Appearance and Reality in Sh Last Plays-spencer

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Appearance and Reality in Shakespeare's Last PlaysAuthor(s): Theodore SpencerSource: Modern Philology, Vol. 39, No. 3 (Feb., 1942), pp. 265-274Published by: The University of Chicago PressStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/434403Accessed: 07/05/2009 12:06

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APPEARANCE AND REALITY IN SHAKE-SPEARE'S LAST PLAYS

THEODORE SPENCERI

IT IS impossible o discussShakespeare'sast plays unlesswe seethem against the background of his earlier work. And that earlierwork, together with the last plays which are its culmination, mustbe seen against the background of Shakespeare's age. I do not mean

merely literary fashion or economic and social conditions or politicalmovements. I mean something deeper, namely, the view of man andof his place in the order of things, which was taken for granted byShakespeare and his contemporaries and which acted as a frameworkfor the presentation and judgment of human action in dramatic form.The basis of this view was the hierarchy of nature adapted fromAristotle and reaffirmedby medieval and Renaissance philosophy, inwhich man's position was crucial. Below him were the animals, en-tirely dependent upon sense; above him were the angels, entirely de-pendent upon intellect. Man was dependent upon both; for he couldnot reason except from a basis of sense. He was the precariousmeet-ing place for the sensible and immaterial worlds. This was the generalsituation. But the individual human being need not remain in sostatic a position, for he could either raise himself to the level of pureintellect by the right use of his reason or sink to the level of mere senseby not using his reason at all.

Partly, though not entirely, as the result of Platonic and Neo-Pla-tonic influence, the early Renaissance-the Renaissance proper-hademphasized the first possibility. "The soule," says Castiglione's Bem-bo, "kindled in the most holy fire of heavenly love, fleeth to coupleherself with the nature of Angels, and not only cleane forsaketh sense,but hath no more neede of the discourse of reason, for being chaungedinto an Angell, she understandeth all things that may be under-stood."l This view appears in many forms and in many writers: in

1 Castiglione, Courtier, trans. Hoby, Book IV (London, 1577), Ylr.[MODERN PHILOLOGY,February, 1942] 265


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THEODORE SPENCERErasmus,2in Spenser, in Neo-Stoicism as well as in Neo-Platonism,and it is one of the primary assumptions of Renaissance theories ofeducation. Man could become a creature of pure intellect, an angel ora god, by the right training of his reason. Hamlet, an ideal Renais-sance prince, had been so taught: "What a piece of work is a man ....how express and admirable in action; in apprehension how like anangel; how like a god!"

But Hamlet could no longer believe in this view-"and yet, to me,what is this quintessence of dust?"-and his age agreed with him.Montaigne was not alone in saying that man, when considered with-out divine aid, was on the same level as the animals. In the seventhsatire of his Scourgeof villainy (1599) Marston looks in vain for a trueman; various individuals are presented to him, but they all turn outto be bestial. Realism, as the handmaid to satire, gave a very differentpicture of human nature from that of Castiglione's or Spenser's ideal-ism, and the shock was all the greater because the ideal had been sothoroughly instilled. Instead of looking to the next level above for apicture of his nature, man looked to the next level below. The resultwas the situation which has been so well described by Robert Frost:

Ourworship,human,conscientiousnessWent long since to the dog underthe table.And served us rightfor havinginstitutedDownwardcomparisons.As longon earthAs our comparisonswere stoutly upwardWith gods or angels, we were men at least,But little lower than the gods andangels.But once comparisonswere yieldeddownward,Once we began to see ourimagesReflected n the mud and evendust,'Twas disillusionupondisillusion.We were lost piecemeal o the animals,Like peoplethrownout to delay the wolves.3

The most sensitive minds of the early seventeenth century felt thatthe reality about man's nature was evil and that the good-man'scapacity for raising himself to the level of pure intellect-was merely

2 Enchiridion (London, 1905), chap. iv, p.81: "For certainly we so greatly excel not allother kinds of brute beasts in perfectness of body, but that we in all his natural gifts arefound to them inferiors. In our minds verily we be so celestial and of godly capacity thatwe may surmount above the nature of angels, and be unite, knit and made one with God."a"The white-tailed hornet," Collected poems of Robert Frost (New York, 1939), p. 360.

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SHAKESPEARE'S AST PLAYSan appearance. "OGod, a beast, that wants discourse of reason, wouldhave mourned longer."The conflict between these two views of man's nature is an impor-tant element in Shakespearean tragedy, as I hope elsewhere to show;I mention it here because an awareness of its presence helps us to un-derstand the last plays. We might even say that this conflict lies be-hind all Elizabethan drama and that drama-the literary form towhich conflict is essential-was the natural expression of the age be-cause the character of the age was determined by this conflict-a con-flict which had been smoldering for centuries, as, in different ways, itis always smoldering, but which at the beginning of the seventeenthcentury burst into flame. It is significant that narrative fiction, whichis less dependent on conflict than dramaand which seemed to be off to afairly good start in the early 1590's, should so quickly have disap-peared. II

But it is not natural, in any age, for an essential conflict of this kindto remain unresolved, and it did not remain unresolved at the begin-ning of the seventeenth century. The first and most permanent solu-tion was religious. All three of the chief satirists of the 1590's-Donne,Hall, and Marston-ended their lives in the church, and it is impor-tant to notice that in both Donne and Hall there is a strong elementof fideism. We know nothing of Marston's views on this point, but itis a safe guess that if his sermons were to be recovered they would befound to emphasize, like Donne's, the impotence of man's power forknowledge and would say that faith alone can give us truth. Fideismwas an obvious temptation to a generation brought up on Montaigne.Yet fideism was only an extreme; the universal intensity of thoughtand feeling about religion in the first half of the seventeenth century,culminating in what Sir George Trevelyan has called a "metaphysicalwar," was the natural consequence of the earlier metaphysical con-flict. An awareness of evil, a kind of passionate disillusionment, be-came a passionate desire for certainty, which found its expression inpassionate action. The first stage was expressed through popular lit-erature, Elizabethan and Jacobean drama; the second through popularreligion.

The second main solution was not so much a solution as a denial of

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THEODOREPENCERthe problem, and, though it at first did not seem to have the immedi-acy of religion, in the long run it was to dominate man's view of him-self and the order of things. I refer, of course, to the ideas of Bacon,the implications of which were that man's attention should be turnedto external nature and that the problems of the soul, or of good andevil, should be put in a separate (and eventually irrelevant) compart-ment.There were other attempts at solving the problem: Chapman, forexample, took over Stoicism, and tried to show, in the person of Cler-mont D'Ambois, how the familiar struggle between "passion andreason,self-division's cause," could be solved by means of a strict fol-lowing of Stoical philosophy. He was, however, a solitary figureas faras the drama was concerned; and the dramatists came more and moreto abandon the subject: after 1615 or so their characters and situa-tions very rarely include an awareness of the universal problem of thenature of man. They rely more and more on the effectiveness of theindividual scene, on surprise, on superficial contrasts: in the historyof Elizabethan drama, as in the Greek, emotional opportunism suc-ceeded integrity of vision. III

We may say, then-with some danger of oversimplification-thatthere were four ways in which the early seventeenth century answeredthe essential humanistic problem of the Renaissance. Religion, sci-ence, Stoicism, or frivolity (the work of Beaumont and Fletcher, likethe Restoration drama which admired it, is essentially frivolous)-each in their various ways seemed to take the burden from men'sminds. But there was still a fifth solution-the solution of Shakespeare-which might be called the poetic solution, and it is this which I wantto describe in the remainder of this paper.

The prevailing tone of Shakespeare's last plays may be summed upin two quotations. The first is from The winter's tale (III, ii, 117):"Now bless thyself: thou mettest with things dying, I with things newborn." The second is from The two noble kinsmen (Theseus is address-ing the gods [V, iv, 134]):

Let us be thankfulFor that whichis, and with you leavedisputeThat are above ourquestion.

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SHAKESPEARE'SLAST PLAYSRebirth through spring, through woman, acceptance of things as

they are, but with glory around them-that is what we find in all theplays from Pericles on. In the tragedies the appearancemight be good,but the reality-the lust of Gertrude, the faithlessness of Cressida, thehypocrisy of Regan and Goneril, the crown of Scotland, and, to Ti-mon, all mankind-was evil. In the last plays the appearancemay beevil, but the reality is good. Marina and Thaisa are alive, not dead;Imogen is faithful, Hermione and Perdita are restored to Leontes, andMiranda's view of man is the opposite of Timon's:

Howbeauteousmankind s! Obravenew worldThat has suchpeoplein't!What differentiates Shakespeare's solution from the other solutionsof the seventeenth-century problem is that, unlike them, it is in nosense of the word an escape. Instead it is a new vision of reality.Beforea manstudiesZen,to himmountainsaremountainsandwaters arewaters;afterhegetsaninsight ntothe truthofZenthrough heinstruction fa goodmaster,mountainso himarenotmountains ndwatersarenotwaters;but afterthis whenhe reallyattains to the abodeof rest,mountainsare oncemoremountainsand watersarewaters.4But the later vision of man and external nature that is the productof an inner turmoil is different from the first unthinking vision of

youth. Rebirth is another thing than birth, for the memory of evil isbehind it. In Shakespeare's last plays the memory of evil is reflectedin the belief of Posthumous that Imogen has betrayed him, in Leontes'fury of jealousy, in the storm and shipwreck of The tempest. And, be-cause the memory of evil is still in the background, the theme of re-birth is often expressed through a kind of incredulous wonder, as if itcould hardly be believed.

O! Stopthen a little.This is the rarestdream hat e'erdullsleepDid mocksad foolswithal;this cannotbe.50 thou goddess!

Thou divineNature,how thyselfthou blazon'stIn these two princelyboys.6'D. T. Suzuki, Essavs in Zen Buddhism (1st ser.; London, 1927), p. 12.5 Pericles, V, i, 162. 6 Cymbeline, IV. ii, 169.

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THEODORE SPENCERO queenEmilia,Fresher han May, sweeter

Than hergoldbuttonson the boughsor allTh' enamell'dknackso' th' meador garden! Yea,We challenge oo the bankof any nymph,That makesthe streamseemflowers!Thou,O jewelO' th' wood,o' the world,hast likewisebless'da placeWith thy sole presence.7The tone is that of incantation, not of dramatic action; the "sensa-tion," as Mr. Middleton Murry says, "belongs to a man to whom the

re-birth of spring has become intolerably tender." And, Mr. Murrycontinues, "there is a connection, I am certain, between this .... ex-quisite celebration of the miracle of reborn Nature, which is uttered inso much of the loveliest verse of the latest plays, and the imagination ofa reborn humanity, which takes substance in the rarewomen, 'tenderas infancy and grace,'who are the chief figuresof their drama."8Thereis also a connection with the theme of reconciliation, of union; and it issignificant that the gods in these last plays, as E. M. W. Tillyardpoints out,9 are repeatedly referred to as benevolent: they do not "killus for their sport," as they do in King Lear. "You gods, look down,"says Hermione,

And from your sacredvials pour yourgracesUpon my daughter'shead.'0

Gonzalo, in The tempest(V, i, 201) says the same thing:Look down,you gods,Andon this couple dropa blessedcrown.

The gods seal the discovery-the rediscovery-of the good reality un-derneath the apparent evil. The beneficence of their rule is undoubted,they are "above our question," and their blessing is a confirmation ofthe blessedness of the individual human life."1

That is the poetic solution of the problem of man's nature-theTwo noble kinsmen, III, i, 4.8 Shakespeare (London, 1936), pp. 385-86.

9Shakespeare's last plays (London, 1938), passim.10 Winter's tale, V, ill, 121.'1 It may be significant that of the 279 occasions on which Shakespeare uses the word"bless" and its derivatives, 72, or more than 25 per cent, occur in the last five plays-ex-cluding The two noble kinsmen-whereas these plays represent less than 15 per cent of histotal output.

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SHAKESPEARE'SASTPLAYSsolution, we might call it, of transfiguration;and only Shakespearewasable to achieve it. It is achieved most perfectly, of course, in Thetempest, a play with so many layers of meaning that no single inter-pretation can do it justice. But if we think of the play in terms of thethree levels of nature-the animal, the human, and the intellectual-which were the basis of Shakespeare's view of man, we have a centralframework from which further interpretations may radiate. I do notsuggest that Shakespeare deliberately planned it in those terms; thatwas not the way he worked. But I do suggest that the three levelswere so much a part of the common body of assumption in his timethat they were a part of his subconscious thinking, so that he usedthem, however indirectly, almost as a matter of course.Like everything else in the later plays, the three levels are trans-figured and transformed; they are presented in a different climate ofreality from their presentation in the tragedies, and it is eminentlyright that the action of the play should take place on a deliberately un-identifiable island, the kind of place where transfiguration is possible.

The isle is full of noisesSoundsandsweet airs,that give delight,andhurt not.Sometimesa thousand wangling nstrumentsWill humabout mineears;andsometimevoices,Willmake me sleep again.In such a place it is fitting that the animal level should be presented

half-symbolically, through Caliban. We are no longer in the climateof tragedy, where human beings themselves are seen as animals, likethe Spartan dog Jago or the wolvish daughters of Lear. The "beastCaliban," as Prospero calls him, is a thing "not honour'd with humanshape" (I, ii, 283); he is set apart-as it were, abstracted-from humannature. Unlike human beings he is unimprovable; he cannot be tamedby reason, he isA devil,a borndevil, on whosenatureNurturewill neverstick;on whommy painsHumanely aken,are all lost, quitelost. (IV, i, 188)And it is characteristic of him that he should take Stephano, the low-est available specimen of human nature, for a god.The human beings on the island are a various crew, perhaps almostdeliberately chosen to present as wide a range as possible. Stephano

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THEODORE SPENCERand Trinculo are associated with Caliban; Alonso and Sebastian areselfish schemers, though royal; there is the good Gonzalo, and there isFerdinand, who, excellent young man as he is, must still pass throughsome difficulties before he marries Miranda, who is to him the "won-der" of the island and, like the other heroines of the last plays, is asymbol of humanity at its best. All these people, with the exception ofMiranda, go through some kind of punishment or purgation. The lowcharacters are merely punished, they get befouled and belabored, as isappropriate-they are incapable of purgation. But the courtly figures-Alonso, Antonio, and Sebastian-lose their human faculties for atime to emerge purifiedas rational beings. The theme of purgation oc-curs earlierin Shakespeare, especially in Lear, but Lear loses his reasonthrough a human agency. Alonso and Sebastian are purged throughmagic. They enter the charmed circle made by Prospero (V, i, 55),and, once there, their reason, their specifically human faculty, is tem-porarily taken away, as-in so very different circumstances-Lear'sreason was taken away. Their brains are useless, "boiled" within theirskulls; "ignorant fumes .... mantle their clearer reason," until finallyTheirunderstandingBeginsto swell,andthe approachingideWill shortly fill the reasonablehoresThat nowlie foul andmuddy.As soon as he comes to himself, Alonso resigns the dukedom, entreat-ing Prospero to pardon his wrongs. Then Miranda and Ferdinand arediscovered, and it is on a regenerated humanity that Miranda lookswhen she exclaims:Howbeauteousmankind s! 0 brave newworld,That has suchpeople n't!

Prospero-until he drowns his book-is clearly on a level abovethat of ordinary human nature. Yet, though we may recognize him asa symbol of the third level, Shakespeare's presentation of him is soshimmering with overtones and implications that to think of himmerely as a representative of intellect is an obvious falsification. Nev-ertheless, we may say that his use of magic is a way of making dra-matically effective his superiority; and, as Professor Curry hasshown,12the elves and demipuppets that have been his agents were

12 W. C. Curry, Shakespeare's philosophical patterns (Baton Rouge, La., 1937), p. 195.

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SHAKESPEARE'SLAST PLAYSconsidered in certain contemporary circles of thought to be creaturesabove man in the hierarchy of nature, between men and angels, andProspero's command of them obviously involves a more than humanpower. Yet Prospero gives up this power and returns to the humanlevel again. I do not agree with Mr. Curry when he says that Pros-pero, at the end of the play, "finds himself immeasurably nearerthanbefore to the impassivity of the gods. His theurgical operations," saysMr. Curry, "have accomplished their purpose. He wishes now to takethe final step and to consummate the assimilation of his soul to thegods. And this step is to be accomplished through prayer."'3 On thecontrary, Prospero abjures his magic, not to become like the gods, butto return to humanity:

I will discaseme, andmyself present,As I was sometimeMilan.He compares (V, i, 170) Alonso's "content" at his rediscovery of Fer-dinand to his own content at being restored to his dukedom, and infact much of the point of the play is lost if we do not see Prospero re-turning to worldly prosperity. In a sense his temporary control of thespirit world has been a purgation too; he has come to the conclusionthat The rareraction isIn virtue than in vengeance;and, his domination of the spirits having been outside the limits of hu-man nature, his wisdom makes him return to humanity.

Such, as I have said, is Shakespeare's answer:Let us be thankfulFor that whichis, andwith you leave disputeThat areaboveour question.

13 P. 196. In support of this view, Mr. Curry, like Mr. Middleton Murry, interpretsProspero's epilogue in religious terms:"Now I wantSpirits to enforce, and to enchant;And my ending is despair,Unless I be relieved by prayer,

Which pierces so that it assaultsMercy itself and frees all faults.As you from crimes would pardon'd be,Let your indulgence set me free."But the prayer is obviously merely a prayer to the audience. It is conventional for anactor to step half out of character in an epilogue, and that is what Prospero is doing here.His "prayer" consists of the last two lines and has no metaphysical connotations.

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274 THEODORESPENCERA rebirth, a return to life, an acceptance, a heightened, symbolicawareness of the beauty of humanity itself after it has been purged ofevil-these are the themes of the last plays; this is the reality under theappearance. It is not merely a literal reality; the mountains andwaters have changed because they once seemed something else. Butliteral reality is there just the same, as the foundation of the vision andof the acceptance. Man, having once looked up to the angels, whenhe looked down to the beasts and shuddered at what he saw there ofhimself, need not throw himself frantically at the feet of God, or cold-bloodedly investigate the preserving qualities of snow, orsyntheticallyconstruct a stoical theory, or escape into high-toned frivolity. Shake-speare had a different answer and a wider vision.

HARVARDUNIVERSITY

Appearance and Reality in Sh Last Plays-spencer

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