Unconformities in Shakespeare’s Tragedies PDF
Preview Unconformities in Shakespeare’s Tragedies
UNCONFORMITIES IN SHAKESPEARE'S TRAGEDIES By the same author UNCONFORMITIES IN SHAKESPEARE'S IllSTORY PLAYS UNCONFORMITIES IN SHAKESPEARE'S EARLY COMEDIES INIURIOUS IMPOSTORS AND RICHARD III MEMORIAL TRANSMISSION AND QUARTO COPY IN RICHARD ill THE TRAGEDY OF KING RICHARD THE TlllRD: PARALLEL TEXTS (editor) POETRY AND BELIEF IN THE WORK OFT. S. ELIOT THE IMPORTANCE OF RECOGNITION: SIX CHAPTERS ON T.S.ELIOT JAMES JOYCE AND THE CULTIC USE OF FICTION KONSTFUGLEN OG NATTERGALEN: ESSAYS OM DIKTNING OG KRITIKK UNCONFORMITIES IN SHAKESPEARE'S TRAGEDIES Kristian Smidt Emeritus Professor of English Literature University of Oslo Palgrave Macmillan ISBN 978-1-349-11122-0 ISBN 978-1-349-11120-6 (eBook) DOI 10.1007/978-1-349-11120-6 © Kristian Smidt, 1990 Softc over reprint of the hardcover 1st edition 1990 978-0-3 3 3-51 087-2 All rights reserved. For information, write: Scholarly and Reference Division, StMartin's Press, Inc., 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, N.Y. 10010 First published in the United States of America in 1990 ISBN 978-0-312-03664-5 Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Smidt, Kristian. Unconformities in Shakespeare's tragedies I Kristian Smidt p. em. Includes bibliographical references. ISBN 978-0-312-03664-5 1. Shakespeare, William, 1564-1616--Tragedies. I. Title. PR2983.S56 1990 822.3'3-dc20 89-36480 CIP For Gerald Eades Bentley friend and mentor Contents Preface IX Introduction 2 Lopped Limbs and Chopped Purposes 15 3 Star-Crossed and Stumbling 27 4 julius Caesar: the Making of a Diptych 45 5 The Mobled Queen and the Sweet Prince 60 6 Ironic Engagements 89 7 With Violent Pace 100 8 The Divided Kingdom I29 9 Double, Double, Toil and Trouble 150 10 I' the East My Pleasure Lies 163 II Pride and Policy 180 I2 Work in Progress: Timon of Athens 197 I3 Conclusion 208 Notes 216 Bibliography 25I Index 259 Vll Preface This is the third 'unconformities' title in a series to be completed, it is hoped, with a study of Shakespeare's middle comedies and late romances, so as to cover the complete dramatic canon. The reception of the first two books, on the histories and early comedies respectively, has been sufficiently encouraging to keep me in business, though some reviewers persist in seeing my efforts as subversive and reductive. It seems I cannot over- emphasise my wish to contribute to a better understanding of Shakespeare's immense genius by examining a too much neglected aspect of his works: the evidence they provide of an agile and powerful imagination feeling its way towards verbal realisations and dramatic developments not always or in every respect pre-planned, sometimes revising to introduce new matter or to cancel inconsistencies, but sometimes, too, disdaining or forgetting to make ideal adjustments. True enough, his manu- scripts were subject to interference- or failure to interfere correctly- by actors, book-keepers, censors, reporters, scribes, editors and compositors, a fact which tends in some measure to obscure the marks of the author in problematic passages, usually those of local or minor importance in the plays. The spectre of collaboration has also been raised again by the authors of the imposing Oxford volume William Shakespeare: A Textual Companion (1987), following upon extensive computerised analysis of stylistic details. We may have to allow a little more room for Middleton, for instance, in the authorship of Macbeth and Timon of Athens than has hitherto been assigned to him. Nevertheless nothing has been suggested so far to make us doubt that Shakespeare was mainly responsible for both the general framework and the logical flow of the plays included in the 1623 Folio. And in any case, even definite proof of collaboration in a few scenes and passages would only provisionally affect my examination of the plays as textual artefacts. My focus is, of lX Preface X course, on Shakespeare, but unconformities are unconformities however they came into being. Shakespeare may not himself have supervised the printing of any of his dramatic works, but the sheer abundance of material they present for comparative and structural studies makes it possible to follow his progress through the composition of the individual works in some detail and with a fair degree of confidence. And to see Shakespeare in the act of creation is to see his human limitations as well as his greatness and should make us all the more able to appreciate the ways in which he raises human achievement beyond a common range. To get this double perspective on his works is also an exciting experience, and I would not be sorry if some of the pleasurable sensations I have felt in my own explorations should have informed my presenta- tion. My concern, then, is with particular features of Shakespeare's dramatic craft, and if I pay relatively little attention to other aspects of his work it is not because I underestimate their importance. It is not my present aim to expound the complexi- ties or expatiate on the marvels of Shakespeare's plays except in so far as interpretation and evaluation are prerequisites for an understanding of the guiding visions and the creative processes reflected in the internal economy of each separate play. I do not attempt a new hermeneutic approach to them or a comprehen- sive view of their constitution. My concern is with unity and coherence in the various aspects and elements of the plays and with the plays as dramatic structures. The justification for this kind of study must be that a certain amount offootwork is necessary if the details that go to make up general impressions are to be closely observed and the founda- tions laid for more advanced judgements. And no doubt in the past there has been a certain unwillingness to consider the problematic features of the play texts-apart, of course, from obvious cruxes and accidental errors. There is fortunately at present a growing understanding of the need to recognise the experimental attitude that was part of Shakespeare's genius as a writer. The word 'unconformities' as used in the title of this book may seem a little uncouth, but it was originally chosen because of its purely factual connotations, as indicating by geological analogy the kind of breaks in continuity that are occasionally found in the Preface xi development of plot, or character, or in other elements of a play. I now seem to be stuck with the word, but there is an advantage in that anyone acquainted with my previous books will recognise its intended neutrality with regard to value-judgements. Uncon- formities are not necessarily faults in the usual sense. The history plays dealt with in my first volume are some of them tragedies: 2-3 Henry VI, Richard III, Richard II, and, more questionably, King John. Some of the plays classified in the First Folio as tragedies are also historical, notably Julius Caesar, Antorry and Cleopatra, and Coriolanus, while Hamlet, Lear, and, with more reason, Macbeth were probably thought of as being founded in history. There is no definite distinction of genre. But the tragedies considered in the present volume are not only pri- marily tragical (some throughout, one or two chiefly by virtue of their endings): they also include Shakespeare's most towering achievements in dramatic art. It is all the more important that the limited aims of my investigation should be kept in mind. I am very sensible that I have had to work mainly with the texts of the plays. I have tried not to forget, however, that the texts, though written by a poet whose inspiration may have been impatient of control and who may well have wished them to be read by friends and patrons, were primarily intended for use in the theatre. The recent appearance of David Wiles's Shakespeare's Clown ( 1987) has forcibly reminded us of this fact. Wiles insists, moreover, on Shakespeare's responsibility for creating suitable parts for the various actors who were his peers in the acting company for which he worked. One of the foremost Shakespeare scholars of our time, G. E. Bentley, says in The Profession of Dramatist in Shakespeare's Time (1971): Dazzled by the genius of Shakespeare, scholars have inevi- tably concentrated on explications of his poetic achievements or on the misadventures of his creations in the printing houses. Both are rewarding and necessary; but, except for the often brash and generally discredited analyses of the disintegrators, most studies tend to take Shakespeare's plays out of the theatre for which they were created and to analyze them in the milieu of the lyric and philosophical poet and not in the milieu of the hard-working professional playwright devoted to the enterprise of the most successful and profitable London acting company of the time-or perhaps of any time. (p.260)
The list of books you might like
