SHAKESPEARE'S MENTAL DEVELOPMENT OF TRAGIC STRUCTURE: 沖縄地域学リポジトリ

Title

SHAKESPEARE'S MENTAL DEVELOPMENT OF TRAGIC

_STRUCTURE

Author(s)

MIYAUCHI, BUNSHICHI

Citation

沖大論叢.人文科学・社会科学・自然科学・英語英文学 =

OKIDAI REVIEW OF ENGLISH AND GENERAL

EDUCATION, 1(1): 1-20

Issue Date

1975-03-31

URL

http://hdl.handle.net/20.500.12001/10565

SHAKESPEARE'S MENTAL DEVELOPMENT

OF TRAGIC STRUCTURE

BuNSHICHI MIYAUCHI

It is commonplace of Shakespeare's·study that his tragedy begins in a personal fault, from which men on earth could scarcely be free, if any. The tragic ef-fects, however, would be variously assessed according to whether or not the protagonists are conscious of their own flaws. Those fated ones might

scarce-ly be gifted with any ~self-knowledge at first. It is only when they are well on the way of being driven into afflictions that they could not choose but be addicted to desperate remedies. Hamlet might be the only exception to this tragic formula, for he had been equipped with an inkling of self-knowledge

competent enough to face "vicious mole of nature", as he truly says. Notwithstanding that, he was pre-cariously on the point of overlooking his own vicious mole, while he was devoted to the hidden study of King Claudius' foibles. We feel affected with irony and pity at the pangs and exasperations of those in-nocent ones, who have been shut up unaware of their

-"walled prison'; of fate almost up to the better part of the plays.

All the same, the essentials of tragedy consist in the still deeper truths of human weaknesses. Tragic characters are barely so clever as to tell good from evil, until they have been engulfed into the tragic chaos, for it might, in one sense, be argued that they are ignorant of how much flawed they might be. But in a still deeper layer of existence, men could hardly dispense with

hubPis,

the sin of self-love. It is typical of human existence to try to escape from the condemnation of his own helplessness, meaninglessness, and futility. That is, men are so grossly infatuated with the sin of pride that, when appraised by others, they would readily protect them-selves with self-centred prejudice. Those who are proud of their untainted virtues would be ready to justify themselves with silly notions that the opposed

I

are to blame, while they themselves are free from crime. In his earlier stage of tragedy, Shakespeare made facile use of such a traditional antithesis of good and evil. It will no doubt give rise to revenge tragedy. Shakespeare's proper specimen of the kind is

Titus Anif:roonicus,

a bloody play in line with Kid's

Spanish TPagedy.

Doing is sinning. The will to do consists in-trinsically in selfish motives, hence a sinful po-tential. The reaction produced thereby is followed up with further sinnings. Lear's sin of pride gives birth to downright ingratitude of his two daughters on the one hand and dumb bigotry on the part of the youngest one on the other, with the result that Lear is provoked to a still greater sin of proud abomina-tion of humanity. This is what is called chain-re-action, in which verbal plots will call for binary opp~sites as complementary aspects of a single ques-tion. Generally speaking, one view should necessarily involve its natural counterpart in the form of an op-posing view to refute it, which will be followed up with still further reactions in its wake. So great, doubtlessly, would be the pang of the tragic charac-ter that one would readily wish for him to be re-venged for his wrongs. But vengeance, which is in itself a chain-reaction, should in all probability cause endless circle of vice. Therefore it had better be dispensed with, before it is too late for the cause of the ever grander vision of humanity to be reinstated. It would naturally follow that the noble death of the protagonist as a counterbalancing measure to that of the antagonist must be the most

-courageous resort to be desired for the final break-ing-up of the vicious circle. This might be the very way how the mere story of revenge could be heightened to a sublime tragedy; Shakespeare has at last found out in this the supreme formula of tragedy, a metaphy-sical tour-de-force of character-sublimation.

To begin with, the scheme of nature ordains that polar opposites come into play to make a reality self-sufficient. Life must have its beginning and its end. Where there is love, there is hate. Man's will to do is always checked by his reason. Then, it would be advisable to see our action dichotomized in-to the agent item and the patient item. Life's drama is so to speak counterpoised with polar opposites of the plus quality and the minus quality. Shakespeare's plays in his earlier stage, whose archetypal topic is vengeance, are formulated as follows: as

Titus

Andronucus indicates, lust necessarily generates chas-tity as its negative correlate, so that both elements are set up against each other to constitute binary opposition between them. The structural mechanism or-dains that the former element is reduced by the latter through the catalyst of time.

In the ordinary kind of tragedy, however, the second item, namely, the will power as an

element to restore the lost cause, need not have so powerful an impact, for the first and the second have only to cancel each other. The tragic ef-fect in this case is commonplace, as thrillers like

Titus Andronicus

and

Richard the Third

indicate. The love tragedies like

Romeo and Juliet

or Chikamatsu's

The Sonezaki-Shinju

might as well be included under this head. The probability, in this connection, is that Shakespeare must have been keenly alive to bis failure in the long-drawn narrative

The Rape of

Lucrece.,

for example, pathetic though the sorrow of Lucrece must have been. It would perhaps be at this pivot that the dramatist sensed the necessity of de-manding a positive value of the supreme magnitude for his intrinsic tragedy worthy of the name, where the dignity of man should be restored with a toll of so many lives. The will power as reduction element should be as sublime as could be, for the protagonist would have to give up his life for the nobler cause of human existence. One might truly see the dignity of man manifested in Shakespearean essence in

Othello

and

King Lear.

With all its problematic elements,

Hamlet

would go the same noble course, for the cor-roded love that prevailed the royal family was once

for all reduced by Hamlet's supreme quality of will power, which culminated in his swan song,

-"The rest is silence."

It should, however, be reassured that the will to do, being sin potential, would as soon elude its or-dained noble course, when left to have its own way. Now, one could readily, suppose that the negative element of the dramatic structure might be afforded by that of a more portentous magnitude than the

re-duction element seen in

Othello.

The probability, then, might be that the most calamitous havoc imag-inable should be wrought on all. Shakespeare has virtually made this experiment, say, in

Macbeth.

Macbeth did bring into practice his wicked ambition

at his own expense. From the regicide onward, his will power of the negative quality in consonance with that of his wife is repeatedly brought into play, till at last he says,

Stepped in so far that, should I wade no more, Returning were as tedious as go o'er.

(Macbeth,

III.

4.

137)

Neither vengeance nor penance of the direst kind would be competent enough to break off this chain of evil reactions and restore the noble scheme of the world. The mere death of the fiend protagonist might reduce this piece to a commonplace bloody play.

What, then, would be required as the last resort for this play to be renovated as grand as it could be? It is Shakespeare's magnificent feat to have it that the bloodiest protagonist could be gifted with by far the greater will powe~ worthy of the name of su-perman, which should transcend even death. With a towering austerity of kingly prestige even to the last syllable of recorded time, Macbeth never flinches in the face of the total downfall of ~or­ tune. Though tainted with so many bloody acts all over, he has thus surpassed life's walking shadow of sin. The final aspect of

Macbeth

is this that the super-ego, which the demon king has created of his own will, is now tranquilly looking from on high over "the dark backward and abysm of time"

The Tempest3

l. 1. 50), in which he has burnt out the brief candle of his dismal experiences. Shake-speare has at last found out his own proper de~

velopment of mind, the level of which no one could have premeditated. This is not, however, the end of the story of his outlook of the world and humanity.

Now we have come to Shakespeare's final stage of tragic experience. Suppose the first item of the structure might be afforded by the sensual love which comes of one's own will and responsibility. Its negative correlate will necessarily be chastity.

-The ensuing dramatic formula of liquidation between those opposing values would be a mere commonplace of love-and-hate design.

Arden of

Feversham~ for ex-ample, must have suggested itself to Shakespeare that a sheer display of love and hate should miss the in-tended coherence of tragic function,for the dispersal field between the opposing poles of love and hate could easily be saturated with its thrilling ele-ments, unless equipped with any other noble designs. One might see to it that an experiment of a still grander merit must have suggested itself to Shake-speare's imagination, hence the elegant structure of

Troilus and Cressida

later on, and the victory of

An-tony and 6leopatra

finally.

All the same, the tragic love of Antony and Cleo-patra, if left alone, would not have rung sublime. What makes it genuine is that they stand firm on the foothold of undaunted will. They did truly defy all the earthly honours, never wailing their destiny, nor seeking for the lost cause. Their love cost them their endeared crown and states. When Antony sees all for nothing, he is courageous enough to say,

Since the torch is out,

Lie down and stray no farther. Now all labour Mars what it does: yea, very force entangles Itself with strength: seal then, and all is done.

When a warrior, well advanced in age after so many lost battles, would decline, of his own free will, from living an elongated life of shame and dishonour, he should not be spurned as a doted weakling. He must rather be a brave traveller in quest of "new heaven, new earth," since he sees "all length is torture," {IV. 12.

46),

being stale in the mundane world. Cleopatra, too, spiritually ventilated, soars high up into the region of "fire and air," now that all is lost for her. Courtesan queen as she was, full of wile and calcu-lation, so as to ensnare the Pillar of the World, solely for the cause of her state of low means, she could not do otherwise but play her own tricky drama of lust. The fundamental irony is that she had been undermined t.y the trick of love of her own making, for she was finally committed to see in herself

No more but e'en a woman, and commanded By such poor passion as the maid that milks, And does the meanest chares. (IV.

13. 73-75)

Structurally speaking, the background atmosphere has now mirrored forth the image of a homely woman as the polar counterpart of the queen of unparalled pride. Both ·of the formative elements vie with each other in mutual exclusion function in Cleopatra's mind, till at last she had for the last moment won the final goal of

love's dignity "at the other extreme of humanity." 1 I t is great

To do that thing that ends all other deeds. Which shackles accidents, and bolts up change; Which sleeps, and never palates more the dug, The beggar's nurse and Caesar's. ( V. 2.

4-8)

When she has done everything imaginable in vain to restore her right of honour "in this vile world," only to give her "other elements to baser life," she never flinches to see her dear country col-lapse, for she is well-informed by the twist and torture of long experience that such is the way of the world. There is so more Egypt left for her. She is the last monarch to have seen what she has seen. The world is a pageant, in which, as she sees, she could play the role of the heroine only to perform the folly of life. She has at last won victory, the victory of the will power of super value over the wanton world of pride, envy, and lust. Thus she bids the mortal asp to be "angry and despatch," saying

With thy sharp teeth this knot intrinsicate Of life at once untie, ( V. 2.

306-7)

1 John Holoway,

The Story of the

Night~ (London, Routledge

&

Kegan Paul, 1961), p. 118.

and calls. in unison with the spirit of Antony,"great Caesar ass,/ unpolicied" ( V. 2. 309-10 ). Hers was a life of vehement drama and its metaphor. That, how-ever, does not exclusively mean that she lived a brave life so that she was immune from sin. Indeed she was unquestionably sinful, which one should scarcely deny, but in the end she went calmly to her death to tri-umph over those sinnings of hers.

When all is said, one might notice that Macbeth, Antony, and Cleopatra are of the same stock in the sense that they are conscious of their own reponsi-bility. The sober truth is that they share mental paradoxes in common among them, for blemishes are co-existing with merits in each of their make-ups. Seek-ing for those similarities, Prof. Willard Farnham would assign

Maabeth

and

Antony and Cleopatra

to the same class of Shakespeare's tragic frontier. A closer examination, however, will reveal that Farnham's theory, though meritorious in itself, is still to be desired, if it should come off convincingly helpful for further studies. One admits that Macbeth, with his self-consciousness, is totally different from .Othello and Lear, who are helplessly slow of self knowledge, but it does not follow that Macbeth could be classed as on the same level as Antony and Clespatra.

-Primarily Macbeth was endowed with none of self-en-lightenment at all, nor had he got the free choice of will, undaunted soldier as he had been in campaigns. Devoid of will power, he is preeminently easy of access of insurgent elements from without. To put it another way, he is so to speak the eye of the ty-phoon, for so many dark elements are circling round to encroach it. He makes of himself a dispersal field of rampant forces with alluring temptations as the outer pole and the patient fabric of mind as the inner pole. The dispersal area between those binary opposites makes a metaphor spectrum of warring doubts. It is only through the repeated temptations of the witches on the one hand and the foul insinua-tions of his wife on the other that he has come to be possessed of the unmitigated ambition of the dark design. One might painfully see how sorely fluctuat-ing he was back and forth in determination, warrior as he was. He might well be reproached by his wife as a coward, whose "hope was drunk." To escape from the predicament of condemnation, he was compelled to drive further into the realm of desperations as a means of self-defence.

Antony, on the contrary, has been and is a man of self-reproach, long before the play begins. And he remains the same to the last. So does Cleopatra,

with this difference that she is guilty of sins of pride and prejudice, and that she is fully aware of them herself from the first. Irrespective of the process of the plot, both of them have known their follies all through.

Whenever Antony and Cleopatra show themselves,rich atomosphere steeps the stage " in soft and delicate Lethe," threading through tricky laughters and in-tricate dialectics, only to announce their life's twilight. See how banteringly dwelling ·they are on the topics of dotage and empire's downfall even at the outset of the play. Those who have been cloyed with so many sweet, but absurd, infatuations would never expect to enjoy the more, when "the long day's task is done." Thus, Antony and Cleopatra are well on the way "for the dark." In spite of the eluci-dating notion of Farnham,l there is discernible a clearcut demarcation between

Macbeth

and

Antony and

Cleopatra.

As regards

Macbeth,

it takes some ample time be-forethe self-knowledge of paradoxical intent suggests

itself in the protagonist, while it begins with the

1 Willard Farnham,

Shakespeare's Tragic Frontier,

(Berkeley, University of California Press, 1950),

passim.

-very first speech of the play in

Antony and CZeopatra.

Philo's indelible criticism of Antony goes thus: Nay, but this dotage of our general's

0' erflowsrthe measure: those his goodly eyes, That o'er the files and musters of the war

Have glow'd like plated Mars, now bend, now turn The office and devotion of their view

Upon a tawny front: his captain's heart,

Which in the scuffles of great fights hath burst The buckles on his breast, reneges all temper, And is become the bellows and the fan

To cool a gipsy''s lust. (I.l. 1-10)

The audience, however, catches Antony's confession of love "on pain of punishment" (I. 1. 39) as of a pe-ripety, but on second thoughts, they notice that it stands syntagmatic with the above-mentioned comment of Philo. Thus, the profound paradox makes its e 1 f felt prominent. As for Hamlet, it is in the lingering process of the play, as in the case of Macbeth, that he becomes a tragic complex. The other tragic charac-ters like Lear and Othello, too, would be among the pattern of Macbeth.

Shakespeare's interest in dramatic paradox is also offeredto his earlier plays. King Richard the Second, huiniliated as he is as to call himself "King of snow, King of mockery", dares to say to John of Gaunt the flower of patriotism, "thou, a lunatic, lean-witted fool." Richard the Third, outright murderer as he is,

striv-ing against his fate. Romeo dispatches the life of Juliet's kinsman on the spur of the moment, in spite of his judicious efforts to act wisely to win the hand of Juliet. It may safely be argued that all Shake-speare's characters are, more or less, paradoxical. The paradox elements could not be the sole require-ment to distinguish Shakespeare's tragic frontier. Then, it would rather be contended that the category of tragic frontier is not an adequate one for the elu-cidation of

Macbeth, Coriolanus,

and

Timom,

that of

Antony and Cleopatra.

except

Paradoxical, it is true, are both Antony and Cleo-patra, but it should be stressed here that they ex-ceed any other tragic character in their making. When they first met each other, they had already

seenthem-selves totally broken up into . opposing elements of abandoned love on the one hand and resolute

'

will to restore the lost ground on the other. They see in vision that those · polar · opposites are well under way to get furious changes fomented in be-tween. As it is, they had risked the honour and pre-stige of "the most high and palmy state of Rome" • They are ready to be cross-ventilated of character. "In their beginning is their end." The probability is that Shakespeare has attained to such a frame of mind after so many elaborate exercises of dramatic

-designs. There are no other charaters so addicted at once to amorous dalliance and reason as Antony and Cleopatra. Imbecility and intelligence, and falsity and honesty, are what they would assume themselves indiscriminately. Macbeth did not attain to his spiri-tual deliverance but through agony; Antony and Cleo-patra did with the least struggle. Theirs is a state of mind beyond mundance morality, as it were.

Now that love is the last resort for them, they know for certain it shall put an end to all the afflictions for the last moment. They have enjoyed life's luxury to the full, so that they would not expect any more for their own, nor be sorry to think they have left any more undone behind. At this juncture, one might the better be reminded of Dryden's comment on Shakespeare's tragic pattern. Dryden, great critic as well as meritorious dramatist as .he is, states in his preface to

AZZ

for Love:

That which is wanting to work up the pity to a greater height, was not afforded me by the story; for the crimes of love, which they both committed, were not occasioned by any necessity, or fatal ignorance, but were wholly voluntary; since our passions are, or ought to be within our power. 1

1 John Dryden, Dramatic Essays., .Everyman's Library, p. 118.

His idea seems that the tragedy of Antony and Cleo-patra is nothing more or less than the story of lust as it properly should be. Casual observers might take the drift of his opinion for granted to be

rea-sonable on the whole, but the well-informed readers would raise a question if the love of those fated ones should resolutely be judged as of"crime." Was it not really occasioned by any necessity? One might rather be inculcated that Caesar had intentionally paved the way for their downfall. As it is, they are so much gifted with self-knowledge as to elucidate their own folly. Caesar would have Antony dismissed as addicted to "lassivious wassails;" the basic irony, however, is that Antony's "Roman thought," which Cleopatra would time and again allude to in derision, might otherwise be presented as a plea to help Antony

from the dismal cause of Roman rigorism.

To make Shakespeare's design of Antony and

Cleopatr>a prominent, in this connection, i t

might be advisable to examine the drift of Dry-den's tragic pattern which he manifests in his

AZZ for> Love. He represents both Antony and

Cleo-patra as being far more subject to warring influences from without than Shakespeare's protagonists. Derek W. Hughes deftly illustrates the ruling vision of AU

-foro Love by demonstrating the elemental imagery 1

that pervades the whole fabric of the play in terms of the metaphor of natural conflict and instability, such as "All southern, from yon hills, the Roman camp

I

Hangs o'er us black and threatening, like a storm/ Just breaking on our heads." Antony, as Dryden de-signs, is so devoid of self-will that he is easily swayed by Ventidius' persuasion to leave Cleopatra and fight once more against Octavius Caesar. In this connection, it is true that Shakespeare's Antony fluc-tuates undecided, too, as to the departure for Rome, but the truth is that, being a man of self-knowledge, he is after all alive to the sense of duty and honour to amend the misconduct of his deceased wife Fulvia as well as to meet the national demand of Pompey cri-sis.

Dryden's Cleopatra, being far from the undaunted woman of will power to cope with the Roman predomi-nance, is maimed as a love's slave, for she ·· wails, saying~

Nature meant me

A wife, a silly, harmless, household dove, Fond without art, and kind without deceit. ( IV, 91--93)

1 Derek W. Hughes, "The significance of AU Foro Love",

EZh,

(The Johns Hopkins Press, Baltimore, 1970)

Moody E. Prior says, "Neither in the action nor in the imagery is this Cleopatra a serpent of old ~ile."l What is, at this juncture, to be hinted at for the

justification of such a poor portrayal of Cleopatra is the classical code of unity, for it must have nec-essarily prescribed Dryden to see strictly to it that Antony and Cleopatra should be made to commit suicide on the same stage with little space of time left to separate their performances. It is indeed pa-thetic to see the lovers die in each other's embrace, but one's death endorsed by the simultaneous death of one's lover could scarcely be called sublime, so much so that the characterization could not help being impoverished.

It might further be discussed that the code of uni-ty seems to have compelled the dramatist to make up his play structurally compatible with the predictabil-ity -of the audience. One might notice the wily de-vice of Alexas the Eunuch to restore Antony's love for Cleopatra. He persuades her to pretend 'to love Dolabella, for it is necessary, as he says, to make Antony jealous. The structure of persuasion is that it achieves coherence by the introduction of its anti-thesis, that is, suggestion of failure. The binary

1 Moody E. Prior,

The Language of tragedy,

p. 205.

-opposition function of those elements, :however, has led to Alexas' false report of Cleopatra's suicide. They had all been undermined by their own wile.

What can I say, to save myself from death?

No matter what becomes of Cleopatra. (V. 138-39) All to the contrary, it is Shakespeare's Cleopatra that commands Mardian the Eunuch to tell Antony that she has slain herself, and to make sure, in addition, to see "how he takes my death." (An tony and Cleo-patra, ( IV, 11. 10). There is a great divergence between this and that in creating the tragic vehe-mence. Before going too far to discuss the details of the relative consequences between the two pieces, one might naturally see the heart of tragic grandeur.

All told, Shakespeare would have it that Ansony and Cleopatra could elucidate sunyata_. the vacuum that could never be filled. They are the explorer of the forlorn life. With Antony and Cleopatra,

Shake-speare has at last come to the frontier of tragedy, beyond which "must they needs find out new heaven,new earth."