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This is to certify that the

thesis entitled

SHAKESPEARE AND MOLIERE:
A COMPARISON OF THEIR COMIC WORLDS

presented by

Judi th Ann Sorum

has been accepted towards fulfillment

of the requirements for
Comparative

Ph - no degree in Literature

 

 

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3/ Major professoU

Date May 4, 1973

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ABSTRACT

SHAKESPEARE AND MOLIRRE: A COMPARISON
OF THEIR COMIC WORLDS

BY
Judith Ann Sorum

The importance of the contributions of Shakespeare
and Moliére to the Western dramatic tradition, as well
as their use of similar plot lines, motifs and characters,
suggest the fruitfulness of a comparison of their works.
Past studies which have compared the two playwrights have
been limited to brief discussions of the similarities of
their lives or of particular comic figures which they
developed. The purpose of this study is to provide a
basis for meaningful detailed comparison of their com-
plete comic works by comparing the interior worlds of
their comedies.

The method used for the study included a close
reading of the texts of the comic works, from which was
sketched an outline of the interior worlds of the comedies.
The two comic worlds were then compared. Chapter I of
the_study defined the concept Of comic vision and outlines

the existing scholarship. Chapter II is an analysis of

Judith Ann Sorum

four Shakespearian comedies: Love's Labour's Lost, A

 

Midsummer Night's Dream, Twelfth Night and The Winter's

 

 

 

Tale. Chapter III outlines the Shakespearian comic
world as seen through these comedies. And Chapter IV
compares that world with the comic world of the Moliére
comedies. Chapter V provides a brief summary.

This comparison of the two playwrights' comic
worlds suggests that Shakespeare‘s comic world, rather
than differing radically from that of Moliere‘s, goes
beyond it, including, but expanding upon the intimate
social group of Moliere's comic world. The Shakespearian
setting which alternates between urban and rural settings
suggests the tensions and dualities of the comic world.
The Moliere setting, on the other hand, is usually simply
a backdrop to the various social groups who are a part
of Moliere's comic world.

In both comic worlds, the movement of life is
from disorder and separation to order and union. In
Shakespeare's comic world this movement proceeds on
many levels: social, political and natural. In Moliére's
comic world, however, the movement is social only, and
lacks the actual physical and geographical movement
which we find in Shakespeare's world. The comedies of
both men end with marriage and union, and in both comic

worlds marriage seems to represent order.

Judith.Ann Scrum

In Shakespeare's comic world, the return to order
is marked by some sort of celebration, while Moliere's
plays come to an abrupt conclusion, as if to suggest the
very irrationality, the absurdity, of life. The return
to order suggests man's powerlessness in Moliere's
world, as it suggests man's role in a sexual, seasonal
cycle of life in Shakespeare's world.

The character of fixity,who appears in many
variations in Moliere's comic world, is seen as well in
Shakespeare's comedies, although he is not so unswervingly
the center of attention there as he is in Moliere's works.
Moliere focuses on the character of fixity as he is a
block to order, while Shakespeare focuses on the char-
acters who provide an impetus for order as they encounter
various blocks to that order.

Both playwrights use parallels between master and
servant to suggest the universality of the human situ-
ation. And both consider the servant and clown to be
the wiseman, the teacher of truths, the person who brings
order. In both.worlds the nature of the play itself is
of importance. Both men suggest the tension between
the play which deludes and the play which reveals truth.
Both suggest that theatre is at once an entertainment
and a lesson, a dream and a cure for man's irrationality.

Both comic worlds place a major emphasis on love

and suggest a tension between the rhetoric of love and

Judith Ann Scrum

the reality of love. And both worlds deal with death.
Death in Shakespeare's world suggests the end to the
individual life, while it affirms the role of the indi-
vidual as part of a seasonal cycle of life. Death, in
the Moliere comic world, is an irrationality which
suggests the absurdity of life.

The Shakespearian character moves through a vast
comic world, learning his proper attitude toward his
fortune, toward that which time brings, while the
Moliere player hides behind his fixity of character,
his mask, in an attempt to prove that he has the power
to live life as he wishes.

As Shakespeare's comic man learns to deal with
fortune, so Moliere's comic man tries to deal with
present reality, with the real life behind the illusion.
Where Shakespeare's hero, however, seems to learn about
the nature of that existence, Moliére's hero, while no
longer a block to the establishment of order at play's
end, never seems to quite understand the irrational
nature of life. He is, until the play ends, the heroic

player in a comic universe.

SHAKESPEARE AND MOLIERE: A COMPARISON

OF THEIR COMIC WORLDS

BY

Judith Ann Scrum

A THESIS

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

DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY
Department of Comparative Literature

1973

“iii.“

33‘s.

“may

4—...

AC KNOWLEDGMENT S

A special thanks to Dr. John A. Yunck, Chairman
of my doctoral committee, for his time, support,
'enthusiasm and expertise during my preparation of
this paper.

Thank you, too, to Dr. Robert wright, Dr. Phillip
McGuire and Dr. M. Kronegger for their willingness to
serve as committee members.

My appreciation goes to Dr. Theodore Brooks for
his discussions with me on the merits of perseverance.

And to Peter Scrum, for his understanding of the
difficulty of the task, and his encouragement that I

undertake it, the greatest thanks.

ii

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Chapter
I. INTRODUCTION . . . . . . . . . . .
II.' SHAKESPEARE'S COMEDIES. . . . . . . .

III. SHAKESPEARE'S COMIC WORLD. . . . . . .

IV. A COMPARISON OF THE COMIC WORLDS OF
SHAKESPEARE AND MOLIERE . . . . . .

Setting and Focus . . . . . . .
The Movement of the Comedy . . . . .
The Significance of the Return to Order .
Resistance to Order Versus an Impetus to
Order . . . . . . . . . .
Parallels: A Repetition of the Themes
The Comic Hero-~A Character of Fixity.
The Hero as Bourgeois . .

Anti-Social Man . . . . . . . .

The Hero As Unique . . . . . . . .

The Man and the Mask . . . . . . .

The Mask and Language . . . . . . .

A Tragic/Heroic Figure in a Comic WOrld .

The Human Being Beneath the Mask . . .

The Mask and Its Variations . . . . .

The Nature of the Play. . . . . . .

The Role of the Wise Servant. . . . .

Love in the Comic WOrld . . . . . .

Death in the Comic WOrld . . . . . .

V. CONCLUSION. . . . . . . . . . . .
SELECTED BIBLIOGRAPHY . . . . . . . . . .

iii

Page

16

57

87

88
95
103

107
109
111
116
117
120
123
123
128
131
140
143
150
151
153

158
164

CHAPTER I

INTRODUCTION

This dissertation has been written in order to
provide a meaningful way of comparing the comic works of
Shakespeare and Moliere. Most comparisons of the two
playwrights have briefly focused on the men's lives,
their social situations, their theatre backgrounds and
the importance of each to the history Of Western dramatic
traditiOns.l Those few critics who have ventured to
compare the actual works of the two men at any length
have limited themselves to similarities in plot, setting
and character.2 This study will go farther, arriving
at an understanding of the view of the comic world which
each playwright develops through his comedies and then
comparing those two comic worlds. My hope is that this
study will increase my understanding and appreciation of
the works of the two playwrights individually, and will
provide a basis for teaching the two playwrights' works
as part of a single college course.

I have chosen the term "comic world“ to refer

to the world within the comedy which is developed in

and through a comedy or a playwright‘s comic works. This
concept of "comic world" focuses our attention on the
interior world Of the comedy. For this concept I am

indebted to E. M. W. Tillyard whose Elizabethan World

 

Picture suggested to me the richness to be found in
analyzing the world View of a body of literature. Yet
the approach of this study differs greatly from that of
Tillyard's. While Tillyard's world picture encompasses
the entirety of Elizabethan literature, my concept of
the comic world is limited to the works of one man. And
while Tillyard was focusing on the society which pro-
duced a given body of literature, I am looking at the
relatively limited world view found within a piece of
literature or a body of literature. So, while Tillyard
defined the world view of the society of which the play-
wright was a part, I am writing about the world view of
the society of which the playwright's characters are a
part-—the inner society of the play.

My reason for wanting to compare comic worlds
rather than dramatic traditions, or motifs, or char-
acters, lies in my feeling that much Moliere and
Shakespeare criticism is limited by its tendency to
draw our attention to the part at the expense of our
understanding of the whole. G. Wilson Knight in his

introduction to The Shakespearian Tempest points to

 

this very tendency:

In any intellectual study we expect first some
principle of unity; but it is exactly this that has
been lacking to our understanding of Shakespeare.

If no unity be apprehended, the result will be

an intellectual chaos such as surely emerged through-
out recent Shakespearian investigation. My purpose
here is to replace that chaos by drawing attention

to the true Shakespearian unity: the opposition,
throughout the plays, of 'tempests' and 'music.'3

Knight bases his discussion of unity in the Shakespearian
plays on the images of the tempest and music. Nonethe-
less, while our approaches vary, his objective is one

with which I am in great agreement. I find in his

reasons for writing The Shakespearian Tempest, feelings

 

very much like my own. He says, for instance, further
on in the introduction to his work:

This tendency to neglect the Shakespearian imagi-
nation has wrecked our understanding. Perhaps it

is but the natural result of the excessive importance
attached to Shakespeare‘s psychology and ‘charac-
terizationl by the criticism of the last century.
While we view the plays primarily as studies in
character, abstracting the literary person from

the close mesh Of that poetic fabric into Which

he is woven, we shall, by continually over-
emphasizing certain qualities in each play and
attending closely to no others, necessarily end

by creating a chaos of the whole. If, however, we
give attention always to poetic colour and suggestion
first, thinking primarily in terms Of symbolism,

not 'characters,‘ we shall find each play in turn
appears more and more amazing in the delicacy of

its texture, and then, and not til then, will the
whole of Shakespeare's work begin to reveal its
richer significance, its harmony, its unity.4

Knight's insistence on viewing the comedy as a complex
whole, of searching for the "delicacy of its texture"

seems to me a valid one. And indeed, I find that

attention to patterns of imagery does point us on our
way to an understanding of the richness of the play.
Yet, we cannot limit our view to just imagery.

I have chosen to write this paper, in effect,
because of my desire to articulate the way in which the
many parts of a comedy--setting, character, language,
silence, imagery, music, dress--all contribute to a
consistent view of a comic world. Thus, rather than
dwell on a single motif, or on certain character
developments, I have taken that approach which I feel
brings me closer to an understanding of the integrity
of the works of each playwright, and subsequently to
the way that those works in their wholeness relate to
each other.

In order to arrive at a comparison of the comic
worlds of the two playwrights, I have used the following
method: I have first surveyed existing Shakespeare/
Moliere comparisons and noted their shortcomings in
relation to the Objectives of this paper. Then I have
defined as precisely as possible the concept of the
"comic world." In Chapter II, an analysis of four
individual Shakespearian plays points the way toward
a definition of Shakespeare's comic world. Chapter III
outlines that comic world in detail. And in Chapter IV,
then, this comic world is compared with that of Moliere

with an emphasis on several topic areas including the

play, love and death. Chapter V is a brief conclusion.
There is no attempt to balance the emphasis placed on

the works of the two playwrights. Since an analysis

of four of the comedies of Shakespeare provides a demon-
stration for arriving at a view of the comic world of a
playwright, his works are by necessity treated at greater
length.

Although this paper is comparative in nature, it
does not proceed with the more common comparative
literature methodology.5 That is, it does not study
the playwrights as part of an international movement nor
from a particular historical perspective. Limitations
on space and time have demanded that we leave the
question of the cultural and theatrical traditions
which impact on comic vision to a later study. Nor
will this study attempt to develop any particular
theory of the comic, the type of study for which Susanne
Langer is so well known.6 This is an area proper to
aesthetics. This dissertation will not discuss any
theories of laughter. This is an area proper to psy-
chology. Nor will it endeavor to refute or corroborate
any theory of Moliere or Shakespeare criticism. The
volumes of such critical work make any such forrays
unmanageable as well as superfluous. It will not argue
the question of whether or not certain comedies are

properly considered comic genre, as opposed to tragi-comedy

or tragedy. For the purposes of this dissertation, a

"comedy" is that which is generally termed a "comedy"

by a majority of critics and so labeled in indices and
summaries.

And finally, this paper does not claim origi—
nality in its analysis of individual comedies. Although
the analysis represents my own thinking and approach,
and thus may be original, the originality of the paper
as a whole remains in the outline of the comic worlds
of the two playwrights and the comparison Of those two
comic worlds.

Let us turn now to the material, however meagre,
which compares the works of Shakespeare and Moliere
and/or the similarities of their lives. Vera Mowry
Roberts writes,

It is of special interest to note that the greatest
playwrights in both France and England were first of
all actors. . . . Indeed, MoliEre ended his days as
an actor, and most of his contemporary fame rested
upon this facet of his ability. . . . They were
different, it is true, in their views of life--the
Englishman's genius was larger, more comprehensive,
more sympathetic; he did not have the satiric bent
that is evident in all of Moliere's work . . . to
both of them, however, the art of acting was at
least as important as that of writing plays--if

not more important.7

Unfortunately Ms. Roberts neither develops nor
supports the comparison which she has begun. we are

left to wonder what constitutes a "larger, more compre-

hensive genius," and in what ways their "views of life"

were different. Here we note the generalizations about
the nature or quality of one or the other playwright's
works which often plague even the briefest comparison Of
the two playwrights.

Eric Bentley in his In Search of Theatre is a
bit more precise, but his comparison is the same type of
undevelOped listing of similarities which leads to little
conclusion:

The modern naturalist can destroy Shakespeare by
the inordinate demands he makes in the realm of
motivation. Iago has no adequate motif. Neither
have the comic villains of Jonson and Moliére.
. . . But Moliere characters, like Shakespeare's,
have very often a background as well as a fore-
ground. In Shakespeare's hands the stage Jew
becomes Shylock; in Moliere's the stage rascal
is also a person. He not only is a stage con—
vention but is related to life.8
Bentley begins an interesting discussion about the way
in which the two playwrights expand upon the given stage
conventions. Yet he fails to develop the idea. He does
not explain how the stage tradition comes to life in
the playwrights' hands-~what it is that makes Shylock
more than the "stage Jew.“

Although many English critics are reluctant to
compare Shakespeare to any other mortal, some Shakespeare
critics do note similarities between the works of the

two playwrights. James Brander Matthews is one of those

few who compare the two men and their works at some length:

The comparison of Shakespere and Moliére, which
the Germans did not care to draw, imposes itself
upon us who speak English and who have been taught
to hold Shakspere as the standard by which the
foremost writers of every other language must be
measured. . . . The Englishman is the master of
tragedy, who has also left us a group of delightful
comedies; and the Frenchman is the master of comedy,
who might have attained to the tragic, if only his
life had been a little longer. . . . In the merely
external circumstances of their careers Shakespere
and Moliere are often curiously alike. . . . Many
of these resemblances in the career of the two
great dramatists may be merely fortuitous; but
some of them are strangely significant. And it
would not be difficult to pick out other points
of similarity or of contrast in their works.

The 'Comedy of Errors' is not unlike 'Amphitryon'
in one of its devices (derived in both cases from
Plautus); and 'Richard III' is not unlike 'Dom Juan'
in its dominating character. . . . Alceste can be
compared better with Jacques than with Timon.
Harpagon repays a comparative study with Shylock,
and Tartuffe with Iago. Hamlet's advice to the
players can be set over against the personal dis-
cussion of actors and of the art of acting which
Moliére put in the 'Impromptu de Versailles.‘9

We can see in the glancing comparisons between
Shakespeare and Moliere an inconclusiveness which
suggests the need for a more thorough comparison of
the works of the two playwrights. However, Matthews,
who seems by virtue of the time he devotes to comparing
Moliére and Shakespeare, the critic most likely to
develop such comparisons, cautions against carrying
the discussion any further.

To push the comparison between these two great
dramatic poets too far would be unfair to Moliére,
since Shakspere is the master mind of all
literature. He soared to heights and he explored

depths and he had a range to which Moliére could
not pretend. His is the spirit of soul-searching

tragedy, of youthful and graceful romantic-comedy,
of dramatic romance, of dramatized history; and in
no one of these is Moliere his rival. But in the
comedy of real life he is not Moliere's rival.10

Many critics seem, like Matthews (in comments
more based on personal preferences for one or the other
playwright than on any particular objective comparison)
to insist that the comedies of the two playwrights are
too unlike to be compared or that one or the other of
the two writers was so superior to the other that no
comparison is possible. But the playwrights' use of
similar motifs, characters and plot lines suggests at
least some grounds for comparison. And to refuse to
compare the two because one is greater than the other
seems to be precarious reasoning.

E. E. Stoll, like Matthews, believed in limiting
comparisons to notable similarities in plot and char-
acter and to biographical affinities. Thus his com-
parisons really come to few conclusions:

By some critics Shakespeare has been thought in the
person of Falstaff to be poking fun at the chivalric
ideals of bravery and honor; but he is only doing
what Moliére did by the same traditional technique
of self—exposure-—nowadays as Stendahl says "par
trop contre nature"--in the person of Sganerelle
who chose to be a cuckold (as in that of Falstaff,
who chose to be a coward) rather than fight.
Discretion is his pet virtue too, as with.many
another artful dodger then and afterwards on the
stage; . . . With such external and more or less

.obvious, though wholly dramatic and direct contrasts,
however, the critics generally are not content.11

10

Although Stoll complains that the critics unwisely are
not content with the obvious contrasts, I find them too
easily content with just the sort of direct and limited
comparison which Stoll prefers. Consider the comments
of Jules Guillemot as he lists several points of com-
parison between the two playwrights and then cuts off

his discussion abruptly:

Si Shakespeare a fait Shylock, Moliére a fait
Harpagon; si le premier a son misanthrope, le

second a aussi le sien. Prenons d'abord l'avare.
Vous savez ce que celui de Moliere répond a sa
fille, lorsqu'elle implore la grace de Valere

et rapelle que celui a qui Harpagon imputs le vol

de sa cassette, a risqué sa vie pour la sauver . . .
Eh! bien, il est curieux de trouver, dans la bouche
de l'avare anglais, l'expression d'une égale
tendresse paternelle. . . . Ici encore, on en con-
viendra, l'anologie est frappante; et la servante de
Shakespeare est cousine germaine du valet de

Moliére . . . les beaux exprits se rencontrent . . .
Voila tout ce aue j'ai voulu faire voir a l'aide des
rapprochements. On pourrait assurement les multi-
plier. Je me suis contenté de relever quelque simil-
itudes, que je crois curieuses, et d‘indinquer une
voie qui pourrait, ce me semble, ouvrir le champ

a de fécondes Observations.12

Certainly it seems to us that the similarities
between the works of the two playwrights d2_0pen the
way for further comparative study. In any case, the
fact that the two men made major contributions to the
Western comic tradition at approximately the same time
in history would suggest that we might want to compare

their works. And certainly since the average student

is exposed to the works of both men (unfortunately

11

usually without reference to any points of comparison
between the two) a study which would develop meaningful
ways to teach the works of the two playwrights simul-
taneously would seem to be in order.

And so this dissertation follows the "path"
which Guillemot has suggested but goes beyond a com-
parison between the elements of the plays to a com-
parison of the comic worlds of the two playwrights.

In the process of sketching the comic worlds of
the two playwrights, we answer many questions about those
worlds. What are the boundaries of the comic world?
What kind of development does man undergo in that world?
Does he have any power, any control over his own destiny?
Does he think he controls his destiny? What are the
governing concepts and ideas in that world? To what do
people owe allegiance? Do the characters change? If
so, how? Do men learn? If so, what? Who, or what,
teaches them? What are the most powerful forces in
that world? What are the most important values? What
causes conflict? How is it resolved? How does man's
view of himself differ from our view of him?

The elements which one may look at in arriving
at this view of the comic world include character,
parallels in character, inconsistencies in character,

the use of symbol, allusion, language, silence, metaphor,

12

timing, setting, song, dress, masks, speech, recurring
motifs and repeated themes.

This method demands a very close reading of the
text and a sort of "jig-saw puzzle" curiosity whereby
we question the significance of each part of the play
to the integrity of the play. The assumption is, of
course, that there i§.a consistency in a single comedy
and among the various comedies by a single playwright.
we assume that the parts do relate to the whole and that
it is appropriate to ask how a single element contributes

to the direction of the play.13

As a critical approach,
the concept of comic vision probably finds most support
in the myth and ritual school, in motif indexes, and in
the works of G. Wilson Knight, Carolyn Spurgeon, Francis
Fergusson, Northrop Frye, Lionel Gossman, Ramon Fernandez
and W. G. Moore, whose critical approaches deal with
the unity of the play and the way in which the myriad
elements contribute to a coherent and effective whole.14
It might be suggested that the greatest weakness
in the concept of the comic world lies in the possibility
that one of the elements of the day may be gratuitous or
that an element may be attributable to tradition rather
than the playwright's creative genius. However, since we
are only discussing the function of the parts of the play

and their contribution to the development of a consistent

view of the interior world of the comedy, neither their

13

source nor their originality are of primary importance.
It matters not, in terms of this study, whether an
element of a play is a sign of the playwright‘s genius
or a simple adaptation of a long-standing dramatic tra-
dition. In either case, the element functions and con-
tributes to the play as a whole. So although the
influences of culture and tradition on the comic
development of both playwrights are considerable, we
have, while looking at the play's internal world, set
aside for a moment those questions Of influence, and
turned our attention instead to that world and its
players which are found within the bounds of the play.
As part of that focus on the interior world of the
comedy we now turn to a discussion of four of Shake—
speare's comedies and the comic world which is developed

through them .

NOTES-“CHAPTER I

1See pages 6 and 7 below for examples of such
comparisons.

2See pages 8 through 10 below for examples of
comparisons of the playwrights' works.

36. Wilson Knight, The Shakespearian Tempest (Lon-
don: Oxford University Press, 1932), p. 1.

4Ibid., pp. 3—4.

5Jan Brandt Corstius' Introduction to the Com-
parative Study of Literature provides a brig? summary of
comparative literature methodology.

 

 

6Susanne Langer's Feeling and Form is especially
useful in its discussion of the tragic and comic rhythms.

7Vera Mowry Roberts, 93 Stage (New York: Harper
and Row, 1962), p. 221.

8Eric Bentley, In Search of Theatre (New York:
Alfred A. Knopf, 1953), PP. I62-204.

9James Brander Matthews, Moliere (New York:
Charles Scribener and Sons, 1910), pp. 361-65.

1°Ibid., p. 366.

11E. E. Stoll, "Moliere and Shakespere,” Romanic
Review, 35 (1944), 14.

12Jules Guillemot, "Shakespeare et Moliere,"
Molieriste, 2 (1879-1880), 209, 214-15.

14

15

13The original plan for this paper called for an
analysis of all the comedies, as I felt, and still do
feel, that one must read them all to fully understand
the comic world. However, an analysis of all was not
possible within this paper. Such an analysis was done,
however, in preparation for the writing. Therefore,
many of the conclusions reflect a study of other plays
than those discussed at length within this paper.

141 have found several works to be especially
useful in their analysis of comic works. They include:
G. Wilson Knight's The Shakespearian Tempest, Carolyn
Spurgeon' s Shake_peare' s Ima er Francis Fergusson' 5
Shakespeare, The Pattern In hlS Carpet, Alfred Harbage' s
A ReaderTs Guide to William ShakeSPeare, Northrop Frye' s
1'-The Mythos of Spring: Comedy," W. G. Moore‘ 5 Moliere,
A New Criticism, Lionel Gossman' 5 Men and Masks an
Ramon Fernandez' s Moliere: The Man Seen Through the

Plays.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

CHAPTER II

SHAKESPEARE'S COMEDIES

Beginning with a vow of abstinence and ending

with a promise of marriage, Love's Labour‘s Lost is an

 

affirmation of man's role in the natural cycle of birth
and death through his participation in courtship and
marriage. The movement of the play is away from an
arbitrary unnatural order--an order in which men and
women are forbidden to meet and in which life is spent
in austere study and contemplation—-toward a natural,
physical order in which men and women meet, love, and
are eventually married.

But unlike most of Shakespeare's comedies in
which the marriages are solemnized, the marriages of

Love's Labour's Lost are only a promise. Instead of

 

the usual scene in which revelry and games are either

a prologue to, or a celebration of, the actual mar-
riages, this play ends with a scene in which the men
vow to do a year's penance, at the end of which time
they mgy_be married. And against the pattern of broken

promises in the play (none of the men remain true to

16

17

their vow of society without women) we must suspect, as
the women do, that these promises of marriage, too, will
be forgotten in time.

Despite Ferdinand's attempt to establish an
academic society, the play as a whole suggests that
man's proper role is that of lover. Biron insists that
the men must

. . . lose our oaths to find ourselves,
Or else we lose ourselves to keep our oaths.
(IV, iii, 361-62)1
And it is Biron, cynically reluctant to sign the pledge,
who acknowledges that the order of love is more natural
than that of abstinence:

As true we are as flesh and blood can be.

The sea will ebb and flow, heaven show his face,

Young blood doth not obey an old decree.

we cannot cross the cause why we were born;
Therefore of all hands must we be forsworn.
(IV, iii, 215-19)
The "cause why we were born" is abundantly reflected in
the predominance of natural images--images of growth,
cyclical movement, seasonal change, natural life and
fecundity.

But the power of nature is reflected in more than
imagery. The very setting of the play is an affirmation
of nature's supremacy. Although the dialogue at first

draws our attention to the court and the palace, with

their denial Of the physical, the action of the entire

18

play takes place in the park, with its beauty and its
promise of physical fulfillment. The first thing we
learn about the park is that it is where Armado has
caught Costard and Jaquenetta together. So from the
start, it is a place where men and women meet and love.
However, the concept of the park suggests more
than the union of men and women. Like the image of the
garden which is develOped in many of Shakespeare‘s
later plays, especially in the histories, the park in

Love's Labour's Lost represents a balance between two

 

opposing forces: the court and the forest, the mind
and the body, order and disorder, society and nature.
This dichotomy is often expressed in terms of a tension
between the philosophical and the physical, between life
in the court and life in the forest, between the order
of man and the order of nature, between the constraints
of society and total freedom. The park, then, is a
meeting-ground between forest and court, a compromise
between two ways of life.

In many of the later comedies, tension between
the two forces is represented by a change in setting
from the court to the forest, and back to the court.

In Love's Labour's Lost this tension is developed by

 

setting the entire play in a park, thus suggesting the
power of nature slightly ordered by the hand of man.

And it is echoed in the appearance of the horseman at

19

the beginning of Act IV, a figure who suggests man's
harnessing and guiding of nature‘s power. It is also
seen in the social contract of marriage which is a har-
nessing, a chanelling Of the drive for procreation.
Marriage is, like the park itself, an ordering of the
procreative power of nature.

Thus the denial of the physical, which would have
been necessitated by the new academic order, is moderated
by directing the human desire for sexual fulfillment into
the socially acceptable form of marriage. (The only
exception to this pattern of moderation is Jacquenetta,
whose troth to Armado is consumated before it is
sanctified.) The play begins, then, with the unnatural
order of study, of "barren tasks," and ends with a pro-
mise of fecundity through love and marriage.

The song which ends the play is a final echo of
the power of the natural, defined in terms of the cyclical

movement of the seasons:

THE SONG.

S rin . When daisies pied and violets blue
And lady-smocks all silver—white

And cuckoo-buds of yellow hue
DO paint the meadows with delight,

The cuckoo then on every tree

Mocks married men; for thus sings he, "Cuckoo;

Cuckoo, cuckoo,"-—O word of fear,

Unpleasing to a married earl

20

When shepherds pipe on oaten straws

And merry larks are ploughmen's clocks,
When turtles tread, and rooks, and daws,

And maidens bleach their summer smocks,
The cuckoo then on every tree
Mocks married men; for thus sings he, "Cuckoo;
Cuckoo, cuckoo,"--O word of fear,
Unpleasing to a married ear!

Winter. When icicles hang by the wall
And Dick the shepherd blows his nail
And Tom bears logs into the hall
And milk comes frozen home in pail,
When blood is nipp'd and ways be (foul),
Then nightly sings the staring owl,
"Tu-whit, tu-who!"--

A merry note,
While greasy Joan doth keel the pot.
When all aloud the wind doth blow

And coughing drowns the parson's saw
And birds sit brooding in the snow

And Marian's nose looks red and raw,
When roasted crabs hiss in the bowl,
Then nightly sings the staring owl,

"Tu-whit, tu-whol"--
A merry note,
While greasy Joan doth keel the pot.
(V, ii, 904-39)

This is the song of the cycle of the seasons,
replete with rich imagery and sexual overtones. The song
of spring--of flowers and fecundity--is followed by the
song of winter, marked by snow and coughing, perhaps a
hint of impending death. But even in its suggestion of
death, the play acknowledges that man is subject to the
same natural forces which shape the destiny Of all life,
and that to resist those forces is futile.

Unfortunately, those very natural forces, which

are defined in terms of love and marriage, and later,

21

death, are not always benevolent. Even though Love's

Labour's Lost defines love, it hardly provides a ringing

 

endorsement of its joys. Within its five acts, we find
an intricate pattern of images, actions and language
which point toward the complex and paradoxical nature
Of human love.2

Standing in sharp contrast to the stylized
romantic love poetry of the four men, and to their
protestations of undying fidelity, is the reality of
the final cynical song in which the joys of spring are
marred by the lyric of the cuckoo-ethe suggestion of
deceit and betrayal. And the curtain rings down, not
on a union of lovely lasses and gallant men, but on a
tenuous promise Of marriage and the song of winter.
we are left, not with the vision of the maids of spring,
but of "greasy Joan" who stirs the pot.

The play‘s final words belong to that most
ridiculous of lovers, the braggard Armado, who says
in response to the song of the seasons, "The words of
Mercury are harsh after the songs of Apollo“ (V, ii,
940). His meaning is uncertain. Perhaps the song of
Apollo is the promise of the glory of the gods or a
hint of the immortality towards which Ferdinand strives
and which this play denies. Or perhaps it is a sug-

gestion of some modicum of truth, that is, if we

22

consider Apollo as the god of truth. Or his comment
might draw our attention back to Biron's words that
love is,

. . . as sweet and musical

As bright Apollo's lute, strung with his hair;

And when Love speaks, the voice of all the gods

Make heaven drowsy with the harmony.

(IV, iii, 342-45)

In any case, the promise of Apollo, be it of
heavenly joy, a hope for eternity, the grasp of truth,
or a promise of love, is drowned out by the words of
Mercury. And if we consider Mercury in his role as
messenger Of death and the guide to the land of the
dead, those words can only be a promise of the inevita-
bility of death. This inevitability is the message of
the song of winter. The play ends with the suggestion
that all things--even love and life-—pass. Death
claims all.

The transient nature of life and love is a harsh

reality in the world of Love‘s Labour‘s Lost. The play

 

is, in a sense, a definition of reality, of truth, as

it relates to love. Against the exaggerated images of
the flowery love poems and the protestations of undying,
all-consuming love, are balanced the reality Of broken
vows, forgotten pledges and the memory of the slightly
pregnant Jaquenetta. As the play is a definition of,

or a search for, the truth about love, so its characters

are involved in various quests for truth.

23

Biron reminds the King of the need to speak
openly. The princess is unimpressed by flattery because
she searches for the truth. And the play pokes fun at
the pedant and the scholar alike, both of whom obscure
the truth with their ridiculous language.

Love's Labour's Lost also emphasizes the search

 

for truth by emphasizing those things which corrupt
truth. The King is sentenced for the sin of "perjury."
Vows are broken. Oaths are forgotten. Great speeches
are spoken in jest. And the play's most ringing endorse-
ment of love is only a "salve for perjury" (IV, iii, 289—
365). In the course of the play almost all the char-
acters lie—-in earnest or in mocking jest. The Only
exception is the clown, Costard, who says: "I suffer

for the truth, sir; for true it is, I was taken with
Jaquenetta, and Jaquenetta is a true girl; and therefore
welcome the sour cup of prosperity!" (I, i, 313-15).

When later he says, "Walk aside the true folk,
and let the traitors stay“ (IV, iii, 213), he is referring
to himself and Jaquenetta as "true folk"; for the
traitors are the King and the three lords. In the play
as a whole, only Costard consistently represents the
truth. He, like Jaquenetta, represents an acceptance
of one's role and a fulfillment through that role.
(Remember that Jaquenetta is the only woman who is

pregnant, the only female whose role within the comic

24

natural cycle is completed.) It is Costard who admits
his sin and suffers for it. It is he who inadvertently
reveals Biron's hypocrisy. It is he who carries messages
between the lovers. And it is he, who like the fool or
clown of many a ShakeSpearian comedy and tragedy, teaches
others.

Costard, too, teaches the proper use of language
through wit and truth. He suggests that man should
accept his fortune. His attitude toward the vagaries
of life is one which the other characters are forced,
in the course of the play, to emulate. It is he who
says philosophically: "Affliction may one day smile
again; and until then, sit thee down, sorrow!" (I, i,
316-17). Biron acknowledges Costard's wisdom when he
says: “well, 'set thee down, sorrowl' for so they say
the fool said, and so say I, and I the fool; well
proved, wit!" (IV, iii, 4-5).

In his role as teacher, Costard is a precursor

to both Feste of Twelfth Night who sings, "For the rain

 

it raineth every day" (Twelfth Night, V, i, 401) and

 

the Fool in King Lear who teaches the aging Lear to

 

accept life's hardships. This view of the clown, or
fool, as the wiseman is a recurring motif in Shake-
spearian drama.

Another recurring motif is the "play within a

play," which is ultimately perfected by Shakespeare in

25

the production of the rude mechanicals in A_Midsummer

 

Night's Dream and is represented in Love's Labour's Lost

 

 

by the play of the Nine WOrthies. This theme is under-
scored by the numerous references to other kinds of play:
entertainment, jests, jokes and games. And these
references to a kind of "play" which detracts from the
truth are balanced against the concept of the "play" as
a teacher of truths. Thus, there is a tension in the
very meaning of the word itself.

Contributing to the emphasis on the "play" in

Love's Labour's Lost are many references to the theatre.

 

Biron realizes that the men have been tricked into
betraying themselves by a "Christmas comedy" (V, ii,
462). And we are witness again and again to the “plays"
within the larger play, each.marked by an unexpected
ending in which, as in the framing play, nothing turns
out as expected. Biron's hypocrisy is exposed before
the three men with whom he'd been playing a role. The
women turn the would-be—Russian's intentions into a
losing game. The play of the Nine WOrthies ends in
confusion when it is cut short by the death of the King

of France. And the greater play, Love's Labour's Lost,

 

ends without its expected conclusion of marriage. As

Biron notes,

Our wooing doth not end like an old play;

Jack hath not Jill. These ladies' courtesy

Might well have made our sport a comedy.
(V, ii, 884-86)

26

If we are to accept the life/play analogy which seems to
be suggested by the comedy, we must conclude that each
of us is no more able to direct the outcome of our lives
than the Nine Worthies were able to direct the outcome
of their play.

And this conclusion applies to king as well as
peasant. The King, like all other mortals in the play,
exercises no power over his own future and continues to
be subject to powers stronger than himself. Without a
doubt, the contrast between Ferdinand's role as king and
his actual pitiful performance as human and lover, serves
to emphasize the power of love over all mortals. When
one can laugh at a king, then indeed all mankind is
vulnerable.

Unlike many of the later plays which present
love as redemptive and healing, cleansing and fulfilling,

Love's Labour's Lost depicts it as a natural, but very

 

temporary and eventually painful force. The numerous
references to horns and cuckoldry, lies and deceit,
broken pledges and vows, point unerringly to the
inevitability of love ending in betrayal. Thus Love's

Labour's Lost is perhaps more akin to the disillusionment

 

of Troilus and Cressida than the light-hearted early

 

comedies with.which it is grouped chronologically.

And perhaps its title refers to the inevitability of

27

the loss of love's labours through betrayal and broken
vows, rather than the postponement of consummation within
the play.

A Midsummer Night's Dream views love from a per-

 

spective different than that of Love's Labour's Lost.

 

In this play's confused matching of couples, love shows
itself as a powerfully irrational but eventually pro-
ductive and healing force. Although the lovers insist
that their passions are rational, we must agree with
Egeus that they are indeed "bewitch'd" (I, i, 27).

Unlike the play's characters, we know about the
magical prescription which has precipitated their passions.‘
we realize that their "undying love" is a response to
drops in their eyes rather than to an Objective appraisal
of their beloved. And although the lovers are in the end
united, that union cannot obliterate the memory of the
May night madness, the magical powers which brought them
together in the first place.

Fickle, irrational and insane as love may be in
the wood outside Athens, it is nevertheless a gripping,
powerful and overwhelming force in man's life. Gone are

the games of the gay lovers of Love's Labour's Lost. In

 

their place we find the alternately overjoyed, miserable,

estatic and glum lovers of A Midsummer Night's Dream who,

 

although unaware of what is happening to them, believe to

the depths of their souls that they are playing the game

28

for "keeps." A Midsummer Night's Dream unlike Love's

 

Labour's Lost ends in the sexual union of the lovers
celebrated by Oberon's benediction:
80 shall all the couples three
Ever true in loving be;
And the blots of Nature's hand
Shall not in their issue stand;
(V, i, 414-17)

With the play's happy ending, all the lovers
except Bottom are included in a nuptial celebration and
thus become part of the natural sexual cycle of life,
love and procreation which the play affirms. This com-
pleted cycle is not, however, the only view of love to
be found in the play.

The tragic implications of the comic love plot
lie in the inner play of Pyramus and Thisbe which ends in

death and separation--an ending following a series of

events not unlike those of Romeo and Juliet. As it

 

mirrors the situation of the Athenian couples, this
inner play of the star-crossed lovers is the negative
image of the action of the larger play. It is in effect,
a "minority report" on the nature of love. This inner
play underlines the destructive potential of love and
provides a balance to the positive view of love affirmed
by the play as a whole.

The images of dreams, visions and bewitching

which often refer to love, point as well to another

29

central concern of A_Midsummer Night's Dream, that of the

 

nature of the theatre. The changing roles, the con-
fusion of the senses, the continued mention of "eyes"
and “visions," "dreams" and "fantasy” all suggest that
the medium here used to describe love (that is, drama)
. partakes of the very nature of that love.

Theseus' famous statement about the "lunatic,
the lover and the poet" (V, i, 7) makes explicit the
relationship which is suggested within the play: the
poet who writes the play and the lover who is its sub—
ject share a similar approach to the transformation of
reality through the medium of imagination. Both rely
on imagination, a mixing of the senses, a suspension
of reason.

The relationship between the play of Pyramus and
Thisbe and EEE audience is certainly expressive of the

relationship between the larger play, A_Midsummer Night's

 

Egggm, and us as its audience: the play in each case is
a particular view, a particular vision of a segment of
human experience which the audience is living.

It is certainly not by chance that the Pyramus
and Thisbe story is in mamy ways an echo of the plot
involving the young lovers in the greater play of A_

Midsummer Night's Dream. As the lovers see in the play

 

within a play a particular view of their own life

struggles, so we see in Shakespeare's play a particular

30

perspective on our own lives--especially in terms of the
power of imagination over our human experience. And we
should note that since the main play is set on the eve
of May Day (not on Midsummer Night as we would expect
from the title) the Midsummer Night's dream to which the
title refers must point to the larger play itself as a
"dream" which its audience experienced first on Midsummer
Night or which is typical of the experiences of a mid-
summer night. Thus as the incident in the wood is a
”dream" to the lovers, so the dramatic experience is a
"dream" to us.

Although it is the play within a play which
suggests the life/theatre analogy, this inner play is
only BEES of the complex Of images relating to the nature
of theatre. While the Pyramus and Thisbe tragedy is
generally viewed as the play within a play in this comedy,
in a greater sense there are several such "inner plays"

to be found in A_Midsummer Night's Dream.

 

The story of Hippolyta and Theseus serves as
a frame for the story of the two young couples (which in
a sense makes that story which we generally consider
the "main plot" to be a "play within a play" itself).
This second story, that of the young lovers, frames the
love/hate relationship of Titania and Oberon, which in
turn reveals the crazy love of Titania for Bottom. And

running across these three levels of love-plot are found

31

the antics of the rude country players as they rehearse
for the playing of the love story of Pyramus and Thisbe.

An image for the complexity of the love story
theme and the myriad "plays" might be the placing of
two mirrors face to face, so that each is reflected in
the other and the succeeding images draw the eye deeper
and deeper into the reflections. Or perhaps one might
compare this multiplicity of visions of love to the
multiple paintings which Monet made of the cathedral at
Rouen, in which he captured the changing impressions of
a single edifice by painting it in a variety of atmos-
pheric and lighting conditions. SO ShakeSpeare captures
the many "faces" of love by developing within a single
play, a variety of inner plays, each reflecting a view
of love.

Thus the variety of "love plays" within the
single work reflect varying views of love. And often
the verbalized views are in direct contradiction to the
view of love presented by the comedy as a whole. While
its players are insisting that their passions are
rational, sensible and comprehensible, the play's plot
suggests that a good-natured insanity is more responsible
for the infatuation of the lovers than is any rational
decision on their part.

The tension between love as presented by the play

and love as verbalized by the players is only one of the

32

contradictions in the play. We see the tension between
the inept, bumbling inner play and the beautiful com-
plexity of Shakespeare's work. The elements of timing,
speech, proper acting--those elements which Bottom's
players handle in such a comically clumsy manner--are
in the greater play of major importance and are handled
gracefully.

And there is a tension in the play in the con-
stant alternation of scenes between the young lovers, the
country players and the fairy royalty. In a sense one
can view the Athenian gentry (the three sets of lovers)
as a middle ground, a compromise, a mean between the
rude country players--those literal folk who deal in
the real "here and now," those "hard handed men" whose
play acting is without any imagination, any belief in
the fantasy world--and the fairies, who on the other
hand partake only of the world of the imagination, the
magical moon-lit world which exists between sundown and
sun-up.

The lovers seem to represent a balance between
the literalness of the country folk and the fantasy
world of the fairies; they partake of both. And it
seems in their loving of each other that these two
worlds meet, much as for the poet-dramatist the real
and the imaginary are fused in the theatre. The play

suggests that both love and theatre are "but a dream,"

33

that both mix the real and the imaginary. Thus the
midsummer night's dream is not the night which the
lovers spend in the forest, but those moments which
we spend watching the comic tale unfold before us on
the stage. It is this which is Puck's "dream."

Puck is, in many ways, analagous to Costard, the
clown whom we met in Love's Labour's Lost; for the role
which Costard played in the earlier play is here shared
by Bottom and Puck. It is Puck who orders things, who
directs the events, who makes sure that the lovers get
together, and who has special kinds of knowledge. It
is he who constantly worries about timing.

Bottom, on the other hand, is (consciously or
not) the speaker of truth, the one character who admits
that "reason and love keep little company together now-a—
days" (III, i, 147). He is most concerned about acting
appropriately, especially in his role as Pyramus. And
he certainly accepts that which fortune hands to him-—
even if it does make little sense to him. We note that
both Bottom and Puck are excluded from the final pair-
ings; this is a situation in which the Shakespearian
clown often finds himself at the play's end.

As in Love's Labour's Lost, the power of nature
and the natural is central to this comedy. The movement
from the city to the magical forest and then back to the

city suggests the tension between the social bonds and

34

the natural world. It also reflects the movement from
the reality of the "here and now" to a fantasy world
and back again. Constant reference to storms and natural
portents which result from the separation of the fairy
lovers points to the role of sexual union in the natural
scheme of things in this comic world. And the barrenness
suggested in the play's Opening scene when Hermia con-
templates life in the convent and even later when we find
that Titania and Oberon have foresworn each other's
beds, is resolved in the final unions. It is the natural
power of the fairies, combined with the "magic" of the
imagination, which cures the disease of barrenness and
separation threatened by the first scene and does so
within the bounds of the laws of the city of Athens.
There is much emphasis throughout the play on
rules and laws. Dramatic roles and conventions are a
concern to the country players. The laws of Athens are
a worry to the young lovers. Children are reminded that
they owe allegiance to their parents. And the bonds of
friendship tie the young girls. The fairies' legal
question of who has the right to the young boy is central
to the play. And the lovers must wait a certain time
in order to be married. Thus the natural union of love
and sexual fulfillment is effected within the limits of

all these laws and bonds.

35

Music, as in Love's Labour's Lost, again plays an

 

important role in the Shakespearian comedy. Here it par-
takes of the magic of fairyland, ushering people into a
dreamland, attending the ministrations of love, contribut-
ing to the final nuptial celebration. It is closely
linked to the elements of fantasy and love and is a
soothing and healing force. It is music which, as
Titania notes, "charmeth sleep" (IV, i, 86).

The emphasis on time, on the ordering of life

within time which we saw in Love's Labour's Lost, is

 

again evident here. The fairies must operate within
certain time limits. Theseus and Hippolyta must wait
four days to be married. And time, as in the earlier
play, threatens all things, even love, with change.

The image of the eye, however, seems to come the

closest to the "soul" of A Midsummer Night's Dream.

 

It is often mentioned in connection with "love"--who is
pictured as blind--and with the theatre, fantasy and
visions. The transforming power of imagination over
the eyes Of man is well proved throughout the play.

And perhaps more than any theme, that of the
play, of reality in tension with the world of the
imagination, of the mixture of timing and speech, action
and music, which makes up the theatre, is the one central

to A Midsummer Night's Dream.

 

36

Like A_Midsummer Night's Dream, Twelfth Night is
a play of tensions--tension between order and disorder,
between love and celibacy, between union and separation,
between two households. Much of this tension, as well as
its attendant resolution through marriage, is reflected
in the settings of the play.

In the early part of the play, the scene moves
back and forth between the Duke's house and Olivia's
house--as if to emphasize the tension between the love-
sick Duke and his cloistered beloved, who is paying no
attention to his protestations of love, but closets
herself in her house to mourn her brother's death. This
alternation of scenes also acts as a backdrop for Pests
and Olivia's roles as go-betweens for the two households,
for throughout the play these two are the only characters
who have open access to both households.

Interspersed with scenes in the two houses are
the two scenes at the seashore in which first Viola and
then her brother, Sebastian, each come ashore believing
the other to have drowned. The sea from which they
emerge seems to represent fortune, fate and the
inexorable movement of time. Its waves, tides and
storms suggest the ebbing and flowing of fortune in
man's life. The sea also symbolizes rebirth or bap-
tism--perhaps a rebirth to a new life in Illyria which

both Viola and Sebastian certainly find. Or perhaps it

37

is a baptism to the need to accept the vicissitudes Of
fate. The sea also suggests the power of nature, a
power whose urge toward creation contrasts with the
barrenness of the two households.

That barrenness is evident in Valentine's
comment that Olivia will be a "cloisteress" for seven
years, in Viola's naming of her role as that of "eunuch,"
and in Feste's belittling of Malvolio as a "barren rascal"
while Malvolio calls him a "barren fool." In this bar-
renness is an anti-life tendency which Toby sees clearly
when he says, "I am sure care's an enemy to life" (I,
iii, 2). It is as if the forces for life--for love and
procreation--are subverted to the anti-life powers of
the two households: to mourning, to Malvolio's idea of
order and to Orsino's stylized infatuation.

In opposition to the barren, anti—life setting
of the interiors of the two households, stand not only
the sea, but also the garden and the out-Of~doors. There
are a total of eighteen scenes in the play, and there is
a startling difference between the setting of the first
nine and the setting of the second nine. Six of the
play's first nine scenes are set inside one of the two
houses. It is during this time that Malvolio is yet
in power in Olivia's house, Olivia has not yet renounced
her mourning, and Orsino is still madly infatuated with
her. Not one of these first nine scenes occurs in the

garden.

38

But with the second nine scenes, everything
changes. The first of these final nine scenes is set in
the garden. It is here that the gulling of Malvolio
gets underway, and his power as an anti-life force is
weakened. In the second of these scenes, which is also
set in the garden, Olivia admits her love to Cesario/
Viola. In fact, six of the last nine scenes occur
outside--either in the garden or before one of the
houses. Thus, as the anti-life forces are converted
and over-powered, the scene shifts to a more natural
setting--from interior sets to the out-of-doors. Thus
the garden becomes representative of nature with its
powerful forces, forces of love and time.

As suggested by the settings, the movement of
the play is from celibacy to marriage, marked by the
triple union of Sebastian and Olivia, Orsino and Viola
and Toby and Maria. The play also moves from stylized
infatuation to love, from separation to unity, from
strife to peace. The early disorder, seen in the
unnatural stances of Olivia and Malvolio, as well as
in the chaos which Toby's group has effected, dissolves
before a new order of love and marriage, and a civil
order symbolized by the return of rule to the household.

Initially, Orsino's infatuation with Olivia seems
to have cut him off from reality, from all action. In

the first four acts he does absolutely nothing but moan

39

of his all-consuming love and send peOple Off to talk
to Olivia. He is a Duke who makes no rulings, a man
with many followers who is "best when in least company"
(I, iv, 37), a man of breeding and law who counsels
Cesario to "be clamorous and leap all civil bounds
rather than make unprofited return" (I, iv, 21).
Yet by the end of the play, his infatuation for

Olivia has been exchanged for a deep love for Viola and
his role as leader changes radically at the same time.
He takes Viola for his beloved with a very measured,
thoughtful speech:

Your master quits you; and for your service done him,

So much against the mettle of your sex,

So far beneath your soft and tender breeding,

And since you call'd me master for so long,

Here is my hand. You shall from this time be

Your master's mistress.

(v, 1, 329-34)

Thus in Orsino's development we see a movement from
infatuation, a form of love which is almost an immobil-
izing sickness and which cannot end in consummation,
to love which demands consummation and thus belongs to
a natural and sexual life cycle. It is this natural
cycle which the other couples—-Sebastian and Olivia,
Toby and Maria-~are a part. Thus the movement of the
play is from celibacy, reflected in the terms "eunuch"

and "barren," to marriage which will ensue when "golden

time convents."

40

But the play emphasizes various kinds of love--
not just romantic love which ends in marriage. We see
the loving friendship of Sebastian and Antonio, the
devotion of Sebastian to his sister, Viola, and even
the love of Orsino for the page whom he thinks is a
young boy. And the play as a whole moves, not only from
celibacy to marriage, but from a variety of kinds of
separation to unity. In the beginning Viola and
Sebastian are separated. The men are apart from the
women. Sebastian and Antonio are lost. The two house—
holds admit no communication. Slowly, through the
intermediaries of Viola and Feste, the characters are
brought closer together. Brother and sister find each
other. The two households admit communication, and
Viola and Sebastian, who were strangers in the land,
are, with their marriages to Orsino and Olivia, included
in the society of Illyria and become the link between
the two households. The only character who refuses to
be a part of the union at the end is Malvolio, who, sick
with self-love, can only think about the fact that he
.has been duped.

SO the disorder of an unnatural way of life is
replaced by the order of marriage. But there is another
kind of disOrder which is resolved. That is the civil
disorder represented by the strife in Olivia's household.

This conflict which pits the extravagant Toby and his

41

companion, Sir Andrew, against the puritan, Malvolio,
results in the establishment of a new order of peace
with the jokers reprimanded and Olivia once more in
control. Orsino's call for peace in the household
reflects that new order.

Twelfth Night is rich with parallels which give

 

the play a complex tapestry effect, as if one were
repeating various patterns in a weaving or various
themes in a musical work. The most obvious of these
repeated patterns are the parallels between the charac-
ters in the main plot and those in the sub-plot.

There is a similarity between Orsino and Sir
Andrew: both men are idiotically infatuated with
Olivia. And we note that Viola and Maria are alike
in that they are both caught up in a play, Viola in
the "play" of being a page to Orsino, and Maria in the
"play" of gulling Malvolio. Both continue in their
roles in order to win the man they love. Both are able
to hold their own with Feste, displaying delightful
quick wits.

Viola also resembles Feste. Both she and the
clown act as go-betweens for the two households. Both
speak the truth freely, Feste from his immunity as a
clown, and Viola by using "double talk" to conceal her
real meaning. Both play roles: Viola as Cesario and

Feste as the Curate. Both are accomplished singers.

42

Both are witty. And both wait for time to cure the
problems of life.

But there are also parallels between characters
within the main plot. Olivia and Viola have both lost
a brother, and both fall in love. These similarities
serve as a backdrop for the contrast between their
acceptance of their fortunes: while Viola waits for
"time t'untie the knot," Olivia takes things in her
own hands wooing Viola and winning Sebastian.

There are also similarities between Sebastian
and Viola. Both are aided by a friendly sailor, perhaps
suggesting the purity of those who come from the sea.
Both fall in love at a time when they least expect to.
And both assume a role--Viola as Cesario and later
Sebastian as Cesario, as well.

Along with parallels in character, we find
parallels of incident. The scene in which Sebastian is
rescued from the sea is almost exactly like the one
in which Viola is rescued, thus emphasizing the motif
of the sea and the shipwreck as reflections on the
nature of life and fortune.

The fourth scene of Act II, in which the Duke
calls for music as a relief from his passion, is almost
an exact re-enactment of the first scene of Act I in
which he calls music the "food of love." The repetition

of this scene emphasizes the music motif, suggesting

43

that music is a combination of harmony and proper use of
language. But it also shows that Orsino's love has in

no way progressed. He is in the same situation in Act II
that he was in Act I and is no closer to actually winning
his beloved.

The images of the play serve to complement the
uses of parallels and the setting. Sebastian speaks of
the sea's "blind waves" (V, i, 236). And we remember
that dame Fortune is often described as blind. He
mentions the "flood of fortune" (IV, iii, 11) again
linking the sea with fate. Viola speaks of love and
the sea saying, "0, if it prove, tempests are kind and
salt waves fresh in love" (III, iv, 418). And the sea
images, especially those of the shipwrecks, also suggest
death, a death which is the final gift of fortune and of
nature. But here death is only a cleansing, a sea bath
which ends in a ”rebirth" in a foreign land.3

The play is rich with images of natural growth.
Olivia swears by the "roses of spring" (III, i, 161)
while Viola speaks of a sister who "never told of her
love, but let concealment, like a worm, i' the bud feed,
on her damask cheek" (II, iv, 113). This natural imagery,
especially as it points to seasonal growth, links the

idea of the natural to the passage of time.

 

In Twelfth Night as in A Midsummer Night's

 

Dream, the image of song and of music plays a large role.

44

Both Viola and Feste are talented singers. The Duke
sees music as healing. And music, in this particular
play, suggests a mixture of harmony and order which is
to be found at the end of the play not only in Feste's
song, but in the return to social order.

Song is, in a very real sense, a mixture of
harmony and rhythm, a mixture of the elements of language

and timing. And as in A Midsummer Night's Dream, it is

 

linked here with love, acting as a kind of prelude to the
fantasies of human passion.

Time itself is a central image in the play. The
Duke attempts to deny the passage of time. Like Ferdinand

of Love's Labour's Lost, he seeks to avoid time, not

 

through a little academe, as in Ferdinand's case, but by
hiding in some golden world of love and poetry. He asks
Cesario to sing,

. . . That old and antique song we heard last night.

Methought it did relieve my passion much,

More than light airs and recollected terms

Of these most brisk and giddy-paced times.
(II, iv, 3-6)

And later he says that the song,

. . . dallies with the innocence of love,
like the old age.
(II, iv, 48-49)

Through music Orsino seeks a time long past.

45

But in Twelfth Night time is more than the simple

 

passage of years. Time represents fortune. Viola, when
she realizes that Olivia has fallen in love with her dis-
guise, makes no attempt to straighten out the dilemma
in which she finds herself:
0 time! thou must untangle this, not I.
It is too hard a knot for me t'untie!
(II, ii, 41-42)

Throughout the play, Feste like Viola, accepts
his fate. At the end of Act V, he admits his motive for
gulling Malvolio was revenge, but he gives "time“ the
credit for bringing about that revenge: "And thus the
whirligig of time brings in his revenge" (V, i, 384).

It is Feste of all the play's characters who
seems most aware of man's role in time, of his need to
accept fortune. His realization that he is growing
older and is beginning to lose favor with Olivia is
part of that awareness. Thus he sings:

O mistress mine, where are you roaming?
0, stay and hear, your true love's coming,
That can sing both high and low.
Trip no further, pretty sweeting;
Journeys end in lovers meeting,
Every wise man's son doth know.
What is love? 'Tis not hereafter.
Present mirth hath.present laughter;
What's to come is still unsure.
In delay there lies no plenty;
Then come and kiss me, sweet and twenty,

Youth's a stuff will not endure.
(II, iii, 40-45 and 48-53)

46

Feste seems more aware than are the other characters of
the temporary nature of love, realizing full well that
it is a very earthly, temporal emotion--not at all the
ethereal, unconsummated infatuation which the Duke
espouses. Thus, while Feste's song is an affirmation
of love which ends in marriage, he is also well aware
that there is more to life than love--that love, like
youth, is only a passing stage of life.

Feste's final song, the one which closes the
fifth act, reflects his attitude toward life as a whole,

of which youth and its love is only a small part:

When that I was and a little tiny boy,
With hey, ho, the wind and the rain,
A foolish thing was but a toy,
For the rain it raineth every day.

But when I came to man's estate,
With hey, ho &c.

'Gainst knaves and thieves men shut their gate,
For the rain, &c.

But when I came, alas! to wive,
With hey, ho &c.

By swaggering could I never thrive,
For the rain, &c.

But when I came unto my beds,
With hey, ho &c.

With toss-pots still had drunken heads,
For the rain, &c.

A great while ago the world begun
With hey, ho, &c.
But that's all one, our play is done,
And we'll strive to please you every day.
(V, i, 398—417)

47

It is this song which most clearly shows the wisdom of
the fool. The song suggests that the life of man is
part of a great cycle: "A great while ago the world
begun." And rain, or misfortune, is an integral portion
of that life. The chorus of the song is the same for
each phase of man's life: "For the rain it raineth
every day." It is this acceptance of fortune, this
understanding that time brings some misfortune to every

man, which marks the fool in Twelfth Night as it did in

 

Love's Labour's Lost.

 

The Winter's Tale, like the three comedies which

 

we have already examined, opens on scenes Of disorder.
Leontes, with no one to lead him astray—-no Iago, no
Iachimo--suspects his sainted wife and Queen of adultry
with King Polixenes. Leontes orders Polixenes killed,
the Queen imprisoned, and their baby abandoned on a
distant shore. And he causes the death of his only son
by ignoring the warning of the oracle.

Throughout the first two acts, the disorders
(which are often described with images of disease)
multiply until, in the middle of Act III, Leontes is.
forced to recognize his error. A resolution of the
disorder, and a cure of the "diseases" begins, then, in
Act IV, as the infant Perdita, now grown to a lovely

country lass, is wooed by Florizel, son of Polixenes.

48

There is a tension in the play between the
disorder of the two courts, with their dissension between
fathers and sons, and the natural beauty and order of
the shepherd's life. Although all the royal characters
eventually return to the court, the bucolic life seems
to leave its stamp on them, as it certainly does on Per—
dita. All are, like Polixenes, "refreshed" by the good
life in the country. As the characters, one by one, are
drawn back to Sicilia, a new order and a new society are
established.

From the disorder a new familial order is dis-
covered. The dead live. -Father and son are reconciled.
The young lovers are free to marry. King and Queen are
reunited. The two boyhood companions are again fast
friends. The servants are rewarded for their faithful-
ness to a higher moral code. All become part of a new
society.

This establishment of a new order is effected by
Time, who in this play is more than an element but an
actual character who speaks openly of his role. His
speech, in the exact center of the play, opens Act IV
and marks an abrupt change in time, setting and tone.
His appearance indicates the passing of sixteen years
and reveals what has happened during those years. It
separates the court from the country, and Sicilia from

Bohemia. It marks a change from a courtly, serious

49

milieu to one of bucolic revelry. Yet it reveals much
more than a movement in time and space. Time defines
himself as:

I, that please some, try all, both joy and terror

Of good and bad, that makes and unfolds error . . .

(IV, 1, 1-2)
Such a definition well reflects the role which
Time has played in the first acts of the play. Time has
"pleased" some: the passage of time has marked the
birth of a child to Hermione, the acquisition of wealth
by the Shepherd and, for many years, the unchanging love
between childhood friends, fathers and children, husbands
and wives. But Time "tries" all through the destruction
of those very things by which he has "pleased." Time
tests the love of the two kings, the relationship of
father and child and the bonds of marriage. Thus Time
has been the "joy and terror" of all the characters and
to all he has brought a mixture of happiness and suffer-
ing.
It is the passage of Time which has made and

"unfolded” error, revealing the mistakes of Leontes
and the crime of Antigonus. Time acts independently
of man's desperate attempts to order existence by law
and custom. His passage makes, changes and destroys

those things which.men thinks are wholly his own. Time

50

even claims the power, with impunity, to over—step the
custom of time in a play, and leap fifteen years.

What kind of a tale is The Winter's Tale? Time's

 

own assertion is that it is his tale:

. . . But let Time's news
Be known when 'tis brought forth. A Shepherd's
daughter,
And what to her adheres, which follows after,
Is th' argument of Time.
(IV, i, 26-29)

This is Time's tale, and the story of Perdita is the
"argument," the very point, of the tale. As we read on
in the play, we see that this "argument" defines man's
relationship to the passage of time and to his own indi-
vidual fortune.

The play suggests through plot and imagery that
time is one of the many commodities valuable to man.
Time himself speaks of time "spent" (IV, i, 30). The
money images of the first scene are linked with time when
Polixenes speaks of a "debt" of thanks for time Spent in
Sicilia (I, ii, 6). The money imagery throughout reminds
us that Leontes "pays" for his mistakes with sixteen
years of his life. Even the Shepherd gives up his
fortune in the realization that the most valuable thing
is his life, his existence in time.

Another item of great value in the play is one's

child, one's heir. Camillo says that little Mamillius

51

"makes old hearts fresh" (I, i, 43). And Polixenes
says of Florizel:

He's all my exercise, my mirth and my matter,

Now my sworn friend and then mine enemy,

My parasite, my soldier, statesman, all.

He makes a July's day as short as December,

And with his varying childness cures in me

Thoughts that would thick my blood.

(I, ii, 166-71)

The child keeps his father young. And in a historical
and biological sense, the begetting of children keeps the
family and race alive. In both the main plot and the
sub-plot, the life of the family, and especially that of
the father, is guaranteed in the potential of its chil—
dren. The importance of child to father is emphasized
in the repeated mention by Hermione of her father, by
the kings of their sons, by the clown of his father, and
even by Autolycus of his father.

The develOpment of the play shows, however, that
the relationship of father and child is subject to change.
Leontes denies Perdita, and Polixenes disowns Florizel.
This act of denying one's child has great significance
in the play. Politically, it means the end of the royal
family. Socially it means an end to the family unit.
Biologically, it implies an end of the race. Such denial

means the end of the seasonal cycle, the coming of

eternal winter. Thus the play's title: The Winter's

 

Tale.

52

Throughout the play we see an emphasis upon the
seasons. The first lines of the play mention "this
coming summer" (I, i, 6). Mamillius says that "a sad
tale's best for winter" (II, i, 25). Perdita passes
out ”flowers of winter" to Polixenes (IV, iv, 78). Such
emphasis upon seasons suggests that man's endurance
through time, a promise inherent in his children, is
analagous to nature's endurance through time, a promise
inherent in the cyclical regularity of the seasons.

The denial of one's children is analogous to a perpetual
winter. And the loss of a child is analogous to death.
Mamillius is right: "a sad tale" ii best for winter,
for the winter of one's life signifies the inevitability
of death. It is the saddest tale of all--the tragic
vision.

The play does not rest, however, on this tragic

vision. Winter is not eternal. The Winter's Tale shows

 

not only death, but also a return to life through marriage
and the possibility of future generations. The reconcili-
ation of father and child and the reaffirmation of the
coming of spring are not a matter of revelation or
intuition, but are "brought forth" by Time itself. The
play moves forward in time, and the characters are

defined in terms of the way in which they accept or try

to manipulate time.

53

Hermione accepts the changes which time brings.

When she is imprisoned she says,

There's some ill planet reigns;

I must be patient till the heavens look

With an aspect more favourable.

(II, i, 105-07)

There is never any indication that she questions that
which has happened to her. She accepts suffering and
joy with equal good grace.

In the course of the play, Leontes, too, learns
this calm acceptance of fortune. Early in the play, he
tries to change that which he thinks is happening to
him by an attempt on Polixenes' life. Then, in order
to end his personal anguish, he resolves to imprison
and kill his wife. Only when he has suffered completely,
through the death of his son and his wife, does he see
his own mistake, accept his fortune and resolve to face
willingly that which time metes out to him. He speaks
of his penitence:

Once a day I'll visit
The chapel where they lie, and tears shed there
Shall be my recreation. So long as nature
Will bear up with his exercise, so long
I daily vow to use it.
(III, ii, 239—43)
The reluctance of Hermione to question fortune,

or to manipulate that which time brings, is analogous

to Perdita's reluctance to accept human manipulation Of

54

nature through art. As her mother is completely passive
to that which fortune brings, so Perdita is equally
passive in accepting that which nature creates. She
rejects all of man's attempts to modify nature through
art. One might say that she rejects art for the real,
for the natural. Yet her attitude, like that of Her-
mione, is not the only one presented in the work.

Polixenes defends art which "does mend Nature,
change it rather, but the art itself is Nature" (IV, iv,
95). And the play in its entirety, emphasizing as it
does various art forms, establishes in the end a positive
attitude toward art. Throughout the play people sing,
dance and write poetry. There is a long discussion of
sculpture. People play roles and don costumes, suggest-
ing that the play itself is an art form.

But the people in the play perceive the difference
between nature and art. Art is not real. It is timeless.
Perdita herself, her play with Florizel ended and the
costumes removed, says,

I told you what would come of this. Beseech you,
Of your own state take care. This dream of mine,--
Being now awake, I'll queen it no inch farther,
But milk my ewes and weep.
(IV, iv, 457-60)
She well knows the difference between the art and reality,
a difference marked by the passage of time. The "statue"

of Hermione is not art because she is real, that is,

55

she exists in time. This is the distinction between art
and nature in the play-~that only art is free from the
power of time. Nature remains subject to the changes,
the cycles, the growth and decay which come in time.

Art does not corrupt nature as Perdita fears.
The "statue" of Hermione suggests that art can well and
faithfully copy nature herself, as the sculptor Junio
Romano was said to have done. But art remains outside
the reign of time. It gains its immortality from
changelessness, while Nature gains hers from "cepying,"
from the "printing off" of the image of the individual
on succeeding generations.

The final vision of the play is that of man
reconciled with his heir, and thus in a sense, free from
absolute death in time through the promise of generations
to come. But there is an accompanying vision, and it

is that of a freedom from time in art.

NOTES-~CHAPTER II

1The Shakespearian text used for this paper is
the New Cambridge Edition of The Complete Pla s and Poems

 

gf‘William Shakespeare, edited—By Wil 1am A en NeIlson
and Charles Jarvis Hill.

2Carolyn Spurgeon's classic work, Shakespeare's
Ima er , is an indispensable aid to anyone who considers
sucg patterns of imagery as keys to the comedy's major
concepts.

 

3G. Wilson Knight's The Shakespearian Tempest
treats at great length the significance of this particu-
lar complex of images.

56

CHAPTER III

SHAKESPEARE'S COMIC WORLD

Now let us look at the conclusions which we can
draw from the analysis which we have just completed of
these four Shakespearian plays. What commonalities can
we see in the plays which suggest a consistent view of
the world within the comedy and point toward a coherent,
recognizable role for man within that world? What
recurring motifs, themes, character types, incidents,
symbols and other elements contribute to this Shake-
spearian view of the comic world? And who is the human
being who inhabits that world?1

The first thing which we might note about
Shakespeare's comic world is its expansiveness, the
great distances between its boundaries, the exotic
places which lie within its reaches. It is a world
of foreign-sounding places (Sicilia, Bohemia, Illyria,
Rome) and a world whose characters travel great dis-
tances in search of their fortunes. Although Pericles

is certainly the Shakespearian comic hero who travels

57

58

the greatest distances, the characters in the four plays
which we have examined also contribute to the pattern

of voyages and travels in a world marked by its immensity
and diversity.

The Winter's Tale alternates its scenes between

 

Sicilia and Bohemia. Sebastian, Antonio and Viola of

Twelfth Night are shipwrecked on a foreign shore. The

 

Princess of Love's Labour's Lost comes from France to

visit the King. And A Midsummer Night's Dream finds

 

the Athenian gentry traveling from the city to a magical
forest peopled by fairy folk who in a moment can travel
the world over.

Because of the expansiveness of the setting, in
speaking of the "movement" within the play we may mean
the "geographical" direction of the travels of the char-
acters as well as the direction of the play as a whole.
And Often, a character's geographical movement is
accompanied by a movement in the play's direction, by
a change within the characters, or by their adjustment
to the new values with which the play ends.

For instance, the actual geographical movement

within The Merchant 9f Venice from Venice to Belmont

 

can be seen as a movement from the world of economic and
legal bonds ruled by money, to a world of emotional and
human bonds ruled by love. Or the movement from the

Athenian forest back to the city in A Midsummer Night's

 

59

Dream can suggest the changes within the characters as

they move from a world of fantasy into the real world

of Athenian law and tradition.

This use of dual settings within the comedies

and the alternation of those settings contributes to

the dynamism within the comic world.

Very often the two

settings represent conflicting values which.must be

integrated in the final scenes.

If we look at all of

Shakespeare's comedies, we are struck by the pattern

of dual settings.

This pattern can be seen in the

following listing of the comedies and their settings:

Love's Labour's Lost

A Midsummer Night's Dream
The Merchant 9: Venice
The Taminggf the Shrew

 

 

 

Much Ado About Nothing

Ag You Like IE

 

The Merry Wives g£_Windsor

Twelfth Night

 

Troilus and Cressida
All's Well that Ends Well

 

 

Measure for Measure

 

Pericles, Prince pf Tyre
CymbeIIfie
The Winter's Tale

The Tempest

 

 

Navarre/the country near it

Athens/a wood near it

Venice/Belmont

Padua/Petruchio's country
house

Messina (in the house,
orchard and garden)

Oliver's house/Duke F's
court/the forest of Arden

Windsor/the neighborhood

City in Illyria/sea coast
near it

Troy/the Greek camp

Rousillon/Paris/Florence/
Marseilles

Vienna (court, prison and
moated grange)

Various countries

Britain/Rome/a cave

Sicilia/Bohemia

An island

In many cases, one Of the two locations is a city

or court and the other a nearby country setting--a forest,

garden or park.

In such a case the suggestion of values

60

in conflict is easily seen: society and nature, the mind
and the body, the sophisticated life and country sim-

plicity. In other cases, as we noted in The Merchant g:

 

Venice two cities represent the tension between two
value systems.

Sometimes the two locations can be seen as
representative of two warring tendencies within the
human psyche. Navarre represents the desire for an
academic, intellectual society; the park represents the
impulse for a sexual, procreative world. Athens repre-
sents the world of everyday reality with its rules and
regulations, while the fairies' forest represents the
world of imagination with its unreasoning powers, its
magical forces, its mystical way of changing things.
Venice represents a legalistic world of conflicting laws
and bonds, while Belmont represents a world of love and
harmony. Duke Ferdinand's court in Ag Y92_Likg.gt_repre-
sents the use of power gone awry, while the forest of
Arden suggests the impulse toward a more human, har-
monious society.

This is not to say that there is to be found a
single meaning in each of these settings, that each
place "equals" a single value, a single life style.
Rather we find that each setting is rich in its sug-
gested meanings, in its contribution to the tensions

within and around man.

61

Thus if we were to examine the setting of a

single play, for instance that of Love's Labour's Lost,

 

we would find a multiplicity of meanings in the tension
between the dual settings. The tension between the
Duke's palace and the park (although there is no actual
movement between the two) can represent the tension
between study and action, the academic society and the
sexual society, abstinence and fulfillment, the separ-
ation of the sexes and the union of men and women,
intellectual life and the physical life, the unnatural
and the natural, anti-life forces and life-giving forces,
disorder and order, barrenness and fertility. This is
not to say that this tension between the park, which

is the actual setting, and the palace, where Ferdinand
had planned to start his academic society, THEE have all
these meanings, but only that the dualities suggested

by the setting seem to relate naturally to other tensions
in the play. We can see in the very setting of the
comedy parallels to the tensions, conflicts, dualisms
and conflicting values within the society of man in the
comic world.

Each play seems to focus on its own complex of
tensions, of dueling values, of conflicting powers. So
the Shakespearian comedies as a group, and certainly
those four which we have examined rather closely,

represent a rather clear view of man operating in a

62

world of conflicting values in which his growth and
eventual survival is marked by his movement away from
one set of values and toward another, or by his ability
to integrate the two conflicting sets of values.

These dualities may be articulated as order and
disorder, society and chaos, nature and society, the
court and the country, mind and body, the intellectual
and the physical, the philosophical and the physical,
the order of man and the order of nature, animality and
gentility, barrenness and fertility, abstinence and ful-
fillment, social constraints and total freedom, reality
and imagination, conflict and harmony, legalism and
human justice. Obviously many of these sets of values
are not mutually exclusive and thus many of the plays
end with an integration of values, as in The Merchant 2f
Venice where the demands of both legalism and human love
are met. But in other cases, the comic character must
choose between values, as PrOSpero chooses to leave the
kingdom of his island and return to his role as ruler.

Generally, the Shakespearian comedy Opens on an
urban setting marked by some type of disorder, moves
toward a second setting more representative of the order
of nature, alternates the two settings, and then finally
returns to the original setting by which time the char-
«acters have been transformed by their exposure to some
Sort of "natural" values and thus are prepared to estab-

liSh a new social order.

63

We can also see the movement of the play as
being a transition from disorder to order. Natural dis-
order which is seen in tempests, shipwrecks and ravenous
beasts, usually reflecting some kind of unnatural order
among men, is resolved by a new social order and marked
by an end to storms and tempests. Social disorder which
is seen in abstinence, separation of the sexes, virginity
and prostitution, is resolved when the natural urge for
procreation is channeled into the institution of marriage.
The reestablishment of the family often marks the end of
social disorder. And political disorder which we note in
wars, strife, usurpation of rule, lawlessness and the
abdication of responsibility by rulers, is resolved in
a return to justice and the rule of the rightful leader.

This resolution of tension and the integration of
values with the attendant movement toward order, results
in the formation of a new social order which recognizes
the forces ignored by the original, unsuccessful society.
And the establishment of a new society carries with it
the promise of success. The new social order of Twelfth
Nigmp will prosper because it is based on a more natural
view of love, because it takes into account man's role
in the biological scheme Of things, and because it
recognizes his need to accept that which fortune brings.
The original society, on which the play Opens, accepts

none of these things.

64

This establishment of a new order at the play's
end is usually marked by a celebration of some sort which
precedes or is a part of the actual physical movement
from the forest, or natural setting, back to the city.
The original settings--Athens, Olivia's house, Leontes'
court--are all transformed or renewed by the changes
which have overtaken the characters.

The new society of Athens in A Midsummer Night's

 

Dmggm is marked by love and marriage, in direct contrast
to the familial strife and barrenness which we saw in
the opening scenes. The city itself seems to have been
transformed by the imaginary world of the forest just
as the society of Sicilia is changed by the contact
which some of its peOple have had with the bucolic life
among Bohemia's shepherds. Thus the return to the
original setting is not a return to the old social
order but to a newly established order which represents
the supremacy of new values: usually these values include
acceptance of fortune and a realization of man's role in
the sexual cycle of birth, procreation and death. And
it is that return to order which is marked by some kind
of celebration.

The celebration at the play‘s end may take the

form of a telling of tales (as is true in The Winter's

 

Tale) or of a play (as is suggested in Love's Labour's

 

Lost) or a blessing (as we see in A_Midsummer Night's

 

65

Egggm). Whatever the form of this celebration it marks
man's acceptance of his part in the sexual scheme of
things and is usually rich with references to the
seasonal cycles of which all nature is a part. The
final celebration is often presided over by the clown,
whose role has been that of a teacher of the new values.
And this same clown is usually left out of the final
couplings at play's end as if to underscore his importance
as mentor. His is the role of observer, the one who
interprets but in many cases does not participate in
the human comic cycle. The final celebration usually
includes the clown's commentary on the significance of
what has happened, his interpretation of the human con-
dition.

Thus Costard closes Love's Labour's Lost with

 

his song of man's fortunes through the seasonal cycles,

while Feste ends Twelfth Night with his song of the

 

"rain" which is inevitably a part of human fortune.
A_Midsummer Night's Dream.closes on Robin Goodfellow's
statement about the nature of the "dream" which we,

as well as the comedy's players, have experienced.

And Leontes, who has shown a "clown-like“ acceptance

of fortune, in his closing lines, urges all to exchange
stories on that which has happened to them in the years
of their separation. These final scenes bring all

factions, all social strata into harmonious society.

66

With the exception of Malvolio who refuses the invitation
to be a part of the new peace, all characters are a part
of the celebration with which the play ends.

The clown's role throughout the comedies is an
important one, for it is he who exhibits and teaches
those values which the play's final scenes usually
affirm. It is usually the clown who ties together the
diverse elements of society, who brings together the
shepherds, kings, nobles and country folk who peOple the
Shakespearian comic world. This demands a great sensi-
tivity and talent on his part. The ability of the clown
to judge people quickly and accurately, to act appro-
priately within the limits of time, to suit his jest
to the situation is well remarked by Viola who says of
Feste:

This fellow is wise enough to play the fool,
And to do that well craves a kind of wit.

He must observe their mood on whom he jests,
The quality of persons, and the time,

And, like the haggard, check at every feather
That comes before his eye. This is a practice

As full of labour as a wise man's art;
(Twelfth Night, III, i,

And rightfully so it is the clown who usually acts as
the go-between for lovers, who communicates with all
groups within the Shakespearian society, and who finally

effects a union of all members of that society.

67

The clown speaks the truth, thanks to the combi-
nation of a sort of "fools immunity" and a delightfully
sharp wit. In each play it is the fool who sees through
the facade to the truth of the matter. Costard and

Feste both "tell true." It is the clown of The Winter's

 

EELS whose insistence on the old Shepherd's telling the
truth brings about the play's final happy ending. And
even Bottom, in his part wise-fool, part idiot role,
admits that love and reason have little to do with each
other; and his admission comes at a time when the other
lovers are insisting upon the rationality Of their
passions. Indeed, the role of the clown or fool as the
"speaker of truth" can be seen in all of Shakespeare's
p1ays--histories and tragedies as well as comedies--a
role perfected in that of the fool who ministers to the

storm-wracked king in King Lear. It is the clown or

 

fool who interprets the meaning of human existence to

the rest of the comic world. He is the teacher of truths.
The clown is usually a singer, as well, and one

whose songs are found throughout the plays. Love's

Labour's Lost is laced with Costard's songs, as is

 

Twelfth Night rich with Feste's singing. The fool's

 

song usually speaks for the proper'combination of
language, harmony and timing. As music becomes,
throughout the comedies, increasingly a metaphor for

social harmony, the clown's ability to sing becomes

68

even more a positive value. In the final song which the
clown often sings in the play's closing moments, is to
be found his wisdom, his ability to sense the lesson
inherent in the human experience, the commonality in

the great diversity of human trials and problems. And
it is the clown who usually affirms, in that final song,
the social view on which the play ends.

The clown, from the play's start, usually under-
stands the nature Of man's role in the comic universe
'and the necessity for his own acceptance of that role
and of the fortune which is part of that role. .Often
his songs are explications of the meaning of man's life
and the need for man to accept the fortune which time
has meted out to him. In his own actions the clown is
often an example, too, of the proper acceptance of
fortune. Costard accepts philosophically that which
time brings him and finally teaches Biron that same
willing acceptance. Feste relies on the “whirligig of
time." Each takes calmly that which time hands him.

The view of fortune, which is central to the
Shakespearian comedies, is that of man existing within
the dictates of time and learning to accept that which
time brings. The emphasis throughout the plays on time--
on the passage of days, hours, minutes, months, on the
cycle of the seasons, on the ebb and flow of the sea--

suggests that time is the great changer, the great

69

leveler. And Fortune, which is Time's co-worker, brings
to each man that which is his assigned role in life.

There is, in the comedies, no central image for
Fortune like that of the balance of fortune which we see
in the Shakespearian histories or the wheel of fortune
which we find in the tragedies. Here the image which
most suggests fortune seems to be the sea with its ebb
and flow, its tempests and calm, its giving of life and
its giving of death in a pattern unintelligible to man
but in adherence to a rhythm of her own. Thus the con-
cepts of time, nature, role and fortune are all inter-
related and in each play it is the clown, who teaches
man these relationships.

The role of the clown also suggests the great
human diversity to be found in Shakespeare's comic world.
Although the main plot line usually follows the actions
of a society of noble folk, we usually find a second
society of country folk in the Shakespearian comedy,
folk whose actions mirror those of the nobility, or
perhaps offer an alternative to the actions of the gentry

as is true in A§_You Like £5. The clown is often the

 

go-between for the two societies. It is he who com-
municates with both the country folk and the three lords

of Love's Labour's Lost. It is he, in Twelfth Night,

 

who is a part of Maria and Toby's antics as well as

being privy to Olivia's feelings. In A Midsummer Night's

 

70

Q£33m_it is Bottom who through drama brings the two
societies together while Puck, with magic, marries (if
only temporarily) country bumpkin to fairy aristocracy.
The clowns, then, are the folk who bring together the
diverse societies of the plays, whose values and lessons
allow for an inclusion of both societies in the play's
final celebration.

Shakespeare makes good use of the characters in
the sub-plots. By building parallels between the inci-
dents in the sub-plot and the main-plot, he suggests the
universality of the situations in which man finds him-
self. That Orsino makes an idiot of himself over Olivia
may be seen as one man's foolishness. When, however, we
watch Sir Andrew and Malvolio go through the same throes
of passion, what might have been one man's error becomes
a common human failing, a mistake of which all mankind is
guilty. Thus the parallels between what happens to
nobility and what happens to slave suggest the uni-
versality of the problems and trials which confront
each man in a Shakespearian comedy. They point out the
commonality of a single man's action and make each of
us a potential player in Shakespeare's comic world.

Parallels also function to emphasize certain
aspects of Shakespeare's comic universe. As a motif
or scene is repeated again and again, its impact becomes

greater, its significance more central to the direction

 

71

of the play. At other times what happens literally to
the characters in the sub-plot happens figuratively to

the nobility. In Measure for Measure the diseases which

 

are literally contracted by the characters in the sub-plot

are figuratively infecting the nobility. In Midsummer

 

Night's Dream, while the low characters are struggling

 

over how to put together a play--how to play the proper
role--the nobility is also trying to decide what each

person's proper role is. In Twelfth Night while the

 

household revelers are trying to cure Malvolio's anti-
life tendencies, those same tendencies are being cured
in Olivia and Orsino.

And the two parallel scenes in Twelfth Night in

 

which first Viola and then Sebastian escape death by
shipwreck, suggest that fortune is the strong but unpre-
dictable force which we have seen reflected in other
elements of the comedies. The repetition of Orsino's
call for music underlines the motif of music as an
accompaniment of love, as well as functioning to suggest
that the Duke's love is no closer to consummation in the
second scene than in the first. The two scenes in which
first Camillo and later Antigonus are asked by Leontes
to kill an innocent person, serve to emphasize their
differences and Camillo's superior moral sense, a
superiority affirmed not only by Antigonus' death but

by Leontes' naming of Camillo as Paulina's husband.

72

The use of repeated scenes emphasizes the idea of the
scene, or provides a means of evaluating the different
way in which the two characters react to the same
situation.

Much of the tension and movement which we have
outlined thus far in our discussion of the settings and
the parallels of plots in the comedies is reaffirmed in
the plays' imagery. A close look at the recurring images
tells us much about Shakespeare's comic world.

The sea is a major symbol within the Shakespearian
comedies and one with a multi-faceted complexity. It
suggests nature's changeability and unpredictability.

Its storms and shipwrecks represent “natural portents"
of disorder--often mirroring the disorders within the
society of men. We remember the fierce storm in which

Antigonus of The Winter's Tale loses his life and the

 

storms in A_Midsummer Night's Dream which echo the fairy

 

battle. Yet those same storms and the shipwrecks which
they cause can also mean a rebirth, a baptism to a new

life as we note in Twelfth Night. Through these natural

 

portents both Sebastian and Viola are introduced to a
new life through the ordeal of a shipwreck.

In its changeability the sea suggests the trans-
formation nature herself undergoes from malevolence
to benevolence. And at the same time the sea's changes

can represent the ebb and flow of man's fortunes. In

73

fact, as we noted earlier, the sea seems to function in
the Shakespearian comedies as a major metaphor for
fortune. Sebastian says,

Yet doth this accident and flood of fortune

So far exceed all instance, all discourse. . . .

(Twelfth Night, IV, iii,
11412)

 

Linked very closely to these images of sea, storms
and shipwrecks is the movement of the seasons and a great
wealth of natural imagery suggesting growth and fecundity.
The view of the passage of time as part of a seasonal
cycle is integral to the "comic vision" of the plays.

We note that of the four plays which we examined, three

of the four titles (A_Midsummer Night'sDream, Twelfth

 

Night and The Winter's Tale) make reference to a season,

or time of year. And the fourth (Love's Labour's Lost)

 

ends with a song of the seasons.

Throughout the plays there is constant mention
of the seasons, of their passage, of the flowers which
represent them--all suggesting that the comic world is
linked to the seasons and is part of the cyclical move-
ment through time which they imply. In many ways the
celebrations of the plays (both "ending" celebrations
and other festive occasions) point to important rites
in that seasonal cycle.2 And nowhere is the implication
of man's part in the seasonal cycle stronger than in

The Winter's Tale, where the disowning of one's heir

 

74

jeopardizes the continuation of the cycle, and threatens
eternal winter. Thus when Leontes greets Florizel and
Perdita in the play's final act, his comment that they

are welcome "as is the spring to the earth" (The Winter's

 

Tale, V, i, 151) is especially apt; for the very fact
that they are alive is his promise of spring out of a
life which had promised to be, as Paulina named it,

"winter in storm perpetual" (The Winter's Tale, III, iii,

 

213-14).

So we see that the seasonal cycle which the plays
emphasize in imagery as well as title, is analagous to
the human cycle of birth, procreation and death, of which
all the characters are a part. As the sonnets so beauti-
fully suggested, man's avoidance of eternal death is to
be found through this cycle of the "printing off" of
images of the father on succeeding generations. The
comedies suggest quite clearly that man's role is that
of a sexual, natural being. So comic man learns in the
course of the comedy that if the winter of his life is
to be only temporary, then he must acknowledge his place
in the natural sexual cycle whereby in winter is to be
found the promise of spring. Robert Corrigan in the
introduction to his anthology on comedy suggests that
this endurance of mankind is to be found in various

forms in all comedy:

75

The constant in comedy is the comic view of life or
the comic spirit: the sense that no matter how many
times man is knocked down he somehow manages to

pull himself up and keep on going. Thus, while
tragedy is a celebration of man's capacity to aSpire
and suffer, comedy celebrates his capacity to endure.
Eric Bentley put it another way in his magnificent
book, 223 Life 9: the Drama: "In tragedy, but by

no means comedy, the self-preservation instinct is
over-ruled. . . . The comic sense tries to COpe with
the daily, hourly, inescapable difficulty of being.
For if everyday life has an undercurrent or cross-
current of the tragic, the main current is material
for comedy."3

 

This role of man in the natural scheme of things
is also seen in anhmal imagery--imagery suggesting man's
harnessing or taming of nature's forces. Some of these
images would seem to point to the role of marriage as a
channeling of man's procreative energies into an acceptable
form. Thus we remember the horseman who appears in Love's

Labour's Lost and recall how Theseus tells of his hounds

 

whose haying he likens to a well-tuned musical instru-
ment. In opposition to these trained, harnessed animals
we see the ravaging beasts of the tempests, who suggest
the power of nature in its most destructive and uncon-
trollable form.

Music is another metaphor central to the Shake-
spearian comedies and to our visualization of his comic
world. Music plays a major role in all the comedies
which we have considered: Costard sings in Love's

Labour's Lost; Orsino asks repeatedly for music in

 

Twelfth Night; Titania sings Bottom to sleep in A_

76

Midsummer Night's Dream and Perdita sings for her guests

 

in The Winter's Tale. Hermione is revealed to Leontes

 

to the accompaniment of music.

Like the sea, music seems to represent at once
many things. As it exhibits harmony it suggests the
development of order out of disorder. And as harmony
is itself a metaphor for union, order and measure, it
reflects the note on which the comedies end. In the
emphasis on "natural" kinds of music--in Theseus' talk
of his baying hounds and Oberon talking of the mermaid
astride the dolphin singing to calm the sea--we are
reminded of the natural order, the natural harmony at
play's end. Oberon says to Puck,

. . . Thou rememb'rest
Since once I sat upon a promontory,
And heard a mermaid on a dolphin's back
Uttering such dulcet and harmonious breath
That the rude sea grew civil at her song,
And certain stars shot madly from their spheres,
To hear the sea-maid's music?
(A_Midsummer Night's Dream,
III, i, 148-54)
The images remind us of the description of Sebastian's
actions during the storm:
. . . Where, like Arion on the dolphin's back,
I saw him hold acquaintance with the waves. . . .
(Twelfth Night, I, ii,
IS-IG)
Since Arion was saved from death by the beauty of the

music which he played, the image suggests clearly the

77

power which music has--a power over nature herself--the
ability to calm tempests, to bring harmony and peace.
The role of music in putting people to sleep

(as it does in both Twelfth Night and A Midsummer Night's

 

 

Dream) or of preceding the awakening from a dream (as in

Hermione's awakening in The Winter's Tale or the fairy

 

queen's awakening in A Midsummer Night's Dream) suggests

 

its close relationship to the world of the dream, the
world of the imagination. We note that music is most
often associated with love and dreaming; perhaps it has

a transitional function, the power to open the doors
between the world of the imagination and the real world.
(This would make the use of song at the end of the comedies
even more significant, as it ushers us, the audience,

back from the world of the imagination, from the dream
which we have experienced during our viewing of the

play.

The third major metaphor of the comedies is that
of the "play." There is a constant tension throughout
the comedies between "play" which is a trick, or a sport
and play which is a revealer of truth. The nature of
play--of its interrelatedness to dreaming and visions--

is treated most completely in A Midsummer Night's Dream

 

but we can see the same concern with the nature of

dramatic art throughout the comedies. Love's Labour's

 

Lost suggests the life/play analogy through the play of

78

the Nine Worthies and at the same time makes clear that
man himself is not the director of his own fortunes.

Biron notes:

Our wooing doth not end like an old play;
Jack hath not Jill. These ladies' courtesy
Might well have made our sport a comedy.
(Love's Labour's Lost, V, ii,

W)

 

Even Biron expects that life, like the comedy, should
culminate in marriage.

With the use of inner plays, the interior "scenes,"
the donning of costumes, the playing of roles, we begin
to see the various functions of the play. The play can
give us a particular vision of reality; just as the play

of the rude mechanicals in A_Midsummer Night's Dream

 

gives the Athenian gentry a different perspective on
that which they are experiencing, so the larger play
gives us a perspective of our own existence. As the
story of Pyramus and Thisbe is a view of the power of
love and thus is presented to an audience which is also
experiencing love, so the Shakespearian play presents

a particular view of the relationship between fantasy
and reality, between man and nature, and between man
and his fortune. And all of these concerns relate to
our experience. Thus the play is a vision of our own

lives.

79

The play is a revealer of truth about man's
foibles, as is the play which tricks Malvolio into
revealing the truth about his ridiculous love for
Olivia. And the play may also provide for a return
to order, as Malvolio's anti-life power is thwarted.
Thus the play is also a cure, a force for order. It
can, however, delude men, as well, providing them with
a false view of things, as does the play within Mggm_Adg
A2223 Nothing. Indeed many of the allusions to play as
sport, or jest or joke suggest the various kinds of play
which do not always lead to truth.

Throughout the comedies, however, the images of
"play" suggest that man's life, like a play, has a
direction of its own, and that he must accept the role
which is assigned to him and act it out to the best of
his ability. Thus to a great extent the metaphor of the
play suggests man's powerlessness.

But theatre is not the only art form which the
comedies are concerned with. As a group, the Shake-
spearian comedies are illuminations of the nature of art
and its relationship to life. The dramas feature inner
plays, dumb Show, music, song--all forms of art.

People dance and sing. They don costumes and play
roles. Certainly art is an integral part of this comic

world.

80

The emphasis on art forms points to the fact that
although art is perfected within the bounds of time, the
art object itself is outside of time's realm. The play
is not reality, but an ordering of reality outside of
time's control. The statue of Hermione is said to be
exactly like the Queen; but the Queen is touched by time,
she ages, and a statue would not. Music and dance like-
wise manifest a harmony which is not changed by time.

The images of dreams, visions and imaginings
which often refer to the "play," point as well to another
central concern of the comedies: the nature of love.

The continued mention of eyes, visions, dreams and fan-

tasy which we saw in A_Midsummer Night's Dream all

 

suggest that love and the theatre both partake of the

same experience:

Lovers and madmen have such seething brains,

Such shaping fantasies, that apprehend

More than cool reason ever comprehends.

The lunatic, the lover and the poet

Are of imagination all compact.
(A_Midsummer Night's Dream,
V, i, 4-8)

 

Love is an integral part of the human situation
in the comedies. It is part of the natural cycle, an
agent for the return to order. And there are varying
views of love which are develOped throughout the come-

dies. In the early comedies, like Love's Labour's Lost,

 

love is unpredictable and unavoidable. People fall in

81

love despite their best intentions. Love is temporary,
momentary; lovers are fickle, changeable and seemingly
incapable of any control over their emotions. Love is
often seen as a paradoxical power: at once a blessing

and a curse. Biron speaks of his passion:

And I, forsooth, in love! I, that have been love's
whip
. . . This wimpled, whining, purblind, wayward boy;
This senior-junior, giant-dwarf, Dan Cupid; . . .
And I to be a corporal of his field . . .
Go to; it is a plague
That Cupid will impose for my neglect
Of his almighty dreadful little might.
(Love's Labour's Lost,

III, i,’17§-20§)

 

The mature comedies continue to suggest that love
is fickle and irrational. Orsino loves Olivia irra-
tionally while she in turn stubbornly resists his wooing.
The passions of the Athenian youth in A_Midsummer Night's
Qgggm are certainly irrational. Yet in both these come-
dies, love is powerful and lasting. We sense that Viola
and Orsino's bond will be an enduring one and that the

lovers of A Midsummer Night's Dream will probably remain

 

 

united. We encounter the faithful lover, the devoted
beloved. Love seems more permanent, less infantile, less
of a curse and more of a blessing. But as always, it is
a force over which man has little control.

The dark comedies, which our analysis neglected,
provide another vision of love, and one important to the

Shakespearian comic vision. Suddenly the plays face more

82

directly the violent side of human passion. We are privy
to the predatory nature of the relationship between men
and women. Somehow, "love" or the attraction of the
sexes is seen in a more stark light. Although the dark
comedies usually end with the establishment of new unions
through marriage, the body of the plays tend to portray
sexual relationships which are a perversion of the usual
cycle of love, marriage and procreation. Instead of the
infatuation of the earlier plays, we see incest, adultery,
lechery and rape.

With the late romantic comedies, like The Winter's

 

Tgig, we turn away from the dark side of love to its
potential for redemption and its role in the establish-
ment of the new society. There is an emphasison various
kinds of love--not only romantic love, but the love of
father for daughter, husband for wife, friend for friend.
Love here has a potential for purity and beauty, for giv-
ing life, for renewing the race. The youthful lovers

are even more pure than before--Perdita and Florizel

are almost ethereal in their lovely innocence.

Thus we see in the plays a great emphasis upon
love, its various forms, its many faces. Throughout the
comedies, however, love stands as an unavoidable part
of man's fortune, a passion dictated by his role in

human existence, something over which he has no control,

83

but which binds him tightly to the sexual cycle of which
all life is a part.

But at the same time the plays emphasize life,
they also speak of death. And it is somehow startling
that death should play such a large role in plays which
are essentially a celebration of life. However, the
death of the individual is part of that cosmic cycle
which the comedies celebrate; and thus while the society
continues on through future generations, death remains
an integral part of Shakespeare's vision of the indi-
vidual role in a comic universe.

The promise of death is surprisingly strong in

the early plays--especially in Love's Labour's Lost

 

 

where its spectre seems to preclude immediate sexual
fulfillment. Although death is not all-pervasive in
these early plays, it does seem at odds with life in a
way which it will not be in the final plays.

The mature comedies are rich with references to
death. Antonio is to die to pay the bond to Shylock.

Hero is believed dead in Much Ado About Nothimg. Both

 

Viola and Sebastian are believed dead in Twelfth Night.

 

But death in these plays is almost always illusory, a
misunderstanding, a mistake. People "die" and are then
rediscovered; death does not get in the way of the comic
conclusion of marriage and the establishment of a new

social order.

84

The dark comedies also show death as illusory,
momentary. But at the same time, they portray it as
pervasive, ignoble, predatory, and rather oppressive.

The pall of death is heavy in Measure for Measure and

 

even more sobering in Troilus and Cressida. These are

 

plays in which many people die or are threatened with
death, and in which death seems meaningless and ignoble.

With the late romantic comedies, however, death
loses much of its fearsomeness. Often it is only an
illusion, a mistake. But it is also more clearly a part
of a great cycle--the natural end of individual life.
Death is even cleansing and redemptive, a sleep to be
welcomed, a thing of beauty. Perdita finds life in a
"stormy death" and Hermione "comes alive" before her
husband's eyes.

What then is ShakeSpeare's view of the human role
in a comic world? It is a view of man as part of a great
tapestry of human existence, a world of immensity and
variety. Within that world man's part in the natural
cycle of birth, procreation and death is evidenced by
the social institution of marriage. His propensity to
love, marry and procreate are part of his fortune, his
role, that which is assigned to him by time and nature.

This comic vision suggests that man's only
hope for immortality within that comic world lies in

the avoidance of time's erasure--either through

85

procreation or art. And in this world, man's fortune is
to love and marry. Love, which is unavoidable, is the
vehicle for his inclusion in nature's cycles.

Man's existence is often seen as a play in which
he is given a role and a brief time in which to play that
role. Through comedy whose movement is from disorder to
order, from social dissonance to a new harmony, Shake-
speare looks beyond the life of the individual man to
that pattern of life and death of which every individual

existence is a part.

NOTES-”CHAPTER I I I

1Although the analysis supporting the view of
Shakespeare's comic world in Chapter II was limited to
four plays, the view of the comic world which is
develOped here takes into consideration many other of
the Shakespearian comedies. In fact, this outline of
the comic world of Shakespeare was developed with the
complete comic works of Shakespeare in mind. Thus,
even though the written analysis of this paper was
limited to four plays, the conclusion reflects the
analysis of the playwright's comic works as a whole,
and is consistent with such an analysis.

 

2C. L. Barber's Shakespeare's Festive Comed pro-
vides much insight into the way in which the foIE cele-
bration, the festival, is central to the development of
the comedies.

3Robert w. Corrigan, Comedy: Meaning and Form
(San Francisco: Chandler PuinShifig Company, 1965Y,
p. 3.

 

86

CHAPTER IV

A COMPARISON OF THE COMIC WORLDS OF

SHAKESPEARE AND MOLIERE

Within our outline of Shakespeare's comic world
in the preceding chapter, we have established some of the
points of comparison between the comic worlds of Moliére
and Shakespeare. Others are suggested by Moliere's view
of the comic world. However, as we compare Shakespeare's
view of the comic world with that of Moliere, we are out-
lining, without the prior analysis which we provided
in our development Of Shakespeare's comic world, a View
of the comic world which Moliére developed through his
comedies. So we begin, in a sense, with our conclusions;
we begin with a discussion of the way the comic world of
Moliere compares with that of Shakespeare.

And as was the case in our discussion of Shake-
speare's comic world, the discussion to follow will
focus on four of Moliere's better known plays even though
it is with consideration of all the comedies of Moliere
that this outline of his world view was developed. Thus

while we pay special attention to Dom Juan, Tartuffe,

 

87

88

pg Misanthrope, and L'Avare, the view of the comic world
which we develop here is consistent with an analysis of
all Moliere's works and includes references from many

of them.

Settipg and Focus

 

Moliére's comedies often focus on man as partlw
of a family unit. This family unit includes servants,
in-laws, parents, children and an occasional outsider
who, like Tartuffe, has been "adopted" by some member
of the family. In L'Avare, for instance, it is one man's
family and the outsiders who are potential members of
that family who stand in the play's "spotlight." Some-
times the focus of the comedy is broadened slightly to

include two families as in L'Ecole des Maris, or a god,

 

as in Amphitryon. At other times, the basic unit is
the salon or rehearsal stage, rather than the family
setting. But in almost all cases the focus of the
comedy is on a limited, rather intimate group, and
most often that group is the family.

Generally the Moliere comedy sees man in terms
of his relationships with the other peOple who are part
of this intimate social unit. Tartuffe is not simply a
vision of a hypocrite, but rather a view of Tartuffe's
relationship with Orgon and the impact of that relation-
ship on Orgon's family. we remember that Shakespeare,

too, portrayed man against a social backdrop. Measure

89

for Measure, the Englishman's comedy about hypocrisy,

 

shows the hypocrite, Angelo, against the backdrop of the
corrupt society of Vienna, much as Moliére shows Tartuffe
and Orgon in relationship to Orgon's household. Harpagon
is silhouetted against the frustration of his family,
whose members find their plans continually blocked by

his avarice, much as Shylock is drawn in relationship

to the society around him which sees his demand for
legalism as an anti-life force.

But we begin to note in these few examples a
difference in focus between the two playwrights. Shake-
speare expands his view beyond that small society which
is Moliere's comic world to include not only a larger
society, but the vastness of the natural universe. We
see Shylock's impact not only on Jessica, but on myriad
members of his society. And Angelo's hypocrisy is both
a reflection of, and a contributor to, the general moral
decay of the society of Vienna. As the vision expands,
Titania and Oberon's conflict is reflected in the entire
natural wotld, through storms and tempests.

It would be inaccurate to say that the focus of
the two playwrights differs radically. Rather, Shake-
speare's comic world goes beyond the boundaries of that
of Moliere; it is Moliére's comic world and much.more.
It includes the Molieresque comic world as only part of

a more universal perspective.

90

We note that Moliere defines comic man's relation-
ships with the others in the intimate social unit without
reference to any higher laws--to laws of either nature
or the universe. Thus, although Tartuffe and 222.1222
both refer frequently to religious belief and would seem
at first to be concerned with man's relationship to a
higher power, we see that these plays are still really
indications of man's relationship to the social fabric
of the world around him. In addition, these plays which
at first seem to deal with religion, speak for comic
man's view of himself as a free agent in contrast with
the view which we, as his society have of him.1 So even
these plays which mention the gods are concerned with the
relationship of man to his fellow man and the paucity
of freedom and independence inherent in that relationship.

Even as Moliere's comic players speak of the
appropriate "saison" they are referring to the social
climate, to the customs and codes which.constrain man's
behavior, rather than to the seasons Of the year which
were so central to the Shakespearian comic world. The
vast natural universe in which Shakespeare's comic char-
acters played out their roles is nowhere to be seen here.
We find no Molieresque comic universe, no natural cycles,
no tempests, no forests, no wild beasts--only a single

room and those human beings who wander in and out of it.

91

Generally the Moliere comedy does take place
within a single room. And so the settings of his plays
reflect the limitations of his comic world. Tartuffe is
set "a Paris" and all we know about it is that there is
a desk under which Orgon is able to hide while Tartuffe
attempts to seduce his wife. Le Misanthrope is set in
a similar room "a Paris" with the additional editor's
notation:

Dans l'appartement de Célimene, au premier étage ofi

se trouve le piece de réception. Un récent decor

du Francais particulierement heureux montrait au fond

a gauche 1e débouché de l'escalier du rez-de-

chaussée et le départ de l'escalier qui méne au

second CD loge Eliante. Les arrivées et sorties

de personnages, éléments essentiels dans l'action

du Misanthrope étaient ainsi spectaculairement

soulignées.2
And we note that the setting, rather than reflecting a
variety of tensions and values as it did in Shakespeare's
comedies, seems simply to be a location through which
players pass. It is the players, rather than the places,
which stand for conflicting values and thus set the
scene. So not only is the Molieresque setting different

from the Shakespearian, but it plays a different role

within the comedy: Where the setting in A Midsummer

 

Night's Dream reflected the tensions within the play
and was an echo to the actions and images of the entire
play, the setting in L'Avare is simply a backdrop against

which the various characters play their roles. Only as

92

that setting suggests by its very limitations the limits
on comic man's freedom and as the presence of the garden
at the rear of the stage suggests the omnipresence of
Harpagon's avarice, does the setting in Moliere's comedy
approach the importance which Shakespeare's setting
enjoys in his comedies as a whole.

Even when Moliere deviates from his habit of
using the very limited setting and moves, as he does
in Q m Jggm, from one location to another including some
natural, outdoor scenes, he is not pointing to any
natural power as much as he is using the varied scenes
to mirror the various social groups which Dom Juan
encounters. Thus, even in this atypical Molierejplay,
where the setting is far from the expected, the variety
of settings seems to be a backdrop to the relationship
between the libertine, Dom Juan, and the variety of
"true believers" whom he encounters in those settings,
rather than a reflection, in itself, of any central
tension in the play.

Despite the usually intimate setting of the
Moliére comedy, however, we encounter a constant stream
of people--matchmakers, servants, relatives, valets,
visitors of all kinds--who wander into the limited world
of which the main character and his family are a part.
This constant stream of social life seems to reflect the

main character's inability to secede from the human race,

93

to live life as he wishes. Alceste's tremendous desire
to flee humanity while he is at the same time drawn to
the society of Célimene's salon, is indicative of the
conflict between man's desire to be left alone and the
reality Of the harassment of society which he exper-
iences.

Often these interlopers are the voices of the
social codes of the day: Dom Carlos and Dom Louis both
demand that Dom Juan adhere to a code. Cléante and
Madame Pernelle each demand that Orgon behave in a dif-
ferent way. Froisine encourages Harpagon to marry
against his own better judgement. Philinte lectures
Alceste on the folly of his.misanthropy. Some of these
people speak for the most ridiculous social customs.
Others advocate a reasonable stance. But each player
who passes through this limited social setting, regard-
less of the life-style which he or she espouses, reflects
the limited freedom which the main character has to live
his life as he wishes.

Shakespeare's comic heroes, too, unsuccessfully
seek freedom from "other voices"; they too try to live
life in their own peculiar manner. Ferdinand tries to
shut out all life except the academic. Olivia locks
herself up in her house and talks of nothing but mourn-
ing. Hermia and Lysander flee Athens to avoid the law.

And Leontes ignores the voice of the oracle. Yet each

94

of these is not so much confounded by others as he is
caught by his own resistance to his fortune. On the
other hand, the Moliere hero seems continually con-

founded by the advice, ministrations and insistences

of others. Eraste of Les Facheux, for instance, is

 

continually cut off from his attempts at wooing his
beloved by the presence of bores. Their chatter is a
consistent testimony to his powerlessness to live as
he wishes. Thus, as a constant flow of humanity seeks
out Moliere's comic hero, we are reminded that comic man
is not able to live as he desires. And through this
parade of humanity which violates comic man's privacy,
we see a redefinition of man's role in the comic world.
Where we saw great emphasis in Shakespeare's
comic world on expansiveness, distance, travel and
physical movement, Moliere's comedies turn our eyes
to a limited and generally stationary world. Unlike
Viola and Perdita, Mariane and Célimene go nowhere.
We find in Moliere's comedies none of the tension
between dual settings which we noted in Shakespeare's
works. Instead the tension is between comic man and the
people who exert pressure on him to behave in a different
way. This pressure is suggested by the closed setting
within which Moliere's comic hero plays his role.
Moliere's comic world has no natural component, no

sense of a great universe beyond. Instead the limited

95

setting seems to speak for the constraints on man's
freedom--a theme which we will see again and again in
Moliere's works. While Shakespeare's comic man is con-
stantly searching about for his appropriate role,
reaching out to others, Moliere's comic hero remains

in a closed setting as he tries to avoid the "fate"

which society would impose on him.

The Movement of the Comedy

 

The movement of the Moliere comedy is usually
from disorder to order and from ignorance to understand-
ing. The disorder is reflected in battles between

husband and wife as in Amphitryon, father and daughter

 

as in L'Avare, and father and son as in Tartuffe. It
is reflected, too, in the separation of young lovers,
in the attempts of old men to marry young girls, and
in the opposition of many characters to marriage.
This movement is very much like that which we
noted in the Shakespearian comedies, although here it
is not accompanied by any geographical movement. We
note the similarities in plot. Leontes accuses Her-
mione; Amphitryon suspects Alcmene of infidelity.
Egeus threatens to send Hermia to a convent; Mariane
Offers to become a nun when she learns what Orgon has
planned for her. Ferdinand promises to do without

female companionship; the Princess of Elide vows to

96

never marry. The disorder which we saw in the Shake-

spearian world is also seen in Moliere's comic society.
Both playwrights open their comedies on a view

of disorder: the separation of lovers, familial strife,

men and women apart. Amphitryon opens with the lovers

 

separated, the family divided, just as does Shakespeare's

 

The Comedy pf Errors. L'Amour Médecin begins in disorder

 

as does Twelfth Night. And both playwrights end the

 

comedies with a return to order or with the establish-
ment of a new order.

This ending, in the case of both Shakespeare and
Moliere, is usually marked by the union of lovers, the
reunion of family members, and an end to strife. The

final scene of The Winter's Tale shows lovers and families

 

reunited, as do the final scenes of L'Avare and Tartuffe.
This new order is most Often celebrated by marriages and
is generally characterized by the formation of a new
society in which a majority of the characters are
included. Those who are not included are usually those
whose fixity of character makes their inclusion impossible,
who refuse to be included: Jacques, Malvolio, Shylock,
Alceste, Tartuffe and Arnolphe. Thus both 223 Tempest
and Lg_Ma1ade Imaginaire end with a promise of marriage
and the inclusion of all the characters in a new social
order. We note, however, that in Moliere's comic world,

the disorder and attendant establishment of order are

97

limited to the purely social sphere of engagement,
marriage and family unity rather than drawing our
attention to any natural passions which these social
institutions suggest. Nevertheless disorder and the
attendant order are defined in much the same terms in
the comic worlds of the two playwrights.

The movement from ignorance to understanding,
which is of major import in the Moliére comedy, however,
is not so central to the Shakespearian comic world. This
is not to say that the Shakespearian comic world does not
include the revelation of identities and the discovery
of truth, rather that these revelations and discoveries
do not have the same significance, the same central
importance which they do in Moliere's comic world. In
the Moliére comedy, ignorance is reflected in mistaken
identities and successful imposters. Both Tartuffe and

Amphitryon are, for instance, marked by a movement from

 

mistaken identities and successful imposters, to under-
standing and the unmasking of the imposter.
Shakespearian comedy also includes the motif of
the "lost children found" and of pe0ple playing roles,
but the impact is different. In the Shakespearian comic
world, the revelation of identities and the unmasking of
imposters seems to speak more for the playing of the
appropriate role, for the supremacy of certain values,

and for the acceptance of fortune, than it does for the

98

ability of the characters to discern reality from
illusion. Thus the revelation of Perdita's identity as
Leontes' daughter speaks for Leontes' acceptance of his
fortune. The unmasking of Angelo speaks for the supremacy
of the value of justice--but with mercy. And the reve-
lation of Viola's true identity speaks for her ability

to accept her proper role and the vindication of those

who accept that which time brings.

In Moliére's comic world, on the other hand, the
achievement of new understanding is often a part of the
return to order at play's end, and often accompanies the
character's rejection of his fixity. Thus Orgon's com-
prehension of what has happened to him begins a return
to order in his household. And Amphitryon's final
understanding of what has transpired allows for a return
to order in his family.

We can see this movement from disorder to order
and from ignorance to understanding in many of.Moliere's
comedies. Tartuffe opens with Orgon and Madame Pernelle
being badly duped by Tartuffe. Two sets of lovers are
separated. And Orgon is irrationally taken with Tartuffe
in a fixity of approach both laughable and distressing.
The end of the play is marked by Orgon's understanding
of what has happened to him. It is also marked by a
removal of all blocks to the lovers' marriages and the

abandonment by Orgon of his fixity of character.

99

Especially important in this play is the disorder within
the household which culminates in the actual loss of the
home to the hypocrite, Tartuffe.

It is ironic that many of the references to
disorder in the comedy are to the role which Dorine,
the servant girl plays.3 Many of the characters see
in her "take charge" attitude, a threat to familial
order, when in reality she is a force for order as she
works for the ouster of Tartuffe and the marriages of
the lovers. Tartuffe's unhealthy supremacy over the
family is documented in his legal right to the house
itself and his eviction notice to Orgon and his family.
The disorder evidenced by Orgon's disowning of Damis
and the transferring of the rights of heritage from
Damis to Tartuffe is righted with the hypocrite's arrest.
The intimate focus which we discussed earlier as typical
of Moliere's comic world is here especially important as
we note the repetitious references to "ceans," ”chez-moi,"
"ce ménage-ci" in the early lines of the play. The play
is very much concerned with the home, with the household
and with order within that very limited society. As
Tartuffe and Orgon both struggle for the role of “maitre”
of the household, Tartuffe's eventual defeat allows for
a return to social order and the reestablishment of the

family unit at play's end.

100

222.1222! on the other hand, is in many ways
atypical of the Moliere comic tradition. And yet many
of the elements of this play which at first seem to con-
tradict the View of the Moliere comic world as seen
throughout the other comedies, really confirm that same
comic vision. The play Opens with marriages being
violated, and potential marriage contracts threatened:
Dom Juan both ignores his commitment to Done Elvire and
threatens the engagement of Pierrot and Charlotte. Yet
as the play ends with the destruction of the man who
threatened the marriage code, it is typical. The removal
of Dom Juan as a block to marriage and a threat to the
social codes of the day is an echo of the conversation

of Argan at the end of L9 Malade Imaginaire or of Orgon

 

at the end of Tartuffe. To the extent that Dom Juan
understands throughout the comedy the power of social
codes (remember that he becomes a hypocrite to avoid the
power of social and religious rules which plague him),

he is not typical of the Moliere comic hero. Orgon's
understanding does not come until late in the play.
Neither does Alceste's. Yet Dom Juan's very existence

is testimony to the fact that man who believes himself
free of all constraints is in the end no freer than those
whom he ridicules for the adherence to social codes. For
Dom Juan, the limitation on his actions comes in death,
but it comes nevertheless. And for the society around

him, that death means a return to social order.

101

Lg_Misanthrope Opens on misunderstanding and

 

conflict and ends with Alceste having realized that in
order to live life as he wishes he must forsake society.
Although Alceste and Céliméne are not married, the play
does end with the bethrothal of Eliante and Philinte.
It is Alceste, with his anti-social attitude who is the
block to social order in the play. SO his admission that
he will forsake human society and will no longer insist
that his values be a part of Célimene's society allows
for the reestablishment of order. The movement of the
comedy is from disorder to order and from misunderstanding
to understanding.

L'Avare is, like Tartuffe, typically Molieresque.
It Opens with two sets of frustrated lovers and closes
with the block to their marriage removed. If Harpagon
does not come to any understanding of what has happened
to him, nonetheless he is no longer an impediment to
the marriage of his children. we see a movement toward
understanding, as the identities of many characters are
revealed. And a new social order emerges which is marked
by marriage and understanding. Although Harpagon is not
included in the marriages, and doesn't really understand
what has happened to him, he will probably coexist
peacefully with this new society.

Thus we see in the Moliere comedies a pattern

whereby the end of the comedy is marked by the

102

establishment of order and the achievement of new under-
standing. In some cases, where the character does not
achieve understanding, or at least does not forsake his
fixity, as in L'Avare and 29m.gg§m, the order at the end
is not necessarily a mgw order but perhaps only the
reestablishment of an old order to which the comic hero
was a threat or block. Still marriage is a part of that
order and the return to order is symbolized by the union
of lovers and a return to peace in the household, while
at the same time, the movement toward understanding is
represented by the revelation of identities, the unmask-
ing of frauds, and in some cases, the abandonment of the
fixity Of character which has precipitated the disorder
in the first place.

We can see that the basic movements inherent in
the comic worlds of both playwrights are similar. Yet
Shakespeare goes beyond Moliere's disorders of the family
and immediate society, to depict social, political and
natural disorder as evidenced by the lawlessness of

Measure for Measure, the political disorders of §§.Y°u

 

Like IE and The Tempest, and the natural disorder oflé

 

 

Midsummer Night's Dream. In Moliere's comedies there
is occasional allusion to political order or disorder;
in Tartuffe there is reference to a political situation
in which Orgon is involved, and to the influence of the

King. However, there seems to be little attempt to

103

suggest that the order of the small society is a metaphor
for governmental order or disorder. And as we noted
before, there is little mention of any natural or bio-
logical disorder. The "disease" which was in Shake-
speare's comedies an image of disorder in the society

of man, in Moliere's work usually reflects a fixity of
character or a means of duping someone, as in L'Amour

Médecin.

The Significance of the Return to Order

 

Most of the comedies of both playwrights end
with marriages and the establishment of order. Yet the
means by which each playwright establishes that order
differ. The concluding movements of the comedies of
both playwrights are marked by revelations of identity:
Leontes learns that Perdita is his daughter and Orgon
learns that Tartuffe is an imposter. Orsino learns that
Viola is a girl and Anselme learns that Valere and
Mariane are his long-lost children. But the revelation
of identity in Shakespeare's comedies speaks for the
happiness which comes to those who accept that which
fortune gives to them. And the same revelation in
Moliere's comedies speaks for the movement from mis-
understanding to understanding, from illusion to reality

which is central to the Molieresque comic world.

104

The Shakespearian conclusion more often encom-
passes some sort of joyous celebration of the new
order--a visible, joyful ceremony which transcends the
mere establishment of a new order and the promise of
marriage--than does the Moliere conclusion. Thus
Twelfth Night ends with a song and A Midsmmmeg Night's
Qggém ends with a blessing. Only a few of the comedy-
ballets of Moliere, notably Lg Malade Ima inaire,
which ends with the mock graduation ceremony, approach
the "celebration" scene usually found at the end of the
Shakespearian comedy--and then that celebration is an
ironic "spoof" of human irrationality. Perhaps it is
Shakespeare's attention to the natural cycles, to the
seasonal movement of life that makes such celebrations
more central to the final order of the play. Or perhaps
it is the play's attention to the combination of "rain"
and joy which come to each man, which makes the cele-
bration of the moments of joy a natural response on the
part of comic man.

Moliere's final scenes are more likely to be
marked by a sense of relief that the fixity which was
a block to order no longer exists, that familial dis-
order is replaced by order. In place of the jubilation
of the Shakespearian comedy, the Moliere comedy closes
with a more measured sense of pleasure, a sense of

resolution, of a return to "normalcy," perhaps not

105

unlike that which we feel in Measure for Measure when

 

all the wrongs are righted, when the hypocrite is
unmasked, and when order is reestablished.

In Moliere's comic world, that final resolution
comes suddenly. With little warning, the disorders are
dissolved into a new order, and the lovers marry. In
Shakespeare's comic world, the resolution of conflict,
the replacing of disorder with order, all takes place
as part of a process which we see throughout the play,
not only in the action of the play itself, but through
imagery, language and many other elements. The movement

toward the union of lovers builds throughout A Midsummer

 

Night's Dream as it does in Twelfth Night. The movement

 

toward a restoration of familial order is developed

throughout Acts IV and V of The Winter's Tale. From

 

the moment that the oracle reveals Leontes' folly, the
play moves slowly and inexorably toward a final resolution
of disorder. From the time that Ferdinand declares him-
self absolutely against any contact with the Opposite

sex, it is inevitable that he should fall in love. So

in the Shakespeare play, much of the action is part of

the establishment of order, and there is a sense of the
inevitable in the fortune which.comes to comic man.

There are no real surprises in the Shakespearian comic
world, for that entire world moves inexorably to the

conclusion of order and marriage.

106

In Moliere's comic world, on the other hand, the
resolution of conflict and disorder comes suddenly.
Dom Juan is destroyed in the final seconds of the play,
and despite the continual insistence of the other char-
acters that he will be punished for his infamous activi-
ties, the death which he meets is a surprise, a sudden
irrational event. The final resolution of L'Avare is
not even possible until the startling unveiling of the
identities of many of the characters which takes place
in the final scene. And this revelation is as much a
surprise to us as it is to the other characters in the
comedy. Orgon's household is only returned to order by
the sudden decision at the end of the comedy that it is
Tartuffe who is to be arrested. Until that moment,
nothing suggests to us that Orgon's actions are leading

to Tartuffe's defeat. Lg_Misanthrope ends with the

 

sudden declaration of Alceste that if Célimene won't
marry him and join him in his withdrawal from society,
he will forsake society alone. Although he has been
threatening throughout the play to flee mankind, his
final resolution comes suddenly and is a surprise to us
and to the members of his society. Thus we note in the
Moliere plays a preponderance of "deux ex machina" end-
ings, which promote a sense of the irrational, the
absurd in the final actions of the play and in the

establishment of order.

107

Therefore, the resolution of the comedies of the
two playwrights, though marked by the same movement toward
familial order and the marriages of the young lovers,
seems to suggest different things. The final order of
the Moliere play speaks for the movement of the char—
acters from illusion to reality, a movement which
Shakespeare does not emphasize in the same manner.4
And the final order of Moliere's comedies, coming as
it does suddenly and without any real dramatic preparation
for the establishment of order, suggests the irrational,
absurd nature of human existence. Shakespeare's final
scenes are more often marked by celebrations as if to
suggest the close relationship between the final order
of the play and the order to be seen in the seasonal
cycles of nature. Thus the final moments of his plays
speak for mankind's role in a reasonable, predictable
cycle of life.

Resistance to Order Versus
an Impetus to Order

 

 

Although both playwrights deal with the disorder
of lovers separated and families sundered, their per-
spectives differ. As we noted, in Tartuffe and L'Avare,
Moliere usually focuses on that character who is a block
to the impetus for order, who stands in the way of mar-
riage and understanding. In 2 m Jggm_the spotlight is

on the libertine; in Lg Malade Imaginaire it is on Argan.

 

 

108

It is the character who resists order who demands our
attention in the Moliere comic world.

In Shakespeare's comedies we often see a similar
comic situation. Egeus blocks the marriage of Hermia and
Lysander. Ferdinand outlaws marriage. Angelo is a block
to the natural, healthy union of the sexes. Polixenes
Opposes Florizel's marriage to Perdita. Yet the spot-
light is not on Egeus, or Ferdinand, or Angelo or
Polixenes. Rather the comedy focuses our attention
on the entire fabric of the society of the play as we
see the power Of fortune through man's role as a lover.

We can Speculate that given three sets of
separated lovers and a character who opposes their
marriage, Moliere will focus on the blocking character
and his fruitless struggle to prevent the marriages,
while Shakespeare will instead concentrate on the lovers

and their struggle toward union. Given A_Midsummer

 

Night's Dream Moliere would probably focus on Egeus

 

and his attempts to separate the lovers. And given

L'Amour Peintre, Shakespeare would probably concentrate

 

a greater portion of the play on the plotting of the
lovers. We can note the same difference in perspective
by comparing Shylock with Harpagon. we note that in
Shakespeare's comedy, a great portion of the play deals

with Antonio, with Belmont, with the lovers, while

109

Moliere's play holds its spotlight almost unswervingly
on the miser as he resists all attempts to weaken his
power over the household.

Thus both playwrights are looking at the same
comic world--although Shakespeare's vision is more
expansive--and they are seeing many of the same char-
acters. But each sees these characters from his own
perspective. Moliere is watching a particular character
of fixity as he resists the movement toward a new order,
while ShakeSpeare gives a more equal division of his
attention to all the characters, with a special interest
in those who are a force for, rather than a block to,
the new society. Hence Moliere focuses more on a single
individual against the backdrop of his society; Harpagon
is seen as a man of fixity against the flexibility of
his society. And Shakespeare looks at the fabric of
that society and sees the comic character as only a part
of that fabric: Shylock is seen as a part of a social
panorama, of a social fabric held together by the bonds
of law and justice.

Parallels:_A_Repetition of
the Themes

 

Moliere's work is often termed "comedy of char—
acter" suggesting theatre in which the attention is
drawn to one character rather than dispersed over a

whole group, or various groups of people as it is, in

110

say, Shakespeare's A_Midsumme£_Night's Dream. Sometimes,

 

however, we take this too literally and expect that a
Moliere comedy will be a caricature of a single person.
It is far from that. While the focus of a Moliere
comedy is often on a single character, it is through
the situation of the other players that we often see
reflections of the major character's predicament. Thus
the use of parallels in Moliere's comedies is similar
to that which we noted in Shakespeare's comedies.
Amphitryon's situation is mirrored in his servant
Sosie's predicament. The parallel serves to compare
the practical wisdom, the pragmatic spirit of the
servant with the fixity of approach of the master.
Orgon's blindness is mirrored in his mother's refusal
to accept the truth. His frustration with her fixity
is even funnier when viewed in light of his recent con-
version to rationality. Dom Juan's rejection of all
codes is echoed in Dom Carlos' frustration with the code
of nobility. His speeches to Dom Juan about that frus-
tration are comic, as the libertine listens without
comment to thoughts that are only a mild version of his
own. Harpagon's avarice is reflected in Froisine's
desire to make some quick money. But she sees the miser
as inhuman while she views her own quest for money as
necessary to her survival. Thus the main character may

be in the spotlight, but the minor characters'

111

situations are often a reflection, an echo, a variation
of his own predicament.

And the main character, while he has the audience's
attention for most of the comedy, is far from atypical,
and is in no way an anomaly. Rather, his situation,
echoed as it is in that of the other characters, speaks
for the universal situation of man in a comic world. As
was true in the Shakespearian comedies, parallels between
the main character (or characters) and the other players
suggest the universality of the situation of the comic
character. Sir Andrew's passion for Olivia suggests the
universality of Orsino's dilemma; so does Damis' inflexi-
bility and unthinking action reflect Orgon's fixity of
character. In both cases, the universality of the human
situation is suggested by parallels between characters.

The Comic Hero--A Character
of Fixity

 

 

The Moliere comic character, Often thought of as
typically a "monomaniac," like Harpagon, comes in many
variations. We remember Sganerelle, Eraste, Dom Garcie,
Dom Juan, La Princesse D'Elide, Argan, Orgon, Tartuffe,
Arnolphe, to name a few. And we note immediately that
not all, in fact not very many, of them are monomaniacs.
All, nonetheless, exhibit some type of fixity Of char-
acter, Of which the monomaniac is the most extreme

variety. Thus despite the great number of comedies

112

which Moliere wrote (he provided us with over thirty in
all) and the great number of heroes which he created,
the Moliere comic man has certain character traits which
appear again and again, and become typical of the human
role in the Molieresque comic world.

The comic hero is usually middle-aged or exhibits
a middle-aged inflexibility which stands in Opposition to
the more tractable young people. We think immediately
of Harpagon, Orgon, Tartuffe and Arnolphe. But sometimes
the comic character is young and plagued by some sort of
youthful inflexibility or fixity--the jealousy of Dom
Garcie, the infatuation of Eraste, the passion Of Dom
Juan.5 Other times he is ageless and bound to an
eternal fixity of character as is Jupiter. SO the
Moliere comic hero exhibits some sort of fixity, and
often, as we will note as we look at Several of the
comedies, is opposed to or destructive of, the insti-
tution of marriage.

In ng_gggm, despite the hero's Opposition to the
fixity of those who believe in a variety of codes and
laws, we see in his own actions a powerful kind of
fixity to which he seems oblivious. Dom Juan, at the
very moment that he is insisting on his personal freedom,
is prey to an uncontrollable desire for female conquests.
we note that early in the comedy Sganerelle points out

that his master is totally predictable:

113

. . . je connois a peu pres 1e train des choses; et

sans qu'il m'ait encore rien dit, je gagerois

presque que l'affair va la. Je pourrois peut-étre

me tromper; mais enfin, sur de tels sujets,

l'expérience m'a pu donner quelque lumieres. 6

(ng_gggp, pp. 715-16)

Like the other comic characters--Argan and Arnolphe
included--Dom Juan is the man who believes that he is
acting freely, but who is controlled by a fixity of
character of which he seems unaware. Thus he is pre-
dictable. And Dom Juan, as he is destructive of mar-
riage, is typical of the Moliere comic hero.

Orgon, who shares the spotlight of Tartuffe with
the hypocrite, is inflexibly convinced of the value of
Tartuffe to the welfare of his family. His fixity of
character is his irrational belief in the man who is
destroying his home. Orgon also stands in the way of
the marriages of his children. And the fixity of Orgon
is echoed in the fixity of the play's other characters.
Tartuffe is betrayed by his fixation on Elmire, by his
irrational desire for her. Damis is absolute for truth,
for telling all. His inability to evaluate the most
rational, effective means of dealing with Tartuffe
almost destroys the family's chances for removing the
hypocrite from the household. Madame Pernelle is
absolute for religion and her unthinking devotion to

Tartuffe so blinds her to the truth that she will not

believe her own son when he insists that he has seen

114

Tartuffe's infamous actions with his own eyes. And
Mariane and Valere are, despite their desire to be
reasonable, absolute for love; theirs is a fixity which
marks most young lovers. Thus we see in the many char-
acters of Tartuffe a pattern of rigidity.

In L§_Misanthrope, Alceste's fixity of approach

 

is contrasted with the pragmatism of most of the society
of which he is a part. With the exception of Oronte's
rigid demand for revenge for Alceste's denunciation of
his ability as a poet, the society in which Alceste lives
provides a remarkable contrast to his rigidity. Alceste
is, like Damis of Tartuffe absolute for truth, and thus
as part of a society based on wit and repartee, is a
ridiculous figure. By insisting constantly on his own
type of perfection, he precludes the possibility of his
marriage to Célimene, and almost brings the society of
Céliméne's salon to a standstill.

With L'Avare we meet the comic hero who is most
Often associated with Moliere. Harpagon is the mono-
maniac; he is absolute for avarice. His rigidity stands
in the way of his children marrying and makes him
inflexibly unable to deal with what happens to him.
He, like the other monomaniacs, makes his mistake not
in the cause which he espouses, but in the rigidity
with which he takes a stance. We can certainly find

no fault in a certain amount of freedom to live one's

115

life, but Dom Juan carries this desire for freedom to a
dangerous extreme. Nor is there anything wrong with a
serious interest in religion; but Orgon is almost
destroyed by his fanaticism. A desire for truth is
laudable; but Alceste is absolute for truth at moments
when such perfection is inapprOpriate. And while fiscal
responsibility is certainly to be commended, Harpagon
over does it. The comic here is not comic in the cause
which he champions, but in the absolute rigidity with
which he champions it.

Throughout the Moliere comedies we see the
repetition of the trait of fixity which in its most
extreme state plagues Harpagon, Argon, Alceste and Dom
Juan. Yet in noting the importance of this character
trait in the comedies of the Frenchman, we should not
ignore the fact that the same character types do occur
repeatedly in Shakespeare's works as well.

Malvolio is absolute for order in the household.
Jacques is absolute in his melancholy. Angelo shows
a definite fixity of character as do Egeus, Shylock,
Olivia, Orsino and Leontes. All these characters have
a rigidity akin to that which we see in the Moliere
comedies. Perhaps it is the fact that most of them
(Olivia, Orsino and Leontes) are "cured" of their fixity,
which makes us think of them as being different from

Moliere's comic hero. Or perhaps it is the fact that

116

the attention of the audience is not so constantly on
them as it is on Harpagon or Alceste. In any case, when
Shakespeare's comic character gives up his ridiculous
fixity, it is usually with the realization that his
fortune lies in a different type of attitude toward
life, and thus he is usually in the end a part of the
sexual cycle.

It is important, then, as we compare the comic
works of the two playwrights, to note that the character
of fixity is not alone the possession of Moliere, the
inhabitant of his world alone, but rather that he is
more central to Moliere's comic world because our

attention is so rivetted upon him and upon his fixity.

The Hero as Bourgeois

 

Many of the comic characters of Moliere are of
the middle-class. A few are royalty or leaders--as are
Dom Garcie and the Princess of Elide--but many are in
that middle economic and sociological group which
suggests both conventionality and universality. So
Harpagon, Orgon and many others represent the bourgeoisie

In Shakespeare's comic world, by contrast, the
suggestion of universality is accomplished by the use of
parallels between the ruling class and the servant,
between master and slave. And there is little emphasis
throughout the Shakespearian comedies on the bourgeoisie.

Sometimes, as we tend to think automatically of Moliere

117

as the playwright who wrote of the middle-class, we
forget that many of his characters do not come from
among this group. Dom Juan, Dom Garcie, Amphitryon

all are noblemen. In these particular cases, however,
it is interesting to note that Moliere uses the same
technique as Shakespeare to suggest the universality of
the comic situation: he provides the comic hero with

a servant or slave who functions as a foil, whose situ-
ation is an echo of or a contrast to his master's. Still,
if we were to characterize Moliere's comic world, it is
most often focused on the middle-class man who sees him-

self as powerful and free and who is proved to be neither.

Anti-Social Man

 

Moliere's comic hero is often anti-social in
some way. He may feel that he is not governed by the
laws which bind other men, or by morals or custom. Of
course, Alceste is the most renowned of these anti-
social men, but Dom Juan is also anti-social in his
feeling that he is exempt from moral law. Often this
anti-social tendency is reflected in a character's
feeling that he is not subject to the same human
emotions which most men feel: Orgon and Argan both
insist that they are free from the usual mundane human
emotions which complicate the average man's life. If
we look back over the major Moliere plays we can see

this tendency quite clearly.

118

Both Madame Pernelle and Orgon counsel Orgon's
family to cut down on their social contacts, to avoid
the society of man so as to not be led astray by the
wrong attitudes which that society promotes. And Tartuffe
is anti-social in his belief that he is, by virtue of
his hypocrisy, free to do whatever he wishes with
impunity. Orgon is typical of the Moliere comic hero
in his insistence that he is not prey to the same human
emotions which others feel. Dorine says of Orgon in
reference to his relationship with Tartuffe:

Il l'appelle son frere, et l'aime dans son ame
cent frois plus qu'il ne fait mere, fils, fille et
femme.
(Tartuffe, I, iii, 185)
And as unlikely as Dorine's assessment of the situation
seems at first, Orgon himself echoes her view:
I1 m'enseigne a n'avoir affection pour rien,
De toutes amitiés il détache mon ame;
Et je verrois mourrir frere, enfants, mere et femme,
Que je m'en soucierois autant que de cela.
(Tartuffe, I, v, 276-79)
Orgon insists that he is in no way interested in earning
the love of others, that their feelings do not matter
to him. He declares, "Je ne veux pas qu'on m'aime."
(Tartuffe, II, ii, 545)

Harpagon, too, believes that he is not bothered

by human emotions. When Elise begs him "par l'amour

parternel" to think of her feelings he responds:

119

Non, non, je ne veux rien entendre; et il faut
que la justice fasse son devoir.
(L'Avare, V, iv, p. 312)

The main character's denial of human emotions,
his insistence that he is not governed by the same bonds
which tie the rest of mankind is seen in some Of the
Shakespearian comic characters. Ferdinand insists that
he can do well without any social contact with women.
Angelo is beyond the call of human decency. Toby insists
he is not subject to the demand for order in the house-
hold. And Leontes insists that he is in no way touched
by the plight of the baby whom he sentences to death on
a distant shore. A few characters are blatantly anti-
social: Malvolio and Jacques are among them. It is
interesting that it is Shakespeare's anti-social char-
acters who are not integrated in the final order of the
play. Both Malvolio and Jacques elect to be apart from
the final society. At the same time, those who, like
Leontes and Ferdinand, insist that they are not touched
by human emotions, are educated to their human role and
become part of the play's closing society. We note,
however, that Moliere's anti-social character is often
(although not always) a part of the play's final order.
Harpagon despite his anti-social insistence on parsimon-
ious treatment of guests, is a grudging part of the
final order which is established. He is still the miser,

but he is not an outlaw.

120

The Hero As Unique

 

Moliere's anti-social comic man is often con-
vinced that he is different from other men, that he is
superior to them. He is a better woodcutter, a more
wronged husband, a sicker invalid, a more powerful
father. He is someone special, apart from the rest of
humanity.

Yet in the course of the play, we become aware,
as the comic character seldom is, that he is indeed like
all other men, that there is nothing particularly dif-
ferent about him. His human situation is muCh the same
as those around him. And if he is indeed different from
all the others, it is not, as he feels, in his superi-
ority, in his freedom from custom, law and human emotions,
but in his ridiculous rigidity, his insistence in a fixity
of approach.

Sganerelle of £2 Médecin Malgré Lui is typical in
his belief that he is special, extraordinary. His last
lines in the play echo this feeling:

. . . Mais prépare-toi désormais a vivre dans un
grand respect avec un homme de ma consequence,
et songe que la colere d'un médecin est plus a
craindre qu'on ne peut croire.

(Lg.Médecin Malgré Lui,
III, ix, p. 48)

 

And earlier in the comedy, when Sganerelle is yet a

simple woodcutter, he says to his wife,

121

Trouve-moi un faiseur de fagots qui sache, comme
moi, raisonner des choses, qui ait servi six
ans un fameux médecin, et qui ait su, dans son
jeune age, son rudiment par coeur.
(L2_Médecin Malgré Lui,
I, i, p. 5)

 

Like Sganerelle, who insists that he is an extra-

ordinary woodcutter, Argan of £3 Malade Imaginaire insists

 

 

that he too is far from an ordinary man. He is delighted
when Toinette, disguised as a doctor, assures him that

his medical case is deserving of special attention:

Je dédaigne de m'amuser a ce menu fatras de
maladies ordinaires. . . . Je veux des maladies
d'importance. . . . et je voudrois, Monsieur,
que vous eussiez toutes les maladies que je viens
de dire, que fous fussiez abandonné de tous les
médecins, désespére, a l'agonie. Pour vous
montrer l'excellence de mes remedes, et l'envie
que j'aurois de vois rendre service.
(La Malade Imaginaire,
III, x, p. 835Y

 

And if we turn to the major plays which we have
considered, we note the same pattern of character traits.
Orgon insists that he is particularly blessed to have
Tartuffe in his home and that everyone misunderstands
his guest except he, himself. Alceste insists that no
one loves as he does and Célimene's response that "the
method is, after all, unusual" suggests the ridiculous-
ness of that kind of extreme passion. We note that the
very love which Alceste feels sets him apart from the

rest of common mankind, indeed, as it is focused on the

122

coquette Célimene, confirms him as a member in good
standing of that very human race which he scorns.

Dom Juan is typical of the Moliere comic hero
in his insistence that he is special, possessed of more
freedom than others, able to do as he pleases with
impunity. And Harpagon, as the miser, sees himself as
the most put-upon of all men, the one most cruelly
deceived, most mortally hurt.

This sense which the Moliere comic hero has of
his specialness, of the extremity of his situation, of
the power of his passion, of a perfection which sets
him apart from mankind, is a recurring theme throughout
the comedies. And it is a trait which we do not gen-
erally find in Shakespeare's comedies. Except in the
cases of many of the lovers who feel that no one loves
as they do, there seems to be little sense in the
Englishman's comedies of the on the part of characters
that they are apart from the rest of humanity, that they
are somehow superior. Perhaps the only case would be
Malvolio who feels that he has been most unjustly put
upon and that he is indeed superior to those of his
society.

Thus we note throughout the Moliere comic world
the feeling which the main character has of his unique-
ness, his specialness; and in the course of the comedy

we come to see, if he does not, that indeed if he is

123

unique it is only in his ridiculous rigidity. That
pinacle of emotion, that special knowledge, that unusual
freedom which he feels he enjoys is only an illusion.

He is, like Alceste, at the very moment that he insists
on his uniqueness, a member of good standing of the human

community which he ridicules.

The Man and the Mask

 

As we have suggested, Moliere's comic hero is
marked by some form of fixity of character, some inflexi-
bility or rigidity which precludes his reacting appro-
priately to the society around him. In some ways, this
rigidity can be seen as a mask, a facade which hides
from us the human response of the character, which makes
it impossible for him to adjust, to adapt to changes in
the world around him. The source of Moliere's fasci-
nation with the mask has been a matter of great interest
to Moliere scholars.8 But for our purposes it is neces-
sary that we simply note the impact of this fixity,
of this mask on the comic hero and his ability to

function in the world of which he is a part.

The Mask and Language

 

The first thing which we note about the char-
acter of fixity is that his rigidity seems to affect
his ability to communicate with others. The Moliere

comic hero stutters. He talks to himself. He is

124

speechless. He doesn't hear what people say to him.
He gives answers which have nothing to do with the
question. He speaks in incomplete sentences. His
staccato language is often a reflection of his mental
rigidity, as his physical clumsiness is a reflection
of his lack of social grace.9
Orgon's ridiculous litany of "et Tartuffe" and
"1e pauvre homme" which render the fourth scene of
Tartuffe laughable are a classic example of the
Molieresque comic hero's inability to communicate with
others. As Dorine informs him that his wife has been
gravely ill, Orgon's robot-like response is to ask how
Tartuffe is, and to sigh that he is, indeed, a "pauvre
homme." The response has nothing to do with the conver-
sation. Later on in the play, when Cléante asks Orgon
to tell what kind Of man Tartuffe is, Orgon is speechless:
Mon frere, vous seriez charmé de le.connoitre,
Et vos ravissements ne prendroient point de fin.
C'est un homme . . . qui, . . . ha! un homme . . .
un homme enfin.
(Tartuffe, I, v, 270-72)
Dom Juan, on the other hand, is articulate man
at his best. It is his servant Sganerelle, his alter
ego, whose language is as clumsy as his physical actions.
The comic hero, himself, is never at a loss for words,
except perhaps when he is confronted by those two

people who most care for him: Done Elvire and Dom Louis.

125

In both cases he is silent, and having listened to their
tirades, he responds in a way which is not at all an
appropriate rejoinder to that which they have said.
Alceste's fixity of language stems from his need

to be truthful at all times. He takes language too
seriously. When the world around him demands wit, he
insists on truth. Thus, when the would-be-poet is
simply asking for a kind word about his poetry, Alceste
insists on giving him literary criticism; his response is
inappropriate to the situation. And when Alceste is
confronted with the uselessness of his insistence on
truth, he, too, is speechless:

Je me verrai trahir, mettre en pieces, voler

Sans que je sois . . . Morbleul Je ne veux point

parler,
Tant ce raisonnement est plein d'impertinence.

(Le Misanthrope, I, i,
I79-81)

 

Harpagon's mental rigidity is often reflected in
his language. He talks to himself. He doesn't hear what
others are saying. And in his confrontation with‘Valere
in the play's final act, his conversation admits of no
real communication as he and his daughter's lover toss
words back and forth, each speaking of a totally dif-
ferent situation. One is preoccupied with the theft of
the fortune and the other with the seduction of the

daughter. Each is so caught up in his fixity, that

126

he does not understand what the other is saying, but
rather interprets it to fit his own inflexibility of
thinking. This same inflexibility of thought is seen
in Harpagon's repetitious use of the phrase "sans dot"
when he talks about Elise's marriage to Anselme. And,
of course, Harpagon's famous speech which opens scene vii
of Act IV, is typical Of the Molieresque comic hero's
inability to articulate. Harpagon, on realizing that
someone has stolen his treasure, becomes absolutely
inarticulate:
Au voleur! au voleurl a l'assassin! au meurtrier!
Justice, juste Ciel! je suis perdu, je suit assasiné,
on m' a coupe la gorge, on m' a dérobe mon argent.
Qui peut-ce etre? Qu' est-i1 dévenu? Ou est-i1?
on se cache-t-il?
(L'Avare, IV, vii, p. 302)
This speech which echoes Shylock's cry of “my daughter,
my ducats," is testimony to the fact that the miser's
fixity is reflected in every facet of his being.
Speech, too, is also important to the Shake-
spearian comic world. Those characters who speak well,
and who also sing well, combining music and speech,
harmony and language, are usually those who best under-
stand their roles. They are the clowns, the lovers,

10 So like

those who have come to accept their fortune.
the Shakespearian comedy, Moliere's comedies use the
element of language to indicate the grace, the flexi-

bility of the comic player.

127

We should note, however, the incidence of courtly,
noble, dramatic, almost Cornelian language in the
Molieresque comic world. Alceste says to Célimene,

Hél le puis-je, traitresse?

Puis-je ainsi triompher de toute ma tendresse?

Et quoique avec ardeur je veuille vous hair,

Trouvé-je un coeur en moi tout prét a m'obéir?

(Le Misanthrope, V, ii,
1747-50)

The language which he uses to speak of his love for a
coquette, for a light-headed girl of twenty, is that
of the great tragic play, of the heroic character. We
note in L'Avare that Harpagon speaks of his fortune, and
of its theft in heroic, dramatic terms.‘ And throughout
Tartuffe we note the elegant, heroic language which is
used by almost all the characters except for Dorine and
Elmire. It is important to note that in Tartuffe all the
characters who seem to exhibit a fixity of character
use heroic language, while the two people who are most
reasonable, most able to deal rationally with what is
happening to them speak in ordinary terms. We have to
laugh, with Dorine, at Mariane's heroic declaration that
she will "die" rather than marry Tartuffe. As Dorine
is trying to engineer some practical means of extricating
the girl from what promises to be a certain fate,

Mariane's suggestion that she will die is indeed

ridiculous.

128

A Tragic/Heroic Figure in
a Comic world

 

 

The use of heroic, dramatic language by the char-
acter who exhibits a fixity of approach suggests that,
indeed, it is the comic player who believes himself to
be heroic, who is in the end, the most human, the most
laughable, and the least heroic of all the players. As
we note the use of terms like "mérite" and "gloire,"
we realize that the Molieresque comic hero is marked
by his belief not only that he is special, that he is
unique, but that he has been assigned an important role,
a "starring" part, in a drama of great consequence. He
is convinced that everything that he does is of tremendous
importance. Throughout the Moliere comic world we see
the character who insists on taking himself too seriously.
Alceste insists on supplying the truth when less than the
truth would suffice. Harpagon likens the theft of his
treasure to a homicide. Mariane will die rather than
marry Tartuffe. Each character sees himself as an
important player in a heroic world, a world where his
every action matters a great deal. But we see, as he
does not, that his is a comic role in a world marked by
its absurdity, its irrationality, its myriad codes and
rules which are less than universal and far from deadly
serious. It is not the eye of God which is on Moliere's

comic hero but simply the eyes of others. SO Moliere's

129

comic hero insists on playing a heroic role in what is
essentially a comic world. In his insistence that he is
heroic, that he stands out from the common herd of man-
kind, he is comic. For example, Alceste's infatuation
with Célimene certainly does not approach the passion

of Tristan for Iseult or Romeo for Juliet. Yet Alceste
does not see this: he insists that his is the passion
of which great tragedies are made, and he insists on
making one.

The Shakespearian comic character sometimes
suffers from this same delusion. Orsino insists on the
power of his passion for Olivia. Olivia insists on the
depth of her sorrow at her brother's death. Malvolio
suddenly develops a deep, passionate interest in his
mistress. The characters who are most resistant to
accepting that fortune which is theirs are the ones
most likely to see their comic struggle in heroic terms.
By play's end, however, most are cured of their myOpia
and accept their places in the cycle of life, within
which the individual's petty struggle is but a small part.

Moliere's comic heroes, on the other hand,
never seem to quite understand the comic nature of the
life Of which they are a part. Ramon Fernandez notes
this very nature of the comic character's relationship

to the world around him:

130

The comic character lives a life without measure,
without suppleness, without shadings, wholly engrossed
in himself and his petty level of existence. His
isolation results, on the one hand, from his refusal
to adapt to life and to accept the language of a
common understanding, and on the other, from his
total concern--as though bewitched--with the satis-
faction of his desire, to the exclusion of everything
else. . . . Their [the comic character's] perception
of themselves and of others never coincides with that
of the spectator. . . . In order to understand the
spirit of comedy, one must distinguish between prag-
matic reason and ideal reason. Pragmatic reason is
concerned with knowing the world as it is, with all
its densities and incoherences. Ideal reason seeks
to achieve a harmony between the world and all its
norms, among which unity is on the highest level.

The need to unify the world, and in consequence, to
find its innermost movement, is the very essence of
ideal reason. The theme of the comic spirit is
precisely the impossibility of this unification.

The comic vision of the world amounts to saying:

"The world is false and absurd and is therefore
incompatible with reason." . . . Molieresque reason,
in essence, is the lucid acceptance, whenever pos-
sible, of things as they are, which necessarily
implies weak character. 1

Shakespeare's players may learn about the nature
of life in the comic world, but Moliere's comic heroes,
on the other hand, never seem to quite understand the
comic nature of the life of which they are a part. Orgon
may be cured of his fixity, of his passion for Tartuffe,
but he doesn't seem to see the irrationality in the life
which is his. Marianne never seems to realize that her
passion for Valere is not really the sort of thing one
dies for. And Sganerelle, the wood-cutter turned doctor,
is still convinced at play's end that this is a very
serious business in which he is involved. Perhaps it

is this unresolved sense of high seriousness in a

131

world in which such seriousness is out of place that
marks the comic hero of Moliere and differentiates him
from Shakespeare's comic player. The Moliere comic
player may be cured of his fixity, as is Orgon, but he
never comes to a full understanding of the irrational

nature of life in the comic world.

The Human Being Beneath the Mask

 

Beneath the fixity of character which we see in
the Moliere comic world, there is a human dimension.
Behind the “mask" we can glimpse the human being who
has two very human needs. The first is for control, for
power, for mastery. And the second is for love--for
affection and human understanding.

Like Leontes and Ferdinand in Shakespeare's
comedies, the Moliere comic hero believes fiercely that
he is in control of his little world--his family, his
salon, his comedy troupe. He is convinced that he knows
all that is happening, and that he can control all that
occurs. He feels that his future is in his own hands,
and he believes himself to be a figure of power. Thus
Argan, who believes himself in control of his household,
remains supremely ignorant of what is happening. And
Orgon who believes he controls all finds that suddenly
he has no power.

The desire for control, for power, on the part of

the comic hero can be seen throughout the comedies. In

132

Tartuffe, for instance, one of the key words is "le
maitre" for it is the role of master for which both
Orgon and Tartuffe struggle. Each is fighting for con-
trol over the household--not only over each other, but
over the unruly children and servants who are a part of
that household. Damis says that Tartuffe holds "un
pouvoir tyrannique" over the household (Tartuffe, I, i,
46). When Mariane resists Orgon's choice of husband for
her, he reminds her that "enfin, ma fille, il faut payer
d'obéissance" (Tartuffe, II, iii, 577). When Damis con-
fronts Orgon with testimony to Tartuffe's evil intent,
Orgon insists that the family is insulting Tartuffe as
a direct means of threatening his own power, as father,
over the household:

Oui, traitre, et des ce soir, pour vous fair enrager.

Ah, je vous brave tous, et vous ferai connaitre6

Qu' il faut qu 'On.m 'Obéisse et que je suis le maitre.

(Tartuffe, III, vi, 1,128-30)

And when Tartuffe is finally exposed as a hypocrite,
he responds with a declaration of his power:

C' est a vous d' en sortir, vous qui parlez en maitre:

La maison m 'appartient, je le ferai connaitre. . .

(Tartuffe, IV, vii, 1, 557- -58)

Orgon finally comes to his senses and admits what has
happened to him; and that admission is in terms of his

control over the household:

133

Il est vrai; mais qu'y faire? A l'orgueil de ce traitre,
De mes ressentiments je n'ai pas éte maitre.
(Tartuffe, V, iii, 1,709-10)

Dom Juan is caught up in the same desire for con-
trol. He refuses to be subject to anything--to law, to
religion, to fear. His desire for power, for control,
comes in his insistence that he is absolutely free of
everything which might control him. In this sense he is
a classic example of this type of Molieresque hero.

Alceste, on the other hand, tries subtly to control
others by insisting that they behave in the manner which
he finds acceptable. He wants Philinte to behave cooly
to his other friends, so that his friendship with Alceste
will see more significant.

Harpagon, who like Orgon, is caught up in main-
taining order in his household, struggles vainly to
remain "maitre." His main objection to the fact that
his son is in love with his own fiancée seems to be
that such a thing is a threat to his power in the home:

J'aime une fille, que je veux épouser; et le pendard
a l'insolence de l'aimer avec moi, et d'y prétendre
malgré mes orders.
(L'Avare, IV, iv, p. 297)
As he says to Cléante, "Ne suis-je ton pere? et ne me
dois-tu pas réspect!" (L'Avare, IV, iv, 296). He is
delighted when Valere suggests taking a "hard line"

approach with Elise: "J'en suis ravi, et je veux que

134

tu prénnes sur elle un pouvoir absolu" (L'Avare, I, v,
p. 258). Thus each comic hero in Moliere's plays seems
caught up in a desire to be in charge, to have power, to
be able to control the small world of which he is a part.
And each, throughout the comedies, becomes an example
of the minimal control that man has over his life.
The second need which the comic character has,
which can be glimpsed through the mask which he wears,
is the need for love, for affection. This need exhibits
itself in many ways--the desire for respect, for adulation,
for compliments, for affection, for friendship, for sexual
conquest, and for lasting love. It takes various forms
with various characters, emerging from beneath the char-
acter's stubborn insistence that he cares for no one,
that society is corrupt, that he feels no human tenderness.
Despite Orgon's attempts to be hard-hearted, he
is touched by Mariane's pleas. We note, too, that what
finally forces him to come out of hiding, to confront
the hypocrite, is Tartuffe's statement about him, that,
Qu'est-il besoin pour lui de soin que vous prenez?
C'est un homme, entre nous, a mener par le nez;
De tous nos entretiens il est pour faire gloire,
Et je l'ai mis au point de voir tout sans rien
crOIre.
(Tartuffe, IV, vi, 1,523-26)
It is only when Tartuffe boasts that he doesn't really

care about Orgon, but considers him someone to be duped,

135

that Orgon comes out of hiding. It is his realization
that he is not loved by his friend which jolts Orgon into
action.

And despite his insistence that he will be a her-
mit, Alceste really seems to yearn for the love and
acceptance of others. When he berates Philante for his
flattery of others, he is really admitting that when
Philinte flatters others, he calls into question his
affection for Alceste. Alceste is threatened by the
possibility that mi§_friendship is, too, a pretense.
Alceste, the very man who says he hates human society,
wants to be liked. In fact, his main problem with
Célimene, is that as the coquette shares her attention
with a number of men, Alceste is increasingly unable to
believe that she really loves him--despite her protes-
tations (which we can believe) that she cares about him
more than the others.

From time to time, the mask of the misanthrOpe,
the anti-social misfit, slips to reveal the real Alceste
behind--the powerless human being who is miserable
because he is in love with a coquette. His love for
Célimene is beyond his control and he realizes it:

Je confesse mon foible, elle a l'art de me plaire:
J'ai beau voir ses défauts, et j'ai beau l'en blamer,
En dépit qu'on en ait, elle se fait aimer.

(Le Misanthrope, I, i, 230-
3'2)

 

136‘

Part of Alceste's need for love is a desire to control

others. He says of his love for Célimene:

C'est qu'un coeur bien atteint veut qu'on soit tout
a lui,
Et je ne viens ici qu'a dessein de lui dire
Tout ce que la-dessus ma passion m'inspire.
(Le Misanthrope, I, i,
240-42)

 

Unfortunately, the very fixity, of which Alceste
is unable to divest himself, comes in conflict with his
love for Céliméne. It is obvious that the young girl has
not ruled him out completely as a suitor, but she is
certainly not interested enough to forsake society and
take up hermitage in the desert as Alceste demands.

As the play proceeds, Alceste's human needs con-
tinue to come in conflict with his fixity of character.
Despite his insistence on truth at all costs, when that
truth is about Célimene, he prefers not to hear it.

When Arsinoé tells him the truth about his beloved, he
replies,
Cela se peut, Madame: on ne voit pas les coeurs;
Mais votre charité se seroit bien passée
De jeter dans le mien une telle pensée.

(Le Misanthrope, III, v,
II6-I8Y

 

He begs Célimene for any explanation, true or not, for

the suspicious letter:

137

De grace, montrez-moi, je serai satisfait,

Qu-on peut pour une femme expliquer ce billet.
(Le Misanthrgpe, IV, iii,
IT363-64)

 

Throughout the play Alceste's insistence that he will
leave society is coupled with his frantic efforts to find
acceptance and affection in that society. He is the
misanthrope who wants love and affection.

Harpagon, too, looks for human affection. He is
delighted that Froisine has found someone who loves him--
and in a scene much like that in which Malvolio is gulled

in Twelfth Night, he vows to be that very perfect lover

 

which Froisine assures him will be cherished by the yOung
Mariane. It is the same motivation which causes Harpagon
to urge Maitre Jacques to tell him what people think of
him. Obviously, Harpagon believes that the news will be
good, that he will find that others are fond of him.
Instead, when the faithful servant tells him the truth,
he loses his temper and beats the man for his honesty.

we remember, too, the scene in which Valere gives away
Harpagon's ring to Mariane, while the father, speechless,
is unable to stop what is happening. Were Harpagon the
completely unfeeling miser, he would have taken back the
ring. Instead he allows the girl to keep it. It is
obvious that his desire to be loved is in conflict with

his monomaniacal avarice.

138

With Dom Juan, the impetus for love, for respect,
is difficult to analyze. One could say that his uncon-
trollable desire for conquests stems from a desire to both
love and control others. And one could suspect that his
gentle treatment of Dom Carlos stems from a desire to
retain the reSpect of the other man.

For most of the characters in Moliere's comic
world the mask, the fixity of character, comes in conflict
with human needs. The rigidity which initially seemed to
guarantee the comic character both the control and
affection which he desired, begins to conflict with
those needs. It drives people away from the comic char-
acter. It renders him powerless. Thus the end of many
of the comedies is marked by a loss of power, or the
realization of his powerlessness by a character who
believed himself to be in control. Often the very
marriages which.mark the formation of a new social and
familial order emphasize that loss of control. And
usually the character is "cured" and drops his mask--
as does Orgon--or is forced by the actions of Others
to assume it even more tightly, with even greater
rigidity--as is Harpagon.

Thus Valere, who initially believed that his
role as servant in Harpagon's house would give him a
better chance of winning_Elise's hand, finds that he is

instead witness to her bethrothal to Tartuffe. And

139

Harpagon who seemed to feel that his parsimonious
behavior would guarantee him both control over his
household and a thrifty wife, in the end has neither.
Orgon, who in his fixity of approach seemed to have

found a means of keeping his household in line, as well
as a means of earning the enduring friendship of Tar-
tuffe, in the end finds that he has neither of the things
he desired. Alceste, whose demand for truth and for life
apart from society, seems to have promised him faithful
friends and the love and control of Célimene, in the

end finds that his fixity affords him none of these
things. And Dom Juan, whose repetitious skirt-chasing,
coupled with the hypocrite's pretense of a religious
life, see to have promised him impunity and power, is
destroyed.

So comic man, who has assumed a mask in order to
fill his human needs for power and love (although the
assumption of the mask may have been unconscious or
involuntary), finds in the end that the mask conflicts
with those human needs, that it frustrates them. The
mask, the fixity of character, which the Moliere comic
hero exhibits, seems to suggest the tension between;
appearance and reality, truth and the lie, illusion
and the real world, the facade and the human being
beneath it. And while in the Shakespearian comic world

such fixity of character and its attendant "cure" is

140

concerned with man's relationship to his future, to his
fortune, in Moliere's comic world that fixity points to

the tension between the illusion and reality.

The Mask and Its Variations

 

Now we shall turn to that mask which suggests the
tension between reality and illusion. What form does it
take? What effect does it have on the comic character?
In Moliere's plays the mask appears in many forms and
is seen on all levels of character development. The
comic lead usually displays some sort of fixity; but
so do the servants. One of the more common types of
"mask" is that of the "role," of the identity willingly
assumed.

The role is a mask which is assumed as part of a
"play," an intrigue. Just as Viola plays the role of
Cesario in order to hide her time, so Elmire plays the
"wanton" to catch Tartuffe. Argan feigns death to see
how much his family loves him. Valere plays the role of
household servant to be near Elise. Sometimes the char-
acter must accept the role in order to survive, as
Sganerelle of E2 Médecin Malgré Egi must. At other
times, he must accept the role to satisfy his monomania,
as Jupiter of Amphitryon or Dom Juan. Often it is
assumed in order to attain something, as in the case

of £2 Médecin Volant or to avoid something, as in the

 

case of Sosie of Amphitryon. Sometimes the character

141

is forced into the role, as is Sganerelle of £3 Médecin
Malgré Lui and other times he accepts it willingly, as
does Argan.

In most cases, as we noted above, the character
who assumes the role, who puts on the mask of another
role, begins to feel uncomfortable. As with Viola of
Twelfth Night or Rosalind of Ag Ygg_§ikg £3, the mask
conflicts with human needs--as if the comic character's
nose itched and he had to remove the mask in order to

scratch it. Thus Cléante in §g_Malade Imaginaire assumes

 

the role of "apothicaire" in order to see his beloved,
and finds himself trapped behind the mask and a witness
to her wooing by another man. Argan willingly agrees
to feign death because he is sure it will prove his wife
loves him. But instead he discovers the truth about
himself and her hatred of him. These are all assumed
roles, masks consciously donned, which make the char-
acters increasingly uncomfortable, but which they wear
until the truth is out.

The second kind of mask is that of hypocrisy.
This is a mask taken consciously by the character as a
means Of reconciling his own needs with the demands of
society. Both Dom Juan and Tartuffe are hypocrites,
and their masks are much like the facial fixity of those
who play roles. Tartuffe, like Cléante, finds that his

mask conflicts with his human needs, and thus it begins

142

to slip. Dom Juan takes up his mask of hypocrisy to
gain impunity for his activities, but is punished none-
theless. Both assume the mask as a means of doing what
they wish with impunity.

The third kind of mask, unlike the first two
kinds, is an unconscious mask, one which is so much a
part of the character that he perceives it as his
identity. This mask is the facade of fixity, of
extremism, of single-mindedness. These characters,
among whom are Géronte and Pandolphe, have not yet
become monomaniacs, but they are certainly well on the
way. This type of character is especially visible in
the early comedies and the farces. He is seen in the
strict father, the Old man stubbornly insistent on
marrying, the jealous husband, the infatuated youth,
the affected woman. This mask also seems to guarantee
the comic character love and control, but in the end*
comes in conflict with both of these needs.

We see this kind of fixity in the young lovers
of the plays we have looked at--in Valere and Elise,
in Cléante and Mariane. We see the same fixity in the
youthful impetuosity of Damis and the continual state
of fright of Sganerelle. This character is much like
the monomaniac, but lacks the total rigidity of that
type of character. He is the monomaniac in his forma-

tive stages.

143

The fourth kind of mask is the one for which
Moliere is justly famous: the monomaniac. The mono-
maniac has a single, absolutely involuntary mask. He
is almost totally motivated by a single idiosyncrasy:
for Orgon his religious devotion to Tartuffe, for Argan
his reverence for medicine, for M. Jourdain, his desire
to be a gentleman. Because of this extremism, this
absolute fixity, such a character ignores human emotion,
social dictates, manners, custom--all. He is absolute
for a single value. He is like Alceste, absolute for
truth, or Harpagon, absolute for money. But occasionally,
the mask of even the monomaniac slips, and we see for a
second, the human being behind the rigid facade. We see
Alceste's desire to know with certainty that he is loved,
Harpagon's wish to control his household. Like the other
masked characters, the monomaniac usually seeks a combi-
nation of love and power. Also, like them, his mask

conflicts with his needs.

The Nature of the Play

 

The importance which Moliere's comedies afford to
the mask, or fixity of character, suggests much about
his comic world. The mask speaks for the comedies'
concern with man's relationship to reality. It gives
man a means of avoiding reality or seeming to change

that reality. It is the mask, too, which leads one to

144

a consideration of the nature of the theatre, of the
play as defined through the comedies.

If it is eyes and dreams and visions in Shake-
speare's comic world which suggest the nature of the
play and its relationship to the power of the imagination,
it is the mask of Moliere which speaks for that same
concern in his comic world. Like Shakespeare, Moliere
makes good use of the "play within a play." Elmire
sets the scene for the inner play with which she catches
Tartuffe. This "play" is a means of revealing truth,
of curing Orgon's error. Cléante plays the role of the
dutiful son to his prospective step-mother in order to
tell her the truth about his feelings for her. Here the
play is a means of telling the truth with impunity.
Philinte likens Alceste's actions to a comedy:

Le monde par vos soins ne se changers pas;

Et puisque la franchise a pour vous tant d'appas,

Je vous dirai tout franc que cette maladie,

Partout ou vous allez, donne la comedié,

Et qu'un si grand courroux contre les moeurs du temps
Vous tourne en ridicule aupres de bien des gens.

(Le Misanthrgpe, I, i,
IO3-08)

 

The endings of the interior plays, like the endings of

many of the "frame" plays are sudden, unexpected, sur-

prising. And they, like the deus ex machina endings

of the "frame" plays, suggest obliquely the real power-
lessness of the comic character. They point to the

inescapable irrationality, the unpredictability of life

145

in Moliere's comic world and to the fact that man in

no way controls the direction of his life in that world.
Thus we note in Moliére's comic world a variety

of uses for theatre. The play can reveal the truth, as

it does in Eg_Malade Imaginaire. It can cure human

 

error, as does Elmire's play in Tartuffe. It can pro-

vide a means of communicating as in §g_Medécin Malgré

 

Lui. It can speak to man through his mask, his human

irrationality, as it does in £3 Malade Imaginaire. Thus,

 

Moliere, like Shakespeare suggests that comedy is an
echo, or a mirror of human reality, by which the play-
wright can cure human error and help each of us better

understand our own roles. And if £g_Malade Imaginaire

 

and A Midsummer Night's Dream are any indication, both

 

playwrights see drama as a means of dealing with man's
irrationality.

It is £g_Malade Imaginaire which, more than any

 

other of Moliere's plays deals directly, through state-
ments in the dialogue and indirectly, through the use of
"inner plays," with the nature of theatre. People don
costumes, assume roles, and direct plays. And between
the acts of this comedy-ballet, we and the comedy's
players are presented with artistic musical and dance
interludes. The interludes, with their graceful

dancing and emphasis on love themes contrast with the
physical clumsiness of many of the comedy's characters--

especially Thomas Diaphorus who "fait toutes choses

146

de mauvaise grace et a centre-temps" (Le Malade Imagi-
naire, II, v, 800)--and underline the importance Of
love to the play's story line.

It is Argan's brother, Béralde, who in his
defense of Moliére's comedies (Argan insists that they
are an attack on the medical profession) points to both
the focus and purpose of the Moliere comedy:

Béralde: Ce que j'en dis n'est qu'entre nous, et
j'aurOIs souhaité de pouroir un peu vous tirer de
l'erreur ou vous étes, et pour vous divertir, vous
mener voir sur ce chapitre quelqu' une des comedies
de Moliere.

Argan: C'est un bon impertinent que votre Moliere
avec ses comedies, et je 1e trouve bien, plaisant
d'aller jouer d'honnétes gens comme les médecins.
Béralde: Ce ne sont point les médecins qu'il joue,
'_'_J_—_ o o .

mais 1e ridicule de la médeCIne.

(Lg_Malade Ima inaire,
III, iii, p. 26)

 

The emphasis is on the word "ridicule": Moliere
makes fun of the ridiculous in medicine, the ridiculous
in man. Béralde also suggests the role of comedy in
entertaining and in curing man of error. In the intro-
duction to the final interlude of the comedy, Angelique
asks Béralde what he is planning. His response suggests
other important functions of comedy:
Béralde: De nous divertir un peu ce soir. Les
comediens on fait un petit intermede de la
reception d'un médecin, avec des danses et de la
musique; je veux que nous en prenions ensemble le

divertissement, et que mon frere y fasse 1e premier
personnage.

147

Angélique: Mais mon oncle, il me semble que vous
vous jouez un peu beaucoup de mon pere.

Béralde: Mais, ma niece, ce n'est pas tant le jouer,
que s'accommoder a ses fantasies. Tout ceci n'est
qu'entre nous. Nous y pouvons aussi prendre
chacun un personnage, et nous donner ainsi la
comédie les uns aux autres.

(Lg.Malade Imaginaire,

III, xiv, p. 846)

 

Perhaps the suggestion is that each of us plays
a role in a comedy of our own, that each of us lives
with certain fantasies. So the theatre, which is an
entertainment and a revealer of truths, is also a means
of dealing with our human irrationalities. Perhaps
by laughing at the mask which another man wears, we
loosen for a moment, that mask, that fixity which is
our own.

The role of theatre as the healer, the cure, is

suggested by Uranie in pa Critigue HE L'Ecoles des Femmes.

 

She says:

. . . Et je trouve, pour moi, que cette comédie
seroit plutdt capable de guérir les gens que de les
rendre malades. ,

(La Critigue de L'Ecoles

see Femmes, §Eene Iii,

p. 486)

 

And she suggests, too, the basic comic situation which
Moliere uses throughout his works, that of man who,
despite numerous warnings, is unable to avoid that fate

which is his.

148

Pour moi, je trouve que la beauté du sujet de
L'Ecole des Femmes consiste dans cette confidence
perpétuelle; et ce qui me paroit assez plaisant,
c'est qu'un homme qui a de l'esprit, et qui est
averti de tout par une innocente qui est sa mai-
tresse, et par un étourdi qui est son rival, ne
puisse avec cela éviter ce qui lui arrive. ,

(Lg Critigue d3 L'Ecoles

des Femmes, scene v1,

p. 509)

 

 

Her comment confirms both the myopia and the powerlessness
which we have noted in Moliere's comic character. And
it is ironic that a play which suggests man's powerless-
ness and fixity can be at the same time a cure for the
foolishness of men, a medicine for the fixity of char-
acter which makes all human life a comic interlude.

Thus the comedy is, as it was in Shakespeare's
comic world, a mirror to our own lives, a means of
exposing our human foibles, of teaching the nature of
our existence in society, the meaning of our struggle.
In Shakespeare's comic world that "mirror" shows man as
part of a sexual cycle of life, learning to accept his
role in that cycle. In Moliere's comic world it shows
man, who believes himself powerful, confronted with his
powerlessness in a world marked by its irrationality,
its absurdity.

Related to the importance of the theatre to
Moliere's works is the tension between illusion and
reality in the comic world. We can see the same tension

in Shakespeare's comedies, in the confusion of lovers

149

in A_Midsummer Night's Dream, in the mismatching of

couples in Love's Labour's Lost, in Feste's successful

 

gulling of Malvolio in Twelfth Night, in the tension

 

between art and reality in Hermione's appearance at

the end of The Winter's Tale. In Moliere's comedies,

 

this tension is seen in the difference between what
comic man sees and what really is, in the difference
between how he sees himself and how we see him, and

in the proliferation of self-delusions, mistaken iden-
tities, confused roles.

In Tartuffe, for instance, there is a tension
between error and correction, ignorance and understanding.
The play abounds with the terms "aveuglement," "apparance,"
"vu." And the tension between appearance and reality
culminates in Orgon's argument with his mother over the
justification for his charges against Tartuffe. Madame
Pernelle insists that there must be a mistake, that
Orgon's sinful household must have turned him against
a true "dévot." Orgon, almost beside himself with the
frustration of witnessing his mother's refusal to accept
the evidence against Tartuffe shouts:

Je vous ai dit déja que j'ai vu tout moi-meme. . . .
Je vous di

Que j'ai vu de mes yeux un crime si hardi. . . .

Je l'ai vu, dis-je, vu, de mes propres yeux vu,

Ce qu'on appelle vu:
(Tartuffe, V, iii, 1,669-77)

150

The word "vu" resounds like a knell. But Madame Pernelle
refuses to hear it. The play's balance between the
forces of appearance and reality, deception and truth,

is so precise, so delicate, that not until the play's
final scene are we certain which force will triumph.
Throughout this comedy, as well as in 22E.QEEEI £2
Misanthrope, and L'Avare, we are constantly reminded

of the tension between what seems and what is, the

illusion and the reality.

The Role of the Wise Servant
The role of the clown, which was so central to

the comic world of Shakespeare, is echoed in Moliere's
comic world in the person of the wise servant, the
quick-witted slave. We recall Dorine's important role
in Orgon's household. She is the one who brings the
lovers together. It is she who first notes the threat
which Tartuffe poses to the household. It is she who
suspects his motivation. It is she who uses language
appropriate to the situation, whose common sense approach
stands in contrast to the religious and heroic pomposity
of the other characters. When Tartuffe orders her to
cover her bosom with a hanky, she retorts,

Certes je ne sais pas quelle chaleur vous monte:

Mais a convoiter, moi, je ne suis point si prompte,

Et je vous verrois nu du haut jusques en bas,

Que toute votre peau ne me tenteroir pas.
(Tartuffe, III, ii, 865-68)

151

She is reasonable, flexible, quick-thinking, practical--
all the things which Orgon is not. Like Feste, she is
the one who directs inner plays, who brings lovers
together, who helps eliminate the anti-life forces.
Sganerelle of ng_Jggm is another such servant. He
understands the motivation of his master. He can pre-
dict his every move. Despite his lack of grace, it is
he who forsees that Dom Juan will not, in the end, be
free to do as he pleases. Moliere's servant, like
Shakespeare's clown, is a teacher of truths, the one
who instructs the master in proper action, the person
whose common sense and understanding are a sharp con-
trast to the master's fixity. And often, in Moliere's
comedies, the power of the servant stands as a reminder
of the master's impotence. Moliere's servant, like
Shakespeare's clown, is usually more deft than his
master. And like the clown he teaches a prOper
attitude--though in Moliere's case that proper attitude
is an understanding of the difference between reality
and illusion, while in Shakespeare's comic world it is

an attitude toward fortune.

Love in the Comic WOrld
As in Shakespeare's comic world, love in Moliere's
comedies plays a large role in the movement, in the
impetus for order. Almost every play ends with the

marriage of young lovers, and every comedy, too, boasts

152

a love theme somewhere in its structure. Yet love is
in no way romanticized. Many of the marriages which
are presented are real battlegrounds, and where there
are not open quarrels, there is no great sense of love
or devotion either. Marriage seems, as it is part of
the over-all focus of the plays, to be an affirmation
of familial order without reference to the great passions
which might motivate that marriage. The rhetoric of
love suggests the great passions, but the reality does
not. The Moliere lovers are seldom of the Romeo and
Juliet variety. They are foolish, infatuated, scatter-
brained, verbose and irrational--but certainly not
intense. Their love seems to stand less as a great
natural force than as a visible block to the power of
one of the main characters. The irrationality Of love
also speaks to the powerlessness to which all men are
prey.

We remember that in Shakespeare's plays love is
powerful. Be it temporary and destructive, or eternal
and cleansing, it is almost always a power to reckon
with, a biological imperative. Viola, Ferdinand, Touch-
stone, Rosalind--all are in the very throes of love.

And even the passions of Angelo and Troilus, Leontes and
Posthumous suggest the power of human passion, if only
in a negative way. Love may be an irrational urge in

the plays of Shakespeare but it is nothing to scoff at.

153

Moliere's plays, however, give us a different
view of love. Love is irrational, and for those few
Older men who seem to love deeply, it is destined to
cause pain. The young lovers are foolish, infatuated,
verbose, fickle—-in a word light. Mariane and Angelique
are a far cry from Viola and Hermione. One seldom
senses any seriousness about their love, and except for
the case of Alcmene and Amphitryon, we find no hint of
great sexual passion in Moliere's lovers. Love is a
kind of youthful fixity, an irrationality of the young.

It is their monomania. And it leads to order.

 

Thus marriage, which is the final measure of the
power of love, in Moliere's comedies is a visible testi-
mony to man's lack of power--to his inability to order
things as he wishes, and to his part in the social scheme
of things. In a Shakespearian comedy, on the other hand,
marriage is an unavoidable fate which speaks first of
all for the character's inclusion in the natural sexual
cycle, and only secondarily for his powerlessness to

order life as he wishes.

Death in the Comic World
Death, like love, is a part of the comic world
of both playwrights. Hermione and Perdita both "die."
Dom Juan goes to Hell. Mariane will die rather than
marry Tartuffe. The mention of death is common through-

out the plays which we have discussed, but the import

154

of death in the Moliere comedy is vastly different from
that in Shakespeare's comic world.

Throughout the ShakeSpearian comedies the pre-
dominant view of death is that of an end to an indi-
vidual life while the cycle of which that life was a
part continues on. Thus death has meaning; it is part
of a larger panorama of human and natural life. Only
in rare cases, like that of Hector, is there a sug-
gestion that death is meaningless or irrational.

Often actual death is erased or negated through
marriage--as the death of Antigonus is erased by
Paulina's marriage to Camillo, and Mamillius' death
is negated by the inclusion of Florizel in Leontes'
family through his marriage to Perdita. Other times
"death" turns out to be a misunderstanding and is
negated by the revelation of identities. But even
when death is actual, or when it is mentioned again
and again in imagery, it remains in Shakespeare's work
a testimony to the natural cycle of which all living
things are a part.

In Moliere's plays, however, without the backdrop
Of natural growth and cosmic cycles, death is only a
threat, a trick, a game, a burlesque. Certainly Tar-
tuffe will not die for his love of Elmire. Argan's
death is only a trick which he plays on his family.

Dom Juan's death is a sudden end to his insistence on

155

his freedom. Death in the Moliere comic world is

sudden and arbitrary, an illusion or a joke, but always
a testimony to the basic irrationality of all life.

And in this world, to threaten death is a heroic gesture
in a comic universe.

Perhaps, then, the difference between the view
of death of the two playwrights is related to another
difference between their views of the world. They seem
to have a different perspective on man's struggle.
Shakespearian comedy defines man's relationship to
his fortune; it suggests his proper behavior toward
that which time brings him. Each comic character learns
or fails to learn about the nature of that fortune.
Orsino, Leontes, Prospero, Ferdinand--all learn their
prOper roles. And Feste, Touchstone and Viola are the
teachers of that lesson. But in Moliere's comedies,
man is defined in relation to a present reality. The
comic character struggles to understand and deal with
the world around him: Amphitryon, Harpagon and Argan
all try to deal appropriately with what they perceive
to be the reality of their world. They are concerned
with what is presently happening to them. By contrast,
Orsino and Ferdinand are learning to deal with fortune,

with what time brings in the future.

NOTES-~C HAPTER IV

1For a further discussion of the contrast
between comic man's view of himself and our view of
him, see the section which follows entitled "The Hero
as Unique," IV, p. 120.

2R. Jouanny, ed., Oeuvres Completes; Moliere
(Paris: Garnier Fréres, 1962), p. 935, note 986.

 

3For a further discussion of the role of the

servant in Moliere and Shakespeare's comedies, see the
section below entitled "The Role of the Wise Servant,"
IV, p. 150.

4AMidsummer Night's Dream, Love's Labour's
Lost, Twelfth Night and The Wifiter's Tale aIl show
characters who gain understafiding throughout the play,
who better understand the reality of what is happening.
But in the case of Shakespearian comedy, this under-
standing seems always related to their understanding
of their fortune, of their relation to time and what
it brings.

 

 

 

 

5Gustave Lanson, in his work on Moliere and farce,
outlines the nature and source of the vision of rigidity
in Moliere's comic characters.

6Quotations from Moliere's plays are taken from
the Garnier Edition of Oeuvres Completes; Moliere, ed.
by R. Jouanny (Paris: Garnier Freres,1962); quotations
indicate act, scene and line or page number as appropriate.

 

7For some excellent ideas on Moliere's bourgeois
character see Lionel Gossoman's article "The Comic Hero
and his Idols," and Paul Benichou's "The Anti-Bourgeois."

156

157

8Alfred Simon, in "The Elementary Rites of

Moliere's Comedy," indicates the debt which Moliere, in
his use of the "mask" owes to farce, and also points

to the tension between the mask and the human face to
which we have alluded.

9w. G. Moore, in his article "Speech" from

Moliere: A Collection of Critical Essays, has some
excellent ideas on the nature of language in the Moliere
comedy.

10Milton Crane's study on the use of prose in
Shakespeare's plays is a good source of information
for people interested in the matter of language in the
comedies.

11Ramon Fernandez, "The Comedy of Will," in

Moliere: A Collection of Critical Essays, ed. by
Jacques GuiCharnaudITEngIEwood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice-
Hall, 1964), pp. 50-52.

CHAPTER V

CONCLUSION

We have, then, provided a means for comparing
the comic works of Moliere and Shakespeare. We have
traced the outlines of the comic world of Shakespeare
through a detailed analysis of four of his major comedies.
We have outlined that comic world. And we have compared
that world with the comic world developed through Moliere's
plays. We have found that some elements which initially
seemed similar (the characters of Shylock and Harpagon,
for instance) in the end suggested contrasts in the comic
world. And other points which would not have seemed
comparable at first (the image of the dream and that of
the mask) suggested points of similarity.

Our conclusions have increased our understanding
of the two playwrights' works. Shakespeare's comic world
rather than differing from that of Moliere's goes beyond
it. The Shakespearian focus includes, but moves beyond,
the intimate social group of Moliere's comic world. It
includes not only the family, which was often Moliere's

focus, but a vast natural and political universe as well.

158

159

Shakespeare's comic characters travel throughout that
universe in search of their fortunes, while Moliere's
comic heroes remain within a closed setting trying,
through a rigidity of approach to fend off those forces
for change which their society forces upon them.

The Shakespearian setting, which alternates
between urban and rural settings, suggests the tensions
and dualities of the comic world. The Moliere setting,
on the other hand, is usually a backdrop to the various
social groups who wander through Moliere's intimate comic
world. Only as it is limited by the four walls of a
single room, suggesting thus the limitations of man's
freedom, does the Moliere setting approach the importance
which the Shakespearian setting has to the movement of
the comedy as a whole.

In both comic worlds, the movement of life is
from disorder and separation to order and union. In
Shakespeare's comic world this movement proceeds on
many levels: social, political and natural. In
Moliere's comic world, however, the movement is social
only, and lacks the actual physical and geographical
movement which we find in Shakespeare's world. In both
worlds the play ends with marriage and union and in both
worlds marriage seems to represent order.

In Shakespeare's comic world, the return to

order is marked by some sort of celebration--a joyous

160

affirmation of life itself. The return to order is a
logical conclusion to the movement of the comedy as a
whole and suggests man's role in a sexual, seasonal
cycle of life. In Moliere's comic world, however, the
return to order, coming as it does so suddenly, seems
to speak for the very irrationality, the absurdity of
life. Thus this return to order is less a matter for
celebration than for a sense of measured joy, a feeling
of relief that the blocks to order are removed.

The character of fixity who appears in.many
variations in Moliere's comic world, is seen as well in
Shakespeare's comic universe. In Shakespeare's comedies,
however, the character of fixity is not so unswervingly
the center of attention as he is in Moliere's comic
world. Moliere focuses on the character of fixity as
he is a block to order, while Shakespeare focuses on
the impetus for order as it encounters blocks to ful-
fillment.

Both playwrights use the parallels between
master and servant to suggest the universality of the
human situation. And both see the servant or the slave,
as the wiseman, the teacher of truths, the one who
returns the world to order. The servant girl of
Moliere's comic world and the clown Of Shakespeare's
comic universe are brother and sister. For each exempli-

fies a common-sense, flexible attitude toward life,

161

an understanding of the proper, natural way to live in
the comic universe. The pragmatism and common sense
approach which they exemplify stands in contrast to
their master who takes himself much too seriously and
who refuses to accept life as it is.

In both comic worlds, the nature of the play
itself is of major importance. Both suggest the .
tension between the play which deludes and the play
which reveals truth, between the mask which covers the
truth and the mask which allows man to speak the truth.
Both suggest that theatre is at once an entertainment
and a lesson, a dream and a cure for man's irrationality.
And both suggest that the theatre holds a mirror to the
audience, teaching each of us important truths about
the nature of our existence. In both comic worlds this
is accomplished through the use of the play within a
play, through the development of inner "scenes," the
donning of costumes, and the assuming of roles.

Both comic worlds place a major emphasis on
love. In both there is a tension between the rhetoric
of love and the reality of love. Shakespeare's comic
world sees the tension between the rationality with
which people think they chose the object of their
affection, and the real irrationality of their passions.
But love, in the Shakespearian world, is a powerful

force. Moliere's comic world suggests the tension

162

between the heroic rhetoric of love, between its tragic-
heroic potential, and its actual petty reality. Love in
Moliere's world, while a power for order, is more of a
curse than a blessing, more of a threat to man's power
than an earth-shaking passion.

And death, which in Shakespeare's works, suggests
the end to the individual life while it affirms the role
Of the individual existence as part of a seasonal cycle
of life, is in the Moliere comic world an irrationality
which suggests in the most graphic terms, the absurdity
of life. It is, too, like love, a suggestion of the
tension between the heroic nature of life as man sees
it, and its comic absurdity as it is actually lived.

Our comparison of the comic worlds of Shakespeare
and Moliere as Offered the opportunity to look at the
works of both playwrights in their entirety, and to
stress how each element of the comedy contributes to a
consistent whole. As we have looked at the complete
works of each man, the elements of each of those works
have begun to take on a greater meaning, to become more
obviously part of a pattern, of a consistent view of the
comic world. And our comparison of their comic worlds
has suggested many important similarities as well as
some significant differences in those worlds.

When such a study is done honestly, without

attempting to draw unnatural comparisons, but simply

163

remaining open to those points of comparison which are
suggested by a careful reading of the texts, our under-
standing of the two playwrights is enhanced. It is such
a study which we have attempted here.

This study suggests many directions for further
exploration. One might continue with a discussion of
how the various traditions from which the two playwrights
issue effect the similarities and differences in their
comic worlds. Or one might take a single element--per-
haps the concept of the theatre or the use of language--
and compare it at greater length.

But for now, our task is completed. We have
sketched the comic worlds of the two playwrights and
compared those two worlds. We have developed an approach
for teaching the two playwrights as part of a Single
college course, an approach which might well be extended
to other courses which present two playwrights at once.
And we have gone beyond a simple comparison of simi-
larities of character or of incident, to provide a
meaningful basis for comparison Of some of the more

profound aspects of the two playwrights' comic works.

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