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STUDIES IN SHAKESPEARES
CRITICAL APPROACHES TO SHAKESPEARE: SOME INITIAL OBSERVATIONS
[This document has been prepared by Ian
Johnston for students of English 366 at Malaspina University-College (now
Vancouver Island University). It is in the public domain, released May, 1999.]
[This text was last revised on November 19,
2001]
INTRODUCTION
An earlier introductory
note to some basic principles of literary interpretation (“On Scholarship and Literary
Interpretation”), stressed that literary interpretation or literary criticism
is, in many ways, an anarchic conversational activity with the practical purpose
of enriching our shared understanding of a particular text. The value of any
particular interpretative observations, or of a methodology upon which those
observations are based, is judged by the results, as adjudicated by a group of
intelligent conversationalists who have read and thought about the text under
discussion. Hence, there is no one privileged way of organizing and presenting
one's views. As that previous note mentioned, there are some basic rules about
how the conversation should proceed, but these do not require a shared adherence
to a single way of reading a text. In fact, the conversational basis for really
useful literary interpretation finds its justification in the contrast between
different ways of reading a text or some portion of it, because conversation is
the best forum in which such differences confront each other and the
participants profit from a discussion of the results of such different readings.
However, in spite of the above remarks, there are some
favorite ways of reading fictions, each of which stresses certain elements of
the work over others. These may be called, I suppose, common approaches to or
entries into the works, preferred ways of making contact with something that is
going on in the text, so as to organize one’s comments and get the
interpretative conversation going. As we shall see, these methods are not
mutually exclusive, although with some works one or more may be more practically
useful than another.
The purpose of this document is to review a few of the
more common of these critical approaches to Shakespeare's plays. This
introductory comment should help students reflect upon their own critical
practices as they read, discuss, and write about Shakespeare's texts. This is
important, because one of the great values of studying Shakespeare is that such
an endeavour can lead to a much wider and fuller understanding, not just of the
works themselves, but of literary interpretation generally. Such an
understanding becomes all the more likely if students are prepared at times to
experiment with new ways of reading a text, leaving behind for a moment their
preferred methods and seeing how different approaches might work.
THE CHALLENGE OF SHAKESPEARE'S WORK
Shakespeare's work offers an
extraordinarily rich resource for the literary interpreter because it includes
such a huge variety, from lyric and narrative poetry to many different forms of
poetic drama. Some of the plays seem deeply rooted in specific political
realities, while others are clearly much closer to romance, science fiction, or
pastoral. The works include scores of complex characters, major and minor, whose
psychological make-up invites analysis, but they also explore complex social,
political, and moral ideas. Sometimes these ideas are very explicitly present,
almost in allegorical form (for example, the witches in Macbeth or Queen
Margaret in Richard III), at other times they are more deeply buried in the
actions and decisions of particular characters. Moreover, the texts present
these elements in an amazingly rich poetic style, full of evocative metaphors.
Here indeed is God's plenty.
As a preliminary caution, we need to remind ourselves
that when we are reading Shakespeare’s plays all we have are the words the
different characters utter (along with some minimally useful stage directions)
and the actions they carry out. We have no reliable notion in most cases of the
tone of voice the character uses, any gestures or movements which might
accompany these words, and no clear idea in most instances whether or not the
character really means what he or she says. Generally, we have no direct
information about what characters look like, how old they are, or how they move.
Unlike, say, a novel in which there is often an omniscient author reliably to
inform us of a character’s intentions, tone, appearance, inner thoughts, and so
on, a Shakespeare script leaves an enormous amount up to us. Hence, it will not
be uncommon for us to find widely different possibilities in a single person or
speech (depending upon how we see and hear the character in action). For
example, the age difference between Hamlet’s father and mother, if it is really
significant (of the same magnitude as the age difference between Juliet’s
parents), may prompt certain interpretative possibilities which are far less
likely if we see the two of them as roughly the same age.
That is one reason (by no means the only one) why we
must reject the notion that there is one authoritative way to read a particular
work. A dramatic script by Shakespeare has no single determinate meaning.
Rather, it contains a range of possible interpretative meanings. Our job as
interpreters is to explore some of these possibilities, to evaluate them with
respect to each other, and, if possible, to come to a sense of some of the major
alternatives. This process will require the ability, one mark of a growing
sophistication in the literary interpreter, to hold simultaneously in one’s
imagination different possibilities (even contradictory options), while at the
same time remaining open to other options.
One serious limitation of a college course in
Shakespeare is that we do not have much opportunity to see many productions of
specific works. While reading Shakespeare can obviously be an enormously
delightful and rewarding experience, we need to remember that he did not write
to be read, but to be performed (that is, to be seen and heard). This point is
particularly important to recall if we drift into the habit of reading these
plays as if they were novels. For we may then find ourselves objecting to
something which we would hardly notice (or would accept readily enough) in a
fine production (e.g., some of the coincidences on which much comic actions
depends, the time frame in Othello or Hamlet, sudden changes of mind, like Lady
Anne's in Richard III, and so on). Plays tend to present a vision of reality far
less immediately naturalistic than traditional novels, simply because an
audience at a play brings a set of evaluative criteria different from the ones
people use when reading naturalistic fiction in the solitude of their domestic
dens (more about this later).
THE APPROACH THROUGH CHARACTER ANALYSIS
The most obvious way to begin
an interpretation of a Shakespearean play (and also the most popular) is by
evaluating the characters. Any play involves characters in a particular setting,
doing particular things. The plot will develop a conflict, which will usually
inflict pain or distress on some people (comically or otherwise), and will lead
to a final resolution of sorts in which some characters may die or be punished
severely, while others survive or triumph or get substantially rewarded. Hence,
one clear entry into such a work is to put the characters on trial: Who is good?
Who is bad? Why do certain people act in certain ways? Do any of the characters
change? Where are my sympathies as I make my way through this play? As an
interpreter, I am, in essence, the judge, and how shall I apportion my verdicts?
Interpreting a play by analyzing the characters in it,
judging them, and coming to some final evaluation of them is a natural way to
approach Shakespeare for three main reasons. The first is that these are plays,
and they inevitably feature active characters more or less recognizably like
people around us. That, indeed, is the chief appeal of the genre. So it is
entirely natural to treat the play as we treat life itself, by responding to the
people we see, the actions they carry out, the words they use, and the decisions
they make. On the basis of these observations we will come to some conclusions
about their characters and will discuss the play in those terms. The second
reason is that Shakespeare is famous, more than anything else, for his
astonishing ability to create interesting, complex, and natural characters.
Unlike many other dramatists whose characters do not invite very complex
investigation (e.g., many writers of situation comedies who rely upon stock
characters very similar to those in other plays), Shakespeare has the ability to
fill a play with scores of characters, each of whom talks in a language and acts
in a way which indicates a sharply focused individual personality with a very
particular response to experience. Hence, it is, once again, natural to treat
them as fully realized people whose conduct (amusing or not) requires an
evaluative judgment.
Then, too, the fact that we are dealing with plays
always keeps the approach through character analysis alive, because theatre
productions depend upon individual actors, and individual actors need to reflect
upon the motivations for their characters. They have to, in a sense, discover
their human qualities and become the stage people whose lives they enact. Thus,
the dramatic tradition of continuing to mount Shakespeare productions ensures
that the analysis of character will remain a powerful force in the
interpretation of the plays.
The third major reason why character analysis is an
important approach to Shakespeare's plays is (as Harold Bloom has repeatedly
pointed out) that Shakespeare's characters are often intrigued or puzzled by
their own characters. That is, they make their characters part of the dramatic
“problem” of the fiction we are exploring. When, for example, Hamlet or Macbeth
or Othello starts to wrestle with his own character, trying to understand his
own motivation, feelings, and actions, that moment places the nature of the
character as an essential element in the work (in a way that is markedly
different from texts in which a character's personality does not create
particular problems for him). In other words, the plays themselves put character
analysis directly on the table.
The approach to a Shakespeare play which places the
analysis of character at the centre of the process was particularly strong in
the nineteenth century, and the literary interpretations from that period often
illustrate the strengths and weaknesses of that approach. The great value of
character analysis is that it always reminds us that, whatever else we may want
to talk of, the central concern is particular human beings. Whatever else King
Lear is about, it is centrally about a suffering old man, whose unique character
brings upon him almost unimaginable suffering. Whatever we make of Hamlet, we
cannot forget that the people in the play drive Ophelia insane and lead her to
suicide, and that she is an innocent and loving young woman. Focusing upon the
characters in the play always keeps us in touch with a major reason why
Shakespeare matters--his works constantly illuminate human nature in all sorts
of moving ways.
That said, however, treating the interpretation of a
play as primarily (or exclusively) a matter of evaluating character can create
problems, particularly if we get into the habit of thinking that that is all
there is that matters in the text. One major problem, of course, is that in many
instances we do not know enough about a character to arrive at a sufficiently
full understanding of his or her personality. We know almost nothing of Hamlet's
childhood, or Bolingbroke's inner thoughts, or Lady Macbeth's sexuality. Thus,
key elements required in any full character analysis are missing. Of course, we
can speculate on such matters (we have to if we want to arrive at a full
understanding of the personality), but such speculations can often end up in
inconclusive and often trivial debates, because there is not enough evidence. So
we can find criticism by the analysis of character degenerating into
explorations of the girlhood of Shakespeare’s heroines, endless arguments about
whether or not the Macbeths had any children, how old Hamlet might be or whether
he is really insane or not, whether Falstaff is a coward or not, how black
Othello really is, or what Antony and Cleopatra really talk about when they are
alone together.
A second problem which can arise by an overemphasis on
character analysis is that we may forget that Shakespeare's characters, as well
as being keenly drawn individuals, also have social and family positions. They
are kings, sisters, daughters, servants, widows, generals, fools, dukes,
property owners, workers, and so on. So they carry with them, not merely their
individual personalities, but a host of social and political attitudes,
commitments, and responsibilities, and they are, to some extent, representatives
of social, political, and gender types. Hence, their interactions are more than
just clashes of particular personalities.
THE APPROACH THROUGH THEMATIC
ANALYSIS
That last point about how dramatic characters are
also, to some extent, representatives of social types is a reminder that their
dramatic impact includes more than their unique personalities. For they bring
with them, for example, political and gender meanings which inevitably have a
bearing on the impact of a play and make it, not just a clash of people, but a
clash of or an exploration of ideas or themes which the characters and their
actions develop, explore, qualify, or undermine. This fact gives rise to
thematic analysis.
A thematic approach to Shakespeare's work will tend to
focus first on some guiding idea which a character in action either expresses
overtly or exemplifies. For example, Richard II is not simply a particular
person; he is also a king. That gives him particular social and political power
and responsibilities. When Bolingbroke rebels against Richard, the action
immediately calls attention to an important idea: the tension between legitimacy
and fitness to rule or, alternatively put, the justification for usurping an
unfit but legitimate king. Richard II is, among other things, very clearly an
examination of this idea--not simply because the point is discussed in the play,
but, more importantly, because the action of the play forces us to consider this
idea from many different perspectives.
Thematic interpretation will tend to see the works
primarily as explorations of particular social, political, or moral ideas. This
does not mean that the work is of interest merely as a philosophical working out
of some issue, some rational investigation of what an idea means or where it
logically leads. What it does mean is that the thematic interpreter will tend to
call attention to some guiding idea or theme in the work and explore how the
action of the play develops our understanding of that idea (often the point will
be to complicate our understanding of an apparently simple issue, without
necessarily resolving it). Richard II does not resolve the issues surrounding
legitimacy and fitness to rule, but by the end of the play we have come to
understand many of the complexities that the issue raises (Henry IV, Part 1 does
the same with the notion of honour). We have come to this understanding, not by
being told of those complexities, but by having witnessed the consequences in
action of characters who have been caught up in a drama in which this issue is
something they have had to deal with in action. Similarly, when we follow the
sufferings of Ophelia in Hamlet, we are, to some extent, dealing with the issue
of how women are treated in Elsinore, an issue which transcends the uniqueness
of Ophelia’s character. And we can push the issue even further to argue that the
play is, in large part, about gender relations generally.
Thematic criticism is particularly useful in reminding
us that these plays are about more than the particular characters, that there
are social, political, gender, religious, and moral issues at stake and that, as
we proceed through the play, we do need to attend to how the drama is putting
pressure on our understanding of those ideas in the context established by the
play (and beyond). Macbeth, for example, is more than the story of one
particular ancient Scottish warrior-king. It is also clearly about the nature of
evil in our world, about loyalty, and other matters as well. If we fail to
attend upon these issues, because we are overly concerned with, say, Lady
Macbeth's motivation, then we are missing some essential elements in the play.
At the same time, however, thematic criticism has its
dangers, particularly if the approach becomes too ham fisted, that is, if the
interpreter simply forces onto the text the working out of a particular idea and
makes the play a relatively simple allegory. An interpreter who insists, for
example, that King Lear is only or exclusively a debate between two contrasting
views of nature has taken an important element in the play and made it the total
experience of the work, forgetting that there’s a suffering old man at the centre of the action and that that man, in all his human particularity, is our
main emotional contact with what is going on. An interpreter who insists that
Richard III is principally a confirmation of the providential vision of history
may well miss important ways in which the play may be subverting that idea or
developing alternative visions.
In other words, if the danger of character analysis is
that it can get bogged down in trivial unanswerable questions about details of
the lives of particular men and women, the danger of thematic criticism can be
that it gets crudely reductive, turning a complex work into the simple
illustration of a particular idea or dogma. This is presumably the form of
criticism practiced by many of those who would dismiss Shakespeare on the ground
that his works are patriarchal, conservative, and bourgeois (i.e., which
reinforce a narrow and unwelcome ideology).
It's true that some plays invite a strongly thematic
approach in which the characters are little more that signals for a particular
idea and their conflict is the working out or illustration of some ideological
message outside the play. Such a work of literature we call allegory. While many
of Shakespeare's works (like King Lear) have what appears to be an allegorical
framework (and can be usefully interpreted to some extent in terms of that), in
most of his plays the complexity in the characters tends to undercut any simple
allegorical approach. The one possible exception in the plays we study is The
Tempest, which, for reasons we will discuss when we get to that work, seems to
invite allegorical treatment (although there is much debate about which
allegorical treatment is most appropriate).
In some sense, interpretation which focuses on
character appeals to our desire for the unique particularity of each moment in
the play and the ways these help to define rich memorable characters;
interpretation which focuses on thematic analysis appeals to our desire for more
general coordinating issues throughout the work. There is no reason these cannot
work well together. In fact, that makes good sense. For in Shakespearean drama,
as in life, ideas and actions are constantly at work, sometimes reinforcing each
other, sometimes contrasting each other. Sometimes a simple action will
undermine a beautifully coherent idea (that happens all the time in
Shakespeare); sometimes a simple action will confirm an important human truth.
For that reason, a good deal of interpretation
involves testing possible themes against the perceived actions of the
characters. Is The Tempest really an exploration of colonialist attitudes?
That's an interesting idea. How does a close reading of the play, together with
a careful examination of the characters’ actions, confirm or repudiate that
suggestion? Is the first History Cycle calling attention to the marginalization
of women from the political process? Or does the dramatic effect of these
particular female characters challenge that idea?
Reading a number of Shakespeare's plays encourages
this often fertile union of character analysis and thematic interpretation,
because he is fond of returning to dramatic conflicts between pairs of opposite
types: the valiant warrior (Othello, Hotspur, Antony) pitted against the devious
manipulative schemer (Iago, Henry IV, Octavius); the expressive poet-prince
(Richard II, Hamlet) pitted against the shrewd political pragmatist
(Bolingbroke, Claudius); the intelligent, loving young woman (Rosalind, Viola)
having to deal with the sentimental, poetical bachelor (Orlando, Orsino), and so
on. These conflicts may present uniquely drawn characters in action, but there
are recurring thematic issues which help to coordinate all of Shakespeare's work
until it starts to become, for the avid reader, one long work, ceaselessly
exploring major issues through the experiences of unforgettable characters.
THE APPROACH THROUGH POETIC SYMBOL
Another common approach to a
particular play focuses on the imagery, either on some obviously important
symbol which recurs throughout the work or to some image pattern. Such poetic
components in the language obviously can contribute in a major way to our
understanding of what is going on. In some sense, of course, because we are
dealing with poetic drama and have only the language to examine, interpreting
both character and theme will often require detailed attention to particular
patterns of imagery, symbol, and other significant language.
For example, however we assess the character of
Hamlet, it is difficult to miss how much of his language, especially in his
soliloquies, is infused with images of death, sickness, and corrupt sexuality,
so much so that the patterns in the imagery invite us see in them a pattern in
the personality or an indication of a major thematic concern of the play, the
sickness in Elsinore, or both. Similarly, when we read Twelfth Night, we can
hardly miss the importance of money as a touchstone of character, since the
actions of giving and taking money occur so frequently. Similarly, in this play
and in many others, music functions as an important symbol against which
characters are tested.
Music, in fact, is a particularly important element to
watch for in the study of the plays. Is there any music in the play? Where does
it come from? How is it received? Does it have any transforming power? In many
of Shakespeare's plays the active power of music or its absence is a decisive
indication of the emotional health of particular people or situations (e.g., As
You Like It, Henry IV, Part 1, Twelfth Night, The Tempest,
King Lear, and so
on).
In general, approaching a play through symbolic
patterns requires more practice and confidence for most students than does
character analysis, simply because discussing nuances of motivation and feelings
of people whose actions we are witnessing is easier to carry out (or we have had
more practice at it) than attending to the more sophisticated task of responding
to the nuances in the poetic images and figures of speech. Still, it is
frequently an excellent exercise to seize upon some obvious symbolic element in
a play or some frequent or predominant image and, by attending carefully to the
pattern of that element in the work, to see how one may come to understand
things more clearly. In fact, paying close attention to the poetic imagery and
symbolism in a play is one of the best ways to develop the skills of close
reading on which the best criticism depends. This approach to a work is
particularly important when one is dealing with a specific production of one of
the plays, for the particulars of the set design and the costumes and furniture
will often (in a good production) bring important symbolic elements to bear on
our reaction to the actions we witness.
Shakespeare is famous for the extraordinary richness
and variety in his imagery, which seems to come from many different quarters
with an accurate sense of specific details of that activity (sailing, warfare,
glove making, the law, education, and so on). These have encouraged all sorts of
biographical speculations about his lost years. But there are some which are
particularly frequent and important, for example, metaphors involving clothes
(especially as they determine rank and value and a sense of identity and gender
differences) and acting (the most convenient metaphor for expressing any tension
between outer appearance and inner reality).
SOME OTHER INTERPRETATIVE
APPROACHES
There are a number of other ways of approaching an
interpretation of a Shakespeare play, but many of them tend often to involve a
good deal of material outside the text and so, for our purposes, they are less
useful. Psychoanalytic criticism, for example, sees the text as an expression of
the inner psychological problems (the neuroses) of the artist. Thus, it strives
to link details of the life with details of the work. In Shakespeare's case this
is very difficult to do, since we know virtually nothing personal about the man.
Nevertheless, with a good deal of speculation about neuroses he must have
suffered psychoanalytic interpreters have gone to work on the plays.
Alternatively, psychoanalytic criticism may direct its attention onto particular
aspects of the text (e.g., the interaction of the characters) or onto specific
themes (e.g., Oedipus Complex) explored in the work or onto certain aspects of
the language of particular psychoanalytic interest.
Mythic criticism approaches the plays with an emphasis
on the structure of the story, seeking to link it to common forms for popular
stories (archetypal plots and characters). Mythic critics often tend to stand
back from the text a good deal, less interested in the finer details and
ambiguities of the language than in the broad structural similarities between a
particular play and other works. There is thus often a tendency in mythic
criticism to eradicate (or dull) the significant particularity of a work into
order to insist upon its structural closeness to certain styles of story
telling. Mythic criticism is perhaps most frequent in interpretations of the
final plays (what some critics call the Romances), probably because these plays
seem to move away from the more naturalistic styles of earlier ones and to
involve more ritual, pageant, and common mythic symbols and motifs.
Historical criticism (as mentioned in the previous
article "On Scholarship and Literary Interpretation") generally will seek to
root the play in its historical context, explaining what goes on in the fiction
with reference to political, cultural, and biographical facts of the age in
which it was produced. Hence, it will frequently tend to make the play an
illustration of the age or limit our understanding of the play to what we can
confirm in its historical context. One particularly interesting element of
historical criticism involves comparing Shakespeare’s treatment of a story with
the same story in the source book which he used (for Shakespeare derives almost
all his plots from other books, often following the originals very closely). In
itself this may not provide much immediate interpretative assistance, but the
procedure helps to establish at least two things: first, Shakespeare's amazing
imaginative power at turning some mundane prose description (like Cleopatra on
the Nile) in the source into the most moving poetry and, second, significant
discrepancies with the source which may provide useful interpretative clues for
an understanding of the play.
No particular approach to a play has any special
privilege (as mentioned before repeatedly), but in English 366 we will be
concentrating on the first three outlined in this note, simply because those
tend to be the most immediately rewarding way (especially for relatively
inexperienced readers of Shakespeare), since they begin and end with the text
itself and do not require constant reference to theories of meaning outside the
text. Our primary task here is to increase the fluency with which we read and
interpret that text. However, it is almost certain that some of the other
interpretative methods will arise in the seminars, and we are free to explore
where those lead. In every case, we measure the value of whatever methodology is
employed by a very practical gauge: Does it enrich our understanding of what is
going on in this text or not?
THE IMPORTANCEOF IRONY AS AN INTERPRETATIVE TOOL
Whatever the particular entry
into a particular text, our major interpretative method will involve exploring
the full range of irony as we continue our examination of whatever we have
selected as a starting point. Hence, it is important to clarify somewhat the
meaning of this key interpretative term.
In common practice, the word irony is applied to some
expression or action in which there are at least two levels of meaning: the
obvious surface meaning and a second implied meaning which may be quite
different from the first. The second meaning, in other words, undermines the
first meaning or qualifies it; in some cases the second meaning may entirely
contradict the first (when that happens and both speaker and listener are aware
of the second meaning contradicting the first, we call the irony, which is very
strong and obvious, sarcasm). In a more general sense, irony can also mean
ambiguity. An ironical expression is one in which we cannot be sure precisely
what is meant because there is a range of possible meanings.
For instance in Sonnet 138, when Shakespeare writes
"Therefore I lie with her and she with me," the word lie carries an obvious
ironical sense manifested in the two possible meanings, to lie in bed with and
to tell an untruth. Which one is the correct meaning here? The obvious answer is
that they are both equally correct, and the ironical double meaning captures the
emotional paradox the speaker of the poem is experiencing, that his sexual life
with his love is based on mutual duplicity, for when they have sex together they
are deceiving each other. Earlier in the same poem the word vainly functions in
the same manner, meaning both in vain and from vanity. The double meaning
captures well the ironic tension at the heart of the speaker's feelings: he
knows his love is a self-defeating activity, but he cannot stop because his
vanity prompts him.
Irony in this sense is a vital part of most creative
writing, because it is one of the best vehicles for capturing the complex nature
of human feelings in an experience in which contradictory impulses are involved.
The ironical resonance of particular words enables to writer to express and
symbolize accurately paradoxical states of feeling. The effect is quite opposite
to the scientific use of language, where the precise clarity of all terminology
is essential to the style (and where, thus, irony is not welcome).
But irony can function in other ways apart from the
different meanings of particular words. Images and metaphors are inherently
ironic, because they evoke a range of associations. Understanding how they
function requires a close attention to the various tensions inherent in any
comparison. When Shakespeare, in an earlier sonnet, concludes the poem with the
line "Lilies that fester smell far worse than weeds," the image puts into play a
number of complex suggestions. Lilies obviously suggest purity, a dazzling
whiteness appropriate for the highest innocence, but the flower also conveys
images of death. The word "weeds" suggests something unwelcome and common, but
at the same time something vigorous and healthy. And the interplay between these
two images is made all the more complicated by the addition of the word
"festers," a word strongly suggestive of a disgusting, fatal infection
(underscored by "smells"). If, as interpreters, we want to sort out the
speaker's feelings as expressed in that line, we have to negotiate our way
through all sorts of ironic possibilities. We will hardly arrive at a single,
simple, and clear "translation" of the images. But if we share our responses, we
may clarify our understanding of the effects of the irony at work.
Such verbal ironies are compounded in drama by other
forms of irony. The most common is called dramatic irony, which occurs through
an uneven distribution of knowledge. We, as readers or spectators, often know
much more about what is going on than any of the characters. Thus, when a
character says something, the utterance will often have two levels of meaning:
what the character thinks it means and what the audience, with a fuller
understanding of the entire situation, understands it to mean. Dramatic irony
may often be funny. In fact, in many comedies much of the humour comes from what
is called an uneven distribution of information. The audience knows everything,
members of the story all know a part of the truth (and what any one particular
character may know may change in the course of the play), and a great deal of
the comic confusion will involve various misunderstandings, mistaken identities,
and so on, which arise from the incomplete distribution of information
(Shakespeare's plays involving twins are the most obvious example of this).
Often our reaction to a play depends upon this
ironical uneven distribution of information. In Richard III, for example, we
have privileged insight into Richard's intentions (he tells us what he's all
about and what he is going to do next). So we are aware that the things he says
to various other people (statements which they take as the truth) are, in fact,
lies or are true in a way which the victims do not understand. Beyond that, of
course, we also know that Richard himself is also caught in an ironic situation,
because he thinks everything will work out for him, but we know that it will
not.
The tragic effect depends upon this last form of
dramatic irony called tragic irony. This feature emerges because the readers or
the audience knows the outcome of the story (that is the reason tragedies
commonly use plots with familiar endings, like Julius Caesar or Hamlet). In the
course of the play, the tragic hero will frequently reveal his understanding of
the situation and his way of dealing with it. We constantly measure that against
our knowledge of how the story is going to end. Much of our imaginative sympathy
for Lear or Macbeth, for example, emerges from our fascination with watching
them become more and more driven towards their destructive end as the tragic
irony of their situation becomes more and more intense. Our response would be
quite different were we totally unfamiliar with the ending.
Beyond that, of course, plays are constantly requiring
the reader or the audience to reassess an earlier understanding of a character
or an issue. We see a character do or say something, and we make up our mind
about that person or issue on the basis of that incident. Then, the character
will do or say something else, and we have to reassess or qualify our earlier
judgment. Or someone else will act in a way that calls the same issue into
question, and we have to qualify our earlier assessment of that issue. Paying
close attention to a Shakespeare play requires, above everything else, a very
close attention to the way in which our powers of judgment are constantly
challenged by every event. If we use the term irony in the widest possible sense
to describe this process of adjustment and readjustment to the situations as
they unfold, then an awareness of the ironical effects of dramatic action and
language will be our most important activity. And most of our useful discussions
about a play or a part of it will focus on the extent to which we see irony at
work and how we assess that.
Shakespeare deliberately forces us to do this,
sometimes very explicitly. In 1 Henry IV, for example, many characters mention
the word honour and discuss what they mean by the word. Then, they act upon that
understanding of the word. The reader or audience is pushed and pulled through
different conceptions of the word and different actions (sometimes in the very
same scene), to the point where it is very clear that one important point of the
play is an ironic exploration of that word really means. Rarely will Shakespeare
arrive at or offer a clear and magisterial definition of a concept: he leaves
that for us to sort out. In the case of 1 Henry IV, whatever our understanding
of the word honour when we started reading the play, by the time we have
finished, we have been forced to review a wide range of possibilities (and to
experience in action the consequences of those possibilities). We are not,
however, given any final authoritative "answer" (if that is what we are looking
for).
In a similar way, a play can, in the action and
presentation, often introduce irony to undercut what seems like a firm
affirmation. This is a common feature of the endings of Shakespeare's plays. Is
the ending of The Tempest an unqualified comic celebration, or is it muted? Is
there any irony present, and, if so, how strong is it? To what extent might we
want to claim that the reconciliation achieved is fragile or illusory? Is it so
muted or undercut with irony that it registers as, in fact, a defeat? Similarly,
is the end of Macbeth or King Lear a happy triumph for the forces of good or
something more complex, shot through with ironic deflations of the reassuring
final actions? One important difference in tone between Twelfth Night and As You
Like It, for example, comes from the sense many (perhaps most) readers or
viewers get that the ending of the latter is unironically celebratory, whereas,
by contrast, the ending of the former is undershot with complex ironic resonance
which qualify the apparently "happy" comic resolution of the conflict.
In particular scenes, the staging can be a source of
complex ironies. When Hamlet lectures his mother on her morally deficient
character, the body of Polonius (whom Hamlet has just killed) is lying on the
stage throughout the scene. Shakespeare, it seems, wanted Polonius killed early
in the scene so that, when Hamlet attempts to take the moral high ground and
lecture his mother on her corrupt character, we have to match that element in
his character against the ease with which he has just killed and discarded the
father of the girl he claims to love (and the chief political figure in the
kingdom after the monarch). The presence of the dead Polonius really qualifies
our response to Hamlet's claims that he is a moral agent.
Similarly, in Henry IV, Part 1 Shakespeare
deliberately has a serious military encounter between Prince Hal and Hotspur
take place alongside a parody of that in a similar encounter between Douglas and
Falstaff. The first is full of heroic talk and brave action; the latter is full
of cowardice and evasion and humour. As audience we are forced to evaluate
military combat by the contrast between the two. This play, in particular, is
full of such ironic contrasts, as we move from the world of the court, to the
taverns, to the camp of the rebellious nobles (as we shall discuss).
Irony can be a slippery business, because once we
sense it is present, we know we are on difficult ground. How deep do the ironies
penetrate? Is there any firm ground on which we can rest an interpretation? And
in some writers, where ironies seem to be present everywhere (e.g., Montaigne),
we can often find ourselves losing confidence in the possibility of any firmly
shared meaning. One of the great problems with Hamlet may well stem from this
point: all energizing senses of goodness and sympathy seem to be qualified so
strongly and persistently with ironic counterweights, that at the end we are not
sure how to sum up what we have experienced. It is difficult, for example, in
this play not to feel some sympathy for almost every character and yet, at the
same time, to judge each character as significantly deficient in some way or
another.
Interpreting Shakespeare requires us to be alert to
the possibility of such ironic complication and to the ways it can affect our
understanding of the play. In fact, many of our discussions will focus squarely
on that issue. Is this speech or this action to be understood literally? Does
the character mean what he says? How is this action or speech qualified, or
undercut, or contradicted by other elements in the scene or in the play? How
does the presence of irony (in varying degrees) affect our response to the play?
Shakespeare's plays and poems offer a fertile ground
for the consideration of these questions, since they range from works that seem
unambiguously affirming (like, perhaps, As You Like It, and many of the sonnets)
to others which offer limited ironic possibilities (like, say, Twelfth Night),
all the way to the other end of the spectrum where some works are so pervasively
ironic that we have the greatest difficulty deciding finally what they might be
claiming, if anything, about experience (like, for example, Hamlet, All's Well
That's Ends Well, Troilus and Cressida, or Sonnet 94).
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