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CRIME AND GOD'S JUDGMENT IN SHAKESPEARE This page intentionally left blank CRIME AND GOD'S JUDGMENT IN SHAKESPEARE ROBERT RENTOUL REED, ]R. THE UNIVERSITY PRESS OF KENTUCKY Copyright © 1984 by The University Press of Kentucky Scholarly publisher for the Commonwealth, serving Bellarmine College, Berea College, Centre College of Kentucky, Eastern Kentucky University, The Filson Club, Georgetown College, Kentucky Historical Society, Kentucky State University, Morehead State University, Murray State University, Northern Kentucky University, Transylvania University, University of Kentucky, University of Louisville, and Western Kentucky University. Editorial and Sales Offices: Lexington, Kentucky 40506-0024 Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data Reed, Robert Rentoul, 1911- Crime and God's judgment in Shakespeare. Includes bibliographical references and index. 1. Shakespeare, William, 1564-1616-Political and social views. 2. Shakespeare, William, 1564-1616- Religion and ethics. 3. Justice in literature. I. Title. PR3017.R43 1983 833.3'3 83-19701 ISBN: 978-0-8131-5450-3 CONTENTS INTRODUCTION 1 ONE: The Structure of Shakespeare's Eight-Part Epic 12 TWO: The Justice of God: Medieval and Renaissance 43 THREE: Thomas of Gloucester: The Sword of Retribution 66 FOUR: Richard II and the Delay of Providence 89 FIVE: The Later Gloucesters: Humphrey and Richard 103 SIX: Prince Hamlet and the Double Mission 129 SEVEN: Macbeth, the Devil, and God 165 CONCLUSION 199 NOTES 205 INDEX 221 This page intentionally left blank INTRODUCTION The present book treats divine retribution both in Shakespeare's English history plays and in several of his major tragedies, each of which has satisfied the precondition that the retribution is a principal force-and sometimes the main force-behind the play's tragic inevitability. In the histories, God's judgments are motivated principally (but not entirely) by the biblical doctrine of inherited guilt; in the tragedies, by the im mediate guilt of a living man. The purpose of my introduction is to re spond to those critics, most of them recent, who have repudiated the presence of divine punishment in the histories-in particular, the two tetralogies-and to whom, in my analyses of the plays, I have found no appropriate place to respond. As for the tragedies, I find no urgent com pulsion to respond, collectively, to readers who have dissented from af firmations of divine retribution in them, for such affirmations, until now, have not been recognized as a motif prominent enough to en courage much adverse commentary. My response is necessarily confined to the English history plays, and even here the imperative behind it is not overriding: the most energetic repudiations of the existence of divine retribution in these plays have been, at best, periodic and in substance not unduly impressive. On the other hand, even though E.M.W. Tillyard introduced the Tudor myth theme as far back as 1944, little that can be termed both perceptive and comprehensive has since been published in support of the providential shaping of destiny within the history plays, in particular as determined by God's judgment upon violations of the divine law. In short, the prin cipal studies rejecting divine retribution in the English history plays are approximately as numerous as those that affirm it and are, in general, more concentrated in their focus. The Naysayers-and this is the crucial point-have exhibited a persuasive talent, more evident in their arresting phrases than in the substance of their arguments, not even approximated in the scholarly and hence less evocative syntax of the Affirmers. 2 INTRODUCTION When Shakespeare wrote the Henry VI plays in the early 1590s, his interest in retribution was focused primarily on the "blood will have blood" stimulus, or the vendetta, and only rarely (and then with a somewhat misted clarity) on God's judgment upon the transgressor. Richard III, by contrast, indicates an awakened awareness of God's power of retribution, which had been a preoccupation more of the Elizabethan pulpit than of the theater. Two or three critics of the past twenty years-responding basically to Tillyard's insistence upon the "Tudor myth"-have marked the relative absence of divine justice in the Henry VI plays and have exploited this absence in rejecting Tillyard's arguments. Others, a bit bolder, have focused their disagreements only on Richard III. Of the former, David Frey, in a recent book (1976), cites the "innocent human suffering" of Henry VI as proof of the absence of God's justice of any kind. He finds "God's historical justice" both in the Tudor chroniclers' accounts of Henry VI and in Shakespeare's Henry VI plays "to be shockingly negligent in protecting [an] anointed king, the innocent Henry VI." Frey then proceeds: "If Providence," as recorded by the chroniclers, "did not protect Henry VI, was it likely [Shakespeare seems to have asked] that it defeated Richard III and planted Richmond on England's throne? Thus, at the same time that he [Shakespeare] revivifies Henry VI to question the 'Tudor myth,' he enlarges on Richard III to nullify it, and he diminishes Richmond to demolish it. "1 This statement of thesis, in suggesting Shakespeare's total disavowal of Providence, contains two flaws which Frey makes no later attempt to correct. First, it does not take appropriate account of two notable af firmations of God's supremacy over men on the occasion of Duke Hum phrey's death in 2 Henry VI, namely, that Humphrey may be a victim of "God's secret judgment" and Henry VI's statement: "If my suspect [about Humphrey's murderers] be false, forgive me God, I For judg ment only doth belong to Thee" (2 Hen 6, III.ii.139-40)-for the death of Humphrey, the King's uncle and Lord Protector, is an event that no critic can lightly bypass: it is to expose the weak-minded King to certain destruction by the house of York, itself a claimant to the throne, and more important in the present context, it brings God's judgment upon Humphrey's murderers. Second, Frey's statement totally ignores the divinely imposed Lancastrian affliction of inherited guilt (of which Humphrey is one of the victims) as carefully established-indeed, Introduction 3 planted with artful "foresight" -by Shakespeare in the historically earlier play Richard II only a year or two after he had completed (in Richard III) his first and historically later tetralogy. It is in this web of inherited guilt (the deferred legacy of the usurper and murderer Henry IV) that both Humphrey and Henry VI, however innocent themselves, are caught up. Of these and other workings of Providence, Frey takes no account. In Humphrey's death there is only the indication of "God's secret judgment" upon him. By contrast, if we are willing to give credence to a single word-" ordain' d" -customarily used by Shakespeare with God as the understood agent, Henry VI's untimely death, as shown late in 3 Henry VI, can be justified, almost irrefutably, in terms of the in herited guilt imposed by God upon Henry IV's heirs. Richard of Glou cester, having heard himself painted by Henry, whose son he has recent ly murdered, as a cutthroat incurably addicted to the shedding of English blood, recoils in unbridled anger: "I'll hear no more. Die, prophet, in thy speech. [Stabs him.] I For this, amongst the rest, was I ordain'd" (3 Hen 6, V.vi.57-58).2 In view of the fact that the spoken word of a character was the Tudor playwright's principal medium of instructing his audience, Shakespeare, almost certainly, would not have put the phrase "For this [the stabbing of Henry] was I ordain' d" in Richard's mouth if he did not intend his audience to understand Richard as a divinely appointed scourge; if we consider Richard's prideful in dependence of worldly officialdom, by what high authority other than God can he have been "ordain'd" to kill not only Henry VI but other men as well? At the very least, Richard thinks himself ordained as a scourge by a higher power, and if we hold in mind God's curse upon Henry IV's heirs (a theme, as chapter 1 will show, enunciated in the historically earlier plays), what Richard thinks about himself in terms of a divine sanction to kill a Lancastrian heir-in this instance, Henry VI-happens to fit in precisely with the judgment of "God omnipo tent" upon the house of Lancaster as twice foretold in Richard II. The task at hand authenticates Richard's boast. Ignorant of providential matters or not, Frey seems to have been in tent on exploding the "Tudor myth," first spelled out, although in a somewhat patchwork format, by Tillyard in 1944. Tillyard, for exam ple, in his chapter on the play Richard II, overlooks (as Frey has done) the theme of inherited guilt which, first implanted in that play, does

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