THk] EXISTENTIAL DRAMATURGY

OF WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE
Character Created Through Crisis

Asloob Ahmad Ansari

With a Foreword by
James Ogden

The Edwin Mellen Press

Lewiston•Queenston•Lampeter
 Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Ansari, Asloob Ahmad, 1925-

The existential dramaturgy of William Shakespeare : character created through crisis /
Asloob Ahmad Ansari ; with a foreword by James Ogden.
P. CM.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN-13: 978-0-7734-3603-9
ISBN-10: 0-7734-3603-0
1. Shakespeare, William, 1564-1616--Psychology. 2. Shakespeare, William, 1564-
1616--Characters. 3. Existentialism in literature. 4. Characters and characteristics in
literature. I. Ogden, James. II. Title.
PR3065.A67 2010
822.33--dc22
2010031053

hors serie.

A CIP catalog record for this book is available from the British Library.

Copyright C 2010 Asloob Ahmad Ansari

All rights reserved. For information contact

The Edwin Mellen Press The Edwin Mellen Press

Box 450 Box 67
Lewiston, New York Queenston, Ontario
USA 14092-0450 CANADA LOS 1L0

The Edwin Mellen Press, Ltd.

Lampeter, Ceredigion, Wales
UNITED KINGDOM SA48 8LT

Printed in the United States of America

Dedicated to my daughters
1 at Ara
Roshan Ara
 CONTENTS

Foreword James Ogden

Chapter 1: Shakespeare's Characterization: An Existential View

Chapter 2: Patterns of Love in Twelfth Night 17

Chapter 3: The Merchant of Venice: An Existential Comedy 33

Chapter 4: Shakespeare's Allegory of Love 49

Chapter 5: Shakespeare's Existential Tragedy 69

Chapter 6: Richard III and Richard II: Two Forms of Alienation 91

Chapter 7: The Problem of Identity in Troilus and Cressida 107

Chapter 8: Fools of Time in Macbeth 123

Chapter 9: Solitariness of the Victim in Othello 139

Chapter 10: The Protagonist's Dilemma in TiMOT1 of Athens 165

Chapter 11: Marcus Brutus: The Divided Self 185

Chapter 12: Coriolanus — the Roots of Alienation 205

Chapter 13: The Ambivalence of Caliban 225

Bibliography 241

Index 245
 FOREWORD

My good friend Asloob Ahmad Ansari has made the study of literature his life's
work. His mother-tongue is Urdu, and at an early age he was inspired by the
Indian, Persian and Arabic poets and mystics. So it is not surprising that his first
love in English literature was the visionary poetry of William Blake. His book
Arrows of Intellect (1965) and an essay on "Blake and the Kabbalah" made his
name well known among the international community of Blake scholars and
enthusiasts. Soon afterwards he became Head of the English Department of
Aligarh Muslim University, where he launched the Aligarh Journal of English
Studies, while in retirement he edited the Aligarh Critical Miscellany. Over a
period of some thirty years these biennial journals published work by established
and aspiring scholars and critics on a wide range of literary subjects. They include
Professor Ansari's further studies of Blake and his many essays on Shakespeare;
the former resulted in the recent publication of Blake's Minor Prophecies (Edwin
Mellen Press, 2001), and the latter form the basis of the present book. ,
Professor Ansari's approach to Shakespeare originates in his personal
response to the plays, and what he has called the "philosophical-symbolical-
imagistic" criticism of Wilson Knight, L.C. Knights, and Derek Traversi. He
rightly believes that this approach is not invalidated by the present tendency to
treat the plays as stage works, and does not preclude a focus on characters in what
may be called existential situations. His belief is supported by analogies
tentatively proposed between the implicit ideas of Shakespeare and the explicit
philosophy of the German existentialist Karl Jaspers. Professor Ansari's daughter
Roshan Ara's book, Existenz and Boundary Situations (Aligarh, 2002), offers an
introduction to the philosophy of Jaspers, but it may be sufficient for readers of
this book to be familiar with his leading ideas: Dasein, or mere existence;
"boundary situations", when individuals are tested by misfortune, evil impulses,
guilt, suffering and the approach of death; Existenz, the individual's potential for
growth and transcendence.
Shakespeare's interest in philosophy is shown by a striking exchange in
Troilus and Cressida, which Professor Ansari quotes in his opening chapter;
Troilus: What's aught but as tis valued?
Hector: But value dwells not in particular will ...
Troilus seems to be the existentialist here, but Ansari argues that there is "an
existential strain" in Hector's thinking too; Troilus's valuations of both the Trojan
cause and his own beloved may be mistaken, yet a willingness to create human
values leads to the transcendence of brute existence. However, Ansari's discovery
of the existential in Shakespeare began with an essay on Twelfth Night, first
published in the Aligarh Journal in 1976. In this play the shipwrecked Viola
explores life's possibilities, and shows us "the search for authentic being" so
conspicuously abandoned by Malvolio. Essays on The Merchant of Venice,
Richard III and Richard II, while noting romantic elements and political
commentary, concentrate on the psychology of characters still more tragically
alienated: Antonio, Shylock, and the two beleaguered monarchs. The great
tragedies offer the clearest examples of characters in "boundary situations", facing
hostile forces, tempted to despair, yet achieving new insights and sometimes a
measure of transcendence, as Hamlet famously does in realising that "the
readiness is all". In Shakespeare's and Ansari's last play, The Tempest, tragedy
still looms large, and civilized man must assert all his powers to achieve what
may well be only temporary harmony. But Caliban, though outwardly "a savage
and deformed slave", may yet "sue for grace", and in him Ansari sees "those
potencies and comprehensions that sustain one in the midst of bounded
existence".
It is said that we live in a global village, and if the metaphor has validity
we must admit that many of our quarrels are trivial. Writers and critics sometimes
participate in them, but ideally they are peacemakers. In this book an English

dramatist of a remote age, a German philosopher of a century ago, and an Indian

scholar happily still with us. come together to explore the foundations of human

understanding. And I am honoured to write its foreword.

James Ogden
Aberystwyth, Wales
 CHAPTER 1

Shakespeare's Characterisation: An Existential View

Some of Shakespeare's major characters, both in the early and the later
plays, exhibit modes of feeling and perception that bring their motivations in
consonance with the postulates of one of the modernist perspectives of thought,
namely, existentialism, which emerged as a post-first world-war phenomenon. It
may well be distinguished as not only a sort of inverted Hegelianism but a
reaction against any and every kind of rigidity of response. It may broadly be
regarded as a protest against Hegel's stress on the Universal, his endeavour to
explain everything in terms of a comprehensive, rational system, and dissolution
of all differences by invoking the all-embracing unity of the Logos. It may be
conveniently summed up as a rejection of essentialism and an acceptance of the
concreteness of lived experience as against pure speculation and arid
abstractionism. It dispenses with the naive Cartesian distinction between mind and
body and does not encourage us to separate cognition, emotion and will from one
another but fuse them into a totality. It has been very succinctly defined as an
'intuitionism of the particular situations'. Existentialist categories like alienation,
dread, transcendence, nothingness, nausea, absurdity, the ambivalence of
experience or what Sartre designates as 'sympathetic antipathy or antipathetic
sympathy' are components that are reflected in the being of these Shakespearian
characters in the exceptional moments of their life.

In the most mature of the early Comedies, Twelfth Night, Viola is the
conspicuous example of the ambiguity that frames the action of the play from the
beginning to the end. The use of disguise is a conventional, theatrical device for
2

objectifying the inner processes of Viola's being. She is not only involved in the
delicate task of winning Olivia for Duke Orsino by proxy but herself feels
fascinated by the charm of his personality. She is embarrassed because on the one
hand she has, as Cesario, to resist the overtures of love made to her by Olivia and
on the other she keeps her own flame of love for the Duke burning without
betraying herself to him. Within Viola-Cesario duality there is the relation of the
subject to itself which forms an indissoluble unity and yet it suffers from tension
and difference. There is thus a perpetually unstable equilibrium deriving from the
existence of this self which cannot achieve a kind of self-coincidence. This is
referred to time and again as I am what I am not'. This may be a source of the
comic on the face of it but there is implicit in it a seriousness of undertone
because Viola's real self remains in a constant state of tension. In Much Ado
About Nothing's persistent concern with 'appearance' and 'illusion' the device of
the mask as employed by Shakespeare acquires a special significance. It affords
ample opportunities for the achievement of both 'confession' and 'parody', and
these have been very skilfully exploited by Shakespeare. What initiates the plot of
the play is the confusion of identities occasioned by the wearing of the mask in a
formal dance and what brings about the climax is the act of unmasking in the
course of another dance that rounds up the action. The mask device inevitably
becomes the integrating factor for the various motifs that are operative in the play.
For Benedick and Beatrice the theatrical unmasking turns into a metaphor for the
self-vision attained by each.

The illusion that is set up between the real and the imagined constitutes the
main fabric of the play Macbeth in which the Weird Sisters function as the agents
of equivocation in respect of their truck with the protagonist. Macbeth's entire
career from the moment of Duncan's murder at his hands till he himself is killed
by Macduff towards the end is nothing but an extended epiphany of this illusion.
The Witches may be conceived as no more than projections of Macbeth's
psychological reflexes which are given a bodily incarnation. Macbeth is not only
thrown into an emotional turmoil but his whole process of thinking is determined
 3

by a belief in the contrariety of human experience. This tendency to be drawn into

opposite direction-'that is and is not'-is something which is inseparable from his
psychological makeup. Lady Macbeth is however made of an entirely different
stuff, and is instinctively persuaded to cast the whole weight of her personality in
favour of a kind of ruthless and irrevocable decisiveness. This is how she upbraids
her husband before the fatal deed is accomplished at long last:

Infirm of purpose!
Give me the daggers. The sleeping and the dead
Are but as pictures; 'tis the eye of childhood
That fears a painted devil.
(II. ii. 52-55)
On Macbeth's entire progress in the action of the play hovers the shadow
of deep anguish which pervades the conflict between the real and the imagined
worlds in both of which he wishes to have a foothold. Both Macbeth and Lady
Macbeth, the latter the earlier, succumb to the strain of this ambition and this
brings their respective careers to a disastrous conclusion.

Three striking examples of the products of fancy that are yet posited as
real and tangible are provided by Troilus and Cressida, Antony and Cleopatra and
The Winter's Tale. In the first of these plays the crisis is reached when following
the conclusion of Antenor's exchange with Cressida Troilus visits the Grecian
camp and a casual glimpse of her is vouchsafed him through the skilful
manoeuvring of the situation by Ulysses. The actual sight of her is preceded by
the hectic display of nerves on the part of Troilus. When he actually witnesses
Cressida yielding herself to the seductive entreaties of his rival, Diomedes, he is
utterly dazed and unnerved. He becomes skeptical of the reality of his own image
of Cressida when it is juxtaposed to the one exposed to his 'cleceptious' sense-
perceptions. For him beauty as pure as that of Cressida is a hypostasis of the soul.
The real and the illusory are lodged at the same time in her identity — 'this is and
is not Cressid' — and yet in the act of betrayal this 'thing inseparate' suffers a
breach. And yet something intuitive and prelogical`bifold authority' — which is
4

distinguished form Logic and Reason as a mode of cognition — makes him feel
convinced that though the 'breadth of this division' is wider than the earth and the
sky still it betrays no recognizable space or vacuity:

This she? No, this is Diomed's Cressida:

If beauty have a soul, this is not she;
If souls guide vows, if vows be sanctimony,
If sanctimony be the gods' delight'.
If there be rule in unity itself,
This was not she. 0 madness of discourse,
That cause sets up with and against itself'.
Bifold authority! where reason can revolt
Without perdition, and loss assume all reason
Without revolt: this is, and is not, Cressid.
Within my soul there doth conduce a fight
Of this strange nature, that a thing inseparate
Divides more wider than the sky and earth;
And yet the spacious breadth of this division
Admits no orifice for a point as subtle
As Ariachne's broken woof to enter.
(V. ii. 135-50)
The second instance is offered by Antony who, quite subdued by his
declining fortunes, grows doubtful of his own authenticity. Cleopatra, seen from
the eyes of Antony, is a shifting and slithering identity and likewise Antony feels
that his own personality has no fixed and stable centre. The analogy for it is
provided by the drifting cloud that is likely to assume different shapes as the focus
of man's vision changes:
Ant. Sometime we see a cloud that's dragonish;
A vapour sometime like a bear or lion,
A tower'd citadel, a pendent rock,
A forked mountain, a blue promontory
With trees upon't that nod unto the world
And mock our eyes with air: thou hast seen these signs;
They are black vesper's pageants.
Eros. Ay, my lord.
Ant. My good knave, Eros, now thy captain is
Even such a body; here I am Antony;
Yet cannot hold this visible shape, my knave...
(IV. xii. 3-13)
 5

The authentic self is likewise an imponderable entity, something extremely

mercurial and unstable and therefore likely to elude one's grasp. The gap between
the real and the assumed, the fixed and the evanescent, is some thing that always
haunts our vision in this play. Lastly, in The Winter's Tale a persistent belief is
made to grow in the fiction of Hermione's death and this is the most effective
means of rendering her restoration to life as something startling and miraculous.
Hermione figuratively turned to stone is a fiction which was widely publicized by
Paulina and The Third Gentleman, and was lent credence to by the common man
no less fervently. All the beauty, tenderness and passion of the queen is believed
to have been transfixed into the marmoreal statue, a form of stillness and fixity, by
which the audience are hypnotized. With the quickening of the impulse to faith
and the operation of the motif of music life is fused into this piece of surpassing
workmanship and resurrection achieved though the use of the technique of
illusionism. One may maintain that Leontes's fancy, stirred by affection, had
created an illusion sixteen years earlier which came to replace the real. Now under
the provocation of reborn faith and love another illusion is created which declares
itself to be more real than the fiction of the statues which is ultimately broken and
rejected.

Troilus and Hector are engaged, in one of the crucial passages of Troilus
and Cressida in what looks like a logical disquisition, as to the nature and source
of value:
Troilus: What is aught, but as 'tis valued?
Hector: But values dwells not in particular will;
It holds his estimate and dignity
As well therein 'tis precious of itself
As in the prizer.
Troilus: My will enkindled by mine eyes and ears,
Two traded pilots `twixt the dangerous shores
Of will and judgement: how may I avoid,
Although my will distaste what it elected,
The wife I chose? There can be no evasion
Now while for Troilus the criterion of value is the human subjectivity of
the perceiver and value is determined by what we pour into the object of
6

perception our own 'will and judment' Hector adopts an altogether different
stance. For him the appraiser ('the prizer') and the objects of appraisal (`the
service) are almost identifiable, and the wholly personal evaluation is no better
than 'mad idolatry'. There is a kind of existential strain in 1-lector's thinking in as
much as it comes close to the notion that life seems to be inadequate because of
the sense of lack or insufficiency on the part of for-itself in its reaching out to
being in-itself. In other words, the perpetual striving of for-itself towards in-itself,
the awareness of the gap that exists between the two and yet the impulse to bridge
it is the main factor responsible for the emergence of value. This impulse may also
be equated with an act of will which creates lower as well as higher degrees of
values in the light of which the phenomena of life may be interpreted.

Some of the Shakespearian characters are, in the intensest moments of

their being, obsessed with the unreality of mere 'words'. What it amounts to in a
dramatic context is that in their nightmarish experience of life words tend to
become denuded of meaning and are reduced to the status of a mere husk. Hamlet
and Troilus react in almost identical ways to the predicament they are involved in.
Words are essentially symbols or ciphers for experiential objects or signs and
parallels for thought-feeling complexes. But when Reality itself comes to be
dissolved, words, instead of functioning as symbolizations of meaning, turn into
empty envelopes. Thus, when in reply to Polonius' query, 'What do you read, my
lord?,' Hamlet replies, 'Words, words, words' or when in reply to Queen
Gertrude's expostulation of Hamlet as to what she had done he expatiates by
saying: '0 what a deed/As from the body of contraction plucks/The very soul, and
sweet religion makes/A rhapsody of words; (III. iv. 45-8) or when Troilus, in
reply to Pandarus's query regarding Cressida's letter to him 'What says she
there?' replies: 'Words, words mere words, no matter for the heart/Th'effect doth
operate another way'-both of them are implicated in a similar life-situation. The
growing consciousness that one's words are just blanks and not significant
pointers to a stable and consistent body of meaning evokes a sense of futility and
absurdity in regard to life. R.A. Foakes has pointed out that Hamlet's speech
 7

habits smack of the court life; they are an effective medium for the display of
wordiness, pomposity, punning and equivocation. Hamlet is fully aware of the
expressive and persuasive power of words and their communicative possibilities.
He is even more sharply sensitive to the destructive potencies that inhere in them
and his own disillusionment with Gertrude and Ophelia forces him to the sense of
futility that clings to the handling of language also. In fact the more the mood of
misanthropy and biting satire descends upon him the more heartless he grows and
continues to use words with remarkable recklessness.

Duke Orsino is the conspicuous example of a Shakespearian character who

is a victim of alienation. Hardly any meaningful communication takes place
between him and Olivia and both of them seem to be over-eaten by pride. Neither
of them experiences that mutual creative love in which self faces self and in which
one includes the identity of another in one's range of vision. There is the solitude
of freedom but there is also the solitude of pride and pain which prevents one
from a positive affirmation of Existenz. That is, in such a situation one denies
implicitly that being can be transformed by a creative exchange of love, and
freedom means keeping oneself open to Existenz. Both Orsino and Olivia are
more or less like isolated monads and hence there is little possibility of a
breakthrough to a liberated mode of living in their case. Communication may not
of necessity lead to love but authentic love should and does engender vital and
responsive communication. This does not happen in the case of Orsino and Olivia
and hence they continue to drift apart from each other. Similarly, in Much Ado
About Nothing Claudio and Hero are not committed to a pure and concrete
intimacy whereas Benedick and Beatrice by contrast are bound, each to each, by a
sort of quasi-religious commitment in spite of being apparently at loggerheads.
For them the act of unmasking is equivalent to discovering by each of the true
identity of the other. In the case of Coriolanus, however, the ultimate crisis ensues
from an acute sense of alienation. He has been reared under the impact of the
towering personality of Volumnia which is characterized by a ruthlessness of will,
a rapacity of the ego. The concept of an abstract ideal of 'honour' has been made
8

to grow in his very bones and this to the exclusion of all public and private
virtues. A 'sense of frigidity' pervades the universe which is inhabited by him and
Virgilia. He feels isolated from the very beginning partly because of his
aristocratic upbringing and partly because a wedge has been driven between him
and the masses by the clever manoeuvrings of the tribunes. The roots of arrogance
have been nourished in him by his unduly possessive mother and the repressive
ethos of the Roman State that has been instilled into him by Volumnia. lie lives in
a universe which is constricted and does not provide scope for the exercise of
outgoing and altruistic impulses. His much talked of intransigence may as well be
a mask to cover up the refusal of his proud idealistic integrity to compromise with
anything which is not clean and above board. There is also a streak of
intractability and peevishness which is brought out in Aufidius's pejorative phrase
'boy' used for him at the climactic point of the play. Since over and above
everything else he is a solider his alienation is not exteriorized in the form of
soliloquies but in the shape of behavioural gestures. His inflexibility of response is
the product of his taciturnity and his highly cultivated mode of self-sufficiency.
Macbeth inhabits a totally different world and his predicament is, therefore, of a
different kind. Macbeth undergoes a far intenser experience of alienation when in
reply to Lady Macbeth's query:
Why do you keep alone,
Of sorriest fancies your companions making,
Using those thoughts, which should indeed have died
With them they think on?
(III. ii. 8-11)

he unburdens himself thus:

Better be with the dead,
Whom we, to gain our peace, have sent to peace,
Than on the torture of the mind to lie
In restless ecstasy.
(III. ii. 19-21)
 9

His 'way of life is fall'n into the sear' and he becomes more and more alienated as
he wades further and further through the pool of bloodshed and manslaughter till
he is dissociated even from his wife who had in no inconsiderable measure
nourished the seeds of ambition in him. He is deserted by his friends and camp-
followers who pay him only lip-service now and his fortunes fall off him like an
unnecessary encumbrance so that he looks ridiculous even in his own eyes:
Those he commands move only in command,
Nothing in love. Now does he feel his title
Hang loose about him, like a giant's robe
Upon a dwarfish thief
(V. ii. 19-22)

Macbeth feels nauseated by disgust and boredom when time itself is reduced to a
meaningless series of moments following each other in a sort of continuum which
is stretched off endlessly. Pressed in by the merciless logic of events, by the
growing menace of the Dasein and tormented by the nameless terror of Destiny
Macbeth painfully realizes the absurdity which Existenz is:
To-morrow, and to-morrow, and to-marrow,
Creeps in this petty pace from day to day
To the last syllable of recorded time;

Out, out, brief condle!

Life's but a walking shadow, a poor player
That struts and frets his hour upon the stage,
And then is heard no more; it is a tale
Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury,
Signifying nothing
(V. v. 19-29)

Life imaged as a brief candle, to be snuffed off sooner or later, and as a walking
shadow, with the implication of insubstantiality and ephemerality; both these are'
integral to the negative vision of life mediated in these memorable lines. The
vision that begins as symptomatic of boredom ends up as vaguely anticipatory of
angst, and the sense of lunacy and nothingness or vacuity is also implicated in this
crucial utterance.
10

Lear gives expression to the awareness of 'nothing' in varying contexts:

'Nothing can be made of nothing' may be regarded as the embryonic form of his
obsession in the play. 'Nothing' for Lear is not synonymous with destructiveness
or logical negation but with ontological non-being-the very form and image of
confrontation with naked or undifferentiated existence. 'Nothingness', according
to Sartre, 'is an essential part of consciousness'; it is connected with the finitude
of human beings and with their movement towards their end in death. Metaphors
of the abyss, the void and the vertigo spring to mind, while going through the
soliloquies of Lear and the notion of temporality is also evoked in this context. A
kind of dizziness is induced when through this preoccupation with nothingness we
are made to fix our gaze on the image of the 'naked, unaccommodated man'.
'Nothing' is also akin to the sense of dread that spreads in ripples over the entire
surface of the play and implies a detachment from the world of contingency and
all that it entails. The hideous rashness exhibited by Lear early in the play has a
tendency to assume frightening proportions little by little, and with increased
awareness of the monstrous ingratitude of his daughters the sense of horror
stimulated by the human condition is also accentuated. Part of this horror relates
to the gruesome aspects of sexuality exhibited by womankind in particular,
Down from the waist they are Centaurs,
Though women all above;
But to the girdle do the gods inherit,
Beneath is all the fiends';
There's hell, there's darkness...
Give me an ounce of civet, good apothecary,
to sweeten my imagination
(IV. vi. 123-130)

This passage issues forth out of the 'sulphurous pit' of Lear's tragic being
and reflects a mood of bitter cynicism. The first four lines bring out the body-soul
nexus in us, including the female sex, but with a heavy accent on their gloating in
the flesh in an abominable way. The last two lines glance at the possibility of the
transubstantiation of the dung element in the structure of the universe and of man
into the pristine purity of the perfumed substance. Hamlet seems to be tickled by
 11

the corruption of the flesh in regard to Queen Gertrude. This gives rise to a sense
of self-disgust and loathing and brings to the forefront of his mind the feeling of
nausea which is the physiological counterpart of pre-reflective consciousness.
What is referred to invariably as the intellectuality of Hamlet is ultimately
shadowed by the negative attitudes of disgust and ennui developed by him
gradually.

What is shocking for Lear at the level of unashamed indulgence in

sexuality is given vent to by Hamlet in rather metaphysical terms. Undoubtedly
Hamlet too, is plagued by the inordinate sexuality of his mother and its wanton
display, and that too, with an indecent haste on her part. But Hamlet is no less
vexed and tormented by 'the dread of something after death,/ The undiscover'd
country from whose bourn/No traveller returns', by 'this goodly frame, the earth'
which seems to him 'a sterile promontory,' by the unreality of 'this too too solid
flesh', and by the fact that man is no more than 'this quintessence of dust'. It may
be pointed out here that guilt, sexuality and 'dread' are interrelated concepts and
are fused into a complex whole in Hamlet's subconscious mind. 'Dread' entails
the sense of dizziness in regard to the unknown abyss of existence and reflects a
preoccupation with the roots of being. Unlike fear which inheres in a specific
object, dread relates to the bodiless and the incomprehensible that resists our
participation in existence. Hamlet is benumbed into amazement as much by the
physical impact of corruption in the 'unweeded' garden of Denmark as by the
metaphysical terror of death. It may be pointed out here that the Coleridgean
criticism of Hamlet has wrongly insisted on the protagonist's `overthinking' over
the event and neglects the import of 'conscience'-a keyword reiterated all along in
the play. The call of conscience is synonymous with the call to make a choice, to
develop the will like those who take upon themselves the possibility of their own
radical finitude. In such a situation we are likely to transcend our proper
individual acts and to face the implication of our human predicament. The phrase
'quintessence of dust', with doubtless Biblical overtones and based as it is on the
juxtaposition of man's glory and sordidness in its dramatic context, is a pitiliess
12

scaling down of man's status in the cosmos. Hamlet's famous soliloquy,

beginning with "To be or not to be, that is the question' may be regarded as an
exploration of self or of the ontological structure of human existence, with 'being'
and 'nothing' as the two divergent poles of the dialectic. On this soliloquy L.C.
Knights comments with perceptiveness to the effect that 'it is built upon two
contrasted sets of metaphors. Life, 'this mortal coil' is at best something which
hampers and impedes, imposing 'fardels' under which we grunt and sweat ...'
Death, on the other hand, is presented simply as a relaxing of tension and an
abandonment of the struggle'. In a not dissimilar situation when Claudio, in
Measure for Measure, is in utter despair of receiving any reprieve for his crime of
adultery his whole being registers an instinctive recoil from the gruesome prospect
of dying. The warm motion of the blood is visualized as turning into cold
obstruction and the soul, once set free from the tenement of the body, is imagined
as wandering into unknown regions and unidentifiable spheres:
Ay, but to die, and go we know not where;
To lie in cold obstruction, and to rot;
This sensible warm motion to become
A kneaded clod; and the delighted spirit
To bathe in fiery floods, or to reside
In thrilling regions of thick-ribbed ice;
To be imprison'd in the viewless winds
And blown with restless violence round about
The pendant world
(III. i. 119-27)

In this magnificent outburst of Claudio, the primitive awe of the unknown and the
uncertainty about complete extinction or dubious survival in an undifferentiated
form are blended together. It is the prospect of the throbbing, fecund and
variegated life on the one hand and that of reaching out towards the clutches of
death on the other which keeps Claudio in a state of flurry. It is the simultaneity of
these two visions that contributes immeasurably to the high tension power of this
memorable passage. Hamlet, like Claudio in Measure for Measure, is benumbed
into apprehension by what the Infinitude may hold in the palm of its hand. Death,
 13

likewise, is a 'boundary' situation for both of them in the sense of being an

inescapable part of their existence as personal identities. This situation not only
evokes the feeling of precariousness but there is also something opaque about it.
The Graveyard Scene in Hamlet is an awe-inspiring crystallization of the
awareness that we seem to collide against an impregnable wall and thus come to
grief with no ultimate prospect of deliverance held before us.

With rare insight and extraordinary critical acumen L.C. Knights has tried
to build up the thesis that the play Hamlet is centered round the radical
proposition of consciousness and self-identity. For him the main source of
Hamlet's trouble is that being highly conscious, he has to live in an unconscious
world. His psyche grows tainted on account of self-disgust and nausea that he
comes to develop and his power of action becomes considerably paralyzed. His is
the case of the corruption of consciousness and that, and not the delay in
executing the commands of his father's ghost, is the real crux of the problem. To
L.C. Knights Hamlet fails to break out of the closed circle of loathing and self-
disgust and his endeavour to shuffle off and evade the complexities of his
predicament is a continuous one though it ends in ultimate failure. Whatever the
cogency of this argument, Hamlet's utterance that 'there is nothing good or bad
but thinking makes it so' contains in essence the germs of the moral choice which
he in fact potentially possesses and which ought to be given due weight. The very
fact that Hamlet is habitually inclined to evaluate the pros and cons of the
obligation laid upon him implies that the freedom of choice is a motif that
operates in the play all along. His power of action is undoubtedly diminished by
the incubus of disgust, boredom and nausea lying on him. But towards the very
end, he does display that kind of bold initiative and self-assertiveness which we
associate with a powerful and heroic temper. The energy, the earnestness and the
pathos with which he persuades himself to crush his opponents eventually is
rather significant. Irrespective of the validity or otherwise of the choice the very
fact of the choice being exercised with the whole inwardness of personality should
count in the ultimate assessment. For once Hamlet rises above his inert, divided
14

and corrupted self and enters the domain of freedom by taking upon himself the
risks and the compulsions entailed by that freedom.

Transcendence is a metaphysical mode or gesture by which some of the

chief Shakespearian characters are lured. It may be identified with the act of
separation from factity of the genuinely ineluctable set of circumstances in which
one is placed. It is also linked with the anticipatory drives of one's consciousness.
It is an ontological and not an epistemological fact in the sense that it not merely
registers the attempt to go beyond our empirical self, -beyond the actual to the
possible — but also connotes its very depth, its ultimate scale of reference. It is
concerned not only with a particular way of knowing and behaving but with the
basis of all knowing and behaving. Whereas Dasein is the being which we are, the
totality of existence, — transcendence may be equated with the Being that
surrounds us. In the act of transcendence, in other words, we can go beyond the
level of objectivity and encounter Being and make an experiment with possibility.
When Hamlet says '0 God! I could be bounded in a nutshell, and count myself a
king of infinite space, were it not that I have bad 'dreams,' or when Lear
expresses the wish `to take upon's the mystery of things,/As if we were God's
spies' both of them are unconsciously betraying their projective self which is
concerned with the annihilation of possibility, with Being in all its multiple
aspects. Almost all these outstanding characters stand transfigured when they are
on the brink of death and come to be invested with some sort of sublimity in the
sense that they break the envelope of their empirical being. In their acceptance of
death as the limit situation, as in the concluding phase of Lear's life or
immediately before Hamlet plunges headlong into the duelling-match with Leartes
or when Antony and Cleopatra are about to set on their pilgrimage to Eternity they
become emancipated from the contingency of the human condition. Similarly, the
hankering after the attainment of 'grace' as expressed by Caliban: 'I'll be wise
hereafter/And seek for grace' betrays an anticipation of the fact that the natural
substance of his identity has to be broken before he is assimilated into himself by
Prospero. As a force of nature Caliban is symbolic of the imperfection that clings
 15

to human life but he has also ingrained in him a spark of the spiritual or the poetic.
Doubtless he forges an unholy alliance with Trinculo and Stephano but he is not
as much an embodiment of pure evil as they and is capable of penetrating the
subtleties of the island that is presided over by Prospero. He is made of the baser
elements of the earth and yet the potential of creativity is latent in him. Hence the
breakthrough to a life of transcendence, though made rather late in the course of
the play's action, is nevertheless there and it is because of this that he stands
redeemed. A similar redemption, in the sense of entrance into the world of
possibility, is achieved by both Antony and Lear. In the case of the former the
transition from mere voluptuousness to a sort of plenitude of being, mediated
through the images of bounty, is much too evident to be missed. And as far as
Lear is concerned, the progress from hideous rashness through blind and animal
hatred to a state of ripened wisdom and compassion and the achievement of a state
of transcendence over and above the wheel of fire to which he had been bound so
long represent well-marked phases in his emotional and spiritual growth. These
characters thus register a flight, in devious ways, from the world of factity to the
world of Existenz or being—in-itself.
 CHAPTER 2
Pattern of Love In: Twelfth Night

Twelfth Night represents the crowning achievement of Shakespeare in the

early phase of his comedy. Its design is intricate, its texture rich and subtly unified
and the interweaving of its various threads is skilful, highly dramatic and full of
surprises. Contrary to As You Like It and The Merchant of Venice it does not
concern itself with any explicit social theme. Love is, indeed, the central motif
here, not treated in a detachable, theoretical way but anatomized through the
various patterns of behaviour and interplay of barely suspected impulsions and
psychological drives. Some of the characters are silhouetted by masks and this
results in a number of confusions. But these confusions are subservient to the
achievement of a purpose lying deeper below the surface. Too much has been
made of the aristocratic bearing of the protagonists —Orsino and Olivia, of their
being self-involved and placing a higher valuation on their concept of love rather
than its concrete object. Orsino appears to be an egoist and a solipsist and Olivia
shrewd, high-brow and disdainful. Both are alleged to be self-centered and
prisoners of their illusions. All this has a grain of truth in it. But the facts of the
case may be re-examined in the hope that some other facet of this whole complex
phenomenon may emerge into light.

The universe of Twelfth Night is a dual one: predominantly it is .

underscored by culture and sophistication, a kind of aestheticism, and here the
finer tones of living matter more than anything else. Here things ripen too fast and
the process of maturing brings in its wake both satiety and nostalgia. But a coarse
18

and brutal world also winds itself in and out of it continually. Taken as a whole it
looks bizarre, and the Duke's characterization of it at a later stage
A natural perspective, that is, and is not!1
(V. i. 209)

seems to be an adequate summing up. The perspectivist view is obliquely

sustained by the assumption of masks by characters like Viola, Malvolio and the
Clown. In this universe everything seems to be shifting from moment to moment
and a stable vantage-point is lacking. The very first speech of the Duke both
reflects his absorption into love and his sense of its romantic paradox: it is
tempestuous, highly assimilative of various moods and impressions and yet
mercurial and changeable. This contrariety is hinted at thus:

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

That, notwithstanding thy capacity
Receiveth as the sea, naught enters there,
Of what validity and pitch soe'er,
But falls into abatement and low price,
Even in a minute: so full of shapes in fancy,
That it alone is high fantastical.
(I. i. 9-15)

The speech begins with a reference to music which feeds the Duke's passion, and
the notations of music are correlated to the rhythms of love not only here but
elsewhere, too. As such music may be regarded as one of the integrative forces in
the play. Orsino's constant demand for snatches of music, antique and nostalgic
along with the Clown's songs, evocative of a sense of transience and
ephemerality, introduce elements of romance and tenderness into the play. These
words of the Duke betray a polarity of attitudes — his deep involvement in love
— and he later on refers to his being as hungry as the sea, 'But mine is all as
hungry as the sea/And can digest as much' (II. iv. 100-101) — and the reaction
against its imperious sway because of a lack of positive response from the object
of his love. This may be accounted for by the rather unnatural embargo Olivia had
placed against yielding herself to any sexual temptation. This has been termed as a
 19

delicious over—indulgence in grief, and for sometime this kind of posturing is

warranted by facts. And yet it is from this luxuriance that Orsino infers Olivia's
infinite potentialities for reciprocal sexual love. Thus speaking to Valentine he
flatters himself with the vague and distant hope of wirming her love :

How will she love, when the rich golden shaft

Hath kill'd the flock of all affections else
That live in her ; when liver, brain, and heart,
These sovereign thrones, are all suppli'd and fill'd
Her sweet perfections with one self king.
(I. i. 35-39)

Not only is the idiom conventional and hackneyed it is also not wide of the
mark to detect in his words a preoccupation with his own image as a lover. The
falsity of tone produces a sense of the incongruous and is a bit discomforting.

Early in the play Viola — a crucial character in the drama — makes up her
mind to enter the service of the Duke in the disguise of a youngman after the
rumour of his continuous, though fruitless, courtship of Olivia had been dinned
into her ears. Into the elegant society of Illyria Viola bursts with all her subtle and
elusive charm, masquerading as a youngman and with the amazing and arduous
mission of unfreezing Olivia and bringing her round to accept the Duke's
importunities. She proceeds in this embassy of love with the greatest poise,
sagacity and judiciousness so much so that she is able to worm her way into his
confidence in no time, and the Duke makes a candid confession to Cesario thus:

I have unclasp'd
To thee the book even of my secret soul:
Therefore, good youth, address the gait unto her;
(I. iv. 13-15)

These lines go a long way to prove that Orsino is capable of having a confidant to
whom he would unburden himself of those feelings that were stirring in the depths
of his heart. That he regards himself as a model lover and is not altogether free of
the taint of the braggart is brought out in these lines:
20

For such as I am all true lovers are:

Unstaid and skittish in all motions else
Save in the constant image of the creature
That is belov'd.
(II. iv. 17-20)

He is a devotee of Venus and such a lover of physical form and the exquisite
sensations attendant upon this experience that every other mundane consideration
is just irrelevant to him. Addressing Cesario he cannot help concealing his order
of preferences and asks him to convey to Olivia that he prizes her above
everything else:

Get thee to yond same sovereign cruelty:

Tell her, my love, more noble than the world,
Prizes not quantity of dirty lands;
The parts that fortune bath bestow'd upon her.
Tell her, I hold as giddily as fortune;
But 'tis that miracle and queen of gems
That nature pranks her in attracts my soul.
(II. iv. 80-86)

It is the soul of the sentimental aesthete that is poured forth here, and in this
gestures of self-advertisement he seems to go the whole hog. To the image of the
constant lover is added the idea of scaling down of material and earthly
possessions as against the life-rhythms of the human body. At the same time he
cannot help assert the superiority of the male spirit over its feminine counterpart:

There is no woman's sides

Can bide the beating of so strong a passion
As love doth give my heart; no woman's heart
So big, to hold so much; they lack retention.
Alas! Their love may be call'd appetite —
No motion of the liver, but the palate —
That suffer surfeit, cloyment, and revolt;
(II. iv. 93-99)

Even making due allowance for his hyperbolic mode of utterance and his unjust
reduction of a woman's passion to mere 'appetite' subject to 'surfeit', 'cloyment'
 21

and 'revolt' (all containing a hint of pejorative connotation), the fact of some
degree of emotional attachment on the part of Orsino may not be altogether
denied.

Viola's role in the play is both intriguing and admirable. She has chosen
voluntarily to champion the Duke's cause, that is, bring about some kind of
rapport between him and 'the cruellest she alive' — the supercilious object of his
passion. And yet in spite of her mask the Duke cannot help perceive that in Viola
– Cesario "all is semblative a woman's part". She has to manoeuvre Olivia into
responding to the Duke's persistent entreaties and yet she cannot resist falling
head over ears in love with him. Hence when the Duke observes:

Make no compare
Between that love a woman can bear me
And that I owe Olivia.
(II. iv. 101-103)
Her sly, cryptic comment
Ay, but I know, —
(II. iv. 104)

affords us a sudden, unexpected glimpse into the depths that had lain
sealed so far. Tracing the history of her supposed sister's inhibited love as
parabolic of her own self–consuming passion she continues upholding her mask
thus:
She never told her love,
But let concealment, like a worm i' the bud,
Feed on her damask cheek: she pin'd in thought,
And with a green and yellow melancholy,
She sat like Patience on a monument,
Smiling at grief.
(II. iv. 110-15)

The fact of one being slowly withered by unrequited love — a predicament borne
with tight-lip patience — is both arresting and poignant. And though it is all a
fictional make-believe yet it nevertheless, makes us realize the continual need for
22

self-sacrifice imposed upon herself by Viola. For in spite of burning with ardent
love for Orsino she perseveres in her entreaties to Olivia in behalf of her master:

If I did love you in my master's flame,

With such a suffering, such a deadly life,
In your denial I would find no sense;
I would not understand it.
(I. v. 254-57)

A kind of transparent sympathy shines through these words. They do not betray
any kind of pose or' attitudinizing. So strongly does she feel about the whole
affair that in reply to Olivia's "Why, what would you do?" she cannot restrain
herself from invoking the contempt of the whole of the physical world and make it
indict her thus:

Make me a willow cabin at your gate,

And call upon my soul with the house;
Write loyal cantons of contemned love,
And sing hem loud even in the dead of night;
Holla your name to the reverberate hills,
And make the babbling gossip of the air
Cry out, 'Olivia'! 0! you should not rest
Between the elements of air and earth,
But you should pity me!
(I. v. 259-66)

These lines are marked by a straining after the consciously poetic effects as well
as raise the finger of accusation against Olivia. Viola is the Janus of love: trying to
win Olivia's love for the Duke and yet herself loving the Duke no less fervently,
though secretly, all the time. The irony of it is that Olivia remains obdurate as far
as the Duke is concerned, but cannot forbear chasing a chimera in the form of
Cesario:

Methinks I feel this youth's perfection

With an invisible and subtle stealth
To creep in at mine eyes.
(I. v. 286-88)
 23

This is in the nature of a self-communion. To Viola as Cesario she does not

hesitate to Make a free and open confession:

Have you not set mine honour at the stake,

And baited it with all th' unmuzzled thoughts
That tyrannous heart can think? To one of your receiving
Enough is shown; a cypress not a bosom,
Hideth my heart.
(III. i. 118-22)

There is here a betrayal of a nervous and muscular tension–a conflict between the
opposite pulls of 'honour' and `love'–a sense of being tugged at by powerful
emotions. It would, however, be naive not to notice the tone of aggressiveness that
envelops the whole speech. And yet Olivia's heart seems to rest in the right place;
it is a 'headstrong potent fault' that leads her astray. It would, nevertheless, be
wrong to suppose that Olivia is impercipient to the virtues and gifts of Orsino, and
yet she remains unmoved:

Yet I suppose him virtuous, know him noble,

Of great estate, of fresh and stainless youth;
In voices well-divulg'd, free, learn'd, and valiant;
And, in dimension and the shape of nature
A gracious person; but yet I cannot love him:
(I. v. 248-52)

In spite of all the pleading done by Viola as Cesario — and Viola's

disinterestedness is hallowed by Shakespeare — Olivia finds herself unresponsive
as is evident from the brisk interchange of words between the two of them:

Olivia : What shall you ask of me that I'will deny,

That honour sav'd may upon asking give?
Viola : Nothing but this; your true love for my master,
Olivia : How with mine honour may I give him that
Which I have given to you?
Viola : I will acquit you.
Olivia : Well, come again tomorrow; fare thee well;
A fiend like thee might bear my soul to hell.
(III. iv. 201-7)
24

The last sentence betrays a total abandonment to Viola — Cesario; it carries with
it the suggestion of an irresistible, devellish charm that is capable of sweeping one
off one's feet. It seems to destroy all the dykes of self-containment that Olivia had
been at such pains to erect against the supposed youngman. But Viola had earlier
referred to the mysterious potency and magical powers possessed by herself and
through which she had hoped to bring about a transformation of Olivia's psyche
thus: "What I am, and what I would, are as secret as maidenhead" (I. v. 208-9).
And Howarth makes a very illuminating comment on it thus: "The lines in which
Viola beguiles Olivia by the evocation of maidenhead send out into the play a
hint of the mythic force a virgin wields: a force by which she wins Olivia and
eventually will win the Duke."2 The two patterns of love so far represented in the
play include the one in which Orsino and Olivia engage themselves through
attorney and the other is a triangle in which Olivia is breath-takingly enamoured
of Viola — Cesario and Viola is in turn deeply fascinated by the Duke.

Malvolio, steward to Olivia, seems to be at odds in this world of romance

and sophistication of Illyria and elicits nothing but pity, contempt and derision of
the reader. Excess of self-love is his besetting sin; he is presumptuous, lamentably
conscious of his importance and given to futile day-dreaming. Olivia provides us
with a useful clue to his character:
0 ! you are sick of self-love, Malvolio, and taste with a
distempered appetite.
(I. v. 90-91)

And Maria capitalizes on that in this way:

the best persuaded of himself; so crammed, as he thinks, with
excellences, that it is his ground of faith that all that look on him love him;
and on that vice in him will my revenge find notable cause to work.
(II. iii. 139-42)

Malvolio is obviously projected in a lower key and he is also very much out of the
orbit of harmony in the play. To his self-delusion is added a certain narrowness
born out of his Puritanic exclusiveness, and this leads on to his cultural ostracism.
 25

He has little in common with Falstaff: he has neither his breadth of humanity nor
his wonderful resilience nor his ingenuity and incisiveness of wit. He is more like
a Jonsonian character, uprooted from the classical soil and transplanted into the
alien climate of Twelfth Night. Before he is brought to bay by the impish genius of
Maria and the sheer callousness of Sir Toby Belch he does show a spark of light-
heartedness and good humour especially when he reports to his mistress about
Viola-Cesario thus:

Not yet old enough for a man, nor young enough for a boy; as a squash is
before 'tis a peascod, or a codling when 'tis almost an apple : 'tis with him
in standing water, between boy and man. He is very well-favoured, and he
speaks very shrewishly: one would think his mother's milk were scarce out
of him.
(I. v. 52-57)

The very fact that Malvolio allows himself to be gulled by the 'sportful malice' of
Maria, and the machinations of the Clown and Sir Toby Belch confirms the
impression that he is grossly deluded and self-involved. His mind seems to be
immovably fixed on one single idea and the mainspring of his behaviour is his
exaggerated notion of himself. He is not presented in depth because of the parodic
intention behind his creation. He represents the third pattern of love in the play: he
is made to take his imagined courtship of Oliva in all seriousness and thus takes
care to appear before her cross-gartered and in yellow stockings, and this evokes
her utter disgust. His soliloquy reveals how the contents of the letter dropped in
his way by Maria have gone to accentuate his imagined self-estimation:

but fortune; all is fortune. Maria once told me she did affect me; and I
have heard herself come thus near, that should she fancy, it should be one
of my complexion. Besides, she uses me with a more exalted respect than
any one else that follows her. What should I think on't?
(II. v. 20-25)

This is Edumund or Iago placed in a comic setting, gloating on what comes his
way, but at the same time time lacking in the power of manipulation of either of
the tragic figures. Malvolio is pu7zIed as to how he should adjust himself to the
26

unexpected flood of fortune with which he seems to be overwhelmed. His fanciful

courtship of Olivia is a burlesque of the Duke's serious and pertinacious
preoccupation with Olivia's image as the object of his passion. This sort of make-
believe evokes both contempt and laughter. Maria's comment about him to the
effect that "he has been yonder i' the sun practicing behaviour to his own shadow
this half-hour" (II. v. 13-14) provides us with a rare insight into his character and
establishes his remote kinship with Orsino. The "Contemplative idiot" that he is,
he is limed by the phrase in the letter "some are born great, some achieve
greatness and some have greatness thrust upon them", and the reiteration of the
phrase helps create the proper context for his self exhibitionism. But Malvolio,
though subjected to a process of unmasking that involves both physical and
mental torture, does not attain to any comic purgation. He ends up by expressing a
sense of outrage when he says that he "will be revenged on the whole pack" of
them. Unlike other characters in the play he can hardly reconcile himself to a
change of heart.

The process of disenchantment, as far as Olivia is concerned, begins with

the beginning of Act IV when Sebastian, who so closely resembles Viola-Cesario,
at long last appears on the scene of action. He is confronted with the Clown, and
the latter who is very well acquainted with Cesario, is piqued at the rebuff
received from Sebastian. The Clown may as well deny the authenticity of his own
sense-perceptions as to be beguiled into believing that he was talking to Sebastian
and not to Cesario:
No, I do not know you; nor I am not sent to you by my lady to bid you
come speak with her; nor your name is not Master Cesario; nor this is not
my nose neither. Nothing that is so is so.
(IV. i. 5-8)

Everything seems to be out of focus, and is a source of delusion. This is followed

by a scuffle between Sir Andrew Aguecheek and Sebastian under the former's
mistaking Sebastian for Cesario, and when Sebastian is able to free himself from
the restraining hand of Sir Toby and Sir Toby is bout to draw, Olivia makes a
 27

sudden and dramatic appearance on the stage. She tries to rebuke Sir Toby and
appease Sebastian mistaking him for Cesario to whom she had lost her heart quite
some time ago. The harshness of the rebuke is in proportion to the depth and
intensity of her feeling for Sebastian or Cesario —both being like "an apple cleft
in two", as Antonio remarks later on:

Will it be ever thus? Ungracious wretch!

Fit for the mountains and the barbarous caves,
Where manners ne'er were preach'd. Out of my sight!
Be not offended, dear Cesario.
Rudesby, be gone!
(IV. i. 46-49)

To the unwary Sebastian this demonstration of love for him by Olivia comes as a
revelation in dream. To Olivia the occasion may appear as a consummation of
what she had been working and preparing for, Sebastian's whole self is soaked in
an unanticipated inundation of light from above-something which seems to be the
product of fancy. And if it more is a product of dream or fancy than a fact of
wakeful reality he would much rather have the blissful moment protracted than let
the fabric of vision be broken. He would not be drawn back to the sanity and
sordidness of the workaday world:

What relish is in this? How runs the stream?

Or I am mad, or else this is a dream:
Let fancy still my sense in Lethe steep;
If it be thus to dream, still let me sleep!
(IV. i. 59-62)

Still enwrapped in his newly discovered bliss Sebastian, communing with his
solitary self in Olivia's garden, feels himself transported to a brave new world.
Under the impact of this gift of grace it appears to him as if the whole of mundane
reality has been transfigured into something rich and strange. For a moment he
begins to be sceptical of his powers of perception and reasoning and yet the
miracle seems to be substantiated by the facts of the situation:
28

This is the air; that is the glorious sun;

This pearl she gave me, I do feel't and see't;
And though 'tis wonder that enwraps me thus,
Yet 'tis not madness.
(IV. iii. 1-4)
Here a fine distinction is made between 'wonder' and 'madness', for "to look
upon life with 'wonder', a proper sense of reverence, is to be, in Shakespearean
comic terms, the opposite of mad".3 Sebastian, it may be added, has been sketched
in rather faintly, and he reappears on the stage after his identity had been almost
forgotten in Acts II and III. Joseph H. Summers has perceptively accounted for
this fact on the plea that Sebastian is "the physical image of the duality that has
made the confusion and the play"4 . This facilitates the transfer of Olivia's love
from Viola — Cesario to Sebastian, and to the latter, who accepts it unhesitatingly
and with gratitude, it comes uninvoked,

Orsino and Olivia are thrown together eventually in the last Act of the
play, and the climactic dialogue between the two ensues thus:
Olivia : If it be aught to the old tune, my lord,
It is as fat and fulsome to mine ear
As howling after music,
Duke : Still so cruel?
Olivia : Still so constant, lord.
Duke : What to perverseness? You uncivil lady,
To whose ingrate and unauspicious altars
My soul the faithfull'st offerings hath
Breath'd out
That e'er devotion tender'd! What shall I do?
Olivia: Even what it please my lord, that shall, become him.
(V. i. 102-16)

Olivia speaks here with a firmness of purpose generated by the assured love
poured out by her on Sebastian and gratefully accepted by him. Equally naturally
Orsino responds to "the marble-breasted tyrant" in a mood of utter desperation
which has sometimes been mistakenly equated with masochism:

Why should I not, had I the heart to do it,

Like to the Egyptian thief at point of death,
 29

Kill what I love? A savage jealously

That sometimes savours nobly.
(V. i. 111-14)

This reminds us of a similar spasm of jealousy experienced by Othello and

Leontes in the play that followed, for in all these three cases the self-torturing
jealousy is in inverse proportion to the intensity of love: it is the love-hate
relationship that has a psychological validity about it. Orisino's last words reflect
the same ambivalence of emotions with which his speech has started:

But this your minion, whom I know you love,

And whom, by heaven I swear, I tender dearly.
Him will t tear out of that cruel eye,
Where he sits crowned in his master's spite,
Come, boy, with me; my thoughts are ripe in mischief;
I'll sacrifice the lamb that I do love,
To spite a raven's heart within a dove.
(V. i. 119-25)

And Viola, with her clear-eyed rationality that can pierce through all shams,
wiser, and in a way having greater perspicacity than either Orsino or Olivia, has
the unique privilege of speaking the last word on the matter:

Viola : And I, most jocund, apt, and willingly,

To do you rest, a thousand deaths would die.
(V. i. 126-27)

The emblematic force of the three words 'lamb', raven' and 'dove' throws a flood
of light on the nature of the triangle of love constituted by Orsino, Olivia and
Viola. Orsino seems to be torn between antithetical emotions: he loves Viola-
Cesario and yet is amazed at Cesario's apparent perfidy; he is most reluctant to
give up his claim upon Olivia and yet has failed to win her over. Viola holds the
key of the enigma locked up in her heart and is the catalytic agent who brings
about a fundamental change in both Orsino and Olivia without their being aware
of it themselves. When she expresses her willingness to die a thousand deaths she
seems to be obliquely and parabolicallly supporting Orsino's intention to sacrifice
30

the lamb which had been nursed by him with such tender and assiduous care.
'Lamb' has all the nimbus of innocence about it and is evocative of a sense of
unalloyed purity. Viola's continual self-sacrifice is, indeed, tantamount to the
death in spirit she has been undergoing all along and has definite religious
overtones about it.

On an over-all view of the relationship between Orsino and Olivia one

cannot help being struck by the fact that neither of them meets the other except in
the last Act. That both of them are capable of strong attachment is betrayed by the
savage jealousy exhibited by Orsino in his last crucial speech to Olivia (V. i. 111-
25) and the almost hysterical expostulations of Olivia with Viola-Cesario. The
thesis of their being in love with loves alone has, therefore, little or no cogency
about it, and is not fully corroborated by facts. The truth is that Orsino and Olivia
are not so much pure egoists as two closed monads and suffer from a certain
degree of existential vacuum and loneliness. Orsino's marked fondness for
solitude is brought out early in the play when he remarks 'for I my-self am
best/When least in company' (I. iv. 37-38). And Olivia had been in perpetual
mourning for seven years continuously and even hidden herself from the public
gaze: 'The element itself, till seven years' heat,/ Shall not behold her face at
ample view;/But, like a cloistress, she will veil'd walk,' (I. i. 26-28). Neither of
them feels for the other the kind of love that may serve as the basis for
communication. And though love does not itself establish communication yet
communication serves as a necessary test and medium for it. "An isolated human
being exists", according to Karl Jaspers, "as a boundary concept, not in fact". To
communicate is to be one self with another, and solitude blocks the way for this
kind of identification. But solitude which entails a sense of the shortcoming of
communication is the source of a break-through to Existenz. This, however,
presupposes the reality of manifestation, for it is through manifestation in the
phenomenality of the temporal world that one may hope to travel from one's
stable empirical existence to possible Existenz. In other words, self-being has to
outgrow itself and be countered by a dialectics in which specific human beings are
 31

not half so significant as the totality of being with all the darkness of historic
origin clinging to it. The sense of solitude, even in the midst of a superficial
abundance of life, may arouse the abysmal terror of non-being. This may sting us
into developing a new variety of solitude which may prove therapeutic and
renovating. Love, for Shakespeare, is, in the ultimate analysis, a kind of
invokement, a dark and sacred passion, an unmotivated impulse to bind self to
self. It is both a unique and unpredictable motion of the spirit and depends for its
growth and sustenance upon some mode of existential communication. A rupture
of communication in existence puts Existenz in jeopardy, but a sense of its
inadequacy prepares us for the realisation of Existenz. Viola's role in the play is
precisely that she tries her level best to make Orsino and Olivia achieve a
semblance of communication, and she even undergoes the mythical ritual of self-
sacrifice for this purpose. She doesn't quite succeed in her mission but
nevertheless proves herself effective to the extent of making both of them find
their true counterparts-Sebastian in the case of Olivia and herself in the case of the
Duke. It is the search for authentic being, the effort to have a glimpse of Existenz
by transcending the particularities of existence and to engage oneself in a loving
combat which may be regarded as the focal point of the play-the point towards
which the entire content of the comic action seems to be directed.

References

1. An quotations are from Twelfth Night, the new Clarendon Shakespeare.

2. Herbert Howard, The Tiger's Heart, (London, 1970) p. 128.
3. Derek Traversi, An Approach to Shakespeare, vol. I, third edition (London, 1968), p. 312.
4. Joseph H. Summers, "The Masks of Twelfth Night", Toronto University Review, XXII,
1955, p. 31.
5. Derek Traversi, op. cit., p. 305.
 CHAPTER 3
The Merchant of Venice: An Existential Comedy

Framed in an ironic mould and despite the eventual resolution of the

dissonancies The Merchant of Venice is charged with moments of deep anxiety.
The two protagonists — Antonio and Shylock — locked up in a war-like embrace
for the start — provide us, in their respective attitudes and responses, with two
apparently analogous, though sharply differentiated, patterns of behaviour. The
antagonism between them is savage and explicit and seems to be rooted in
elemental passions: to Antonio, Shylock is 'like a goodly apple rotten at the
heart'6 and to Shylock, Antonio is 'like a fawning publican'. Antonio is open-
handed and self-effacing and his generosity has, perhaps, encouraged to some
degree Bassanio's spend-thrift habits; their mutual love and friendship seems to be
in accord with the Platonic ideal of friendship which was upheld and applauded in
the renaissance age; 'to you Antonio,/I owe the most in money and in love', (1.i.
130-31) — Bassani°, and 'Then do but say to me what I should do/ That in your
knowledge may by me be done./And I am prest unto it'; (1. i. 158-60) — Antonio.
This is borne out by Solanio, who can at least be trusted with accurate reporting,
thus: 'Turning his face, he put his hand behind him,/ And with affection wondrous
sensible/ He wrung Bassanio's hand, and so they parted' (II. viii. 47-49). It is
stretching the point too far, merely indulging in wild surmise. I think, to discover
in this, as has been suggested, any overtones of homosexuality. Antonio is one
who not only feels wearied with life but whose entire mode of existence is
shadowed with loneliness and a sense of being self-exiled. He is introduced to us
as one who is imbued with the passion for self-sacrifice: offers ungrudgingly to
help the Prodigal Bassanio — reckless, pleasure-loving and debonair as he is —
34

when such help is earnestly solicited and Bassanio's own resources, on account of
his extravagance, are sadly depleted to meet a contingency. Though his argosies
are at present all gone out to distant seas, yet the trade capitalist Antonio can very
well count on the fortune they are likely to bring him and he also commands
credibility in the commercial circles of Venice. Normally he looks insulated and
withdrawn from the humdrum of life–one who is fed on his own delicious
melancholy:

In sooth I know not why I am so sad,

It wearies me...
But how I caught it, found it, or came by it,
What stuff, 'tis made of, whereof it is born,
I am to learn:
(1. i. 1-5)

This malaise of his clearly registers the impression of boredom and ennui and also
betrays an ignorance of self which is very characteristic of Antonio. He disavows
categorically later, while refuting Salerio, that his anxiety has anything to do with
his business enterprises, for it is rooted, in fact, deeply in his psychic make–up.
The fact of sadness or 'estrangement' from the Sartrean ensoi holds the key for
unlocking the secret of Antonio's quaint charm: he insists on it a little later thus:

I hold the world but as the world Gratiano,

A stage, where everyman must play a part,
And mine a sad one.
(1. i. 77-79)

Here his mind seems to be obsessed by the transitory nature of the world, the
notion of make-believe involved in play-acting and by the 'boundary' situation
with which man in a hostile universe is confronted. Salerio, while talking with
Solanio — both of them are irksome and unsavoury characters, though — also
confirms the pervasive complexion of Antonio's mind thus:

I pray thee let us go and find him out

And quicken his embraced heaviness
With some delight or other,
 35

(II. viii. 51-53)

In a later context, while answering Bassanio's query in respect of Antonio's well-

being, he, rather unwittingly, underlines this fact in this pithy and suggestive way;
'Not sick my lord, unless it be in mind' (III. ii. 233). And, surprisingly enough,
this impression persists till the very end, for instance, in Portia's 'Sir grieve not
you, —you are most welcome notwithstanding' (V. i. 239).

In spite of his genuine, though undemonstrating, friendship with Bassanio

and his frequent contacts with Gratiano, Antonio is essentially a lonely man, there
is no Portia to sweeten the agonized moments of his life and share his burdens
which seem to shake his equipoise: 'These griefs and losses have so bated
me/That I shall hardly spare a pound of flesh/Tomorrow, to my bloody creditor'
(III. iii. 32-34). His inward being, starved of the nourishing springs of intensely
emotive life, finds its compensation in friendship—a fact which, as acutely pointed
out by Miss Mahood, is paralleled with the relationship of the poet with his friend
in Shakespeare's Sonnets.7 More or less like a protective shield for Bassanio he
remains all along a care—worn person and suffers from a sense of alienation. The
only thing which sustains him and provides him propelling energy is his
benevolence and altruism: his willingness and capability of doing a good turn to
Bassanio to whom he is bound with 'hoops of gold' and lending money gratis and
thus have the consolation of alleviating the distress of others. The latter fact
becomes an irritant for Shylock, for it brings his modus operandum or style of
functioning into disrepute: 'I hate him...!.. .for that in low simplicity/He lends out
money gratis, and brings down/The rate of usance here with us in Venice' (1. iii.
37-40).

The action of the play is triggered off by Bassanio's decision to go forth to

Belmont for taking the risk of wooing Portia, and Antonio, committed to finance
this romantic adventure, is at once pushed to the foreground. The melancholy
streak in him, which is well-pronounced, determines the sombre reality of the play
as a whole and in a way provides its spiritual setting. He does not evince any
36

spontaneity of response even when the tension generated by the likelihood of the
forfeiture of the bond is relaxed. His emotional temperature rises only
occasionally as in his jeering and flouting of his professed adversary, Shylock; he
looks down upon him with unconcealed abhorrence and seeks to undermine his
human dignity and staying power with unremitting shafts of ridicule. Even when
he is driven into a tight corner he does not lose his equanimity of temper though
the undertone of irony in his utterance is a fair index of the blistering contempt he
feels for Shylock. In spite of his solicitude and over–flowing generosity towards
Bassani° there is hardly anything in the play to corroborate that he is on terms of
intimacy with any one –not even with the bunch of friends common to Bassanio
and himself. He lacks the moral stamina which enables one to face the vicissitudes
of life with an unflinching eye, and his death–wish, arising from soul–sickness, of
and born of an acute sense of frustration, is brought out thus:

I am a tainted wether of the flock.

Meetest for death, — the weakest kind of fruit
Drops earliest to the ground, and so let me;
You cannot better be employ'd Bassani°.
Than to live still and write mine epitaph.
(IV. i. 114-18)

The awareness of inner corruption and the anguish accompanying it seems to

thrust him towards the threshold of death. A later utterance in which boredom
reaches the point of saturation and is steeped in despair, approximates to it thus:

It is still her (Fortune's) use

To let the wretched man outlive his wealth,
To view with hollow eye and wrinkled brow
An age of poverty; from which ling 'ring penance
Of such misery doth she cut me off.
(IV. i., 264-68)

It is this pervasive gloom and abiding discontent pertaining to survival in an

inimical world which provides the dominant undertone of the play. He is fed up
with life because of the increasing load of miseries on him and the uneasiness and
 37

annoyance caused by the lodg'd hate' and 'loathing' Shylock bears to him. No
convivialities are available to distract him, and though not exactly self–centred his
universe is nevertheless bounded with narrow horizons: he has no option but to
seek sustenance from the realization of limited objectives and concerns. His
value-system suffers from a sort of 'lack' or inadequacy, and this kind of self–
engagement has almost always the effect of atrophying one's perceptions.

Shylock — the polar opposite of Antonio — offers a sharp dramatic

contrast to him in so far as he is lacking in that humaneness which is the bed–rock
of Antonio's personality. For one thing his relationship with Tubal is very much
unlike the sense of mutuality and reciprocity shared by Antonio and Bassanio, and
this is evidenced by the following bit of dialogue which takes place between the
two of them at a crucial point in the play:

Tub. One of them showed me a ring that he had of your daughter for a
monkey.
Shy. Out upon her! Thou torturest me Tubal, — it was my turquoise. I
had it of Leah when I was a bachelor: I would not have given it for
a wilderness of monkeys.
(III. i. 108-113)

Even his own flesh and blood, Jessica, `asham'd to be my father's child', and
alleging 'Our house is hell' (II. iii. 2) rebels against his authority and abandons
him with unmitigated callousness: the bitterness of this sense of loss stings him to
the quick and pushes him little by little to the verge of desperation. The 'house'
invoked so often in Shylock's utterances is the symbol of insularity and
imprisonment to which he has been condemned consequent upon the rupture of all
personal ties and social commitments. Apparently Shylock looks inflexible and
uncompromising, his mind rivetted on the injuries done to him he sees no prospect
of achieving an equipoise. In view of the lasting damage caused to his psyche and
the raw wounds inflicted on him continuing to fester any possibility of reaching an
understating with the coterie of his adversaries is completely ruled out. He bears
an ancient grudge against all Christians in general (something rooted in his racial
38

sensitivity) and against Antonio specially because his commercial interests have
been jeopardized by the latter's innocuous lending practice. To support his
hypocritical contention that 'thrift is blessing' he cites the Biblical analogue of the
agreement between Jacob and Laban regarding the rearing of the ewes: the
speckled ones produced by the use of an ingenious device fell to Jacob's share.
Shylock justifies, by inference, the breeding of the metal and thus turns it into
flesh and rationalizes his own nefarious practice by equating the divine and the
human mechanism. Also perhaps he is insinuating that there is hardly any
difference between the profits accruing form his money-lending practice and the
'venture' of Antonio's sending out his argosies to distant lands and thus earning
`exess' which is after all 'good'. His malice and hatred toward Antonio seems to
spring from primitive animal drives and he sees no harm in making a public
demonstration of it. He is, therefore, bent upon exacting the penalty for Antonio's
failure to pay back the three thousand ducats by the stipulated period of time.

Act I scene iii opens thus:

Shy :Three thousand ducats, well,
Bass : Ay, Sir, for three months.
Shy : For three months, well,
Bass : For the which as I told you, Antonio shall be bound.
Shy : Antonio shall become bound, well,
(I. iii. 1-5)

Here the reiteration of the monosyllable 'well' betrays a cool, calculated, grim
resolve to catch Antonio 'upon the hip' if he were to stumble, and this sounds
almost premonitory. His secret calculus, the details of which he is too cunning to
disclose, is boosted up by an uncanny apprehension which is hinted at thus: 'but
ships are but boards, sailors but men, there be land-rats, and water-rats, water-
thieves and land-thieves, (I mean pirates), and then there is the peril of waters,
winds, and rocks': (I. iii. 19-23). As his hatred intensifies and the plan of
wreaking vengeance ripens and gets clarified in his mind he becomes impervious
to all persuasion, logic or even threat: his mind cannot be dispossessed of what
holds it in its strong grip. He refuses to be moved by any sentimental appeal to
 39

compassion or charitableness: 'And for my love I pray you wrong me not' (I. iii.
166), addressed to Antonio contains an element of wryness and callous
indifference to all softer passions:
I'll have my bond, I will not hear thee speak,
I'll have my bond, and therefore speak no more,
I'll no be made a soft and dull-ey'd fool,
To shake the head, relent, and sigh, and yield
To Christian intercessors: follow not, —
I'll have no speaking, I will have my bond.
(III. iii. 12-17)

He has not only become impercipient but has been reduced to a state of
petrifaction: only the haunting cadence of the word 'bond' is dinned into one's
ears with nauseating frequency and a nameless horror. He speaks in a tone of
finality, the whole utterance being measured and categorical and contains an
element of iron in it.

It can hardly be denied that Shylock is a self–tortured soul and he has been
forced to develop a permanently nihilistic stance; a pose based upon nothing but a
gesture of rejection and annulment. At the back of it lies the aggressively
unyielding, malicious and haughtily offensive behaviour of the whole pack of
hounds by which he is surrounded on all sides — an attitude which stresses man's
inhumanity to man. He is hissed at, ridiculed and insulted for the 'moneys and
usances' which he regards as his legitimate due, for to him the breeding of the
barren metal is as innocuous as the breeding of the ewes. He has been subjected
to such constantly rehearsed vituperations that he has developed a guilty
conscience which he tries to cloak behind his flintiness. The fact of his being
consistently discriminated against, of his being forcibly removed to the periphery
of civilized living, becomes a deposit of his Unconscious and makes his normal
responses warped and contorted. The racial prejudice which seems to operate on
both sides — the Christians as well as the Jews vie with one another in apathy and
intolerance — makes Shylock develop a sort of primeval hatred and revulsion like
that of a Heathcliff and makes him repudiate all pieties, graces and decencies of a
40

corporate and sophisticated mode of existence. His obduracy derives, ultimarely,

as a chain reaction, from the mockery and ridicule poured upon him by the
magnificoes of Venice, especially by Antonio, Bassanio and the whole set of his
opponents who pride themselves upon their much-publicized gentleness, urbanity
and decorum. His coarsened sensibility and his emotionally twisted nature
constitute a blockage in the way of communication in the absence of which he has
been rendered incapable of responsiveness to the good and the beautiful. With the
trial scence in the offing, Shylock, in a crucial passage makes, apropos of
Antonio, a spirited defence of his self-validating view-point thus:

'he hath disgrac'd me, and hinder' d me half a million, laugh'd at

my losses, mock'd at my gains, scorned my nation, thwarted my bargains,
cooled my friends, heated mine enemies, — and what's his reason? I am a
Jew. Hath not a Jew eyes? Hath not a Jew hands, organs, dimensions,
senses, affections, passions, fed with the same food, hurt with the same
weapons, subject to the same diseases, healed by the same means, warmed
and cooled by the same winter and summer as a Christian is? — If you
prick us do we not bleed? If you tickle us do we not laugh? If you poison
us, do we not die? And if you wrong us shall we not revenge?. If we are
like you in the rest, we will resemble you in that. If a Jew wrong a
Christian, what is his humility? Revenge? If a Christian wrong a Jew, what
should his sufferance be by Christian example? Why revenge!
(III. i. 48-64)

Though the word 'revenge' has been flaunted repeatedly here— the implicit
assumption being that the Jewish retaliation is as good as the Christian assault by
which it is motivated — yet looked at in a wider perspective it is a plea for
equality and a sense of human brotherhood, and Shylock's logic seems in its own
way krefragable. He hammers out his points with vigour and pungency, speaks
with devastating clear-sightedness and his attacks upon his opponents are lethal
and demoralizing. He speaks nevertheless like a man under the sway of controlled
passion, with an intentness and dignity of utterance, and yet as one who is brutal
and unforgiving. What is also worth noticing is that he makes his points with only
the nutritive and sensitive composition of human nature in view and does not
bother about the rational soul of man or his angelic substance. With the human
 41

relationships become wilted and their sanctity gone he feels alienated not only
with the whole Christian community but also with Jessica, Tubal and Launcelot
and his identity seems to dissolve in the overwhelming tide of disgust and
loathsomeness. His mind thus tends to become empty and opaque and incapable
of human interaction. He is the eternal outsider, accursed to live beyond the pale
of the charmed circle. He always has the desolating, agonized feeling of living
outside society and suffering from his own sense of negation.

Antonio and Shylock offer two parallel versions of loneliness and the
difference between them amounts to this: whereas the former's loneliness is,
perhaps, temperamental, that of the latter is the end-product of a continuous
process not only of discriminatory treatment of him but also of ostracism to which
he is subjected as well as of his desire to cling to his own separate racial identity.
For Shylock hatred, revenge and loneliness form a network of complexes out of
which he just cannot extricate himself. It is incorrect to hold that Lorenzo's
elopement of Jessica is the proximate cause of the pursuit of his plan of revenge,
for as confirmed by Jessica herself, Shylock had been harping upon it all along
and had vowed himself to it in case he succeeded in ensnaring Antonio. It is
intriguing to notice that both Antonio and Shylock claim to be epitomes of
patience, respectively, thus: 'I do oppose/My patience to his fury, and am arm'd
/To suffer with a quietness of spirit,/The very tyranny and rage of his' (IV. i. 10-
13) — Antonio, and 'Still have I brone it with a patient shrug,/For suff ranee is
the badge of all out tribe' (I. iii. 104-105) — Shylock. All this seems to be merely
a futile exercise in sophistry on the part of both of them; the truth, however, lies in
these counter-assertions which are marked with disillusioning forthrightness:

Shy, I will buy with you, sell with you, talk with you, walk with you,
and so following: but I will not eat with you, drink with you, nor
pray with you.
(I. iii. 30-33)
Ant, I am as like to call thee so again,
To spit on thee again, to spurn thee too,
If thou will lend this money, lend it not
42

As to thy friends, for when did friendship take

A breed of barren metal of his friend?
But lend it rather to thine enemy,
Who if he break, thou may'st with better face
Exact the penalty.
(I. iii. 125-132)

The 'bond' becomes for Shylock a sort of fetish round which are gathered
together all the destructive impulses which are embodied in himself It was
observed earlier that Jessica's desertion of Shylock was one of the disturbing
factors which precipitated his emotional crisis and threw him into perturbation,
and he was perplexed with a sense of dereliction and loneliness. It is also worth
pondering that Shylock's frenzied outburst on learning of Jessica's flight with
Lornnzo from 'my sober house' as reported by Solanio:

My daughter ! 0 my ducats ! 0 my daughter!

Fled with a Christian! 0 my Christian ducats!
Justice, the law, my ducats, and my daughter!
(II, viii. 15-17)
is not intended either to evoke pathos for his sense of deprivation or expose him to
the agony of the stab of derision; both of these will be tantamount to creating a
facile theatrical effect which is far from Shakespeare's dramatic purpose. The
coupling of '0 my ducats' and '0 my daughter' does not merely underscore
Shylock's ingrained avarice but is also symptomatic of the fact that the wrench
from Jessica has given him a jolt at the deepest psychic level. One may add that
his apparent hatred of Jessica may as well be regarded as an inverted form of love
in a man who is hedged in and baited by a swarm of bitter enemies. This, along
with his bruised egotism, contributes in no small measure to his sense of
humiliation.

In the beginning of Act IV, before the trial scene gets going, the suave and
sober Duke, discarding all pretence of refinement and finesse characterizes
Shylock thus:
A stony adversary, an inhuman wretch,
Uncapable of pity, void and empty
 43

From any dram of mercy

(IV. i. 4-6)

This is followed by another vignette of Shylock — done by Antonio, believed to

be uniformly benign and superior, and who yet is capable of strong and sudden
eruptions of feelings:
You may as well go stand upon the beach
And bid the main flood bate his usual height,
You may as well use question with the wolf,
Why he hath made the ewe bleat for the lamb;
You may as well forbid the mountain pines
To wag their high tops, and to make no noise
When they are fretten with the gusts of heaven:
You may as well do anything most hard
As seek to soften that –than which what's harder? —
His Jewish heart
(IV. i. 71-80)

Goddard significantly comments on this to the following effect:-`The metaphors

reveal his intuition that what he is dealing with is not ordinary human feeling
within Shylock but elemental forces from without that have swept in and taken
possession of him'.3 In spite of being preoccupied with straining after effects —
every single image reflecting a certain subtlety of contrivance — Antonio's
elaborate rhetoric suffers from both flaccidity and mawkishness and in it the
descent from the antisublime to mere bathos and helplessness is brought out thus:
You may as well do anything hard.' The pejorative intention is manifest from
beginning to end and can hardly be mistaken. The accent of the high–falutin
speech cannot altogether cover up the explosion of resentment and exasperation
against Shylock, and, surprisingly enough, contradicts the impression of the
anguished and level–headed gentleman Antonio is generally reputed to be. •
Alongside this may also be placed Gratiano's caricature of Shylock, based as it is
upon his parodying the Pythagorean view of reincarnation:
Thou almost mak'st me waver in my faith,
To hold opinion with Pythagoras,
That souls of animals infuse themselves
44

Into the trunks of men: thy currish spirit

Govern'd a wolf, who hang'd for human slaugher-
Even from the gallows did his fell soul fleet,
And, whilst thou lay'st in thy unhallow'd dam,
Infus' d itself in thee: for thy desires
Are wolfish, bloody, starv'd, and ravenous.
(IV. i. 130-38)

This is downright name—calling in the manner of Dryden's Absalom and

Achitophel and bears upon it the stamp of Gratiano's mean — spiritedness. The
obsequious Gratiano is not bothered to communicate his sense of consternation
through any literary artifice perhaps because he is just incapable of managing it
— but straightaway puts his nasty finger upon Shylock's 'currish spirit' and
sarcastically designates his desires as 'wolfish', 'bloody', 'starved' and 'ravenous'
— a gruesome collocation of adjectives suggesting a sort of fiendishness. Small
wonder, then that Shylock becomes all the more hardened in his reaction and
would not be appeased with anything less than obtaining the coveted pound of
flesh. The three well-marked stages in his following the lead of his dark end
malevolent impulses or three phases of the crescendo of obduracy may be
distinguished thus: 'It is my humour', My deeds upon my head', and 'An Oath, an
oath, I have an oath in heaven!' And when Portia wishes to intercede by saying
'bid me tear the bond', pat comes the reply: 'When it is paid, according to the
tenour' (IV. i. 231),

Portia's speech at the trial scene, invoking human compassion on the

divine analogy, is a superb and set piece of oration— eloquent, forceful and highly
stylized — but is at the same time marked by impotence because it miserably fails
in unfreezing Shylock and thus breaking the deadlock. Shylock has grown
impervious to all such sentimental appeals. Portia nevertheless plays her game
with consummate skill and optimum of shrewdness, first in letting Shylock,
irrevocably bent upon literalism, have his own way, with the facade of the law
being in his favour, and then, by a clever stratagem, forcing upon him, in the
reversed situation, the acceptance of the implementation of nothing less than the
 45

letter of the law– literalism, in a new guise. Shylock's obstinate insistence on

literalism, meant to be an agent of destruction, becomes, paradoxically enough,
the miraculous means of deliverance for Antonio. Her legal acumen enables Portia
to place Antonio's sworn enemy in a quandary and Gratiano, with his lacerating
tongue and never-failing opprobrium at his disposal, jumps to the occasion and
throws Shylock's earlier exuberant commendation of Portia: 'A Daniel come to
judgment' mercilessly back into his own teeth. Whereas Portia undoubtedly
emerges from the ordeal of this ritualism as an accomplished performer and a
brilliant strategist, Gratiano gloats in the prospect of seeing Shylock lick his own
wounds. In that consists Antonio's and his own unanticipated glow of triumph and
that also constitutes the source of Shylock's chagrin as well as his tragic dilemma.
All Shylock's furtive calculations are thus upset when the literalism he had all
along so passionately insisted on is enforced against him, thus inevitably resulting
in his total discomfiture. But despite his dogged pursuit of his quarry, his setting
his heart on 'a weight of carrion flesh' and his being reviled as an inexcerable
dog' by the foul–mouthed Gratiano, Shylock does possess a sort of dignity and
self-containedness. And had he had the courage and grittiness to face the
consequences flowing from the operation of the letter of the law in its fulness —
and it would have squared with his own initial impulse as well — he could attain
the near–tragic dimensions of personality. But harrowed, hunted and stigmatized
as he is, he tends to lose his nerve and proves himself guilty of a sort of apostasy
and is, therefore, 'hoist with his own petard'. It is no less true that a sort of
palpable lack of charity stares one in the face when one contemplates the way in
which he is despised and belittled by his opponents – the Antonio – Bassani° –
Gratiano axis against which he is pitted – including the Duke, after his
annihilation in the court room. And though forgiven for his trespasses, he is made
to undergo conversion to Christianity almost under duress which fact brings little
credit to his detractors and opponents. They seem to derive a sort of masochistic
pleasure from his being trapped and reduced to dust and ashes. No feat of verbal
felicity or splendid understatement can match the force and meaningfulness of the
46

laconic 'I am not well' for conveying the impact of the sense of persecution on the
shattered and disillusioned Shylock. Will it be too much to claim that like
Malvolio, Shylock is deliberately excluded from harmony or grace when almost
all the dramatis personae are moving towards it to become co-sharers in an
unanticipated upsurge of beneficence? It is only fair to admit that this represents
the climactic point of the continuous process of his being excluded from the open
sesame by the excluders who were motivated by nothing else except sheer
perversity.

Racial discrimination against the Jews, sense of superiority assumed and

wantonly paraded by the Christians and the fact of Shylock's unfeeling extortion
of money — the use of 'excess' obstructed by Antonio's liberal 'economics of
Christian grace': this chain of causalities cannot be called in question. What is,
however, of prime importance is that two diametrically opposed personality types
are produced by this chain, despite their sharing together the common trait of
loneliness. It hardly needs stressing that whereas Shylock's behaviour and being
are of a piece, in a way unified, a sort of disjunction between the two seems to
exist in the case of Antonio. It was pointed out earlier that Shylock is barred from
the experience of grace and harmony by the Christian conclave which is deadly
set against him and this fact is brought out in Lorenzo's generalized observation
thus:
Such harmony is in immortal souls,
But whilst this muddy vesture of decay
Doth grossly close it in, we cannot hear it.
(V. i. 63-65)

This 'muddy vesture of decay' in which Shylock's 'currish spirit' in Gratiano's

servile, animal image, is enclosed cannot hope to penetrate to concord and grace.
But Shylock, despite all his infirmities, is possessed of greater breadth and
intensity of imaginative life (he has been given more effective lines in the play)
than Antonio and even his hatred, as pointed out by Burkhandt, is the 'generosity
of hatred'.8 which Antonio is by no means capable of reckoning with: he is also
 47

potent in his vindictiveness. At the same time it is true that Shylock is averse to
participating in any activity which has a festive or communal complexion: most of
the time he is pacing up and down in a barricaded universe of his own creation,
and imperceptibly shades off into Duke Orsino or Malvolio of Twelfth Night. Very
much unlike Orsino, however, we find Shylock, early in the play, warning Jessica
against the internal temptation of 'the drum/and the vile squeaking of the wry-
neck'd fife' and this makes us pause awhile. But then 'the drum' and 'the fife' –
organs of the sacrilegious music– are those of the Christian masquers, and he is in
all probability suspicious of these precisely and preponderately on that account.
And when one of these Christians — his own unacknowledged son-in-law,
Lorenzo, who surreptitiously flew away with Jessica — idling in Belmont — the
Arcadia of the play — speculates with such audacity and cocksureness;
The man that hath no music in himself
Nor is not moved with concord of sweet sounds,
Is fit for treasons, stratagems, and spoils,
The motions of his spirit are dull as night,
And his affections dark as Erebus:
(V. i. 83-88)

is it going beyond permissible limits to hazard the guess that he is rather

unwittingly passing a pretty harsh judgment on Shylock, not only by branding his
'affections dark as Erebus' but by denouncing him as unfit to live anywhere, by
implication, except in Erebus? Whatever criteria of judgment we may evolve, and
even conceding that he sometimes appears like an unappeased ghost, there is no
denying the fact that Shylock is possessed of a sort of consistency and human
solidity as opposed to Antonio whose sobriety and sophistication are double-
edged.
48

References

6. All quotations are from The Merchant of Venice, edited by J.R. Brown, the new Arden
Shakespeare (London, 1955)
7. M.M. Mahood; Golden Lads and Girsls, in The Aligarh Journal of English Studie:
4, No, 1, 1979, p. 122.
8. S. Burckhardt, 'The Merchant of Venice: The Gentle Bond', in EHL. 29, 1962, p r..
105.
 CHAPTER 4
Shakespeare's Allegory of Love

In sharp contrast to the plays preceding it in the Shakespearian canon A

Midsummer Night's Dream does reflect some degree of development in the
prosecution of the comic idea though it is enclosed within the framework of a
dream. Sleep, dream and vision are key words in the play and are closely
interrelated. Dreams occur in the state of sleep, and vision implies the process
whereby the significance of the dream is clarified and the eyes opened to it.
Dream logic is basically different from that of the condition of wakefulness in as
much as it connotes the coexistence of disparate elements and a blurring of
distinctions. As emblems of sanity, balance and order in the rich heterogeneity of
phantasmagoria, Theseus and Hippolyta invite attention to themselves. Theseus
turns his martial triumph into the graces of love in wedding Hippolyta with
'pomp' and 'revelling' and thus emphasises the element of creativity latent in the
experience of love. Everything is refracted here through the prism of dream and
vision and everything is also subject to radical transformation. The moon is the
presiding and all-powerful metaphor in the play, and both the action and the
characters are inundated by its light and appear in an ambiguous, mercurial way.
At the very outset Theseus declares in tones of muted melancholy:

but 0! methinks how slow

This old moon wanes; she lingers my desires,
Like to a step-dame; or a dowager
Long withering out a young man's revenue.9
(I. i. 3-6)
50

With quicker feminine perception Hippolyta, however, strikes a more cheerful

note thus:

Four nights will quickly dream away the time;

And then the moon, like to a silver bow
New-bent in heaven, shall behold the night
Of our solemnities.
(I, i. 8-11)

Here is held out the possibility of an objective fact—the span of four nights—
being compressed into the mode of inner, subjective experience, and on this
transforming power of love falls the bewitching radiance of the moon. And it is
Hippolyta again who toward the end of the play exclaims: 'Truly, the moon shines
with a good grace' (V, i. 261).

The play is largely concerned with exploring the various manifestations of

the irrationality of love, governed by chaotic, subconscious impulses and drives.
There is something delightfully enchanting about the quartet of lovers and their
involvement in love relationships. Hermia is equally passionately wooed by both
Lysander and Demetrius though she responds to the protestations of the former
alone, and Helena who 'dotes' on him in idolatory is spurned by Demetrius. This
baffling, though not uncommon situation, contains the germs of embarrassments
the lovers have to undergo later. The shadow of potential darkness every now and
then falls across the idealizations and fervent effusions of these quick, bright
lovers who thread their way into the mazy labyrinths of love:

Hermia. Of then, what graces in my love do dwell,

That he hath turn'd a heaven unto a hell.
(1. i. 206-7)

Similarly, Egeus, the voice of authority and repression, strikes a skeptical,

discordant note early thus:

Thou hast by moonlight at her window sung,

With feigning voice, verses of feigning love;
And stol'n the impression of her fantasy
With bracelets of thy hair, rings, gawds, conceits,
 51

Knacks, trifles, nosegays, sweetmeats, messengers

Of strong prevailment in unharden'd youth;
(I, i. 30-5)

Earlier his accusation against Lysander, 'This man hath bewitched the bosom of
my child', remind one of Brabantio's similar indictment of Othello, and the word
'bewitched' implies a suspension of powers of reason and lack of lucidity brought
about by some kind of mesmerism. It is a view of love that is not likely to be
endorsed consciously by any one of the lovers. The moonlight by which Lysander
is alleged to have sung at Hermia's window is of a piece with the romantic setting
of the play, but the 'feigning voice' and 'verses of feigning love' not only imply
an adolescent love-madness but also betray Egeus's derogatory, inflexible and
hostile attitude to 'unharden'd youth'.

In the antiphonal exercise held between Lysander and Hermia regarding

the course of true love Lysander's accent falls on the disasters and mishaps by
which it is likely to be eroded. Transience and impermanence are integral to the
very nature of love and all its lustre is tarnished by the forces inhibiting and
blocking its passage:

Lysander. Or, if there were a sympathy in choice,

War, death, or sickness did lay siege to it,
Making it momentary as a sound
Swift as a shadow, short as any dream,
Brief as the lightning in the collied night,
That, in a spleen, unfolds both heaven and earth,
And ere a man bath power to say, 'Behold' !
The jaws of darkness do devour it up;
(I. i. 141-8)

The image of lightning'— lightning surrounded by 'collied night'— for love •

underscores its quality as an act of instant illumination that reveals both heaven
and earth. It is, nevertheless, caught up in the jaws of darkness, and crushed
thereby. Hermia seems to counterpoise something more positive and self-
52

affirming to it and her dedication to the vital impulse of love is externalized

through a mythical framework, woven by delicate evocations:

Hermia. I swear to thee by Cupid's strongest bow,

By his best arrow with the golden head,
By the simplicity of Venus' doves,
By that which knitteth souls and prospers love
And by that fire which bum' d the Carthage queen,
When the false Troyan under sail was seen,
By all the vows that ever men have broke.
(I. i. 169-75)

But it is also worth some attention that Cupid is a naughty and mischievous god,
known primarily for its fickleness, and Venus's doves are far from simple. The
last line seems in particular to cancel out all these apparently happy and attractive
configurations of love.

Both Hermia and Helena, a little more sharply individualized than

Lysander and Demetrius, are well aware of the extremities to which the
experience of love is subject. Having resisted the alternatives of death or fruitless,
sterile celibacy imposed upon her by Theseus in case she continued in her
obduracy Hermia chose the ideal of reciprocal, satisfying and glorious passion
imaged by 'the distill'd rose'. She thus prospers in love for sometime and yet she,
too, has some taste of the anguish inseparable from it. And similarly Helena is the
unfortunate victim of betrayal by Demetrius and is moved to expose the
chameleon-like nature of love professed by him thus:

As waggish boys in game themselves forswear,

So the boy Love is perjur'd everywhere;
For ere Demetrius look'd on Hermia's eyne,
He hail'd down oaths that he was only mine;
And when this hail some heat from Hermia felt,
So he dissolv'd and show'rs of oaths did melt.
(I. i. 240-5)

Lysander is, therefore, fully justified in calling him 'this spotted and inconstant
man' and showing a deep-seated repugnance towards him.
 53

The quartet of lovers find themselves ultimately at odds with one another:
Lysander, who had been deeply in love with Hermia (and she responded to his
love fully) forsakes her altogether, and falls equally intensely in love with Helena
though the latter finds it hard to believe. Also Demetrius who was for so long
drawn to Hermia as to a magnet gives her up and holds as firmly to Helena as
Lysander does. This naturally means that Helena becomes perplexed and tends to
suppose that all three of them — Lysander, Demetrius and Hermia — are part of
the 'confederacy' against her and she herself is the object of their calculated
brutality and derision. Hermia, on her part, is stung by a violent spasm of jealousy
directed against Helena who, she thought, was responsible for her displacement in
the affection of Lysander. The act of displacement is, however, effected by
pouring the juice of a little western flower into the eyes of the sleeping lovers by
Puck, the spirit of irresponsibility in the play. And the magical flower is
distinguished in this way:
But I might see young Cupid's fiery shaft
Quench'd in the chaste beams of the wat'ry moon
And the imperial vot'ress passed on,
In maiden meditation, fancy-free,
Yet mark'd I where the bolt of Cupid fell:
It fell upon a little western flower,
Before milk-white, now purple with love's wound,
And maidens call it, Love-in-idleness.
(II. i. 161-8)

This flower is possessed of the magical potency of making the person in whose
eyes its juice is squeezed fall in love with 'the first live thing' he or she perceives
on waking. In the context of the play it may be identified with the technique of
transformation. Moreover, for one thing, Cupid's fiery bolt was quenched in the
'beams of the wat'ry moon' — a recognized symbol of mutability, and
significantly also it was 'before milkwhite', but 'now purple with love's wound'.
This betrays an essential contrariety, the dual nature of love which is one of the
important motifs in the play. It may be added that the dream world and the spirit
world have many points of intersection all along.
54

The tangled web created by the wrongful squeezing of the juice by Puck
results, on the one hand, in making Lysander and Demetrius be at loggerheads
with each other and also puts Hermia and Helena at cross purposes. The two men
are, therefore, moved to exchange blows and though the two women ordinarily
speak a banal and stilted language yet Helena tries to define the area of
understanding common to them. Helena's evocation of memories of shared
experience in the past may serve in removing the incubus of blind suspicion that
has been allowed to grow between them:
We, Hermia, like two artificial gods,
Have with our needles created both one flower,
Both on one sampler, sitting on one cushion,
Both warbling of one song, both in one key;
As if our hands, our sides, voices, and minds,
Had been incorporate. So we grew togethere,
Like to a double cherry, seeming parted,
But yet a union in partition,
Two lovely berries moulded on one stem;
So, with two seeming bodies, but one heart;
Two of the first, like coats in heraldry,
Due but to one, and crowned with one crest.
(III. ii. 203-14)

On the face of it the passage betrays a school-girlish pose focusing on amity and
concord the achieved fusion of the two bodies animated by a single, indivisible
soul. It also vivifies the image of two beings nourished on a deliciously nostalgic
past and sharing a kind of mirror-state. But there is more to it than that. Both of
them may be regarded as emblems of 'gods of artifice', turning the raw material
of their experience into some sort of creative harmony for which 'one flower' and
'one song' is the visible counterpart — an artifact which contains the quintessence
of their mutual love and joy. And the pity of it is that now seeds of discord have
been sown into this harmonious composition and the 'union in partition' has been
wrecked beyond all repair.

Theseus and Hippolyta move within the orbit of sophisticated society and
theirs is the variety of courtly love, with all its hidden nuances and controlled
 55

rhythms. Yet some of the most important love scenes take place in the wood
outside Athens. The wood is a constant presence in the play, it is the home of
potent and dark energies that are displayed in all their fecundity and luxuriance. It
is to the wood that Lysander and Hermia take their stealthy flight and it is in fact
used as a tryst for all the lovers. It is here again that the pagan rituals of love are
enacted both on the human and the supernatural levels. The wood is not only the
symbol of the mysterious, subterrranean potencies but is also the physical
landscape that helps uncover the menacing drama of love played at the
subconscious level and through the medium of dream imagery. The presiding
deity of this supernatural world is Oberon — equivalent of Cupid who functions
as the intermediary between the lover and his object of adorations. Along with
him is Titania — his counterpart, Puck, the manipulator of all the topsy–turveyism
in the play, and a whole host of minuscule fairy spirits — Pease–Blossom,
Cobweb, Moth and Mustard–seed — who are no more than mere gossamers
sprung into existence at the very whiff of breath. Exquisitely fragile and
evanescent as they are, they owe their existence to Shakespeare's debt to the
native folkloric tradition and bring into prominence the sheer inexhaustible
richness and fertility of the dramatist's genius.

Corresponding to the activities of the Athenian lovers, and providing a

frame for them, Oberon and Titania are also involved in love–skirmishes that are
delightful to contemplate. Oberon's personality is sketched in and his amorous
pursuits are hinted at by Titania's arched glance thrown on them thus:
Titania. Then, I must be thy lady; but I know
When thou hast stol'n away from fairy land,
And in the shape of Corin sat all day,
Playing on pipes of corn, and versing love
To amorous Phillida,
(II. i. 64-8)

Not only is there a mythical dimension to the portrait but the attempt at spiteful
denigration is much too obvious to be concealed or evaded. And Titania's pastoral
boudoir is, by way of parallelism, painted in this way:
56

I know a bank where the wild thyme blows,

Where oxlips and the nodding violet grows
Quite over-canopied with luscious woodbine,
With sweet musk-roses, and with eglantine;
There sleeps Titania some time of the night
Lull'd in these flowers with dances and delight;
And there the snake throws his enamell'd skin,
Weed wide enough to wrap a fairy in;
(II. i. 249-56)

This is the picture of unfallen Paradise — the state of innocence of Blakean

construction where concord, harmony and perfect integration reign supreme and
where bounds have as yet not been put to the illimitable energy by reason. It is the
mythical garden of Eden par excellence, for here even the snake — the symbol of
betrayal and violence, generally speaking, is beneficent. The luscious flowers and
dances and delight are emblems of both fertility and unfettered organic growth in
the vegetable universe and of complete instinctual unity in the human.

For the time being Oberon and Titania are deeply at variance with each
other on account of the changeling that Titania nestles in her heart and whom
Oberon would like to have as one of his train of knights. The feelings of jealousy
stirred up in both Oberon and Titania manifest themselves in devious ways.
Titania accuses Oberon of infidelity in being attracted towards Hippolyta:
Why art thou here,
Come from the furtherst steppe of India?
But that, forsooth, the bouncing Amazon,
Your buskin'd mistress and your warrior love,
To Theseus must be wedded.
(II. ii. 68-72)

This not only forces Oberon to retort and he not only accuses Titania of having
some dubious truck with Theseus but also drags the latter's reputation into the
quagmire of calumny:
Oberon. How canst thou thus for shame, Titania,
Glance at my credit with Hippolyta,
Knowing I know thy love to Theseus?
Didst thou not lead him through the glimmering night
 57

From Perigouna, whom he ravished?

And make him with fair Aegles break his faith,
With Ariadne, and Antiopa?
(II. i. 74-80)

These Titania calls mere 'forgeries of jealousy', having little foundation in fact
and truth. Anyhow, the repeated requests on the part of Oberon to hand over the
changeling to him and the repeated rejection of these requests by Titania help
build up some kind of emotional tension between them. It has been pointed out,
and with a fair amount of plausibility, that the issue of the changeling does not
sufficiently account for this state of things. The dissension over the changeling is,
therefore, the overt symbol of the irrational, antagonistic, submerged forces in the
sub—conscious of Oberon and Titania. This tension has had the effect of
introducing anarchy and disruption in the whole chain of being and preventing
nature from geysering into the infinite wealth of organic and inorganic substances,
of throwing the whole seasonal cycle out of focus:
And thorough this distemperature we see
The seasons alter: hoary-headed frosts
Fall in the fresh lap of the crimson rose,
And on old Hiems' thin and icy crown
An odorous chaplet of sweet summer buds
Is, as in mockery, set. The spring, the summer,
The childing autumn, angry winter, change
Their wonted liveries, and the mazed world,
By their increase, now knows not which is which.
(II. i. 106-14)

This is a comprehensive picture of chaos, the mythical garden fallen in ruins and
all sense of order, coherence and proportion completely lost. As against this
picture of the disheveling of nature may be set another as underlined in Oberon's
words thus:
Thou remember'st
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,
58

And certain stars shot madly from their spheres

To hear the sea-maid's music.
(II. i. 48-54)

Here it is the motif of harmony as opposed to that of discord that seems to

permeate Nature, and the whole passage may be treated as a paean offered to the
power of music. In the stars shooting 'madly from their spheres' is contained the
further suggestion that the universe benumbed into utter silence by the 'dulcet and
harmonious breath' is likely to be stirred again to pure intensity and creative
rhythm.

It was hinted at earlier that the adventure of the madcap mishief-maker,

Puck, backfires in the sense that the juice of the magical herb, intended to be
poured into the eyes of Demetrius while he was asleep, was by mistake crushed
into those of Lysander with its inevitable consequence — he perceives Helena and
falls in love with her as soon as he wakes up. With some drops of the same herb
were anointed the eyes of Titania by Oberon himself, and the first object she casts
her eyes on waking is no less a person than Bottom — 'that rose of ragweeds, that
lion of locusts' l° — on whose head an ass's nowl had earlier been thrown by
Puck. Thus Titania falls madly in love with Bottom — the chief of the rude
mechanicals, and this was the device that had been hit upon by Oberon for
wreaking his vengeance against Titania as a punishment for withholding the
changeling from him. Both in his preferences for food and his general propensities
Bottom seems to enjoy with a keen relish and disarming naivety the role that has
been imposed upon him. His complete identification with his mask is betrayed
thus:
Titania. Or say, sweet love, what thou desir'st to eat,
Bottom. Truly, a peck of provender: I could munch your good dry oats,
Methinks I have a great desire to a bottle of hay: good hay, sweat
hay, hath no fellow.
Titania. I have a venturous fairy that shall seek the squirrel's hoard, and
fetch thee thence new nuts,
Bottom. I had rather have a handful or two of dried pease.
(IV. i. 32-8)
 59

Titania's falling in love with Bottom is a supreme example of that violent yoking
together of incongruities that is a recurrent phenomenon in the play and demands
an utter suspension of disbelief on the part of the reader. After Oberon relents and
decides to undo 'this hateful imperfection of her eyes' and the antidote is applied
to her Titania comes back into her own and says:
Titania. My Oberon! What visions have I seen!
Methought I was enamour'd of an ass.
(IV. i. 76-7)

And Oberon's laconic comment has an element of stressed cruelty in it:

Oberon. There lies your love.

(IV. i. 78)

This whole ludicrous business may be regarded as providing a means for the
articulation of the irrational subconscious and thus having it unearthed and
clarified.

Dream and play may be regarded as the leitmotifs in A Midsummer Night's

Dream, and the one is enmeshed into the other. Bottom and his company plan to
fit up the lamentable comedy of Pyramus and Thisby to be staged on the occasion
of the nuptials of Theseus and Hippolyta. The dreamworld which is the natural
habitat of the lovers and the play-within-the-play to be manoeuvred by Peter
Quince and others are self-reflecting mirrors. Or one may view the playlet as the
objective frame through which the subjectivities of the world of love and romance
are objectified and evaluated. And to discuss the cast and the repertoire the
artisans meet in the wood outside Athens. As against Oberon and Titania and
Puck — the chief executor of Oberon's commands — along with the rest of the
spirits who have something exquisitely volatile and ethereal about them, these
mechanicals are purely earthy and smell, uninhibitedly, of the sod. And Bully
Bottom stands out conspicuously among them as he represents a certain kind of
practicality, shrewdness and a penchant for bold initiative. Irrepressible energy
60

exudes from him as it doesn't from any of the rest, and he holds the strings of
action firmly in his hands whenever occasion requires it. He is always alert and
assertive and ever ready, with a bounce, to take upon himself any role that others
may squeamishly decline as either hazardous, irksome or embarrassing or not
worth their salt. He has a certain amount of rock-bottom reality or earthiness
about him and seems to be, in point of his boundless resourcefulness and capacity
for resurgence, a dim analogue of Falstaff. Though he is invited to play the role of
Pyramus — and it is a major one — yet he is prepared to assume that of Thisby,
the Lion and even that of the Wall, too. About that of Thisby his offer amounts to
this:

Bottom. An I may hide my face, let me play Thisby too. I'll speak in a
monstrous little voice. `Thisne. Thisne!"Ah, Pyramus, my lover
dear; thy Thisby dear, and lady dear!'
(I. ii. 46-8)

And regarding the impersonation of the lion's voice he adds: 'but I will aggravate
my voice so that it will roar you as gently as any sucking dove; I will roar you as
`twere any nightingale'. (I. ii. 74-6). Bottom has a subtle sense of the inner drama
of life and he enjoys his role of an ass thoroughly. What is most remarkable about
him is that he is capable of keeping his drollery within proper bounds. He is
touchingly human and accommodating and knows how to keep his co-workers
together and make them act with a genuine sense of participation in a common
venture. With Peter Quince and him at the helm of affairs the play is bound to go
very well down the throats of the royal pair as well as the general audience.

One cannot help feeling that the image of the eye is a reiterative image in
A Midsummer Night's Dream. The eye is both the organ of perception and the
channel of passion. Love makes its way into the heart through the medium of the
eye, and this is true both of mere temporary infatuation and more serious and
abiding involvements. Love has been sought to be aroused by pouring love-potion
into the eyes of one of the lovers — and a wrong one at that — and later the
mistake is rectified and things restored to normalcy by the application of the
 61

antidote, In the first instance it gave rise to embarrassing confusions and hence it
may be asserted legitimately that the vagaries of the lovers in the first half of the
play derive from a dislocation of perception. It is equally true that equilibrium is
regained when with the administration of the antidote the scales fall off the eyes.
The image of the eye is brought out in four different contexts thus!

Hermia. I would my father look'd but with my eyes.

Theseus. Rather your eyes must with his judgment look.

Lysander. Reason becomes the marshal to my will,

And leads me to your eyes; where I o'erlook
Love's stories written in love's richest book

Lysander. Fair Helena, who more engilds the night

Than all yon fiery oes and eyes of light

Titania. I pray thee, gentle mortal, sing again;

Mine ear is much enamour'd of thy note;
So is mine eye enthralled to thy shape;
(III. i. 130-2)
The wealth of analogies used for the eye is so enormous that it appears as if this is
the most important symbolic correlate for both love and beauty in the play.

Though it is hinted at occasionally that love is guided by reason and

judgment, yet the overwhelming evidence in the play goes to establish the fact
that these hardly matter. On the contrary, almost all the major characters are
moved by their irrational impulses; they are victims of impetuous passion and
coltish desires, and are seen blundering and moving tangentially in the crooked
by-paths of love. It may also be taken into account that the image of the eye and
the motifs of sleep and dream are closely interlinked. Hermia, for instance,
recounts her dream thus:

Hermia (Awaking) Help me, Lysander, help me! Do thy best

To pluck this crawling serpent from my breast.
Ay me, for pity! What a dream was here!
Lysander, look how do I quake with fear;
62

Methouhgt a serpent eat my heart away,

And you sat smiling at his cruel prey,
(II. ii. 145-50)

This has obvious Freudian overtones, for the figure of the crawling serpent is
symbolic of male sexuality and violence. Within the symbolic landscape it
suggests that Hermia is to be displaced in Lysander's affection in no time, despite
the firmest bonds of mutuality earlier, and the dream comes true on waking. But
the dream motif has a more positive aspect, too. In the climactic scene all the four
lovers — Lysander, Demetrius, Herrnia and Helena — overcome by sheer
physical exhaustion or protracted mental agony or both, fall down to sleep and
later are reawakened by the strains of music. Sleep does the trick here, as in other
plays of Shakespeare, too, of initiating the process of emotional recovery and
adjustment. And when they reawaken, their attachments are redirected to their
proper places, and this brings them a delicious surprise. They fall down to sleep in
a state of distraction and perplexity, they rise up in a state of amazement and are at
their wits' end as to how best to unravel this mystery. The love-potion, squeezed
down the eyes a second time, co-operates with the strange alchemy of sleep to
restore them to a healthful state.

After the reconciliation is achieved and the loose ends of the action have
been sorted out it looks as if the major characters have had quite an experience in
the course of their hallucinatory sleep. The whole tangled web of the jealousies
and wranglings in love is viewed as 'the fierce vexation of a dream' — something
most incredible in its own right, and yet inducing a sense of wonderment and
exquisite delight because of the transformations effected by it. All the four major
characters have to reassure themselves that they are no longer asleep but are fully
wide awake and yet they feel skeptical about the validity of this experience in the
deepest recesses of their psyche. For them vision is still distorted and they seem to
be in possession of a double image of things in the external world. The tyranny of
the eye is still much too compulsive and obstinate to be got rid of and it continues
 63

to play havoc with the identity of objects and persons. Ambiguity, deliquescence
and two-fold vision are what characterize their pattern of responses:
Demetrius. These things seem small and undistinguishable,
Like far-off mountains turned into clouds.
Hermia. Methinks I see those things with parted eye,
When everything seems double.
Helena. So methinks:
And I have found Demetrius like a jewel,
Mine own, and not mine own.
Demetrius. Are you sure
That we are awake! It seems to me
That yet we sleep, we dream.
(IV. i. 187-96)

Hermia's dream, referred to earlier, is predictive in nature but the experience of

these lovers, despite Puck's comment

Lord, what fools these mortals be!

(III. ii. 115)

brings them surpassing wonder because all these fooleries turn out triumphantly.

Bottom proves himself, however, the shrewdest and most perceptive of all
commentators, for he puts the whole thing in a very clever way, conceding the
uniqueness of the experience and yet doubting the wisdom of fathoming its
mysteries: '1 have had a most rare vision, I have had a dream, past the wit of man
to say what dream it was: man is but an ass, if he go about to expound this dream'
(IV. i. 204-7). And when he adds 'man is but a patched fool' he seems to be
corroborating Puck's insight referred to earlier. Putting St. Paul's defence of the
primacy of spirit over the letter in the epistle addressed to the Conrinthians (2:29)
in a scrambled form Bottom brings his judgment to a conclusive end thus:

The eye of man hath not heard, the ear of man hath not seen, man's hand is not
able to taste, his tongue to conceive, nor his heart to report, what my dream was. I
will get Peter Quince to write a ballad of this dream: it shall be called Bottom's
Dream, because it hath no bottom...
(IV. i. 210-15)
64

In spite of his rock-bottom simplicity Bottom discloses radical wisdom in these

malapropisms and seems to assert his modesty indirectly because he is the
Biblical humble vessel through whom vital truths, intended to deflate the proud
and the self-centred, are being uttered. He makes a clear confession of his own
insufficiency of articulation and lays emphasis on our lack of apprehension of
truth on account of the confusion from which the multiplicity of the senses
suffers. He further insinuates that instead of deciphering and proclaiming these
mysteries it would be much more worth-while to have them structure in the form
of a literary artifact like the ballad to be written by Peter Quince and sung before
the Duke.

Immediately following it Theseus is moved to make a magisterial,

categorical pronouncement and he tends to look upon the revelation of the
Athenian lovers with an air of superior disdain and an Olympian detachment:
Lovers and madman 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:
(V. i. 3-7)

He puts the perfervid feeling, the emotional temperature shared alike by the lovers
and the madmen at high premium and uses the phrases 'shaping fantasies' in a
rather pejorative sense, and seems to prefer 'cool reason' to what can be intuited
by the imagination. He further isolates the poetic furore and highlights the
peculiar functioning of the creative gift of the imagination thus:
The poet's eye, in a frenzy rolling,
Doth glance from heaven to earth, from earth to heaven;
And as imagination bodies forth
The forms of things unknown, the poet's pen
Turns them to shapes, and gives to airy nothing
A local habitation and a name.
(V. i. 12-17)
 65

The accent here falls on the comprehensiveness of the poetic vision, and on the
fact that the poet's eye spans far wider horizons than can be managed by man's
speculative reach. Further, the poet is capable of creating internal imaginative
structures or configurations of thought and emotion out of the chaos of
experience. He is truly a maker in the sense of giving a tangible body to what is
shapeless and conferring a recognizable form and proportion on sense experience
so that it becomes significant and meaningful. Meaning and form thus become
coextensive with each other, and value emerges only during the process of the
incarnation of experience. Earlier Helena had spoken of the transforming power of
love, its capacity to turn what is base and vile into something fascinating and
consequential:
Things base and vile, holding no quantity,
Love can transpose to form and dignity.
(I. i. 232-3)

What is, however, conceded by Theseus, inspite of himself, is given further depth
and significance by Hippolyta thus:

But all the story of the night told over,

And all their minds transfigur'd so together,
More witnesseth than fancy's images
And grows to something of great constancy,
But, howsoever, strange and admirable.
(V. i. 23-7)

Hippolyta is doubtless using the word 'fancy' in the same sense in which
'imagination' is used by Theseus. But she seems to propose that these internal
structures built up by 'fancy' or 'imagination', interchangeably, enjoy a certain
degree of coherence and viability that the other processes of cognition are
incapable of achieving. And still more important is the recognition of the fact that
all those who undergo the experience of love have known its transforming power
— 'their minds transfigur'd thus' — which is as intense and powerful as that of
the creative imagination. The alchemy of love brings new identities into being
66

however brittle and inconsequential and impercipient the original selves might
have been.

These two observations made by Theseus and Hippolyta, respectively,

provide a frame in which the experience of the Athenian lovers may be put. And
the presentation of the lamentable comedy of Pyramus and Thisby has the status
of the action that is required for placing that experience in perspective. This
playlet has been characterized as 'Merry and tragicall, tedious and brief/That is,
hot ice and wondrous strange snow.' (V. i. 58-9) The impersonation of the two
lovers offers a theatrical antithesis of the love and romance of the quartet of
Athenian lovers. Moreover, by dramatizing the tragic end of Pyramus and Thisby
the element of death has been incorporated and triumphed over in the comic
structure of the play. And hence Bottom is made to say 'No, I assure you; the wall
is down that parted their fathers' (V. i. 34). He is 'the literalist of the
imagination" and hence the need for providing the Prologue and the occasional
asides uttered by him and his colleagues explaining the various points in the
staging of the play for the benefit of the audience. In spite of this the technical
expertise displayed by his colleagues and the efficiency of the roles of the Lion,
the Moonshine and the Wall help raise the mechanics of stage acting to the
illusionist technique of modern drama as reflected in the plays of Beckett or
Brecht. The verve, the ecstasy and the passion of the actors highlight the
components of the illusionist techniques and the whole status of this playlet may
be regarded as a kind of counter-myth with reference to the main action of A
Midsummer Night's Dream. Again Hippolyta and Theseus have their own
valuation to offer:

Hippolyta. This is the silliest stuff that ever I heard.

Theseus. The best in this kind are shadows, and the worst are no worse, if
imagination amend them.
(V. i. 210-12)

This is yet another grudging tribute paid to the transforming power of the
imagination by Theseus who represents the voice of cool reason and civilized
 67

intelligence in the play. The activities of Oberon and Titania that are use for
distancing those of the main characters and the happy illusion created by Bottom
and his company in staging the playlet underscore the superb feat of joinery on the
part of the dramatist and renders the whole business a breath-taking achievement.
And it needs hardly to be added that whereas the quartet of the lovers regard the
illusion of their love experience a reality, the actors of the playlet insinuate that
the reality of their drama is a mere illusion.

References:

9. AU Quotations are from A Midsummer Night's Dream, the new Clarendon Shakespeare.
10. Theodore Weiss, The Breath of Clowns and Kings (London, 1971), p. 91.
11. Theodore Weiss, op, cit., p. 91.
 CHAPTER 5
Shakespeare's Existential Tragedy

The peculiarly problematic character of Hamlet as a play derives as much

from what the protagonist does or suffers in devious ways as from how he reacts
to the Dasein — the concrete, ineluctable set of circumstances in which he finds
himself oddly placed. This misplacedness makes him acutely aware of the radical
duality between the in-itself and its nihilation in for-itself and therefore of the
ontological necessity of making a choice, thereby undergoing the experience of
the anguish of freedom. The dread command of wreaking vengeance against king
Claudius, imposed upon him by his father's ghost (the authenticity of which and
of Claudius's sin and treachery are validated through the protracted process of
exploration) is what initiates the action of the play, and melancholy 'sits on brood'
in Hamlet over its execution endlessly. The strong and sincere revulsion against
his mother's hasty and incestuous re-marriage rankles him inwardly like an
'embossed' sore, it gets intensified and becomes projected into the whole
objective world around him. Hamlet's gradually increasing contact with evil is
concretized in the persons of Claudius and Gertrude, primarily, but seems to
enmesh some of the subsidiary characters too in no small measure. Claudius and
Hamlet's deceased father are juxtaposed more than once and largely to the
former's disadvantage; the invidious contrast is drawn in terms of the opposition
between a beast-like satyr and the Sun-god, Hyperion, between one who is a mere
sensual interloper and one who is the image of dignity, military prowess and the
self-sacrificial impulse of love. Hamlet comes to visualize down before
'Olympus', that is, Coriolanus unfreezes and grants reprieve to Rome. This is
tantamount to the fact that his inner integrity is sacrificed at the altar of the
70

pressure exercised upon him vicariously by the caste-iron mechanism of the

Roman State through Volumnia. She has absorbed into her very marrow a certain
variety of 'ethnocentrism' which is being transferred from the mother to the son.
This has also been interpreted as the triumph of love over self-consuming egotism
and Wilson Knight, in particular, waxes very rhapsodic over it.12 The common
man's response, for whom 'the natural wakeful life of the Ego is a perceiving'
(Cf. Eliot's 'The Triumphal March') is reflected in images of unusual felicity,
resonance and magic — something which is at variance with the emotional
blockade of the proceeding passages — that mark the ecstatic tone of the Second
Messenger thus:

Ne'er through an arch so hurried the blown tide,

As the recomforted through the gates. Why, hark you!
[Trumpets and hautboys sounded, and drums beaten all together]
The trumpets sackbuts, psalteries and fifes.
Tabors and cymbals and the shouting Romans,
Make the sun dance.
(V. iv. 46-9)
This may be identified with what Eliot calls 'A still moment, repose of noon set
under the upper branches of noon's widest tree, (`Difficulties of a Statesman') —
the achievement of the Light invisible. But true consciousness implies absorption,
through sensory experience, of 'the multiple changing view of the object of
perception', and hence the moment of anguish, following the fugitive and
momentary flicker of hope, caused by the crumbling of the idealistic self of
Coriolanus, and which leaves him an empty husk, may also be taken into
cognizance:
O. my mother! Mother! 0!
You have won a happy victory to Rome;
But for your son, believe it 0! believe it,
Most dangerously you have with him prevail'd.
If not most mortal to him.
(V. iii. 185-9)
 71

His father by evocation of the whole pantheon of Olympian gods (the element of
literary artifice underlines this portraiture), embodying varying shades of
perfection and eventually sums him up as

A combination and a form indeed

Where every god did seem to set his seal
To give the world assurance of a man;
(III. iv. 60-2)

And he caps it all by denigrating Claudius thus: 'Here is your husband; like a
mildew'd ear,/Blasting his wholesome brother.' (III. iv. 64-5).

Since the moment of the seizure of crown by Claudius, Hamlet's mind is

beclouded with cynicism, self-hatred and disgust. In the verbal combat with
Rosencrantz and Guildenstem he does confess that his `wit's diseased', and it is
all too evident that loathing and anxiety are the two inalienable attributes of his
personality. Initially this loathing is aroused by and directed against Gertrude,
subsequently and with shrewd callousness he causes it to enwrap Ophelia and
ultimately the whole universe seems to be exposed to its corrosive power. Little
by little it transforms itself into a sickness of the soul and comes to hover over the
edges of Hamlet's mind. In fact he himself becomes the pure, transcendental field
of consciousness in which the cosmic drama is supposed to be enacted. This is
mediated through the soliloquy which follows quickly at the heels of his dialogue
with Claudius: '0! that this too too solid flesh would melt,/Thaw and resolve
itself into dew !' (I. ii. 129-30). In this is exhibited the persistent and nauseating
sense of ennui against the body which nevertheless forms a very stubborn part of
the human personality. The 'too too solid (or sullied) flesh' is more or less
equivalent to the condition of being-in-the-midst-of-the world, and hence the dew
into which the flesh is to dissolve or evaporate is the state of transcendence or
being in-itself. The body or the flesh is an irritant which ought to be swept away
before the soul enters the region proper to it. This 'heavy chain' (the incubus of
the flesh) which 'does freeze our bones around' (Cf. Blake's Earth's Answer) is to
be broken in order that man is able to carry through his project with life on which
72

he is launced. His train of thought is given a further convolution in the succeeding

lines to this effect:

How weary, state, flat, and unprofitable

Seem to me all the uses of this world.
Fie on't! Ah, fie! tis an unweeded garden,
That grows to seed; things rank and gross in nature
Possess it merely.
(I. ii. 133-7)

The nausea betrayed earlier seeps into the structure of the Dasein, and words like
'weary', 'stale' flar and `unprofitable'— all implying infructuousness —makes
us think of the transactions of the world as utterly futile and unrewarding.
Whereas life set in time-space dimension of the contemporary Denmark is imaged
as 'an unweeded garden' (with overtones of a wild and chaotic growth), 'growing
to seed' is the metaphor of its incipient extinction. And since things 'rank and
gross in nature' (suggestive of pell-mell corruption) run riot in this garden, they
annul the possibilities of regeneration altogether. The Elsinorean court, in other
words, is a mere sham; it is a false and hideous structure which rests upon
espionage, manipulative power and command-obedience chain of personal
conduct. It is a world in which tight-lipped calculation is the unspoken law and
hence any show of uninhibited bravura is frowned upon. Its vital core of culture
smacks of a certain variety of philistinism; it is symbolic of Blake's 'Single
Vision & Newton's Sleep'; it amounts to containment of psychic energy and
implies a sense of limitation and constraint. Sooner or later this 'imposthume' of
peace and haven of socialized living, festering within, is bound to burst open and
plunge the whole body-politic into a maelstrom.

The Hamlet universe suffers from incredible dislocation: it is largely the

product of Claudius's subtle manoeuverings, his dubious and clandestine politics
and his endeavour to set bounds to the volatilities of Hamlet. He gives the
impression of being suave, efficient and plausible, but the state he rules over and
in which Hamlet is willy-nilly to live and breathe is a hot-bed of intrigues and
stratagems: the latter finds himself `benetted round with villainies'. Behind the
 73

facade of meticulousness maintained by Claudius one may very well discern the
attempt to play a role which is later on successfully countered by Hamlet's
assumption of a grotesque ('antic') mask. On the political level Claudius tries his
level best to hold intact the fabric of the state by the Machiavellian rationalization
of his policies and by throwing the portentuous weight of his personality around
them. Yet such are the uncertainties of the situation, so much is Denmark subject
to disquietude and instability that the hot and young Fortinbras is lured to pursue
his adventurist designs unashamedly, when at the end of Act I, after Hamlet has
partially taken his friends into confidence regarding the revelation of the ghost
and the ghost has made an exit he declares: 'the time is out of joint; 0, curse
spite,/That ever I was born to set it right !; (I. v. 188-9). He may be putting up a
clever piece of self-advertisement but there lurks in it a streak of genuineness in
proposing to take the burden of purgation on his own shoulders. It is also possible
to presume that the malaise from which the body-politic seems to suffer is a
projection of Hamlet's own over-powering sense of disgust and horror. This may
be regarded as an empathetic approach which has nonetheless its own validity.
When Hamlet engages himself in conversation with the two 'sponges' —
Rosencrantz and Guildenstern — who are no better than 'handsaws' or
instruments of the King, and have been set on him to worm out his secret he
relieves himself thus:
Hamlet. Denmark's a prison,
Rosencranztz, Then is the world one,
Hamlet. A good one; in which there are many confines, wards, and
dungeons, Denmark being one o' the worst.
Rosencrantz. We think not so, my lord.
Hamlet. Why then, 'tis none to you; for there is nothing good or
bad, but thinking makes it so; to me it is a prison.
(II. i. 244-51)

Besides being 'an unweeded garden', Denmark to Hamlet is also a prison, and,
generally speaking, 'time is out of joint': this complex of ideas is reiterated in
varying contexts and constitutes the reality which is there for him to confront or
subdue. His consciousness of the contingent world as suffering from a lack turns
74

into an obsessive and passionate concern and to cleanse it of surrounding evil

becomes therefore one of his chosen tasks. Since the simulacrum of reality
depends on the eye of the beholder: 'there is nothing good or bad but thinking
makes it so'; one is persuaded to perceive the symptoms of evil in Denmark
society as an outgrowth of the nausea to which Hamlet is so prone to be sensitive.
In the midst of the formal ostentation, attention to ceremony and crude animalism
of the Court at Elsinor — all of which eventuate into a kind of hollowness — he is
bound to feel frustrated and thwarted. And the impact of the ever-widening area of
evil around makes him feel life to be insecure and menacing as also leading
toward psychic torpor.

Hamlet's hypersensitivity to bodily corruption and the irredeemable

disgust it evokes in him is betrayed in the poignant verbal combat with his mother
which takes place following the accidental killing of Polonius behind the arras.
This act of unpremeditated murder maximizes his difficulties though he does not
realize its exact import at the moment. His real concern here is to make Gertrude
operate at a low moral depth, to jolt her into an awareness of her monstrosity and
derive a perverse, sadistic enjoyment out of this calculated exercise. In this
arraignment of her and while Hamlet plays the role of a moral cauterizer he
betrays unconsciously his abhorrence of his mother's lasciviousness: for him she
tends to become an embodiment of Voluptas:

Mother, for love of grace

Lay not that flattering unction to your soul,
That not your trespass but my madness speaks;
It will but skin and film the ulcerous place,
Whiles rank corruption, mining all within,
Infects unseen.
(III. iv. 144-49)
His reaction to Gertrude's fallenness is a traumatic experience, for this
unrestrained indulgence in sex, symptomatic of utter corruption of the will, is
downright nauseating. Hence piling one gruesome image upon another he
 75

proceeds with even greater ferocity to expose the rapacious nature of female
sexuality thus:

Let the bloat King tempt you again to bed;

Pinch wanton on your cheek; call you his mouse;
And let him, for a pair of reechy kisses.
Or paddling in your neck with his damn'd fingers,
Make you to ravel all this matter out,
That! essentially am not in madness,
But mad in craft.
(III. iv. 182-88)
Hamlet's shrewd glancing at the sexual intimacy of Claudius and Gertrude, as a
result to which she is most likely to betray her son, is managed with all the
vehemence he can afford to muster. In this utterance are mixed up elements of
cruelty and jeering, and it is provoked by his sense of outrage and indignation at
his mother's insatiable sexual appetite. This registers an instinctive recoil of
disgust and foreshadows, in a later context, the nausea aroused in Leontes by the
imagined carnal relationship between Polixenes and Hermoine. With it may also
be linked Hamlet's irritatingly ambiguous bit of advice to Ophelia, offered with
devastatingly unnerving sarcasm, to go to a nunnery. In Hamlet's troubled
imagination she ceases to be the symbol of radiant romantic love and of Cast itas
and is transformed into something which betokens both verfallenheit and
inauthenticity. In allowing herself to be deployed, for purpose of surveillance, by
Claudius and Polonius, she has suffered a moral descent and becomes, in
Hamlet's view, tainted and smirched with the pervasive vice in blood. She is
therefore swamped by the tidal wave of obscenity which starts from Gertrude and
has dehumanized her beyond all recognition. Hamlet's searing and caustic
reactions, conveyed with an air of indirection, are aimed at the innocence of
Ophelia thus:

Get thee to a nunnery; why wouldst thou be a breeder of sinners? I am

myself indifferent honest; but yet I could accuse me of such things that it
were better my mother had not borne me. I am very proud, revengeful
ambitious; with more offences at my back than I have thoughts to put them
76

in, imagination to give them shape, or time to act them in, what should
such fellows as I do crawling between heaven and earth?

(III. i. 121-9)

Sexual passion in the play is poisoned at its very source: it disintegrates and
undermines the very foundations to which individual, emotional life at its deepest
is anchored. Hamlet may have nursed an implicit, nebulous desire to provide
Ophelia a niche of security in a benighted world — a world which is no better
than a quagmire of corrupted and corruptible flesh — but seems to be blinded by
his sense of horror at the limitlessness of sexual promiscuity. Earlier he refers to
her bitingly as the 'fishmonger's daughter' (the phrase being weighted with
cryptic, bawdy connotations) and his mind has been obsessed with the conflict
between beauty and honesty (in the sense of chastity). Small wonder then that in
the word 'nunnery' its accepted implication coexists, and in a very incisive way,
with the blasphemous euphemism for a brothel in the Elizabethan slang, and the
latter is regarded as the proper habitat for her. Otherwise, the possibility, fraught
with even greater disaster, is that the whole world may come to be peopled with
the contaminated progeny of their sexual union. Such is the flurry of emotions in
which he is entangled that Hamlet does not refrain from castigating himself either
for the infinite vices that the human 'flesh is heir to'; his self-depreciation is
couched in very vigorous and unequivocal terms. To him it seems as if the whole
of existence has grown leprous because of the deep infection which is eating into
its vitals. One may also treat it as a case of emotional displacement, for Ophelia
tends to become in his myopic vision the surrogate for the sexual aberrations of
Gertrude. Hence Hamlet's revulsion against sex and disillusionment with Ophelia,
whom he regards as the sweet bait set by Claudius and Polonius for catching him,
become fused in a complex reaction.

Reference was made earlier to the two major components, besides

intensity of apprehension, in the psychological make up of Hamlet: nausea and
anxiety. The two seem to have a tenuous nexus of relationship; for both spring out
 77

of the severance form the roots of Being or Existenz. Hamlet finds it abnormally
difficult to bridge the gap between the incompatibles: his divided consciousness
has its genesis in the conflict between the duty to revenge and his aversion to what
is so obnoxious and yet so unavoidable. That he is no ordinary revenger poses an
intractable problem to him : he cannot bring about the necessary synthesis of his
contemplative bias and his heroic self-assertion. This generates both moral and
metaphysical perplexities and an early inkling of these is offered us when he
cogitates thus: 'this goodly frame, the earth, seems to me a sterile promontory;
this most excellent canopy, the air, look you, this brave o'erhanging firmament,
this majestical roof, fretted with golden fire, why, it appears no other thing to me
but a foul and pestilent congregation of vapours' (II. ii. 298-303). Under the
impact of negative emotions, the earth, the air, and the sky — magnificent in their
complex organization and designed as a beautiful and harmonious whole by the
Divine architect—somehow lose their aesthetic appeal for him; to visualize their
co-existence with a 'sterile promontory' and 'foul and pestilent congregation of
vapour' is to put the whole thing within the ambience of paradox. When he
proceeds from the scrutiny of the macrocosm, the external world, to the
microcosm of man's intelligence, his basic stance — the stance of an obstinately
self-doubting mind — remains unaltered: 'What a piece, of work is a man! How
noble in reason ! how infinite in faculties! inform, and moving, how express and
admirable ! in action how like an angel ! in apprehension how like a god! the
beauty of the world ! the paragon of animals ! And yet, to me, what is this
quintessence of dust? Man delights not me; no, nor woman either.' (II. ii. 303-9).
Hamlet concedes to a point the centrality of the Medieval Christian cosmology
which places man midway in the Chain of Being : higher than the brutes but less
exalted than the hierarchy of the angels, and yet assimilating the paradigm of
virtues, specific to both. But he springs a surprise when towards the end he
deflates this idealized, exquisite and flattering picture of human potentialities and
equates man, the miracle of creation, with 'this quintessence of dust', this seems
to be in conformity with the Biblical theory of creatureliness as well as the
78

Quranic doctrine of the heights and depths within which man is destined to
oscillate. Disregarding the traditional sanctities one may as well uphold that in this
vision of man beauty and ugliness, comedy and pain are intertwined and this
constitutes the distinctive feature of that grotesquery of absurdity which clings to
the human condition. We are no less insistently aware, in this context and in the
Shakespearian cannon, of Macbeth's 'Tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow'
soliloquy which is uttered when the terrible news of Lady Macbeth's self-
slaughter is announced. Both are utterances of disgust and bitter disillusionment
and underline the assumption that life is made up of no more than disorganized
congeries of atoms.

The void in which Hamlet habitually lives is partly intimated by the fact
that he seems to have lost faith in the efficacy of words which, instead of
functioning as symbolizations of experience, have been reduced to mere cyphers.
When in response to Polonius's query: 'What do you read. My Lord' He replies:
'Words, words, words' or when replying to Gertrude's pathetic interrogation:
'What have I done that thou dar'st wag thy tongue/In noise so rude against me?'
(III. iv. 38-9) he retorts:
0! such a deed
As from the body of contraction plucks
The very soul, and sweet religion makes
A rhapsody words;
(III. iv. 45-8)

He seems to be implicated in a particular life-situation wherein a disjunction has

taken place between word and the heart of truth which is their ultimate referent.
Words for Hamlet stand divested of their evocative potency and are no longer
valued as crystals of meaning. Far from being envelopes of any cognitive
consonance they are merely possessed of denotative value. Not that Hamlet is
inarticulate or incapable of expending words but they are not liable to signify
much to their recipient and also prevent him from establishing any significant
contact with the Dasein. One of the sources of the existentialist dilemma, besides
 79

lack of congruence between affectivity (passion) and understanding (discourse of

reason or judgment) is the inadequacy of speech manifest in the play all along.
Hamlet acquires knowledge of other characters not so much from their deeds as
through their reactions and even these reactions are not properly identified by the
ordering of speech symbols. When Hamlet pretty early in the play declares; 'I
have that within which passeth show', part of the ambiguity of this statement
derives from the fact that in this context hardly any expressive means of
communication are available. Not only passions as such stand contaminated but
there words are also 'painted', and hence are more or less specious counters and
serve as 'mere interpolators of unholy suits' between Ophelia and himself. She
fails to respond to his quibbling and ironic puns, hedged in as they are by all
shades of subtlety, and therefore they do not contribute to the growth of
interpersonal relationships. Gertrude's sense of nothingness which is
incommensurate with words is mediated thus:
Queen. To whom do you speak this?
Hamlet. Do you see nothing there?
Queen. Nothing at all; yet all that is I see,
Hamlet. Nor did you nothing hear?
Queen. No, nothing but ourselves.
(III. iv. 130-9)

Likewise, Horatio, vis-à-vis Hamlet, also continues to function more or less as a

peripheral, shadowy figure for a long stretch of time — till Act V — after the
latter had sworn his confidants to absolute secrecy regarding the revelation of the
ghost. Neither Ophelia nor Horatio if are able to penetrate the region where
Hamlet is cocooned in his self-acquiescence and he is moved on to it by the
breakdown of verbal communication. Both Ophelia and Horatio on the one hand,
and Hamlet on the other, seem to live in isolated and discrete inner worlds which
do not admit any point of intersection.

The famous soliloquy `To be or not to be; that is the question', riddled as it
is with all sorts of dubieties, has for its datum more than simplistic polarities like
life and death or suffering and doing. In it the notion of suicide holds, I should
80

think, only a marginal value. It is centred on what Dr. Johnson has very
judiciously put his finger on — 'the contrariety of desires' — and a number of
half-intuited but recurrent ideas are poised on the undercurrent of feeling which
goes backwards and forwards. The question of all questions is the polarization of
totality without fissure versus a `detotalized totality'. Hamlet's main trouble, as
the central consciousness of the play, is the excruciating sense of lack both in
himself and in the Dasein, and he is therefore engaged in the ever-continuing
search for totality or wholeness. One of the pre-requisites of this search is to
activate his weak will and harmonize it with his strong passions as also to hold
contemplation and energetic action in a mutual embrace. Hamlet's advice to the
first Player to the effect: 'suit the action to the word, the word to the action' (III.
ii. 18-9) may not be construed as entirely subsuming his insight into the intricacies
of the mimetic art but also insinuates a norm of personality pattern. This is
preceded by: 'for in the very torrent tempest, and — as I may say — the
whirlwind of passion, you must acquire and beget a temperance, that may give it
smoothness' (III. ii. 5-8). Here 'temperance,' whose cultivation in the midst of
'turbulence' is recommended, implicates the Aristotelian category — one of the
crucial concepts in the Medieval spectrum. This is one of the essentials of that
equipoise which was no less prized by the Elizabethans. Later, Hamlet's words
occurring in his colloquy with Horatio:
And blest are those
Whose blood and judgment are so well commingled
That they are not a pipe for fortune's finger
To sound what stop she please
(III. ii. 68-71)

which constitutes the ideal he should bend all his energies to pursue and realize in
his personal life also reflect back on the soliloquy. He holds Horatio up for
fervent, spontaneous and unqualified admiration because of his equanimity of
mind and stoical impassability as one who 'in suffering all' suffers nothing' and
takes 'fortune's buffets and rewards' (III. ii. 66-7) without whispering any
complaint against its vagaries. What Hamlet is eager to strive for is not the
 81

complete subdual of passion by judgment but blending them together so as to

achieve the necessary integration of personality. But despite all this youthful
idealism he is not sure of discovering the man who is not 'passion's slave': were
such a rare creature to be had he would wear him in his heart's core, make him the
cynosure of his eye. He is not only outwardly anxious to develop this equipoise in
his own self but is vaguely and unconsciously aware of possessing it as a
potentiality. Hamlet is himself urged by irresistible feelings of nausea and disgust
and his real dilemma in this soliloquy, contrary to the common, oft-repeated
assumption, in not that, because of 'thinking too precisely on the event', that is,
being over-speculative, his will has become paralyzed. He is in need of cultivating
that attitude of 'maturity' in the absence of which he flounders or is stuck up in
the realization of his objectives. It may be added that conscience which 'makes
cowards of us all' may not in this context be equated with moral discrimination or
judgment of the internal lawgiver exclusively but connotes knowledge or
consciousness as well. In Hamlet 'consciene' has been used consistently in the
sense of 'conscientia' or 'in-wit' over and above the deliverances of the moral
sense. Undoubtedly, towards the end, while taking Horatio into his confidence and
apropos the deaths of Guildenstem and Rosencrantz when Hamlet says: 'Why,
man they did make love to this employment;/They are not near my conscience':
(V. ii. 57-8) he is referring to moral compunctions alone. But immediately
afterwards, when cataloguing his specific reasons for the proposed killing of
Claudius he adds:

Is't not perfect conscience

To quit him with this arm? And is't not to be damn'd
To let this canker of our nature come
In further evil?
(V. ii. 67-70)

He is trying to admit within the ambit of meaning both the connotations of

'conscience': the consequences of sustained thinking plus the dictates of the inner
sense which together supply the possible rationale of his action.
82

Further, Hamlet's diagnosis to the effect; 'And thus the native hue of
resolution/Is sicklied o'er with the pale cast of thought' (III. i. 84-5), though
offered as a broad generalization, has nevertheless a close bearing on his own
predicament. It has specificity about it because it implies an oblique intimation of
the conflicting impulses operative in his psyche, and each one is struggling to
achieve supremacy over the other. The fact that Hamlet has been weighing the
different alternatives to the execution of vengeance implies that he wishes to
undergo the Sartrean anguish of freedom. The basic problem in the play is that of
the existential choice; the double-edged anxiety felt by Hamlet is how best to
reconcile the two seemingly irreconcilables: the primitive law of blood-feud and
the code of forgiveness enjoined equally by the Catholic and the Protestant ethic,
and thus have the Gordian knot cut. He seems to be as much attracted to the
notion of patient suffering as to the assertiveness of the will: `to take arms against
a sea of troubles;/And by opposing them' (III. i. 59-60). But the intriguing point to
notice is that the consummation implicit in the phrase 'end them' is neither
achieved nor dramatically enacted: on the contrary, such is the dynamics of the
play that the protagonist becomes involved in the labyrinth of contradictions and
is pulled into contrary directions. Neither are 'the slings and arrows of outrageous
fortune' resisted nor are all the hazards and illogicalities that make 'calamity of so
long life, averted nor the final 'quietus' achieved. Then, speaking earlier to
Guildenstern and mischievously trying to put him on the wrong track, Hamlet
indulges in an agonized, rhetorical style; '0 God! could be bounded in a nutshell,
and count myself a king of infinite space, were it not I have bad dreams' (II. ii.
254-6), the obvious referent of 'bad dreams' is either the repugnance felt over the
incubus of the flesh or the haunting, lacerating, unconscious memory of the
discontents of the mundane world. In the present soliloquy, sleep which creates
the illusion of death, is again broken and disturbed by dreams which allow
glimpses of and therefore strike 'dread' in regard to 'the undiscovered country' or
the circumambient Reality. This offers a striking parallel to the nervous rhythms
of Claudio's 'Ay, but to die, and go we know not where' in Measure for Measure,
 83

and the succession of blood-curdling images relating to 'the pendent world' into
which the soul may be hurled after death. This, according to James, brings
'Hamlet's fearful imagination of life after deathi3 into focus and is a source of the,
deepest disquietude in the play. It is worth stressing, though, that there is all the
difference in the world between the terror of existential 'nothing' and the fear of
vital 'non being'. In the case of Hamlet it is the former rather than the latter which
impinges upon him the consciousness of his radical finitude.

Hamlet is highly egocentric and hypersensitive and the dichotomies he

encounters and the inner tensions he wishes to resolve prevent him from going
straight to his task. What is really relevant or crucial is not so much the fact of his
being thrown into metaphysical speculation every now and then as his awareness
of a lack or fissure in his inmost being and his persistent endeavour to clarify to
himself the tangle of his motives and discriminations that has put him in a
quandary. This is the main burden of his soliloquies or 'meditations' in which he
tends to be occupied the with task of self-explication and which have also the
status of choric commentaries on the interlocking chain of events and occurrences
in the play. His will does become or seems to become `mildew'd' or `apoplex•d'
for long stretches of time, and the resolution of ambiguities remains only a remote
possibility. His delay in action would have gone unnoticed had he himself not
drawn pointed attention to it at least twice. First, he castigates himself for 'being a
rogue and peasant slave' and cannot help wondering, apropos the actor in the Play
Scene: 'What's Hecuba to him or he to Hecuba/That he should weep for her?'
(II. ii. 552-3). The passion may be counterfeit but its enactment by him is
overwhelmingly authentic: so complete is the identification in the Play Scene that
we cannot possibly 'separate the dancer from the dance.' In other words he fully
appreciates the perfect commitment of the actor, though in a 'dream of passion'
and while 'the suspension of disbelief' lasts, to the requirements of the fictional
mode. He feels an unexpressed emulation for the actor who can arouse in himself
that degree of heightened sensitivity which can carry conviction with the ordinary
theatre-goer of connoisseur of art. And further, it is a question of so transforming
84

and objectifying passion as to produce the true image of the dramatic fable. In his
own case the 'cue for passion' is undoubtedly there but the necessary boldness of
initiative required of an avenger of blood or the courage of making one's
unquenchable fury issue out into outward action has all along been in abeyance.
Secondly, he is touched to the quick by the sight of the reckless and spirited
Fortinbras, puffed up with 'divine ambition', leading his conscripted soldiers
through Denmark to Poland, exposing everything to hazard, 'even for an egg-
shell', and 'making mouths at the invisible event' He is therefore all the more
stung by the arrows of conscience to realize his own 'bestial oblivion' and is
stimulated to making a crucial comment to this effect:
Rightly to be great
Is not to stir without great argument,
But greatly to find quarrel in a straw
When honour's at the stake.
(IV. iv. 53-6)

Here he feels skeptical about action which is unsupported by convincing

motivation and which consequently becomes pretty trifling having nothing to
enhance its values or even to vindicate it. But, paradoxically enough, action which
is initiated when paltry ambition, camouflaged as 'honour' is involved in it,
becomes commendable even though in the frame of contingency it may still look
feeble and tawdry. This obviously entails a kind of doubleness of vision for
neither of the two varieties of action cancel each other out completely, and yet
'honour' is a specious category which is bandied about for covering up one's
bloated sense of vainglory. And hence Hamlet's attitude to 'the delicate and
tender prince' and to his preoccupations is rather ambivalent: he admires his
courage as well as pooh poohs his bravado, swaggering and foolhardiness.
Simultaneously, he prides himself on his own possession of `god-like reason' and
yet feel amazed and dispirited at the imbalance created by 'A thought, which
quarter'd, hath but one part wisdom./And ever three parts coward' (IV. iv. 42-3).
In both these soliloquies, however, though Hamlet may be seen to be palpably
admonishing in order to whip himself into action yet in real fact he is trying as
 85

best he can to explore his own resources and get the right perspective for making
thought and action cohere into a wished-for harmony.

Looking retrospectively, one cannot help noticing that Hamlet refrains

from playing the role of the avenger of blood when he discovers Claudius, his
'mighty opposite', in the posture of repentance (which precedes the state of grace)
and also does not chastise himself subsequently on that score. Many ingenious
explanations have been offered for Hamlet's not finishing him there and then but
the ones which remain =formulated are no less cogent though they seem to
operate at the level of the 'unconscious'. Hamlet is held back partly because of his
obsession with intense loathing and hatred for Claudius which in a way spills over
and impedes overt action. Moreover, had he taken advantage of this fugitive
moment his deed would have acquired the same odour of the sacrilege as that of
Claudius's secret killing of Hamlet's father; nothing less than 'a piece of crookd
knavery'. Its this inchoate reasoning done in the womb of the undifferentiated
psyche, which is dramatized by him in the soliloquy following the conclusion of
the Prayer Scene. The Play Scene — one of Hamlet's own skilful construction —
is a sort of mirror in which is reflected at once the image of Claudius's 'occulted
guilt' as well as the foreshadowing of his eventual death, and it provides Hamlet
the unique opportunity of making Claudius realize his own culpability by the
sheer act of betrayal of his 'limed soul'. Besides, Hamlet's transference of his own
identification with Pyrrhus to one with the terrible, shimmering Lucianus in the
Dumb Show amounts to a prefiguring of the ultimate forcing of the poisoned
chalice to Claudius's lips, as a ritualistic gesture, when he is at long last roused, as
if surprised by occasion, to dealing the fatal death-blow to his adversary, on the
spur of the moment. It looks, therefore, that despite the 'craven scruple' the
continuous wrestling of his soul, the unsettling of cerebral activity and the
pressure of unconscious drives and impulses, Hamlet succeeds ultimately and with
the wholeness of his being, in making the inescapable, free, personal, though
sadly belated choice.
86

Almost all the themes of the play finally converge on the point of death
because violence and self-destructive passion, casting their ominous shadow over
it, lead ultimately to utter annihilation. The secret and heinous murder of elder
Hamlet by Claudius; the accidental killing of Polonius, Ophelia's death by water,
Laertes's blood-thirsty pursuit of vendetta against Hamlet, the cunning
manipulation of the duel, the 'mediated' perception of murder in the Play Scene
and Hamlet's unconscious bracing of himself for the climactic deed, all these are
woven together into a single, inviolable whole. Our awareness of the spectre of
death in the play is made recognizable through neutralized comments as well as
perspicuous icons. Gertrude looks upon death as part of the biological cycle and
as a 'boundary' situation which should be accepted unhesitatingly and without
demur:
Do not for ever with thy veiled lids
Seek for thy noble father in the dust;
Thou Icnow'st 'tis common; all that lives must die,
Passing through nature to eternity.
(1. ii. 70-3)

Claudius, likewise, underlines the element of sameness involved in the process of

death and the vulgarity of lamenting over the dead one. For him death is not a
concrete, particularized experience, with its ghastly fascination but more or less a
phenomenology which should not be scrutinized either too closely or too long: his
superficially persuasive speech betrays however both apathy and insensitiveness:

And the survivor bound

In filial obligation for some term
To do obsequious sorrow but to persevere
Of obstinate condolement is a course
Of impious stubbornness ...
Why should we in our peevish opposition
Take it to heart?
(I. ii. 90-101)
Whereas Gertrude's utterance reflects the brutishness of a person herself
wallowing in a pigsty, Claudius's approach, though apparently commonsensical,
 87

is shot through with a deliberate crassness and is intended to make Hamlet gloss
over this traumatic experience of his father's murder by applying to it 'the rhetoric
of oblivion' 14 and thus forget the haunting cadence of the Ghost's reiterated
'Remember me !' neither of them feels the necessity nor has the capability of
obtaining from the consciousness of nothingness any assurance of true Existenz.
On the contrary, a sense of brutality is blended with the nervy and brazen self-
assurance of one's immunity to death and thus makes one regard it as unworthy of
being pondered over.

Hamlet's attitude to death is more complex and charged with greater

intricacy of feeling ; it stands out in sharp contrast with the opaqueness (and self-
complacency) of both the king of shreds and patches' and his no less abominable
queen. It is brought out, in the first instance, when in response to the king's query
about Polonius's whereabouts after his death; 'At supper! where?', he replies
tartly; 'Not where he eats, but where he is eaten; a certain convocation of politic
worms are e'en at him, Your worm is your only emperor for diet: we fat all
creatures else to fat us, and we fat ourselves for maggots, your fat king and your
lean beggar is but variable service; two dishes, but to one table; that's the end ..
(IV. iii. 20-25). This may be regarded as a fantastic inversion of the 'banquet of
sense' notion; a kind of metaphysical conceit is woven around the ineluctable fact
of human mortality and the process of putrefaction incumbent on death. 'We fat
ourselves for maggots' is a phrase which links up with the central, terrifying
image of the corruptible flesh and the ultimate, total annihilation accompanying it
in the terrestrial world. When later in the Graveyard Scene (in which is framed the
Universal Form of death) the First Clown throws up a skull Hamlet makes a very
scathing and disillusioning comment on it thus: 'That skull has a tongue in it, and
could sing once; how the knave jowls it to the ground, as if it were Cain's jaw-
bone, that did the first murder! This might be the pate of a politician, which this
ass now o'er-reaches, that would circumvent God, might it not?' (V. i. 74-8). A
little further on he expatiates thus: 'Why, e'en so, and now my Lady Wonn's;
chapless, and knocked about the mazzard with a sexton's spade. Here's tine
88

revolution, an we had the trick to see't'. (V. i. 85-7), In these near-monologues is

focused the teasing mystery of man's enigmatic existence and in them we
perceive subtle variations made both on 'the quintessence of dust' hypothesis and
the 'convocation of politic worms' axiology. The skull which 'could sing once',
which might be 'the pate of a politician' that 'would circumvent God' and that of
'Lady Worm's' --`chapless' and 'knocked about the mazzard' all these are
gruesome icons of that relentless law of mutability which is inherent in the very
constitution of human existence. The allusion to Cain's jaw-bone puts the whole
phenomenon across the stream of time which flows down into the desert of human
achievement. The evocation of the sense of waste and futility, of the dissolution of
the bodily framework and of the stark and bewildering contrast between mundane
glory on the one hand and the ultimate nothingness to which it is reduced on the
other is no less glaringly manifest. Hamlet takes up Yorick's skull — of the
King's jester — and utters his self-communion in these mordant tones: 'Here
hung those lips that I have kissed I know not how oft. Where be your gibes now?
Your gambols ? Your songs? Your flashes of merriment, that were wont to set the
table on a roar? Not one now, to mock your own grinning? Quite chapfallen? Now
get you to my lady's chamber, and tell her, let her paint an inch thick, to this
favour she must come; make her laugh at that.' (V. i. 181-88). This contemplation
of the skull is a dramatic device of exposing the brittleness of life on earth and
helps the passage of human memory through the corridors of time which are
distinguished variously. There is a wide and incomprehensible chasm which
divides the present from the past and over both and the future hangs the
impenetrable void. The element of disenchantment is pervasive and the last half of
the passage is aimed at unmasking humanity of all pretences. Breaking all images
of one's mirror-state and all chimeras of self-involvement. In pictorial
representations, generally speaking, the skull has had the status of memento mori
which reminds us that death brings about the termination of action and all
suffering, all responsibility and all commitment, all bustle and all contentment. It
 89

becomes the icon of the bizarre dance of death by which not only the cemetry but
the entire cosmos is overshadowed and human ambition is brought to naught.

The Grave-digger, a dialectician by temperament and an expert in

quibbling, looks upon death as the only and most authentic leveler of all
distinctions: he is therefore engaged in digging graves with superb equanimity and
chilly self-dedication. And so deep is his absorption in his chosen vocation that
the Graveyard itself appears to be a form of his self-projection and death is
emblematic of him. And yet his imperturbability and lucidity are amazing and
breath-taking. Hamlet's meditation on death emerges out of his heightened
awareness of the mystery of Existenz; in his case, the courage to die presupposes
the courage to live. He formalizes his intuition of the ominous oncoming of death
in the form of the ache he feels about his heart. And yet his invincible inner
strength and self-renunciation before the Ultimate, not un-mixed with a grain of
fatalism, resounds in the utterance when Horatio volunteers himself to get the
fencing-bout with Laertes called off; 'Not a whit, we defy augury; there's a
special providence in the fall of sparrow. If it be now, 'tis not to come; if it be not
to come, it will be now; if it be not now, yet it will come; the readiness is all', (V.
ii. 211-14). In this conditional syllogism, so impeccably organized, so resonant of
acceptance and impregnated with such a sense of ultimacy, both the past and the
future seem to be relegated to comparative insignificance and attention comes to
be riveted on the immediacy of the present moment and acquiescence in the divine
order of things. To put it differently, the present moment, instead of being only an
isolated unit of the larger continuum, has become a potion of Eternity. Moreover,
would it be too idle to speculate than this kind of total and unswerving
commitment — 'the readiness is all' — is also in a way conditioned and
facilitated by Hamlet's eventual recognition of the harmony of love — the
splendid blaze of passion kindled by and manifested in his embrace of Ophelia's
corpse in the grave — when mind, body and soul are assimilated into an organic
and indissoluble unity? In such a moment of ecstasy there is no flinching from
death, no parrying of the inevitable but one can afford to look into its face with a
90

certain fixity of vision. Hamlet's attitude at this stage reflects a degree of poise —
an essential pre-condition of the resolution of discords although the complete
resolution seems to elude his grasp. A semblance of charity and tenderness is
indeed exhibited by him towards Laertes before the duel starts. When he declares:
`If 't be so, Hamlet is of the faction that is wrong'd/His madness is poor Hamlet's
enemy' (V. ii. 229-31) it does not look that he is striking a posture and his voice
more or less rings true. He does not treat death either as absolutely trivial or
awesome but takes the burden of anguish and responsibility upon his purgated
consciousness. In such a context it appears as if the veil has been taken off the
countenance of truth temporarily and Hamlet achieves a half-glimpse knowledge
of the terror and absurdity which cleaves to the very structure of mundane life.
And yet the total resolution of disharmonies is no more than a chimera and
Existenz continues to remain a tantalizing, inscrutable and unidentified mystery.

References

12. All quotations are from Hamlet edited by George Rylands, New Clarendon Shakespeare
(OXFORD, 1955).
13. D.G. JAMES, The Dream of Learning (Oxford, 1951), p. 40.
14. Nigel Alexander, Poison, Play and Duel, (London, 1971), p. 51.
 CHAPTER 6
Richard HI and Richard II: Two Forms of Alienation

Among the early tragic heroes of Shakespeare Richard III invites attention
to himself all at once because of his flamboyant nature, his reserves of boisterous
energy and proclivity to quick jump into action without any scruples though not
without ulterior motives. Obsessively conscious of his physical deformities and
therefore being apparently at a disadvantage as against others (though hiding this
fact with his characteristic levity) he tries to brush aside and compensate for these,
as best he can, through his virtuoso performances, his snobbery and his ironic self-
assertion. He does suffer from inferiority complex his is a case of Freudian
repression) and is strongly urged not only to make the best of the worst situations
he is placed in but also manipulate every conceivable opportunity to forge ahead
with a clean sweep so as to ensure a secure place for himself. The 'abortive,
rooting hog' (a piquant image for a destructive animal) he is both dazzlingly witty
and impudent, he is `bunch-back`cl', strong-willed and an over-reacher; he is
shrewd enough to be exploitative and bustles in the political arena to remove all
obstacles to his ascent to power by bringing his rivals and adversaries to naught.
Posing as a mere swindler he is nevertheless a strategist of the first order and is
not bothered by any moral imperatives; he is both a monster and a grotesque.
Having butchered Henry VI and his son early and got rid of Clarence with
shocking brutality, he aims at getting Edward's two other sons, the young Princes,
killed so that the prospects of all potential claimants to the throne are altogether
nullified. The two obvious and propelling motive-forces underlying all that he
does or propose to enact is the gain of political ascendancy and the satisfaction of
92

his sensual appetites. It is perhaps not a bit inadequate to surmise that his constant
search for sexual variety is just a camouflage for self-assertiveness and is
subservient to his political game. What links these two motivations inextricably is,
in a manner of speaking, an inverted idolization of himself.

The initial point in the rampage of violence is the shuddering and most
callous murder, engineered through hired assassins and least suspected by any, of
his own brother, the Duke of Clarence. This is followed in hot haste and as if
systematically, by the killing of Hastings because of his hesitancy 'in falling in line
with him in the elimination of his own enemies — Rivers, Vaughan and Grey and
by putting Buckingham in the Tower and then having him subsequently disposed
of, for he wished to be spared a breath and claimed the right to think about the
murder of the Princes before committing himself irrevocably and on the spur of
the moment. And this series is concluded by the heinous act of having the two
Young Princes hacked to pieces. In Clarence's hallucinatory vision, preceding his
death, not only are his past and future reflected in a discontinuous way but the
reality of pain, of the charnel and of 'the shades of death' are all fused together
and transmuted, phantasmagorically, into the bewildering opulence of the sea-bed
and the wide-spread chaos likely to erupt from Richard's web of intrigues and
subterfuges is also foreshadowed unmistakably. Not unlike Macbeth later, Richard
III goes on wading through the pool of blood so persistently and with such
monstrous immunity, that it becomes impossible for him to retrace his steps, even
if he had any desire to do so; 'But I am in/So far in blood that sin will pluck on
sin' (IV, ii, 63-64). Through her sibylline mutterings the Duchess of Margaret (the
Norm in play) not only prophesies the future but also provides the mirror in which
may be glimpsed 'the dreadful minister of hell', 'the troubler of the poor world's
peace' and 'hell's black intelligencer'. To the litany of curses — lying like a
mysterious veil over the play — are joined the croaking voices of Lady Anne,
Queen Elizabeth and the Duchess of York, all of them subject to a sort of blight
and all cataloguing Richard's crimes committed brazenly, for he never lets his
gaze averted from the crown. But he has the obduracy of being impervious to all
 93

the rebukes arid curses heaped on him from all quarters because all his calculated
designs are directed to the seizure of the 'imperial metal' expected, to be
'encircling round his head'. Though put in the dock by all those who condemn his
underhand tactic he turns a deaf ear to all their imprecations and outcries. On
Edward IV's death who dies, reportedly, as a consequence of sexual excesses (his
clandestine relation, with Mistress Shore are pointed at, slantingly, every now and
then) it is essential that his heirs be done to death and the line of direct descent
broken. The world Richard III moves and breathes in is one of opportunism,
abrupt violence and firm, consistent action taken by Richard for furthering his
scramble up the ladder of absolute power. He is the sort of person who is not
likely to go into the intricacies of any matter in hand or letting his mind be
deflected from any course of action he has already resolved upon by any subtle
points of moral discrimination. Though exhilarated and buoyed up by the flush of
his success in overpowering his opponents with an iron hand and taking all
possible steps for future security he ultimately falls a victim to his own
machinations. Histrionic to the marrow he is capable of playing different roles
with equal felicity and with the desired effect on the audience. His hilarious play-
acting (which he keenly relishes) is splendidly brought out partly in his deftly
managed seduction of the Lady Anne as also when he is flanked, with an
ecclesiastical façade, by the two priests and the mayor, holding the Scriptures in
his hands, apparently stubbornly declining to be burdened with the cares of
kingship and yet pretending to be solicitous for the love and welfare of his
subjects — the citizens of London and hence yielding at long last, with maiden-
like bashfulness, to their urgent entreaties. But little by little all his shams are
exposed and even such a close and trusted ally as Buckingham who helps him
become the Lord Protector and successively the king, gets disillusioned and is
given short shrift, for he could not persuade himself to bow down before his
peremptoriness.

With the successful courting of Lady Anne in his bantering vein and in all
his wicked glory and preposterousness and later getting the two Princes smothered
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and killed mercilessly Richard III flatters himself with having reached the apex of
his fortunes. To compensate for the latter sinister crime this jocund adventurer
toys with the bizarre idea of proposing to marry Edward's young daughter and
hence slanderously attempts to use Elizabeth as an attorney for her daughter's
hand. This vicarious courtship of the young princess, though accompanied with
radiant hypocrisy and rollicking humour — a replica of his courtship of Lady
Anne — doesn't have even half the verve and witticism so pervasive in his earlier
performance. He is moved more by expediency and very much less by genuine
passion (he never had any pretensions that way) and this repetition of himself is
insipid and colourless excepting the splendid paradox based on a sexual image
when in reply to Elizabeth's 'Yet didst thou kill my children' he says: 'But in your
daughter's womb I bury them,/Where in that nest of spicery, they will
breed/Selves of themselves to your recomforture' (IV. iv. 423-25). He is,
nevertheless, an adept at chicanery, is shamefacedly articulate and ultimately
seems to get her impish, tacit approval of his proposal and ends up by making a
cynical comment, according to his own lights, on Elizabeth's mindlessness though
it transpires later that this accomplished trickster is outwitted by the 'Relenting
fool, and shallow, changing woman'. (IV. iv. 431). Having got himself installed
into the seat of power (surreptitiously elbowing out the rightful heir) with the
connivance and active support of Buckingham, putting him in the Tower for being
a little responsive to the twinges of his conscience and having the Princes — 'the
two unblowed flowers', 'the most replenished sweet work of Nature' blasted out
of existence, Richard III appears to heave a sigh of relief but all this paves the way
for an anti-climax, is only a prelude to the catastrophe to come. He seems to revel
in the dexterity of his postures and stands up before us flaunting his ingrained
diabolism and moral bankruptcy. But the appearance of Richmond as a shooting-
star descending from the heavens marks the approaching end of Richard's career
of slaughter, usurpation and naked violence. The former is presented less like a
full-blooded character and more as a symbol of redemption whereas Richard is
incarnate evil and a monster of ingratitudes. Richmond's landing on the Western
 95

coast of England signals the impending collapse of Richard' s power and prestige,
its total destruction at the fomer's hands. The spectral masque of all those who
had been victims of this tyranny, dinning their threatening voices into his ears
while he is asleep, prophesy his eventual ruin and disgrace. Simultaneously, these
same ghosts' whispers of encouragement and consolation to Richmond on their
nocturnal visitation to him are an intimation of his eventual triumph. Likewise the
quality and tempo of the two parallel orations, addressed by Richard and
Richmond to their respective camp-followers, betray the contrast between the
vision and the depth of moral reach of the two and distinguish between one who
was planning to fight desperately for his own personal aggrandizement and the
other for whom the restitution of order and stability to the trouble-torn kingdom
and resurgence of peace and prosperity therein was his primary and passionate
concern. The juxtaposition of these two mighty opposite, on the eve of their
military encounter, brings home to us the perception that the corrupting politics of
Richard was bound to lead to utter annihilation and chaos and a bulwark against it
was offered, providentially, by Richmond — 'the visitant from another world".

The sudden military crash of Richard III is preceded by the erosion of his
moral credibility: the former in fact follows the latter as a logical consequence and
he also comes to suffer from a sense of alienation by which he is fully enveloped.
As part of his attempt at image-building and in a mood of sheer bravado he had
said at the very outset: 'I am myself alone' but as the pattern of tragic events
unfolds itself and tension mounts up he begins to realize that he stands bereft of
everything he had put his store by. No one bothers about him because his villainy,
covered up fold within fold, is laid bare in all its colossal hideousness and his
masks taken off his enticing glamour is dimmed. Being an ardent worshipper of
unchallenged authority and gloating in his audacity and infectious abandon he
finds that his hold on the power-nexus is gradually loosening. Ile had treated
women as fops and playthings and looked upon his allies and confederates not as
worthy equals but as mere tools for capturing more unbridled power: he enjoyed
reciprocity of love and confidence with none whatsoever. Both Hastings and
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Buckingham had some inkling of his mind and were allowed to be in the know of
his secret designs till such time as they were prepared to behave like lackeys of an
absolute monarch: even a whiff of disagreement did cost them their lives.
Towards the end, when he is forced to taste the bitter fruit of his diabolical
adventurings and fallen into the freezing darkness of solitude, he feels himself to
be completely at variance with the world around him. His so-called adherents and
counsellors defect to Richmond and he is left aghast and stupefied, faced with an
opaque and oppressive world. He is deprived of sound sleep and this is
symptomatic of the fact that he has lost his inner poise and serenity of temper.
Disengaged from immersion into a hectic and feverish round of activities he is
condemned to brood upon the intractable and the incomprehensible in the world
of contingency. The disordered world of which he is the somber but trifling
architect is emblematic of the inner chaos of his being so that starting out of his
dream he blurts out spontaneously: 'Richard loves Richard, that is, I and I (V. iii.
184). His desperate search for 'a horse', symbolic of ecstasy for the fight, reflects
the need to brace himself up at the high tension-point of his career and an attempt
to 'shore' his 'fragments against the ruins' He is now more or less like the falcon
who has lost his pitch and is forced to move within the precincts of his
circumscribed universe. He begins with giving the impression of being both
highly unpredictable and resourceful and one who is cocksure of his strategies and
ends up with being ruminative, distracted and chagrined. He moves long enough
along the crest of the rising tide of his fortunes and is therefore disdainful of every
thought of compromise and sense of proportion. His policies continue to pay him
dividends for a while but then he comes to be wrecked by his insolent self-
confidence and complicity in crimes that are piled up pretty high. Not only is he
vanquished, politically and militarily, by Richmond — the preordained redeemer
— but he is made to peer into the depths of futility contrived by his own wicked
ingenuity. Identically with Macbeth, he grows a-weary of life and very much like
a Kafka character finds himself caught up in a labyrinth out of which he is unable
to extricate. His inner disequilibrium that runs parallel to the failure of his military
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tactics not only robs him of his usual verve, animation and high spirits but his
over-blown ambition and bloated selfhood are seen to be merely sottish. One who
always gloated in hoodwinking others is hurled down his pedestal, his wings
clipped, and he is left with no option but to chew the dust at his feet. Though
dispirited he is not entirely without pluck; but at the same time the fact that when,
like Macbeth 'tied to a stake' he is strutting upon the stage and reiterating the
word 'self', indicates that he is trapped by his egotism which bars out the healthy
and invigorating atmosphere outside:

Then fly. What, from myself? Great reason why,

Lest I revenge? What, myself upon myself?
Alack, I love myself. Wherefore? For any good
That I myself have done unto myself?
(V. iii. 186-89)
Not only does he forfeit everybody's sympathy but also comes to develop a sort of
self-hatred: symptom of a rift in personality that is voiced forth thus:
My conscience has a several thousand tongues,
And every tongue brings in a several tongue,
And every tale condemns me for a villain:
There is no creature loves me
And if I die, no soul will pity me.
(V. iii. 194-96...201-202)

Richard II initially registers the impression of being head-strong, obdurate

and clinch-fisted and this is brought out in the way in which he imposes his strong
will on two of his refractory courtiers hotly contesting against each other over
their nasty squabblings : Bolingbroke and Mowbray. Each of them swears by the
chivalric code of 'honour' and makes it a point to demonstrate his firm and
unnegotiable fealty and allegiance to the reigning monarch. Bolingbroke exploits
this opportunity of accusing Mowbray, the Duke of Norfolk, of malice,
embezzlement and treason and is rebutted by him in equally lethal terms. Richard
pretends to be impartial and above board and offers to arbitrate between them
judiciously, with a view to effecting a peaceful reconciliation. But ultimately this
proposed combat in arms, prepared as an elaborate medieval pageant, about to get
98

going, is abruptly halted by Richard and is made to took like a farcical show.
While Mowbray is banished for ever Bolingbroke is sentenced to only ten year's
exile out of which four are knocked off later as an act of expediency on the part of
Richard to beguile the Opposition. But this gesture of uncalled-for and dubious
clemency, besides being a betrayal of Mowbray who had been steadfast in his
love of Richard, may also be viewed as expressive of political purblindness and
lack of insight into character, for it amounts to having a bosom-snake warmed in
blood as it was proved by later events conclusively and beyond a shadow of doubt
and despite the fact that Richard had had a fleeting perception of Bolingbroke's
dangerous potentialities when he commented: 'How high a pitch his resolution
soars' (/. i. 109). Implicit in it however, is an element of irresponsible enjoyment
of a mock-heroic situation. Through casual and subtle hints dropped occasionally
Richard II is made to appear obliquely implicated in the Duke of Gloucester's
murder. The reverberations of this backward perspective are audible frequently in
the course of the action of the play; quite a few of the characters make muted and
tangential references to it. Being blunt and forthright and having no axe to grind
John of Gaunt raises his finger of accusation at Richard II fearlessly and without
mincing words: he is also apprehensive of the fact that his 'rash fierce blaze of
riot' will not last long, and suspicion of the Queen's relatives thriving on the
Royal Exchequer as cormorants is also voiced forth so as to cause embarrassment
and shrugging of shoulders to sensitive hearers all around. Bolingbrok's main
grievance, which becomes the ostensible pretext of his launching rebellion against
Richard II's entrenched authority and which has also every shred of plausibility
and legitimacy about it, is that all his royalties and signories under the law of
succession, are confiscated, on his father, John of Gaunt's decease, with undue
and indecent haste by the king. Not only does Bolingbroke become disaffected,
but all the landowners, the capitalists as also the commoners are critical and
resentful of the heavy fiscal exactions imposed on them on the flimsy ground of
meeting the expenditure to be incurred on the Irish wars. It is intriguing, however,
that hardly any details on this count are offered and the whole business is
 99

enwrapped in mystery. That conditions in the state are chaotic and unsettling is an
incontrovertible fact but no less so is the disastrously inept and inefficient
handling of them by the King and his associates. The Duke of York's untidy and
clumsy management of affairs in the King's absence in Ireland is a classical
example of dithering and helplessness in the military annals. Richard II's bungling
and cupidity in the seizing of Bolingbroke's inheritance in such a blatant manner
not only gives the fillip to his rebellion but also provokes him to mustering the
support of all the disgnmtled elements in the state in his own behalf. The entire
play is in a way a kind of seismograph of the vicissitudes in the careers of Richard
and Bolingbroke; the latter plays the pivotal role, through his vibrant and forceful
personality, in making Richard's fortunes crumble like a pack of cards. And
though Richard is sensitive, sophisticated and responsive to the delicate rhythms
and harmonies of the world around him, yet his vaccilations and waywardness
provide the much-needed grist to the mill of the subtle, sinister and wily
Bolingbroke who is highly pragmatic and a man of remarkable self-control. He is
the sort of sly and cunning politician who adroitly makes others do all the dirty
work for him and benefits from it while keeping himself behind the scene: he has
a streak of the Machiavelli in him. The higher he rises the steeper does Richard go
down in one's scale of estimation, and the former has the astuteness, the
promptitude and the mellowed judgment to make capital out of the latter's
pathetic lapses and miscalculations. While departing for the Irish campaigns
hanging heavy over his nerves Richard leaves the tottering kingdom in the hands
of the moderately intelligent, sturdy and devoted Duke of York who, constrained
to managing things on behalf of the King admits, of necessity, that they are in a
pretty mess and he himself, though sober and well-intentioned, doesn't have the
requisite stamina and resourcefulness to set them right. He suffers from a sense of
fussy impotence and his dilemma amounts to the human display of hesitations of a
commonplace but conscientious man. In exercise of his infallible political acumen
and large-ranging vision of things Bolingbroke manoeuvres to bring
Northumberland (and his son, too) round and the Duke of York, though a staunch
100

and dependable ally of Richard II and yet not unconvinced of the legitimacy of
Bolingbroke's claims, is driven steadily and almost imperceptibly to forsake his
neutrality and thus change his loyalties in favour of the latter. While
Northumberland is a subtle and crafty knave, equipped with the art of obsequious
flattery, the Duke of York, the typically conservative English Lord, follows the
middle-of-the-road policy, is impeccable in his devotion to the King, just and
discriminating in judgment and a man of terrible honesty. He goes a long way in
supporting Richard Il's cause but eventually realizes, with his characteristic level-
headedness and perspicacity, the futility and purposelessness of continuing in this
course and therefore however reluctantly, veers round, blamelessly, and ends up
by buckling his fortunes with those of Bolingbroke. The crass brutality with which
the latter orders the beheading of Bushy, Greene and the Earl of Wiltshire, 'the
catespillars of the Commonwealth' as he designates them, reflects not only his
quick power of decision but also his inhuman competence in getting it executed
instantly. Richard's servile acquiescence in being unkinged, his complicity in his
own dethronement, make it all look like something arranged without enough
forethought and perceptiveness, and the ritual of the actual transference of the
crown from him to Bolingbroke is rather casual, almost perfunctory, the most
unsavoury aspect of the whole proceedings being Northumberland's insistence
that 'the plume-pluck'd Richard' goes through the impeachment meticulously.
This is tantamount to driving the wedge between him and Bolingbroke completely
and underlines the ingrained mean-spiritedness and lack of compassion that are
essential ingredients in Northumberland's very make-up.

As pointed out earlier, too, Bolingbroke's ascendancy to the pinnacle of

power simultaneously focuses attention on Richard's poignant and, perhaps,
undeserved decline of fortunes. Though Bolingbroke's penchant for following a
firm and clear line of action and disentangling the vexed issues in the light of his
cautious but unerring judgment may excite admiration, it in no way dilutes one's
partiality for the weaker of the two contestants for supremacy. Bolingbroke keeps
a steady and unflinching gaze on the political weather, can in no way be cozened
 101

by sycophants and time-servers, and has the knack to penetrate through illusions
to reality: he chooses his options without any mental reservations or ambiguity.
He is far from being a sentimentalist, in fact his forte is a rigorously objective and
cool assessment of a complex situation, ingratiating himself into the favour of
others and entering the vortex of action with due circumspection and with a
vigilant eye on the achievement of his own purposes, Richard II looks at things
not as they are but through the prism of his self-engrossed imagination, is a
connoisseur of self-pity, extracting an exquisite pleasure from his misfortunes and
turning them into a sacrificial rite: 'the rite of degradation' as Walter Pater puts it
laconically. He is a model of self-exhibitionism, given to spinning variations on
his own whims and fancies, strutting on the stage inconsequentially and with all
the colourfulness of an innocent make-believe. In his early flourish and gay
triumph as also in his later despondency he is persuaded to believe that being one
of the Lord's anointed no harm can come to him because he is hedged in by
divinity and his armoury of prerogatives will be protected by the heavenly hosts
against any encroachment:

Yet know, my master, God omnipotent/Is mustering in his clouds, on our

behalf/ Armies of pestilence, and they shall strike/ Your children yet
unborn, and unbegot./ That lift your vassal hands against my head./ And
threat the glory of my precious crown'
(III. iii. 85-90)

Here he seems to be speaking from the centre of a name religious certitude

though he also comes to realize later the futility of his 'senseless conjuration'. It
may be of some interest to note that the Biblical symbol of 'the pestilence-bearing
clouds' was also used with equal effectiveness by William Blake in his early
minor prophecy, The French Revolution. Twice in the play Richard is on the point
of relinquishing his power and privilege and solemnly vows to leading an
attenuated life, void of ostentation and the glare of kingship, but his hankering
after a monkish renunciation of the world, contrary to the saintly Henry VI's
nostalgia for the lost arcadian existence is shot through with images of the (III. iii.
102

147-53) glamour of royalty. This utterance of the master of 'elocient self-pity'

demonstrates the fact that in it, though overtly idealizing the state of destitution he
is in, Richard seems, nevertheless, to be enamoured of his erstwhile grandeur and
is hard put to forgo it. But before asking for the mirror, as the feckless ritual of
stepping down is about to be concluded, he is moved to this expression of bathos:
'0 that I were a mockery king of snow/Standing before the sun of Bolingbroke/To
melt myself in water-drops' (IV. i. 260-62). In a colloquy with Bolingbroke he
concentrates on the familiar Shakespearean motif of shadow versus substance and
it undoubtedly bears upon it the stamp of real intensity of feeling that comes
shimmering to us thus: 'And these external manners of lament/Are merely
shadows to the unseen grief/ That swells with silence in the tortur'd soul,/There
lies the substance' (IV. i. 296-98). Looking into the mirror and letting it fall into
shivers he is motivated by the anxious desire to catch a glimpse of his fragmented
self and compose a threnody over the brittleness of all mundane glory and fanfare.
It may, however, be added that the voluntary abdication of the authority invested
in a king was regarded as a mortal and deadly sin in the political ethics of the
Tudors, and Richard II was no whit conscious of it when he says: 'Nay, if I turn
mine eyes upon myself,/ I find myself a traitor with the rest./ For I have given
here my soul's consent/ T'undeck the pompous body of a King; /Made glory base,
and sovereignty a slave:/ Proud majesty a subject, state a peasant'.

(IV. i. 247-53)

His plea that on his surrender, as he is now a 'sworn brother to grim

Necessity', he be allowed to live beyond the pale of human communication: 'Then
give me leave to go/Whither,/ Whither you will, so I were from your sights' (IV. i.
313-15) is marked by searing, incalculable bitterness and desperate search for
isolation. Not only are his links with Northumberland and the Duke of York rent
asunder but he is also compelled to part company with the Queen Isabel who
'Came once' (to him) `adorn'd like sweet May'. In the rare Utopian
vision of England, as a glorious artifact vouchsafed to us by the dying and
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sententious Gaunt (II. i.) we are provided with an ideal of unity or perfection the
fall from which into something chaotic and disordered is insinuated by the
complementary vision of the rotten and tangled garden painted in such lurid and
dismal colours by the Gardener who now comes to acquire the role of a choric
commentator. Coming at the point that it does the decaying garden offers a fine
analogy of the state; it also equally legitimately epitomizes the deharmonized and
distraught mind of Richard that seems to have lost its organizing principle, its
cohesive centre. All along he has been exploiting his histrionic skill to full
advantage, the earliest example was the way in which the proposed combat at
arms at Coventry was halted, and the whole magnificent paraphernalia pertaining
to it dismantled by his stern command. In the midst of his soliloquizing, before he
is murdered by Exton at Bolingbroke's behest, he allegorizes the equation
between solitude in the kingdom of his own mind and the world at large and
visualizes the interchanging roles of king and beggar he pretends to assume in
succession. He also descants leisurely on the mutations of time. Measured
outwardly by the clock and subjectively by the spasms of misery by which he is
being gnawed and wasted: 'I wasted time, but now doth time waste me'; 'But my
time,/Runs hasting on in Bolingbroke's proud joy./ While I stand fooling here, his
Jack of the clock/ This music mads me. Let it sound no more' (V. v. 49, 58-61).
This bears upon it the impress of a more or less academic exercise, as also of a
feigned melancholy, and it hardly looks like the fruit of deep meditation. The way
in which he continues fabricating verbal conceits with an offhand informality is
something one does not expect from a man poised tremulously on the edge of
death: his whims and fancies have always provided him with the means of
immuring himself against what Reese calls 'the craggy truths of experience'.
Alienated Richard is from all the perdurable human ties but at the heart of all his
cogitations lies the temptation to dramatize both his doings and sufferings: role-
playing cleaves to the very roots of his being and helps him in forgetting his
misfortunes partially: in fact it is not grief but the image of grief that satisfies his
instinct for improvisation most. That way, perhaps, Richard Ill's sense of
104

alienation is a bit more genuine, heartfelt and less of a pose than a spontaneous
reaction to a deadlock.

As alienated figures the two protagonists, Richard III and Richard II

apparently look alike: the former thrown headlong into the whirlpool of political
turmoil, manipulating men and things with an uncanny and scintillating brilliance,
ultimately stands disenchanted and develops a sort of nausea and self-disgust
whereas the latter swirls from a hectic life to the solitude of his self-regarding
musings. For Richard III it is the intellect and the will which are the compulsive
motivations in life, for Richard II it is the inbred fancies and a febrile imagination
whose high-tension power generates a sense of futility and meaninglessness in
respect of the human concerns. Each of them comes to live in his puny and
circumscribed universe in which no larger issues are at stake, and each of them is
a bit of a Narcissus. Richard III begins as a reveller, with a heavy strain of
careless abandon about him but towards the end he becomes depressed and is cut
to the heart by the desertion of his supporters and is, therefore, faced with the
complete rupture of communication though it must be conceded that he does fight
to the last gasp. His dedicated separateness has its impact upon his psychic life; he
is perturbed in the depths of his unconscious by the remembrance of his enormous
crimes and the Queen bears personal testimony to his 'timorous dreams'. Before
he gets a premonition of his utter failure and ruin on the eve of Bosworth his mind
is invaded by a sense of betrayal and alienation. His mode of living undergoes a
change from gregariousness and conviviality to enforced withdrawal into the
cocoon of his own insulted self; this is disheartening and he is condemned to view
the broken crystals of his identity. As the sky is overcast with the clouds of
foreboding and his doomsday approaches near he has no means of retracing his
steps and mending his fences. Trapped in the prison of his egotism he is faced
with the spectacle of the contraction of sympathies and hardening and coarsening
of the fibres of human relationships. From the consistently hurried pace of living
and the long-continued indulgence in voluptuousness and philandering this
'cacodemon', in Margaret's vivid and pungent phrase, descends equally
 105

precipitously into his own hell of fire; he comes to lose, as he himself observes,
his 'alacrity of spirit' and 'cheer of mind' he was wont to have and this is
symptomatic of a split personality. Richard II, a creature of impulse, tends to be
refined, pensive and, nevertheless, unstable. Excepting his role in the would — be
clash between Bolingbroke and Mowbray that betokens an unaccountable stroke
of diplomacy he doesn't strike one as being tough, unlelenting or intractable. But
gradually and almost imperceptibly he is deprived of his inner poise and harmony;
to his unstable impetuousity of disposition may be traced the cause of his undoing
and as he comes into conflict with his arch rival — the clear sighted, astute and
self-possessed Bolingbroke: CO to what purpose dost thou hoard thy words;' (I.
iii. 253) his genius is scattered into flakes. Whereas Bolingbroke is a man of iron,
Richard is all quicksilver, and is no more than a petulant child of politics, toying
with his own freaks and delusions. And yet nobody bears any malice to him, he
inspires pity and even affection and not contempt or hatred; even Bolingbroke
who has been nursing his grievance and devising all possible stratagems for
supplanting him treats him with hypocritical courtesy and puts up a modicum of
civilized behaviour (though devastating irony is embedded in it) on the occasion
of his self-induced surrender of office. He is as self-centred though not as
rapacious and ruthless as Richard III; he has no flair for the finesse of diplomacy,
though. Having a reflective cast of mind sunk into the pool of reveries bred by his
sense of alienation, words being his only retreat from stark realities, he gradually
comes to lose his grip over the positives of life. Whereas for Richard III 'a horse'
is a symbol of 'sprightly running', the 'roan Barbary' is foolishly conceived by
Richard II as symbol of betrayal and abject resignation to the reigning deity. His
yearning for love is an inverted form of his sense of deprivation in the inimical
world surrounding him and this is brought out in his climactic effusion thus: 'and
love to Richard/Is a strange brooch in this all-hating world'. (V. v. 65-66). His
protracted self-indulgence in his griefs, his somber reflections on time, kingship
and mortality evoke pity for one who is a victim of sad mischance, has grown into
a neurotic, bereft of communication because of his `weav'd up' follies and
106

irresolution. His involvement in his own tragic experience has the effect of
distancing the participation of the reader or the spectator in it and thus diminishes
its worthwhileness. The dark comedy in which the volatile Richard III plays a
crucial role and the near fustian tragedy of Richard II end up creating a sense of
frustration, unease and disorientation. Like Shakespeare's other history plays
these two are also concerned with the ethics of rightful ruling and the upheaval
brought on by an illegal usurper: the spectre of chaos hung heavy over the
political horizon of the Elizabethan milieu. Richard III is a clear instance of the
Nemesis chasing the over-ambitious but Bolingbroke's act of sacrilege bringing
about Richard ll's deposition in the interest of the homogeneity of the state
(though he himself is puzzlingly reticent, doesn't make even a cryptic reference to
it) has a kind of ambivalence about it, for though Richard II is pathetically ill-
equipped and inept for governance Bolingbroke's moral status is not unequivocal
either. Besides focusing on the subtle and delicate points of diplomacy and
statecraft, on the fact legal succession and the forces counteracting it Shakespeare
is no less intrigued by the exploration of the states of mind of the two
protagonists. Richard III is shown groping in the wilderness of his own
fashioning, driven to utter despair and ennsiui and Richard H, nourished on his
own morbidity, is turned into a lyrical poet and an ineffectual dreamer,
magnifying his own obsessions and ultimately torn aside from the normal
processes of living and the impulsions, both religious and moral, underlying •
 CHAPTER 7

The Problem of Identity In: Troilus and Cressida

The presence of tonal ambiguities is pervasive both in the characters and

the matrix of circumstance in which they are involved in Troilus and Cressida. In
it are focalized the themes of honour and love and a complex image of their
intertwining set up in terms of the antithetical characters. The play provides
evidence of a close correspondence between its conceptual framework and the
dramatic design relevant to it. Concurrently, it also presents two divergent orders
of experience or modes of civilization — the Trojan and the Greek. The Trojans
are, by and the large, creatures of the moment and are passionate, volatile and
idealistic; the Greek, on the contrary, are level-headed, restrained but also reduced
to a state of inertia by being 'crammed' with reason and expediency. That the
members of both the camps are subjected to a dispassionate, critical scrutiny by
Shakespeare is evident from the exposure of their animating impulses in what
goes on in the Greek senate and the Council in Troy. The calculated pragmatism
of the Greeks and the immediacy of the Trojans are shown to be equally flawed,
and only Ulysses and Hector in their own way seem to emerge as representatives
of the norm of sanity and equipoise. Over the crucial issue of the legendary Helen,
who had been raped by Paris and retained by the Trojans for an old aunt of theirs,
the behaviour of the Trojans is motivated by 'pleasure' and that of the Greeks be
'revenge'. Alongside this is glimpsed the crescendo of the emotional life of
Troilus and Cressida leading on to the eventual return of the latter to the Greeks
and her ignominious surrender to Diomed. This theme grows out of and is
assimilated with the larger theme of war and state diplomacy between the two
rival powers. The subtlety, the indeterminacy, the fatal and seductive charm of
108

Cressida's responses, and the intricate web of illusions in which Troilus is

doomed to be entangled constitute the core of the tragic dilemma in the play.

The sense of being in a labyrinth characterises the play's action as a

totality and even the relationship between Troilus and Cressida partakes of it in a
large measure. Una Ellis-Fermor's view that 'an implacable assertion of chaos as
the ultimate fact of being' 15 is the indelible impression about Troilus and Cressida
has much to support it and this chaos has been formalized through the structuring
of experience in the body of the play. Its explicit, theoretical statement is to be
found in Ulysses's famous Degree speech that is concluded thus:

Then everything includes itself in power,

Power into will, will into appetite;
And appetite, an universal wolf,
So doubly seconded with will and power,
Must make perforce an universal prey,
And last eat up himself.I6
(I. iii. 119-23)

The coalescence of power, will and appetite prepares the ground for the
ultimate and precipitate descent into irretrievable chaos — the state of savagery as
visualized by Hobbes. With the individual as the specific point of reference chaos
may seem to result from a lack of coordination between thought and action,
passion and judgment, impulse and control, and this fact is concretized thus:

That `twixt his mental and his active parts

Kingdom'd Achilles in commotion rages
And batters down himself:
(I. iii. 183-5)

This is the application of the orthodox Elizabethan political doctrine to the

microcosm which eventuates into complete disintegration. Similarly, when
Troilus formulates his query early in the play thus:

Tell me, Apollo, for thy Daphne's love,

What Cressid is, what Pandar, and what we?
Her bed is India; there she lies, a pearl;
Between our Ilium and where she resides,
 109

Let it be call'd the wild and wandering flood;

(I. ii. 105-9)

he discloses this sense of the chaotic (or stressed dubiety), the sense of confusion
and perplexity in regard to the identity of Cressida and his own relationship with
her. By exploiting the myth of Apollo and Daphne (and here he betrays his poetic
impulses) the shifting area of contact between them is being underlined. In 'the
wild and wandering flood' lying between 'our Ilium and where she resides' is
evoked not only the image of excited feelings but also of the chaos born out of the
fact of inaccessibility. The total impact of these lines is that Troilus seems to be
lost in the sea of speculation and is unable to say precisely at what point their two
identities are likely to intersect each other. Earlier he made this ejaculation.

Each Trojan that is master of his heart,

Let him to field; Troilus alas! hath none.
(I. i. 4-5)

This may be construed a piece of self-dramatization but it is nonetheless true that

Troilus is the divided image. He has a rather uncertain grasp over the realities of
the situation and he is pretty unsure as to where his predilections will lead him. He
is fallen into a state of dizzy bewilderment, is mercurial and unstable and his
identity suffers from lack of cohesiveness.

Troilus has a strong tendency towards dispersion and 'seems to be

reaching desperately for some kind of centre, though beset constantly by the fear
that he will derive from love not self-possession but self-loss'.17 This basic
anxiety and this sense of self-loss taints the lcinesis that he so amply demonstrates
and epitomizes. Undoubtedly he feels irresistibly drawn towards Cressida so much
so that he is avid of being merged with her completely. But surprisingly, however,
this ardent hankering after mergence also makes him realize simultaneously that
he is a free human agent — a self-contained as well as a distinct though
fragmented personality. This is more or less anticipated by Pandarus when he
110

talks of him in his usual derisive and scathing tones but without being aware of
their full and far-reaching implications:

Cres. 'Tis just! to each of them; he is himself,

Pan. Himself! Alas! poor Troilus, I would he were,
Cres. So he is.
Pan. Condition, I had gone bare-foot to India,
Cres. He is not Hector.
Pan. Himself, no, he's not himself; would a' were himself!
(I. ii. 74-81)

Here Cressida and Pandanis seem to be arguing at cross-purposes. She is engaged

in the effort to distinguish between Troilus and Hector in the sense of their being
two distinct personalities. But for Pandarus this is more or less pointless, for he is
wholly persuaded of the fact that Troilus, whether a discrete entity or not, is not an
entire being in himself. There is division at the heart of his existence and there is
precious little chance of its being healed up.

It was hinted at earlier that one of the problems posed in the play relates to
the question whether Helen, described in a Marlovian hyperbole and to whom
Paris had lost his heart, should be returned to Sparta's king, Menelaus, she
lawfully belonged to. Hector and Troilus, both Trojans, hold diametrically
opposite views on the matter. Apart from other arguments — arguments based on
the 'moral laws of nature and of nations' — invoked and elaborated by him later,
Hector begins by upholding that Helen is not worth the stakes involved in
retaining her. This is, however, controverted by Troilus and this initiates a vital
and tricky debate which is also of primary significance;
Hec. Brother, she is not worth what she doth cost
The holding.
Tro. What is aught but as 'tis valued?
Hec. But value dwells not in particular will;
It holds his estimate and dignity
As well wherein 'tis precious of itself
As in the prizer, 'Tis mad idolatory
To make the service greater than the god;
And the will dotes that is inclinable
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To what infectiously itself affects,

Without some image of the affected merit.

Tro: I take today a wife, and my election

Is led on in the conduct of my will;
My will enkindled by mine eyes and ears,
Two traded pilots `twixt the dangerous shores
Of will and judgment. How may I avoid,
Although my will distaste what it elected,
The wife I chose? there can be no evasion
To blench from this and so stand firm by honour.
(II. ii. 51-68)

The passage has the air of a disquisition, conducted adroitly and with a sense of
urgency, and it has a close bearing upon the philosophical issues raised in the
play. What Hector and Troilus are anxious about is to crystallize their views
regarding 'Value': whereas for Hector it has an objective status and is determined
externally, Troilus sponsors the notion of relative and assessed value. 'Honour',
by which the latter swears, is an important constituent in the spectrum of values
prescribed by the code of chivalry and implies a firmness of commitment. Hector
believes in the body of the law or principles of social and political conduct that
have an element of rigidity about them. Such a law as envisioned by him contains
its validity and warrant within itself and may in that sense be regarded
autonomous. For Troilus, on the contrary, value is created by what - the particular
will'—the complex of subjective experiences and criteria of judgment — pours
into it. For Hector, the appraiser ('the prize') and the object of appraisal (`the
service') are almost identifiable, and the wholly personal evaluation is no better
than 'mad idolatory', and the without incorporating into itself some 'image
of the attested merit' grows unhealthy and infectious and becomes, therefore, ,
undependable. Troilus's contention that the 'eyes' and 'ears' act as a mediator or
pilot between 'will' and 'judgment' does not seem to be happily phrased, because
'will' in the sense of passion and physical or sexual appetite — its common
enough connotation in Shakespeare — is hardly distinguishable from 'eyes' and
'ears', the inlets of the data of sense experience. It may, therefore, be more
112

adequate to maintain that judgment arbitrates between the sense and the conative
faculties of man. What Troilus seems to insist upon is that subjective assessment
is the only criterion of value that may be legitimately trusted. And once made it
entails an irrevocableness of action that contributes towards the achievement of
stability. 'Honour' is a mere husk or an empty abstraction if it is dissociated from
the act of human apperception. It is, therefore, obvious that Hector, who later on
performs a somersault in the sense of abandoning his firmly held position and
identifying himself completely with the viewpoint of Troilus and Paris, assumes
here a very objective stance. Troilus, on the contrary, takes a subjectivist attitude
because for him 'value' is projected by the human vision and has an element of
inherence about it.

In a brief but highly significant soliloquy Troilus unburdens himself thus:

I am giddy, expectation whirls me round.

The imaginary relish is so sweet
That it enchants my sense. What will it be
When that the watery palate tastes indeed
Love's thrice — repured nectar? Death, I fear me,
Sounding destruction, or some joy too fine,
Too subtle-potent, tun'd too sharp in sweetness
For the capacity of my ruder powers:
I fear it much; and I do fear besides
That I shall lose distinction in my joys;
(III. ii. 17-25)

This is the poetry of anticipation and reflects the same kind of subjectivism as is
evidenced by his cogitations on 'Value'. It also betrays a preoccupation with
possibility and is marked by hurried and fevered overtones. There is as well an
emphasis on the keenness of physical sensations, on tasting 'love's thrice-repured
nectar' through the palate. The imaginary relish is deeply soaked in sweetness and
seems to be in excess of what his raw, uncultivated powers can properly respond
to and assimilate. What is even more worth attention is the sheer menacing power
of this heightened emotionality or ecstasy and his incapacity to distinguish these
pell-mell joys the one from the other. Giddiness or 'an intolerable anxiety' is what
 113

characterises the turmoil into which he has been flung. Later, in conversation
with Cressida, he speaks to the following effect: 'This is the monstruosity of love,
lady, that the will is infinite and the execution confined; that the desire is
boundless, and the act a slave to limit.' (III. ii. 85-8). Here the infinity of love and
the frustrating barriers that are interposed between the lover and the object of his
adoration are visualized as two distant poles. Or in a wider perspective, it is the
discrepancy between the ideal and the fact that is being glanced at. But that 'the
will is infinite' and 'the desire is boundless' enforces the recognition of the
extensive reach of the human potential. Man's volition is indeed hedged in by all
kinds of obstructions but the existence of this potential is nevertheless undeniable.
The tenuous relation between this statement and the earlier colloquy between
Hector and Troilus lies in the fact that the subjective assessment is ultimate source
of 'Value'.

For purposes of juxtaposition it would be intriguing to keep spotlit in mind

the following lines utterd by Cressida:

I have a kind of self resides with you;

But an unkind self, tha itself will leave,
To be another's fool
(III. ii. 158-60)

Though preceded by 'Prince Troilus, I have loved you night and day/For many
weary months' (III. ii. 124-5), the lines quoted above sound pretty disingenuous,
for Cressida is not a divided self in the same sense as Troilus: it is a brazen lie
thrown in the face of Troilus merely to hoodwink him. In other words, the two
halves of her self — the one that she pretends to leave with Troilus and the other
that will lend itself to be another's fool — are not self-subsistent but fabricated on
purpose to deceive Troilus. This piece of sophistry also smacks of dramatic irony
the full force of which explodes only in the last Act of the play. As against this
may be placed the following spontaneous articulation by Troilus:
114

I am as true as truth's simplicity,

And simpler than the infancy of truth.
(III. ii. 181-2)

And he adds significantly:

True swains in love shall in the world to come

Approve their truths by Troilus ...
Yet, after all comparisons of truth,
As truth's authentic author to be cited,
As true as Troilus shall crown up the verse
And sanctify their numbers...
(III. ii. 185-94)

In a later context, in response to Cressida's query: 'My lord, will you be true?'
Troilus repeats his earlier stance with an extra measure of emphasis:

Who, I? alas! Is my vice, my fault:

While others fish with craft for great opinion,
I with greater truth catch mere simplicity;
(IV. iv. 102-4)

Even making allowance for a bit of swagger (Troilus regards himself the grand
exemplar of truth), all these assertions put together bring out his genuine concern
with the notion of authenticity. The reiteration of the concept of truth is both
revelatory and significant. 'Truth' and 'simplicity' may be treated as the means
through which the bonds of authenticity have to be forged. To all intents and
purposes 'truth' seems to be Troilus's ideal and it is to be achieved by undergoing
a radical conversion through anguish and leading on to the assumption of
freedom. To 'catch mere simplicity with greater truth' is tantamount to the choice
of freedom as against determinism and of moral responsibility which also enables
one to accept one's past as part of facticity and transcend it by looking up to
possibility. It is quite legitimate to surmise that the line 'while others fish with
craft for great opinion' contains a tangential reference to Hector who is polarized
with Troilus. One may thus be hard put to agree with Mr Bayley when he
comments: 'The "truth" of Troilus goes by default in such a play: it is on the
 115

division of Cressida that Shakespeare concentrated.'18 Not the division of Cressida

as such but as it is internalized by Troilus himself as will become apparent later.
For Troilus honour, fidelity (or truth) and love are inextricably bound together and
this complex structure of values (also enjoined by the chivalrous ideal) that
Troilus conforms and adheres to has been damaged by 'the envious and
calumniating time'. The frustration generated in him derives partly from the
action of times and partly from being forced to reading facticity into
transcendence. What he is constantly required to do is to realize the duality
between being in the world and being in the midst of the world. The simplicity, to
the achievement of which Troilus declares himself to be dedicated, is equivalent
to a spontaneous recognition of the opposite poles of the past to which one wishes
to cling and of the open future towards which one has to move in one's flight of
transcendence. Hence when L.C. Knights asserts that 'it is Troilus's subjectivism
that commits him to a world of time, appearance, and what M. Fluchere calls "an
intolerable anxiety",I9 one is tempted to make the counter suggestion that it is
precisely this attitude of subjectivism that releases Troilus from the world of
appearances and the despotism of time. It might be added that when Cressida, in a
large sweep of rhetorical gesture, begins by saying:

If I be false, or swerve a hair from truth,

When time is old and hath forgot itself,
When water-drops hath worn the stones of Troy
And blind oblivion swallow'd cities up,
And mighty states characterless are grated
To dusty nothing, yet let memory,
From false to false, among false maids in love,
Upbraid my falsehood.
(III. ii. 180-187)
and reaches the climactic point to the following effect:

Yea let them say, to stick the heart of falsehood

'As false as Cressid'.
(III. ii. 191-192)
it strikes an ominous note in view of the devouring jaw of destruction to which all
116

human achievements fall a prey. The falsehood she charges herself with is more
or less interchangeable with a kind of inauthenticity or 'wither'd truth' as Troilus
puts it succinctly. Unlike Troilus she seems to be conscious only of facticity and is
incapable of walking over into the region of transcendence and thus attaining
some degree of moral responsibility or freedom.

Reference was made earlier to the fact that Hector, though arguing all
along to the contrary, came round to the seemingly fallacious logic of Troilus and
Paris that Helen should not be returned to the Greeks. But the Greeks decided,
with a free consensus and at the instance of Calchas, that Antenor was to be
handed over to the Trojans as a bargain counter and that Diomed should take
charge of Cressida on their behalf and bring her back to the Greek camp. To
Troilus this meant, of course, that all his hopes of the consummation of his
tremulous, fevered, and ecstatic love for Cressida were to be wrecked totally after
he had enjoyed only a brief and flickering moment of felicity with her. When the
decision is communicated to them and Cressida expresses her scepticism by
saying: 'And is it true that I must go from Troy?' Troilus replies abruptly but with
a sense of finality: 'From Troy and Troilus'. And in sheer precipitance comes this
explosion of passion:

And suddenly; where injury of chance

Puts back leave-taking, justles roughly by
All time of pause, rudely beguiles our lips
Of all rejoindure, forcibly prevents
Our lock'sd embrasures, strangles our dear vows
Even in the birth of our own labouring breath.
We two, that with so many thousand sighs
Did buy each other, must poorly sell our-selves
With the rude brevity and discharge of one.
(IV. iv. 33-41)

The passage registers the shock of painful surprise, a pounding of heart, an inner
wrenching that one may find it impossible to recover from. All the verb forms
employed here like 'puts back', `justles roughly by', 'rudely beguiles', 'forcibly
 117

prevents' and 'strangles' betray the sense of jolt, of the complete blockage of
energy. Phrases like 'injury of chance' at the beginning and 'the rude brevity and
discharge' towards the close are also matched with each other and reflect the
ceaseless and continuing violence done to their inmost selves. For till this moment
Troilus and Cressida were the sole dwellers in this sanctuary of love. But the
culminating point of tragic experience occurs when a little later Troilus obtains an
unmistakable oracular proof of Cressida's perfidy, for she capitulates before
Diomed unashamedly. The opening of V.ii in which Troilus's impetuosity is held
in check by Ulysses when the former was about to burst forth is almost
breathtaking. Troilus watches Cressida stroking the cheek of Diomed and when
Ulysses essays admonishingly, 'Come, come', Troilus is made to reply in a
magnificently stoic mood:

Nay, stay: by Jove, I will not speak a word:

There is between my will and all offences
A guard of patience: stay a little while.
(V. ii. 48-50)
In fact most of the time that Cressida and Diomed are together and exchanging the
intimacies and softnesses of love Troilus is both torn asunder by an excruciating
mental torture and also exercising upon himself a kind of Jobean patience. And
this is analogous to the need for 'Patience' felt by King Lear in the moment of his
exasperation of disillusionment with both Goneril and Regan when he pathetically
realized that he was on the brink of utter collapse. When both the paramours leave
and Ulysses inquires: 'Why stay we then?' Troilus comes out with the heart-
rending reply thus:

But if I tell how these two did co-act,

Shall I not lie in publishing a truth?
Sith yet there is a credence in my heart,
An esperance so obstinately strong,
That doth invert th' attest of eyes and ears,
As if those organs had deceptious functions,
Created only to calumniate;
Was Cressid here?
(V. ii. 114-21)
U8

Truth here connotes no more than a factual statement that is relevant within a
particular context — a fact that evokes here a strong sense of revulsion. Further,
'eyes' and 'ears' — the two traded pilots between the dangerous shores of will
and judgement' — whose mediation could be trusted earlier seem now to be
degraded to 'organs' with `deceptious functions' because Troilus, with the
desperate and compulsive need to continue to hold fast to his own image of
Cressida, would not accept their testimony, however incontrovertible it might
appear. The emotional flurry in which he seems to be involved puts him in such
grave uncertainty that he would and yet would not believe in the lucidity of his
own sense-preceptions. When in reply to his own query: 'Was Cressida here'?'
Troilus says 'She was not, sure', and is contradicted firmly by Ulysses's 'Most
sure, she was', he asserts emphatically: 'Why, my negation hath on taste of
madness'. Thus it becomes plain that Troilus has already allowed Cressida to be
carved into two distinct and mutually exclusive images. Ulysses counters him by
saying, with a degree of naivety and with the persistent, unconscious refusal to
fathom the depths of Troilus's psyche: 'Nor mine, my lord: Cressida was here but
now.' Troilus is thus left with no option but to suggest that in case Ulysses
insisted upon identifying her as the real Cressida one had better eschew measuring
the whole of womankind in general by her model:

Let it not be believe'd for womanhoodl

Think, we had mothers; do not give advantage
To stubborn critics, apt, without a theme,
For depravation, to square the general sex
By Cressid's rule: rather think this not Cressid.
(V. ii. 125-9)
Though deceptively simple the phrase 'think, we had mothers' comes upon us
invested with an incalculable load of misery. The image of Cressida that Troilus
has been nestling in his heart for so long has suffered not only obscuration but
also defilement. But Ulysses, because of his matter-of-factness and insensibility,
is incapable of grasping this fact. And the same is true of the sharp-tongued,
 119

scurrilous and flippant Thersites when he says about Troilus:

Will he swagger himself out on's own eyes?

(V. ii. 132)

He is not inclined to give Troilus the credit for looking at things with more than
Blake's single, perverted vision, and this provokes Troilus to make an extremely
ambivalent statement thus:

This she? no; this is Diomed's Cressida.

If beauty have a soul, this is not she;
If souls guide vows, if vows be sanctimonies,
If sanctimony be the gods' delight
If there be rule in unity itself,
This is not she. 0 madness of discourse,
That cause sets up with and against thyself;
Bifold authority! Where reason can revolt
Without perdition, and loss assume all reason
Without revolt: this is, and is not, Cressida,
Within my soul there doth conduce a fight
Of this strange nature, that a thing inseparate
Divides more wider than the sky and earth;
And yet the spacious breadth of this division
Admits no orifex for a point as subtle
As Ariachne's broken woof to enter,
Instance, 0 instance! strong as Pluto's gates;
Cressid in mine, tied with the bonds of heaven;
Instance, 0 instance! strong as heaven itself;
The bonds of heaven are slipp'd, dissolv'd, and loos'd;
And with another knot, five-finger-tied,
The fractions of her faith, orts of her love,
The fragments, scraps, the bits and greasy relics
Of her o'er-eaten faith, are bound to Diomed.
(V. ii. 133-56)

The whole passage reflects the psychosis of the dazed man, caught within the
meshes of his own idealism and tugging at them in the effort to achieve an inner
poise if such a poise is at all within his reach. The shillings and slitherings of
Cressida's identity are the focus of critical attention here. Apart from betraying
the nightmare moment of experience the divergent promptings of instinct and the
120

precarious positions they lead on to are of the essence of this disturbing utterance.
Troilus begins with the assumption: 'This is Diomed's Cressida', for she belies
his own image of her, and the sharp discrepancy between the two images is
lacerating his heart. His own image of her rested on the fiction that beauty like
that of Cressida is the hypostasis of a pure soul. That fiction now stands broken
and hence the Subjunctive is replaced by what really obtains within his own
experiential universe. His idealism receives a rebuff and he, therefore, reaches the
shattering conclusion that 'This is not she': that is, her former identity with which
Troilus has been familiar in the past has now come to grief, the sense of
disjunction pertaining to her can be explained away by an exercise of logic. But
the findings of logic, however irrefragable the processes pursued by it, are often
specious and misleading. Opposed to reason and transcending it, as a mode of
cognition, is the non-logical apprehension, and following its lead Troilus feels
firmly persuaded that the personal identity of Cressida — she being 'the heart of
darkness' as she herself puts it — has now suffered a wider breach than what
separates the sky and earth. And yet such is the ambivalence of the imaginative
perception that his mind reverts to the belief that the breach or opening is after all
not very comprehensive. The 'bi-fold authority' is synonymous with the power of
the soul which renders possible the coexistence of the deductions of logic and the
epiphanies of the poetic intuition. Or in other words, it is this power which
enables him to wrest from the seeming chaos of opposed possibilities the real
existence of both halves of the single identity of Cressida — the one being the
product of reason and the other which is the embodiment of 'Value' or of
subjective evaluation.

Two contrary movements again start in Troilus's subconscious mind.

Drawing for evidence upon the body of experience accumulated in the past —
experience whose credibility cannot be questioned at will — makes Troilus
believe that Cressida still belongs to him. There is a suggestion of muscular
strength in the image evoked by Pluto's gates, and this image offers a kind of
psychological support for one's latent wishful thinking. But the testimony of
 121

'eyes' and 'ears' — no less compelling and persuasive — drives home the
conviction that she is not his but has been appropriated by Diomed. This latter
agonizing conclusion that cuts across his heart like a sharp blade follows
inevitably the premise that 'the bonds of heaven', like filaments of steel, with
which Cressida seemed to be tied to him, have now worn out and dissolved. There
is thus a tension generated by the flesh and blood Cressida—Diomed's or
anybody's darling on the one hand, and the one whom his own imagination had
manufactured on the other. The chivalrous values that once inspired Troilus who
says about himself:
never did young man fancy
With so eternal and so fix'd a soul.
(V. iii. 161-2)
have now become corrupted and denuded of their significance: the pure breath of
heaven is grown infectious, putrefying and sickening. For Troilus the only course
now left is to outgrow the sphere of idealistic love, exercise an active control over
affairs in the contingent world and identify himself thoroughly with the Trojan
cause. The shift from pure love to blind and animal hatred is underlined thus:

Hark, Greek, as much as I do Cressid love,

So much by weight hate I her Diomed;
(V. iii. 163-4)
These two are the orbits in which Troilus seems to be moving in the course of the
play, and this accounts for his lack of stability.

References

15. Una Ellis Fermore, The Frontiers of Drama (London, 1945), p. 73.
16. All quotations are from Troilus and Cressida, edited by K. Deightor the Arden Edition
(London, 1922).
17. Michael Long, The Unnatural Scene (London, 1976), p. 119.
122

18. L.C. Knights, Some Shakespearean Themes (London, 1959) p.77.

19. John Bayley, 'Time and the Trojans', Essays in Criticism, XXV, No. (1975), p.71.
 CHAPTER 8

Fools of Time In Macbeth

Among the great tragedies of Shakespeare Macbeth stands out as much for
its sharpness of focus and tenuous but volcanic speed as for the intricate web of
ambiguities in which the entire action is enclosed. Each crucial incident in the
play looks Janus-like and yields, on close scrutiny, contrary significances. The
Weird Sisters speak on purpose with a double tongue and Macbeth, self-tempted
to some extent, is unable to tear through the haziness of their speeches and attain
to certainty till the very last. 'Fair is foul, and foul is fair' (I. i. 2) comes upon us
with an ominous, haunting cadence; it strikes the key-note of the play and
determines, by and large, its ever-changing perspective. Banquo, more clear-eyed
and freer of mental cobwebs than Macbeth, is able to perceive:

But' its strange:

And oftentimes, to win us to our harm,
The instruments of Darkness talk us truths;
Win us with honest trifles, to betray 's
In deepest consequence.2°
(I. iii. 122)

This is how he comments upon the initial prophecy coming true to Macbeth and
recognizes. with and ironical somberness, the dubiety hovering over the utterances
of the Witches — 'the instruments of Darkness', though a kind of unconscious
sardonic pleasure seems to be lurking behind it. He focuses on the enormity of
their juggling and its shattering impact over its recipients as if foreshadowing —
without being aware of it — the future yet shrouded in mystery for Macbeth.
124

Unlike Banquo, Macbeth is both possessed of a supreme gift of vision and is a

victim of self-delusion. In an aside immediately following the colloquy referred to
above, however, he is very much skeptical about the validity of their stance and
his own attitude corresponding to it:

This supernatural soliciting

Cannot be ill; cannot be good:-
If ill, why hath it given me earnest of success,
Commencing in a truth? I am Thane of Cawdor:
If good, why do I yield to that suggestion
Whose horrid image doth unfix my hair,
And make my seated heart knock at my ribs,
Against the use of nature?
(I. iii. 130)

Here Macbeth indulges in a sustained meditation, holding the mutually

contradictory aspects of the 'supernatural soliciting' spotlit in his mind and
painfully realizing that it is the equivocal character of the temptation offered that
keeps him in a flurry. It should not be treated as an abstract statement of
ambiguity but its concrete apprehension and presentment in terms of lived
experience. It is not 'suggestion' as a concept but its horrid image which offers
itself to his hallucinatory vision, and the moment he yields to it the fibres of his
body become high-strung and he is thrown into a physio-psychic turmoil though
as yet only a tiny part of the prophecy has been fulfilled. The unfixing of hair and
the pounding of the heart — both symptoms of a taut, muscular tension — imply a
dislocation of the normal and natural processes of living and leave one dazed with
a primitive, animal horror. Macbeth thus finds himself caught in a see-saw rhythm
and is at his wits' end how best to decipher the cryptic, quasi-oracular
pronouncements of the Sisters. In the letter that Lady Macbeth is perusing at the
beginning of Act I, Scene v, occur these significant words: !Whiles I stood rapt in
the wonder of it, came missives from the King, who all-hail'd me, 'Thane of
Cawdor'; by which title, before, these Weird Sisters saluted me, and referr'd me
to the coming on of time, with 'Hail, King that shalt be!' The phrase 'stood rapt in
the wonder of it' betrays the fact that Macbeth is overwhelmed with amazement
 125

and his judgment, therefore, lies suspended for the moment. Convinced of their
power of looking into the seeds of time he is fully persuaded to take their
deliberate sophistry at its face value, and this involves him in a kind of self-
deception he finds it difficult to extricate himself from. There is a close and
hidden connection between 'all-haird me Thane of Cawdor' and King that
shalt be'— the present and the future moments of time are interlocked, and this
intertwining corresponds exactly to that cloud of unknowing behind which
Macbeth strives to seek shelter and thus the avalanche of ruin descends upon him
block by block. Only half-contented with his grasp on the present Macbeth seems
to be chasing the future with all the eager trepidation at his command, and the
play thus appears to be furiously future driven.

The abundant use of dramatic irony in the play is also linked with the
juxtaposition of the motifs of 'illusion' and 'reality', for the employment of irony
necessarily implies a dislocation of perspective. Things turn out differently from
what they look like, and contrary to our expectations, so that 'nothing is, but what
is not' (I. iii. 142), and the foreshadowing of events is achieved inspite of
ourselves. Duncan's estimate of Macbeth is belied tragically, and to our sense of
deep shock, by his sacrilegious murder of his cousin and guest; the original Thane
of Cawdor betrays the absolute trust Duncan had built on him early; Banquo's
reliance of Macbeth is rudely shattered by his suborning the murderers to cut short
the lives of Banquo and his son, Fleance, and Macduff, too, is given a false scent
by the consciously contrived self-denigration Malcolm subjects himself to. And
the crowning event in this long catalogue is the movement of the Birnam Wood in
the direction of the Dunsinane Castle — as clever stratagem contrived with the
intention of undermining Macbeth's posture of smugself-complacency and his
apparently impregnable will. This is in addition to Macduff — the nemesis-figure
— proving himself to be the ultimate agent of destruction in virtue of his not
being born of woman. Thus the calculated build-up of treacherous appearances is
pretty pervasive in the play throughout.
126

Apart from the ambiguity which is the current coin in the Witches'
transaction with Macbeth, he himself, too, as reported by Lady Macbeth in one of
her early soliloquies, is torn by divergent pulls and ambivalent drives:

Thou wouldst be great;

Art not without ambition, but without
The illness should attend it: what thou wouldst highly,
That wouldst thou holily; wouldst not play false,
And yet wouldst wrongly win; thou'dst have, great Glamis,
That which cries, "Thus thou must do", if thou have it;
And that which rather thou dost fear to do,
Than wishest should be undone.
(I. v. 18)
This is a piece of sharp, objective, clinical analysis, framed in the language of
depth paradox — a kind of controlled vagueness. A fair amount of distancing is
involved in Lady Macbeth's appraisal of her husband and this appraisal is
conveyed through carefully balanced opposites. With her characteristic feminine
intuition she is quick to perceive that for her husband ambition is one of the vital
impulsions of life. Normally the achievement of this ambition by Macbeth is
unattended by malice, rancour or crookedness, and a holiness of spirit shines
through his motivations. On occasions, however, a hiatus may seem to yawn
between the options he has chosen and the value-system that governs his life as a
whole. Curiously enough, sometimes he doesn't mind achieving his objective and
yet shuns a course of action which is not in conformity with the moral absolutes,
theoretically speaking. Also occasionally what makes him abstain from embarking
upon some particular strategy is the fear complex that is not only inhibiting but
nerve-wracking. In a later context Lady Macbeth calls her husband 'infirm of
purpose' with an explosion of impatience, but the infirmity she stains him with
emanates from the fact that he is most often tormented with 'compunctious
visitings of nature' and cannot bring his desire and performance into any firm
coordination. The Hell that stares Macbeth in the face is designed partly by the
doubts and fears sown into him by the Witches and partly by his own ambivalent
attitudes. This is what precedes the murder of Duncan. What follows in its wake
 127

may, however, he visualized as the Harrowing of Hell as in the case of Herod in

the Mystery plays, for he is condemned to pacing up and down the infernal
universe of his own creation all along.

The Porter's scene has been subjected to a fair amount of explication, and
De Quincey is the earliest critic to point out how it ushers in a daylight world in
the midst of the suffocating darkness which had dominated the preceding scenes.
But its real significance lies, I should think, in the fact that it reinforces the theme
of temptation through equivocation. It has been pointed out with some justice that
the Porter bears the same relationship to the knockers at the gate as the Witches
have towards Macbeth,21 for the knockers are tempted into Hell as Macbeth
descends into his Dantesque Inferno little by little as a consequence of believing
in the casuistry of the Witches. In both cases the temptation offered outwardly
seems to be an externalization of the evil subsisting at the core of the ego. The
knockers' world, portrayed in all its width of reference and highlighting all its
nuances, is a microcosm counterpoised to the macrocosm of Macbeth, and from it
also radiate waves of ambiguity and suspense. In it some of the typical characters
— all damned for some vice or the other — are subjected to withering sarcasm
and the apparent hilarity of tone is shot through with a subtle and corrosive irony.
The Porter's scene, it may be admitted, contributes its own share to the creation of
that illusion which brings the antithetical reality into sharp relief.

Lady Macbeth's is a case of psychopathy and transcends the mere causal

relationship of crime and punishment. Her tragic predicament is characterized by
the fact that her psyche begins to dislocate — its integrative centre being lost —
the moment the heinous crime is perpetrated, and she begins to live henceforth,
not very much unlike Macbeth in a world of ghostly appearances. With Macbeth
the conscious mind, though shadowed and tortured by hallucinatory fears and the
guilt complex that stings his conscience off and on, remains vibrant to the last; in
the case of Lady Macbeth, it is the subliminal self which is most deeply involved.
In the sleep-walking scene it is the twilight of consciousness that seems to be her
128

natural habitat, and she is turned into a kind of automaton. Macbeth's penchant for
visual evocation, keyed to the highest pitch of intensity, is brought out again and
again in his soul-searching soliloquies. Lady Macbeth, on the contrary, creates for
herself a mirror state which helps her bring to the surface the contents of her
submerged, unconscious mind. Her obsessed reliving of the past harks back to
indelible memories that yet have to be plucked and erased in the interest of her
psychic reorientation whereas Macbeth is almost always looking forward to the
future.

Macbeth's soliloquy in Act V, scene v, offers a sharp contrast to the one in

Act I, scene vii. In the latter 'the bank and shoal of time' and what is relevant to it
absorbs his full attention; in the former any continued existence in the palpable
and tangible world of facts is fretful and wearisome to him in the extreme. The
nadir of Macbeth's fortunes is reached when he is shown the three apparitions
with manoeuvred ironic overtones, and Macbeth is peremptorily forbidden to seek
any further unravelling of the mystery. The first is that of the armed head,
apparently intended to incite Macbeth to engage himself at any cost in the
impending combat against his enemies but implicitly signifying, nevertheless, that
his own head was to be cut off by Macduff and carried to Malcolm. The second is
that of the bloody child — that is, of Macduff who has been untimely ripped out
of his mother's womb, and Macbeth had been given the false and tantalizing
assurance of not being cowed down by any one born of woman. The third one is
of the child with a crown on his head and a bough in his hand, symbolizing the
royal Malcolm who was to succeed in the direct line of descent from Duncan and
who ordered his soldiers to hew down branches of trees in the Birnam Wood and
take them to Dunsinane. And Macbeth had been forewarned not to succumb
unless the Birnam Wood moved towards the Dunsinane Castle — a phenomenon
out of the order of nature and hence most incredible to human reasoning. A
subsidiary symbolic meaning of the bough relates to the blossoming forth of the
forces of regeneration and harmony waiting upon the return of Malcolm to the
country which had been distraught and laid waste by the over-vaulting ambition of
 129

Macbeth. The unfolding of these apparitions is an ingenious attempt to screw up

Macbeth's courage 'to the sticking-place', to goad him to a false sense of
immunity and then cause the citadel of his self-assurance topple down with a
bang. This is yet another example of that equivocation which operates as an
important thematic strand in the play. Later, the show of eight successive kings —
embodying the vision of Banquo's progeny — the last one carrying a glass in his
hand, signifies the unending chain of royalty in favour of Banquo and drives home
pathetically to Macbeth the sense of sterility of his own line. This shakes him to
the roots of his being and elicits from him this withering comment: 'What! Will
the line stretch out to th' crack of doom?' (IV. i. 117) This powerfully laconic
line, in its own subtle way, betrays that Macbeth is now delicately poised on the
edge of the precipice, his hopes are in utter collapse and his defences begin to give
way from now onwards. And Angus, in the beginning of Act V sums up, with
penetrating insight, the steep tragic contrast between the two successive phases of
Macbeth's pursuit of power thus:

now does he feel his title

Hang loose about him, like a giant's robe
Upon a dwarfish thief.
(V. ii. 20)
It hardly needs to be stressed that the antithesis between 'a giant's robe' and 'a
dwarfish thief on whom it settles down serves as the most effective means of
deflation here.

The Hell Macbeth lands himself into is the inevitable consequence of the
fact that in his case 'function is smothered in surmise' and his 'single state of
man'— the microcosm of personality — is completely fragmented by his chaotic
desires and the web of ambiguities woven for him by the Witches. He is
compelled of necessity to fumble his way through the tumult of jostling fears and
anxieties to a point of stability and order. The major and final 'tomorrow, and
tomorrow, and tomorrow' soliloquy is already prepared for by the jaded and
130

mounting despair reflected in Macbeth's reaction to the stunning apparitions

exposed to his view by the Weird Sisters and in his later comment:

I have liv'd long enough: my way of life

Is fall'n into the sere, the yellow leaf;
(V. iii. 22)
'The yellow leaf' is a very luminous concretion of the wintry landscape, the
frozen circle of Hell in which Macbeth now seems to be imprisoned and which is
what is the darkness of his soul has made as its masterpiece. The distance from
this deeply poignant expression of pathos to the sense of the dissolution of time is
not very far, indeed. The news of Lady Macbeth's death (a death caused by her
own violent hands in sheer desperation and a benumbing, logical climax to her
protracted frenzied living) prompts Macbeth to make an only excursion into the
realm of metaphysics and speculate over the unreality of time and, inferentially, of
life itself. It would be helpful at this point to hold the text of the soliloquy firmly
within one's range of vision for a moment:

Macb. She should have died hereafter:

There would have been a time for such a word —
To-morrow, and to-morrow, and to-morrow,
Creeps in this petty pace from day to day,
To the last syllable of recorded time;
And all our yesterdays have lighted fools
The way to dusty death. Out, out, brief candle!
Life's but a walking shadow; a poor player,
That struts and frets his hour upon the stage,
And then is heard no more: it is a tale
Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury,
Signifying nothing.
(V. v. 17)
'There would have been a time for such a word' is really interchangeable with
'she should have died hereafter'. No simple opposition between 'now' and 'later'
is involved here, and this is too transparent and self-evident a datum to warrant
any extended commentary upon it. On the contrary, the very concept of time as
comprising both 'now' and 'later' is not only unsavoury but utterly obnoxious to
 131

Macbeth in his present state of perturbation. For him time has ceased to be an
integrated whole, a meaningful and connected sequence; it is unreal and illusory
in the sense of being no more than a conglomeration of the isolated 'flows'
succeeding each other mechanically in an endless chain of trivia. It is this
mechanical succession, corresponding to the notion of the 'hereafter' or the
linking together of 'tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow', that comes upon us
with an insistent refrain. One may well recall that while welcoming Macbeth, in
the first flush of his astounding victory on the bathe-field where he had fought for
Duncan as one of his trusted lieutenants and generals, Lady Macbeth had burst out
in a moment of utter exhilaration buoyancy thus:

Great Glamis, worthy Cawdor!

Greater than both, by the all-hail hereafter!
The letters have transported me beyond
This ignorant present, and I feel now
The future in the instant.
(I. v. 54)
It may not be wide of the mark to point out that whereas 'hereafter' in this context
is related to a state of expectancy — the present being depreciated as 'this
ignorant present' —,the 'tomorrow' in the final soliloquy is nugatory — a pale
and evanescent shadow shimmering over the surface of time. It has been
perceptively demonstrated by John Lawlor that the concept of time implicated
here is not linear and incremental but cyclic and repetitive.22 All the 'tomorrows'
— each one of which creeps in this petty pace from day to day — constitute an
ant-like ghostly procession and offer us an image of a shapeless mass of endlessly
multiplying moments. FIistory or 'recorded time' thus becomes meaningless
because it is lacking in an integrated patterning of lived experience. Without a
sense of sequence or continuity and of value — both of which contribute to
whatever plenitude inheres in the concept of time—the future is reduced to a mere
sham, an 'insubstantial pageant,' with nothing solid to sustain it. Lady Macbeth's
death, occurring in the present, suggests the idea of a series of tomorrows but it
may, with a backward glance, as well insinuate the notion of 'yesterdays.' For
132

with death staring us in the face with its icy gaze, time instead of reaching out into
the future, registers a regression into the past. The yesterdays are equivalent to
moments of time frozen in the abysmal depths of the past and these remain as
alive to consciousness as events taking place here and now, and Lady Macbeth's
death is a glaring instance of it. Again, whereas all the 'yesterdays' the 'now's' and
the 'tomorrows' form one continuum for the normal percipient, to Macbeth,
paradoxically enough, it is not so much the sense of cohesiveness and interfusion
as that of dispersion and dislocation that is more urgent and obstinate. This is so
because at this critical juncture it is Macbeth's consciousness that serves as the
mode for measuring the tlow of time. And his is a fractured consciousness — one
which amounts to a cleavage in the innermost fabric of the mind occasioned by
the persistent tension between the compulsions of the simple present and those of
the Subjunctive future. There is, therefore, a direct relationship and consonance
between the essential lunacy of Macbeth's alienated life and duration which,
instead of being a symbol of order and control, has become cancerous. The
yesterdays are more or less imaged as torch-bearers leading the 'fools of time' —
inept, blundering, impercipient mortals—upto the threshold of Death. 'Dusty
death' vivifies for an instant the spark of meaning latent in the Biblical warning
that 'Dust we are and unto dust must we return'— a strong enough reminder of
the emblematical force of memento mori pageant. By a sudden leap of the
imagination Macbeth may briefly and temporarily identify himself with one such
fool, for with the dislocated time as his characteristic frame of reference, he is one
who can no longer control events.23 And such a one is bound to be summoned,
like Everyman in the Medieval play with that title, into the gigantic cemetery of
the skeletal forms condemned to be made food for worms sooner or later.

It has been pointed out by several critics — Ribner, being one of them —
and with explicit moral disapproval, that Macbeth shows little concern or
sensitivity when the news of the Queen's death is communicated to him.24 Here
there is no question of personal involvement. It is the inescapable dilemma of the
human condition that Macbeth watches with bated breath. As a matter of fact,
 133

Lady Macbeth's death precipitates the psychological crisis, bringing to a focus the
accumulating burden of pain to which Macbeth had bowed down at long last, and
his excruciating awareness of the disarray in life is for once and immediately
crystallized into a philosophical utterance. Macbeth has for the moment ceased to
be an active participant in the drama; he becomes instead, the choric voice in
terms of which a judgment is passed on human life with a shuddering honesty.
The 'haunting majesty' discovered by Tomlinson in the soliloquy may have been
contributed by the texture of sound,25 but the note of anguish born of the acute
sense of futility is no less and patently unmistakable. The suggestion of the torch
latent in the world 'lighted' is brought out openly in the image of the candle that
flickers for a brief moment and is then suddenly extinguished. This helps us recall
a similar image used by Shakespeare when Othello, stirred up to a maddening
spasm of jealousy, is about to strangulate Desdemona in her bed: Put out the
light, and then put out the light!' The co-presence of the literal and the figurative
light reminds us in that line not only of the fragility and precariousness of human
existence but of its preternatural aspect as well, and here, too, the brief candle of
life is destined to be smothered and goes out in no time. If time is involved in a
process of dispersion, so is the lamp of life to peter out sometime or the other.

The procession of the 'tomorrows', involved in a crawling, snail-like,

retarded movement, the 'yesterdays' receding ultimately into the valley of bones,
and the flickering light of the candle — all these woven together evoke the image
of the 'walking shadow' because the sense of precariousness is their common
denominator. And 'shadow' evokes the notion of substance as its antithesis, and
life in time is shadowy as opposed to the radiance of Eternity though this
undercurrent of meaning, it may be emphasised, is not the focus of attention there.
The idea of Eternity is farthest from the mind of Macbeth at the moment, for he is
too deeply involved in the present to make it an object of contemplation. In life's
but a walking shadow' are gathered together all the implications of contingency,
insubstantiality, and movement which is blind, undirected and purposeless. It
evokes the impression of an uncertain and fitful groping into the regions of
134

darkness, of an abortive endeavour to reduce chaos to manageable proportions.

Life may also be imaged as a 'poor player'— a shoddy artist, one who bungles his
material, misconceives the process of fashioning it into a coherent whole, a fully
wrought artifact, and makes a mawkish and pitiable display of his talents. In the
two verbs 'struts' and 'frets' is contained the reference to one who counterfeits —
like each one of the players in Jacques's speech in As You Like It — many roles of
the fustian kind. He has his 'exits' and 'entrances', performs his role in the
enacted drama till a predetermined period of time, and then droops into utter
nothingness. He has to abandon at long last all the power and prestige, all the
vainglory and pompousness, and accept with resignation, like characters in the
Morality plays, 'the constitution of silence'. All the significances of this soliloquy
are brought to a head in the concluding image: 'it is a tale/Told by an idiot, full of
sound and fury/ Signifying nothing'. From the 'walking shadow' suggested by the
dim, flickering candle through the poor player on to the 'idiot' telling a tale, 'full
of sound and fury' there seems to have been introduced a slight change in the
metaphoric idiom of the passage. But it is, however, no less manifest that the
'idiot' in the last line is the new mask taken on by the 'poor player' or the shoddy
artist referred to in the preceding line. Also life which is normally equivalent to
Logos is now converted into the gibberish outpouring of a maniac — an utterance
stuffed with high-sounding but incomprehensible words, a king of verbal
imposture. An implicit opposition between force and violence on the one hand,
and futility and absurdity on the other is also insinuated here. Time has become a
cipher because damage has been done to those things which are intrinsically
valuable in life. And all things in the terrestrial universe function and realize
themselves in and through the medium of time. Denuded of its essential
significance life is reduced to a mere husk, a void in which things do not interact
organically and do not hold together in a dynamic and fructuous relationship. Life,
in all its particularities becomes inauthentic.
 135

Giving an account of Duncan's reception of the news of Macbeth's brave

and amazing military exploits Ross had, with an uncanny insight, spoken the truth
about `13ellona's bridegroom' thus: 'Nothing afeard of what thyself didst make,/
Strange images of death' (I. iii. 96). Later, Macbeth unwittingly confirms this
insight when externalizing his own inner turmoil he explains to Lady Macbeth the
dark intimation of the ghost voices of his own consciences thus:

Still it cried, "Sleep no more!" to all the house:

"Glamis hath murder'd sleep; and therefore Cawdor
Shall sleep no more, Macbeth shall sleep no more!'
(IL ii. 40)

Glamis, Cawdor and Macbeth are multiple facets of the same personality who is
the architect of 'the strange images of death', and has murdered sleep which is an
act of blasphemy. Sleep, it needs hardly to be underscored, is the symbol of the
renewal of vitality, restoration of order and poise in the midst of chaos and
disorder, and of the eventual possibility of psychic rehabilitation. And time and
sleep are coordinates, and any violence done to them implies that human
consciousness has also come to grief Partly through carving images of death,
partly through annulling the possibilities of re-constitution and partly through his
own betrayal to the casuistry of the Wend Sister Macbeth has 'put rancours in the
vessel of his peace' and deprived himself of the prospect of re-achieving his sadly
lost inner poise. It is, therefore, small wonder that in this soliloquy the end of the
human sojourn in this world is envisioned in terms of pure nihilism. For the time
being, at any, rate, the notion of a Christian optimism, of an ultimate beneficence
in a benighted world seems to be brushed aside brusquely. The pathos associated
with the 'poor player' on both the moral and the aesthetic planes is extended to the
lot of the 'idiot' who is imagined to be involved in a Dionysian dance of
existence. This is what impels him to go down the wheel, to relinquish his unsure
hold on life and be thrown into a state of damnation, for in Macbeth's case and,
generally speaking, too, such a state is tantamount to living in a realm which is
136

'devoid of significant relations'26 and in which the Subjunctive is no long

operative.

Life as an absurd phenomenon, not reducible to any logical coherence or

pattern, and with anti-reason as its substratum, is what is projected unmistakably
in this soliloquy. It also reflects the protagonist's claustrophobic state of mind at
this particular juncture. He has been 'tied to a stake', condemned to live in a
hostile universe where all the channels of communication with the circtunambient
reality have now been finally disrupted. In this soliloquy Macbeth has been able to
paint his soul-sickness most effectively and with a sure touch, and nausea and
absurdity — the two main concerns of the existentialist philosophers — are very
much in the foreground of this picture. In this sense Macbeth may, like Samuel
Beckett's Waiting for Gado,' and Endgame, be considered as an image, in the
realm of art, of the anxiety and absurdity cleaving to the human condition as its
inalienable attributes. Macbeth's exasperation of disillusionment reaches a
climactic point here and all the spirals of gloom and seething discontent forming
earlier are objectified eventually in this soliloquy. No doubt the play ends with the
re-emergence of the forces of grace and harmony but this soliloquy — far from
reflecting Shakespeare's mature vision — represents, nevertheless, the swelling
act of the drama that had been enacted in Macbeth's soul since he laid 'the Lord's
anointed Temple' in ruins. And Macbeth, before he is actually murdered by
Macduff in the last scene of the play, is already symbolically entombed within the
debris of his own truncated and mutilated personality.

References

20. All quotations are from Macbeth, edited by Kenneth Muir, the new Arden Edition
(London, 1953).
21. Essays in Shakespearean Critcism, edited by James L. Calderwood and Harold E. Toliver
(Englewood Cliffs, N. J, 1970), p. 517.
22. John Lawlor, The Tragic Sense in Shakespeare (London, 1966), p.138.
 137

23. Northrop Frye, Fools of Time: Studies in Shakespearean Tragedy (Toronto, 1960), p.88.
/4. Irving Ribner, Patterns in Shakespearean Tragedy (London, 1969), p.I 64.
25. T.B. Tomlinson, 'Action and Soliloquy in Macbeth', Essays in Criticism, 8(1968), p.
152.
26. L.C. Knights, Some Shakespearean Themes (London, 1959), p. 141.
 CHAPTER 9

Solitariness of the Victim in Othello

Almost towards the end of the play, when the excruciating inner drama has
reached for Othello its climactic point, he expresses his sense of being dazed —
his sense, as it were, of the controlling design of the play or the 'resistlessness of
events' thus: 'but 0 vain boast,/Who can control his fate'?27 (V. ii. 265-66). He
further projects the strain of his anxiety-ridden and over-burdened soul by
formulating his disconcerting query thus: 'Will you, I pray, demand that demi-
devil/Why he hath thus ensnar'd my soul and body?' (V. ii. 302-3). The demi-
devil, — the embodiment of sheer destructive and satanic energy — in this
context, it goes without saying, is no other than Iago, and the phrase `ensnar'd my
soul and body'— personality in all its congeries — reflects upon the subtle
machinations directed against Othello: the elaborate and intricate web of fraud and
guile spun with rare and masterly ingenuity by Iago and in which the protagonists
come to be enmeshed. Iago is the medium through whom Othello is hoodwinked,
bamboozled and wantonly and callously tortured, and this leads ultimately not
only to his own complete collapse and disintegration but also to the abandoning of
his love for Desdemona. lago's innate capacity for doing evil appears to him to be
something causeless, infinite and inscrutable: an enigma which frustrates all
attempts at its unravelling and is shrouded in mystery. There are two things that
attract our attention in this regard specifically and all at once: Othello's impetuous
and inundating passion for Desdemona is referred to as equivalent to some sort of
`witchcarff (the suggestion of the subdual and suspension of the normal reactions
being latent in it) exercised upon the latter in a variety of contexts. Brabantio's
140

stream of accusations flows on uninterrupted and perhaps, without any

forethought: he begins by saying:
That thou has practis'd on her with foul charms,
Abus'd her delicate youth, with drugs or minerals,
That weakens motion:
(I. ii. 73-75)
and expatiates on it a little later thus:
She is abus'd, stol'n from me and corrupted,
By spells and medicines, bought of mountebanks,
For nature so preposterously to err,
(Being not deficient, blind, or lame of sense,)
Sans witchcraft could not.
(I. iii. 60-64)

The intended drift of all these accusations is that Desdemona was utterly
hypnotized, her perceptions, otherwise ordinarily acute and alert, were
overpowered and kept in abeyance by the administering of potions, medicines and
'minerals', and above all by the application of black magic in the course of
Othello's love-making to her. But Othello, more clear-sighted, perceptive and
shrewd than Brabantio (believing not in literal 'witchcraft' but in the mysterious
and incalculable potency of love) refutes all these charges leveled against him by
making a frank, forthright and laconic statement to this effect:
She lov'd me for the dangers I had pass'd,
And I lov'd her that she did pity them,
This only is the witchraft I have us'd:
(I. iii. 167-69)

This seemingly innocuous utterance contains the admixture of an element of

narcissism in Othello — an extension of the self-esteem so frequently and so
boisterously paraded by him. Moreover, Iago is referred to time and again, mostly
by Othello, and with intriguing reiteration (which is both 'harsh' and 'grating') as
'honest' Iago, although honesty as his hypothetically prime and essential virtue, is
blatantly denied as many dines as it is affirmed. It looks as if 'tis a pageant,/ To
 141

keep us in false gaze': (I. iii. 18-19). This sort of constant punning on 'honest' and
'honesty' runs throughout the play and turns lago into an object of unconscious
ridicule, and truth about him explodes only towards the very end in all its
terrifying implications. These two factors constitute the motif of 'seeming' and
'being' which is pervasive here as in Hamlet and Macbeth, too, and which is
succinctly summed up by lago thus: 'Men should be that they seem,/Or those that
be not, would they might seem none!' (III. iii. 130-131) and 'The Moor a free and
open nature too,/That thinks men honest that but seems to be so': (I. iii. 397-98) as
he is the major exponent and practitioner of the art of 'seeming'. While Cassio,
downright earnest and unsuspecting as he is, laments over his dismissal as
Othello's lieutenant and equates it with a sense of personal loss of reputation:
'Reputation, reputation, I ha' lost my reputation! I ha' lost the immortal part, sir,
of my self, and what remains is bestial; my reputation, lago, my reputation!' (II.
iii. 254-57), lago brushes it off with a hearty chuckle as something utterly
inconsequential and irrelevant: 'As I am an honest man, I thought you had
receiv-d some bodily wound, there is more offence in that than in reputation:
reputation is an idle and most false imposition, oft got without merit, and lost
without deserving. You have lost no reputation at all, unless you repute yourself
such a loser' (IL iii. 258-63). Essentially an egotist in the very roots of his being
and his categories of judgment being reductive he denies any existential reality to
such a futile notion as reputation: to him it is not something tactile CI thought you
had receiv'd some bodily wound'): it is vaporous and insubstantial, and its loss
does not matter so long as one does not have that irritating sense of deprivation
coming upon its heels. Similarly, in a later context he avers: 'Her honour is an
essence that's not seen,/They have it very oft that have it not': (IV. i. 16-17),
meaning thereby that there are countless persons, including Desdemona, who are
mistakenly credited with the possession of this rich and invisible 'essence' which
is in fact non-existent. The deceitful appearances by which Othello's psyche is
bedevilled and led astray are partly the creation of his own phantasy — as is the
case with Macbeth, too — and they are no less equivalent to the fatal web into
142

which Othello is pushed and entangled: a whole mass of lies, falsehoods and
fabrications fashioned by Iago's 'diabolic intellect'.

Early in the play, while endeavouring to take the simpleton Roderigo into
his confidence, lago speaks with an odd and uncharacteristic honesty and
straightforwardness, which is any way amazing, to the following effect:

Heaven is my judge, not I for love and duty,

But seeming so, for my peculiar end.
For when my outward action does demonstrate
The native act, and figure of my heart,
In complement extern, 'tis not long after,
But I will wear my heart upon my sleeve,
For doves to peck at:,I am not what I am !
(I. i. 59-65)

The quintessential phrase here 'I am not what I am' (with the distinct Sartrean
ring about it) is also used by Viola in Twelfth Night (III. i. 142) but with comic
undertones, though. There it links up with the acts of burlesquing and confusions
of identity -- the source of the comic — which ensue from it: here it becomes the
medium of tragic ruin and waste of potentialities and shatters eventually the
illusion of romantic love built up by Othello with such eager and passionate
involvement. In both cases it implies the gesture of putting on a mask upon one's
self — assumption of a role which is in conformity with the pursuit of one's
calculated designs and purposes and serves as an effective means of deluding
others.

Othello, the chief actor in this hectic war of nerves, is caught between the
two contraries; putting it differently one may uphold that himself a duality he is
drawn simultaneously and irresistibly towards the polar opposites represented by
Iago and Desdemona. He has to make a choice between the steadfast loyalty
which is masqueraded by the former and his own burning passion and ardour for
the latter. And the choice forced upon him involves the anguish of freedom and
even the unhappy choice which Othello at long last makes is an inalienable
adjunct of this freedom. He succumbs to the piercing thrust, the specious logic
 143

reflected in the adroitly contrived strategies of the former while to Desdemona —

'love's martyr'28 — he is apparently bound by the ties of love; the 'cables of
perdurable toughness'. The two of them instinctively believe in an ideal image
and pattern of love and this is anathema to lago who equates love with lechery: 'a
sect or scion' of 'our raging motions, our carnal stings, our unbitted lusts' (I. iii.
330) which betrays his own cunningly controlled sensuality. Othello is prone to
jealousy by temperament and lago very well perceives that the poison injected by
him in the body of love will defile and contaminate it. He is therefore bent upon
effecting the violent rupture of this sacred relationship whatever the cost involved
in embarking upon this odyssey of hate. The 'motive hunting' of 'a motiveless
malignity' is the quest on which the critics were sent by Coleridge and which has
led to endless and bewildering speculations. At the very outset of the play lago
tries to clarify to himself as well as illuminate the audience regarding the various
components of the malignity he so unashamedly bears towards Othello. First,
there is the fact of the sense of 'injured merit,' of his being deprived of Othello's
lieutenantry and thus the place he legitimately aspires for and languishes after is
given to Cassio — 'the bookish theoric' — one in whose case, 'mere prattle
without practice/Is all his soldiership' (I. i. 26-27). Secondly, he suspects Othello
to have had illicit relations with his own wife, Emilia; 'I hate the Moor,/And it is
thought abroad, that `twixt my sheets/He's done my office': (1. iii. 384-86) and
'For that I do suspect the lustful Moor/Hath leap'd into my seat, the thought
whereof/Doth like a poisonous mineral gnaw my inwards', (II. i. 290-92). And
although he is cautious enough to add a rider:

I know not if t be true....

Yet, I, for mere suspicion in that kind,
Will do, as if for surety:
(I. iii. 386-88)

he nevertheless enjoins upon himself the task of launching over the sinister and
nefarious plan of wreaking vengeance against him:
144

Yet that I put the Moor,

At least, into a jealousy so strong,
That judgment cannot cure;..
And practising upon his peace and quiet,
Even to madness: 'tis here, but yet confus`d;
(II. i. 295-306)

Generally speaking, he is obsessed, in a hazy and indistinct way, by the notion

that he is not getting his due and has been shoved off to an inferior position as
opposed to Cassio. Even the specific grounds of his discontent as voiced forth
from time to time are not entirely convincing: in fact one has the feeling that the
first has not been dwelt upon so pertinaciously as to constitute a genuine
grievance; only Emilia, perhaps, later on gets near the truth when in a rather
hysterically indignant way she bursts out thus:

I will be hang'd, if some eternal villain,

Some busy, and insinuating rogue,
Some cogging, cozening slave, to get some office,
Have not devis'd this slander, I' 11 be hang'd else.
(IV. ii. 133-36)

And the second is not substantiated by the slightest shred of evidence anywhere in
the play. Neither Othello nor Emilia throws out any hint of mutual infatuation or
intimacy nor betray any hankering after the softness of unauthorized and
voluptuous love proposed to be indulged in by them. It is also worth pondering
over that if Iago really suspected Emilia to be the Moor's mistress how could he
reasonably ask her to steal the ominous handkerchief for him, not apprehending
that she might as well divulge the secret of his continued solicitude in this regard
to her supposed paramour? What seems much more plausible and conducive to
belief is that lago bears an indwelling hatred towards Othello and he offers not
reasons but mere pretexts for this hatred born of thwarted personal ambitions and
gnawing envy of Othello's blessed marital state: the hatred in fact precedes, in its
gestation, the ingenious and twisted process of rationalization. His malevolence
against Othello is pursued with such single-minded concentration and consistency,
 145

with such absorption and finesse and he derives such a aesthetic pleasure from the
contemplation and execution of his strategies that he almost looks like a pure and
disinterested artist. He observes the corrosive effect of his insinuations and
obtains a salacious satisfaction from doing so:

Work on,
My medicine, work: thus credulous fools are caught,
And many worthy and chaste dames, even thus
All guiltless, meet reproach.
(IV. i. 44-47)

Once the plan, formerly inchoate, is defined in his devilish brain he loses no time
in working out its details like a connoisseur and with a sure and unerring instinct.
It may, however, be added that concentrated evil like that of lago is so complex
and ambiguous that it is difficult to probe its depths and intricacies.

Both Othello and Desdemona are unsuspecting targets of lago's

impeccably designed plan of victimization: whereas Othello is credulous and
high-strung, 'one not easily jealous, but being wrought,/Perplex'd in the extreme;
(V. ii. 346-7), Desdemona, 'the moth of peace', 'So still, and quiet, that her
motion/Blush'd at herself: (I. iii. 95-96) is passive and reserved, stoic and
unbending in moments of acute crisis and even distress, one who, not unlike
Cordelia, 'could not heave her heart into her mouth'. lago, on the contrary, is the
emblem of energetic will, keyed up to unleashing the forces of chaos, one who
feels an immense and malicious glee in worrying the helpless fly caught within his
web and smashing it utterly and beyond recognition. While trying to put off the
silly and pertinacious Roderigo he formulates unwittingly his own value-system
thus: 'Virtue? A fig! 'as in ourselves, that we are thus, or thus: our bodies are
gardens, to the which our wills are gardeners, so that if we will plant nettles, or
sow lettuce, set hyssop, and weed up thyme; supply it with one gender of herbs, or
distract it with many; either to have it sterile with idleness, or maned with
industry, why, the power, and corrigible authority of this, lies in our wills. If the
balance of our lives had not one scale of reason, to poise another of sensuality, the
146

blood and baseness of our natures would conduct us to most preposterous

conclusion' (I. iii. 319-30). lago here sounds very much like Edmund — his
counterpart in King Lear: a thoroughgoing sceptic and amoralist, one whose
seventeenth century rationalism flies in the face of Gloucester's superciliousness
and provides a foil to it. The image of the gardener is brought in with a view to
stressing man's manipulative power and self-sufficiency; constituted as we are we
can make the circumambient Reality bend to our proclivities and make our
histories according to our own choices. We reap what we have sown and much
depends on the stamp we are capable of putting on the initial experience. lago not
only recognizes the sinister potential and the menacing explosiveness of the
buried sexual energies but also lays emphasis on human volition and the self-
determining and self-evolving capacity of reason. He thinks in terms of being lord
of his own self (and thus holds an object lesson to Roderigo) and knows how to
keep the fury and tumult of instinctive sensual urges by the exercise of rational
constraints.
In spite to his disclaimer
How am I then a villain,
To counsel Cassio to this parallel course,
Directly to his good? Divinity of hell!
When devils their blackest sins put on,
They do suggest at first with heavenly shows,
As I do now:
(II. iii. 339-44)

lago is not only the supreme incarnation of evil but he is also most scrupulously
dedicated to the task of corrupting and undermining Othello's will by engendering
the canker of doubt and suspicion in his mind. All his efforts are directed towards
that end as he is fully aware that Othello is liable to falling into a paroxysm of
jealousy and once he has thus fallen it would be pretty difficult to extricate
himself out of it. He therefore initiates the process by dropping in, advisedy, the
calamitous word:

0, beware jealousy;
It is green-ey'd monster, which doth mock
 147

That meat it feeds on.

(III. iii. 169-71)
lago's main strategy consists in making Othello suspect his wife with
Cassio and thus cause him intensely agonizing pain particularly because no ocular
proof in such a delicate case can be provided but only such stray hints and guesses
as may be pieced together to form some semblance of evidence. lago, audaciously
and with a streak of malice in his tongue, suggests that Othello's case is all the
more desperate and pitiable because he is tom between love and doubt and these
two are closely interwoven and, as co-ordinates, are entirely inseparable:

That cuckold lies in bliss,

Who, certain of his fate, loves not his wronger:
But 0, what damned hours tells he o'er
Who dotes, yet doubts, suspects, yet strongly loves'.
(III. iii. 171-174.)

And although Othello declares unequivocally: 'I'll see before I doubt, when I
doubt, prove,/And on the proof, there is no more but this:/Away at once with love
or jealousy!' (III. iii. 194-96), lago at once sidetracks the issue and insinuates the
distinction between 'an erring barbarian' Can extravagant and wheeling
stranger,/Of here, and everywhere: (I. i. 136-37) and 'the super-subtle Venetian',
between two distinct, types of sexual behaviour — the primitive and the
sophisticated. Othello bursts suddenly upon the Venetian 'courtesy-culture' with
the animal ferocity and dark shadowy power of a Heathcliff and his vehemence
and impetuosity seem to be at odds with the Venetian's slippery charm and
seductiveness. The colour 'black' is symbolic of both lasciviousness and jealousy,
and the black moor is warm-hearted, passionate and vulnerable. And juxtaposed
to him is the fragility and sophistication of one who finds it obnoxious even to
utter the word 'whore' without letting her lips be besmeared as with the touch of
pitch. Whereas Desdemona is steeped in the Venetian mores, Othello is more or
less to be equated with the kinetic energy of under-nature which erupts the
jealously protected glassy surface of the particular society which is represented by
148

her. lago has more in common with Othello than with Desdemona in that being
himself blood-inspired and having also the Falstaff-element in him he knows that
love is not so much a matter of chivalric and Petrarchan idealism as the
consummate flowering of anarchic and devouring instincts, too. He maintains a
sort of distance-mechanism, but conceding the inflammable quality of Othello's
disposition he cryptically suggests that Desdemona, no less lascivious than
Othello, is nevertheless, capable of concealing her promiscuity beneath the veneer
of feminine hypocrisy and deceitfulness:

In Venice they do let God see the pranks

They dare not show their husbands: their best
conscience
Is not to leave undone, but keep unknown.
iii. 206-08)

Earlier a similar stance was taken when Iago was still busy with deluding
Roderigo into believing that Desdemona might with the passage of time feel fed
up with the Moor, and if Roderigo were to succeed in cutting off Cassio's thread
of life, then he would surely get the chance of ingratiating himself into her favour
and ultimately enjoying her in carnal passion: 'When the blood is made dull with
the act of sport, there should be again to inflame it, and give satiety a fresh
appetite, loveliness in favour, sympathy in years, manners and beauties; all which
the Moor is defective in: now, for want of these requir'd conveniences, her
delicate tenderness will find itself abus'd, begin to heave the gorge, disrelish and
abhor the Moor, very nature will instruct her to it, and compel her to some second
choice. Now, sir, this granted (as it is a most pregnant and unforc'd position) who
stands so eminently in the degree of this fortune as Cassio does ?' (II. i. 225-36).
Here he is not, perhaps, referring specifically to Desdemona's disposition as
conforming to Venetian mores but seems to generalize upon the vagaries of
human nature which, according to his own lights, follow the lead of the appetites,
advancing insidiously from one degree of carnal satisfaction to the ensuing one.
Inferentially, it also glances at the fact that Desdemona, in the event of feeling
 149

surfeited with the Moor, will be looking, just for a change, towards Cassio who is
physically much more captivating than anybody else. And later, with the barely
concealed malicious purpose of stinging Othello, he surreptitiously suggests:

I do not in position
Distinctly speak of her, though I may fear
Her will, recoiling to her better judgement,
May fall to match you with her country forms,
And happily repent.
(HI. iii. 238-42)

Othello, far from being a man of infallible and proven judgment, is

extremely vulnerable, takes to suggestion with as much alacrity as a cat laps milk
and notwithstanding his flamboyant assertion: I'll see before I doubt', is capable
of being overwhelmed by violent passion and urged on the precipitate action
accordingly. In spite of Desdemona's earnest prayer 'Haven keep that monster
from Othello's mind'! (III. iv. 161) and her poignantly naïve belief: 'I think the
sun where he was born/Drew all such humours from him' (III. iv. 26-27) the spark
of jealousy despite its being ignited in him by lago had lain dormant in him all
along as something which might be regarded as an indispensable ingredient of his
pagan, savage and barbaric disposition or temperament. Desdemona had made
fervent, unambiguous, total commitment to going to the farthest length in order to
urge upon Othello to 'splinter Cassio's fortunes' and canvass for his re-
instatement to the position of consequence and prestige from which he had fallen
as an inevitable effect of a pretty well-engineered, sordid and judiciously-timed
brawl with Roderigo:

If I do vow a friendship, I'll perform it

To the last article; my lord shall never rest,
I'll watch him tame, and talk him out of patience;
His bed shall seem a school, his board a shrift,
I'll intermingle everything he does
With Cassio's suit; therefore be merry, Cassio,
For thy solicitor shall rather die
Than give thy cause away.
(III. iii. 21-23)
150

What adds fuel to the fire, that is, confirms and accentuates Othello's worst
suspicions concerning Desdemona's dubious authenticity is the 'strong and
vehement importunity' with which she continues pestering the Moor so as to leave
him hardly any breathing-space:
Why then to-morrow night, or Tuesday morn,
On Tuesday noon, or night, or Wednesday morn;
I prithee name the time, but let it not
Exceed three days: I' faith, he's penitent,
And yet his trespass...
is not almost a fault
To incur a private check: when shall he come?
(III. iii. 61-68)

It is characteristic of lago's dry and sullen objectivity that, despite his

malevolence, he is apt, occasionally, to form an unbiased judgment of Othello:
'The Moor, howbe't that I endure him not,/ Is of a constant, noble, loving nature;'
(II. I. 283-84) as well as of Cassio thus: 'He has a daily beauty in his life,/ That
makes me ugly:' (V. i. 19-20). He can look without blinkers, has a hawk's eye
with regard to situations, persons and their hidden, untapped motivations. And yet
what is said of Othello by Emilia to the effect: 'They are not ever jealous for the
cause,/But jealous for they are jealous': (III. iv. 158-59) is very much applicable
to lago only if one were to substitute the word 'jealous' by the word 'malicious'.
He is in fact incredibly and overwhelmingly so and manages to incite Othello to
the highest pitch of provocation though he does it imperceptibly and in
instalments, and then brings about a radical and thorough enervation of his will
power. Initially he pretends to be Othello's confidant and well-wisher, capable of
prying into crevices which remain opaque to his vision and makes a tentative and
exploratory approach without sounding dogmatic, prepossessed or fussy over
mere trifles. The nearest analogue to him is the toad in the Garden of Eden,
making sly and circuitous overtures to Eve with the express and sinister purpose
of bringing about her complete subdual and collapse, and Othello constituted as he
 151

is, pitiably lacks the capability either of putting him in the wrong or perceiving the
duplicity that lurks behind his artifice:
Therefore these stops of thine fright me the more;
For such things in a false disloyal knave
Are tricks of custom; but in a man that's just,
They are close denotements, working from the heart,
That passion cannot rule.
(III. iii. 124-28)

In his incrimination of Desdemona lago proceeds warily and with undue

circumspection, always giving the impression that he has an open, receptive and
flexible mind, is given to an impartial and objective assessment of things and
persons, sifting and weighing every little bit of evidence before arriving at a
definitive conclusion. But inspite of his deftly improvised piece of dissimulation,
a piece of subtle and black artistry:
I entreat you then.....
You'Id take no notice, nor build yourself a trouble
Out of my scattering and unsure observance;
It were not for your quiet, nor your good,
Nor for my manhood, honesty, or wisdom,
To let you know my thoughts.
(III. iii. 152-58)

he continues dropping casual, though provocative, hints which not only make
Othello feel nettled, stung and uncontrollably furious but also enable him to
develop a kind of hallucinatory obsession about the imagined infidelity of
Desdemona. It may however be added that the pretension not to disclose his
innermost thoughts — the plea being that such thoughts ought not to be wrenched
away from the sanctuary wherein they lie embedded and even a mere slave
enjoys the privilege of keeping them to himself — is really aimed at not only
whetting Othello's curiosity but also keeping him on tenter-hooks.

The impact which lago succeeds in making on Othello may well be gauged
by the vast distance that the latter traverses from his initial idealistic fervour:
But that I love the gentle Desdemona,
I would not my unhous'd free condition
152

Put into circumscription and confine

For the sea's worth.
(I. ii. 25-28)

and 'if it were now to die,/'Twere now to be most happy' (II. I. 189-90) and
playing variation on it in a slightly different key thus:

Excellent wretch, perdition catch my soul

But I do love thee, and when I love thee not,
Chaos is come again.
(III. iii. 91-93)

to calling her 'the cunning whore of Venice', a 'lewd minx' or a strumpet who is
all but wily, treacherous and chameleon-like. The last quoted passage oscillates
between doting adoration and the anticipatory disgust and revulsion caused by the
operation of the poison already injected by lago — and which comes to assume
such alarming proportions later. The pace of action in the play is accelerated in
proportion to the swiftness with which Iago eats into the vitals of Othello-
Desdemona relationship. Othello is not only 'one that lov'd not wisely, but too
well', but also one who is 'most ignorant of what he is most assured' (Cf.
Measure For Measure) and yet he brooks no delay in initiating the action he
proposes to take. One minor but significant contributory factor in this hellish
drama is the unlucky dropping of the handkerchief by Desdemona — something
done inadvertently, though, yet something which is fraught with disastrous
consequences. The 'antique token', the charmed handkerchief (sewed in her
prophetic fury by an Egyptian sibyl), has more or less the status of a totem and
may be regarded as 'terrific symbol' of Othello's love and jealousy.

There is some point in Lawrence Lerner's claim that 'Othello won

Desdemona from the life of reason'29, but to proceed from this assumption that it
was so because the handkerchief was invested with some magical potency in
almost Brabantio's connotation of the term is to make an unwarranted and
untenable claim. Brabantio did believe firmly, and to himself irrefutably, in the
 153

exercise of magic by Othello in an exactly literal sense, believed, that is to say, in

some form of occultism. The truth of the matter, on the contrary, is that the
handerchief symbolizes the mystery and the terror of love which might induce the
lovers to fuse their two distinct and separate identities into some kind of
indissoluble oneness. It is also not for nothing that a direct encounter between
Othello and Cassio which could disentangle the knot pertaining to the loss of the
fabulous handkerchief was studiously avoided at all costs and thus Othello's
unfounded suspicion of Cassio's supposed sexual intimacy with Desdemona was
allowed to deepen and intensify. To arouse Othello's ingrained susceptibility to
jealousy Iago has been proceeding in such a well-conceived and systematic way
that he comes to contemplate with a sort of gloating contempt the possibility that
Othello's heightened state of anxiety and perturbation will not leave him in peace
and serenity and he is most likely to be bereft of the balm of restorative sleep:
Look where he comes, not poppy, nor mandragora,
Nor all the drowsy syrups of the world,
Shall ever medicine thee to that sweet sleep
Which thou owedst yesterday.
(III. iii. 335-38)
This reflects Iago's firm and unmistakable awareness of his own assured future
success in carrying out his plan to throw Othello headlong into a frenzied state
which was not to allow him any respite. And so consummate is Iago's skill in
manipulating things that inspite of his very brief and fugitive moments of
skepticism Othello is brought round so completely that he identifies himself
unhesitatingly with lago in the attempt to locate Desdemona's sin and punishing
her as best he can. In an oration of pretty inflated rhetoric (lago pooh-poohs it as
'bombast circumstance'), with its clear accent on self-exhibitionism, Othello —
the dupe of his own egotism — swears to be revengeful thus:

Like to the Pontic sea,

Whose icy current, and compulsive course,
Ne'er feels retiring ebb, but keeps due on
To the Propontic, and the Hellespont:
Even so my bloody thoughts, with violent pace
154

Shall ne'er look back, neer ebb to humble love,

Till that a capable and wide revenge
Swallow them up.
(III. iii. 460-67)
In this variety of rhetoric which may rather imprecisely be designated as the anti-
sublime the image for 'bloody thoughts' of capacious revenge is provided by the
Pontic Sea and emphasis is sought to be laid on the irreversibility of the current
because the swelling tide of the fury which propels Othello remains unabated.
And with an alacrity of spirit lago, modulating his 'deflating, unbeglamouring,
brutally realistic'30 mode of utterance so as to make it approximate to that of
Othello, invokes the natural phenomena to bear witness to his total self-surrender
to his master (no better than a 'slave of passion') in implementing his wholly
perverse designs thus:
lago. Do not rise yet. (lago Kneels)
Witness, you ever-burning lights above,
You elements that clip us round about,
Witness that here lago doth give up
The excellencey of his wit, hand, heart,
To wrong'd Othello's service:
(III. iii. 469-74)

And this grim parody of mutual self-dedication is climaxed by his solemnly

adding further: 'I am your own for ever' (III. iii. 486). Here the victim and the
victimizer become one, the walls of separation, if they existed earlier between
them, crumble (Ribner calls it the symbolic union of Othello and lago)31 and any
iota of doubt which protruded itself formerly on to their relationship is eliminated
altogether, thus bringing to Othello strong and unassailable conviction about the
genuineness and authenticity of lago's posture. This also goes to show that
Othello, hypersensitive in his fundamental attitudes and pattern of behaviour as he
is, is highly vulnerable and may be prevailed upon to enter into a sort of pact with
Mephistopheles (lago). He lets himself slide into the power of his (Blakean)
Spectre and can be egregiously led by the nose 'as an ass'. Putting it differently
 155

one may uphold that his own fallibility provides the tender soil for lago's evilness
to be grounded in.

Middleton Murry puts his finger in the right place when apropos of
Othello he maintains that it is 'the drama of the destiny of a woman who loves
entirely, and a man who loves entirely yet cannot quite believe that he is entirely
loved'.32 According to Othello's own avowal it was the simple recital of his
romantic adventures 'Wherein of antres vast, and deserts idel,/Rough quarries,
rocks and hills, whose heads touch heaver-lilt was my hint to speak, such was the
process': (I. iii. 140-42) and his exotic evocation in his 'travel's history' of 'the
Cannibals', 'the Anthropophagi' and the 'hair-breadth scapes' i'th' imminent
deadly breach' which had bewitched Desdemona and threw her into a state of
rapture and ecstasy. From this it is quite apparent that their love-relationship,
believed to be suffused with the glow of chivalric idealization reflected in
Desdemona's assertion that she 'saw Othello's visage in his mind,' (I. iii. 252)
nevertheless failed to grow into a firm, stable and indissoluble union of their
splendid physical selves. Othello continues to remain a romantic visionary all
along and Desdemona a passive and inert recipient of the violence and terror of
his love. Of reciprocity or the spontaneous give-and-take of love there is hardly
any palpable trace in the play. Murry regards lago as 'one whose function it is to
bring 'the seed of death that is in the love of Othello and Desdemona to
maturity'.33 But despite Othello's claim 'I cannot speak enough of this content,/It
stops me here, it is too much of joy'; (II. i. 197-98) and lago's cunningly malign
comment on it reflected in, '0, you are well-tun'd now,/But I'll set down the pegs
that make this music', (II. i. 199-200) — implying his firm, unflinching and
malicious resolve to replace the harmony of love by sheer discord — some kind of
exclusiveness adheres to this relationship. Between the two of them there yawns
'the unplumb'd, salt, estranging sea' (Cf. Arnold's To Marguerite) of
incommunicability which accounts for the sense of solitariness from which
Othello continually suffers. He is so much engrossed and confused by the incisive
logic-chopping of lago and the endless chain of sophistries at his command and
156

finds himself so much at bay that he is unable to enter into that kind of soul-
dialogue with Desdemona without which any love-relationship is put on the rocks.
It is not only impoverished but stands in danger of being totally wrecked once it is
exposed to the contrarious winds blowing against it from all quarters. Inspite of
Othello's blaze of rhetoric it looks like an etiolated and devitalized relationship,
entirely one-sided and for ever haunted by the demon of doubt and suspicion and
offers a sharp contrast to the one existing between Antony and Cleopatra from the
first to the end of the fourth Act. Othello can engage himself in courtship with
excessive warmth and exuberance, can apotheosize Desdemona as a goddess and
can visualize his life as 'one entire and perfect chrysolite', and yet there is
something essentially self-regarding about his emotions and he cannot bring
himself to address her as a unique and distinct individual standing at par with him
on the summit of love. Love, in the ultimate analysis, subsists on communication,
and absence of communication is tantamount to the death of love. In his tortured
musings Othello is a lonely man with hardly anything to sustain him; he is either
puzzled and confused by lago's cynical insinuations or luxuriates, not unlike
Richard II, in the glow of his own lapidary style of utterance (or what Wilson
Knight distinguishes as 'Othello music') which has nonetheless something
mawkish about it. When he is talked into and convinced by lago's greasy and
loquacious tongue about the alleged ‘stol'n hours of lust' shared together by
Desdemona and Cassio he is shaken to the very foundations of his being and
reaches the nadir of his fortunes on which hovers the acute sense of aloneness in
his little world of man. In this hour of gloom and disillusionment he is willing to
renounce all that is most significant to him in terms of military glory and its
paraphernalia and his opulent rhetorical gesture, with its façade of ostentation, is
in effect a vain and lamentable effort 'to cheer himself up':

0 farewell,
Farewell the neighing steed, and the shrill trump,
The spirit-stirring drum, the ear-piercing fife;
The royal banner, and all quality,
Pride, pomp, and circumstance of glorious war!
 157

And, 0 ye mortal engines; whose wide throats

The immortal Jove's great clamour counterfeit;
Farewell, Othello's occupation's gone!
(III. iii. 356-63)

His pose of transcendence and his inborn love of grandiloquence, so much made
by critics of varying persuasion, and the attitudinizing that is integral to it, are a
mere cover for his bloated egotism — an inverted from of self-pity: two of his
cardinal and deadly sins. Othello and Desdemona do not appear as participants in
a mutually fructifying and creative relationship but very much belonging to the
antipodes: it is the sense of alienation which is at the root of Othello's failure to
love and is the groundswell of his tragedy. He remains an outsider till the very
end.

Images of sex abound in Othello as they occur equally copiously in

Hamlet and King Lear, too, because the action of the play is centred in the
perverted sexuality, maliciously and causelessly attributed to Cassio, and which is
largely responsible for undermining the very basis of Othello's faith in the purity
and chastity of Desdemona. In reply to Othello's insistence on having an ocular
proof of the supposedly physical proximity and intimacy between Cassio and
Desdemona lago tries to wriggle out of this embarrassing situation by laying stress
on both the impossibility and the futility of such a demonstration:

It is impossible you should see this,

Were they as prime as goats, as hot as monkeys,
As salt as wolves, in pride; and fools as gross
As ignorance made drunk:
(III. iii. 408-11)

In a different context, while cursing his blighted 'marriage hearse' (Cf. Blake's
London) Othello makes use of discomforting animal image:

0 curse of marriage,
That we can call these delicate creatures ours,
And not their appetites! I had rather be a toad,
And live upon the vapour in a dungeon,
158

Than keep a corner in a thing I love,

For others' uses:
(III. iii. 272-77)

The passage as a whole is steeped in profound and searing pathos though the
images of the 'toad' and 'vapour in a dungeon' are evocative of a sort of
loathsomeness which is both irritating and unsavoury. Iago seems to be endowed
with a sensual imagination — which is also rotten at the core — and he aims at
arousing nausea and disgust in Othello's mind with a view to throwing him into
maddening fury against Desdetnona. An identical impression of queasiness is
evoked when in reply to Desdemona's innocuous query: 'I hope my noble lord
esteems me honest', Othello burst forth indignantly and furiously and gets this
outburst mediated in terms of a pungent olfactory sensation thus: '0, ay, as
summer's flies, are in the shambles, /That quicken even with blowing:' (IV. ii. 67-
68). Iago's unashamed and unconcealed nastiness is brought out in conjuring up
before Othello's mind's eye scenes of abject and headlong indulgence in sex:

0th. An unauthoriz'd kiss.

Iago. Or to be naked with her friend abed,
An hour, or more, not meaning any harm?
0th. Naked abed, Iago, and not mean harm?
It is hypocrisy against the devil:
They that mean virtuously, and yet do so,
The devil their virtue tempts, and they tempt heaven.
(IV. i. 2-8)

Also lago's obscene narration before Othello of Cassio's fake dream is aimed at
stimulating his rage and indignation to the highest pitch of intensity, administering
a dreadful shock to him by the evocation of images of physical proximity with
Desdemona while fully realizing all the time that he was merely trying to impose
on Othello:
And then, sir, would he gripe and wring
my hand,
Cry out 'Sweet creature !' and then kiss me hard,
As if he pluck'd up kisses by the roots,
 159

That grew upon my lips, then laid his leg

Over my thigh, and sigh'd, and kiss'd, and then
Cried, `Curs'd fate, that gave thee to the Moor I
(III. iii. 427-32)

Obscenity of this order, characteristic of the coarse-grained and brutish lago alone,
is likely to give Othello's pride a mortal wound and this pushes him to such an
extretnity of desperation that he feels urged upon to 'chop her into messes'. A
natural corollary following it is that, in his outrageous fury, as if the lion had been
put in the cage and were smarting under his wounds and tugging against the cage,
he now gives a short shrift to that love by whose sacred radiance his life had been
flooded over so far. Not unnaturally, perhaps, he now comes to be wedded, in a
chain of intense reaction, to that 'tyrannous hate' in which his whole being is
submerged:

All my fond love thus do I blow to heaven...

'Tis gone,
Arise black vengeance, from the hollow cell,
Yield up, 0 love, thy crown, and hearted throne,
To tyrannous hate, swell, bosom, with thy fraught,
For 'tis of aspics' tongues!
(III. iii. 452-57)
'Topping' and `tupping' are images by employing which lago wishes to fill
Othello's imagination with 'fire and brimstone' and maximize his agonizing pain.
He continues dinning into his ears the fact of the loss of the handkerchief, for in
the peculiar complex of his psychic obsession, the loss of it and belief in
Desdemona's unchastity (It is the cause, it is the cause, my soul./Let me not name
it to you, you chaste stars': V. ii. 1-2) become coalesced and lago is very far from
wishing this coalescence to break or fall apart. Figures of such despicable objects
in the phenomenal world as apes, goats and monkeys, — all notorious symbols of
sensuality or lechery, — are evoked in varying contexts in order to underline and
enforce the fact that man is ultimately and inescapably subjugated by his sensual
instincts and impulses which work havoc with all the established norms of
decency and push him irresistibly on to the verge of absolute bestiality.
160

Emilia, deeply rooted in the elemental energies of life, — one who

combines in herself downright earthiness with terrifying honesty, — discusses the
matter of lack of chastity in a naughty world in a mood of seeming frivolity and
impishness when she says 'marry, I would not do such a thing for a joint-ring, or
for measures of lawn, nor for gowns, or petticoats, nor caps, nor any such
exhibition; but, for the whole world? ud's pity, who would not make her husband
a cuckold, to make him a monarch? I should venture purgatory for it' (IV. iii. 71-
76). Desdemona, who had earlier glanced at all this in her impregnated phrase 'the
world's mass of vanity' now reacts to this piece of blasphemous witticism on
Emilia's part in her own poised, detached and self-effacing manner thus:
`13eshrew me, if I would do such a wrong,/For the whole world' (IV. iii. 77-78).
The little scene in which this lively exchange of shrewd comments occurs
corresponds to and provides a minor variant of the great Temptation Scene (III.
iii.) and is sandwiched between the Willow song scene (in which Desdemona is
impelled, as if intuiting her impending death, to sing a profoundly touching song)
and the final scene of her cold-blooded murder by Othello: 'Put out the light, and
then put out the light': (V. ii. 7). It looks both before and after and all these three
scenes have a close bearing on the crescendo of the hellish drama which is being
enacted with incredibly increasing horror. Earlier, as if mesmerized by the
accumulating impact of lago's Machiavellian tactic, Othello visualizes the
supposedly tainted and unwholesome love of Cassio and Desdemona in very
concrete terms and it is downright horrifying: Tie with her, lie on her? — We say
lie on her, when they belier her, --lie with her, zounds, that's fulsome ! .... Nature
would not invest herself in such shadowing passion without some instruction. It is
not words that shake me thus. Pish! Noses, ears and lips. Is't possible? —
Confess? — Handkerchief? , — 0 devil!' (N. i. 35-43). Othello begins by
speaking in disjointed phrases, — this reflects upon his psychic incoherence and
instability, — and the gruesome image of Desdemona wallowing in the sty of sin
with Cassio is something which is revolting and makes him cross the utmost limit
of patience (if any remnant of that 'young and rose-lipp'd cherubin' was still left
 161

once he had started on the fearful voyage of hatred) so much so that from this
point onwards he can only proceed to Desdemona's bed-chamber with the express
and unbending determination of killing her by strangulation (though he eventually
kills her by stabbing her with the sword — a point which the unwary reader is
likely to slur over). But before this actually takes place we hear Othello's last
heart-rending cry arising from the abysmal depths of his heart thus:
But there, where I have garner'd up my heart,
Where either I must live, or bear no life,
The fountain, from the which my current runs,
Or else dries up, to be discarded thence,
Or keep it as a cistern; for foul toads
To knot and gender in!
(IV. ii. 58-63)
Here fountain — the source 'of pure, organic pleasure' and bubbling energy, — is
the metaphor for Desdemona: the only option for Othello is either to have it dried
up (by killing her) or else to have it turned into a cistern, — symbol of deadness
and stagnation — from which inferior persons like Cassio are falsely believed to
derive their surfeit of pleasure. The sharp juxtaposition of the two symbols —
fountain and cistern — helps one recall one of Blake's Proverbs of Hell: 'The
cistern contains, the fountain overflows'(Cf. The Marriage of Heaven and Hell)
having an almost identical broad sweep of connotation. The intensity of pain and
horror implicit in the deeply touching and corrosive utterance and prompted, as a
proximate cause, by lago's machinations and double knavery, can only be
neutralized by the callous murder of one who had been the cynosure of Othello's
eye. And all this is effected by the devillish ingenuity of one who is an
embodiment of unbounded, destructive energy and the immeasurable, passionate
hatred emanating from it.

The Othello world of illusion is not commensurate with the work-a-day

world because the fictional world is invariably in the nature of an artifact: it has
the status of a self-contained cosmos framed and enveloped within the realm of
fact. A sort of ambivalence results from the juxtaposition of 'seeming' and 'being'
and the law of causality does not seem to operate here with any degree of finality,
162

decisiveness or rigour. The elements which constitute its fabric are brazenly non-
naturalistic and, somehow, puzzlingly enough, facts remain unverified and
uncorroborated and this generates both the sense of uncertainty and of
precariousness. In this world lago, whose cold revenge emanates from the union
of intellect and hatred, demonstrates a dynamics of pragmatism. Though he does
not have many or recognizable claims on human credibility (Leavis regards him
as a clumsy dramatic device34 employed for the purpose of exposing Othello's
weaknesses), yet his feigned and consistently flaunted air of 'honesty' and his
abrupt and unpredictable somersaults very well fit into this world of make-
believe; they are infact integral to its very make-up. Here love is looked upon
either as 'witchcraft' or 'lust of the blood or permission of the will', fidelity is
indistinguishable from fornication, and identity as that of lago is slithery, difficult
to hold on and define in all its inwoven intricacies and subterranean depths.
Cassio — another embodiment of the finesse and fragility of the Venetian culture
— is very much a denizen of this world of illusion and inspite of his quasi-
religious invocation: 'and the grace of heaven,/Before, behind thee; and on every
hand,/Enwheel thee round!' (II. i. 85-87) is maligned and bespotted by the arch-
fiend, lago, because there is all the likelihood of Desdemona — for whom the
invocation is used — being fascinated by his stunningly masculine charm. On
this brittle foundation lago builds up a huge and imposing edifice of villification.
He is all the time engaged in dangling false prospects of success before Roderigo,
exploiting his crass stupidity, poisoning Othello's naïve and corruptible mind,
undermining his self-confidence and trying to have Cassio 'on the hip.' He is an
adept at mutilation and distortion of facts or twisting them in accordance with his
own well-formulated calculations, designs his strategic moves with considerable
skill and audacity but his sensual imagination — unlike that of Macbeth — lacks
both intensity and vividness. His unreserved self-dedication to intellect — and
almost all Shakespearian villains like Aaron, Richard III and Edmund who
achieve a kind of 'bad eminence' are rationalists — is allied with death and
destruction. Goddard has very acutely pointed out: 'Whatever he begins by being,
 163

however human the motives that at first led him on, he ends by being an image of
death revenging itself on life through destruction'.35 He is more or less like a
pyromaniac haunted continuously by the powers of darkness and is bent upon
doing irreparable damage to individuals as well as to the human species. He treats
Emilia as a pawn for striking bargain and his relationship with her is touchingly
devoid of depth, inwardness and rapture; it is, on the contrary, shrewdly business-
like and opportunistic, Without having even the ghost of an idea about his ulterior,
sinister motives she lets herself be played into his hands, becomes serviceable in
picking up ('filching') with lightning speed the much-coveted handkerchief —
symbol now and agent of his own depravity as well — which Desdemona lets slip
casually and, perhaps, in a fit of absent-mindedness and which is represented by
him to Othello as proof positive of her playing false with the Moor. The arched
flights of his wit, his cynical insights, his gusto and flair for practicality, his
'gambler's sang-froid', his pursuit of his objectives with unflagging zeal and
dogged perseverance and his inflexibility of determination are facets of
personality which render him emotionally and intellectually ambivalent. The
cancerous growth of evil in him turns into a kind of perversity and he tends to
develop contempt for all that is rational, normative and life-enhancing: his pure
unmixed evil, with the Blakean 'fearful symmetry' adhering to it, is raised in
rivalry with flamboyant passion. He reduces both being and action to a kind of
livid neutrality and one is at one's wits' end to explain how his peculiar variety of
cynicism and depravity could have its genesis in the powers and forces of Nature.
He executes his plans with unerring dexterity and an icy coldness which borders
upon a sort of aboriginal wickedness. An aura of cosmic mystery hangs over it all
along and becomes all the more distinct towards the very end when he vows to
become altogether inarticulate and dumb. 'From this time forth I never will speak
word' (V. ii. 305); he is, so to say, condemned now to primordial speechlessness.
West makes the point admirably when he comments thus: 'He is a known
abomination seen in an icy extreme that makes it unfamiliar and so throws the
mystery of iniquity into high relief' .36 Surprisingly lacking in the dimensions and
164

minute particulars of a fully organized and well-integrated character as Leavis

visualizes him lago is wholly negative in his basic approaches and responses; he is
yet a titanic force, an engine of destruction. 'a disembodied intelligence' and a
medium of that cerebral activity which is instrumental in bringing about not only
the almost preordained discomfiture of the protagonist but also leading him up to
the threshold of total extinction: 'but yet the pity of it, lago: 0 lago, the pity of it,
lago!' (IV. i. 191-92):

References:

27. All quotations are from Othello ed. M.R. Ridey, The Arden Shakespeare, (London, 1958).
28. Helen Gardner: The Noble Moor, Annual Shakespeare Lecture, British Academy,
(London, 1955), p. 20.
/9. Lawrence Lerner, The Machiavel and the Moor in E.C., vol. IX, No 4, (Oxford, 1959), p.
358.
30. F. R. Leavis, Diabolic Intellect and the Noble Moor in The Common Pursuit, Chatto &
Windus, (London, 1953), p. 144.
31. Irving Ribner, Patterns in Shakespearian Tragedy, (London, 1969), P. 95.
32. J. Middleton Murry, Shakespeare, (London, 1969), p. 316.
33. J. Middleton Murry, Op. cit., p. 318.
34. F.R. Leavis, Op. cit., p. 158.
35. Harold C. Goddard, The Meaning of Shakespeare, vol. II. University of Chicago Press,
1951, p. 76.
36. Robert H. West, Shakespeare: the Outer Mystery, (University of Kentucky Press, 1968),
p. 103.
 CHAPTER 10

The Protagonist's Dilemma In Timon of Athens

Both bitter and baffling as it is 17171017 of Athens is conspicuously lacking

in psychological consistency: in fact characterization in it suffers at the expense of
a sort of conceptual schematism. At best it may be regarded as a camouflage for
reflecting the protagonist's obsessions and frustrations and highlighting the
aberrations of some of those who surround him. The latter seem to play their
almost folkloristic roles assigned to them in the bizarre drama and hence fail to
create the impression of either manifoldness or even coherence. Whatever
minimum action there is in the play really centres on crystallizing the 'ruin of a
frank and generous soul' shattered by the onslaught of ingratitude, for Timon is,
on all accounts, a kindly benefactor, 'the very soul of bounty' which presupposes
the presence of a grain of nobility embedded in him. He is possessed, though, at
the same time, of an unmistakable naivety, waywardness and unpredictability. The
play opens with a sort of significant prologue, for in the dialogue between the Poet
and Painter, specifically, are sketched in the contours of Timon's personality with
a certain indirection. The portraiture done by the poet runs to this effect:

his large fortune,

Upon his good and gracious nature hanging,
Subdues and properties to his love and tendence
All sorts of hearts; yea, from the glass-fac'd flatterer
To Apemantus, that few things loves better
Than to abhor himself37
(I. i. 56-61)

And the Painter, elaborating the fable of Fortune's hill, complements it thus:
166

This throne, this Fortune, and this hill, methinks,

With one man beckon'd from the rest below,
Bowing his head against the steepy mount
To climb his happiness, would be well express'd
In our condition.
(I. i. 75-79)
No less intriguing is the fact that the words of both of them are ominously
anticipatory of Timon's later decline and desertion by his friends. Employing the
medieval emblem of Fortune's 'shift and change of mood' the Poet is led to
speculate that:
all his dependants
Which labour'd after him to the mountain's top
Even on their knees and hands, let him sit down,
Not one accompanying his declining foot.
(I. i. 87-90)
And the Painter, offering an adequate technical riposte, and establishing the
supremacy of the visual art of painting over the verbal configurations of the Poet
as an instrument of insight into the vagaries of Fortune, speaks of its status in the
intellectual economy of society thus:

A thousand moral paintings I can show

That shall demonstrate these quick blows of Fortune's
More pregnantly than words.
(I. i. 92-94)
'More pregnantly than words' reflects on this theme which was commonly treated
in Renaissance paintings and miniatures. The playwright's strategy in making use
of this fable is both cunning and deliberate, for it provides us with an inkling of
the vicissitudes in Timon's life to follow.

Timon's attitude to the dispensing of his wealth is that of an uncritical

spendthrift; he squanders it right and left indiscriminately, in 'motion of raging
waste'; he gets Ventidius ransomed by paying the prisoner's debt on his behalf
when he goes bankrupt and also 'strains' to provide part of the marriage portion of
the old Athenian's daughter who has been wooed and won by one of his personal
 167

servants. The best way of wringing money from him is to heap lavish praises on
his generosity or open-handedness. Though gift-giving was fairly common in
Elizabethan and Jacobean Courts and Shakespeare, as ably demonstrated by
Wallace,38 may have been indebted for his awareness of it to Seneca's moral
treatise, De beneficiis, yet Timon's largesse is characterized by love of ostentation
and vainglory. His liberality proves self-destructive ultimately, for it tends to be
reduced to the level of an abstraction by him. To the old Athenian he says: 'To
build his fortune I will strain a little/For 'it's a bond in men' (1. i. 146-147), and
when Ventidius, consequent on his father's death, comes into partrimony and
hence offers to pay back the money he had been lent by him and Timon replies: 'I
gave it freely ever, and there's none/Can truly say he gives, if he receives' (I. ii.
10-11) one is struck by the moral flourish in the speaker's tone and gesture. The
emphasis on 'bond in men' and 'none can truly say he gives, if he receives' may
be in conformity with the Jacobean cult of courtesy and may sound innocuous
apparently but it also betrays an unconscious effort to build up some sort of self-
image to be sustained by others' praises and indifference to or belittlement of the
notion of reciprocity. 'Giving' in his case need not entail any 'receiving' and this
constitutes his frame of values. The three flattering lords, Lucullus. Lucius and
Sempronious — emblems of clumsy jocularity and sordidness — have been
beneficiaries of his munificence all along as is evident from their unabashed
confession of it. Timon formulates his own credo thus: 'Methinks I could deal
kingdoms to my friends,/And 'fever be weary' (I. ii. 219-20). Supplementing the
observation of the first Lord: 'He out-goes the very heart of kindness' the second
Lord maintains:
Plutus the god of gold
Is but his steward, No meed but he repays
Seven-fold above itself: no gift to him
But breeds the giver a return exceeding
All use of quittance,
(I. i. 275-79)
168

And the Lords and the Strangers, it is worth adding, have the status of choric
commentators in the play.

There is undoubtedly a narcisstic element in Timon's bounty as well as a

sort of recklessness which is self-defeating. His predicament is of his own
making: squandering of money in excess of the available resources, taking
cognizance of only the Steward's integrity in his system of accounts but thwarting
all his attempts at acquainting him with the actual position. He is so vitiated by his
ingrained prodigality that, do what you will, he cannot be weaned away from it at
all. The intolerable paradox involved in this situation amounts to the fact that the
seeming opulence on which the parasitic lords and the hangers-on batten like
cormorants partly subsists on what Timon had been borrowing from the usurers of
Athens—the city of Iniquity, 'the coward and licentious town'—which luxuriates
on what Karl Marx calls the cash-nexus. What brings this acquisitive and usurous
city into disrepute is that here money becomes the prime object of adoration and
human relationships are subordinated to it and thus grow vulgarized. When he is
hedged in by Varro, Isidore and Lucius — servants of the money-lenders and of
Timon's creditors — he feels strangulated and turns helplessly for succour to the
beneficiaries of his largesse and thus creates a noozle for his own neck. His own
comment, which is not disingenuous, on this practice of largesse, is that
'unwisely, not ignobly, have I given'. The impulse behind all this trafficking may
be some kind of altruism but it is in no way unmixed with folly, generates self-
complacency and involves bad economics. Possessed of a far less jaundiced view
Apemantus is rightly aware of the exploitative nature of the relation which the
sycophant lords bear to Timon and comments on it thus:

What a number of men eats Timon, and he sees 'em not ! It grieves
me to see so many dip their meat in one man's blood; ... the fellow that
sits next him, now parts bread with him, pledges the breath of him in a
divided draught, is the readiest man to kill him'.
(I. ii. 39-49)
 169

The images of eating and 'dipping meat in blood' are repellent and nauseous and
have ironic overtones, unconsciously conjuring up the biblical vision of the
disciples of Christ. Alongside this is the 'yellow, glittering, precious gold' —
symbol of alienation in an acquisitive society — which makes 'Black, white; foul,
fair; wrong, right;/Base, noble; old, young; coward, valiant' (IV. iii. 29-30) and

Will knit and break religions, bless th 'accurs'd

Make the hoar leprosy ador'd, place thieves,
And give them title, knee and approbation
With senators on the bench.
(IV. iii. 35-38)
That is, it is capable of subverting the nature of things and places an altogether
different complexion on them from what they usually bear. It also tends to change
the natural powers into mere qualities of objects and the latter are hence denuded
of their real worth. Corruption and defilement of what is sacred and harmonious is
integral to this process and gold standards by which everything is weighed and
evaluated in Athens enjoy unimpeded currency there:
thou bright defiler,
Of Hymen's purest bed, ....
Thou invisible god,
That sold' rest close impossibilities,
And mak'st them kiss; that speak'st with every tongue,
To every purpose!
(IV. iii. 385-92)

Timon's diatribe against gold's serviceability and functioning underlines the

confusion that reigns supreme in the Athenian society and it is subversive of
order. It is also the leveller of social distinctions and its power of metamorphosis
turns objects and living processes into mere ciphers. Timon's fulminations against
gold as an externalizing force reminds us strongly of what the Bastard has to say
about Commodity in King John. Timon himself tried to buy love with gold and
thus developed for himself 'the tormenting phantoms' and self-delusions or what
Blake calls 'the reptiles of the mind'.
170

Timon doubtless looks from the beginning as one who is bound to go

bankrupt, for he can in no way control his excesses and tends to be swayed easily
by empty adulations of his generosity. In his case the borders between nobility
and stupidity constantly get blurred and become almost indistinguishable. His
bounty knows no limits and his extravagance assumes grotesque forms. He is also
neurotic and extremely self-regarding and feels nettled and exasperated when
things turn awry and he is pestered by his creditors. He is scandalously credulous
and his trust is more often than not betrayed by those who have basked in the
sunshine of his favours. The Steward, supposed to hold his purse-strings in his
hands, is one who not only proves himself worthy of the trust reposed in him but
remains steadfast and unswerving in his loyalty to Timon: his heart in fact bleeds
over the ruin Timon has brought on himself owing to his own impetuosity and
lack of discretion. Towards the very end Timon pays him an eloquent and
ungrudging tribute thus:
Surely this man
Was born of woman,
Forgive my general and exceptless rashness,
You perpetual-sober gods! I do proclaim
One honest man.
(IV. iii. 497-501)

Hedged in by the messengers of his creditors and explicitly told by the Steward
that whatever he owned was no longer his since it had been mortgaged Timon felt
himself unnerved and at sea. In sheer desperation he therefore turns of his
erstwhile friends and admirers of his gifts and favours, for, ironically enough, he
had persuaded himself earlier, '0 what a precious comfort 'tis to have so many
like brothers commanding one another's fortunes' (I. ii. 101-103). The three of
them, Luculius, Lucius and Sempronius, invariably prove themselves perfect and
unconscionable hypocrites; they are almost like Judas's children, bent upon
betraying Timon while simultaneously acknowledging, with oily tongues, both
their indebtedness to him in the past and showing feigned concern and solicitude
for his present financial embarrassments. The first to expose himself is Lucullus,
 171

who, after parading his fake sympathy for him on being belied in his expectations
of receiving some fresh gift from Timon and experiencing consequent
disillusionment, refuses, pointblank, to lend him any money 'upon mere
friendship and without any security'. Then Lucius, pretending surprise at
Lucullus's obduracy, asserts that had Timon 'mistook him' for Lucullus's in the
first instance, he 'should never have denied his occasion so many talents'. He ends
up by indulging in pure falsehood to the effect that he had lately invested his
money in some undertaking and could, therefore, not spare any for Timon to help
him retrieve himself in the face of this crisis. Lastly, Sempronius, sheltering
himself under the same pretext that his own regard for Timon had been
gratuitously scanted and undervalued, voices forth his resentment laconically thus:
'who bates mine honour shall not know my coin'. His pose of self-injury provides
him a cover for concealing his blatant sense of ingratitude. 'How fairly this Lord
strives to appear foul': this scathing comment made by one of the servants is not
applicable to Sempronious alone but amounts to a shrewd measuring up of the
chicanery of all these hypocrites who look like ludicrous figures pacing up and
down this world of fantasy. 'The three scenes,' says Gornme, 'in which Timon's
servants are repulsed by his false friends have a monstrous comedy in which the
lords are carcicatured'.39 What is most annoying is their effrontery in rejecting
Timon's request in a joint and corporate voice', freezing his messengers into
opacity and cloaking their evasions and subterfuges under the cover of what W.H.
Auden terms 'a set mask of rectitude'. Timon's judgment of them rests on the
perception of an icy coldness which cleaves to their hearts:

These old fellows

Have their ingratitude in them hereditary;
Their blood is cak'd, 'tis cold, it seldom flows;
'Tis lack of kindly warmth they are not kind;
(II. ii. 218-221)

One of Timon's quirks visible in this context is ordering another feast

immediately after this and to which all these ungrateful persons are invited. And
172

as if to underline their not coming to his rescue when they were urgently required
to do so.

To Timon is counterpoised Alcibiades; with the former's wilful

introversion is contrasted the precise and sophisticated argumentativeness of the
latter. Timon's hysterical frothiness looks all the more ridiculous when judged in
the perspective of the Aristotelian 'mean' as practised by Alcibiades. He is seen at
his best in his defence of Timon who, we are told, overcome by blind fury,
`stepp'd into the law' and therefore rendered himself vulnerable to the strictest
punishment: he just cannot escape persecution. Timon is condemned by the
Senators for lacking forbearance and thus over-reacting to the fact that his
'honour' had been traduced. In a neat and sustained chain of argument which is
supported by examples culled from the various levels of experience Alcibiades
establishes with irrefragable logic, that forbearance or 'suffering' is both
inadequate and indefensible when one's fundamental loyalties, convictions or
commitments are contravened: Timon, it may be inferred, is a victim of his own
code of chivalrous honour. In upholding the validity of the sway of passion and
thus 'disqualifying' the orthodoxy of Stoic resignation and yet insisting on the
plea for reprieve on behalf of his friend Alcibiades is not playing the sophist, for
he represents what Maxwell calls 'balanced humanity' •40 He concedes that 'to be
in anger' is impiety, but then to endure threats to one's 'honour' is no less so, and
'pity is the virtue of the law'. He advocates, as a last resort, that his own deserts
be thrown as an additional weight into the scale for purpose of getting Timon's
pardon for the crime committed only impulsively. But the Senators are in no way
inclined to give leeway to one who, according to their judgment, wants 'to bring
man-slaughter into form'. It appears that whereas the Senators are preoccupied
with the abstract notion of equity — the mere husk of the law — Alcibiades
insists on the validity of the spontaneous human reaction in a critical situation.
When both logic and rhetoric fail to make any impact and the first Senator says
categorically that 'He forfeits his own blood that spills another's' and Alcibiades
maintains no less firmly and doggedly 'It must not be so', the latter, despite all the
 173

eminence and prestige he had so long enjoyed, is banished from Athens for ever.
Although it looks as if this episode is a sudden eruption, with nothing that
prepares for it and nothing that comes in its wake, yet it is validated by the fact
that through it the character of Alcibiades is allowed to establish a norm and a
point of reference for placing the vehemence and recklessness of Timon.
Alcibiades emerges from this skirmish in this play-within-play as one who is
dispassionate, clear-eyed and has the courage of his convictions and can stick to
his guns to the last.

The climactic point is reached when close on heels of Alcibiades's

punishment Timon invites the bunch of treacherous and self-seeking flatterers to a
mock banquet where covered dishes containing only lukewarm water are served
and this water is wantonly thrown into their faces. One may well surmise that the
dishes are covered presumably because they are to be served to those who
manipulate to cover up their inner filth and sordidness under the veil of
hypocritical attitudinizing: the guests are like `pensil'd figures' presented as
deeply engaged souls. It is a kind of macabre entertainment which serves as an
instrument of retaliation against those `trencher-friends', those lime's flies' who
quickly dissociate themselves from Timon, and with a degree of brazenness and
perversity, when he had arrived at the nadir of his fortunes. His chagrin and
disillusionment is betrayed by this withering, unequivocal utterance: 'Henceforth
hated be/Of Timon, man and all humanity' (III. vi. 100-101). The scene ends up
with throwing, pell-mell, 'jewel', 'cap' and 'gown' — symbols of utter confusion
in the convivial world which is but a reflection and a symptom of the imbalance in
Timon's own distraught mind. The play has many points of contact with King
Lear: in both the protagonist is an unintegrated self but whereas Lear is only a
victim ingratitude of maximized to the level of animal ferocity by Goneril and
Regan, Timon has been subjected to the ghoulish experience of hypocrisy and
fraud as well. Lear is also invested with tragic splendour and a depth of
inwardness both of which are sadly lacking in Timon. The latter decides a little
later to turn his back, not unlike Coriolanus, upon Athens, abjure all human
174

company and lead a life of ostracism and withdrawal: `Timon will to the woods,
where he shall find/Th'unkindest beast more kinder than mankind' (IV. i. 35-36).

It is, however, intriguing to observe that, inspite of his having been driven
to the brink of disaster, the Steward and some of Timon's personal servants —
'implements of a ruin'd house'— persevere in their initial allegiance to him very
much like Antony's friends, particularly Eros who was overwhelmed by vibrant
emotions, when their master was on the verge of committing suicide. The Third
Servant speaks to the following effect:

Leak'd is our bark,

And we, poor mates, stand on the dying deck,
Hearing the surges threat; we must all part
Into this sea of air,
(IV. ii. 19-22)

And the Steward, inspired by genuine feelings and speaking with dignified
simplicity and candour, strikes the note of human fellowship thus: ... for Timon's
sake,/Let's yet be fellows'. His telling words are loaded with significance when he
says: 'Who would be so mocked with glory, or to live,/But in a dream of
friendship' (IV. ii. 33-34), and passes his verdict on the vicissitudes of Timon's
life in a pithy statement thus: thy great fortunes/Are made thy chief
afflictions' (IV. ii. 43-44). The Steward's first utterance reflects upon the
ambivalence between appearance and reality in which Timon has been
unwittingly involved and the latter one is equivalent to the vision of transparent
sympathy and affection which contrasts strikingly and compellingly with the pose
of perfidious hypocrisy and hollowness put up by the fawning lords not unlike that
of some of the disciples of Christ.

Removing the distorting mirror placed by the flatterers, Apcmantus puts

another one before Timon in which he may catch a fleeting glimpse of himself
unobtrusively; the former is capable of looking through all shams, communicating
his perceptions with a carping tongue and never misses any opportunity of
 175

touching Timon's raw wounds. Apemantus can afford to stand apart from the
immediate scene of action and develop that degree of detachment which has the
effect of depersonalizing his own identity. Very much like the Fool in King Lear,
perhaps with even greater incisiveness, he tends to bandy arguments with Timon
with a view to moderating his imperiousness as well as jolting him out of his
black melancholy and breaking his mental cobwebs. He is not just a snarler as
Kenneth Muir41 would have us believe, and despite the ruggedness of his exterior
represents the muted undertone of sanity in the play. To the cynical and nihilistic
mood pervasive in Timon, Apemantus continues to add a sharp edge. And yet one
cannot deny his uncanny insight and his capacity to seize upon the tacit
implications of a given situation or utterance. His comment on the masque of
Ladies as Amazons is shot through with penetrating insight:

What a sweep of vanity comes this way,

They dance? They are madwomen,
Like madness is the glory of this life,
As this pomp shows to a little oil and root.
(I. ii. 128-31)

His favourite weapon for disconcerting others is the use of the language of
paradox and he gives a wholly unexpected twist to whatever is the focus of
concentration in a particular context. His comments are far from being an
expression of personal petulance; on the contrary, they are cast in a philosophical
mould and are characterized by an epigrammatic terseness and lucidity. Unlike the
Fool in King Lear, Apemantus does not use bawdy language but he does employ
quick and snappy wit and rebounding retorts which always go home and his
verbal thrusts are lethal and irresistible. His assessment of Timon: 'The middle of
humanity thou ne'er knew'st but the extremity of both ends' is a very fair and
objective estimate of the latter's line of approach. His mental alertness is amazing
and his responses are almost always indeterminate. His whole endeavour is
directed towards making Timon see the nakedness of Truth and making him re-
draw, if he possibly can, the world on the perilous edge of which he has been
176

standing so long. Apropos of Timon, Apemantus's role is that of a stem warner or

moralizer who would in no way relent or equivocate. He himself refers to his own
role thus: 'If I should be brib'd, too, there would be none left to rail upon thee,
and then thou wouldst sin the faster' (I. ii. 240-242). One can hardly ignore the
fact that this is an oblique way of calling his generosity 'wicked prodigality'.

In his state of voluntarily chosen isolation Timon turns outrageous in his

rising hatred of the world and humankind; his ingrown discontent now becomes
crystallized and staggering. It is some indication of his corrosive self-pity as well
as dignified pathos that when Apemantus, in a bid to relieving the burden of his
misery, offers to soothe him he counters by 'I had rather be alone' (IV, iii, 99).
Earlier, the second Servant, moved by genuine compassion, had commented with
remarkable perspicacity thus:

and his poor self,

A dedicated beggar to the air,
With his disease of all-shunn'd poverty,
Walks like contempt, alone.
(IV. ii. 12-15)

The channels of communication and mutual sympathy between him and the
outside world are completely disrupted and he has not a soul to turn to for
purposes of unpacking his heart. He gives a tangible form to his sense of desertion
by the former servile flatterers and opportunists thus:

The mouths, the tongues, the eyes and hearts of men...

That numberless upon me stuck, as leaves
Do on the oak, have with one winter's brush
Fall from their boughs and left me open, bare,
For every storm that blows—
(IV. iii. 263-68)
The basic image used here is evocative of a wintry landscape, the process of
decadence and falling-off is at the centre of it and it very well accords with
Timon's acute feeling that he now stands bereft of all that sustained and boosted
up his self-image.
 177

When Alcibiades's effort to obtain reprieve for Timon fails the latter is
shaken to the base and feels cauterized so much so that he renounces Athens, and
the iron of hatred, however irrational it may seem, penetrates his inmost heart.
Like Lear in an identical situation he flings large and deep curses on it and
invokes the powers and potencies of Nature to operate against it. He formalizes
his sense of violent indignation thus:

Plagues incident to men,

Your potent and infectious fevers keep
On Athens ripe for stroke!
(IV. i. 21-23)

His retreat into the woods is a symptom of deepening cynicism: an impulse to cut
himself adrift from all human contact and which feeds itself on utter negation is
no less evident. To it is also added an apocalyptic fear for the doomed Athens.
Seized by a mood of frenzy and even in the initial stage of disillusionment Lear
had called upon the powers of Nature to strike his two pernicious daughters,
Goneril and Regan, with sterility, for a more sinister imprecation cannot be
poured upon a woman. Likewise, on his first entrance into the woods, Timon
invokes the Sun — universal symbol of fertility and gestation — to contaminate
the sublunary world with infection so that it is rendered irredeemably barren and
unfrutuous:

0 blessed breeding sun, draw from the earth

Rotten humidity; below thy sister's orb
Infect the air!
(IV. iii. 1-3)

Timon's bounty was marred, as pointed out earlier, by his inordinate susceptibility
to flattery and this contributed in no small measure to the growth of a bloated self-
hood in him. Disdainful of any restraining influence or forethought as he is, his
love of extravagance is carried to its farthest length and borders upon utter
stupidity. He seems to be as ineradicably prodigal in hurling curses as he was
moved by his high-souled generosity in giving away large sums of money on the
178

slightest pretext earlier. His loathing and hatred of mankind is in inverse

proportion to the love he had bought and mistakenly enjoyed in the past. It may be
gauged in terms of his having rather the companionship of beasts than that of
human beings, and this preference is both disgraceful and putrifying; `Timon will
to the woods, where he shall find/ Th'ukindest beast more kinder than mankind'
(IV, i, 35-36). Timon's mentor, Apemantus, communicates a similar perception
which is both incisive and penetrating: 'The Commonwealth of Athens is become
a forest of beasts'. But the real beasts are anyway preferred by Timon to man
turned bestial — emblems of rapacity, greed and ravenousness. His misanthropy
reaches acme when, overpowered by the fury of blind passion, he perceives
nothing but radical evil which has pulverized the very roots of being. He is
completely swamped by negative emotions, sees nothings but unrelieved darkness
around him and wishes humankind, gone morally bankrupt, to be annihilated
beyond any hope of redemption:
all's oblique;
There's nothing level in our cursed natures
But direct villainy. Therefore be abhorr'd
All feasts, societies, and throngs of men!
His semlable, yea, himself, Timon disdains,
Destruction fang mankind!
(IV. iii. 18-23)

In such a state of total gloom, brought on so devastatingly by awareness of the

falsity of his erstwhile friends, Timon becomes maddeningly enraged and makes a
further appeal to nature thus:

Ensear thy fertile and conceptious womb;

Let it no more bring out ingrateful man,
Go great with tigers, dragons, wolves and bears;
Teem with new monsters, whom thy upward face
Hath to the marbled mansion all above
Never presented.
(IV. iii. 189-94)
 179

Timon's revulsion is partly rooted in his reaction to the Athenian society

which is an acquisitive society and in which the power of money is responsible for
the dissolution of all bonds of sympathy and solidarity among men. Here money
regulates human relationships and in it the organic rhythms of life are atrophied
and everything is swallowed by the dull round of sameness. In such a society
cash-nexus becomes, as suggested earlier, too, the ultimate criterion of Value, and
all personal loyalties and allegiances stand suspect. 'Gold' in Timon of Athens is
therefore the symbol of destructive materialism and necessitates a fundamental
change in the accepted patterns of behaviour. It may very well alter the
complexion and proportion of things by destabilizing them and is more often than
not the symptom of the decay of civilization. 'Root', on the contrary, being
symbolic of elemental nature, may facilitate the process of renewal and
reintegration. It may be of some interest to keep spotlit in mind the fact that the
Poet and the Painter reappear to exploit Timon now that he has suddenly
discovered gold while he was engaged in digging the root. From Timon's
malevolent treatment of them—they are rejected as 'naturals', — follows the
deduction that art may be prostituted for mercenary ends, for grabbing gold in the
case. Both these characters are also emblems of hypocrisy, and the exposure of
hypocrisy, dramatized through them and the three Lords, seem to be a crucial
subsidiary theme in the play.

With the sense of festering corruption generated by the power of money

also goes the wrench which is caused by sex-nausea; it seems to me that it enjoys
pride of place among the various constituents of Timon's psychic make-up. He is
made aware of it pointedly by the presence of Phrynia and Timandra —`the brace
of harlots' kept by Alicibiades and who are part of his personal retinue. The far-
reaching implications of the worship of 'gold' or money and the sway of 'blood'
get interwoven in Timon's subconscious mind. As his trial in absentia for
committing man-slaughter, intensifying his hatred of Athens, comes to an end,
and as he enters at the opening of Act IV he calls upon Nature to spread infectious
180

diseases in the world of man. This invocation has now become part of the
comprehensive sweep of indictment which he relishes to invoke:

Matrons, turn incontinent!...

To general fifths
Convert, o 'th' instant, green virginity!...
Maid, to thy master's bed;
Thy mistress is o 'th' brothel. ....
Thou cold sciatica,
Cripple our senators, that their limbs may halt
As lamely as their manners!...
Itches, blains,
Sow all th 'Athenian bosoms, and their crop
Be general leprosy!
(IV. i. 3-30)

And to Timandra he blurts out in such caustic terms as these:

Be a whore still. They love thee not that use thee.

Give them diseases, leaving with thee their lust.
Make use of thy salt hours; season the slaves
For tubs and baths; bring down rose-cheek'd youth
To the tub-fast and the diet.
(IV. iii. 84-88)

The corrupting power of money and the monstrous hypocrisy displayed by its
shallow adulators — 'these pensil'd figures' as they are dubbed by Timon quite
early — set up morbid reactions in the reader. Sex-aberration is the main
component in the general comlex of corruption and Timon feels so incensed
against humanity that he wishes it to be pushed into the darkest region of
degradation. His horrified imagination finds a sort of satisfaction in visualizing
that humankind may let itself be preyed upon by all that is filthy, sordid and
atrocious. Lear, sharing a similar psychic predicament, observes, with his implicit
approbation, the fact of promiscuity which is rampant in the whole of creation:

What was thy cause?

Adultery?
Thou shalt not die: die for adultery! No:
The wren goes to`t, and the small gilded fly
 181

Does lecher in my sight.

Let copulation thrive; for Gloucester's bastard son
Was kinder to his father than my daughters
Got `tween the lawful sheets. To't, luxury, pell-mell!
(IV. vi. 12-119)

And borne on the same swelling tide of disgust he adds a little later:
there's hell, there's darkness,
There is the sulphurous pit — burning; scalding,
Stench, consumption; fie, fie, fie! pah, pah!
Give me an ounce of civet, good apothecary,
To sweeten my imagination.
(IV. vi. 129-33)

Both the passage from Timon and Lear reflect the deepening cynicism and
intensification of nausea and loathing but they are qualitatively different from
each other both in accent and intention. Timon wishes that anarchic sexuality,
resulting from unbridled libidinal indulgence, may be unleashed and disintegrate
the very fabric of ordered, social life. Lear concedes it as an ineluctable
experience — a phenomenon which is unquestionably universal. Timon derives
masochistic pleasure from it and it validates his whole-sale condemnation of
humankind. Lear, on the contrary, ridicules and castigates the moral
squeamishness at having to observe and undermine it, for rooted in human
instincts, sexuality is practised at all levels of the created universe. In another
instance, his pathetic plea for the sweetening of imagination is uttered from the
depths of tragic experience and makes us envision a state of existence which is
cankered, dungy and mortally offensive and therefore stands in need of being
changed into its polar opposite. Further, whereas Timon's utterance amounts to a
hysterical outburst, Lear's expression of his sense of sacrilege, comparatively
speaking, is artistically controlled and is characterized by a tautness of
organization.
182

It may be worth mentioning that the man-beast juxtaposition assumes

another dimension in a bit of colloquy between Timon and Apemantus, both
living embodiments of 'poor, unmanly melancholy':

Tim. What wouldst thou do with the world,

Apemantus, if it lay in thine power?
pem. Give it the beasts, to be rid of the men,
Tim. Wouldst thou have thyself fall in the confusion
of men, and remain a beast with the beasts?
Apem. Ay, Timon.
Tim. A lovely ambition, which the gods grant thee t' attain to.

(IV. iii. 321-29)

Timon's tenacious and implacable hatred of mankind makes him betray his
awareness of the fact of predatoriness visible in the animal kingdom. In other
words, even animals, preferred to men earlier (like horses in Swift's Gulliver 's
Fourth Voyage) themselves become degraded, engaged as they are in a cut-throat
competition and the stronger ones are urged on instinctively to bring about the
annihilation of those who are below or weaker than themselves (Cf. IV. iii. 328-
43). Thus the choice of the beasts as against dehumanized fellow beings becomes
a dubious option and likely to be withdrawn.

Timon's besetting sin is self-exaltation rather than self-exculpation, and he

has become incapacitated to outgrow his failings and entertain a wider vision of
humankind at large, to travel back from hatred and misanthropy into the domain
of love and compassion despite the scars which the maimed self has left behind it.
Timon's brusque treatment of the cringing lords, the Senators, the Poet, the
Painter and the bandits is alike dictated by misanthropy which is born of his
deeply bruised egotism and his arbitrariness and eccentricity. He is never
prompted by the impulse towards those gropings after self-knowledge which Lear
ultimately achieves, never develops that kind of wisdom and humility which is
indistinguishable from charity. Timon never wholly recovers from the shock at
being abandoned by the ignominous knot of 'mouth-friends' and the state of
 183

Athens which is rotten to the core and which holds them in its firm grip. He
therefore continues to remain estranged and embittered and for ever haunted by
the ghost of dereliction:

It is vain that you would speak with Timon;

For he is set so only to himself,
That nothing but himself, which looks like man,
Is friendly with him.
(V. i. 115-118)
While informing the Steward about his proposed epitaph Timon speaks to the
following effect:

My long sickness
Of health and living now begins to mend,
And nothing brings me all things.
(V. i. 185-87)

This awareness of 'nothing' or Infinitude in the existential sense — not unlike

Cordelia's 'Nothing, my Lord' — to which all aspects of contingent being are
juxtaposed or which represents 'the all-embracing finality crowning existence'
may insinuate what G. Wilson Knight designates as 'a gradual unfurling towards
maturity'42. One may, however, venture to enter the caveat in hot haste that this
'over-balance of the positive' remains hardly more than a momentary impulse, a
fugitive and isolated incident in the wider spectrum, for it is swamped very soon
by the gathering clouds of pessimism, the absolute, non-perceptual, unrelieved
chaos against which nothing really holds together. His choice of 'his everlasting
mansions/ Upon the beach'd verge of the salt flood' — acceptance of solitude
shadowed with darker tones, and his taking the Steward into his confidence by
adding: 'Lips, let sour words go by and language end: /What is amiss, plague and
infection mend' (V. i. 219-220) are pointers that he has failed to bring his
fragmented psyche to a state of wholeness and equilibrium — extinction of words
being symbolic of the dissolution of all entanglements. 'Language', as Agostino
Lombardo puts it, 'has built another illusion, and Timon's rebellion extinguishes
184

itself with the extinction of words'43. It is the Steward Flavius who speaks so
feelingly about this broken pyramid of a man:

0 you gods!
Is yond despis'd and ruinous man my lord?
Full of decay and failing! 0 monument
And wonder of good deeds evilly bestow'd!
(IV. iii. 461-64)

This may be paralleled with the vision of the identical collapse of Lear as
eloquently and perceptively phrased by Gloucester: '0 ruin'd piece of Nature'—
collapse of a potentially tremendous power in both which yet contained within
itself the seeds of death and destruction.

Reference

37. All quotations from the text are from Timon of Athens. The Arden Shakespeare, ed. HI
Oliver, London, 1963.
38. John H. Wallace: Timon of Athens and the Three Graces in Modern Philology, Vol. 83
No. 4, 1986, p. 349.
39. Andor Gomme: Timon of Athens in E.C. Vol. IX, No. 2, 1954, pp,. 123-24.
40. J.C. Maxwell: Timon of Athens In Scrutiny, 15, 1948
41. Kenneth Muir: Timon of Athens and the Cash-nexus in Modern Quarterly Miscellany, 1,
1947, p. 67.
42. G. Wilson Knight: Timon of Athens and Buddhism in E.C. Vol. )0CX. No. 2, 1980,
43. Agostino Lombardo: The Two Utopias of Timon of Athens in Shakespeare Jal
Weimar, 1984, pp. 88-89.
 CHAPTER 11

Marcus Brutus: The Divided Self

The basic conflict in Julius Caesar, round which the entire pattern of the
play is structured, derives from and in a way is rooted in the opposed political
passions and conception of the power-nexus. These are reflected, at one extreme,
in the alleged despotism of Julius Caesar (his ambition, says Cassius, before the
murder, 'shall be glanced at', and after the event, 'ambition's debt is paid') and
his close alliance with Mark Antony who bears him 'an ingrafted love' and, on the
other, in the secret manoeuvrings of Cassius, Casca, Trebonius and Metullus
Cimber — the band of conspirators by whom Brutus is also roped in and is asked
to lead the conspiracy — whose whole endeavour is directed towards thwarting
Caesar's further growth into illimitable power. The play is enveloped in what may
tentatively be distinguished as an outer and an inner mystery and the tangled skein
of personal and impersonal motivations render it both puzzling and fascinating.
The military power is at present concentrated into the hands of Julius Caesar who,
after registering a convincing victory over Pompey and his sons in Spain, returns
to Rome with 'glories', 'triumphs' and 'spoils' and is about to be established as
King by being offered the crown, on the occasion of the feast of Lupercal, in the
Capitol. The plebeians flawed with the taint of 'ingratitude' for forgetting Pompey
so soon and for applauding the inflated egotism of Caesar, are reprimanded and
instigated by the tribunes to rise in revolt against his suzerainty. Further, Flavious
asks Marullus to 'disrobe the images. If you do find them deck'd with
ceremonies'44 (I. i. 64-65), for (and the image of the falcon is very much implicit
here):
186

These growing feathers pluck'd from Caesar's wing

Will make him fly an ordinary pitch,
Who else would soar above the view of man
And keep us all in servile fearfulness.
(I. i. 72-75)
Later we are told that both Flavious and Marullus were 'put to silence' for
'pulling scarfs off Caesar's images.' We are imperceptibly led to believe that
things have already reached such an impasse that quick and decisive action is
called for: the immediate pretext for it is provided by Caesar's blatant and
categorical refusal to accept the petition for Cimber's repeal of banishment.
Caesar's meteoric and unimpeded ascent to supremacy and the resultant turmoil in
the body-politic is imaged in the fearful portents visible both in the phenomenal
world and in the world of man:

eaven hath infus'd them with these spirits

o make them instruments of fear and warning
Unto some monstrous state....
A man no mightier than thyself, or me,
In personal action, yet prodigious grown,
And fearful, as these strange eruptions are.
(I. iii. 69-78)
These may be regarded as the major disorder symbols. The thrasonical Caesar,
dubbed as a man of 'feeble temper' by Cassius who yet 'bestrides the narrow
world like a Colossus', insists all along on his royalism, creating his own heroic
images which is in consonance with the Renaissance notion of the priority of the
soul over the body and is juxtaposed with counter, mock-heroic image, and these
posturings of his look rather ludicrous. Cassius, the sinister arch-conspirator is,
therefore, moved to plan the strategy for undermining his entrenched power and
authority with a ruthless hand. Simultaneously the dormant seeds of ambition in
Brutus have to be activated and his inchoate political idealism is the proper organ
to be played upon. And Cassius, as a psychologist of penetrating perception,
knows his job of sounding out and giving the requisite twist to Brutus's hitherto
hidden and imperfectly known impulses.
 187

Initially Brutus looks startlingly nave, idealistic and hence gullible, calm,
detached and meditative, fond of solitude, one whose eye-lids, unlike those of his
own Lucius, more often than not remain unvisited by the 'honey-heavy dew of
slumber' and is given to reading late at night as it is twice underlined thus: 'Look,
Lucius, here's the book I sought for so;/ I put it in the pocket of my gown (IV. Iii.
251-52) and; 'Let me see; is not the leaf turned down/Where I left reading?' (IV.
Iii. 272-73). His proneness to meditation is brought out in such stray remarks as

Why, farewell, Portia, We must die Messala,

With meditating that she must die once,
I have the patience to endure it now,
(IV. iii. 189-91)

And while Brutus despondingly purports at committing suicide Dardarius refers to

the poignancy of this contemplated act to Clitus thus: 'Look, he meditates' (V. v.
12). He is habitually lost in self-communings, is secretive and tight-lipped even in
the matter if exchanging confidences with Portia as is borne out in her touchingly
affectionate remonstrance with him thus:

Am I Your self
But, as it were, in sort or limitation,
To keep with you at meals, comfort your bed,
And talk to you sometimes ? Dwell I but in the suburbs
Of your good pleasure?
(II. i. 282-86)
It is perhaps of the nature of this specific relationship `to be without
communication':45 it is not marked by reciprocity or genuine warmth of feeling on
his part. Similarly, in the celebrated ugly wrangle with Cassius, when with the
'icy weight of his self-esteem' he bears him down by humiliating him he seems in
fact to be externalizing his inner conflicts — his awareness of failure and his
looking askance, obliquely, and in retrospect, at having been invited to join the
conspiracy: 'You have done that you should be sorry for' (IV. iii. 65). This scene
is in no way 'engineered as an experiment in psychological sadism' as is
speculated by William R. Bowden." Brutus heavily comes down on Cassius'
188

friend for accepting bribes, demands of Cassius extorted money for paying his
own legions, insinuates at his having 'an itching palm' and resents his withholding
from him the ill-got money when it was urgently needed by him. He thus lands
himself in an exasperatingly contradictory position: approving bribery with
connivance and demanding money wrung by underhand means while condemning
both these on the theoretical plane — a kind of antithesis which is at the root of all
his tensions and ambivalences. Underlying the petulance displayed by him in this
scene is the ambiguity of response to a situation which he would and would not
like to put up with. This is also reflected in the taut, rasping, uneasy tones of both
the combatants and the matter is patched up only by the ultimate giving in by
Cassius to the posturing of invulnerability by Brutus. The latter also feels
psychologically relieved of the pressure of pent-up feelings after having lived
through this skirmish. But this is to anticipate.

Brutus is a divided being; like Cassius, too, he is inward-looking, torn

between contrary emotions; 'with himself at war' he is mostly given to brooding
over the exigencies of the situation he finds himself placed in and his self-
grapplings are jealously guarded against any intrusion or prying into:

Vexed I am
Of late with passions of some difference,
Conceptions only proper to myself,
Which gives some soil, perhaps, to my behaviours;
(I. ii. 38-41)
Later, in an anxious moment of solicitude Portia comments to this effect: 'No, my
Brutus;/You have some sick offence within your mind; (II, i, 267-68). Bowden is
therefore not justified in upholding that Brutus does not feel the stain of internal
conflict47 and is incapable of being put on 'the rack of this tough world'. He is
moved by the worthiest of motives and stoops at the same time to the most
ignoble promptings. He professes love for Caesar in more than one context (there
is no shred of evidence for any mutuality of response, though, except Cassius's
and Antony's indirect references to it) and yet allows himself to be seduced by the
 189

machinations of Cassius who burns with envy for Caesar's 'getting the start of the
majestic world'. Cassius finds it hard to stomach the fact that a man like Caesar,
who is apparently no better, in physical dimensions and intellectual gifts, than
Brutus or himself, should elevate his being to an Olympus-like stature and be
accepted as such by 'underlings'— 'petty men who walk under his huge legs'.
Caesar seems to be very discerning when he makes a forthright comment about
Cassius thus:

Yet if my name were liable to fear

I do not know the man I should avoid
So soon as that spare Cassius ...
He is a great observer, and he looks
Quite through the deeds of men.
(1. ii. 196-98)
This hardly applies to Brutus. When in reply to Cassius's adroitly formulated
query: 'Tell me, good Brutus, can you see your face?' Brutus replies naively and
unsuspectingly, 'No, Cassius; for the eye sees not itself/ But by reflection, by
some other things;' (I. ii. 51-52) Cassius makes the first tentative and exploratory
gesture of entangling him in the insidious web of his guile thus:

And it is very much lamented, Brutus,

That you have no such mirrors as will turn
Your hidden worthiness into your eye,
That you might see your shadow.
(1. ii. 54-57)

The saliency and centrality of this passage has not been adequately noticed by the
critics. The 'eye-mirror' metaphor recalls Ulysses's address to Achilles to the
effect that one cannot gain knowledge of one's self except through others. The
accent here falls on the 'hidden worthiness' of which Brutus stands in need of
being made aware, but the 'shadow', as Goddard puts it, will only be a 'shadow
on the wall.'48 Cassius proceeds warily and reduces his own role to that of a mere
glass in which Brutus may catch a glimpse of himself:

And since you know you cannot see yourself

o well as by reflections, 1, your glass,
190

ill modestly discover to yourself

That of yourself which you yet know not of.
(I. ii. 66-69)
Cassius's real intention by the use of this device is to wrench Brutus's mind away
to his own purposes but, ironically enough, the image to be projected by the
distorting mirror of Cassius's mind will in the nature of things be only a grotesque
one. He had already hinted at the fact that it would be very much worthwhile if, as
speculated by many others — 'many of the best respect in Rome' — the noble
Brutus were sensitive to the milieu by which they were environed. Exploiting the
image of the 'eye' and groping through the dark labyrinths of Cassius's opaque
meanings Brutus unburdens himself to the following effect:

If it be aught toward the general good,

Set honour in one eye, and death I 'th'other,
And I will look on both indifferently;
For let the gods so speed me as I love
The name of honour more than I fear death
(I. ii. 84-88)
Toying with specious philosophical commonplace, 'the general good' (Blake
stigmatises it as 'the cry of the scoundrel and the hypocrite') the alternatives
distinctly posed by him are 'honour' (the recurrent motif of Brutus's utterances
throughout the play) and 'death', and the forthright and explicit declaration of
intentions (with a touch of ingenuousness, though) amounts to the resolve that he
would rather embrace the latter than abandon the former in case a choice were
forced on him. This effusion lacks the bumptiousness (also the frothiness that goes
along with it) and the Marlovian ring of a Hotspur in an identical context and is,
on the contrary, marked with a candid simplicity as well as an ultimacy of will.

Brutus is offered 'the fruit of deceit/Ruddy and sweet to eat' (Cf. Blake's
The Human Abstract) only gradually and through subtle insinuations. The
absorbing passion for 'the general good' is the ostensible reason given by him for
consenting to ally himself with the clique of conspirators — 'the choice and
master spirits of this age '— as dubbed by Antony who later, in a gesture of ironic
inversion, calls them 'gentlemen all' and 'all honourable men': monosyllabic
 191

expressions which are charged with blistering contempt. The whole political
machinery, resting on monarchism, is in a ramshackle way and has got to be put
back on its rails. Neither Cassius nor Casca is precisely aware of the existence of
any constitutional tangle except that they are vowed to tyrannicide and the
conspirators are leagued together to achieve some kind of vague, Utopian freedom
for the common man. Though contemporary Rome is not the focus of attention
here as in Coriolanus or Antony and Cleopatra yet the state has fallen into
decrepitude, if not corruption, and it is symptomatic of its unwholesomeness that
despots like Caesar — ogres of monstrous and unmitigated oppression — prosper
in it by controlling its affairs and the plebeians are of necessity cowed down into
submission:
What trash is Rome,
What rubbish, and what offal, when it serves
For the base matter to illuminate
So vile a thing as Caesar!
(I. iii. 108-14)
Brutus therefore, logically enough, calls for the necessary purge; 'A piece of work
that will make sick men whole' (II, i, 327). In this particular context it is
cryptically pointed out by Cassius that it is not so much Caesar as his own
confederates, allowing themselves to be bullied, who in reality suffer from the
'falling-sickness':

No, Caesar hath it not; but you, and I,

And honest Casca we, have the falling-sickness,
(I. ii. 252-53)

Little by little Brutus is so manipulated as to become convinced that it is

imperative to have Caesar dislodged from paramountcy because monarchy
always tends to degenerate into tyranny. Exposed to the resplendent phenomenon
of the dawn which Decius and Cinna merely observe as such, Casca reacts to it in
his own peculiar fashion. Shrewd and pragmatic as he is and having an owl's
vigilant eye on practical affairs he treats the sunrise as an emblem of the new day
they wish to bring to Rome:
192

You shall confess that you are both deceiv' d,

Here, as I point my sword, the sun arises,
Which is a great way growing on the south,
Weighing the youthful season of the year,
Some two months hence, up higher toward the north
He first presents his fire; and the high east
Stands, as the Capitol, directly here.
(II. i. 105-111)
However inconsequential the talk they are engaged in and however fantastic the
fact that Casca seems to locate the east towards the point of his sword, this
utterance has its relevance because he is convinced that the conspirators will
prove to be the liberators of their country. It may be added that the breaking of the
dawn runs as a recurrent motif in the play in more than one context.

Cassius's portrayal is offered with a view to projecting him as a foil to

Brutus: the former seems to be gifted with an uncanny insight into the latter's
hidden and unsuspected motivations. Always playing safe and with a cunning
politician's artifice at his command he succeeds in persuading Brutus to give the
lead to the conspirators: he feels sure of putting his finger on his dupe's weak spot
and of the laurels he himself has so far got:

Well, Brutus, thou art noble ; yet I see

Thy honourable mettle may be wrought
From that it is dispos'd; therefore 'tis meet
That noble minds keep ever with their likes;
(I. ii. 305-308)

He entertains no doubt of Brutus's nobility of mind but is no less convinced of his

naivety and integrity of soul and of the fact that this nobility may easily be
deflected form its rightful channel of expression and geared to his own designs
and objectives. Does it also imply some sort of shrewd skepticism that his
inherent virtues are most likely to be tarnished by proximity to Cassius himself?
Brutus gives the impression of yielding to the temptation offered him by Cassius
and other confederates rather too soon and in a naive and unself-conscious way.
One is inevitably struck by the 'hugger-mugger', the murkiness and the
precipitancy enshrouding the whole affair. The truth of the matter, however, is
 193

that once the seductive overture has been accepted the whole situation is subjected
by him to a close and minute analysis and with a degree of near squeamishness.
The famous orchard soliloquy begins with a kind of horrible finality: 'It must be
by his death' and though the whole design of it may have the look of a set of
rationalizations yet he does seem to be engaged in a sober inquiry, trying to reach
some kind of certitude. His integrity is unquestionable and there always yawns a
hiatus between a decision taken and the implementation of it in actuality. His
mental stock-taking, in no way to be equated with fumbling, is evident from these
lines:

I know no personal cause to spurn at him,

But for the general. He would be crown'd:
How that might change his nature, there's the question ....
Crown him? That;
And then, I grant, we put a sting in him.
That at his will he may do danger with,
Th'abuse of greatness is when it disjoins
Remorse from power and, to speak truth of Caesar,
I have not known when his affections sway'd
More than his reason. But 'tis a common proof.
That lowliness is young ambition's ladder,
hereto the climber-upward turns his face;
(II. i. 11-23)
Once again Brutus puts personal malice at a discount and he reiterates his
passionate involvement in 'the general good'. It is the fear of the hypothetical
change in Caesar's political behaviour likely to ensue from his being crowned and
not any recognizable vices possessed by him at the moment which is the bugbear
for him. It is the infinite gap between what he is and what he might become — the
potential danger so to say — which is fraught with frightening possibilities. The
lure of future power may put poison in the vessels of his mind and this may make
him deviate from the path of moderation and make him lose his sense of poise.
Back of this agonized critical assessment, riddled with uncertainties, lies the one
fundamental piece of political wisdom: 'the abuse of greatness' ensues when it
'disjoins remorse from power', that is, when power is exercized without being
tempered with and to the total exclusion of humaneness. And though he frankly
194

admits that Caesar's judgment has never yielded to the sway of passions yet the
apprehension persists that he may be corrupted by absolute power and the present
show of suavity and apparent self-abnegation (lowliness' as he terms it) may
prove only a pretense of the 'climber-upward' who more often than not is
'consumed in confidence' and is power-crazy. He caps it all by saying:

What he is, augmented,

Would run to these and these extremities;
And therefore think him as a serpent's egg,
Which, hatch'd, would, as his kind, grow mischievous,
And kill him in the shell
(II. i. 30-34)
Brutus's mind is not the kind of intricate, ratiocinative instrument for the
exploration of experience as Hamlet's is but it certainly registers the impact of an
internal conflict. He is perturbed by what even a little access to Caesar's power
and privileges may lead to: he is already powerful and therefore dangerous, and he
may grow even more menacing and prove a genuine threat to peace and stability.
His ambition (for which the serpent's egg is a concrete and vivid metaphor) may,
given the chance of enrooting and proliferating itself, ultimately grow disastrous
and plunge the whole body-politic into chaos. The shift from a conceptual to a
metaphorical mode of utterance is worth some attention but even more significant
is the impulse towards aborting the potential danger: 'And kill him in the shell'.

Depending upon the possibility of attaining the acme of power, on

Caesar's forcible elimination, and before the task is actually accomplished, Brutus
is made to traverse the inferno of conflict, live though the bitter agony of suspense
in the subsequent soliloquy thus:

Between the acting of a dreadful thing

And the first motion, all the interim is
Like a phantasms, or a hideous dream;
The genius and the mortal instruments
Are then in council; and the state of man,
Like to a little kingdom, suffers then
The nature of an insurrection.
(II. i. 63-69)
 195

The political idealist in Brutus — one who is given to playing one half-baked
thought against another — is in disarray which would have left the plain blunt
soldier unaffected: at the moment he is torn between the first stirrings of ambition
and the prospect of consummation which attends it. For him it is a nightmarish
experience, very much like a phantasma, in that he is faced with something which
is horrible as well as unreal. The 'genius' is the intellect and 'the mortal
instruments' are the means proposed for bringing about Caesar's murder —
'which yet is but fantastical' and the unstable equilibrium between these in
productive of the anarchy which is 'loosed' upon the microcosm — Macbeth's
'single state of man'. The conceit of the mind being a council is a familiar
Renaissance icon; in such a situation the mind is far from being tidy or coherent or
harmonized because the whole emotional and instinctual hierarchy has been
thrown into 'perturbation' and rises in revulsion against it. Brutus has almost
accepted the dark and ominous fate which has descended upon him like an
avalanche and he is caught into the see-saw of emotions. He has only to wait for
the hour when, things getting clarified, he may proceed to accomplish his purpose
and strike at the intended target.

Brutus is congenitally incapable of grasping the complexities of a political

situation; also unlike Cassius he does not bear any grudge against Caesar. He
stakes his all on some kind of idealism which is not sufficiently anchored in facts
but wholly rests on unverified assumptions or postulates and mental cobwebs. He
is pretty well convinced that personal animosity and hatred (which any way are
not his primary motivations) may be disjointed from commitment to impersonal
obligations. For the latter he claims a degree of purity and disinterestedness which
can be conceded only by a Stoic theorist. Even when the plan for killing Caesar
has been finalized (it was to follow his refusal to grant enfranchisement to Publius
Cimber) and is about to be implemented in cold blood Brutus insists on making a
fine-spun distinction between killing for malice ('enactment of a several bastardy'
by each conspirator) and the achievement of a good visualized in purely abstract
terms:
196

Let's be sacrificers, but not butchers, Caius.

We all stand up against the spirit of Caesar,
And in the spirit of men there is no blood.
0, that we then could come by Caesar's spirit,
And not dismember Caesar! But, alas,
Caesar must bleed for it ....
Let's kill him boldly, but not wrathfully;
Let's carve him as a dish fit for the gods,
Not hew him as a carcass fit for the hounds.
(II. i. 166-74)

Belief in a blood-free spirit reflects the falsity which clings to Brutus's value-
system as a whole — a sham to cover up self-delusion, for spirit cannot be killed
except by spilling blood, and not even after that as is conceded by Brutus in the
very next breath. And looking upon shedding of blood as a sacrificial or
sacramental ritual further confirms a kind of wool-gathering on his part. Ironically
enough and as if to throw his fallacious logic into his teeth the bloodshed is
effected and yet Caesar's spirit continues to range wide, clamouring to be avenged
and appeased, in the later half of the play and ultimately comes to haunt Brutus
disconcertingly both at Sardis and Phillipi. Brutus is not very much unnerved by it
in the first instance but at long last perceives the ineluctable fact that Caesar's
ghost is a presentiment of the livingness of his spirit and Brutus to be vanquished
by it. Not ethical finesse but a sort of verbal trifling is betrayed in distinguishing
between carving him as 'a dish fit for the gods' and hewing him as 'a carcass fit
for the hounds'. Brutus's dilemma stems from the fact that this kind of
dissociation between the personal and the impersonal implied and insisted on here
is not in consonance with the facts of experience. Human actions and their
psychological stimuli never exist in perfect isolation; they are, on the contrary,
intermeshed and human behaviour represents, therefore, a strange amalgam of
contrary impulsions. After the murder of Julius Caesar has been effected, Brutus,
feeling somewhat accountable to Antony, indulges in this rather unsure posture of
self-defence:

Our hearts you see not; they are pitiful;

 197

And pity to the general wrong of Rome —

As fire drives out fire, so pity pity —
Hath done this deed on Caesar.
(III. i. 169-72)

Here Caesar is again looked upon as the source of evil and injury to Rome and
hence his violent and forcible elimination is justified on the plea that the
opposition in the world may effectively be countered by the world's own
weapons. Further, while talking to the enraged horde of plebeians he tries to
exonerate himself of his crime thus: 'If then that friend demand why Brutus rose
against Caesar, this is my answer: Not that I loved Caesear less, but that I loved
Rome more', (III. Ii. 20-23). Here he seems to be faced with the difficult moral
choice between two different kinds of loyalties — both equally valid and equally
compelling. Still later, while engaged in the crucial quarrel scene, in a bout of
recrimination and counter recrimination — the tempers being ruffled on both
sides—he harks back to the same motif thus:

Did not great Julius bleed for justice' sake?

What villain touch'd his body, that did stab,
And not for justice?
(IV. iii. 19-21)
All this, however, stands invalidated, strangely enough, by what Brutus says, after
the callous stabbing of Caesar has resulted in the major catastrophe of the play,
apropos of his proposing to the conspirators that they join in the ghastly,
ritualistic action thus:

Stoop, Romans, stoop,

And let us bathe our hands in Caesar's blood
Up to the elbows, and besmear our swords;
Then walk we forth, even to the market-place,
And waving our red weapons over our heads,
Let's all cry, 'Peace, Freedom, and Liberty'!
(III. i. 105-110)
'Let us bathe our hands in Caesar's blood' sounds like a bizarre confirmation of
Calphurnia's anticipatory dream. Here Brutus not only reinforces the sacrificial
motif but also adds the jingoistic cry of libertarian sentiment thus: 'Peace,
198

Freedom, and Liberty' which makes an instantaneous hysterical impact on mob

emotion. But Antony, moved by irrepressible anger, exposes, with serpent speed
of irony and by repetition of image and symbol, the sacrificial ritualism of Brutus
for the imposture that it is in an exceptionally virulent outburst thus:

Villains! You did not so when your vile daggers

Hack'd one another in the sides of Caesar:
You show'd your teeth like apes, and favvn'd like hounds
And bow'd like bondmen, kissing Caesar's feet;
Whilst damned Casca, like a cur, behind
Struck Caesar on the neck.
(V. i. 39-44)

It was pointed out earlier that Cassius is set up as a foil to Brutus: the former is a
much more shrewd judge of men and the odd and tricky situations created by
political life around us. Brutus swears by and invokes some sort of vague political
and ethical idealism to whose intricacies he is, however, pathetically blind and
this prevents him from being pragmatic and thus he keeps on falling into one
pitfall after another. He was patently wrong in trusting the 'gamesome' Antony
and sparing his life while Caesar's assassination had been decided upon, on the
untenable ground that as a mere limb of Caesar's body he could do little harm to
the cause of the conspirators. That debonair trickster who, unlike himself, 'loves
much company' will, according to Brutus's own misjudgment, laugh at the whole
bloody business and stage it to the relish and amusement of the threatre-goers.
Owing to studied miscalculation he permits Antony to take away Caesar's dead
body to the market-place and deliver the funeral oration there, little suspecting
how tremendously could he use his power of artful persuasion (and this brings
their conspiracy to utter ruin), ride along the crest of popular upsurge, convert
every single point made with meticulous care by Brutus earlier to their
disadvantage and roundly put him in the wrong. It is impossible, therefore, to give
him credit for 'political shrewdness and practical wisdom' as Ernest Schanzer is
inclined to do.49
 199

Having full mastery over theatrical rhetoric and being both audacious and
circumspect Antony uses his forensic training as instrument for bringing the truth
of Caesar's murder to the light of day5° and thus succeeds in turning the
credulous, naïve and bewildered Roman populace into a frenzied and viperous
hydra-headed monster. Not a wassailor like Antony, Brutus is determined to be
'calm, resolute and contained', believes in making Euclidean propositions with
mathematical precision and accuracy, speaks lucidly and from the centre of
conscious rectitude. Antony, on the contrary, makes the warp and woof of his
oratorical fabric out of simple, malleable emotions, is neither fanatical nor
partisan but is certainly warm-hearted, alert and keen-eyed and inspite of his
disclaimer: Tor I have neither wit, nor words, nor worth,/Action, nor utterance,
nor the power of speech/To stir men's blood; (III. ii. 223-25) has an undoubted
edge over Brutus in the matter of public declamation. He is a master of polemics
and every single word of his harangue is measured to the volatile temperament of
his listeners whom he can afford to mesmerize even with the resonance of his
voice. A born opportunist and a perfect demagogue he exploits to the maximum
every nuance of feeling within his access and exposes every loophole in the
situation at the funeral and thus turns the corner against his opponents. Brutus's
preoccupation with the abstraction 'honour' is used by Antony as a lethal weapon
which is made to recoil upon him, bringing discredit to him in the eyes of the
plebeians and the charge of 'ambition' leveled against Caesar is not only rebutted
with dexterity, but replaced with its polar opposite — 'magnanimity' — as the
dominant trait of his personality. Brutus makes another tactical error of
surrendering the mountainous vantage-point and deciding, against the better
judgment of Cassius, to meet the enemy on their own ground at Phillipi. His
attenuated logic, masquerading as a trick of facile rhetoric, offers a sharp contrast
to the bouncing energy, the aliveness and the rhythmical patterning of Antony's
oration:

There is a tide in the affairs of men,

Which taken at the flood, leads on to fortune;
200

Omitted, all the voyage of their life

Is bound in shallows and in miseries,
(IV. iii. 217-20)

While Antony gives the impression of being a seasoned orator, the urbane, soft-
voiced but humourless Brutus seems to have only a thin streak of histrionic
talents, creates only a debilitating effect and establishes a comparatively weaker
rapport with the audience. The last tragic one in a series of blunders was to give a
false and early alarm and anticipate defeat at the hands of his opponents though
the chances of success on either side till that moment were evenly balanced.

Some grain of truth lurks in the resounding tribute paid to Brutus by his
formidable rival Antony when the latter, in a spontaneous effusion, comes out
unreservedly thus:

All the conspirators save only he

Did, that they did in envy of great Caesar;
He only, in a general honest thought
And common good to all, made one of them
(V. v. 69-72)

Here it is conceded that Brutus supported the rebels not 'in envy of great Caesar'
but because the impulse for 'a general honest thought' and common good to all'
weighed preponderately with him. In other words, his inherent and personal
nobility was embarrassingly surrounded by envy and malice on all sides. Earlier,
in a gesture of self-justification, he had told the plebeians: 'if then that friend
demand why Brutus rose against Caesar, this is my answer; not that I loved Caesar
less but that I loved Rome more' (III. ii. 20-23). Brutus's self-division thus seems
to derive ostensibly from the fact that in him love for Caesar, however one-sided
an affair (it looks like a fluid contact, more in the nature of friendship and less
energetic than love) may have coexisted with his fervently avowed dedication to
Rome , however ill-defined and flexible that motivation be. He thus lives in a
dichotomous world, poised delicately over difficult options. It is this ambivalence
which constitutes the inner mystery of the play whereas the outer mystery is
 201

tantamount to the talismanic Ides of March notion, the conflicting constructions

put on Calphumia's fantastic dream, on the eve of the investiture ceremony, by
Decius and her own self and the whole phenomenon of supernature in which, the
play is steeped. Taking a rigorously moralistic stance Dante consigns Brutus,
though, along with Judas the Iscariot and Cassius, to the lowest ring of the circle
in Hell (Canto XXXIV) for the great betrayal of Caesar, for having him
mercilessly butchered by the conspirators, adding the final stroke himself. More
ponderable, however, than ambivalence or conflict is the overwhelming sense of
desolation and ennui which for Brutus clings to the very basis of existence and is
so pervasive in the play. We get an early intimation of it in the colloquy between
Brutus and Casca:

Bru. That we shall die, we know; 'tis but the time

And drawing days out, that men stand upon.
Casca. Why, he that cuts off twenty years of life
Cuts off so many years of fearing death.
(III. i. 99-102)

and in Tor Cassius in aweary of the world' and its shadow begins to lengthen as
we proceed further. Not only do the conspirators grow steadily conscious of torpor
and of resigned defeat, of the rootedness of the Caesar idea and of the
insubstantiality of their dreams but also of the incomprehension of the human
dilemma — the sense of the earth becoming a 'sterile promontory' as Hamlet felt
it in the dryness of his soul. Brutus, being of a speculative cast of mind and having
had a larger share of inner integrity, the film of illusion and fake optimism falls
off his eyes more quickly, effecting a greater subdual of spirits than is the case
with any one of his confederates — the coterie of arch-villains. He cannot get
away from the consciousness of an abysmal dwindling of life within himself, of
the curtailment of the sources of energy that feed life in its varied manifestations.
He finds it difficult to disentangle the heterogeneity of emotions by which he is
impelled simultaneously, to make sense of the welter of discordant impulses and
is obsessed by the painful realization that what he had struggled for and allowed
himself to suffer as an idealist (or an accomplice in the sordid machinations of the
202

conspirators?) had been brought to utter nothingness. His frustariton springs from
the sense of futility: the revolution planned by the conspirators against
imperialism has resulted only in unleashing the forces of chaos and oppression.
'He realizes at last that he has brought down on Rome in hundred-fold measure
the very spirit to exorcize which he sold his soul to the conspiracy'.51 Both the
heaven and the earth are therefore, swamped for him in a kind of ennui and his
soul 'transpires at very pore' with its sickening and depressing odour. He has all
along been bolstered by the tenuous concept of 'the general good' and has,
paradoxically, a more pronounced and distinct feeling of what Eliot in Burnt
Norton terms as 'desiccation of the world of sense' or of desolation and emptiness
emanating from what he has brought on himself as well as caused to others bound
to him by intricate and devious channels of sympathy: to Portia, Cassius, Casca
and above all to Caesar. Not so much the sense of the engima of life as the sense
of futility following the failure of the revolution is what pervades his entire being.
He is even more sensitive than Cassius because he cannot escape the
consciousness of isolation from 'the organic, generative power of the kinetic.'

0, that a man might know

The end of this day's business ere it come!
But it sufficeth that the day will end,
And then the end is known.
(V. i. 123-26)

He speaks with a real feel of angst and withering sense of the impending doom
thus: 'Night hangs upon mine eyes; my bones would rest,/That have but labour'd
to attain this hour' (V. v. 41-42). He thus remains poised over the void in Existenz
till such time as he 'makes his quietus' with a 'bare 'bodkin.'
 203

References

44. All quotations are from Julius Caesar ed.. T.S. Dorsch. The Arden Shakespeare,
(London, 1964).
45. Derek Traversi, An Approach to Shakespeare, London, 19669, Vol. 2, P. 192.
46. William R. Bowden "The mind of Brutus" in Shakespeare Quarterly, Vol. XII, No. I,
1966, p. 63.
47. William R. Bowden, O. cit.
48. Herold C. Goddard, The Meaning of Shakespeare, University of Chicago Press, 1951,
Vol. I, p. 311
49. Ernest Schanzer; The Tragedy of Shakespeare's Brutus in ELH Vol. 22, No. I, 1925, p. 1
50. Derek Traversi, op. cit, p. 200.
51. Harold C. Goddard, op. cit, p. 329.
 CHAPTER 12
Coriolanus — The Roots Of Alienation

On the face of it Coriolanus is built up around the conflicting attitudes of

the two major political factions, each of which is wedded unflinchingly to its own
ideals and has evolved its own strategy of operation. These may be identified as
the patricians, including Coriolanus — sullen and aristocratic by temperament, a
mighty and peerless soldier by training, one who had received seven wounds in
the repulse of Tarquin — and the plebeians. The latter are represented by the two
Roman tribunes — Brutus and Sicinius — who stand out conspicuously in the
hierarchical polity of Rome, uphold the popular cause and are entirely
unscrupulous in their manoeuvrings. The rivalry between the two factions and the
clash of interests generated on that account is paralleled with the larger and more
deeply ingrained antagonism between the Romans and the Volscians. The ancient
and implacable hatred between citizens of the two states had been brewing for
long and Coriolanus who had distinguished himself by imposing a crushing defeat
upon the Volscians earned for himself the enviable title which signified both the
skill and the prowess displayed by him on the battlefield. What may be termed
`Romannness'; is more or less to be equated with the rigidity and consequential
incommunicability that characterises the dynamics of the model of the Roman
State. The grievance that is voiced by the plebeians relates to their not getting corn
gratis to which they lay a perfectly legitimate claim according to their own lights.
This reflects, as openly alleged by them, not only cupidity and selfishness but also
heartless apathy exhibited by the patricians, and it is not drought but they who are
responsible for their miserable plight. 'What authority surfeits on would relieve
us. If they would yield us but the superfluity, while it were wholesome, we might
guess they relieved us humanely; but they think we are too dear: the leanness that
206

afflicts us, the object of our misery, is an Inventory to particularize their

abundance; our sufferance is a gain to them.' (I. i. 15-21).52 The logic appears to
be seamless: everything is made to turn upon yielding the superfluity and the
denial of it is the source of abundance for the already prosperous class.

Though unlettered and volatile the plebeians do have some dim awareness
of the nexus of relationship that binds them to the body-politic. And yet they are
likely to be swayed by whoever is able to exploit and mislead them for achieving
his own objectives. In the fable of the belly, derived from Plutarch and serving as
an archetype for the 1607 Midlands riots over food and prices, she is accused of
being cormorant and therefore rapacious. This is calculated to demonstrate the
fact that its functioning as a concordant organic whole depends largely upon the
self-discipline and harmony that obtains among its constituent elements. The belly
enjoys a privileged position indeed but only to the extent of safeguarding the well-
being of its component parts and this obviously entails a heavy responsibility
upon it. Menenius, who worships his own god, and is astute and garrulous at the
same time, puts the whole thing shrewdly and with enough good grace thus:
The senators of Rome are this good belly,
And you the mutinous members: for, examine —
Their counsels and their cares digest things rightly
Touching the weal o' the common: You shall find
No public benefit which you receive
But it proceeds or comes from them to you
And no way from yourselves!
(I. i. 147-53)

The curiosity of the listeners is at long last satisfied when Menenius offers them
the explicit and unambiguous equation between the belly and the senators on the
one hand and the 'mutinous members' and the common people on the other. Here
not only is the principle of 'creative mutuality' underlined but also the
macrocosm-microcosm correspondence hinted at, and the fact of the plebeians'
utter dependence upon their superiors is accepted as incontrovertible. But this
does not seem to cut much ice with the plebeians, for they are engrossed in their
 207

own petty interests and their minds are made to circle round the same point over
and over again.

Coriolanus's besetting sins are presumed to comprise 'iron-hearted' pride,

bragging, self-willed isolation and an inflexibility of attitude which verges on
intransigence. His is the integrity of a natural leader to a self-constructed ethic
which excludes participation of and responsibility to the common people. To
Menenius's query: 'In what enormity is Marcius poor in that you two have not in
abundance?' the two tribunes respond thus:

Brutus. He's poor in no one fault, but stored with al,

Siciniu. Especially in pride.
Brutus. And topping all others in boasting.
(II. i. 17-19)
An earlier interchange between the two of them puts the matter more vividly
though not so succinctly:
Brutus. Being mov'd, he will not spare to gird the gods.
Sicinius. Bemock the modest moon.
Brutus. The present wars devour him; he is grown too proud to be so
valiant.
Sicinius. Such a nature,
Tickled with good success, disdains the shadow
Which he treads on at noon. But I do wonder
His insolence can brook to be commanded
Under Cominius
(I. i. 255-62)

Coriolanus is referred to invariably as 'noble' in different contexts, and this is

very well borne out by the facts of the situation, but this nobility becomes
shadowed and slurred over. He has grown up under the impact of the towering
personality of Volumnia who is more or less a monster: she is characterised by a
ruthlessness of will, a rapacity of the ego. She loves her son intensely and
therefore wishes to cast him into the iron mould of her own making and choice. It
may, however, be conceded that though Coriolanus is contemptuous of the
common people, is repelled by their untidiness, their 'stinking breaths' and their
anarchic and unstable temper — he calls them `wollen vassals' and 'multiplying
208

spawn' — yet he is not altogether devoid of the spirit of comraderie which he

shares with them. When he is about to undertake the onslaught on the Volscians
he addresses them in this ambivalent manner:
If any such be here—
As it were sin to doubt — that love this painting
Wherein you see me smear'd; if any fear
Lesser his person than an ill report;
If any think brave death outweighs bad life,
And that his country's dearer than himself;
Let him, alone , or so many so minded,
wave thus, to express his disposition,
And follow Martins.
(I. vi. 68-75)
The undertone of self-righteousness is carried further when he speaks to Lartius in
this largely flaunting way:
I have done as you have done; that's what I can;
Induc'd as you have been; that's for my country;
He that has but effected his good will
Hath overta'en mine act.
(I. ix. 16-19)

On the contrary, the attempt at self-depreciation in another context is forced to

purview in a rather brusque manner thus:

I had rather have one scratch my head i' the sun

When the alarum were struck than idly sit
To hear my nothings monster'd
(II. ii. 74-6)

The very fact that Cariolanus fought her wars for Rome against the
Volscians — their inveterate enemies — and gave them absolutely no quarter is
enough to prove his credentials beyond any legitimacy of doubt. The tremendous
ovation he receives from his own people provides on the one hand the testimony
to his intrinsic worth and, on the other, it helps us measure the depth and intensity
of the popular upsurge in his behalf. Reporting the common speculation that
 209

Cariolanus might be rewarded for his military exploits by being elected consul
one of the messengers cannot help commenting on it to this effect:

I have seen the dumb men throng to see him, and

The blind to hear him speak; matrons flung gloves,
Ladies and maids their scarfs and handkerchers
Upon him as he pass'd ; the nobles bended,
As to Jove's statue, and the commons made
A shower and thunder with their caps and shouts;
I never saw the like.
(II. i. 256-62)

The fervour of the beholders for this supposed demi-god is conveyed in terms of
the amalgamation of the contradictory impacts of the various sense-organs. At a
later stage when Coriolanus is in the midst of the Volscians and is bent upon
wreaking vengeance against Rome and his countrymen by attacking them because
they had banished him disgracefully he is reported by Cominius to be acclaimed
with no less enthusiasm conveyed through the medium of a violent physical
impact:

He is their god: he leads them like a thing

Made by some other deity than Nature,
That shapes man better; and they follow him,
Against us brats, with no less confidence
Than boys pursuing summer butterflies,
Or butchers killing flies.
(IV. vi. 90-6)

These two pictures set side by side emphasize the hypnotic appeal that Coriolanus
had for the common people because of his dauntless courage, his capacity for
taking risks (as evidenced by his entrance into the enemy's gates and being shut
up unexpectedly) and his unswerving attachment to whatever cause he espoused.

Coriolanus, like Othello, wears the garland of war as his most distinctive
insignia. Throughout the play he is visualized in the image of the epic heroes of
antiquity, and Mars is the chief emblematic figure used for highlighting his
indomitable strength, his fighting manhood and his stern defiance of shunless
210

destiny'. After his military campaigns are temporarily suspended he is painted

thus in retrospect by Menenius:

As weeds before
A vessel under sail, 'so men obey'd,
And fell below his stem: his sword, death's stamp,
Where it did mark, it took; from face to foot
He was a thing of blood, whose every motion
Was tim'd with dying cries: alone he enter'd
The mortal gate of the city, which he painted
With shunless destiny; aidless came off,
And with a sudden re-enforcement struck
Corioli like a planet.
(II. ii. 104-13)

Here Coriolanus, the 'flower of warriors' is identified with 'Death that dark spirit,
that in's nervy arm doth lie'— a terrible nihilistic power that mows down
everything that crosses his path. All the images used in this description are loaded
with articulate energy and Coriolanus seems to oppose all that obstructs him with
an irresistible thrust. A sense of apocalyptic doom appears to overhang the earth
on which he treads and which he commands. It should however not be forgotten
that Coriolanus is what Volumnia has made of him: she is the only source of
power which he understands and obeys instinctively. The two motifs of war and
honour were implanted early in him by his mother, and glory and danger were
twinned together into the pattern of his mind. 'When yet he was but tender-bodied
and the only son of my womb, when youth with comeliness plucked all gaze his
way, when for a day of kings' entreaties a mother should not sell him an hour
from her beholding, I, considering how honour would become such a person, that
it was no better than picture-like to hang by the wall, if renown made it not stir,
was pleased to let him seek danger where he was like to find fame. To a cruel war
I sent him; from hence he returned, his brows bound with ah oak' (I. iii. 5-15). To
her he is the flamboyant hero, the quintessential man of iron, the embodiment of
virility (the sexual innuendos of this passage are too apparent to be missed), and to
this ideal of fashioning him she had dedicated herself relentlessly. He is her
 211

creature in all respects: it is Volumnia who turned him into a demonic force,
nourished the roots of his arrogance on the one hand and prevented him from
attaining independent manhood on the other. This is borne witness to by the First
Citizen who makes a very perceptive comment in this respect thus: 'I say unto
you, what he hath done famously, he did it to that end: though soft-conscienced
men can be content to say it was for his country, he did it to please his mother,
and to be partly proud; which he is, even to the altitude of his virute', (I. i. 34-9).
It would be delightful to keep spotlit in mind Valeria's vignette of Coriolanus's
son which may be juxtaposed with what Vokunnia had said about her own son:
'0' my troth, I looked upon him o' Wednesday half an hour together: he has such
a confirmed countenance. I saw him run after a gilded butterfly; and when he
caught it, he let it go again; and after I again; and over and over he comes, and up
again; catched it again; or whether his fall enraged him, or how 't was, he did so
set his teeth and tear it; 0! I warrant, how he mammocked it.' (I, iii, 59-66). In
this violent and sadistic butterfly chase are reflected the attitudes and disposition
of Coriolanus with such transparency as if the son is only a 'miniature variant' of
the bloodthirsty father. It offers a revelation of the father in all his pertinacity, his
grim pursuit of power and his unmitigated infliction of pain on the object of his
anger. 'This little incident', says Wilson Knight, 'reflects well Coriolanus's
merciless power, his unpitying condemnation of the weak, his violent self-will:
above all, his quality of strength misused.'53

One marginal aspect of Coriolanus's selflessness is evidenced by the fact

that he is prepared to share the booty acquired after the victory over the Volscians
with everybody else and not withholding anything for himself alone. His oddity or
his characteristic self-assertiveness is however brought out when he says: 'I had
rather be their servant in my way/Than sway with them in theirs'. (II. i. 198-9).
Coriolanus's attitudes are not complex but contradictory and far from being
indeterminate : the people around him, especially the tribunes, know how he
would respond to certain critical stimuli. He is an odd mixture of liberality and
narrowness, of an exaggerated sense of honour and of puerility. His aristocratic
212

and sullen pride, his priggishness and his bloated self-importance prevent him
from parading his merits before the common people. He very much covets the
office inwardly and yet he is most likely to flame into revolt if he is asked to
prostrate himself before them. When the fit of passion is on him he overlooks the
necessity of restraining himself even if the prospect of winning the consulship
were dangling in front of him. He is very much averse to standing in the market-
place and coaxing the plebeians to confer honour and distinction upon him. He
therefore insists that the ritual of advertising his wounds in public might be done
away with and he be allowed to escape this opprobrium. His ironical response to
what is expected of him is formulated thus: `I will, sir, flatter my sworn brother
the people, to earn a dearer estimation of them; 'tis a condition they account
gentle: and since the wisdom of their choice is rather to have my hat than my
heart, I will practise the insinuating nod, and be off to them most counterfeitly;
that is, sir, I will counterfeit the bewitchment of some popular man, and give it
bountifully to the desirers (II, iii, 94-101). This Falstaffian notion of
`counterfeiting' with which Coriolanus's mind is dizzied is symptomatic of his
psychological incoherence at the moment. He ridicules the temptation to falsify
himself and would like to transfer it to any popular pedagogue who may play the
second fiddle to a blindly indulgent and credulous audience. His own incapacity
for striking such a posture is dwelt upon again and again. He continues in almost
the same vein when, with the entrance of three more citizens, the chain of his
monologue is broken thus:

Here come more voices.

Your voices: for your voices I have fought;
Watch' d for your voices; for your voices bear
Of wounds two dozen odd; battles thrice six
I have seen and heard of; for your voices have
Done many things, some less, some more; your voice?
Indeed, I would be consul.
(II. iii. 124-30)
 213

For purposes of getting the proposal for consulship confirmed in his favour
Coriolanus has of necessity to secure the full consent of the plebeians passing
through the market-place in twos and threes. Hence this sort of harping on the
word 'voices' (synonymous with votes in the Elizabethan usage), gradually
modulating itself into a terrible crescendo, betrays the inner revulsion he has been
feeling all along against any canon which required him to humiliate himself in the
presence of the commoners. This crescendo is reminiscent, in an earlier context,
of the exercise of the arithmetic of wounds done by Volumnia with remarkable
felicity and hardly concealed gusto. To cap it all is the concentrated irony which
explodes towards the very end with the simple, unadorned and yet effective
utterance: 'Indeed, I would be consul.'

Apparently, the play is centred round the polemics pertaining to the rights
and privileges of the common people, the nature of sovereignty and the rule of
thumb allegedly exercised by the patricians. Tensions are naturally built up when
opposite forces collide against one another and result in a sterile and unresolved
conflict. The plebeians had been persuaded by the tribunes to the effect that all
their special privileges had been withdrawn and violently curbed by Coriolanus
and the patricians who were in league with him. They had thus been deprived of
their paramount importance in the oligarchy established by their oppressors and
reduced to mere impotence. Coriolanus's counter logic — free corn could be
offered to the plebeians only as a reward for military service — however rests on
the following premises:

Being press'd to the war,

Even when the navel of the state was touch'd
They would not thread the gates: this kind of service
Did not deserve corn gratis. Being I' the war,
Their mutinies and revolts, Wherein they show' d
Most valour, spoke not for them.
(III. i. 121-6)
214

The obvious and well-defined polarization between the plebelians and the
patricians — and Coriolanus'sf sympathies are doubtlessly tilted towards the latter
— is formulated by him in this laconic maner:

This double worship,

Where one part does disdain with cause, the other
Insult without all reason; where gentry, title, wisdom,
Cannot conclude, but by the yea and no
Of general ignorance — it must omit
Real necessities, and give way the while
To unstable slightness; purpose so barr'd, it follows
Nothing is done to purpose.
(III. i. 141-8)

This reflects an honest and objective evaluation of the party position on the one
hand and of the process is involving, what L.C. Knights calls, 'thwarting and
stultification'54 on the other; and the body-politic is engulfed into an utter chaos as
an ineluctable consequence of it. While the tribunes are motivated by deep-seated
animosity and political crookedness and opportunism, the plebeians are voracious,
fickle-minded and untrustworthy. They are neither capable of a precise and
accurate understanding of the tangle of issues involved nor do they possess any
sagacity or stability of approach. The Third Citizen paints their mercurial temper
with great urbanity and sense of humour, though not necessarily with full
awareness of the implications of his comment : 'not that our heads are some
brown, some black, some abram, some bald, but that our wits are so diversely
coloured: and truly I think, if all our wits were to issue out of one skull, they
would fly east, west, north, south; and their consent of one direct way should be at
once to all the points o' the compass' (II. iii. 17-23). They are likely to be led by
their noses and follow their superiors blindfold because left to themselves they
may go off the tangent altogether. In this context Brutus and Sicinius play a very
sinister role in inciting them against Coriolanus for whom the plebeians feel an
animal hatred. The tribunes make capital out of it and they are also shrewd enough
to anticipate what his reflex action in a particular situation would be if he were
provoked on a sensitive point. Attention is focused by them not only on his over-
 215

weening pride but also on the nausea Coriolanus feels for the common people, and
the fact of his combining in himself both generosity and hard inflexibility in
varying proportions is also exploited fully. The plebeians are pitiably lacking in
discrimination and critical judgment; they are coarse-grained and offensive and
have an itch for irrationality which may be sparked off on the slightest pretext.
They are likely to applaud and revile Coriolanus at the same time and their
reactions against him oscillate between the two poles of adoration and attack.
They don't seem to have any scruples either and swing in different direction in
accordance with the change in the political weather.

Inspite of the obvious political overtones, Coriolanus may, with greater

adequacy, be approached not in terms of the stakes run into by the two faction in a
constricted and abrasive society but in those of the tragic experience involved in
the very structure of the play. The protagonist lives both in a repressive society
and in familial bonds which have a tendency towards the freezing of sympathies.
He keeps himself disdainfully aloof and barricaded from the common people and
relishes the cultivation of his egotism. Despite indulging in occasional bouts of
frenzy he was initially generous and well-meaning but he found it progressively
embarrassing to communicate with the outside world and thus became alienated.
His inherent instinct for domination, his bias towards self-righteousness and his
love for absoluteness leave no areas of tolerance. Volumnia feeds his child-like
petulance and it is further accentuated by Menenius who functions as a father
figure. Coriolanus must have things engineered and executed according to his own
whim and calculation and need on no account be opposed or resisted. Between
him and the plebeians there seems to have occurred a complete breakdown of
communication and a 'sense of frigidity' surrounds the universe inhabited by the
shadowy and melancholy figure of Virgilia and himself. Coriolanus is both
generous and petty, affectionate and bitter and little by little he is driven to
stiffness and inflexibility as the gulf between him and the masses is made to
widen by the machinations and sophistry of the two demagogic tribunes. It may be
added that the plebeians, as individuals, behave not only sensibly but allow him
216

enough latitude and recognize Coriolanus's merit with spontaneous and genuine
exuberance. Their minimum requirement is that they be treated with
considerateness so that when Coriolanus enquires rather condescendingly and
shabbily about 'the price o' the consulship' the First Citizen is quick to respond:
'The price is, to ask it kindly'. (II. iii. 74). As a group however their psychology
undergoes a radical change; they are deflected from the usual norm and begin to
behave as a real 'hydraheaded' multitude; they become pugnacious, short-sighted
and vindictive and feel like descending upon Coriolanus with a hawk-like
ferocity. Coriolanus's incapacity for using measured and judicious language is
accounted for by Menenius thus

Consider this; he has been bred i' the wars

Since he could draw a sword, and is ill-school'd
In bolted language; meal and bran together
He throws without distinction.
(III. i. 318-21)

There is some grain of truth in what Brutus says regarding him: `You speak o' the
people,/ As if you were a god to punish, not/A man of their infirmity' (III, i, 79-
81). Nevertheless his rightful honesty is not something to be trifled with ; it is
above board and he is absolutely incorruptible. In the handsome tribute paid him
by Menenius every single virtue is given its rightful place in the broad spectrum
of his personality:

His nature is too noble for the world:

He would not flatter Neptune for his trident,
Or Jove for's power to thunder. His heart's his mouth:
What his breast forges, that his tongue must vent;
And, being angry, does forget that ever
He heard the name of death.
(III. i. 254-9)

Coriolanus, like Timon, does fall into a violent spasm of wrath but only when his
impeccable integrity is maliciously and wantonly questioned, and this opens a
wound that continues to fester in his heart unabated. To effect this the plebeians
are hoodwinked by the casuistry and the forensic power of Brutus and Sicinius.
 217

Both of them incite the plebeians against him, persuade them to take back their
approbation of his consulship and make them insinuate to Coriolanus that they
had been prompted in their choice not voluntarily but by the considered and
mature judgment of the tribunes which had been foisted upon them, Sicinius very
cunningly and surreptitiously formulates for them the premises of their arguments
thus:

Say, you chose him

More after our commandment than as guided
By your own true affections; and that, your minds.
Pre-occupied with what you rather must do
Than what you should, made you against the grain
To voice him consul: lay the fault on us.
(II. iii. 228-33)

It is a very clever strategy employed not so much for making his own opposition
to Coriolanus crystal clear as also for emphasizing the fact that the plebeians had
supported him unthinkingly and more or less under duress. Hence the withdrawal
of their support of him and the radical revision of their stand later are made to
look amply plausible.

To begin with, Coriolanus had for Rome and the Romans a kind of
lukewarm love allied with a certain degree of incalcitrance, but the facade of love
and tolerance ultimately comes crashing to the ground. Though he could never
persuade himself to adopt vulgar methods of ingratiating himself into the favour
of the people yet he was not altogether impervious to appeals for softness and
clemency. He is brought round by Volumnia and the patricians to put on the
'napless vesture of humility' and humour up the people for the customary
approval of consulship for himself. Before he is treacherously betrayed he gives
expression to his large-heartedness and his positive notion of the wholesomeness
of the state thus:

The honour'd gods

Keep Rome in safety, and the chairs of justice
Supplied with worthy men ! plant love among's !
218

Throng our large temples with the shows of peace.

And not our streets with war!
(III. iii. 33-7)

This undoubtedly betrays the vision of ordered and stable relationships which
might obtain between the individual and the social organism — the wished-for
sense of harmony which remains only a possibility to be explored arid actualized.
We know that Rome is, on the contrary, a city which, like Langland's or Blake's
Babylon, is only a city of darkness and reflects the repressive ethos of the Roman
State. When the outrageous conspiracy hatched against him by Brutus and
Sicinius reaches the boiling-point and Coriolanus is pilloried mercilessly in the
market-place by being accused of treason to his very face the flood-gates of his
impetuosity are thrown open. He indulges in unrestrained vituperation and his
own countrymen are subjected to a devastating torrent of abuse. This is climaxed,
as a reaction, by his being banished from Rome for his apostasy or by his turning
his back upon it and seeking the world elsewhere. After his banishment
materializes no less a person than Sicinius — one of the two arch-conspirators —
offers, in an unanticipated moment of illumination, this eloquent though left-
handed tribute to Coriolanus whom he had consistently and unequivocally hated
from the bottom of his heart:

I would he had continu'd to his country

As he began, and not unknit himself
The noble knot he made.
(IV. ii. 30-2)

The 'noble knot' is doubtless 'the intrinsicate' knot of love with which Coriolanus
was bound to Rome but which was snapped under the unbearable strain of being
branded a 'traitor'. In such a situation the subtle distinction between love for one's
country and hatred for the fellow citizens becomes blurred and is wiped off in the
violent swirl of passion. Coriolanus's journey from love to hate was precipitated
partly because of his characteristically soldierly taciturnity and partly owing to his
utter disregard to compromise his integrity. He can neither put up with flattery and
double-dealing nor practise that sort of expediency which often helps one tide
 219

over a crisis without any qualms of conscience. Volumnia provides us with a rare
insight into the springs of his motivation when she chides Coriolanus by saying:
'You are too absolute;' (III, ii, 39).

It should not be an idle surmise to suggest that the fugitive moment falling
between the ostracism of Coriolanus and his final and irrevocable resolution to
destroy Rome—a moment which by its very nature could not be exteriorized —
was nevertheless invested with deep significance. He did not receive any message
of hope, any hint of reprieve, any gesture of grace either from the tribunes or the
patricians, and his life remained a total vacancy all this while. This moment,
separated from the flux of time, impinged upon him the solitariness of a homeless
exile, his heart hardened and his nerves became corrugated. The blind, intolerable
chaos to which his entire universe was reduced assumed large and uncanny
proportions. This is brought out in the following dialogue Coriolanus holds with
the third servingman before he stumbled upon Aufidius in his palace:

Third Servingman. Where dwell'st thou?

Coriolanus. Under the canopy,
Third Servingman. 'Under the canopy?
Third Servingman. Where's that?
Coriolanus. I' the city of kites and crows.
(IV. v. 40-5)

This is a sort of prism through which is radiated a subdued grotesquerie of vision,

not unlike that of a Lear or a Timon, at a time when the business of life is about to
be wound up and nothing worthwhile is left in the sublunary world to contemplate
over. For a victim of ingratitude like Coriolanus refuge from his harrowing
experiences may be sought in the naked, elemental world where the little birds
may prove very much less predatory and callous than human beings. Later, when
he is still smarting under the obsessive pain of personal injury and is acutely
sensitive to the disheartening phenomenon of betrayal Coriolanus's mind is
gripped by his proposed destruction of Rome as a means of revenging himself
against her. In Antium he aligns himself with Aufidius whose armies enter the
220

Roman territories in one direction and those led by himself in another. While still
obdurately unresponsive to all appeals made by Volumnia and Virgilia to spare
his countrymen he throws into relief his own sense of loneliness and his self-
reliant endurance thus:
Let the Volsces
Plough Rome, and harrow Italy; I'll never
Be such a gosling to obey instinct, but stand
As if a man were author of himself
And knew no other kin.
(V. iii. 33-7)
In other words he renounces his instinctual behaviour and along with it the
familial bonds and now comes to pride himself on his being willfully calculating
though nothing fruitful or constructive may emerge out of it.

Coriolanus hardly outgrows his obstinacy and pride; he is isolated and his
universe in curtained off on all sides. And the irony of it is that the more he abides
by his inviolable integrity the more is he held in condemnation by those who
imagine it to be a grave defect in him. His basic impulses of generosity and tender
shyness are thwarted at every step and he is subject to occasional blazes of
brutality. It has been pointed out that Coriolanus is wanting in that variety of
inwardness which Shakespeare's tragic heroes usually possess. There is no
'elusive heart to [his] mystery which we are defied to pluck out'.55 This may be
accounted for by the fact, though only tentatively, that more than Macbeth or
Othello or Antony, he is really `Belladona's bridegroom'. Hence while Macbeth's
sense of alienation is mediated through the deeply philosophical 'Tomorrow and
tomorrow and tomorrow' soliloquy, Coriolanus's is articulated through an
outward, physical gesture of impatience or stubbornness. His alienation is
therefore situational and belongs to its own distinctive order. Being lured by
Volumnia into meeting the plebeians in a restrained and softened way and avoid
bursting forth into his usual fury of indignation he is addressed by her to the
following effect:
 221

Go to them, with this bonnet in thy hand;

And thus far having strech'd it — here be with them,—
Thy knee bussing the stones,— for in such business
Action is eloquence, and the eyes of the ignorant
More learned than the ears, — waving thy head,
Which, often, thus correcting thy stout heart,
Now humble as the ripest mulberry
That will not hold the handling —
(III. ii. 73-80)
This amounts to persuading him to do a little bit of play-acting and, thus,
inferentially, also accept the state of fragmentation which he feels suspicious of
and abhors. Coriolanus believes that he is surrounded by people who are
disembodied and grotesque figures and lack the wholeness of self. He would like
to preserve his own integrity and wholeness of vision though Volumnia is
imperceptibly inviting him to abandon this effort. 'Action is eloquence' is the key-
phrase here: action may legitimately be replaced by speech or articulation, and
this Coriolanus seems to lack to all intents and purposes. But the fact is that in his
case language functions not through a symbolic medium but on the literal plane,
for he lives habitually in a legalistic or militant world. With him, therefore, the use
of language is disjunctive and not purely or essentially communicative. It is
objectified in behavioural gestures of bodily action and he uses language
emphatically for hurling curses, like Caliban, upon his opponents — 'the
dissentious rogues' — as he calls them.

All this is supplemented with the frightening description of him as given

by Menenius thus: 'and he no more remembers his mother now than an eight-year
old horse. The tartness of his face sours ripe grapes: when he walks, he moves like
an engine, and the ground shrinks before his treading, he is able to pierce a
crosslet with his eye; talks like a knell, and his hum is a battery. He sits in his
state, as a thing made for Alexander. What he bids be done is finished with his
bidding. He wants nothing of a god but eternity and a heaven to throne in'. (V. iv.
16-24). This description links up with the 'thing of blood' passage earlier in as
much as both these evoke the image of brute, repugnant and irredeemable horror.
222

Coriolanus strikes us not as a sentient human being but as a 'huge clanking

machine, terrific and monstrous'. This is reinforced by and reflected in the hard
metallic imagery which is pervasive in the play and this picture also indicates a
complete warping of the fibre of which Coriolanus was perhaps originally
constituted. It is however significant that despite Menenius's secepticism: 'If it be
possible for you to displace it [yond coign o' the Capitol, yond cornerstone] with
your little finger, there is some hope that the ladies of Rome, especially his
mother, may prevail with him' (V. iv. 4-6), it is the 'mole-hill' that does bow
down before 'Olympus', that is, Coriolanus unfreezes and grants reprieve to
Rome. This is tantamount to the fact that his inner integrity is sacrificed at the
altar of the pressure exercised upon him vicariously by the caste-iron mechanism
of the Roman State through Volumnia. She has absorbed into her very marrow a
certain variety of' ethnocentrism' which is being transferred from the mother to
the son. This has also been interpreted as the triumph of love over self-consuming
egotism and Wilson Knight, in particular, waxes very rhapsodic over it.56 The
common man's response, for whom 'the natural wakeful life of the Ego is a
perceiving' (Cf. Eliot's 'The Triumphal March') is reflected in images of unusual
felicity, resonance and magic — something which is at variance with the
emotional blockade of the preceding passages — that mark the ecstatic tone of the
Second Messenger thus:

Ne'er through an arch so hurried the blown tide,

As the recomforted through the gates. Why, hark you !
[Trumpets and hautboys sounded, and drums beaten all together]
The trumpets sackbuts, psalteries and fifes,
Tabors, and cymbals, and the shouting Romans,
Make the sun dance.
(V. iv. 46-9)
This may be identified with what Eliot calls 'A still moment, repose of noon, set
under the upper/Branches of noon's widest tree,(`Difficulties of a Statesman') —
the achievement of the Light Invisible. But true consciousness implies absorption,
through sensory experience, of 'the multiple changing views of the object of
 223

perception', and hence the moment of anguish, following the fugitive and
momentary flicker of hope, caused by the crumbling of the idealistic self of
Coriolanus, and which leaves him an empty husk, may also be taken into
cognizance:

0, my mother! Mother! 0!
You have won a happy victory to Rome;
But for your son — believe it. 0, believe it,
Most dangerously you have with him prevail'd
If not most mortal to him.
(V. iii. 185-9)
This is an outburst which betrays both nobility and pathos whose mainsprings lie
deep down in Coriolanus' inward being. It records a moment which is lengthened
to include the anguish of being called a 'twist of rotten silk' and 'thou boy of
tears' by Aufidius. This last phrase ironically implies a sense of insufficiency
which contradicts the notion of wholeness upon which Coriolanus has prided
himself all along. This in his view has been developed and maintained in the state
of isolation while for those outside the pale of his influence it is allied with the
'shallow chaotic flux of rotten existence'. It registers a shock of bewilderment to
him and causes the biggest flare-up in the course of the action of the play.

When Eliot, towards the conclusion of The Waste Land., says cryptically:
'We think of the key, each in his prison/ Thinking of the key, each confirms a
prison', he is obliquely focusing on the solitary identity which is locked in pride
and can be released only by the exercise of self-surrender and sympathy. Later, in
the two parts of Coriolan, for which the cue was indubitably provided by
Shakespeare's play, Coriolan's self-absorption — an inevitable constituent of his
sense of alienation — is brought out thus:

0 hidden under the dove's wing, hidden in the turtle's breast,

Under the palm-tree at noon, under the running water

At the still point of the turning world. 0 hidden.

224

The Light Invisible is hidden in the temple of Vesta and is associated with the
retention of the sausage or the Eucharist. In the later poem, the haunting
invocation of the 'mother' figure helps establish two things: first. Coriolan's, and
likewise, Coriolanus's agonizing cry over his shattered integrity, and secondly, the
implied insistence on the achievement of a degree of transcendence or emergence
into the half-glimpsed world of 'the still point'. It is this dilemma or agon of the
man round whom Aufidius's soldiers form a cordon and eventually kill him which
has not been sufficiently taken care of by the critics of the play.

References:

52. All quotations are from Coriolanus, edited by B.H Kembak Cook, New Clermdon
Shakespeare (Oxford, 1954).
53. G. Wilson Knight, The Imperial Theme (London, 1931), P. 170.
54. L.C. Knights, Some Shakespearean Themes (London, 1959), p. 151.
55. Michael Goldman, Shakespeare and the Energies of Drama (Princeton, 1972), p. 110.
56. G. Wilson Knight, op. cit., p. 196.
 CHAPTER 13
The Ambivalence of Caliban

To regard The Tempest as primarily a 'Romance' amounts to an

exaggeration of a half-truth only. It has all the background of Arcadia to it, and
the wanderings, the disguises, the remoteness of context, the profusion of incident
and the sense of mystery hovering over the passion between Ferdinand and
Miranda — all these determine the tonal harmonies of the play. Recurrent use of
words like 'dream', 'wonder' and 'sleep' contributes to a pervasive atmosphere
which is other than earthly or mundane. Admittedly 'romance' as an important
motif is very much there and it is reinforced by all the suggestions of the
miraculous. But the romantic and the miraculous are part of a total design and are
subservient to a larger pattern of expectations that the play sets up from the
beginning. Even the mythical theme of restoration from death and ordeal by water
(reverberations of which were presumably caught by Eliot in The Waste Land)
which runs as the groundswell of the play is given weight and relevance through a
full exploration of sin and evil. In other words 'romance' as an instrument of
reconciliation provides only the outer envelope of the play; its real core consists of
an ethical concern of tremendous dimensions. Prospero is the supreme, controlling
power in the desert island where the main action of the play takes place. But
through a quasi-monologue in which Prospero is reminiscing about the past we
are enabled to see in a flash-back how he had been rendered ineffective by the
subtle machinations of his own brother, Antonio. His is the case of the priest-king
or the contemplative imposed upon and driven out and cheated by the man of
action. Consecrating himself to an ideal of perfection he was immersed in the
close study of the liberal arts and the world of books was the true orbit in which
226

'rapt and transported' he moved happily and with a sense of inner fulfilment. He
grew indifferent to his divine right as king and, holding Antonio next only to
Miranda in his affection, built an absolute trust on him. Being invested with full
powers, and helped and abetted by Alonso, the king of Naples and an inveterate
enemy of Prospero, Antonio, went the whole hog in consolidating his own
position and throwing out the rightful duke of Milan. He met the requirements of
his status punctiliously and held the officers of the duchy under his sway with
such firmness that according to Prospero,

now he was
The ivy which had hid my princely trunk,
And suck'd my verdure out on't.5'
(I. ii. 85-87)

The image of the ivy, climbing up the tree-truck stealthily and depriving it of
freshness and vitality little by little, is very precise and luminous. It concretizes
the process through which Antonio managed to creep into the bosom of Prospero
and deprived him, perfidiously, and through a secret alignment with Alonso, of
ducal power and the energy and sustenance he drew from it. Bent upon removing
even the semblance of 'delegation' and seating himself securely in the saddle
Antonio embraced Naples as a ready ally. With calculated designs he bent his
coronet to the crown in return for which Alonso eagerly supported him and
provided ministers for shoving Prospero, along with Miranda, off Milan in 'the
dead of darkness'. This is symbolic of a descent into hell, an irruption of the
paradisal bliss and tranquility which had characterized life in Milan till that
moment. In this Prospero is not the doer but one who is acted upon by others, a
helpless victim of the devouring jealousy and 'ill-weav'd ambition' of his own
brother. The latter's task was facilitated partly by Prospero's lack of sagacity in
worldly matters and the magnanimity with which he had transferred the authority
of the state to Antonio, and partly by the latter's adroit and cunning exploitation of
the situation.
 227

After settling down on the island the perspective changes positively.

Prospero not only sets Ariel free of 'the cloven pine' where he had lain
imprisoned for years by Sycorax, and holds Caliban — the product of the union of
Sycorax and the devil — absolutely under his control, but he is also able to raise
the providential storm which helps him bring all his former enemies to the remote
island: They are landed there so safely, inspite of the ambiguous shipwreck that
'not a hair perished', and as Gonzalo puts it: 'our garments seem now as fresh as
when we were at Tunis at the marriage of your daughter, who is now Queen' (II,
i, 92-94). This Prospero had been able to accomplish as practiser of the white
magic and with the help of his books of secret lore (Caliban anyway thought
Prospero's supernatural powers to he dependent on them) he had been provided
with by the kind-hearted Gonzalo. Prospero now holds the strings of power firmly
in his hands and can dictate his terms to any one and whenever he chooses to.
Antonio, who had already dislodged Prospero with a sleight of hand, now tries to
pour poison into Sebastian's mind and provoke him follow the precedent he
himself had established. Through secret manoeuvring he had succeeded in
depriving Prospero and Miranda of their legitimate right of governance; now
employing all his powers of persuasion to convince Sebastian of Ferdinand's
supposed death he urges him to resolve upon disinheriting Claribel, his sister, who
is married to the king of Tunis. Following Sebastian's final, though demurring,
acceptance of Ferdinand's death and reacting against the premise that Claribel
may be the next heir of Naples, Antonio puts all his rhetorical energy into pooh-
poohing this wild surmise:

She that is Queen of Tunis; she that dwells

Ten leagues beyond man's life; she that from Naples
Can have no note, unless the sun were post,—
The man i'th moon's too slow, — till new-born chins
Be rough and razorable; she that from whom
We all were sea-swallow'd, though some cast again,
And that by destiny, to perform an act
Whereof what's past is prologue; what to come,
In yours and my discharge.
(II. i. 241-48)
228

The sense of vast space between Tunis and Naples, which renders any possibility
of communication ridiculous, is hinted at through the employment of hyperbolical
images. These are woven into the texture of the verse skilfully in order to deepen
the note of bitter cynicism at the expense of Sebastian's naivety. Antonio is
engaged both in exploding this naivety and energizing Sebastian into prompt,
vigorous, precipitate action—a kind of self-assertion against the freaks of chance
or destiny. But before he is fully and finally nerved up Sebastian anticipates the
possibility that the qualms of conscience might deflect him eventually from the
path chosen by their mutual consent. And Antonio's reply, which seeks to lay
down the demon of doubt in Sebastian's mind, is a classic one, for here the
promptings of our moral nature are brushed aside as delusory, meaningless and
irrelevant:

Seb. But for your conscience.

Ant. Ay, sir; where lies that? If t were a kibe,
'T would put me to my slipper: but I feel not
This deity in my bosom; twenty consciences,
That stand `twixt me and Milan, candied be they,
And melt, ere they molest!
(II. i. 270-75)

This temptation scene in The Tempest has all the overtones of what transpires
between Macbeth and Lady Macbeth; — conscience is dismissed as less than a
physical inconvenience which can anyway be removed mechanically and is
denuded of any inner significance. To evacuate his bosom of the presence of 'this
deity' (and the sneering touch is too biting to be missed here) is bound to pave the
way for a cold-blooded murder. All finicky considerations of right and wrong,
which are likely to retard simple, instantaneous action, ought to be given up. They
are evocative of a sense of loathing and disgust in a man who wants to pay off old
scores. And Antonio is not content with merely ridiculing the abstract notion of
conscience or even its emblematized form. Once the futility of all conceptualizing
is taken into account and the mental cobwebs are removed, prompt execution of
what is intended should follow. This proposed violence, forestalled by the timely
 229

intervention of Ariel, is a ghastly repetition and extension of the punishment

which had been inflicted upon Prospero and Miranda when they were forcibly
evicted from the dukedom of Milan. Again, in the one case Prospero was grossly
victimized and was impotent to protect Miranda and himself against aggression; in
the other the murder of Alonso and Gonzalo is prevented through his own
omniscience. In other words, from a state of complete passivity Prospero walks
forward to the status of a prime mover, and looks like the magus of the
Renaissance neo-Platonic tradition.

The theme of ingratitude which is at the centre in King Lear is also

focalized in The Tempest, and Shakespeare plays variations on it in a single
unified pattern. After being cast adrift on the uninhabited island Prospero comes
to be recognized as its indisputable lord and master both by Ariel and Caliban.
The latter, who is a creature of the base elements — earth and water — offers an
antithesis to Ariel who is made of the finer ones — air and fire. Caliban's
pedigree accounts both for his physical features and his moral depravity. He
reminds us of Circe who, in the allegorical fables, turns men into beasts by
subduing their reason to the supremacy of the senses. He is a true picture of
deformity, and the uglier he grows 'so his mind cankers' (IV. i. 191-92). While
Caliban's proclivity towards magic and sorcery, being inherited on his mother's
side, is an exercise of procedures towards profane and evil ends. Prospero's magic
is of a neutral character, capable of being turned to both good and indifferent end
— a kind of theurgy which may sometimes be pressed into the service of religious
ends Prospero is rapt, secretive, unworldly as well as pragmatic, humane and
business-like. He employs Ariel for carrying out his delicate and sometimes
arduous behests and Caliban has to do menial services for him, and the latter is
also subjected, as a compensation, perhaps, to a process of education. He claims
credit for acquainting Prospero with all the beauties and subtleties of the island
which would otherwise have been hidden from the latter's view:

and then I lov'd thee,

And show'd thee all the qualities o' th' isle,
230

The fresh springs, brine-pits, barren place and fertile:

Curs'd be 1 that did so!
(I. ii. 338-41)

On Caliban's own showing it was Prospero who taught him the alphabet — the
first rudiments of knowledge — language which is instrumental in clarifying
vague and inchoate impressions, and thus be in possession of the medium for
naming the objects — 'the bigger light' and 'the less'. It is through language that
thought is provided with an outward vesture and it is in terms of the capacity to
solidify this nebulous mass into precise images that the progress from primitivism
to civilized living may be measured. And Caliban's ingratitude — no less
astounding than that of Antonio — may be gauged by his own rejoinder to
Prospero:
You taught me language; and my profit on't
Is, I know how to curse. The red plague rid you
For learning me your language!
((I. ii. 365-67)
He betrays his sensual impulses when he harbours the evil intention of raping
Miranda—a radiant image of innocent chastity—as alleged against him by
Prospero:
And lodg'd thee
In mine own cell, till thou didst seek to violate
The honour of my child.
(I. ii. 348-50)
The element of brutishness in him is evidenced by the unabashed and unqualified
perfidy of his reply:
0 ho, 0 ho! would 't had been done!
Thou didst prevent me; I had peopled else
This isle with Calibans.
(I. ii. 351-53)
This constitutes an assertion of individuality on Caliban's part and his indulgence
in animal instincts is part of his idea of freedom. And it is no less apparent that
this freedom is passion-directed and leads on to complete nihilism.
 231

Though the bestiality and irreducible earthiness of Caliban has already

been glimpsed at as a necessary datum of his being, yet the way in which he is
exposed to Trinculo's view is worth some attention:

Here's neither bush nor shrub, to bear off any weather at all, and another
storm brewing; I hear it sing i'th' wind, yond same black cloud, yond huge
one, looks like a foul bombard that would shed his liquor. If it should
thunder as it did before , I know not where to hide my head: yond same
black cloud cannot choose but fall by pailfuls. What have we here? A man
or a fish? Dead or alive? A fish: he smells like a fish; a very ancient and
fish-like smell; a kind of, not of the newest Poor-John.
(II. ii. 18-27)

Trinculo is caught in the midst of impending rain and thunder — 'the black cloud'
looking 'like a foul bombard' about to discharge its liquor. He does not know
where to seek shelter against the fury of the elements that press upon him on all
sides. The threat to security is mounting up steadily and there seems to be no
likelihood of the abatement of the fury. While thus feeling miserable and impotent
Trinculo catches a glimpse of Caliban and the context of the lines suggests that he
is indistinguishable from the elements surrounding him. There is something of the
sea-beast about him, a kind of monstrosity, a smack of the submarine life reaching
back to the beginnings of time. He smells like a fish, thus creating an unsavoury
effect, and the suggestion of the primordial life about him arrests our attention all
at once. On closer scrutiny it is revealed that he is legg'd like a man and his fins
like arms', and the palpable warmth exuding from him confirms that he is instinct
with life. And yet this living clod of clay seems to subsist at the lowest level of
sentience. This element of monstrosity — the fact of his being 'a mooncalf — is
thus underlined both in regard to his antecedents and the pattern of relationships in
which he is involved.

Early in the play Miranda refers to Caliban thus:

Abhorred slave,
Which any print of goodness will not take,
Being capable of all ill!
(I. ii. 353-55)
232

And this intuition is further confirmed in a later context by Prospero in almost

identical terms:

A devil, a born devil, on whose nature

Nurture can never stick; on whom my pains,
Humanely taken, all, all lost, quite lost;
(IV. i. 189-90)

Miranda's statement, born of peevishness, is couched in very general terms of

good and evil; she is specific only to the extent of implying that Caliban is
recalcitrant to all those civilizing influences Prospero and herself had been trying
consistently to exercise on him. Part of her peevishness might have been
engendered by the ingenuity and flow of the curses Caliban had been pouring
upon his benefactor, or usurper, according to his own valuation. He is so much
compact of evil that goodness has a precious little chance of penetrating through
this opacity. For Prospero, equally piqued by his intransigence, the criterion of
judgment is the antithesis between nature and nurture. Nature in this context is a
complex idea, implying brute energy, the untamed beast in man, the potential of
unbridled passions, and nurture is the process of imposing a limit upon what is
unbounded and chaotic. It is also possible to conceive of nature as a fallen state —
a state of gracelessness — which can be made good by the process of education or
culture. It may as well be regarded as a condition of primitivism in which man
was involved at the threshold of life and which may be lived through and
transcended. While Miranda only expresses a sense of exasperation at how
Caliban behaves, Prospero, indeed, is the spokesman of a kind of pessimism, for
the unregenerate Nature, symbolized by Caliban, is not likely to undergo any
radical transformation from within. Spenser in The Faerie Queene has been
similarly concerned with the Nature-Grace polarity, for whereas nature implies an
order of living in consonance with the naked human impulsions on the mundane
level, grace connotes a mode of consciousness shaped by the moral and religious
absolutes. In The Tempest the nature-nurture antithesis reflects the rising scale
 233

from the primtitive through the sophisticated to the ultimate; and Caliban seems to
both Prospero and Miranda to frustrate all attempts `to incorporate him into the
new civilized order of moral realities.' 58

Besides Caliban's ignoble designs against Miranda's chastity and his

pouring forth an endless stream of curses on Prospero, his transfer of allegiance
from Prospero to Stephano is rather symptomatic. The two of them represent two
different spectra of values, and there is nothing in common between them. Caliban
is seduced by 'the celestial liquor' to fall under the spell of Stephano's
personality. His hailing of him as 'thou wondrous man' seems to be a travesty of
Miranda's welcome of Ferdinand as 'a thing divine'. Though both are expressive
of an ecstatic response to an idealized figure. This is preceded by a quick
interchange between the two of them thus:
Cal. Hast thou not dropp'd from heaven?
Ste. Out o' the moon, I do assure thee: I was the man i'th' moon when
time was.
Cal. I have seen thee in her, and I do adore thee:
My mistress show'd me thee, and thy dog, and thy bush.
(II. ii. 137-42)

These lines reflect an element of child-like simplicity and the capacity to conjure
up shapes and figures, aided by visionary gleam of perception, conferred upon the
unsophisticated. He is fascinated by Stephano, crowns him king in his own
imagination, swears to be his true subject and his footlicker, and extends his
ambition to the extent of joining him and Trinculo in a foul conspiracy against
Prospero. The prospect of braining Prospero, possessing the 'nonpareil beauty',
Miranda, and becoming the undisputed lord of the secluded retreat is kept
dangling before Stephano by Caliban all the time. The radicality of
destructiveness lying at the back of these designs explains the grandeur of evil
embodied in Caliban, and this picture is complementary to that of the naive
primitive referred to a little earlier. This conspiracy is analogous to the one
hatched by Antonio and Sebastian against the apparently defenceless victim,
234

Alonso. To achieve this objective an alliance is forged between Stephano and

Trinculo — 'the parasites of civilization'59 on the one hand, and Caliban — the
primitive in whom violent and unpurged passions have swamped reason in a
morass — on the other. Caliban resents subservience to Prospero and hankers
after freedom consistently and is deluded into thinking that he will achieve his
long-sought ambition by renouncing tutelage of one kind in favour of another. In
other words, so irksome and humiliating to him are the menial services he has
been subjected to by Prospero so far that he imagines he would be free if he were
accepted as his protégé by Stephano. In return for this he promises: 'I'll show thee
every fertile inch o' th' island' (II, ii, 148), and further

I'll show thee the best springs; I'll pluck thee berries;
I'll fish for thee, and get thee wood enough.
A plague upon the tyrant that I serve!
(II. ii. 160-62)

He had earlier spoken to Prospero in a similar vein (I, ii, 338-341) while leveling
the charge of usurpation against him and giving free scope to his imprecations.
'There is something visionary too about Caliban's feeling for freedom, even if he
is mistaken in supposing that it will lie in serving Stephano.'69 In the first part of
this comment Foakes seems to go quite wide of the mark, for there is nothing
'visionary' about Caliban's aspiration to be set free of the tyrant Prospero. On the
contrary, his aspiration is equivalent to a kind of anti-freedom, and is rooted in the
anarchy of instincts. Prospero and Stephano represent two different categories of
value and Caliban leaves us in no doubt about his order of preferences. By
identifying himself with Stephano he casts himself in his image at least for the
time being.

Prospero's 'filth as thou art' is a strong etching of Caliban's character and

yet inspite of this earthiness as well as a streak of vindictiveness brutality and
beauty are strangely blended in him, and contribute to his essential ambiguity.
Reference was made earlier to the primordial quality of Caliban's life when he is
discovered by Trinculo unawares and in a chance encounter. The moment he
 235

becomes real the evil in him gets blurred and does not remain an absolute evil; it
assumes the attractiveness, almost the spirituality, of the primitive. One of the
stage directions in III, ii, 123 reads thus: Ariel plays the tune on a tabor and pipe,
and this is followed by the ensuing lines:

Ste, What is this same?

Trin. This is the tune of our catch, played by the picture of Nobody.
Ste. If thou beest a man, show thyself in thy likeness; if thou beest a
devil, take't as thou list.
Tn. 0 forgive me my sins!
Ste. He that dies pays all debts: I defy thee. Mercy upon us!
Cal. Art thou afeard?
Ste. No, monster, not I.
(III. ii. 124-32)

It is evident from the above that the responses both of Stephano and Trinculo to
the sweet harmonious sounds flowing from Ariel's tabor are wavering and
indeterminate; they are enmeshed in ambiguities. Both of them are at a loss to say
where they emanate from, alternately imagining them to be produced either by a
man or the devil. The unearthly music of Ariel leaves them in a complete muddle
and their sense of discrimination remains suspended. Stephano, being the cleverer
of the two, more wide-awake and sharp-witted, tries to hoodwink Caliban and
refrains from committing himself anyway. Caliban's reaction, on the contrary, is
more forthright and ingenuous and he seems to be perfectly at home in this island
of strange and beautiful sounds. His imagination — that unique and subtle gift,
that transforming power with which he has been endowed by Shakespeare — is
set ablaze at once and he begins to dream of the unsuspected riches that the clouds
are likely to pour upon him when he is in a state of trance. It is this capacity for
travelling in unrealized worlds at the touch of music and fancy that distinguishes
him from his brazen-faced confederates and brings him near to Ariel:

Be not afeard; the isle is full of noises,

Sounds and sweet airs, that give delight, and hurt not.
Sometimes a thousand swangling instruments
Will hum about mine ears; and sometimes voices,
That, if I then had wak'd after long sleep,
236

Will make me sleep again; and then, in dreaming,

The clouds methought would open, and show riches
Ready to drop upon me; that, when I walc'd,
I cried to dream again.
(III. ii. 133-141)
This continuing sense of wonder, this responsiveness to the shimmering beauty of
sounds and voices and this keen impulse to have the rapturous condition
prolonged is, indeed, amazing and creates a feeling of blessedness. The alternation
between sleep, waking and then sleeping again in order to be visited with dreams
of surpassing beauty confers upon Caliban a unique distinction. He is capable of
following the trail of a visionary gleam and soaring into transcendental regions.
His sensitivity to music is borne out by Ariel himself in a later context thus:

Then I beat my tabor;

At which, like unback'd colts, they prick'd their ears,
Advance'd their eyelids, lifted up their noses
As they smelt music: so I charm'd their ears,
That, calf-like, they my lowing follow'd, through
Tooth'd briers, sharp furzes, pricking goss, and thorns,
Which enter'd their frail shins;
(IV. I. 175-81)

This is apparently in reply to Prospero's query regarding how and where Ariel
found 'these varlets' (Caliban and his confederates) but that the specific reference
is, nevertheless, aimed at Caliban is brought out by Prospero's.

Spirit,
We must prepare to meet with Caliban.
(IV. i. 165-66)

uttered a little earlier in the same context. 'They smelt music' is a clear instance of
synesthesia, and the lines following closely upon this phrase demonstrate their
complete and dazed absorption into the sea of music around them. They seem to
be hypnotized and rendered powerless and the sweet and ravishing airs seem to
penetrate their whole being.
 237

And Caliban is not merely capable of responding to tones and voices but
also has the uncanny flair for pouring forth sophisticated verse as he does when he
speaks to Stephano about the strange hiding-places of beauty in the island:

I prithee, let me bring thee where crabs grow;

And I with my long nails will dig thee pig-nuts;
Show thee a joy's nest, and instruct thee how
To snare the nimble marmoset; I'll bring thee
To clustering filberts, and sometimes I'll get thee
Young scamels from the rock. Wilt thou go with me?
(II. ii. 167-72)

This is poetry elicited from the bowels of the earth when the gleam of the
imagination plays upon it, and it has an exquisite touch of the marvelous upon it.

The process of regeneration in the play begins after the guilt of all
Prospero's former enemies has been laid bare, evaluated and held up to the
Judgment of Destiny. All of them are made to undergo penitence before they are
able to qualify for forgiveness. Alonso, being a little less culpable than others,
begins to have a growing realization that the whole harmony of nature is out to
denounce him for his act of sacrilege against Prospero and Miranda. His
desperation is carried to such an extent that he would rather lie mudded i'th.
ooze' than survive his son with a guilt-laden conscience. Things are set going the
moment Prospero surrenders his status as an adept or illuminatus and proclaims
with the deepest conviction of his soul:

Yet with my nobler reason `gainst my fury

Do I take part: the rarer action is
In virtue than in vengeance:
(V. i. 26-28)

Prospero's utterance is weighted not only with wisdom but also with super-human
detachment and brings into exercise the Christian concept of Caritas which
necessarily follows upon Castitas. And yet Sebastian remains lukewarm and
undecided and Antonio continues to retain his hard and hateful silence. He suffers
from a sense of chagrin and defies any attempt at eradicating his ingrained
238

obduracy. Only the two grotesques — Stephan° and Trinculo — are excluded
from Prospero's final gesture of graciousness as he consigns these two to the care
of Alonso:
Two of these fellows you
Must know and own; this thing of darkness I
Acknowledge mine.
(V. i. 274-76)
The possibility of this acknowledgment had been intuited very early in the play
thus:
But, as 'tis,
We cannot miss him:
(I. ii. 314-15)
And D.G. James comments shrewdly in this context thus: 'and the time will come
when he will say: "this thing of darkness I acknowledge mine"; as St. Agustine in
his Confessions knew well the darkness that was in him, set over against the light
before which he trembled in love and awe.'61 And Foakes also believes that
Caliban externalizes Prospero's own propensity towards evil, and hence his
acceptance of him is the recognition of the subdual of evil within his own self.62

Caliban is ultimately moved to speak very significantly when he says:

and I'll be wise hereafter,

And seek for grace, what a thrice-double ass
Was I, to take this drunkard for a god,
And worship this dull fool!
(V. i. 294-97)
These lines are the fruit of a chastened impulse and mark a clear advance in
perspicacity. The disillusionment that Caliban comes to experience regarding
Stephano and Trinculo is partly caused by a sense of their discomfiture in the face
of Prospero's superior strategy and partly by an instinctive perception that he,
along with them, has been rotating in an endless chain of trivia. But 'darkness' as
defined by James or Foakes is neither peculiar to any extant being (Caliban or
Prospero) or to an ideal validity (humanity in general); it is rather the enchainment
of the self in the confusion of being and existence. An element of bravado is
 239

mingled in Prospero's assertion to acknowledge 'this thing of darkness', for evil

cannot be completely rooted out, one can only hope to struggle for coming to
terms with it and be prepared to face a kind of moral pathos. In fact two different
configurations of evil are evoked by Shakespeare in Antonio and Caliban. In the
former evil operates as an assertion of the empirical self-existence against the
possible being or Existenz. He erects his sheer self-interest into a kind of god and
regards that god as omnipotent; in him we come across the phenomenon of the
absolutizing of pure existence which amounts to nothing but vacuity and negation.
The will that determines his choice is, in Karl Jaspers's pregnant phrase, 'the will
to the void.' Caliban, on the contrary, though no less involved in the shackles of
self-existence, shrouding himself from the clear luminosity of reason and carrying
his naked passion to the point of self-destruction, has implicit in him a spark of
light. And this points up the way towards the attainment of purgation. It may with
some justice be claimed that he is as much 'surrounded by the power of
Prospero'63 as Ariel offers a self —projection of his master. The 'grace' he resolves
to seek is not just a theological category but is equivalent to the will to
manifestation which is to be actualized by the alchemy of the imagination. In him
one may perceive the marvellous equilibrium of those potencies and
comprehensions that sustain one in the midst of the chaos of a bounded existence.
He may, therefore, be regarded as symbolic of the ritual of promise which has
been enacted more than once in Shakespeare's last plays.

References

57. All quotations are from The Tempest, edited by Frank Kermode, the Arden Edition
(London, 1954).
58. Derek Traversi, An Approach to Shakespeare, Vol, II, third edition (London, 1968). P.
312.
59. George Gordon, Shakespearian Comedy (London, 1944), p. 85.
240

60. R.A. Foakes, Shakespeare: the Dark Comedies to the Last Plays (London, 1971), p. 153.
61. D.J. James, The Dream of Prospero (Oxford, 1967), p. 121.
62. R.A. Foakes, op. cit., p. 169.
63. D.G. James, Scepticism and Poetry (London, 1960), p. 238.
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 INDEX

Absalom and Achitophel 44 James, D.J. 83, 90, 136, 238, 240
Aguecheek, Sir Andrew 26 Jaspers, Karl 30, 239
Agustine (St.) 238
Alexendeh, Nigel 90 Kermode, Frank 239
Antony and Cleopatra 3, 14, King John 169
156, 191 King Lear 117, 146, 157, 173, 175,
As You Like It 17, 134 229
Auden, W.H. 171 Knight, G. Wilson 183, 184, 211, 222,
224
Bayley, John 114, 122 Knights, L.C. 12, 13, 56, 115, 122,
Beckett, Samuel 66, 136 137, 214, 224
Bowden, William R. 187, 188,
203 Lawlor, John 131, 136
Brown, J.R. 48, 241 Lerner, Lawrence 152, 164
Burckhardt, S. 48 Lombardo, Agostino 183, 184
Long, Michael 121
Calderwood, James L. 136
Mahood, M.M. 35, 48
Dante 201 To Marguerite 155
Deightor, K. 121 The Marriage of Heaven and Hell 161
Dorsch, T.S. 203 Marx, Karl 168
Dryden, John 44 Maxwell, J.C. 172, 184
Measure for Measure 12, 82, 152
Earth's Answer 71 The Merchant of Venice 17, 33, 48
Endgame 136 A Midsummer Night's Dream 49
Much Ado About Nothing 2, 7
The Faerie Queene 232 Muir, Kenneth 136, 175, 184
Fermor, Una Ellis 108, 121 Murry, Middleton 155, 164
Flavius, Steward 184
Fluchere, M. 115 Northumberland 99, 100, 102
Foakes, R.A. 6, 234, 238, 240
The French Revolution 101 Paris 107, 110, 112, 116
Frye, Northrop 137 Pater, Walter 101,
Protector, Lord 93,
Goddard, Herold C. 43, 163,
164, (89,203 Queen Elizabeth 92, 94
Gomme, Andor 171, 184 Queen Gertrude 6, 7, 11, 69, 71, 74,
Gordon. George 239 75, 76, 78, 79, 86
Greek 1077, 116, 121 Queen Isabel 102
Quince, Peter 59, 60, 62, 64, 133
Howard, Herbert 31
246

Ribner, Irving 132, 137, 154,

164
Richard 1191, 97, 98, 99, 100,
101, 102, 104, 105, 106,
156
Richard 11191, 92, 93, 94, 95,
103, 104, 105, 106. 162
Rylands, George 90

Schanzer, Ernest 198, 203

Summers, Joseph H. 28, 31

The Tempest 225, 228, 229,

232, 239
The Tiger's Heart 31
Ti117017 of Athens 165, 184
Toliver, Harold E. 136
Tomlinson, T.B. 133, 137
Traversi, Derek 31, 203, 239
Twelfth Night 1, 17, 25, 31, 47,
142

Waiting for Godot 136

Wallace, John H. 167, 184
The Waste Land 223, 225
The Winter's Tale 3, 5
Asloob Ahmad Ansari

Dr. Asloob Ahmad Ansari is a retired Professor from Aligarh Muslim

University, India. Dr. Ansari was awarded a D.Litt. Degree Honoris Causa by
the University of Gorakhpur and holds an M.A. in English from Aligarh Muslim
University.