Lead us from hence, where
we may leisurely
Each one demand and answer to his part
Performed in this wide gap of time since first
We were dissevered. [V.iii.188]
In The Tempest
too the final reconciliation of Prospero and Antonio has
none of the vitality of comic harmony in it. Even in the
words of forgiveness which Prospero speaks there is a
note of blame:
For you, most
wicked sir, whom to call brother
Would infect my mouth, I do forgive
Thy rankest fault [V.i.158]
Resolution is diluted
by the lingering reminder of earlier discord, so that the
general effect of the plays is far more bleak than would
be typical of a comedy.
Furthermore in these last plays Shakespeare resolves not
to adhere to the rule of comedy that no one should die.
For example Mamillius, the cherished child of Hermione
and Leontes, dies tragically due to grief for his mother's
disgrace, his grieving sickness intensifying and growing
like a cancer, along with the sickness of his father's
jealous mind. The distressing impression created by this
episode is a far cry from what we would expect from a
comedy. This element of tragic form intensifies the moral
condemnation of Leontes's behaviour in a way which a
purely comic style could not.
The jealous rage of Leontes, in The Winter's Tale,
and his subsequent treatment of Hermione, and Perdita,
along with Hermione's feigned death, are also reminiscent
of tragedy.
So too in The Tempest the plot can be viewed as
matching perfectly the typical Elizabethan revenge
tragedy, up until the point where Prospero and Miranda
are banished on the sea. Bradley claims that we can
categorise a play as a tragedy when a person of high rank
suffers a fatal fall and experiences exceptional
suffering. Prospero's neglect of his duties due to his 'being
transported/ And rapt in secret studies' [1.ii.96], and
Leontes's jealousy, followed by their consequent
suffering, could thus by this rule suggest that the plays
were tragedies.
When we compare the heroes' suffering with, for example,
that of Lear or Macbeth, however, we cannot but be struck
by the difference in their effect on us as an audience or
reader. Aristotle, in his Poetics, claimed that
tragedy aimed 'to arouse the emotions of pity and fear in
such a way as to effect that special purging and relief (catharsis)'.
Surely then by this standard these plays do not fit the
tragic pattern. The heroes themselves seem to adhere more
to the comic rule than the tragic in being realistic only
in externals, and in essence more like 'types'.
To compare Leontes's jealousy with, for example, Othello's,
illustrates this point. Although Leontes's jealousy is
realistic in itself - as in the paranoid delusions, 'is
whispering nothing? / Is leaning cheek to cheek? Is
meeting noses? / Kissing with inside lip?' [1.ii.339] -
it seems to me to emerge conspicuously suddenly, and to
be completely motiveless. Such absence of motivation is
surely more commonly a feature of romance than of
realistic tragic style; the effect on us being far less
consuming than that which a straightforward tragedy would
evoke. Such a mixture of styles can indeed prove elusive
for an audience to absorb. The detachment which the comic
style allows means that we must search harder for the
more serious moral messages of the tragic theme. We are
forced to work at understanding the play as opposed to
merely absorbing what is presented to us.
This point between two styles to which Shakespeare brings
us in his last plays, with for example the characters
poised just on the brink of death, is neither comedy nor
tragedy, or, both comedy and tragedy. This has led modern
critics to categorise the last plays as 'Tragi-comedies'.
According to Greenblatt a feature of the tragi-comedies
is that they expect us 'to imagine a turn of events
against the evidence of our senses'. The statue scene in The
Winter's Tale is one of the best examples of this.
After believing that Hermione is dead, we must believe
that she has been living for sixteen years in hiding, and
that she now willingly parades herself as a statue before
the husband and daughter she hasn't seen for so long, so
that Paulina can stage her resurrection. We must
furthermore believe that art can be a convincing enough
assimilation of nature for us to be surprised that art
turns out after all to be nature!
The effect of a style similar to that of pantomime on an
Elizabethan audience, accustomed to plays such as Hamlet
and Macbeth, must indeed have been great. For a
modern audience too such scenes subvert our expectations.
We must first accept that the play is not true to life,
and thus allow the style of romance to draw us in. Indeed,
the very title of the play prepares us for the romantic
implausibility which the play is to contain. With this
adjustment to the romantic style achieved we can accept
the highly improbable events that will finally lead to
the reconciliation towards which the play proceeds. For
example Perdita's meeting - by 'chance' - with Florizel,
the son of Polixenes, and of course the highly
implausible event of Perdita being sent to her own father's
house in order to wait out the rage of Polixenes over the
marriage.
In The Tempest too we are presented with
elements of romance, complete with the unrealistic
location of a magical island, inhabited by the unlikely
characters such as the magical spirit Aerial, and
implausible events such as the survival of Prospero and
Miranda in their insubstantial vessel against all the
odds of the tempestuous winds. Despite this romantic
style of presentation, however, the overall effect of the
two plays is not on the whole unrealistic. This is
because Shakespeare combines a mixture of realism with
the romance, so that we are able to believe the
unbelievable.
Shakespeare uses an extraordinary skill in his transition
from one style to another, combining the disparate
elements in order to achieve an overall unity. I will
discuss two scenes from the two plays in order to
illustrate this use of different styles:
In The Winter's Tale the trial scene of the
third act is written in the realistic style of the tragic
mode, the force of Leontes's accusations against Hermione
evoking a sense of injustice in the reader / audience.
Hermione's defence is emphatic and pathetic in tone:
. . . my past life
Hath been as continent, as chaste as true,
As I am now unhappy; which is more
Than history can pattern [3.ii.38]
A deep sense of pathos
is inherent in the verse. Hermione is quietly, placidly,
accepting of her fatal destiny. She is a victim, but a
dignified victim. When news of Mamillius's death is
brought - with all the urgency usually accompanying news
of death in the tragic style - the pathos is intensified
still further. The effect on Hermione is apparently fatal
- she falls down, and Leontes is later - falsely - told
that she has died.
Leontes's realisation of his grave error is equally
tragic. The news of the death of his son finally exerts
the necessary power over Leontes and brings him to his
senses. Immediately he recognises his error and appeals
to Apollo for pardon for his 'great profaneness' [3.ii.181].
With the tragic proportions of Leontes's actions
established, Shakespeare now guides us onto the somewhat
ludicrous account of Antigonus's dream of Hermione
visiting him in his cabin at night:
[she] thrice bowed
before me,
And, gasping to begin some speech, her eyes
Became two spouts [3.iii.31]
and the equally
surprising stage-direction of his being chased towards
his untimely end - 'pursued by a bear' [3.iii.67]. We
have now reached the realm of romance.
With the tragic message established and the romance
element introduced we can enter the pastoral world
smoothly, with the knowledge of corruption and pathos to
counterbalance the idyllic world of the pastoral. The
pastoral style provides us with an antithesis to the
realistic but corrupt world of the court, presenting a
beautiful celebration of innocence and a new life into
which the corrupt deeds of the past must be submerged.
Into this romance style, however, Shakespeare weaves
another contradictory style, of realism, in the character
of Autolycus, who in his comic rogueries seems wholly out
of place in such a setting. After the highly emotional
scene in which Florizel and Perdita are found out by
Polixenes, Autolycus enters with tales of his robbery,
saying, 'Ha, ha! What a fool honesty is' [4.iv.699]. The
character of Autolycus serves both to retain the balance
of tragedy by dampening the tension, and to subvert the
romance with an element of realism which prevents the
scene from becoming overly sentimental. Through this
mixture of styles Shakespeare strengthens the effect of
the scene.
In The Tempest, similarly, we are taken through
a series of different styles which combine and compliment
each other. The marriage celebration of Ferdinand and
Miranda, complete with its spirits, seems at first to be
a straightforward romantic celebration of the symbolic
marriage of reconciliation; the Masque element
heightening the celebration, and with the plentiful
riches equalling the richness of the occasion. Juno's
song illustrates this:
Honour, riches,
marriage-blessing,
Long continuance and increasing,
Hourly joys upon you! [4.i.129]
Ferdinand's delight at
such plenty is the delight of a reveller in a utopian
world:
Let me live here
ever!
So rare a wondered father and a wise
makes this place a paradise. [4.i.147]
It seems as if we have
reached the harmonious ending of comedy and romance. But
this impression is soon overthrown by another change in
style. For through Prospero's sudden, anguished
remembrance of the 'foul conspiracy' [4.i.177] of Caliban
we are yanked back into the tragic plot; Caliban's plot
being a microcosm of Alonso and Antonio's usurpation of
Prospero's Dukedom. As this change of tone occurs all
traces of the masque vanish 'and / Are melted into air,
into thin air; / And, like the baseless fabric of this
vision' [4.i.188]. The idealised world of romance and
plenty is swallowed up into the corruption which exists
in the real world. Harmony, we learn, cannot be achieved
through such romantic heights; Prospero tells Ferdinand 'Our
revels now are ended.' [4.i.187]. True harmony must be
accomplished through a regeneration of the spirit, a
freeing of the soul from corruption - symbolised in the
freeing of the personified spirit Aerial. Magic and
romance must be laid to rest, and resolution achieved
through realistic means. Thus in The Tempest the
unity is finally achieved through the tragic style.
This theme of renewal and regeneration is the moral
message which ties together not only the disparate
elements of style, but also the last plays as a whole.
The themes of innocence and experience are tied up in
this regeneration, the new offering innocent hope for an
older, corrupted generation. Miranda and Ferdinand; and
Perdita and Florizel, unite the broken relations of their
fathers and seal the band of reconciliation. In The
Tempest Prospero himself can also be seen to embody
regeneration and spiritual development, for through his
magic he brings about the repentance of Antonio and
Alonso, and the marriage which is to achieve the
regeneration.
Through Prospero also, the disparate styles are united.
He is the symbolic figure in which the tragic events are
rooted, for he is both victim of revenge tragedy and the
hero who suffered from a fatal flaw. So too is he the
instigator of the play's romance. With his magic wand we
find he has caused the shipwreck of the first act, which
initially seemed to be rooted in realism.
The mixture of styles in both plays are, then,
successfully combined. They work together to produce a
unified whole; separately and collectively combing to 'exert
[an] energy' which enhances and balances the moral
message of Shakespeare's last plays.
Bibliography
Bradley, A.C. Shakespeare and the Globe: Then and Now
Greenblatt, Stephen. The Norton Shakespeare
Wells, Stanley.
© Liz Lewis December 2001
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