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The culture of Shakespeare’s England reflected the long-standing medieval vision that the universe was created by God to be a perfect unity, within which every aspect of creation had its place. This “great chain of being,” as it later came to be called, encompassed all of existence, from inanimate objects to the angels, and placed each in what were judged to be natural places of subordination. Within this order was a series of correspondences. As God was the highest among the angels, so the sun was the highest of the stars, fire the highest of the elements, the king the highest of human beings, the lion the highest of beasts, and the eagle the highest of birds. Furthermore, order within the political and social realm corresponded to that within the human body. Just as the surrounding world, the macrocosm, was said to be composed of four elements (fire, air, water, and earth), so human nature contained four parallel humors (choler, blood, phlegm, and melancholy). Any imbalance of these forces within an individual could lead to disorder that extended into the political and social realms, then into the universe itself.
The culture of Shakespeare’s England reflected the long-standing medieval vision that the universe was created by God to be a perfect unity, within which every aspect of creation had its place. This “great chain of being,” as it later came to be called, encompassed all of existence, from inanimate objects to the angels, and placed each in what were judged to be natural places of subordination. Within this order was a series of correspondences. As God was the highest among the angels, so the sun was the highest of the stars, fire the highest of the elements, the king the highest of human beings, the lion the highest of beasts, and the eagle the highest of birds. Furthermore, order within the political and social realm corresponded to that within the human body. Just as the surrounding world, the macrocosm, was said to be composed of four elements (fire, air, water, and earth), so human nature contained four parallel humors (choler, blood, phlegm, and melancholy). Any imbalance of these forces within an individual could lead to disorder that extended into the political and social realms, then into the universe itself. During Shakespeare’s lifetime, however, this medieval vision was challenged by the forces of the Renaissance and the Reformation, both of which inspired dispute about religious, political, social, and intellectual rights and freedoms. Each movement in its own way shifted responsibility away from institutions and more to the individual. In addition, the growing awareness of new lands and societies, especially throughout the Americas, caused European civilization to reflect upon the very nature of the human species, as well as on fundamental questions of morality and theology. All this turmoil was reflected in the central subject of Elizabethan literature: the struggle for order between individual lives and the social structure. Shakespeare’s plays dramatize this tension between old and new visions, between the world as a closed, structured system, and the capacity and responsibility of individuals to find their own way. Thus the playscelebrate individuality, but they also reflect a contradictory belief that the exertion of individual will creates conflict. The relationship of such conflict to drama is essential, for when theatrical characters exert their individual will, whether in the malevolent desire for power or wealth, or in the benign desire for love, the consequences include disorder, within both the characters themselves and the surrounding social structure. Such imbalance is the mainspring of Shakespeare’s plots. Equally important, Shakespeare’s audience wanted to see the resolution of that conflict manifested in the reestablishment of personal and social order. In the comedies and certain romances, such imbalance tends to be localized. For example, in one of Shakspeare’s earliest plays, The Comedy of Errors, the source of disorder is clarified from the opening lines, as the wandering Egeon requests that the Duke of Ephesus impose punishment on him: Proceeed, Solinus, to procure my fall, And by the doom of death end woes and all. (I, i, 1–2) The Duke’s response is equally somber, ending with the threat of death against Egeon for illegally visiting Ephesus without 1,000 marks for ransom. In return, Egeon narrates how his wife in Syracuse gave birth to twins, as did one of his serving women. On a sea voyage, a storm left the family alone on the ship, which itself split apart. Egeon was left with one son and a servant, and his wife with the other two boys. When the son whom Egeon raised turned eighteen, he set out in search of his brother, and Egeon has followed that quest. All this information, dispensed in unwieldly fashion, sets up the fundamental disorder that besets Egeon’s family. Thus we anticipate that by the end of the play, all will be resolved, and such is the case. Until then, confusion over the twin sons and servants abounds, but eventually the Abbess of Ephesus reunites everyone. We are also surprised to learn that she is Egeon’s long-lost wife, Amelia (V, i, 345–346), one of only two instances in his plays when Shakespeare withholds information in this way (the other occurs in The Winter’s Tale).This fundamental movement from emotional disorder to order is characteristic of all of Shakespeare’s comedies. In Love’s Labor’s Lost, the unbalancing exertion of will is the King’s decree that his court will become a sanctuary for scholars to remain in isolation. By the end of the play, the men who have subscribed to this foolish scheme all end up in love. In A Midsummer Night’s Dream, the initial source of disorder is the demand by Egeus that his daughter, Hermia, marry the young man whom Egeus has chosen for her, Demetrius, rather than the one she prefers, Lysander. Eventually Lysander and Hermia are married, alongside Demetrius and the woman who loves him, Helena. In addition, such movement in the human world is paralleled by similar action in the world of the fairies, as Oberon and Titania, King and Queen of the fairies, initially quarrel over possession of the changeling boy, then reconcile. This coupling is also set against the royal marriage between Duke Theseus and Queen Hipployta. Thus at all levels of the story, we are conscious of marriage as a source of social harmony. Sometimes Shakespeare’s desperation to end a comedy with the restoration of order is almost palpable. In the final scene of Measure for Measure, the Duke unmasks himself from the monk’s cowl under which he has moved undetected through Vienna, observing everyone’s actions and words. In a burst of manipulation and decree, he wraps up all strands of the plot. Lucio, the sharp-witted “fantastic” who has unknowingly insulted the Duke, is condemned to marriage, then whipping and hanging. Claudio, earlier ordered to death for having impregnated Juliet outside marriage, is revealed to be alive and permitted to marry her. Mariana, once betrothed to Angelo, is allowed to marry him, even though the hypocritical Deputy stays so dislikeable that we wonder why Mariana remains devoted to him. Finally, after thanking his advisor, Escalus, and the prison Provost for their steadfast support, the Duke shocks everyone by proposing marriage to Claudio’s sister, Isabella. True, he has rescued her, but she has already sought to enter a particularly strict religious order. Before she is permitted a reply, though, the play ends. We may not find all these unions dramatically persuasive, but we understand the underlying theme: social, political, and religious balance have been restored to the city. One of Shakespeare’s most famous statements about order occurs in Troilus and Cressida, when the Greek leader Ulysses, seeking to rally the Greek forces, speaks of the need for unity: The heavens themselves, the planets, and this centre Observe degree, priority, and place, Insisture, course, proportion, season, form, Office, and custom, in all line of order… (I, iii, 85–88) Because this play treats all matters ironically, from the great Trojan War to the sexual proclivities of the participants, Ulysses’ speech must be regarded with suspicion. Indeed, he soon demonstrates an ulterior motive, when he speculates on what happens when order breaks down: Then every thing include 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. (I, iii, 119–124) According to Ulysses, the only way to avoid anarchy is mass fidelity to unquestioned authority, which must be accepted simply because it is authority. His oration exposes his lust for absolute power, and thus through Ulysses Shakespeare suggests how any call for conformity must be taken with skepticism. Consider, then, the Archbishop of Canterbury’s oration in Henry V, offered after the King has demanded theological justification for going to war against France: Therefore doth heaven divide The state of man in divers functions, Setting endeavor in continual motion; To which is fixed, as an aim or butt, Obedience; for so work the honey-bees, Creatures that by a rule in nature teach The act of order in a peopled kingdom. (I, ii, 183–189) The logic here is dubious. Just because bees operate in strict order does not necessarily mean that human beings should do so. Moreover, our awareness that Canterbury has explained how a war with France would bring profit to his church makes us question his motives from the start. We also know that he seeks to curry the King’s favor, and a public call for universal support of Henry’s decision, with everyone obeying without question, fulfills that purpose. Altogether, then, Canterbury’s statement should also be regarded skeptically. Yet the need for order is always paramount throughout Shakespeare’s works, including his final group of plays, the romances. In every example of this genre, a royal family is divided and children are lost, then reconciled after substantial time and travel. Cymbeline may be taken as representative. In the opening scene, two nameless gentlemen comment how Imogen, the daughter of King Cymbeline of Britain by a former wife, has disobeyed her father by marrying his foster son, Posthumus, rather than her stepbrother, Cloten, son of the manipulative new Queen. We also learn of Cymbeline’s other two sons by that first wife (I, i, 56–65), who were lost twenty years ago. Thus from the start, we anticipate the reuniting of this royal family. Such familial disorder is set against political turmoil, on both the personal and national levels. First, we have the schemer Jachimo’s unseemly bet with Posthumus about his wife Imogen’s fidelity, and Posthumus’s even more unseemly willingness to accept the wager. When Jachimo apparently provides incontrovertible evidence of Imogen’s unfaithfulness, i.e., the bracelet he stole while she was sleeping, Posthumus’s fury (II, v, 19–35) should be understood not only as the expression of a proud, yet foolish man turned against the woman he loves, but also as the conquering of an Englishman by an Italian invader. In the midst of this story line, Posthumus joins with his friend, Philario, to consider the quarrel between Rome and Britain, and the issue of whether Cymbeline will pay tribute to the Roman Emperor. That crisis is temporarlly resolved, when the king’s son, Cloten, in his one heroic moment, dismisses the Roman general Lucius’s order for tribute: Britain’s a world By itself, and we will nothing pay For wearing our own noses. (III, i, 12–14) The allegorical implication is the importance of a united Britain against Rome, an image in contrast with the family split over the marriage of Imogen and the treachery and conflict that have ensued. The plot of Cymbeline becomes bewilderingly complicated, but of concern here is how order is restored on a multitude of planes. Imogen suffers through exile in the forest but eventually returns to her husband, Posthumus, who berates himself over his susceptibility to Jachimo’s scheme (V, v, 217–220). Thereafter Imogen and Cymbeline meet again (V, v, 260–273), and father and daughter exchange forgiveness. Finally, faced with his son’s execution over the death of Cloten, the country lord Morgan reveals that he is the long-lost Belarius, and that the two young men he has raised as his own, Polydore and Cadwal, are indeed Guiderius and Aviragus, Cymbeline’s sons and Imogen’s brothers. Thus the instinctive solicitude they felt for her in the forest is understandable. Even Jachimo is so moved that he begs forgiveness, and Posthumus pardons him (V, v, 412–420). On the national level, Cymbeline agrees to pay tribute to Caesar, and the two empires of Rome and Britain are united. This alliance should not be viewed as Britain’s capitulation, for in the play Britain triumphs militarily, but as a foundation of the English culture that started before Christianity, and which endured throughout Shakespeare’s day. The order of the royal family and the state itself are thereby reaffirmed. In the comedies and romances, the imbalance in character that breaks the order of things generally emerges from a desire for love. In the history plays, however, that force is a desire for power. Indeed, Shakespeare’s two tetralogies based on English history from 1398 to 1485 may be said to be one long progression from disorder to order: from the removal of Richard II from the throne by Bullingbrook, one day to be Henry IV, to the destruction of Richard III and the unity of the two houses of Lancaster and York in the person of King Henry VII. Each individual play, however, also ends with a temporary restoration of order within the ensuing chaos. For example, Richard II begins with mutual charges of treachery by Bullingbrook, the King’s cousin, and Mowbray, the King’s most trusted associate. Richard temporarily escapes the crisis by exiling both men, but after the death of John of Gaunt, the King’s uncle and Bullingbrook’s father, the King’s greed and political miscalculation lead him to confiscate Bullingbrook’s inherited lands and funds. This shattering of precedent provides Bullingbrook with the legal and political cover to break the command of exile and rally forces against the King. In the midst of the usurpation, one scene encapsulates many of the themes of the story, when the Gardener reflects on Richard’s plight: He that hath suffered this disordered spring Hath now himself met with the fall of leaf. (III, iv, 48–49) Not long after, the Bishop of Carlisle, the voice of orthodox religion in the play, berates those who would show loyalty to the newly crowned Bullingbrook: Disorder, horror, fear, and mutiny Shall here inhabit, and this land be call’d The field of Golgotha and dead men’s skulls. (IV, i, 142–144) Both the Gardener and Carlisle understand that chaos must be resolved. Richard, though, seems to understand his situation best, and in a final soliloquy in prison, accepts the damage he has inflicted on himself and his kingdom: How sour sweet music is When time is broke, and no proportion kept! So is it in the music of men’s lives. And here have I the daintiness of ear To check time broke in a disordered string; But for the concord of my state and time Had not an ear to hear my true time broke. I wasted time, and now doth time waste me… (V, v, 42–49) In considering the unbalanced world he has created, Richard invokes two images that pervade Shakespeare’s plays: time and music, both of which imply aspects of “order.” Time reflects the progression of life, and the shattering of time is often said to manifest disruption of social procedure. In turn, the restoration of time implies the renewed balance of that procedure, as in one of the final lines of Macbeth, when Malcolm takes the throne: “We will perform in measure, time, and grace” (V, ix, 39). Music played in tune, on the other hand, has overtones of harmony, while music out of tune implies discord. For example, in Othello, the ensign Iago relishes his plots by commenting: “But I’ll set down the pegs that make this music,/ As honest as I am” (II, i, 200–201). Richard II ends with the new King Henry’s vow to seek expiation for the tumult that grips his kingdom: Lords, I protest my soul is full of woe That blood should sprinkle me to make me grow. Come mourn with me for what I do lament, And put on sullen black incontinent. I’ll make a voyage to the Holy Land, To wash this blood off from my guilty hand. March sadly after, grace my mournings here, In weeping after this untimely bier. (V, vi, 45–52) The King recognizes what we do: the paradoxical consequences of his actions. On one hand, the removal of Richard II was necessary for the nation’s political health; indeed, it began the modern political era in England. At the same time, removing a king, whose position, after all, was religiously ordained, was an act against God. Thus punishment, for both Henry personally and the country he governs, is inevitable. We see such punishment in the form of disorder throughout the rest of the second Henriad, which details the reigns of Henry IV (1400–1413) and Henry V (1413–1422), and in the earlier Henriad, which dramatizes the later period (1422–1485), but which Shakespeare actually wrote first. In each play, rebels plot against the occupant of the throne, and the ruling powers temporarily subdue the insurrection at considerable loss of life. Yet as control of the throne moves back and forth from the Lancasters to the Yorks, many characters are conscious of how order must return. For instance, in Henry VI, Part 3, when the Yorkist Edward IV loses the crown to the Lancasters, the deposed King comments: Though Fortune’s malice overthrow my state, My mind exceeds the compass of her wheel. (IV, iii, 46–47) For the first time, Edward speaks of the larger scheme of life, that his fate is not the only issue. Moreover, the image of the wheel coming around suggests the inevitable reestablishment of order. The nightmarish decades climax with succession of murders carried out by Richard of York, first as the Duke of Gloucester, then as Richard III. After his death, the Earl of Richmond, soon to be King Henry VII, comments in the final speech of Richard III: All this divided York and Lancaster, Divided in their dire division, O now let Richmond and Elizabeth, The true succeeders of each royal house, By God’s fair ordinance conjoin together. (V, v, 27–31) The long-awaited reordering of the kingship and the kingdom has been achieved. The movement from disorder to order also underlies Shakespeare’s tragedies; in each, we are conscious of how quickly chaos can spread through the political and social framework. In his first tragedy, Titus Andronicus, the opening lines reveal that the two sons of the late Emperor, Saturninus (the elder) and Bassianus, compete for the Roman throne. The misguided intervention of the eminent general Titus Andronicus on behalf of Saturninus is an attempt to restore order, but Titus unwittingly causes further disorder by sacrificing the son of Tamora, Queen of the defeated Goths. This brutality ensures more of the same, and the subsequent alliance between Tamora and Saturninus, who becomes infatuated with her, ensures that anarchy will grab hold of Rome. What follows is a grotesque pageant of murder, torture, and mutilation singular in Shakespeare, perhaps epitomized most graphically in the person of Lavinia, who is raped by Tamora’s sons, then left with her hands cut off and her tongue removed (II, iv). At the end of the play, in a thematic purging, virtually all the principal characters are killed except Titus’s son, Lucius, who assumes the throne of Rome, and restores order. The theme of disorder appears more subtly in Othello, when Iago confides in his dupe, Roderigo, about Iago’s seeming devotion to Othello: I follow him to serve my turn upon him. We cannot all be masters, nor all masters Cannot be truly followed. (I, i, 42–44) A few lines later, Iago adds: Were I the Moor, I would not be Iago. In following him, I follow but myself… (I, i, 57–58) Iago sees himself as an enemy to the social contract, and Shakespeare’s audience would have understood that the chaos Iago inspires is the inevitable outcome of his opposition to order in every form. At the same time, devoted service is a hallmark of order. In Timon of Athens, the servant Flavius remains loyal to the King, and such devotion temporarily keeps the country unified: Happier is he that has no friend to feed Than such that do e’en enemies exceed. I bleed inwardly for my lord. (I, ii, 203–205) Despite the affection and advice he offers, Flavius eventually fails to help Timon through the crisis the King himself creates by dispensing money away with excessive generosity. Still, Flavius’s loyalty affirms the importance of noble service as essential to a healthy society. The story of King Lear, too, is founded upon the unleashing of disorder. At the start of the play, Lear announces his plan to step down from the throne and divide his kingdom in three: We have this hour a constant will to publish Our daughters’ several dowers, that future strife May be prevented now. (I, i, 43–45) The terrible irony of this plan is that Lear means well. Yet his good intentions cannot legitimize a blunder of cataclysmic proportions. First, the kingship cannot be simply surrendered; the position is conferred by God for a lifetime. Furthermore, a divided kingdom inevitably yields to squabbling for authority, and such competition surfaces soon enough. Finally, Lear’s fracturing of the royal family by the expulsion of his youngest daughter, Cordelia, leads to chaos throughout the extended family of his people, whose lives are irretrievably bound to his own. Thus Lear’s actions in this opening scene propel his nation into tumult that takes the form of warfare between the surviving sisters, as well as with France, but even more memorably in the storm that mirrors the disorder of Lear’s mind, his country, and the universe itself. Order is restored, but only with the purging of evil through the deaths of the elder sisters, Goneril and Regan, and their allies, as well as by the assumption of authority by Gloucester’s benign son, Edgar, and Goneril’s husband, Al bany. That order is achieved at stunning cost, including the unexpected death of Cordelia. Nonetheless, the kingdom finds peace at last. Finally, we come to Hamlet, in which the title figure sums up the theme of disorder as effectively as any character in Shakespeare’s plays. Here is a young man mourning the death of his father, furious over the marriage of his mother to his hated uncle, then urged by his father’s Ghost to take revenge on that uncle. Moreover, as Prince of Denmark, Hamlet not only bears responsibility for the political and military future of his country, but also must deal with the social, religious, and ethical consequences of his behavior. Finally, virtually every word he says and every movement he takes invite scrutiny from all sides. In short, disorder reigns supreme: The time is out of joint—O cursed spite, That ever I was born to set it right! (I, v, 188–189) Like all of Shakespeare’s tragedies, Hamlet ends with the restoration of order, as Fortinbras assumes the throne of Denmark. To be sure, he is the son of the dead King of Norway and therefore a descendant of the enemy of Hamlet’s father. Yet Fortinbras’s control puts the country back on plane, and his ascension is an affirmation of faith in the rightness of things. Because all of Shakespeare’s plays end with such order, when viewed together they suggest that whatever military, political, and intellectual conflicts may have shaken the society in which the plays were created, the overall vision of the world that emerges from them is one of unity and balance. |