THE IMITATIVE AND ITERATIVE
SHAKESPEARE–I
PROF. K. VISWANATHAM
You
will be able to make cross references to parallel incidents, characters or even
phrases, to have the odd experience, after reading Macbeth, of finding
in a play so far removed as Loves Labours Lost the line: “Fair in all
hail is foul, as I conceive.”
–Grose and Oxley
Good
phrases are surely, and ever were, very commendable. Accommodated!–it comes
from accomodo: very good: a good phrase.
–Henry IV. P 2
Why
write I still all one, ever the same,
And
keep invention in a noted weed,
That
every word doth almost tell my name,
Showing
their birth, and where they did proceed.
–Sonnet LXXVI
That
here, as in some other traits of the poet’s greatest creation,
we come into close contact with Shakespeare the
man.
–Bradley
Yet
when Shakespeare’s heroes stand with their backs to the wall defying the world,
they betray a wild trick of their Marlovian ancestors.
–Levin
Students of Keats have pointed out
that he is fond of words like tip-toe, nest, tease, etc. Every one, as Prof.
Raleigh suggests, has to compile a dictionary of his words which mean more to him than to others.
These words occurring in ordinary contexts become suddenly and surprisingly a
flare of beauty and an example of inevitability as Keat’s “tease” does in “tease
us out of thought.”
“Beggar”
used as a verb by the second murderer in Richard III has not the poetic energy
of Enobarbus’ “beggared”.
Critics
have written about iterative imagery and image clusters in Shakespeare. It will
be interesting to note the expressions and ideas which have such a hold on
Shakespeare that he repeats them in several plays. If Olivia tells Viola that
to be poetical is to be feigned and Touchstone informs Audrey that the truest poetry
is the most feigning then, perhaps, it is Shakespeare’s definition. If
conscience and cowardice occur in more than one context to crystallize itself
in Hamlet: “Conscience doth make cowards of us all” the presumption is in
favour of ascribing it to the poet. To King Richard conscience is a word that
cowards use. In this Shakespeare is no exception to any lover of language who
jots down in his notebook or tablets (as Hamlet does) striking expressions and
ideas and does not hesitate to use them in a suitable context; that is the
sketch of the playwright that Shaw gives us in his playlet on the Dark Lady of
the Sonnets. Bradley suggests in his discussion of Hamlet’s idiosyncrasy of
repetition: fie, fie; thrift, thrift; indeed, indeed; wormwood, wormwood; come,
come, etc., that the poet himself had this trick of repetition. (Shakespearian
Tragedy Pp. 148-152.)
The
best commentary on a play of Shakespeare is another play of Shakespeare or all
the plays in the canon. This is the implication of Eliot’s remark that to
understand a single play of Shakespeare you have to read all the plays. The
best criticism of Hamlet starts not with Goethe and Coleridge and Werder but
with Claudius and Gertrude and Polonius–with a glance at Hieronimo. Romeo
and Juliet, Troilus and Cressida, Antony and Cleopatra supplement one
another. Othello, The Winter’s Tale, Cymbeline and Much Ado are
strung together by jealousy and slander. Lear and Timon are cousins. Take for
instance the economy of the closed heart (as Hubler terms it) which is the
opposite of economy and which Shakespeare detests with all his open heart. Man
should not hide his talents under a bushel; he is sinning against light. The
graces of nature should not fust unused. This is a rooted idea in Shakespeare.
We find it in the Sonnets, Venus and Adonis, Romeo and Juliet, Twelfth
Night, Measure for Measure.
Venus tells Adonis:
Torches
are made to light, jewels to wear
Dainties
to taste, fresh beauty for the use,
Herbs
for their smell, and sappy plants to bear;
Things
growing to themselves are growth’s abuse
Seeds
spring from seeds, and beauty breedeth beauty
Thou
wast begot,–to get it is thy duty.
In
Sonnet LIV the poet compares self-centred beauty to dog roses:
But,
for their virtue only is their show,
They
live unwoo’d, and un respected fade;
Die
to themselves.
The idea is repeated in XCIV:
The
summer’s flower is to the summer sweet
Though
to itself it only live and die.
In
Measure for Measure the very expression in Venus and Adonis “Torches are made to light” is amplified,
The Duke advises Angelo:
Heaven
doth with us as we with torches do,
Not
light them for themselves; for if our virtues
Did
not go forth of us, it were all alike
As
if we had them not...
...nor
Nature never lends
The
smallest scruple of her excellence
But
like a thrifty Goddess, she determines
Herself
the glory of a creditor
Both
thanks and use.
Romeo tells Benvolio:
For
beauty, starved with her severity,
Cuts
beauty off from all posterity.
Viola speaks to Olivia:
Lady,
you are the cruellest she alive
If
you lead these graces to the grave,
And
leave the world no copy.
Theseus hates the rose
which
withering on, the virgin thorn
Grows
lives and dies in single blessedness.
Comus tells the lady:
Beauty
is Nature’s coin, must not be hoarded
But
must be current and the good there of
Consists
in mutual and partaken bliss
Unsavoury
in the enjoyment of itself;
If
you let slip time, like a neglected rose
It
withers on the stalk with languished head.
II: 739-744
II
Shakespeare
does not think it beneath his dignity to quote the dead shepherd’s saw of might
in his As You Like It: 3-5-81.
Philip Henderson writes: “Dido Queen of
Oh
girl, oh gold, oh beauty, oh my bliss
And Romeo’s
But
soft, what light through yonder window breaks
It
is the East, and Juliet is the sun
is just a variation on
But
stay, what star shines yonder in the East?
The
load star of my life, if Abigail
in The Jew of
Was
this the face that launched a thousand ships
And
burnt the topless towers of IIium?
of Dr. Faustus is remembered in Troilus and
Cressida
Why
she is a pearl
Whose
price hath launched above a thousand ships
And
turned crowned kings to merchants
King Richard repeats this apostrophe thrice:
Was
this face the face...
Was
this the face...
Was
this the face...
4-1-281
Marlowe is not forgotten by Pistol:
Shall
pack horses
And
hollow pampered jades of
Which
cannot go thirty miles a day,
Compare
with Caesars and with Cannibals
And
Trojan Greeks?
As
Levin remarks: Shakespeare’s journey work is full of unassimilated Marlowe and
smells no less of the Classics than it would be if he too had gone to the university
(The Overreacher, P. 170). That Shakespeare copied almost verbatim
Plutarch in his Antony and Cleopatra is too obvious to be stressed.
III
All
through Marlowe’s work, it is said, there is the habit of improving on his best
lines and outdoing his best theatrical effects. It is no less true of Shakespeare.
In Marlowe the earlier
And
he will make me immortal with a kiss
captures later the frenzied despair and complex
grace of
Sweet
Helen, make me immortal with a kiss.
Likewise
That
after burnt the pride of
becomes the haunting and sounding
And
burnt the topless towers of Iliam.
Similarly in Shakespeare consider Othello’s
Keep
up your bright swords for the dew will rust them
Good
Signior, you shall more command with years
Than
with your weapons
Bradley regards it as a miracle even in
Shakespeare who is full of miracles. Eliot in his Drama and Poetry discusses
this line as one which is a happy marriage of drama and poetry. Drama lends
grace to poetry and poetry lends effectiveness to drama. Othello’s Keep up your
bright swords steps upon earlier rungs. Even Viola says: Pray, Sir, put up your
sword; Antonio too uses the same expression. In King John the Bastard
tells
Your
sword is bright, Sir; put it up again
Prospero addresses Ferdinand violently: Put thy sword
up, traitor. Othello’s Keep up far outstrips Viola’s or the Bastard’s or
Prospero’s Put up. After long gestation Keep in Othello delivers itself as a
miracle. Waves of suggestion flow out of a simple Keep up your bright swords:
(a)
the mention of dew indicates time;
(b)
dew rusting the blades shows the professional knowledge of Othello;
(c)
the courage and fearlessness of Othello is evident;
(d)
the imperative mood betokens the habitual tone of command in him;
(e)
the lines evidence the unwillingness of the General of the Venetian forces to
be involved in a street brawl;
(f)
there is grave irony and sarcasm and a touch of contempt in his tone;
(g)
there is reverence for age;
(h)
there is respect for law and order;
(i)
the fearless advice shows that regard to Desdemona he did nothing of which he
need be ashamed.
The
line is not ‘self-approving self-dramatization.’ No wonder if critics hold it
up for our admiration and appreciation.
IV
Cordelia’s
Sure
I shall never marry like my sisters
To
love my father all
finds its echo in Desdemona’s
And
so much duty as my mother showed
To
you, preferring you before her father,
So
much I challenge that I may profess
Due
to the Moor, my lord
The daughter of Brabantio and the daughter of
Imogen
envies “the senseless linen happier therein than I.” Cleopatra envies the happy
horse that bears the weight of
O,
that I were a glove upon that hand
That
I might touch that cheek!
Linen, glove and horse belong to the same world
of love thoughts–with contextual variations.
Shakespeare seems to have been much fascinated
by the following lines about a woman.
She
is beautiful, and therefore to be wooed;
She
is a woman, therefore to be won.
Demetrius tells Aaron:
She
is a woman, therefore may be wooed;
She
is a woman, therefore may be won.
In the Sonnet XLI the poet writes:
Gentle
thou art, and therefore to be won,
Beauteous
thou art, therefore to be assailed.
The syntax of this sentiment reminds one of
Kalidasa’s
Jnaatasvaado
vivritajaghanaam kovihaatum samarthah
Juliet’s thought
They
are but beggars that can count their worth becomes a weighty cosmic
observation.
There
is beggary in love that can be reckoned
on the lips of
Excessive
happiness makes us weep. Miranda says: I am a fool to weep at I am glad of.
Coriolanus reprimands lovingly his ‘gracious silence’ that weep’st to see me
triumph.
Launce’s
To be slow in words is a
woman’s only virtue in The Two Gentlemen is echoed in Lear’s loving
tribute to his daughter:
Her
voice was ever soft
Gentle,
and low–an excellent thing in woman.
There is Slender’s tribute to Mistress Anne
Page: Speaks small like a woman.
Lust,
of course, is one of the topics scorched by the poet’s consuming violence of
language and vocabulary like tup, mount, cover, colt. It burns in Tarquin’s
hurried strides, rages like a tempest in Sonnet CXXIX:
Is
perjured, murderous, bloody, full of blame
Savage,
extreme, rude, cruel, not to trust;
Snarls
like a vicious hyena in Hamlet, gathers round itself toads, goats and monkeys
in Othello making a beast with two backs and blusters ungovernably in Lear’s
demented speech on Adultery and Lechery:
Beneath
is all fiend’s; there is hell, there is darkness
There
is the sulphurous pit burning, scalding, stench, consumption;
Viola’s
witty “Alas, our frailty is the cause, not we” becomes the bitter observation
in Hamlet: “Frailty, thy name is woman.”
Venus
draws the contrast between love and lust to Adonis:
Love
comforteth like sunshine after ram,
But
lust’s effect is tempest after sun
After
greeting his fair warrior Othello expresses the soul’s fullness in
If
it were now to die,
It
were now to be most happy
Likewise Pericles recognizes his Thaisa and
appeals to the gods:
You
shall do well
That
on the touching of her lips I may
Melt
and no more be seen
Keat’s My heart aches in the Nightingale Ode is
abundantly explained by Cymbeline’s
The
gods do mean to strike me
To
death with mortal joy
and Pericles’
Give
me a gash, put me to present pain
Lest
the great sea of joy rushing upon me
Overbear
the shores of mortality.
The
poet recognizes that being good or doing good is no defence against the
predatory world.
I
never spake bad word, nor did ill turn
To
any living creature;
believe me, la,
I
never killed a mouse, nor hurt a fly...
Lady Macduff knows it as woman’s defence:
I have done no harm. But I remember
now
I am in this earthly world; where to
do harm
Is often laudable; to do good,
sometime
Accounted
dangerous folly; why then, alas,
Do
I put up that womanly defence,
To
say I have done no harm?
Lover’s
requesting to take back the kiss is
a quaint idea we find.
Romeo
requests Juliet: “Give me my sin again”. The Queen implores King Richard: “Give
me mine own again”.
Lovers’
exchanging eyes is a deeply metaphysical idea. It goes to the root of this
four-lettered mystery. When A loves B, what a really loves is his own self; he
loves B that B loves him; he is mirrored in B’s eyes and sees his own self. It is,
in the vocabulary of psycho-analysis, narcissism and the philosophy of Aham in
the Aesthetics of Bhoja’s Sringaara Prakaasa. Prospero discovers that
At
the first sight
They
have ’changed eyes.
Benedick
wishes to lie buried in Beatrice’s eyes. That this is not a far-fetched
interpretation is clear from Louis’ reply to King Philip in King John:
I
do protest I never loved myself
Till
now infixed I beheld myself
Drawn
in the flattering table of her eye
The same idea is found in
Sonnet XXIV:
Now
see what good turns eyes for eyes have done;
Mine
have drawn thy shape and thine for me
Are
windows to my breast.
The
frequent reference to Black brows is commented upon by critics. It is the influence
of the Dark Lady: “The worser spirit coloured ill”.
The
poet tells us in Sonnet CXXVII.
“But
now is black beauty’s successive heir.”
Byron refers to
A
whitely wanton with a velvet brow
With
two pitch balls stuck in her face for eyes.
Phebe
tells Silvius that “He said mine eyes were black and my hair black”
Mamilius informs the ladies in the Palace:
Yet black brows, they say,
Become some women best.
I wonder if this black mystique is behind
Proteus’ remark in Two Gentlemen:
“Black
men are pearls in beauteous ladies’ eyes.”
Parolles may say in All’s Well: “A young
man married is a man that is marred.” The poet cries up the marriage of true minds
(though to Donne this is all ‘bunk’
That
loving wretch that swears
It
is not the bodies marry; but the minds...)
The first citizen in King John describes this
ideal:
He
is the half part of a blessed man
Left
to be finished by such a she
This
is the ideal symbolized in Siva’s being half-man and half-woman. True marriage
is ‘advaitam’ in the happy characterization of a great poet. Man and wife, as
Hamlet says, sarcastically is one flesh. Lady Hotspur shows her wifely devotion
in
for
since you love me not,
I
will not love myself.
Doll Tearsheet is no less when she tells
Falstaff: Prove that I ever dress myself handsome till thy return. Virgilia is
firm: Indeed, no, by your patience, I will not over the threshold till my lord
return from the wars. Miranda is even prepared to be
your
servant
Whether
you will or no.
Even the ill-used Mariana pleads against all
sense for Angelo:
O
my dear lord
I
crave no other, nor no better man.
Or
in my life what comfort when I am
Dead
to my husband?
Even Cleopatra can say: Husband, I come. Portia’s
loving indignation
If
it be no more
Portia
is Brutus’ harlot, not his wife
speaks volumes of the wife’s status. Both Brutus
and Hotspur have doubts regarding woman’s ability for secrecy. A woman is said
to be a miniature relay station. Hotspur pays a jocular compliment to his wife:
I
well believe
Thou
wilt not utter what thou dost not know.
Another Portia tells Bassanio:
yet
for you
I
would be trebled twenty times myself.
Instances can be multiplied. (As against this
there is Emilia’s protest against husbands:
Let
husbands know
Their
wives have sense like them...
and
have we not affection
Desire
for sport and frailty as men have?)
No wonder if C. S. Lewis remarks that
Shakespeare is not only the greatest love poet but the only love poet in
English. His is the love that gives; it is the story of the Clod.
Cleopatra’s
beauty
makes
hungry
Where
most she satisfies.
Hamlet is unhappy that
she
would hang on him
As
if increase of appetite had grown
By
what it fed on.
Pericles is reminded of his Queen
Who
starves the ears she feeds, and makes them hungry
The
more she gives them speech.
Ophelia
narrates to her father what the distraught Hamlet did:
He
falls to such perusal of my face
As
he would draw it.
That is what Othello also does when he is
distraught and Desdemona is upset by the horrible fancy of Othello; “Let me see
your eyes” as if Hamlet and Othello are searching for truth and fidelity in
persons they are made to suspect.
The
quality of Mercy so closely associated with Portia droppeth as the gentle rain
in Measure for Measure:
No
ceremony that to great ones ’longs
Not
the king’s crown nor the deputed sword,
The
marshal’s truncheon nor the judge’ robe,
Become
them with one half so good a grace
As
mercy does.
How is this different from Portia’s
it
becomes
The
throned monarch better than his crown?
Portia and Isabella are sisters of mercy. Brutus
echoes the same:
The
abuse of greatness is when it disjoins
Remorse
from power,
Tamora appeals to Titus in the same strain:
Wilt
thou draw near the nature of the gods?
Draw
near them in being merciful;
Sweet
mercy is nobility’s true badge.
The
opposite view is also expressed by the Prince in Romeo and Juliet that “Mercy
but murders pardoning those that kill” and by Escalus “Pardon is still the
nurse of second woe.”
This
latter view is mentioned by Justice Overdo in Ben Jonson’s Bartholomew Fair:
I
see compassion may become a justice, though it be a weakness,
I
confess, and nearer a vice than a virtue.
Edgar
and Hamlet and Othello and their creator are all one family. The King’s tribute
to Hamlet is all the more worthy as it is the tribute of an enemy:
he,
being remiss,
Most
generous, And free from all contriving,
Will
not peruse the foils.
Edmund’s tribute to Edgar stresses this same
unsuspecting quality:
a
brother noble,
Whose
nature is so far from doing harms
That
he suspects none.
Iago’s compliment to Othello is of the same
complexion:
The
Moor is of a free and open nature
That
thinks men honest that but seem to be so.
It
was pointed out by Bradley in his lecture on Shakespeare the Man that these are
the very words used about the poet by Ben Jonson: He was indeed honest and of
an open and free nature.
It
has been noted by Eliot that all the tragic heroes are very much concerned with
their good name. Loss of reputation is loss of life. Cassio laments that he is
hurt past surgery because his reputation is gone.
For
why should others’ false adulterate eyes
Give
salutation to my sportive blood
Or
on my frailties why are frailer spies
Which
in their wills count bad what I think good?
No,–I
am that I am.
I Am That I Am–is
said to be one of the proudest lines in literature like
Not
to know me argues yourselves unknown
or
Kim
sevyaate sumansaa manasaapi gandhah
Kasturikaa
jananasakti bhrita mrigena
A
critic comments on this thus: These words are Shakespeare’s single and final
self- criticism. These are appalling in their superb brevity and concentrated
insight; beside them even the pride of Milton dwindles and grows pale, for here
Shakespeare, for one revealing moment, speaks not as though he were God’s elect
but as though he were God himself.
I
Am That I Am–is repeated in various
contexts. Antipholus in The Comedy of Errors tells Luciana:
But
if that I am I, then well I know
Your
weeping sister is no wife of mine.
The
Bastard in King John asserts proudly: “And I am I, however I was begot.” King
Richard in Richard III states: “Richard loves Richard; that is, I am I”
This
has to be contrasted with Iago’s: I am not what I am. (Viola utters precisely
the same sentence but it belongs to a gentle different world.) Iago tells
Cassio that reputation is a false imposition but tells Othello that filching
one’s good name is impoverishment. Then only we can visualise the gentle
Shakespeare drawing himself to his fullest height and shouting at the pitch of
his voice against the detractors and the vilifiers and scandal-mongers: No–I
am, that I am: This self-assertiveness is un-Shakesperian in one sense that it
goes against the gentleness and good sense, and Shakesperian in another that it
is a recognition of unalterable facts. The real Shakespeare is in his Prospero
who says:
Though
with their high wrongs I am struck to the quick,
Yet
with my nobler reason, against my fury
Do
I take part; the rarer action is
In
virtue than in vengeance
is in his Posthumus who spares his enemy:
The
power I have on you is to spare you;
The
malice towards you to forgive you; live,
And
deal with others better.
A son-in-law teaches his royal father-in-law:
We
will learn our freeness of a son-in-law:
Pardon
is the word to all.
According
to the poet we commit a most mischievous foul sin in chiding sin. No one is a
moral Olympian. Leonato’s
There
was never yet philosopher
That
could endure toothache patiently
is confirmed by Mariana’s “They say best men are
moulded out of faults.”
I
will chide no breather, says
We
are all men,
In
our own nature frail, and capable
Of
our flesh; few are angels.
Hence it is said that Shakespeare has a God-like
understanding of sin whereas
The
chariest maid is prodigal enough
If
she unmask her beauty to the moon.
Slander leads to saintliness. Pisanio states
expansively:
It
is slander
Whose
edge is sharper than the sword; whose tongue
Outvenoms
all the worms of the
Rides
on the posting winds, and doth belie
All
corners of the world; kings, queens and states
Maids,
matrons, nay, the secrets of the grave
This
viperous slander enters.
(To be concluded)