catalog
of virtues and vices at the close of the play would seem
to substantiate the view that the various characters in
the play are much like the allegorical figures in morality
plays.

Marina is regarded by Knight as at once a symbol and
a real girl; on.p. 62 of The Crown.2£ Life she is "art

 

 

incarnate," and three pages later Knight writes that "there
is nothing inflexible, inhuman, about Marina: she remains
at every instant a natural girl." This formidable para-
gon.of virtue, this tremendously talented girl, who preaches
divinity in.a bawdy house, is hardly a "natural girl";
she is, as the character Gower indicates at the conclusion,
a figure representing virtue and chastity.

There are primarily three things that_Knight is

eager to prove in his interpretation of Pericles: the

162
first is that the play is itself coherent, an organic
entity with "running coherences of idea, image, and event"
(pp. 70-1). The second is that the play is a part of a
larger whole; in other words, that it fits into the Shake-
speare Progress. The third is that the play, in.common
with the other last plays, of which Pericles is the first,
possesses transcendental meaning. We have found that by
continually comparing the characters, images, and situa-
tions in Pericles with those of other plays by Shakespeare
Knight succeeds in linking the play with the rest of
Shakespeare's work. By concentrating on themes and images
and subordinating action to imagery and character to
symbolism Knight can not only conclude: "His [:Shakespeare'a
imagery, his poetry, dictates the action" (p. 57), but that
it is thoroughly organic as a play (p. 70).

Having established to his own satisfaction.that
Pericles is coherent in itself and part of a larger organic
whole, Knight differentiates the play from its predecessors
by mentioning that "the structural elements in.Pericles
are not all new; but the treatment gives them fresh, and
explicitly transcendental meaning" (p. 72). Knight rests
his case, naturally enough, on the following things:
Cerimon's reviving of Thaisa, which he regards as "the
key-incident that unlocks the whole range of Shakespeare's
later work" (p. 57); the association of birth and tempest
(p. 59); Marina's possessing knowledge both of the art of
music (dancing and singing) and of design (weaving and
sewing), which Knight relates to eternity (P. 6#) (music

163
because of its supernatural symbolism and the arts of a
spatial nature because of their supposed permanence); the
employment of a direct theOphany by Shakespeare (p. 67);
and the child of royal birth, whose origin Knight associates
with the supposed origin.in eternity of the soul of the
child as one finds it recorded in.Wordsworth's "Immortal-
ity Ode" (p. 72). The following quotation summarizes the
elements that Knight has stressed and the conclusion that
he draws from their significance:

It is accordingly not strange that art,
as such, should be given greater emp -
sis than hitherto; in.stage-conception,
ceremonious procession (as of the tour-
Wts) and ritual quality; in
dumb-show; in.monumefifEI’Inscriptions,
and metaphors ;mment
(PerIEIésT'Efid MarIfi§T§?'in.Marina's
dancing and decorative needlework. The
arts—least eEpEEEIEEE‘in.Shakespeare,
the—sEEEIE”EFEE'BT'desI", assumééafhew
prominence,‘Ei?ifi§”fi§‘ffi§'exquisite
descriptions of Marina in.monumental
terms. Shakespeare's drama-IE-EEEIFing
towards the eternal harmo and the
eternal pattEFfi‘Tfi? . alics mine]

 

This paragraph is an excellent example of Knight's
"spatial" method of interpretation.in.practice. Notice
the emphasis on.the Spatial arts--though Knight is con»
strained to admit that they occupy a very small place in
most of Shakespeare's works-~and their identification
with eternity, or a permanent, eternal structure. Note
too the stressing of art, ritual, ceremony, and metaphor;
the play is taken.by Knight to be "Shakespeare's total
poetry on the brink of self-knowledge" (p. 73). The play

becomes a quasi-religious ritual, in.which symbolic person!

ages engaged in symbolic actions speak symbolic language.

l6#
After all, Knight finds various personages symbolic--
Cerimon.and Marina, for exampleseathe action he finds
forming a significant pattern (pp. 73-#); and the gnomic
utterances of the characters are best understood as
symbolic language (p. 7#). The play, in short, is regarded
as a parable of human.fortune that is simultaneously a
myth of immortality.

There are certain.objections that one can raise to
Knight's interpretation of Pericles. He fails to take into
account the great thematic difference between the first
two acts and the last three. The first two acts are filled
with moralistic statements about kingship and tyranny.

The Pericles of the first two acts is moving in,a moralis-
tic atmosphere while the last three acts--with the excep-
tion.of Gower's epilogue--show a Pericles who is totally
at the mercy of Fortune or Providence, in either case
powers beyond human control. But Knight makes a strong
case for the homogeneity of the play.

A more serious objection is Knight's tendency to
read the characters, actions, imagery, and themes in terms
of what Shakespeare wrote in other plays. There are simil-
arities, for example, between Pericles and Hamlet, or
Cerimon and Timon, or Marina and Helena, but when Knight
pushes the comparisons too far he falsifies the play under
consideration. In.trying to link Pericles with the rest of
Shakespeare's work the things that distinguish this play
are obscured or overlooked. Where else does one find a

moralizing chorus comparable to Gower? Knight is really

165
violating his ostensible belief in.the integrity and
individuality of each separate work of art.

There is really no way of refuting Knight's reading
of transcendental meanings into Pericles--or any other of
the last plays, for that matter. One can only state that
there is no positive indication in the play that Shake-
speare saw any vision.of immortality beyond the perpetua-
tion.of oneself through art or progeny, and of the two the
natural way appears to have the poet's favor, though nature

and art seem somehow to be identified in The Winter's

 

Tale and The Tempest. As in All's Well, the future in.all

 

 

of the last plays lies with the younger generation, Marina
and the not-so-innocent Lysimachus, Perdita and Florizel,
Miranda and Ferdinand, Imogen and Posthumus, and the
infant Elizabeth. In all of the plays the innocence and
purity of the young girls is a constant. The strength
lies with these paragons of virtue. For all the super-
natural trappings of the last plays--and these trappings
are all rather conventional: ShakeSpeare is no myth-
creating Blake--it is nature that is deified, though it is
a refined rather than a savage one.

In summary, Pericles presents us with a humanistic-
naturalistic Shakespeare rather than a supernaturalistic
one. The reviving of Thaisa and the reunion of Pericles
with Thaisa and Marina is not supernatural since there is
no real resurrection; the power that Cerimon has is, like
that of Helena in.Allis Well, ultimately natural rather than

supernatural. With the peculiarly strong reverence for

166

nature and the presence of chaste young women possessing

great abilities and strength of character, one could
almost see the last plays as Shakespeare's approximation
to the reference for the great mother earth-goddess that
Hebert Graves finds preceding in time the later patriarch-
ally-oriented gods. Moreover, it is Diana of Ephesus

who is the presiding deity of Pericles.

In interpreting The Winter's Tale Knight is not
faced with the urgent task of defending its authenticity,
since the only part of the play whose authenticity has been
seriously questioned is Time, the chorus, who appears
only once in.the play, at the beginning of Act IV. Knight's

essay in.The Crown of Life, "'Great Creating Nature':

 

 

An.Essay on The Winter's Tale," is perhaps the best of
his essays on the last plays and has been anthologized.8
Following the same procedure he used with Pericles,

Knight rather effectively ties The Winter's Tale to the

 

rest of Shakespeare's work, especially the great trag-
edies, this time doing less violence to the play's own
integrity. Some examples should suffice to indicate

how thoroughly Knight established the play's relationship
with the earlier works. The supreme love-value Knight
finds reminiscent of Desdemona in Othello (p. 79); the
play with which Knight seems most desirous to relate The
Winter's Tale is Macbeth: the jealous imaginings of

 

8Leonard F. Dean, ed., Shakespeare: Modern Essays
_i_n_ Criticism, New York, 1957, pp. 3783120. "' "" ' '

167
Leontes Knight compares to the nightmarish thoughts of
Macbeth (p. 82); the unreality of evil he sees as common.
to the two plays (p. 82); the unmotivated evil of Leontes
is likened to that of Hamlet, Iago, and Macbeth (p. 8#);
the tyranny of Leontes is juxtaposed with that of Richard
III and Macbeth (p. 86);; the opposition between the child
and the powers of darkness is shown to be present in.both

The Winter's Tale and Macbeth (p. 91); Leontes' treatment

 

of Paulina is compared to that of Lear with Kent (PP. 87-8);
the Shepherd's remark on the behavior of young men.between
l6 and 23 recalls to Knight the character Thersites (p. 98);
and the Spring-and-winter relation.in.the play is seen

as reversing that of Love's Labour's EEEE.(P" 100).

The Winter's Tale, like Pericles, is not merely a
rehashing of old material but rather a more profound re-
working of what had been handled in.a lyric or tragic way
earlier; for example, Knight finds that: "Leontes is more
complex than Othello as a study of jealousy and more real-g
istically than Macbeth as a study of evil possession" (p. 96).
Moreover, Knight asserts, "we find Leontes marking an.ad-
vance in Shakespeare's human delineation: the poetic and
philosOphic overtones of Hamlet, Lear and Timons are com-
pressed into a study as sharply defined as the Nurse in
E2222.§E§ Juliet and as objectively diagnosed as Ford,
Malvolio, and Parolles" (P. 96). Both of these claims
are excessive, and again I believe it is because of Knight's
being overly eager to prove that the last plays are not only

of a piece with the early work of Shakespeare but also an

168
advance over it. Knight quotes some comic passages showing
Autolycus bilking the Clown to support his assertion that
"far from relaxing, Shakespeare's art is, on every front,
advancing" (p. 102).
Knight also indicates many things "The Winter's Tale

 

has in common.with the other four final plays. Here again
a few examples should serve. The narrative is similar to
that of Pericles (p. 76); the tormented rhythms are compared
to those of Cymbeline (p. 83); Hermione's is justly likened

 

to Katharine in EEEEZ.Z£E£.<D" 93); the morality-interest

is present, as in.Pericles (p. 96; and the obvious similar-
ity between the Florizel-Perdita and Ferdinand-Miranda loves
is indicated (P. 108).

Here too Knight is more successful in establishing
the coherence of the individual play. One cohering ele-
ment which Knight emphasizes very heavily is the progress
of Leontes' Spiritual develOpment. Knight, we recall, did
violence to the text in.attributing to Pericles a loss of
innocence and a sense of sin; but in.The Winter's Tale
Leontes is so obviously responsible for his own and the
others' suffering that Knight is perhaps justified in
asserting that "Leontes sins and endures a purgatory of
guilt" (p. 76). Whether Leontes ever achieves a true
repentance, however, is questionable.

Knight regards the reviving of Thaisa as the central

event in Pericles, and in.The Winter's Tale the crucial

 

 

event is taken to be what Knight refers to as the resurrection

of Hermione (p. 76). All the rest of the play leads up to

169
this event. The play's progress, according to Knight, in
three stages: the tragic, the pastoral, and the ritual-
istic, a mixture of the earthly and the transcendental
that centers about the resurrection of Hermione (p. 76
and 113-128). Thus a transcendental event is taken to be
a binding force in.the play.

For the purpose of proving the play's organic inte-
grity Knight also utilizes various thematic Oppositions
that have been found in.the play. For example, he mentions
the Opposition between maturity and death and birth and
resurrection (p. 76); the simplicities of Bohemia contrasted
with the luxuries of Sicilia (p. 77); the innocence of
youth versus the sineconsciousness of maturing (p. 77);
and art and nature, both ultimately seen.as parts of
"great creating Nature" (p. 105). All of these thematic
dualisms tend to unify the play.

Imagery occupies a decidedly subordinate position
in Knight's interpretation of all of the last plays. When
the events and characters themselves are regarded as symbolic
it is perhaps less necessary to seek for symbolic imagery.
Even the music-tempest symbolism assumes a minor role in

Knight's interpretation of The Winter's Tale. The tempest

 

is here a manifestation.of unbridled nature in.its savage
aspect (p. 98), and music again.anters as a symbol of the
supernatural at the "resurrection" of Hermione in.Opposi-
tion to the tempest (p. 12#).

We have already found that Knight assumes the supreme

symbolic importance of Hermione's restoration. Another event

170

of great significance is the famous conversation between
Polixenes and Perdita, where they discuss art and nature;
this Knight regards as "a microcosm of our whole drama"
(p. 105). A few statements should illustrate the symbolic
or allegorical meanings Knight assigns to various charac-
ters. At one point Knight maintains that: "Mamillius
stands before Leontes as Truth confronting Error" (p. 80).
At another Paulina is found to represent "the pure Christian
conscience, together with common sense" (p. 88). Apollo
is found to be "both a nature-deity and transcendent,"
to be at once "the Greek Apollo and the Hebraic Jehovah"
(p. 92). Elsewhere Paulina is "repentance incarnate"
(P. 95). Autolycus is seen.as "Spring incarnate" (p. 100).

Shakespeare has succeeded better in The Winter's

Tale than.in Pericles in.fusing the human.and allegorical

 

 

aspects of his characters, and Knight is also, for the most
part, more successful in.interpreting the characters.
However, there are weaknesses in his handling of the charac-
ters. The most serious and significant is his over-estima-
tion of Leontes. Leontes is neither a Macbeth nor an Othello,
though Knight finds him more complex and profound than
either. At times Knight relapses into Bradleyism by pro-
viding psychological reasons for Leontes' actions: in
accounting for Leontes' tirade against Paulina, Knight

_ writes "by a transition well known to psychologists [Leonteé]
tends to deny vehemently the name of tyrant, whilst seeing
in his Opposite, Paulina, the exact evil really lodged
against himself (p. 86). If characters are primarily if

171
not purely symbolic and not subject to realistic standards,
then why provide a psychological mechanism to account for
Leontes' action?

Knight also fails to stress the comic element in
the early scene of Leontes' jealous rantings: Knight will
only admit that "it is almost comic" (p. 86); but he hastens
to add that there is not_"one atom's less of tragic intenp
sity" (p. 86). Moreover, with all the allegorical meanings
that he finds in.Paulina, Knight never does justice to
the shrewishness of the woman whose husband declares that
"When she will take the rein I let her run;/But she'll
not stumble" (II. iii. 51-2). Paulina is indeed virtuous,
but in a rather formidable though humorous, strong-willed
way.

Nature is rightly placed at the center of the play,
though Knight is not content to leave Apollo a mere nature-
deity but insists upon making him transcendent (p. 92), a
symbol of the Hebraic Jehovah (P. 92). Furthermore, there
are many other instances of Knight's attempting to relate
1222 Winter's Tale to Christianity. Knight calls our attenp

 

tion to Paulina's orthodox Christian.phraseology (P. 87);
Paulina is said to represent the "pure Christian conscience"
(p. 88); the close association of nature and human.child-
hood are found to have Christian affinities (P. 89);
Paulina's Speech (II. iii. 97ff.) Knight regards as "deeply
Christian" (p. 91); and there are frequent references to
the New Testament, with Hermione's "resurrection" being the

climax of the play, a symbol of the triumph of life over

172
Death.which points to the New Testament.

In.his interpretation.of The Winter's Tale Knight
tries to prove the same three things that he attempted in
his interpretations of Pericles: the cOherence of the
play itself; the place of the play in the ShakeSpeare
Progress; and its transcendental nature, the difference
between the last five plays and the preceding ones. The
first of these three was perhaps the easiest, since few .
have ever seriously questioned the coherence of the play,
except for the 16-year time lapse between the first two
acts and the last three and the geographical shifts; both
of these problems, of time and of space, do not threaten
the integrity of the work as a question of authorship
would. They are more a matter of dramaturgy than of poetry,
and it is the latter that Knight insists upon stressing
more heavily.

Roughly a third of the essay on.The Winter's Tale

 

is devoted exclusively to the transcendental element, which
is centered around the restoration of Hermione in the last
act. Knight's whole case for the immortality myth, the
eternity-vision, rests on an insecure foundation. How

can one who has never died be resurrected? Shakespeare

does not question the finality of death in.his last plays,

as Knight seems to think. When Simonides or Mamillius

dies he stays dead. Hermione does not die--she is simply
separated from her husband, just as Thaisa was from Pericles,
or Imogen from Posthumus. Reunion.or restoration, but not

resurrection or rebirth. It has frequently been pointed

173
out that reality versus false appearance is a constant
preoccupation of ShakeSpeare, eSpecially in.the last plays.
If this is so, then perhaps Shakespeare also carefully

distinguishes between real and imagined death. Mamillius,

 

Simonides, Cloten, and the wicked Queen all remain.dead;
Shakespeare has not resurrected them. Nor can one object
that only bad peOple die: Simonides was a good man, and
Mamillius is even regarded as Innocence personified.
Knight sees eternity symbolized in both nature and

art, which he finds ultimately one (p. 105). Knight
himself never seems able to choose between nature and
eternity: "Is the miracle a transfiguration of nature or
wholly transcendental?" (p. 117); and on p. 118 he goes on
to maintain that: "The implications of 'eternity' are
semi-transcendental in attempt to define that unmotivated
power behind the mystery of free generation in nature and
in art; indeed, implicit in freedom itself" (p. 118).
The Winter's Tale, Knight decides, is "hammering on the
threshold cf some extraordinary truth related to both
'nature' and 'eternity'" (p. 120). ‘In.Pericles it was
Marina who possessed artistic skill, and in.The Winter's
Tale it is Julio Romano who has this "uncanny eternity-
imitating, skill" (p. 121). Ultimately Knight would seem
to choose a deified nature, hardly distinguishable from
pantheism; he concludes the essay in the following manner:

That drama, however, by its very enigma,

its unsolved and yet uncompromising state-

ment, throws up-«as in.emall compass did the

little flower-dialogue too-a'vague, num-
inous, sense of mighty powers, working

l7#

through both the natural order and man's

religious consciousness, that preserve,

in.spite of all appearance, the good. ,

Orthodox tradition is used, but it does not

direct; a pagan.naturalism is used too.

The Bible has been an influence; so have

classical myth and Renaissance pastoral;

but the greatest influence was Life it—

self, that creating and protecting deity

whose superhuman presence and powers the

drama labours to define (P. 128).
We can recall from an earlier discussion of Knight's theories
of art and interpretation that his metaphysic is ultimate—
ly a romantic variety of vitalistic naturalism. The general
vagueness of what Knight means by "eternity" or "immortal-
ity" coupled with his deceptive use of orthodox terminology
could well lead the casual reader to assume that Knight is
reading an orthodox Christian.interpretation into the last
plays. But nothing could be farther from the truth:
Knight's interpretation rests on a rather incoherent and
inconsistent romantic, sentimental, naturalism.

Knight correctly emphasizes the importance of the
scene in Act IV where Polixenes and Perdita discuss art
and nature (pp. 10#-5). The two would appear to be dis-
cussing a nature that generates an art which is natural
rather than artificial. One could say that the art that
improves upon.nature is itself art created by nature. Had
Knight been content to see Shakespeare in the last plays
poised between humanism (art) and naturalism (pro-
creation), ultimately choosing a perfected.nature that trans-
cends both the artificiality of civilization.and the
harshness of uncultivated rustic simplicity, and seeking

to synthesize the innocence of nature and the wisdom of

175
civilization, then.perhaps Knight would be closer to the
essence of the last plays.. It is when.trying to drag in
the infinite that Knight falsifies facts by making Pericles
atone for a sin.he never committed or Hermione be resurrect-
ed from a death she never died. One could argue for a
humanistic-naturalistic ShakeSpeare on the basis of his
living in the Renaissance, in.a Protestant country, and .
one could argue for his preoccupation with art and nature
on the basis of what he elsewhere wrote--in.the Sonnets,
for example. In conclusion, Knight's interpretation of

The Winter's Tale is a brilliant one full of perceptive

 

insights,-but it is vitiated by his straining after trans-
cendental meanings. ShakeSpeare in the last plays would
seem to be revealing a cosmic harmony, but there is no
positive proof that he ever saw a supernatural order

transcending nature.

The importance that G. Wilson Knight attaches to

the Vision of Jupiter in.Cymbeline can.be gauged by the

 

length-35 pages--of the second part of the essay (pp. 168-
202), which is devoted exclusively to defending its authenp
ticity. Knight lays heavy stress on the significance of
the various theOphanies which occur in.the final five
plays; consequently, he harks back to earlier plays in.an
effort to support his contention that theophanies are not
interpolations by inferior writers but rather an integral
part of the ShakeSpeare Progress. Knight defends the auth-
enticity of the Vision in.its entirety and tries to prove

176
that it is an example of a normal Shakespearian technique.
Knight concludes that the atmosphere of the play
leads inevitably to the Vision: "The Vision of Jupiter
certainly occurs in a work saturated with. religious sugges—

tion" (p. 179). Moreover, Knight asserts, "the gods are

 

even more frequently mentioned En Cymbeline than in
m Liar" (p. 179). Knight therefore concludes (p. 183)
that: "The Vision is exactly in tone with the play's
theological impressionism."

Knight's method of defending the authenticity of
the Vision of Jupiter is, first of all, to prove that it
is an integral part of the play in which it occurs. The
second line of defense is to prove that it is in harmony
with what occurs in the earlier plays and with what trans-
pires in the other late plays. With the first line of
reasoning Knight tries to establish that the Vision is
an integral part of the play so that he can conclude that
"in rhythm, vocabulary, sentiment and purpose the speech
is Shakespearian" (p. 195). The rhythm and vocabulary he
defends on P1). 193-5. Knight argues that the solemnity
of the death-imagery (pp. 168-171), the recurrence of
the nature-imagery (pp. 173~#) , the art-imagery which he
sees as "shading into thoughts of eternity" (p. 175),
and so on, all culminate in the Vision of Jupiter. The
frequent references to the gods (p. 179) are also used to
support Knight's view, though when he mentions that such
references even exceed those in m Lea: (p. 179) one is

tempted to reply that perhaps they are also as naturalistically

1??

conceived as in.Lear. Knight's argument, however, for the
Visionfis being an.integral part of the play is very well
reasoned, though one might not agree with him when.he assumes
affirmative answers to the following questions: "Is it
possible that twentieth-century scholarship is merely
attributing to ShakeSpeare its own dislike of the vision»
ary and the supernatural? And that its stylistic judgements
merely reflect that dislike?" (p. 196).

Knight also succeeds in.relating the theOphany in
Cymbeline to those in the other last plays, though his

 

effort to link it with supernatural events in the earlier
plays is, I believe, less successful. He likens it to
Queen Katherine's vision in leggy Y_I_I_£ (p. 168), to the
appearance of Diana in.Pericles (p. 185), and to the felt
presence of Phoebus-Apollo in.The Winter's Talg’(P. 185).
Knight links Cymbeline with the remaining final play,

 

The Tempest, when he makes reference (p. 190) to the masque
where Juno, Ceres, and Iris appear. Thus all of the last
five plays have been.joined by their theOphanies, counting
the presiding deity of Apollo in.The Winter's Tale as a
quasi-theophany. After tying in Cymbeline with the other

 

last plays Knight concludes that: "Surely the necessity
of our Vision is now apparent. If we reject it, Cymbeline

 

is left, alone in this group, without any striking trans-
cendental moment" (p. 191). Furthermore, Knight maintains
(p. 191), "nearly all Shakespeare's greater works have their
transcendental, or semi-transcendental scenes: the Ghost

in Hamlet, the Cauldronpscene in.Macbeth (with Hecate and

178
the Apparitions), the weird tempests continually, as in
Julius Caesar and K_i_11_g Lear, the mysterious music in
Antony and_Cle0patra. Pericles and The_Winter's Tale_have
their powerful tempests, but Cymbeline no active tempest-

 

symbolism outside the Vision; its massed effect is one of
sombre assurance; but surely something similar is needed."
Yet we notice immediately that one of these, the Cauldron»
scene, is also of dubious authenticity (Knight thinks

otherwise; Cf. The Shakespearian Tempest, Appendix B),

 

and none of the examples, with the exception of Lear,

 

perhaps--though even there the tempest is certainly more
symbolic of savage nature than of anything transcendental--
occupies the central position that Knight finds the
theOphanies occupying in the last plays. In addition, it
is at once apparent that, with the exception of the vision
of Katharine in.Henry VIII, the theOphanies in the last
plays all involve classical pagan deities, not ghosts or
witches. Furthermore, these classical deities can all--
again.axcepting Katherine's vision--be more or less identi-
fies with aspects of nature: Diana not only with virginity
but also fertility; Apollo with the life-giving sun,
Neptune with the ocean; Zeus with the overarching heavens
and cosmic order in general; and Juno, Ceres, and Iris

with their respective realms. On.the other hand, one

could also argue that they were taken in the conventional
way: as ready-made symbols to be employed poetically with-
out reference to any transcendental categories of the

interpreter's imaginings. Observing Knight's defense of

179

the Vision of Jupiter we again find that he has employed
his method of arguing for the integrity of the individual
play and relating that play to the rest of ShakeSpeare's
work. This method we have already found Knight using in
his analyses of Pericles and The Winter's 2213; we shall
again find him employing it in his interpretations of
The Tempest and H_e_n_r_y_ 1122:

Let us turn, then, to Knight's handling of the
themes and characters in.Cymbeline. Knight finds Cymbeline

 

 

unrivalled for the complexity of its plot, excelling both

 

Pericles and The Winter's Tale with which it shares many

of the same themes (P. 129). Plot and event would seem
to predominate over imagistic effect and atmOSphere (p. 129).

Moreover, in.spite of the many unrealistic features which
the play shares with the other past plays-«excepting
Henry VIII-sand with the romance in general, Knight regards

 

Cymbeline as primarily a history play (p. 129). The play

 

is seen as uniting ShakeSpeare's two principal historical
interests, the Roman and the British (p. 130).

The main.national interest, according to Knight,
involves Cymbeline's refusal to continue paying tribute
to Rome (p. 13#). This raises the question of patriotism,
which is undoubtedly present: Cloten and his wicked mother
are both patriotic, as is Posthumus, and yet Imogen,
Pisanio, and the final decision of Cymbeline all seem to
favor subservience to Rome. Whether Rome is to be construed
as classical or ecclesiastical is uncertain; when one recalls

the great prestige that classical Rome had in.Henaissance

180

EurOpe it would perhaps be wiser to assume that it is
classical Rome. In any event, it is not contemporary

Rome, since that is associated with decadence and its
depraved representative Iachimo.

There is also the theme of jealousy, manifested by
Posthumus, whom Knight finds, as do most commentators,
colorless and lacking a "core to his personality" (p. l#0).
Then, too, there is the theme of British manhood, also
represented by Posthumus, engaged in.a struggle with cont-
inental intrigue (p. l#3). The pattern that Knight finds
emerging involves "(1) British mangood being led to (ii)
sexual disintegration by (iii) foreign.and eSpecially
Italianate intrigue" (p. l#7). Not content with keeping
the pattern on this level, Knight brings in the metaphysical
by asserting that: "Posthumus defends not merely a single
lady, but Britain's soul-integrity" (p. l#8). But the plot
for the most part pits British manhood against Italian
cunning (P. l#9). Central to the play, however, is the
union of Rome and Britain.(p. 165).

Typical of Knight's interpretative method are the
symbolic meanings he assigns to the various characters.

The Queen is "cruelty incarnate" (p. 130); she "person.
ifies the ugly thing Posthumus suspects in.lmogen" (p. 131);
Posthumus represents British manhood (p. 138), British
strength (p. l#l), and the "unknown soldier" (p. l#6); he

personifies the union of British and Roman.virtues (p. l#2);

Iachimo becomes the symbol of "continental intrigue, showi-

ness, and superficial refinement" (p. l#3); and Jupiter

181

becomes God (p. 201), Jehovah (p. 202), and kindly
Providence (p. 202).

What remains to be discussed of Knight's interpre-
tation.of Cymbeline is the transcendental significance that

 

he finds in the play. Strangely enough, Knight believes
that this new intuition of immortality in the past plays
helps ShakeSpeare in his task of creating fully-realized
characters; praising-~excessively, I believe-Shakespeare's
realization of the character of Iachimo, whom he somewhat
oddly finds surpassing both Iago and Edmund, Knight writes
that "as so often, Shakespeare's last work presents, if
anything, an advance in human delineation; as though the
new intuition of transcendence accompanies a newly concrete
awareness of man" (p. l#2).. One could cite many examples
to the contrary: Cymbeline, Posthumus, Belarius, Henry
VIII, Leontes, Florizel, Pericles, PrOSpero, all of whom
have been.found dramatically deficient for various reasons.
If, on the other hand, one takes into account the conven-
tional and therefore acceptable unreality of figures of

the romance-tradition, then the validity of Knight's state-
ment is still dubious. The flaw in Knight's estimate of
the characters in the last plays is his seeing too much

of the tragic figures of the great tragedies in.the romance

figures of the last plays. This, in.turn, is because of

his desire to link the last plays with the preceding tragedies

in.order to prove that the final plays are the consummation
of ShakeSpeare's work, a consummation that he finds surpass-

ing the tragic intuition by substituting for it a vision
of immortality.

182

Knight again emphasizes the notion of a resurrection;
he does so by asserting that: "Imogen's revival makes
contact with the resurrections of Thaisa and Hermione"

(p. 170). Now Hermione was not dead and Thaisa was revived
by Cerimonis power over nature; and Imogen is Obviously
never'dead, as Shakespeare takes pains to indicate: Corn-
elius in an aside informs the audience that he does not
trust the Queen.with poisons but instead gives her some-
thing which

Will stupefy and dull the sense awhile;

Which first (perchance) she'll prove on cats

and dogs,

Then afterward up higher: but there is

No danger in.what show of death it makes,

More than the looking up the spirits a time,

To be more fresh, reviving.
Knight acknowledges (p. 156) that Imogen.never really dies,
but yet he treats her semblance of death as the real thing,
real enough for him to take her revival as an approximate
resurrection. Shakespeare appears to have kept a sharp
distinction between apparent death and real death, but
Knight again fails to observe this.

When Knight visualizes the royal boys Guiderius and
Arviragus as approaching Nietzsche's "integration of
gentleness and power" (p. 163), one of the preoccupations
of the later Knight is evident. In.the same paragraph
Knight betrays his own essential romanticism when he finds
that the royal boys reveal hints of "some order of human
being in embryo, to which the nearest analogies in.our
literature are the youthful heroes of Coleridge's Zapolyta

and Keats" Otho the Great; with one sad miscarriage of

 

 

183
attempt in Wordsworth's Excursion" (P. 163).

 

Knight places a heavy burden.of significance on

Cymbeline: "young Britain.receives, through Posthumus,

 

the blessing and protection of great Jupiter, the guardian
deity of ancient Rome" (P. 16#). It need hardly be repeated
that one of the conveniences of symbolism is its accommo~
dation of whatever construction the interpreter wishes to
place on.it. One could-nand it has been.done-just as
easily argue that the whole play is symbolic of the pro-
Catholic sentiment of ShakeSpeare and that the payment of
tribute to Rome was symbolic of his allegiance to the Roman
Catholic Church, the figure of Jupiter representing the Pope.

The extraordinarily high claims that Knight makes
for the last plays are evident when he writes that "as

Pericles and The Winter's Tale assimilate and negate tragedy,

 

 

so Cymbeline transmutes former dramas of victorious war
into a strangely paradoxical harmony of warsnegating peace,
wherein.the victor in.fine humility acknowledges the laser's
right" (p. 166). It is only through a total disregard for
the genre of the romance and an.insistence upon.an inte~
grity of the whole of Shakespeare's work that takes prece-
dencen-and sometimes rides roughshod--over the integrity
of the individual play that Knight can make such a claim.
An assertion of this kind rests upon the assumption.that
there is a continuous develOpment of artistic and spiritual
progress, more or less coterminous, and that the "spatial"
method of interpretation.can define it with scientific

precision.

18#
In conclusion, Knight finds Cymbeline to be "this

 

vivid revelation of a kindly Providence behind mortality's
drama," and "our one anthrOpomorphic expression of that

beyond-tragedy recognition felt through the miracles and

resurrections of sister-plays and reaching Christian form-
ulation in.Henry VIII" (p. 202). Knight's whole approach
to the last plays is summarized in.the concluding state-

ment (p. 202) of his essay on Cymbeline: "Only through a
careful study of the harmonies, minute and massive, of

 

Shakespeare's world can the full authenticity of these

crowning works be established." Without the establishment

of this authenticity, his whole theory collapses. Knight's_
interpretations are usually thorough, occasionally profound,

sometimes penetrating, often brilliant, but seldom discrim-

inat ing.

The Tempest has long been regarded as both an auto-
biography of its creator and a play extraordinarily rich
in.symbolic suggestion. Since this play has not had either
its authenticity or its internal coherence seriously questioned,
Knight is free to devote his attention to relating the play
to the rest of the Shakespeare Progress and to loading the
play with parabolic, symbolic, transcendental, and futur-
istic meanings. The play has been.ao diversely interpreted
that Knight's interpretation of it is perhaps initially
less novel than his interpretations of the other final
plays. However, as Knight develOps his interpretation.he

reveals his own romanticism, his view of Shakespeare's

185
romanticism, his theory of poetry, his later preoccupations
(Nietzsche's blending of power and grace and the bisexual
theory of artistic creation, for examples), his belief
in.the primacy of the imagination, and even.a somewhat
extravagant and altogether fanciful view that The Tempest
foreshadows British destiny.

The essay on.The Tempest in The Crown of Life

 

(pp. 203-255) is divided into four parts. The first part
(pp. 203-223) is a very elaborate and impressive effort to

prove that the final plays-~The Tempest preeminently-uare
the summation or culmination of all the preceding artistic

efforts of Shakespeare. The first part of the essay, then,
is a brilliant cataloguing of characters, themes, images,

and events from every Single play and poem that ShakeSpeare;
is generally acknowledged to have written. It is an excellent

 

example of Knight's Spatial method at work, revealing at
once both its strength and weakness. The strength lies in
the large number of correspondences in character, plot,
theme, moral, event, and image that Knight marshals as
evidence of a coherence unifying the totality of Shakespeare's
output. The weakness lies in.an ignoring of the fact that
many of the things that are found recurring in Shakespeare's
work are so conventional, so universal, that one could just
as easily argue that the plays of other playwrights are,
ShakeSpeare's on the basis of likenesses in.theme, plot,
character, moral, and image that they employ. By hauling

in, because of superficial similarities, parts of works that
are put to greatly different uses in.their respective plays

Knight does violence to the integrity of the plays individually.

186

Poetry itself is regarded by Knight as the subject
of The Tempest: "ShakeSpeare En The Tempesia has no objec-

tive story before him from which to create. He Spins his
plot from his own poetic world entirely, simplifying the
main.issues of his total work-plot, poetry, persons;
whittling off the nonessential and leaving the naked truth
exposed. The Tempest, patterned of storm and music, is,
thus an.interpretation of ShakeSpeare's world" (p. 20#).
Moreover, Knight maintains, "The Tempest will be found
peculiarly poor in metaphor" because "this play is itself
metaphor" (p. 22#).

The_Tempest Knight sees as both.a myth of creation
(p. 226) and a myth of the national (British) soul (p. 255).
Throughout his essay Knight is at pains to emphasize that
the play is not so much a subjective record as an artistic
one: "What is generally called a man's spiritual auto-
biography is accordingly less important than his artistic
autobiography. Such an autobiography is The Tempest"
(p. 225). Furthermore, Knight goes on.to state: "The
total result is nearer self-transcendence than self-reflec-
tion; while in throwing himself as creator on to the screen,
and showing himself at work in.creative activity and cone
trol, the poet constructs a myth of creation in its whole-
ness and universality" (p. 226).

In his essay on.The Tempest in.The Crown.gf Life

 

 

Knight mentions (pp. 226 and 230)lColin Still, whose
Shakespeare's Mystery Play (1921), later revised and reissued.
in.an expanded form under the title The Timeless Theme (1936),

 

187

harmonizes, by and large, with Knight's own interpretation.
Knight and Still agree that The Tempest is a myth that
rests upon.an archetypal pattern that has presented itself
to the great creative artists throughout human.history.
Colin Still writes that The Tempest not only presupposes
but actually demonstrates that "there is one universal
tradition underlying all religious and semi-religious con.
cepts."9 Knight concurs (p. 226), stating that "A myth of
creation woven.from his total work by the most universal
of poets is likely to show correspondences with other
well-authenticated results of the racial imagination."
Knight, like Still, sees The_Tempest as an account of the
spiritual redemption of man. Knight, however, finds Still's
application of his thesis that the pattern of The Tempest
is the same as that of pagan.initiation rites to be some-
what forced: "Still's centre of reference is less in the
poetry than.in.a rigid system of universal symbolism
deliberately, but quite legitimately, applied to it" (p. 230).

Colin Still roughly equates Prospero with God:
"Prospero may be regarded as the counterpart of the hiero-
phant, or iniating priest. But in.the wider scheme he
figures as the prototypal Supreme Being."10 Knight, on.
the other hand, at one point asserts that: "Prospero is
somehow more then.poet yet less than God" (pp. 230-1).

 

9Colin.Still, Shakespeare's Mystery Play, p. 205.
1°Ibid., p. 202.

188
There are many other things that Knight finds Prospero
symbolizing. PrOSpero is seen as "a composite of many
Shakespearian heroes" (p. 20#); and though Knight concedes
that he is "less warm, less richly human, than most of his
poetic ancestors" (p. 208), he is nonetheless seen.as
"controlling, not merely a Shakespearian play, but the Shake-
spearian world" (p. 208). Furthermore, Knight concludes:
"He is thus automatically in the position of Shakespeare
himself, and it is accordingly inevitable that he should
often speak as with Shakespeare's voice" (p. 208). Pros-
pero is regarded as the artist (p. 210); as a reflection
of Shakespeare himself (p. 220); as one aspect of Shake-
speare (the others being Ariel, Caliban, and Miranda)
(p. 223); as being all mind (p. 232); as a symbol of the
Renaissance "as it takes form in.alliance with Puritan
instinct and under Elizabethan guidance" (p. 2#2); as a
god-man.or god-inpman.(p. 2#2); as a character who is both
"the adventure of Renaiésance discovery and the majesty
of Renaissance intellect" (p. 2#3); as "the eternal artist
rejected by the society his art redeems" (p. 2#3); as "the
great composer whose implements are natural forces and
whose music is the music of creation" (p. 2#3); as " a
close replica of Christ" (p. 253); as "Plato's philOSOpher-
king betrayed by a Machiaveilian 'policy'" (p. 25#); and
finally, as a symbol of British colonizers "impelled by
political or religious tyrannies to follow their soul-
cravings across the sea and there work out the controlled

magic of personal integration" (p. 255).

189

Other characters are no less symbolically-uor fanci-
fully-interpreted. Ariel is variously regarded as the
agent of Prospero's purpose (p. 210); art; man's free
imagination.liberated after centuries of penance under
ecclesiastical control (p. 228); the aspect of life seen
most clearly by Shelley (p. 232), "a boy-figure in whom
grace and power blend," "bisexual, like Shelley's hermaphro-
dite, or perhaps, rather sexless, with the indeterminacy
of art" (p. 233); that which touches charity, "like poetry,
too, which takes us to the brink of grace" (p. 23#); nature
in.its ceaseless variety (p. 23#); poetry, "as it would be
were its melodies to step from literature into life"
(p. 235); music incarnate (p. 235); dramatic art; and
England's "inventive and poetic genius variously concerned
with the tapping and use of natural energy" (p. 255).

Caliban symbolizes both the animal aspect of man
and brainless revolution (p. 211); he "derives from all
bad passion" and "combines the infra-natural evil of Macbeth
with the bestial evil of King .1535. (p. 211); he is simul-
taneously man, savage, ape, water-beast, dragon, semi-
devil (p. 212); he is the physical as Opposed to the spirit-
ual and earth and water as Opposed to air and fire (p. 212);
he is "process incarnate", the "eternal quality of creation,
of time itself" (p. 2#0); and he is a "study of creationfls
very inertia.and retrogression in laborious advance" (p. 2#0).

The remaining symbolic figures of the play can be
quickly listed, since Prospero, Caliban, and Ariel are by

far the most important figures in Knight's scheme. Prospero

190
is the artist and like Christ; Caliban is matter both
poetic and physical, the brute creation, and sexual instinct;
and Ariel is the imagination. Thus the three members of
Knight's trinity, the natural, the human, and the super-
natural, are all present. Alonso and his party are simply
an assortment of more or less guilty peOple (p. 212).
Stephano is "a burlesque of the power-quest," a parody of
"the essential absurdity of tyrannic ambition" (p. 218);
Ferdinand and Miranda are virtuous youth who illustrate
humility, innocence, faith and purity (p. 220). The
island itself is seen both as nature (p. 2#7) and as "some
new dimension of awareness" (p. 251).

The play is visualized as having a purgatorial pur-
pose (p. 217). though there are few characters--and they
minor-~who are capable of undergoing a purgatorial process.
Alonso, Sebastian, and Antonio, Trinculo, Stephano, and
Caliban—~all are forgiven.by ProsPero; and yet it is dubious
whether there has been any purgation of guilt, unless
perhaps of Alonso, who seems, however, more concerned
throughout the play over the loss of his son than over his
own guilt. Antonio, who never really repents, is forgiven
by Prospero in the following manner: "I do forgive thee,/
Unnatural though thou art!" (V. 1. 78-9); PrOSpero realizes
that he is unregenerate:

For you, most wicked sir, whom to call brother
Would even infect my mouth, I do forgive
Thy rankest fault; all of them; and require

My dukedom of thee, which, perforce, I know,
Thou must restore" (V. i. l30-l3#).

191

If one takes Prospero as a symbol of God, Providence, or

Christ, the statement that Sebastian makes when.PrOSpero
hints at his knowledge of his treachery (V. 1. 126-129)

is perilously close to the unforgivable sin; he says in an
aside "the devil speaks in.him" (V. i. 129), thus indicat-
ing that he is still unregenerate. One can conclude then
that whatever regenerative process has been set in motion
is, oddly enough, found in the person of Caliban:

I'll be wise hereafter,
And seek for grace (V. i. 29#-5).

Knight himself, however, doubts whether there is a true
reformation on the part of Antonio (p. 213).

It is obvious that there is no event in.the play
precisely analogous to the revival of Thaisa, the restor-
ation.of Hermione, and the awakening of Imogen, unless
perhaps it is PrOSpero's preservation of the ship and its
crew and Alonso's son Ferdinand, whom his father thought
dead. Knight does not strain to find a resurrection in
his essay on.The Tempest, though he does refer to the saving
of the ship (pp. 221 and 231) and the reference that
Prospero makes to his potent art being able to Open graves
and awaken their sleepers (p. 221). Nevertheless, Knight
concludes, Prospero's speech (V. i. 52, 57) "forms a recap-
itulation of Shakespeare's artistic progress from tempest-
torn tragedy to resurrection.and music" (p. 221).

The Tempest is, along with the rest of the plays
of Shakespeare, regarded by Knight as a parable (p. 221).
In.addition, the play is taken to be a prOphecy of British

I 192
destiny, and the fourth part of the essay (pp. 253-255)
is concerned exclusively with this matter. Aside from the
intrusion.of Knight's theory of art, the bisexual theory,
and the strained comparisons with the New Testament,
Nietzsche, and various romantics (Shelley, Wordsworth,
Blake), the weakest part of the essay is, I believe, not
in the various symbolic significances Knight finds in Ariel,
Caliban, and Prospero so much as in this nationalistic code
that he adds to the essay. In.summary, Knight finds the
play to be a visionary statement of British destiny: the
island is England; PrOSpero is "her inpruling political
instincts, of which her first colonial adventures and the
Puritan revolution were active examples" (p. 255); Ariel
becomes "her inventive and poetic genius variously concerned
with the tapping and use of natural energy" (p. 255);
and Caliban, strangely, becomes "her colonizing, especially
her will to raise savage peOples from superstition.and
blood-sacrificing taboos and witchcraft and the attendant
fears and slaveries, to a more enlightened existence"

(P. 255). Moreover, Knight adds, without the symbolic
figure of Miranda exerting her influence on British destiny,
perhaps "our tenpthousands-years-hence historian.would not
have been.born" (p. 255). Thus the play becomes"a myth

of the national soul" (p. 256).

This of course is sheer fancy on the part of Knight;
there is no reference to British destiny in the play. This
is somewhat fanciful an.interpretation that has no warrant
whatsoever in the text. One might argue that the major

193
weakness of Knight's interpretation of The Tempest is his
trying to force on the play his usual transcendental
significance, i.e., that it is a myth of immortality.
Yet Knight devotes surprisingly little of the essay to
this. Throughout most of the essay he is far more intent
on proving that the play is capable of sustaining an inter-
pretation that sees the play as Shakespeare's summarizing
commentary on his art, and the relation of this art to
nature. Knight visualizes a romantic Shakespeare who even-
tually comes to write a work of art about nothing other
than the artistic process itself. Thus Shakespeare, like
many of the romantics, is seen in T_h_e_ Tempest writing poetry

about poetic creation.

At the time he wrote Myth and; Miracle Knight had
apparently not yet come to consider m VII; as Shake-
speare's crowning achievement. But by the time The 93912
of Life appeared it had assumed a commanding position in
Knight's ShakeSpeare Pregress; the very length of the
essay--"H_§n_ry_ VIII and the Poetry of Conversion" is the

 

longest (81 pages) in the book-u-indicateS the importance

that Knight assigns to this play. Knight's three-point

interpretative method is employed again: he argues for

the authenticity and coherence of the play against those

who would assign various scenes and speeches to Fletcher

or others; he links the play with ShakeSpeare's earlier

work; and he finds transcendental significances in the play.
Part I (pp. 256—272) of the essay is devoted, for the

l9#

most part, to establishing the authenticity of the play
in its entirety by showing that the various passages that
have been thought spurious all have counterparts in the
earlier plays of ShakeSpeare. Part II (pp. 272-296) is
primarily concerned with discussing the falls of Buckingham,
Wolsey, and Katharine, interpreting the three characters,
and indicating that they all have antecedents in Shake-
Speare's earlier plays. The falls are seen by Knight as
the summation of ShakeSpeare's tragic intuition (p. 296):
"There is nothing in Shakespeare more remarkable than
these three similar falling movements, of Buckingham,
Wolsey, and Queen Katharine. The two first conform to the
two main types of Shakespearian tragedy involving (1)
betrayal and (ii) the power-quest; while the Queen sums all
Shakespeare's feminine sympathies. The Tragedies culmina-
ting in 21.292 9: Athens and £12 Tempest (for man) and
Antony and CleoEtra and the remaining Final Plays (for
woman) have developed the ShakeSpearian humanism to its
limit, though with no severing of Christian contacts.
Herewe face the limits of even that, purified, humanism"(p. 296).

Part III (pp. 297-318) is taken up with the King,
Anne Bullen, Cranmer, the crowd, and whatever elements in
the play Knight associates with life as Opposed to death,
comedy as contrasted with tragedy, the comic and tragic
elements uniting in Henry 2121 (p. 306): "We attend
diversely two views of human existence; the tragic and
religious as Opposed by the warm, sex-impelled, blood;
the eternities of death as against the glow and thrill of

. 195

incarnate life, of creation. These two themes meet in.the
person of the King" (p. 306). Part Iv (pp. 318-329) is
Knight's interpretation.of the play as an example, like
the other last plays, of a religious ritual celebrating
ShakeSpeare's transcendental humanism. In Part V Knight
develOps his theory that the play is at once a vision of
British destiny and a vision of eternity or immortality.
Knight here summarizes his belief that He_nry_ VIII is the

ultimate statement of ShakeSpeare's art: "Henry VIII

 

 

binds and claSps this massive lifeework into a single
whole expanding the habitual design of Shakespearian
tragedy: from normality and order, through violent cone
flict to a Spiritualized music, and thence to the conclud-
ing ritual. Such is the organic unity of ShakeSpeare's
world" (P. 336).

One of the things that distinguishes HenrtuIIl

 

from the other four final plays is its peculiar dependence
on recent English history; Knight, of course, takes
Cymbeline also to be primarily a historical play, though

 

he interprets it not only as a statement of British destiny
but also as a vision of immortality. Henry 1111;}. is taken
to be a marriage of the temporal and the eternal (p. 33#),
the Christian and the royalistic (p. 328), and at once a
vision of eternity and a prOphecy of British destiny

(pp. 332-33#). Yet there is a problem here that is not
present in any of the other four final plays, not even
Cymbeline: recent historical personages such as Henry VIII

 

are poorly suited to romantic or mystic ends. Furthermore,

196 .

if one chooses Henry VIII as the nexus for the temporal
and the eternal, the eternal is likely to be dragged down.
to the level of the sensual or subordinated to "policy,"
since Henry VIII does not possess the requisite sensiti-
vity to either moral or metaphysical matters to prove
satisfactory. In short, we know too much about the real
Henry VIII for him to serve as a successful symbol.

The play does seem, however, to have been designed
as a statement of British destiny, and Henry VIII is,
incredible as it may seem, apparently presented for our
approval, as a symbol of kingship that rules both Spiritu-
ally and temporally. ShakeSpeare apparently endorsed
kingship and seems to have regarded kings as divinely
appointed, but Henry VIII is sadly lacking in the moral
sensitivity that one usually finds in.ShakeSpeare. There
are many bad kings--Richard II, Richard III, King John,
Macbeth, for examples--in.Shakespeare's plays, but nowhere
except in.Henry.V££I_does ShakeSpeare blithely ignore the
distinction between the man and the symbol of authority.
In Henry VIII_the author is peculiarly silent about the

 

sins of the King and his being the cause of suffering in
Katharine, who is as innocent as Hermione or Imogen.
Moreover, one could charge that Henry VIII was a poor
ruler in.allowing Buckingham to be summarily executed

on a trumped-up charge. Wolsey is of course presented as
being behind the divorce of Henry VIII and the destruction
of Buckingham, but Wolsey is not in favor of Henry's
marriage to Anne Bullen and realizes that his own.downfall

197
is because of his Opposition to it:

There was the weight that pull'd me down. 0 Cromwell!

The king has gone beyond me: all my glories

In that one woman I have lost for ever (III.ii.#07-9).
Earlier, when the Lord Chamberlain and the Duke of Suffolk
are discussing Henry VIII's scruples about his marriage to
Katharine, the following exchange occurs:

Chamberlain. It seems the marriage with his

, brother's wife
Has crept too near his conscience.
Suffolk. No; his conscience
Has crept too near another lady.
(II. 1. 15-17)

But nowhere in the play does anyone charge Henry VIII
with lust, greed, or duplicity. Buckingham, Katharine, and
WOlsey all remain.1oyal to their King to the end.

What then, are some possible reasons for Henry's
being chosen as the symbol of both secular and religious
sovereignty with no serious charge at any time being made
against his lack of character? The most obvious is it
would have been.foolhardy for a playwright to be too
honest about a recent predecessor of the present monarch.

Another possible reason is that the author of

Henry VIII was merely endorsing Anglican.protestantism:

 

Henry VIII was the originator of the Church of England as
an hnstrument of national policy; if the playwright wished
to endorse the Church of England and repudiate Rome-.

and such things as the fall of Wolsey and Henry's refer-
ence to the "dilatory sloth and tricks of Rome" would seem
to indicate a rather conventional bias in favor of the

Erastian.Church of England-~then.he would have to present

198

an idealized portrait of Henry VIII. The entire play
reads like a eulogy of Tudor nationalism, and thus it is
most natural that Henry VIII should be presented in.a
favorable light. The author of the Prologue, in choosing
to write about Henry apparently knew that there was a
p0pular, perhaps tolerant, but certainly not lofty, esti-
mate of Henry VIII that might militate against the serious
and solemn.atmOSphere he wished to develop. He begins
the Prologue by declaring that

I come no more to make you laugh: things now,

That bear a weighty and a serious brow, '

Sad, high, and working, full of state and woe,

Such noble scenes as draw the eye to flow,

We now present."
A few lines later he warns that one should not hope to see
"a merry, bawdy play" (line 1#), which could very well
refer to the Henry of pOpular conception. One serious
flaw, then, is that the near-contemporary, sensual Henry.
VIII was not suited to serve as a symbol in.a prOphetic
or parabolic play. The bland acceptance of the amoral
Henry VIII seems a sad conclusion.to a dramatic career.
The religion and royalism that one encounters in.Henry:!££I
smack suspiciously of the rather close identification of
God and country that is found so distressingly frequent in
modern nationalism. King Henry VIE reads more like prop-
agenda put to a practical and than it does a vision of
immortality or a prOphecy of later British destiny.

To return to Knight's interpretation.of Henry VIII:

 

Knight too is aware of the objections that one might
raise to Henry VIII'S being a successful symbol of secular

199

and religious authority. Knight writes that "Only through
a sympathetic humour and that most difficult Of humilities,
intellectual charity, that wide trust in creation.which
our raucous crowd scenes so clearly assert, and of which
such humour is a reflection, can we forgive the King what
is a grave lapse causing suffering to the good Katharine"
(p. 317). Knight is quite right, I believe, in.his assump-
tion.that Henry VIII is the central figure who "dominates
absolutely" (p. 307); and he is also correct when he main»
tains that "King Henry is the one king in.ShakeSpeare
in whom you cannot dissociate man from Office." This is,
because the man.is completely swallowed up by the office;
it is King Henry VIII, the Head of the Anglican Church,
the Prime Exponent of English Nationalism, and the Father
of Elizabeth that one encounters in.the play, not the greedy,
lecherous, treacherous historical Henry VIII. The major
difference between the Henry VIII that the author of the
play presents us and the Henry VIII that the interpreter
visualizes lies in the additional symbolic significances
that Knight finds in Shakespeare's Henry VIII. The Henry
VIII of the play is rather conventional, little more than.
the historical instrument used to break England free from
Rome and continental domination.and to sire Elizabeth.
The Henry VIII that emerges from Knight's interpretation
of the play is at once a nobler, more humane, and more
prOphetic figure.

Knight claims that Henry "has, if not Spiritual .
understanding, yet clear Spiritual sympathies" (p. 307),

200

that Henry is characterized by "an eminently human king-
1iness" (p. 308), that Henry is, "like everyone here,
religious" (p. 307), that the King is "autocratic, but
constitutionally minded and just" (p. 308), and that
"his account of how his doubts suggested that his lack of
a male heir was to be referred to Providential displeasure
makes a convincing blend of conscientious scruple and prac-
tical expediency which rings true" (p. 310). Yet later,
after treating Henry VIII in.a Bradley-like way, Knight
writes that_"as a man, he is far from faultless; and yet
'as a man! he does not exist" (p. 312). Quite true: then
why spend so much space (pp. 306-318) defending his charac-
ter and motives?

What remains of our discussion of Knight's interpre-
tation of Henry_!££l is the transcendental significance
he finds in it. Knight states that: "We meet a similar
attempt to realize a transcendental humanism to that in
other late plays, though in terms of contemporary and nation-
al symbolism rather than individual persons, and with an
expansion.of romantic love to international amity (already
heralded in Cymbeline). As once in.The Tempest, we are

 

pointed to a reality compared to which the old fictions

are no longer unbelievable (pp. 321-2). Where has there
ever really been an emphasis on individual persons in the
final plays? One could more readily advance the view that
in.the last plays there is a negation of personality and
an.attempt to find the solution to tragedy in.a cosmic order
or a humanity that is seen continually renewing itself

201

with.progeny. For "romantic love" in the above quotation
one should read "erotic love". The protagonists in all
the last plays are not seen as personalities in their own
rights so much as links in.a natural process which is for-
ever renewing itself in.a new generation. Even Henry VIII
is primarily important because he is the father of Eliza-
beth. ShakeSpeare never identifies his cosmic order, his
destiny, or Providence, with the Christian.God, except in

Henry VIII, where the identification is unsatisfactory be-

 

cause it is really little more than a conventional equating
of Tudor despotism with Divine Providence that reaches its
consummation.in.Elizabeth.

Like the other final plays EEEEZNXEEE.18' according
to Knight, primarily a ceremonial ritual: "Ritual is our
true protagonist" (p. 326), and "Ritual characterizes not
only our tragic, but also our more buoyant scenes" (p. 327).
The coronation.is found to be at once royalistic and
Christian (p. 328). The crowds found in.the play are con.
sidered part of the ritual and are given a mystic signi—
ficance by Knight; after quoting a passage (IV. 1. 69ff.)
about the crowd present at Anne's coronation.Knight
declares that

The crowd is now a single, mystic body, where-
in all those stern moral and possessive sex-
ual severities that have for so long torment-
ed the Shakespearian universe are, momentar-
ily, dissolved, with no man able to claim his
own wife, all personal relationships being
annihilated. Here is our Opposite extreme to
the poetry of individuality, of personality,

of the '1'; instead we face a greater communal
'we', with direct New Testament analogies.

We are in.a beyondawar, beyond-ethic, millenium,
the 'old time' of human.antagonisms being past.

(p. 329)

202
This is a rather profound meaning to extract from the
statement that "No man living/ Could say, 'This is my
wife', there; all were woven/ So strangely in.one piece,"
which is just as easily and certainly more probably intern
preted as simply meaning that the press was so great that
the peOple were packed together like sardines.

Knight's finding the play a vision of Elizabethan
England (p. 331) is, I believe, correct. However, it is
a far more conventionally, far more mundanely conceived
vision than Knight takes it to be. And Knight may be right
that: "In laying his final prophetic emphasis on.a child

ShakeSpeare follows a long tradition, Vergilian and

Christian" (p. 331). One could, perhaps, argue that the
treatment of Henry VIII, the absence of any condemnation

of his evil character, harks back to the Old Testament,
where many of the presumed antecedents of Christ, who were
of unsavory character, were nonetheless treated without
critical comment. Then, too, the Old Testament often
treats various characters in.a most summary way, apparently
indicating that all they counted for was to beget a later
and more significant figure in.a line of descent.) The
best thing that the poet says about Henry VIII is that he
produced Elizabeth.

The references to Elizabeth as the Phoenix and the
employment of other mystic or religious terms Knight takes
to indicate (p. 33#) that in.HenrdeEII "the temporality
is shot through with eternal meaning, and immortality."

It is a sheer act of faith on the part of Knight when he

203
reasons (p. 336) that the prOphecy at the end of the
play cannot be confined merely to Elizabeth and James.
In conclusion, Knight's interpretation of Henry VIII

 

suffers through its failure to take into account the lit-
erary tradition of Shakespeare's time and the topicality--
in this play crucial-of its concern. The play is a con.
ventional presentation of the Tudor progress which culmin—
ated in Elizabeth. Henry VIII was a poor but necessary
choice for the symbol of kingship. The play fails partly
because Henry VIII was a historical figure about whom we
know too much, partly because the partisanship of the
author dulled his moral sensitivity, partly because there.
is no real dramatic tensionp-the aristocracy (Buckingham),
the Roman Catholic Church (Wolsey) and the injured though]
innocent wife (Katharine) all tamely submit to Henry VIII,
the triumphant personification.of Tudor destiny--and partly
because the whole subject of the Tudor myth was already

a hackneyed one. There is an element in.the play, suggested
in the Prologue, that is reminiscent of the morality:

the play is designed to show "how soon this mightiness

meets misery" (1.30).

In.summary, Knight has taken.pains in his inter-
pretations of each of the last five plays to defend the
authenticity of the parts of dubious authorship; he has
attempted to prove the integrity of each of.the plays,
stressing their running coherence of idea, image, and
event; he has argued for their close relationship with all

20#
of the preceding work of Shakespeare; he has maintained
that collectively they are the final step in the Shake-

speare Progress, and that Henry VIII is the crowning

 

achievement of all of Shakespeare's work; and he has dis-
covered a transcendental meaning common to all five plays.
All of these plays are seen as visions of immortality,
not so much as visions of life-after-death as visions of
life triumphant, as myths of creation itself.

The "Spatial" method is employed throughout these
interpretations: in.proving the coherence of the whole
of Shakespeare's work Knight has extracted images, ideas,

events, and characters to make his point. The "vertical"
dimension.is found in.the last five plays to consist mainly

of theOphanies, which Knight stresses heavily; and of
references to the artse-that of design in.Pericles, sculp-
ture in {122 Winter's 29.1.2! the poet's own art in The Tempest,
the elaborate stage directions for the Vision of Jupiter

in Cymbeline, and the elaborate ritual ceremonies of

 

Henry VIII.
The plays are all seen.as emphasizing forgiveness

 

and reconciliation, and Henry VIII is taken to be pro-

 

foundly Christian. The restoration.of the lost--Hermione,
Imogen, Thaisa--and the saving of the ship in.The Tempest,
are regarded more or less as resurrections, Hermione and
Thaisa being heavily stressed.

British nationalism is found to be suggested in

Cymbeline and The Tempest, and explicitly stated in.Henry
VIII. In gymbeline and The Tempest Knight's finding such

 

205.

a message is somewhat fanciful, while in his interpretation
of Henry VIII he gives it more prOphetic significance than.

it deserves.

All of the last five plays Knight takes to be
intimately concerned with art, which is, after all, a kind
of creation, its permanence suggesting eternity. Knight
considers The Tempest to be at once a summary of ShakeSpeare's
artistic progress, an autobiography of the artist, an
expanded metaphor (the tempest), and a work woven.not out
of reality but out of art.

Each of the final plays Knight considers a parable

dominated by symbolic characters, actions, and language.
The ritualistic elements in the plays he regards as an.inn
dication both of the religious and the artistic concerns

of the poet. The characters, images, and events of the
last plays are regarded as summaries or restatements of

all the characters, images, and events of all the preceding
plays of Shakespeare, though the handling in the final
plays is thought to be different.’ Knight interprets the
final plays as visionary statements which transcend the
earlier erotic and tragic intuitions of Shakespeare; though
both the love and hate themes of the earlier periods are
found in all of the last plays. What kind of an.immortale
ity Knight sees Shakespeare as visualizing is never quite
clear: he never accepts the naturalistic explanation.that
ShakeSpeare is pointing to immortality in.progeny; nor

does he ever state that Shakespeare is, in.a Yeatsian
manner, establishing a case for the eternity of art. It

remains a kind of nebulous vitalism-at one time immortality

206

is referred to as life or life triumphant while at another
it becomes a myth of creation. Knight would seem to be

contemplating a kind of cosmic order indistinguishable from

Destiny or Providence, though it is impossible to regard

Knight's interpretations as Christian.in any orthodox

sense of the term. The frequent references to Wordsworth's

Immortality Ode and to various other poems by the great

romantics does not so much clarify his conception of eter- p

nity as reveal the essential romanticism of Knight, as a

well as the romanticism of his Shakespeare. .
The soundness of Knight's interpretative method is E

sometimes questionable. Pulling images, characters, events, (

and ideas out of context is of dubious value. The violence

he sometimes does to the integrity of the individual play

in his effort to tie it in with preceding plays is also a

fault. Then, too, Knight's grasping after metaphysical

significances--straining after examples of resurrection

in.the cases of Hermione and Imogen, to cite one instance--

shows a disregard for the integrity of the text. A re-

fusal to consider the traditional symbolic meanings which

were already assigned to certain.oharacters, images, or

events before the time of Shakespeare is another weakness;

ShakeSpeare undoubtedly took many associations ready-made-

those of music and tempests, perhaps--and did not necessar-

ily forge them all afresh in the smithy of his own.sou1.

The last objection is related to the preceding one, and

primarily concerns Knight's interpretation of Henry VIII;

a closer knowledge of the conventional contemporary treatment

207

of the Tudor myth would perhaps have restricted Knight's
apocalyptic envisionings somewhat. Yet one cannot disprove

many of Knight's conclusions, since they are questions of
one mind extracting more symbolic meaning from a play than.
another will allow. We are faced with the fact that
Knight's interpretations are largely imaginative ones.

The large degree of success that Knight does realize
in his interpretations of the last five plays is largely
due to their parabolic nature, their ritualistic quality,
and the great symbolic significances that one finds in
them. In.Spite of the extravagance of some of his meta-
physical flights Knight has established a strong case for
the complete genuineness of the last plays, for their having
many strong affiliations with the earlier work, for their
having enough likenesses to constitute a group to them-
selves, and for their being profoundly symbolic statements.
But the question of what they are symbolic of, and the
question of what kind of a mind is reflected in.them,
are still Open. Knight has done more, perhaps, to estab-
lish their literary value-~though valuation.as such is
never his concern~-than.many of the more orthodox scholars
who could see nothing‘but a period of serenity, a falling
off of dramatic skill, or a Shakespeare eager to exploit
a literary form only recently adapted to the stage.

CHAPTER FIVE

G. Wilson Knight has exerted a.powerful influence
on.other ShakeSpearian scholars and critics, mainly through
The Wheel of Fire, though his Myth and Miracle and The

 

Crown.g£ Life, in.which Myth and Miracle later appeared,

 

are also influential. Much of Knight's influence has been
unacknowledged because of his growing preoccupation.with
metaphysics; this concern was present from the outset--
Myth and Miracle was subtitled "An Essay on.the Mystic
Symbolism of Shakespeare"-but when Knight began to assume
the prOphet's role he lost much of the sympathy that had

been accorded the author of The Wheel 2£_Fire, a book

 

which had so neatly undermined the position of A. C. Bradley
and J. M. Robertson.

Many younger scholars have followed the lead of
Knight in.substituting the study of symbols for that of
character. Among the writers who owe a debt to Knight are
several who were affiliated with the so-called Scrutiny
school of criticism. J. F. Danby, Henri Fluchere,
L. C. Knights, A. A. Stephenson, F. C. Tinkler, James Smith,
J. C. Maxwell, and D. A. Traversi all wrote essays on
various plays of Shakespeare for Scrutiny and all are pri-
marily concerned with symbol or theme and study the plays
as poems rather than drama.

This is not to claim that Knight alone revolutionized
contemporary Shakespeare studies, or to assume that Knight
is solely responsible for providing the critical assumptions

208

209

underlying recent ShakeSpeare scholarship. Knight himself
acknowledges the influence of J. Middleton Murry, John
Masefield, William James, and even A. C. Bradley, the man
whose work he is usually thought to have repudiated. More-
over, Knight did not originate the contemporary preoccup
pation.with imagery, Since Caroline Spurgeon's work was
appearing at the same time as his own. Nor did Knight
first point to the archetypal patterns that have been.found
in literature, since Maud Bodkin.was already applying the
findings of Jung and Frazer to literary study. The acknow-
ledged influences indicate that Knight is a romantic of a
spiritualistic and psychological orientation; much of the
metaphysical matter in Knight's work indicates either a
congeniality of outlook between.Knight and Murry or an.un~
fortunate influence of Murry upon.Knight. Masefield and
William James also reveal where the younger Knight perhaps
acquired some of the metaphysical notions that have been
present throughout his work. Though Knight rejected
Bradley's excessive emphasis upon.character-analysis he
did not reject some of the romantic assumptions implicit
in.Bradley's work.

Knight assumes-~as did Bradley-ethat each play has
a peculiar atmOSphere. Unlike Bradley, Knight finds that
image, theme, and action.are as important as character in
determining this atmOSphere. Unlike Bradley, Knight does
not regard character as central and dominant, dictating the
action.and language. Like Bradley, and all the post-

Coleridgean romantics, Knight feels that there is a coherence

210
uniting all of ShakeSpeare's work and that there is a
record of Shakespeare's mental develOpment expressed in
the plays.

Though Knight is commonly associated with the analysis
of imagery and the extraction of various parabolic, mata-
physical, or apocalyptic meaning from such analysis, he
has actually been.as concerned with symbolic character,
symbolic action, and symbolic theme as he has with symbolic
imagery. The abstraction.of themes from the plays in order
to establish their significance was not a new thing with .
Knight, for F. C. Kolbe, and, even.earlier, B. G. Moulton,
had sought to capture the essence of a play by finding the
dominant theme. R. G. Moulton had also anticipated Knight's
"scientific" interpretative method with his "inductive"
method. r

The originality of Knight's contribution, then, is
not so much in.the formulation of new principles of lit-
erary criticism or the creation of an.altogether'new method
of interpretation.as it is in.the application of recent
findings--the importance of imagery, the existence of themes
not expressed solely in terms of character, the presence
of archetypal patterns only noticed after the discoveries
of modern.psychology and anthropology-~to the second half

of Shakespeare's career. At the time The Wheel of Fire

 

first appeared no one had yet analyzed the great tragedies.
of Shakespeare in.terms of recent develOpments in literary,
psychological, or anthropological theory.

Nor is Knight's reassessment of the final plays

211
altogether original. J. Middleton Murry in Countries of

 

the Mind (1922) and Discoveries (192#) had more or less

 

repeated Strachey's estimate of the last plays, but in
Heaven-«and Earth (1938) and in ShakeSpeare (1936) Murry

 

had evidently changed his mind and come to view the plays
as symbolic presentations of a spiritual rebirth. Now the
two last-named books appeared long after Knight's M

and; Miracle (1929), but in Murry's To t_h_e_ Unknown G_od_ (l92#)
he had already referred to The Tempest as. "the most perfect
prOphetic achievement of the Western mind, "1 and had gone,
on to assert that "as Shakespeare is prophetic of the last,
modern era of the Westernoconsciousness, Christ was pro-
phetic of the” whole epoch, of which this last modern era

is the culminating part."2 Yet Murry never develOped these
insights himself, he never related the last plays to the
totality of ShakeSpeare's work, and he never attempted to
include m VIII with the other four final plays.

 

Other contemporary scholars besides the Scrutifl
writers have taken their cue from Knight, especially those
who have written upon the final plays. Theodore Spencer
in his Shakespeare and the Nature of Man (l9#2) sees the
last plays as symbolic visions of rebirth in which the poetry
dominates. Like Knight, he finds the final playso-themati-
cally, at least--summarizing the course of Shakespeare's

work as a whole.3 There is no way of finding whether various

 

lJ. M.‘Murry, T2 the Unlmown God, London, l92#, p. 185.
21bid., p. 191.

3 T. Spencer, Shakespeare and the Nature of Man, New
York, l9#5, pp. 222- , —- — -—---- -—

212
contemporary Shakespearian scholars whose findings resemble
Knight's but who, like Spencer, do not aclmowledge a debt
to Knight, were or were not influenced by Knight; they have,
however, come to accept a view of the last plays that Knight
was largely instrumental in establishing. Another example
of a contemporary scholar whose work seems to have been
influenced by Knight's findings is S. L. Bethell. In
his _T_h_e_ Winter's T313: A S_t\_£l_y_ he limits himself to

 

The Winter's Tale, though he intends his argument to extend

 

to everything from Pericles to The Tempest.“ Bethell too
is largely concerned with symbolism, myth, and archetypal
patterns, though he arrives at a conclusion somewhat at
variance with Knight's. Bethell finds Shakespeare a
Christian humanist, in the orthodox sense of the term.
Knight, however, had already made reference to the possible
hint of the Pauline doctrine that the Christian life on
earth is e resurrected life,5 and yet Bethell, when he

6 does not seem cognizant of this fact.

suggests this,

Bethell makes no mention of Knight's work in his book.
Kenneth Muir has written a book on the last plays

whichubears some strong resemblances to Knight's work.

Muir in his Last Periods g Shakespeare, Racine, and Ibsen

 

 

visualizes the last plays as symbolic poems illustrating
redemption and forgiveness. Muir, unlike Spencer and Bethell,

 

“S. L. Bethell, The Winter's Tale: A Study, p. 20.

50:. pp. 76 and 119 of The Crown.g£ Life.

 

 

6Bethe11, p. 7#.

213
refers to Knight's contribution.7 Muir assumes the co-
herence of the totality of Shakespeare's work and, like
the Knight of m and Miracle, regards The Tempest as
the natural culmination.of the plays of the final period.
The last plays are, according to Muir, parabolic art.
Muir sees the last plays as expressing a faith on.the
natural goodness of man when.not corrupted by society.

E. M. W. Tillyard wrote a book on the last plays
which incorporated the conclusions of Knight and others
without the courtesy of acknowledgment. Tillyard's
Shakespeare's East Plays, which has nothing new to say, sets
out to prove that the last plays are the final phase of the
tragic pattern, the last step in.a regenerative process.
Knight had anticipated this discovery, and receives for
his pains the statement in Tillyard's book that Knight and
D. G. James had overstressed the importance of Pericles.8

Another contemporary writer who shows the influence
of G. Wilson.Knight or an agreement with his findings is
Patrick Cruttwell in.his The Shakespearian Moment. Cruttwell,
like Knight, sees the last plays as symbolic poems; and,
like Knight, he sees the last plays as combining symbolism
and stark realism. There is frequent mention.of symbolic
patterns and transcendental meanings as integral parts of
the poetry, and of the plays as symbolizing a fine balance
of Church and State, achieved for a brief time in the Anglican

 

7Muir, Last Periods, pp. 48, 50-1, 60.
BTillyard, p. 21+.

214
Settlement under Elizabeth. All of these matters were
stressed by Knight in.his work on.the last plays. More-
over, Knight had already interpreted Mamillius as a symbol
of innocence, and Cruttwell repeats this,9 without acknow-
ledgment. Though Roy Walker does not admit to having re-
ferred to Knight's essay on.Hacbeth before the writing of

his own.The Time is Free, he does acknowledge the similar-

 

ity between.their findings and the encouragement that he

personally had received from Knight.lo

Except for The Wheel 2£_Fire, which many writers

 

have praised and acknowledged as a major influence, and

The Crown.2£ Life, which has even received praise from
ll

 

some of the editors of the New Arden Shakespeare, few of
the remaining books by Knight have won.favorab1e comments.
And there are several reasons for this. The most important
reason, which is also the greatest objection to his work,
is Knight's metaphysical speculations. Knight insists upon
using philosoPhical terminology and upon.treating Shake-
speare as a great philosOphical and religious poet. Other

reasons which have alienated many of the more orthodox

scholars are his refusal to relate the plays to their age

 

9Cruttwell, p. 102.
1°Waiker, p. xii.

lle. Frank Kermode, Introduction to the New Arden
edition of The Tempest, London, 1962, pp. lxxxiii-lxxxv;'
F. D. hoeniEEF,”InEFBEuction to New Arden.Perioles, 1963,
p. lxxxi;'and J. M. Nosworthy, Introductiom Arden
Cymbeline, 1960, pp. xxxiv-xxxvi.

 

215

and his regarding the plays as mystical compositions inn
stead of plays. An.ob3ection to Knight's method is his
disregard for the context from which he extracts images
or ideas in.order to make a comparison. When.Knight
employed this method only with Shakespeare's plays which .
he knew intimately, there were some murmurings of dissent,
but when he went on to abstract symbols from vastly different
writers, writing in.different genres in.dissimilar ages
and putting their images and ideas to divergent uses, then
his Spatial method lost what support it had gained.

When Knight began to assume the prOphet's role--

already in.The Christian.Renaissance-uand tried to relate
Shakespeare to Christianity it was obvious that he had

 

passed beyond the bounds of literary study. The later
decay of Knight's critical powers is not, strictly speaking,
a decay so much as a misapplication or abuse of abilities.
Knight seems to place Shakespeare at the center of his
metaphysical system and to compare or relate all the other
literary figures he discusses to this center. Only by
assuming this to be so can.one understand how Knight could
write that '222 Dunciad is Papa's Inferno, his Macbeth,'1?
or that IIByron's poetic interests are, like Shakespeare's,
at once subjective, personal, social, political, natural-
istic, and cosmic,'13 or that “Shakespeare and Byron.are

our two greatest masters of tragedy.'1a The writers that

 

12112 222.1115 9.52.92- P- 180. 13m." p. 286.

1“:bid., p. 291.

216
Knight selects to study in.his The Burning Oracle, which
illustrates well Knight's preoccupation with extra-literary
concerns, are not chosen because of any profound likeness .
of either form or content but because, according to Knight,
'each of the writers discussed in.my book has felt himself

a national prOphet.'15 From The Christian Renaissance on

 

Shakespeare was all but identified with Christ in.Knight's
scheme. It was not long before G. Wilson.Knight was offer-
ing his own gospel to the world; in.Christ EEE_Nietzsche
Knight enumerates the four pillars upon which his own.eome-
what eccentric wisdom rests: l'The four pillars upholding
my present effort towards a reconstruction of Christianity
are Shelley's Defense of Poetry, Nietzsche's Thus Spgkg

 

Zarathustra, Shakespeare's Timon.2£ Athens, and POpe's
16

 

£3.51 93 E." A more bizarre selection of more diverse
figures is hard to contemplate.

Knight came to visualize himself not only as a seer
of the transcendental but also as a prOphet of British
destiny. The books of Knight which are at once the worst
and the dullest are those which he wrote on.Shakespeare's
message to England at war. Most of this one can ignore,
but the disturbing thing is that Knight's esthetic sensiti-
vity was not proof against the temptation.to revaluate

Shakespeare's work on the basis of a play's national 'mes-

sage'. This seems actually to have happened in the case

of King Henry VIII.

 

‘-

15Loc. cit. 16Christ and Nietzsche, p. 231.

217
Another weakness is the re-appearance in.Knight's

later Shakespearian work of certain.nineteenth century
romantic views. One of these is his attempt to get at

the artist's intentions. Another is his assigning a
moralistic motive to the artist's work. A third is his
reading of the author as person.in.his work. In.The Wheel

 

SELEEEE' where Knight was formulating his principles of
interpretation, he repudiated these three things. Knight
of course would answer all three of these objections by
replying that it is the poet's intentions as poet that he
seeks, that it is the metaphysical significance and not

the moralistic purpose he aims at, and that it is the uni-
versal spiritual experience of the poet and not the person.

alistic autobiography that he is trying to reconstruct.
However, when he states that Shakespeare has a message for
England and for modern civilization, that Shakespeare's
work is designed to control the beast in man, and that
ShakeSpeare is revealed in Hamlet and Timon, he would seem
to be relapsing into nineteenth century habits of thought.
Knight is a symbolist whose symbolism sometimes
approaches allegory, though he never becomes an orthodox
Christian.humanist like S. L. Bethell, B. W. Chambers, or
R. Battenhouse. Knight recognizes the naturalistic elements
in.Shakespeare, as do J. F. Danby, Geoffrey Bush, and
Theodore Spenser; and he acknowledges the humanistic elements,
as A. P. Rossiter and H. B. Charlton.do; but he also sees
a transcendental element, particularly in the last plays.

When Knight visualizes a Christ-Eros or ApollonianpDionysian

218

cleavage in.contemporary Western civilization.he parts
company with the orthodox apologists; Knight's work never
descends to the pedestrian task of "Christianizing'I
Shakespeare, though this descent is prevented at the
price of eccentricity.

Much of the eccentricity in Knight's work is strongly
reminiscent of John.Middleton.Murry. Like Murry, Knight
is a romantic; like Murry, Knight attempts to make a pro-
phet of Shakespeare; like Murry, Knight attempts to extract
a metaphysical system from Shakespeare's work; like Murry,
Knight embraces a vitalistic gospel that is ultimately a

glorified naturalism. Like Murry, Knight has made much
of the last plays of Shakespeare, though Murry's work is

much more derivative and much less thoroughly worked out
than.Knight's. The imagination occupies essentially the
same position in.Murry's scheme that it does in.Knight's.
Murry too was enthused with metaphoric language. Both
Knight and Murry see the contemporary Christian Church in
need of regeneration. Both Knight and Murry hold low
Opinions of the literary historians and philogists. Both
Knight and Murry hold high estimates of Antony §§d_glgg¢
EEEEE! though for different reasons. Knight considers it
a victory of love, the infinite value, over tragedy; Murry
also sees it as a love-victory, but he values Antony and.
Cleopatra even.more highly than.Thg Tempest because he finds
it is a solution.in.terms of the real world, while The
Tempest is not.17 Much of what scholars have objected to

 

17Discoveries, p. 39.

 

219
in Knight's work is evidently derived from Middleton.Murry.
Without metaphysical pretensions Knight would re-
semble J. F. Danby or D. A. Traversi; Danby does not
acknowledge Knight's influence while Traversi does, though
not to Knight's satisfaction. Knight wrote a letter to
the Scrutiny editors which appeared in.the Winter 1949

 

issue (Vol. XVI, pp. 323-7). In.this letter he not only
protested J. F. Danby's alleged plagiarizing from The
Imperial Theme, The Wheel of Fire, and The Shakespearian

Tempest but also Traversi's alleged lifting of ideas from

The Crown of Life. The material Danby plagiarized from The

 

Imperial Theme Knight maintains, appeared in Danby's
Scrutiny essay on Antony and Cleopatra (Sept. l9h9, pp. 196-
213); the things which Knight finds Danby apprOpriating
from The Wheel of Fire and The Shakespearian Tempest were

 

 

incorporated in.Danby's book, Shakespeare's Doctrine of
Nature (1949). Knight charges that Traversi's unacknow-
ledged debt is for certain.ideas he incorporated in his

Scrutiny essay (June, l9h9) on.The Tegpest. Knight com-

 

plains that there are limits to the unacknowledged appro-
priating of ideas, which are reached when 'those influenced,

to quote an.amusing reviewer of The Crown.of Life, 'crib'

 

with one hand what they 'crab' with the other!"18 There
are other controversies in which Knight has engaged over
the question.of unacknowledged literary debts.l9 It is

 

18Knight, 'Correspondence,‘ Scrutiny, XVI, p. 326.

19The K on Review, Winter 19b8; RES, Oct. l9h6;
TLS, 14 56-13% m. 19b6; 21 ApriI-I'950; and The
LIEtener, 7 July 1949. '-—-

220
an.open question.whether the various writers whose works
resemble Knight's in their approach and, to a lesser
degree, their conclusions, have actually lifted material
from his books; but it is an.undoubted fact that the
scholarly climate of opinion which now welcomes analyses
of symbolic works, and thus encourages these writers, is
largely one of Knight's creating. The assumptions that
Shakespeare's drama is poetry, that there are valid prin»
ciples of poetic organization other than character in
Shakespeare's plays, and that the final plays are great
symbolic poems, all owe much of their present acceptance
to G. Wilson Knight.

Knight's contribution to literary study possesses
the strength and weakness of all post-Coleridgean romantic
criticism. His interpretative work is romantic principally
because it places the stress upon.the sovereign, synthe-
sizing imagination. This imagination he sometimes associates
with the Crown.and sometimes with divine grace. The imag-
ination.according to Knight includes an element of love.
Knight applies the imagination.both to the creation.of
art and its interpretation.and fails to make an adequate
distinction between.the active creative task and the
passive contemplation of the work of art. .Each interpre-
tation is a re-creation.of the work of art, and thus the
interpreter enters into an active partnership with the

creative artist. In The Sacred Wood T. 8. Eliot discusses

 

various kinds of 'imperfect' critics, and one of these kinds

is the impressionistic critic who neither creates a work of

221
art nor evaluates someone else's, but instead produces
something that is neither art nor criticism. This, essen-
tially, is what Knight does.

The romantic Knight conceives a Shakespeare who is
also romantic. The romanticism of Knight's conception of
Shakespeare is evident in the following ways. In the first
place, Shakespeare is seen as undergoing a series of spirit-
ual experiences which are assumed to be recorded in.his
art. Knight at times protests that it is Shakespeare's
artistic progress in which he is interested, but more often
it is his psychological or religious progress. Horeover,
certain.characters-~principally Timon.and Hamlet--are
visualized as peculiarly exact records of Shakespeare's
own.mind. In the second place, the whole concept of a co-
herence uniting not only each individual play but also all
of the plays into one total organic structure is a legacy
of the romantics.

In the thirdplace, Knight shares with the romantics
their propensities for finding transcendental significance
in.art and for putting art to metaphysical tasks. Witness
Knight's interpretations of the last plays. Knight's
tendency to view art as religious ritual was present from
the outset. From the time of w and Miracle, where
Wordsworth's Immortality Ode and Dante's Paradiso were
compared to Shakespeare's last plays, an element of roman.
tic religiosity was present in Knight's work. Like the
romantics Knight is continually bringing in.transcendental

categories: art itself becomes an.Incarnation, a marriage

222
of the temporal and eternal. The last plays become myths
of immortality; this immortality is revealed both in the
imagery (that of music and art), the events (the "resurrec-
tions') and the characters (the innocent younger generations).
Knight is continually seeking religious certainty through
art; art itself in Knight's scheme becomes externalized
religion.

Shakespeare's career is envisioned as beginning
with the praise of romantic (erotic) love, passing on to
the tragic intuition (the I'hate"--theme challenging the
love-theme), and eventually culminating in the triumph of
a death-negating transcendental love. In.the problem
plays hate predominates; in the tragedies love begins to
right the balance again. These three stages correspond
respectively to the romantic comedies; the problem plays
and tragedies; and the final plays, the myths of immortal-
ity. The final period does not so much ignore or deny
either the erotic or the tragic as fulfill or transcend
them with a vision of eternity. Thus the last plays, in
Knight's estimation, become not a series of anticlimaxes
after the great tragedies but instead the greatest and most
profound statements of Shakespeare's artistic career.

Though the later work of Knight shows an unfortunate
.schematization (the Power-Love dichotomy, for example)
which results in the abstracting of images for the purpose
of erecting a metaphysical scheme, the influence of Knight
upon Shakespearian scholarship has been.aalutary. Knight
helped to destroy the ossified academic approaches toward

223
the study of Shakespeare's plays and to introduce a more
adventurous Spirit in their interpretation. Much of the

revolutionary shift in approach to the tragedies and final
plays, away from character-study, dramaturgy, and lit-
erary history, and towards the essentially poetic and the
symbolic, was effected by G. Wilson Knight.

BIBLIOGRAPHY
A. WRITINGS OF G. WILSON KNIGHT

1. Books and Pamphlets .
Atlantic Crossing. London, 1936.

 

The Burning Oracle. London, 1939.
Byron and Hamlet. Manchester, 1962.

 

Byron's Dramatic Prose. University of Nottingham, 1953.

 

 

Chariot of Wrath. London, 1942.

 

Christ and Nietzsche. London, 1948.

 

 

The Christian Renaissance, rev. ed. New York, 1962.

The Crown of Life, correctedireprint. London, 1961.

 

 

 

The Dynasty of Stowe, 2nd ed. London, 191+6.
The Golden Labyrinth. London, 1962.

Hiroshima. London, 19146.

 

 

Ibsen ('Writers and Critics" series). London, 1962.

 

The Imperial Theme, 3rd ed., corrected reprint._ London, 1961.

 

The Last of the Incas. The University of Leeds, 1951+.

Laureate of Peace. New York, 1955.

 

 

Lord Byron: Christian Virtues. New York, 1953.

 

 

Lord Byron's Marriage. New York, 1957.

 

 

 

The Mutual Flame. London, 1955.

Myth and Miracle. London, 1929.

 

 

 

 

The Olive and the Sword. London, 19%.

Principles of Shakespearian Production. New York, 1936.

 

 

 

 

Shakespeare and Tolstoy (The English Association Pamphlet
—"'—‘NU'."'8‘8")'.' m, April 1931+.

The Shakespearian Tempest, 3rd ed. London, 1953.

 

 

22h

 

In

 

225
Thg Sovereign Flower. London, 1958. .
The Starlit 2222, enlarged ed. London, 1959.
This Sceptred Isle. Oxford, 1941.

The Wheel g£_Fire, 5th rev. ed. New York, 1958.

 

2. Articles

 

'Byron.as Poet," Essays EELCriticism, IX (January, 1959), 87-93.

 

'Colman and Don Leon,“ Twentieth Century, CLIX (June, 1956),
562-573. '

'A Communication,‘I The Kenyon.Review, XI (Winter, 1949), 172.

 

I'Correspondence," Review 23 English Studies, XXII (October,
1946), 325.

I'Lawrence, Joyce and Po s,' Essays in Criticism, XI
(October, 1961), 03-4I72“""'

Letter to the editors of Scrutiny, XVI (December, 1949),
323'3270

'Lyly,‘ Review of English Studies, XV (April, 1939), 146-163.

'Macbeth and the Metaphysic of Evil,I The Hibbert Journal,
"“‘IXXVIII (October, 1929), 328-342.

 

 

 

"The New Interpretation," Essays in:Criticism, III (October,
1953). 382-395.. _

“The Road to Samarkand,‘ The Wind and the Rain,(Winter,
1944), 93-103. .

“The Scholar Gypsy: An Interpretation,‘ Review of English
"' eratfiFET'VIsn.s. (January, 195377—33352.

I'The School of Kni ht,"Essays'EE Criticism, IV (October,
195“). “30 '31.

'Scrutiny and Criticism,“ Essays in Criticism, XIV (January,
1964), 32-36. '""'

 

 

'Shakespeare and Byron's P1ays,' Shakespeare Jahrbuch,
Band 95. (1959). 82-97. w

I'The Style of OthellO,‘ The Fortnightly Review, CXXV n.s.
(April, 1929), 508-521. ' '

'Timon.Of Athens and its Dramatic Descendants," Review of
EEgIIE‘E'I'iterature, II (October, 1961), 9T— . ‘—

 

 

 

. 226 .
llWho Wrote Don.Leon?,' Twentieth Century, CLVI (July,

19547767771

 

B. SECONDARY SOURCES

Alexander, S. Space, Time, and Deity. 2 vols. London, 1920.
Bethell, S. L. The Winter's Tale: A Study. London, 1947.

 

Boas, F. Shakspere and his Predecessors. London, 1910._

 

Bodkin, M. Archetypal Patterns in Poetry. London, 1934.
Bradley, A. C. Oxford Lectures in Poetry. 'London, 1919.

 

-- ..... '. Shakespearean Tragedy. New York, 19u9I

Bridges, R. The Influence 9£_the Audience gn;Shakespeare's
Drama, VOI. X, CoIlected Essays. London, 27. ‘

 

Bush, G. Shakespeare and the Natural Condition. Cambridge, 1956.

 

Campbell, L. B. ShakeSpeare's Tragic Heroes. New York, 1952.
Chambers, E. K. The Elizabethan Stage. 4 vols. Oxford, 1961.

 

-.. ----- . Shakespeare: A,Survey. London, 1955.

 

Charlton, H. B. Shakes eare: Politics and Politicians
(The English KsthIaEiofiIPafififiIeE No. 72). London,
April, 1929. . . .
-----~-. Shakespearian.Comedy. New YOrk, 1938.
--------. Shakespearian.Traged . Cambridge, 1948.
Clark, C. Shakespeare and the Supernatural. London, 1931.
------f--. 5 Study o_f_ Shakespeare's 'Henry VIII'.‘ London, 1938.

Clemen, W. The Development of Shakespeare's Imagery.
London: . "'

Cruttwell, P. The Shakespearean Moment. London, 1954.

Curry, W. C. Shakespeare's PhiloBOphical Patterns.
Baton Hon—gs, 1937'. "'"'”" "" '—

 

Danby, J. F. Poets on Fortune's Hill. London, 1952.

 

--------. Shakespeare's Doctrine of Nature. London, 1949.

 

. 227
Dowden, E. Shakspere: His Mind and Art.‘ New York, 1918.

Fluchere, H. ShakeSpeare. London, 1953.

Frye, N. "The Argument of Comedy," ShakeSpeare: Modern
Essays 55 Criticism, ed. LeonaFd F. Dean. New’York, 1957.

 

Frye, R. M. Shakespeare and Christian Doctrine. Princeton, 1963.

 

-------. I'Recognition.in.the Winter's Tale,‘I Essays on
Shakespeare and Elizabethan Drama in.Honor of
HardinC lg, ed. R. Hosley. Columbia (Missouri), 1962.

 

 

 

Halliday, F. E. Shakespeare. New York, 1961. .
------. Shakespeare and his Critics. London, 1949.

 

Halliday, w. s. _T__he m BackgLound gt; Early Christianity,
London, 1925. ~

Harbage, A. As They Liked It. New York, 1947._

 

--------. Shakespeare and the Rival Traditions. New York, 1952-

 

Harrison, G. B. Shakespeare at Work: 1592-1603.
1 Ann Arbor-1938. """'"

James, D. G. Scepticism and Poetry. London, 1960
James, William. Human Immortality. Boston, 1898.

-------. The varieties of Reli ious Experience.
New-YErR: 1936. -___§L-_—'

 

 

 

Kirschbaum, L. Character and Characterization in.ShakeSpeare.
Detroit, 1962.

 

 

Knights, L. C. AniApproach.tg 'Hamlet'. Stanford university, 1961.

 

----..--. Explorations. New York, 1947.

 

--------. Poetry, P01itics and the English Tradition.
London, 1953.

 

 

----e-. Some ShakeSpearian.Themes. Stanford University, 1960
Kolbe, Mgr. F. C. Shakespeare's Way. London, 1930 .
Lawrence, W. W. Shakespeare's Problem Comedies. New York, 1960.

Leavis, F. R. llThe Criticism cf ShakeSpeare's Late Plays.
A Caveat, ' Scrutiny, X, 339-345.

_ ‘ 228.
Lessing, G. E. Laocoen, London, 1930. _
Lewis, W. The Lion and the Fox. London, 1927.

 

Masefield, J. ShakeSpeare and Spiritual Life. Oxford, 1924.
Moulton, R. G. Shakespeare a§_a Dramatic Artist. Oxford, 1906.

 

--------. Shakespeare as a Dramatic Thinker. New Yerk, 1907.

 

 

Muir, K. I'Changing Interpretations of Shakespeare, '

The Age of Shakes eare, ed. Boris Ford, pp. 282-301.
Ififidon, U55. '

-------. Last Periods of Shakespeare, Racine, and Ibsen.
Wayne State UfiIversIfy, 196I.

Murry, J. M. Countries 23 the Mind. New York, 1922.

 

 

 

 

--------. Keats and Shakespeare. London, 1935.

 

-------. Shakespeare. London, 1936.

-......--..... 2'2 the Unknown 22:}. London, 1924.

Nicoll, A. Shakespeare. London, 1961. _
Nietzsche, F. 32: Philosophy 92 Nietzsche. New Yerk, 195M.

 

Noble, R. Shakespeare's Biblical Knowledge. London, 1935.

 

Ralli, A. A History of ShakeSpeare Criticism. 2 vols.
New YorE,'19 9" '

Rossiter, A. P. Angel With Horns. New York, 1961.

 

 

Royds, T. F. Virgil_ and Isaiah. Oxford, 1918.

Schicking, L. L. Character Problems in Shakespeare' s
P_1____ays. Lemon, 1922. ""'"'""—""'

 

Shakespeare Criticism, 1919-1935, ed. A. Ridler. London, 1962.

 

Sherriff, R. C. Journey's End. London, 1929.

Spengler, O. The Decline of the West, transl. by C. F.
Atkinson. New York"1927.

Spurgeon, C. F. E. Shakespeare's Imagery. New York, 1936.

Stephenson, A. A. 'The Significance of 'Cymbeline', '
Scrutiny, X. 329-338.

 

229
Still, C. Shakespeare's Mystery Play. London, 1921.
--------. The Timeless Theme. London, 1936.

 

Strachey, L. 'Shakespeare's Final Period,‘ Books and
Characters, pp. 51-69. New York, l922?"""

Tillyard, E. M. W. Shakespeare's Last Plays. London, 1951.

Thorndike, A. H. The Influence of Beaumont and Fletcher on
Shakespere. WoFEeéEer’TNEssécfiu§§EfsJ, 1951. "'

Tinkler, F. C. "Cymbeline", Scrutiny, VII, 5-19.

 

--------. I"The Winter's Tale'", Scrutiny, V, 349-64.

Tolstoy, L. 'Shakespeare and the Drama,I Recollections and
Essays, Vol. 21. pp. 307-383. Lonfiai,1937. "'

 

Traversi, D. A. "The Last Plays of Shakespeare,“ The A e
2£_Shakespeare, ed. Boris Ford, pp. 257-28I7'Lo on, 1955.

--------. Shakespeare from Richard £3.22 Henry 2} Stanford
UniversIEy, I9 I.

Vyvyan,J. The Shakespearean Ethic. London, 1959.
Walker, R. The Time is Free. London, l9h9.

 

Wilson, J. D. The Egaging_g£_'The Tempest'. Newcastle, 1936.
UOrdsworth, C. Shakes eare's Knowledge and Use of the Bible.
London, IBBUI‘¥""_' """"“"""""

m-a

 

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