Shakespeare and The Revelation of the Mechanics of the Universe.

Here is the final draft of my final paper. It's not be presented until Friday, but it had to be unloaded today. Some quotes may be missing, but the primary thrust is here. Enjoy my recognition.




Shakespeare and The Revelation of the Mechanics of the Universe


Daniel Lockhart
ENGL 432
Spring 2006
This examination of Shakespeare will pick up where his final play, the Tempest, left us. The knowledge and recognition that I say I’ve gained from this course can easily be summed up in the most memorable scene in this, the greatest of his romance. It is microscopic view of macroscopic structure of the universe. We witness Ferdinand and Miranda playing chess behind a veiled wall, in the most ancient of human dwellings, a cave. This is Shakespeare as Prospero revealing the macrocosmic view of the universe. The chess board, the pieces, the players. These are all the critical elements to function of the universe we as humans have come to inhabit. The old Bard has provided the macrocosmic view to the plain of entities that cannot see outside of their microcosmic view. His series of plays present us with a series of chess boards, the setting if you will. The characters that populate these plays can be seen as the individual pieces.
The chess match is an extremely apt metaphor for the functioning of universe. It is, in essence what Shakespeare has been doing since his first play Henry VI, pt one. In this game, every piece is an archetype, and every setting a board. Each archetype carries with it, its own duties, goals, personalities, and views. There are many different types of boards upon which to play this most ancient game. It is how they are maneuvered that determine the success of each individual piece. The success of each piece is not reliant upon survival, but more upon its ability to fulfill its goal and duty. Each piece, or archetype fails to see the board or setting it inhabits in totality. It is obscured by its microscopic vision of its self and surrounds. The only view each piece has is it’s own interactions with its surroundings and fellow pieces. Characters are these archetypes. People are those characters. What they fail to see is the entities that manipulate the game. Two opposite consciousnesses controlling two opposing sets of pieces or archetypes manipulate the pieces to their own ends.[1] These games occur over limited periods of time, but appear to continue in an unending succession of matches. Gloucester states in King Lear, “As flies are to th’ wanton boys are we to th’ gods: They kill us for their sport.” (King Lear. Act IV, I, 34-45). We are mere pawns in the hands of gods that play with our very existence for sport. Over and over, history shows us that like situations repeat themselves. Similar archetypes arise and fall according to their adherence to cues set forth by these overlying entities.
How is it that Shakespeare is able to understand this and illustrate it to us? The answer to that is simple. Karl Jung was another in the great line of thinkers that brought us a further enhanced view of the macrocosm that we have come to inhabit. Jung and much to the same extent, Emerson[2], and the Transcendalists highlight facts that Shakespeare can merely point to. The understanding of the existence of the great collective consciousness. We are all aspects of this, the great over soul, and only fail to understand the workings of the universe because our senses reduce our understanding to that a microscopic view of the whole. Much of this same sort of viewpoint can be seen in basic Buddhist tenants that claim the soul is confused by our five, inherently flawed senses. Building further upon this, the soul is merely one aspect or part of the larger over-arching entity that is the over soul, or collective consciousness. Certain special individuals are able to pull these all encompassing understandings through themselves and illustrate them to our meager senses. Shakespeare was one of these unique individuals. He was a channeller of the divine. A rare individual that was capable of melding heaven with earth. Like Prospero, he wielded the magic of the island, our island, to illustrate an understanding quite critical to what it was to be human. Shakespeare transformed this knowledge into not only words, but also images, we can form into the basic principles of this understanding.
If we look to the Tempest we can see the crescendo of these images. His previous works are just mere early workings of these images.[3] This play is as blatant an example of this view of the universe as could be produced. Prospero shares so much in common with Will, that we can see him almost as nothing other than Shakespeare. His duty is the director of the action. Coming out of hiding, he is no longer the Duke of Dark Corners we see in Measure for Measure. He is overt, he is magical, and he is in clear command of the actions of the characters on this island. Duke Vincentio is the younger Shakespeare, Prospero the mature Shakespeare. As actor director of this piece we see him direct the end result of this particular group of individuals. He is manipulating the pieces against his opponent. His opponent in this game is time. According to Northrop Frye, so much of this play has to do with time and the concern characters have for it. (Frye pg.178). All along the end results were predetermined, it was merely a matter of hitting his cues on time to complete the end. Still pulling upon basic principles of Buddhism, I would agree with Frye but take this point further. I would argue that all of Shakespeare’s works are enamored with time. They need to be. On stage directions are all reliant upon timing. If Jacques is correct in stating that all the world is a stage, then time becomes more critical then first imagined. Everything within the universe is impermanent. If we all have one duty, a Dharma if you will, during our limited time here then it is critical to understand that timing is everything. This cannot be stressed enough. If we are unable to fulfill our Dharma, the view of our life can be nothing better than the sight of a tragedy. Timing is critical, as in failing to follow our “on stage” cues, we risk missing our chance to complete or tasks. Prospero’s Dharma was to be an apt ruler to his people, and a father to his daughter. By the end of the Tempest he has done this, through his manipulation of magic. Like Hamlet, he procrastinated by his obsession with books. Before the end of this play, he has found his way and assumes his responsibility as a Duke. As such, the tale of Prospero ends as a comedic Romance.
In looking at Richard II we can see the aspects of unfulfilled Dharma and tragedy. Richard’s job in life is to be a king and rule. Like Hamlet, the great procrastinator, he puts off his real job by playing with words. The very poetic nature of Richard II plays into this. According to Bloom this one of Shakespeare’s most lyrical work. Richard becomes so immersed in this that he essentially spells out his own demise. If you look at Prospero in these same terms, his actions mimic those of Richard. The marked difference is that Prospero pulls out of his distraction in time and grasps the cues of our great director at the appropriate moment. Richard misses his endless line of cues to take up the role of king, and continues to focus inward on his own sufferings. “Perhaps we could say that Richard has the language of a major poet but lacks the range, since his only subject is his own sufferings …” (Bloom, pg.253) Poets look outward, or at least good poets look outward and Richard clearly is not capable of doing this. Richard fails to complete his Dharma and as such his time among us must end as failure and hence a tragedy. Prospero fulfills his, as does the Duke in Measure for Measure. As such both of their plays end in a comedic fashion. Time is huge here. Richard does fails to realize neither his procrastination nor Dharma in time. Prospero and the Duke, on other the hand, do. Chess matches, can only last so long. All things are impermanent.
The whole of Shakespeare’s works can be seen in this light. Frye believes that the very essence of tragedy lies in the unfulfilled aspects of comedy. I agree with him, in large part, in regards to this statement. Tragedy occurs as failure to fulfill your Dharma before your limited time is up. Comedy indicates you have fulfilled your duty. The Chess board and pieces supply us with the metaphor for our macrocosmic view of the universe. Two opposing entities, the first of time, the second of Dharma playing for sport with our existence. They compete under these principles in unending sequence from our origins and to time immemorial.[4] By Shakespeare’s connection to the collective consciousness, he has enabled us to see the macrocosmic view of the universe. He has done this through his channeling of individual characters and in turn their reactions to certain settings[5]. Shakespeare has done this with such brilliance that his Dharma of a great revealer, has been obfuscated by our view of him as a playwright. Microscopically we see ourselves as mere pieces in this game. But there is macrocosmic view that is being obscured by confused senses. It was this view that Shakespeare provided us.
Works Cited:

Bloom, Harold . Shakespeare: The Invention of the Human. New York: Riverhead Books, 1998.

Frye, Northrop . Northrop Frye On Shakespeare. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1986.



[1] These consciousness manipulate the events by installing cues and manoeurving other characters around them.
[2] See Ralph Emerson’s essays on the Over-soul and the Poet for insight into this.
[3] Duke Vincentio (Measure for Measure) and Rosalind (As You Like It) are mere early workings of Prospero.
[4] Hence the game of chess in the cave. These are our origins as pawns in the game. We have been manipulated by these same gods since the moment we began to remember. The cave can also be taken as vessel akin to a womb. From this, it is the view that from conception we are pawns in this game.
[5] Settings in this case refers to all encompassing view of their environment. This includes actions done by others.

Quick Thoughts on Richard II

I have to admit this play was far from captivating the first time I watched it/read it. After reading both Blooms and Frye's thoughts on the play I really started to see some fantastic elements in it. The poetic nature of the lines I think, can really throw one off from the content. More than anything, this is a beautifully written play. The prose that we so commonly see in Shakespeare is rather absent in this particular work. I'm looking a little more in depth at this work in my final paper, so I'll be saving the description of much of my insight of the play until then. The one thing I do want to leave in this short discussion is the importance of both Dharma and Procrastination in regards to the main characters. There really isn't much in the way of likable qualities in Richard. He's a poor ruler, and self-centred, and thus equally poor, poet. Poet's look outward, and that's something he does not do. In the same way so do great leaders. Being "annointed" by God as king, it quite obvious what Dharma he was putting off in the course of his actions.

Much Ado About Nothing

I'm really not too sure how I feel about Bloom's take on nihilist view of the play. Ok, maybe I do. I really don't care for it. Guess I've never really overly thought about this play. Maybe that's because, maybe that Bloom is correct. On some level, and one not very much below the surface, this play could be construed to be about nothing. Hence the title right? Thing is the dialogue is just fantastic. I can always picture Shakespeare and Jonson going back and forth at some pub as Will's source for the quick wit of these lines. It does take a great group of actors to successfully pull this off, and saddly I do have yet to see such a collection of individuals. There is always hope though.

Some Thoughts on As You Like It

I actually recently saw this play. Last summer the girlfriend and I travelled back to the homeland to see this play staged at Stratford Shakespeare Festival in lovely Ontario, Canada. Somewhat appropriately we arrived in this small rural community in Volkswagon Vanagon to watch a play set in the 1960s complete with hippies. This was a fantastic rendition of the play. Rosalind came across as by the far the superior character in the performance. Bloom believed her to best comic hero yet conceived in the Western cannon. After seeing this play, I had to agree. To see a play acted is considerable better reading, no matter what Bloom may feel about this issue. Interesting, it was Touchstone's part that captivated my attention. His character clearly had the feeling of 1950s polyester suit "swingin'" kind of guy lost amongst the granola chuggin, tree-hugging hippies around him. It really was a interesting and contemporary take on the anti-pastoral conventions. I suppose I somewhat embraced him as character, as I the big city boy loose here in quaint Mountain-walled Montana. I love a little of both, but man, what I wouldn't give on some days for a coney dog, a ride on the people mover, and to stare at Diego Rivas' Murals at the DIA. And yes, that's a picture from the performance. Good old Hymen has joined the Hippies on stage. Where's my stash at?

Paper Written For ENGL 216

Here's a posting of the paper I wrote on Measure for Measure for Brit Lit I:

With a title drawn from the bible, Measure for Measure is one of Shakespeare’s works that appears clearly within the religious context of his times. This problem comedy deals with the moral nature of government and order. Mercy is cast as the critical factor in this discussion, as it becomes the underlying catalyst for the play. In first examining the analysis of Northrop Frye and then turning to an evaluation of the human aspects of the characters we see in Harold Bloom’s writings we can clearly see each individuals layered existence within these concepts of both the spiritual and natural realms of late Renaissance England.
The venerable Northrop Frye provides us with an excellent summary of Elizabethan England’s cosmological view of nature and the divine. His chapter on King Lear, looks into depth at what nature is in the understanding of Shakespeare’s audiences. It is a multifaceted word for multilayered universe. The first and highest level is that of heaven itself. This is the seat of the Christian God. The second level can be seen from Earth, and are the heavens. The stars within the heavens are made of the purest elements, and as such are the visible manifestations of the first level of the universe. The Garden of Eden was made up of the same material as the stars, and thus inhabited the same basic plane that the heavens did. Man then moved into the third level of nature. It is an existence that is morally superior to the nature inhabited solely by animals. This is the level of moral order, the best we can hope to achieve while in the plane of the living. The fourth level of nature is the base level of animals. It is the crude world of Darwin’s survival of the fittest ideology. This the lens through which Touchstone in As You Like It sees the world. It also the plane that mankind is falling to as we descend further from the divine realms of the Christian God. The last level is hell. (Frye 1986, pg.106)

In the end of the first act of Measure for Measure we see Vincentio leave his dukedom in the hands of the rather base character Angelo. I say base, because Angelo is a man of crude rules and morals governed by that fourth level of nature. He is a man of outward angelic morals, but at his innermost root is driven by the animalistic godless fourth level of nature. The Duke is aware of these short comings, but only after all the problems Angelo has been causing. This revelation comes through his conversation with Lucio, who believes the Duke to be the friar. (Act III, 2, 250-). It appears the Duke is aware of his shortcomings prior to this, as he quite clearly was aware of Angelo’s less than moral treatment of Marianna, his betrothed wife. Despite this, Vincentio is more than happy to hand over the keys of the city to an individual he knows is less than virtuous. This does serve an important and well planned out aspect to this particular work. Duke Vincentio truly is the Duke of Dark Corners as Lucio points out in Act IV. He possesses a deep understanding of the underpinnings of the universe, and how to manipulate them to desired ends. In this way the Duke is a pre-cursor to the Tempest’s Prospero. Only by leaving the city in the hands of a base character like Angelo, can their be any salvation, any return to righteous order. It was clear that order, in particular moral order, was on the verge of collapse prior to Vincentio’s departure (Bloom 1998, pg. 360). In the appointment of Angelo, there is a monumental swing in the direction of law. Law in this particular case, does not preclude itself to be moral. Often in the case of Shakespeare’s works, the law is anything but moral. Look to the example of Midsummer’s Night Dream and the adherence to the strict Athenian Law. The law works here on the same level. Shakespeare is again playing with the fundament differences of legal order and moral order. In Angelo’s workings of the law, there is no aspect of mercy. Mercy if course being, one of the guiding principles of christianity. With no mercy present in laws to institute morality in a city devoid of it, there is no hope of their success. A city with no morals, handed down from the heavens above, is one reduced to level of sheer animals. It is a region populated by creatures who organize their existence solely upon basic carnal levels. The carnal aspects of Vienna were beginning to consume the city and draw into this lower level, but only with the ascension of Angelo can the final moral blow be given to this city.
The interesting aspect of Angelo is that he, like the law, is not what he appears to be. According to R.W. Chambers “ ....Angelo is not so called for nothing. He is “angel on the outward side” -an ascetic saint in the judgment of his fellow citizens, and despite the meanness of his spirit, nay, because of it, a saint in his own esteem” (Muir 1965, pg 91). Angelo is in all outward viewings, to be saintly, and thus the best to uphold the laws concocted to end immorality. Appearances are often quite deceptive, and in the case of Shakespeare in general, Measure for Measure in particular, this more often than not rings true. As we later learn, Angelo is anything but angelic, specifically in his treatment of Marianna but more importantly in his lack of mercy. Here, the Bard is playing on aspects of human perception. Blinded by that fourth level of nature, it is beyond our scope to understand the divine, and hence the absolute moral[1]. This is a man who is regularly issuing decrees of death against people breaking a law contrived to prevent the very thing that assures their continuation in nature[2]. Angelo cannot be truly angelic as he lacks the key virtue of mercy. Their is much human quality to be intermingled with Christian morality, and as such the very things that Angelo stands against seem to deny the citizens of Vienna to be of human level closer to that fourth level of nature. Angelo, until the final scene of the play, never seems to doubt his own self importance[3]. This finds him morally defective in another sense, but also helps to play him against the divinely humane aspects of Vincentio. Vincentio is full of self doubt, as is evident in his departure from power. He does believe himself holy enough to solve the moral issues of his town. We are divine in that we follow the creation pattern of God. To suggest we can know everything is to commit one of the highest sins. The sin of hubris. Angelo carries himself with the air of divine being, the self-assured smugness that comes with knowing all to the extent of the knowledge of the gods. His repression of the carnal knowledge can easily be linked to God casting out Adam and Eve from the Garden of Eden for learning that same knowledge. The Duke is humane, he is the opposite of Angelo in most every way. Interesting the Duke draws his divinity from being human, and as such a creation of God.
As the Duke becomes a friar, he merges political power with a religious one. It is a strength that draws the divine power of the upper level of nature into a sort of moral reckoning at the human level. The Duke is clearly not fully initiated in this upper level, as Lucio, our play’s truth teller, a journalist according to Bloom (Bloom 1998, pg. 371), illustrates in his candid conversation with the Duke as friar:

“Duke: I never heard the absent Duke much detect for women. He was not
inclined that way
Lucio: O, sir, you are deceived .......
Who? Not the Duke? Yes, your beggar of fifty, and his use was to put a
Ducat in her clack-dish. The Duke had crotchets in him. He would be
Drunk, too: that let me inform you.” Act III, ii, 115-122

Lucio makes clear from his view of the Duke, that he was as much part of the animalistic nature of the world as the people he governed over. Although Vincentio has one major aspect that raises him above the rest of the base members of those he governs; mercy. Interesting with regards to the divine, Vincentio must inhabit both levels of nature. Only by drawing from both levels is mercy and moral order possible. Angelo is also one of these masses, and as such lacks just what it takes to stop Vienna from perpetual slide into the fourth level of nature. He is property of solely one level of existence. Due to this he is incapable of enacting any sort of moral order. Angelo may grasp at the upper level, but is incapable of attaining it. This steams primarily from his hubris. Lucio is also aware of the importance of mercy and highlights the brilliance of Vincentio as Duke : “He had some feeling of the sport. He knew the service, and that instructed him to mercy.” Act III, ii, 105-106. The sport he speaks of is the everyday life of the people of Vienna, and in particular the sexual exploits of the people. There is a clear knowledge of the presence of the carnal animalistic existence of humankind, but there is also an important moral aspect of that existence.
Mercy is the critical element of this. It is the lens through which enacting laws to maintain a moral order in the carnal world must be observed through. Angelo has no real concept of this carnal knowledge and thus his extreme stance against any violation of his laws against fornication. His lack of the knowledge[4] of what is to be human perhaps alienates him from the understanding the importance of mercy. The Duke gains his power through this, Angelo loses his in this same aspect. Again we are shown here that what appears to be is not so often what really is. What makes Angelo an interesting character, is that while we very much part of the fourth level of nature, he appears to make every effort to seem above it. He is not what he seems, and as such can hold no divine salvation for the town. The Duke is redemption of Vienna. Without him this play cannot end in any other way than a tragedy. It is he who suggests the infamous bed trick, that saves Claudio and restores Marianna to glory. After the Dukes rise to the third level of nature as the friar, and his subsequent return to the Vienna of the fourth level he realizes the vital nature of mercy in the morality in law. The Duke appears as the embodiment of the idea of mercy to his people, this made evident in the lines of Lucio. As the divine investment of moral law in the city Vienna, it is realization that he must make in order affect moral change in the order of Vienna. His mercy, but sparing not only Claudio but also Angelo, brings about the comedic conventions of the multiple marriages that end this play. It is through mercy that Duke Vincentio restores moral order to his kingdom.
Works Cited


Frye, Northrop . Northrop Frye On Shakespeare. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1986.

Bloom, Harold . Shakespeare: The Invention of the Human. New York: Riverhead Books, 1998.
Muir, Kenneth , ed. Shakespeare The Comedies: A Collection of Critical Essays. Englewood Cliffs: Prentice Hall Inc, 1965.
[1] What I mean by the absolute moral, is the supreme morals as occur in heaven. This level of morality does not and cannot completely occupy our levels of existence, because of crude corruptibility of nature.
[2] Copulation. The reason why animals exists is to procreate. As elements of this fourth level of nature, humans are is some essence animals. This law is unnatural, and thus does not belong here.
[3] This self assumed importance and superiority is clearly illustrated in Act II, i, when Angelo leaves Escalus to deal with the immoral rabble he cares not judge.
[4] What is made clear in this play, is that he never “formalized” his marriage with Marianna. Angelo has no knowledge of sex, primarily because he has never participated in. The Duke stands apart and opposite of this, especially if he has been visiting the whore houses like Lucio claims he has.

Harold Bloom on Pericles.

Bloom on Perciles

What follows is some notes I took from Bloom's Book Shakespeare: The Invention of the Human. The Chapter on, you guessed it, Pericles.
First two acts are rather poorly written, and thus cannot have been Shakespeare’s
Ben Johnson had hand in editing the first folio, and denounced Pericles as “a mouldy tale”
It appears that a man named George Wilkins was the primary author of the first two acts.
He was “a lowlife hack, possibly hanger-on” that the Bard may have illustrated
the plot to.
Was a whoremonger in London ---> an unsavory fellow in London.
Very odd in genre, and features choral recitation by a presenter ---> John Gower, medieval poet. ---> improves over the course of the play.
Has sporadic continuity ---> we are give episodes from the lives of Pericles, his wife Thaisa and daughter Marina.
The episodes do not generate each other as they would in rather history, comedy
and tragedy.
Seems that Shakespeare had exhausted these modes
Pericles has no personality whatsoever
Marina has lots of virtue but no personality to speak of.
There cannot be that individual a pathos in the emblematic world of Pericles, Prince of Tyre.
Pericles and Marina are a universal father and daughter
His only importance is that he is her father, who loses her and receives her again
Her only importance is that she is his daughter, who suffers separation and
redemption.
The importance her is relationship, NOT ARCHETYPES.
Pericles is just real enough to suffer trauma, and Marina strong enough to resist
being debauched, but both scarcely exist as will, cognition, and desire.
To Bloom Pericles is the only play he would rather see than read. This is because it is so poorly written.
Shakespeare compensated by making the last three acts of this play an radical
theatrical experiment.
In the Epilogue, Gower’s speech indicates the triumph of virtue over fortune, thanks to the intercession of the gods.
There appears a late life obsession with Diana in Shakespeare’s life
There are only two deities in Pericles, Neptune and Diana, and Diana wins
Such an emptying-out of Shakespeare’s characteristic richness is kenosis of sorts; the most sophisticated of all poet-playwrights surrenders his greatest powers and originalities - God becoming man, as it were
Kenosis is a Greek word for emptiness, which is used as a theological term
One suspects that the scenario for the play originated with Shakespeare, but that he had some distaste for what was to go into the first two acts and assigned them to his crony, Wilkins.
Shakespeare takes over on Pericles voyage back to Tyre with his wife and newborn
This scene highlight’s Shakespeare’s Melville’esque character III.i.1-6
Diana is the patron goddess of Ephesus where Thaisa is washed up
Shakespeare avoids the patterns of Christian miracle plays in exalting Diana.
Most vivid scenes to Bloom at the episodes of defiance in the brothel by Marina, and the recognition scene between Pericles and Marina on board of the ship in Act IV
Only in the brothel scenes does Shakespeare’s mimetic art return
Pandar, Bawd, and Boult all have personalities.
Interestingly enough these personalities must yield to divine virtue of Marina
She not only defeats them, but also wins over and converts the governor,
Lysimachus.
Clearly we have to regard Marina’s chastity as being mystical or occult; it cannot
Be violated, because Diana protects her own.
After her reunion with her father she can now be married to Lysimachus, both
because now he knows he social rank is at least as high as his, and also because
Diana accepts married chastity as an alternative for votaress.
Comedy is brothel scene is one of Shakespeare’s most advanced.
Only the irony of Marina’s invulnerable status maintains the dramatic structure’s
coherence.
Pericles appears on his ship like Kafka’s undead Hunter Gracchus on his death ship
Bur Gracchus is the Wandering Jew, caught forever in a cycle, and Pericles at last
is on the verge of release from his passive yielding to a procession of
catastrophes.
Obvious comparative nature between incestuous father-daughter and virtuous
father-daughter in recognition scene.
“Extremity” sums up all of Pericles’ catastrophes; awe is a proper response to the tribute father makes to daughter, as her smile undoes the whole history of his calamities.
Marina stoic like response to the recognition scene are perhaps rooted in her divine connection through virtueHe went well beyond Pericles in the romances that followed it, but this play was the school he learned his final art. ---> Well, the last 3 Acts anyhow.

Thought on Titus

After reading through Titus Andronicus and watching the presentation in class I couldn't help but to draw from it what I've come to understand about Roman History. Being presently enrolled in Dr. Cherry's History of Rome, the one clear fact that Rome had immensely difficult times in controlling bloodshed with regards to their government. A quick review of Late Republican Rome (prior to the rise of Augustus) and post Claudius Rome are clear examples of this violence. Now, there does exist an interesting paradox here. Often held up as one of the bastions of the civilized world, how could such repugnent and horrendous violence be so wide spread. Using Frye's examination of the different natures of the early modern world, could Shakespeare, in fact being using Titus to explore this idea? Are we in constant freefall from the grace that we once enjoyed with our gods? Does the mythologic idea of fall from grace captivate the Bard's mind? Or is this simply a very Dark comedy about Roman follies?

Some Notes On King Lear

Northrop Frye on King Lear

Part of a series of plays on the histories of British kings
Now seen as legends, but in days of bard they were seen as truth
Based upon Welch priest named Geoffrey of Monmouth (12th century)
Concocted a fictional history of Britain modeled on Virgil
Britain was colonized by Trojan refugees led by one Brutus
Lear is one the many kings chronicled in those writings
Lear was supposed to have lived somewhere around the 7th or 8th century before Christ
The place is thus the earliest chronological staged of Shakespeare’s works
With a setting that is so far back in time, sense of historical blurs into the sense of mythical and legendary times
Main characters expand into a gigantic, even titanic, dimension that simply wouldn’t be possible in a historical context (i.e. Henry VI)
Tensions arise from tensions between tragic structure and a framework of assumptions derived from Christianity.
Christianity is based on a myth which is comic in shape, its theme being the
salvation and redemption of man
look towards Dante and his commedia which follows this central christian myth;
story ends happily for all those who matter
Tragedy needs a hero of outsize dimensions:
Easy to get in Greek tragedy (men can descend from gods, history and
legend blend)
In Christianity there is no hero other than Christ who has a divine dimension.
Tragedy also raises some rather disturbing questions as to what type of god lies
At the centre of the universe ----> think the Gnostic gods.
Opening scene presents Gloucester and then Lear as a couple of incredibly foolish and gullible dodderers
Gloucester’s boast of how he begot Edmund makes us feel that there is credibility
to his later treachery.
It is a genuine humiliation for Goneril and Regan to make speeches of love to their father.
Lear doesn’t at any time in the play express any real affection or tenderness for
either of them.
Seems to be all about how much he’s given them, and what they ought to feel for
Him ---> a sort of bondage?
It is obvious (as speech in scene following Cordellia’s removal) that they are not
Grateful, and why should they be?
During first two acts, Lear’s collisions with his daughters steadily diminish his dignity and leave them with the dramatic honours.
Regan and Goneril never lose their cool: they are certainly harsh and unattractive women, but they have a kind of brusque common sense that bears [Lear] down every time.
Not until scene at end of second act (“shut up your doors”) that our sympathies clearly shift to Lear.
Obvious decrease from the one hundred knights that he used to have employed.
Desperate train now includes only the fool.
It is during and after the storm that the characters of the play begin to show their real nature.
This is unique in the Shakespearean world in that the characters are like chess
pieces ---> obviously black or white
three most apparent and important words in Lear are: 1) nature
2) nothing
3) fool

Nature
To understand this term it is important to examine kind of world view held by Shakespeare’s audience:
Two different types of Goddess of Nature invoked in Edmund’s first soliloquy and Lear’s curse on Goneril ---> illustrate two different concepts of this nature
People assumed that the universe was a hierarchy in which good was “up” and the bad was “down”. ---> simple metaphors, but didn’t affect their force or usefulness
At top of cosmos was the God of Christianity, whose abode was heaven
The lower heaven or sky is not heaven, but it’s the clearest visible symbol of it
The stars were made of a purer substance than this world, kept reminding us in
their circling of the planning and intelligence that went into the Creator’s
original construction
Garden of Eden was made of this same sort of stuff, except that man was meant to inhabit it.
Man fell out of this into a “lower” world, a third level into which man is now born but feels alienated from
Below this the fourth level, the demonic world.
The heaven of God is above nature, the hell of Satan below it.
The two middle levels however form this idea of nature, and thus nature has two levels. ---> the higher level we were intended to live in, and lower that we do.
Man can either attempt to rise above this level, or fall below it.
Their is no way to return to the Garden of Eden (its is gone), nor any physical return to the higher level, but their is hope to mentally get back to another level.
When we speak of nature it is important to note whether we speak of the upper human level of nature, or the environment around us.
Many things are natural to man, but not to things on the lower level
These differences illustrate the point that we are alien to this level
Edmond is commiting himself only to the lower, physical level of nature --- predators (aristocracy) and prey
Lear is cursing to the nature that includes what is natural to man (existence in which love, obedience, authority, and loyality are genuinely human.
Goneril is being cursed because her treatment of her father is “unnatural”
It should not be assumed that either of them actually are aware of the levels of nature, as this place actually predates the Christian god.
King Lear is the spookiest of the tragedies, and yet nothing explicitly supernatural or superhuman occurs. ----> We really don’t believe in Poor Toms five fiends
To Shakespeare’s audience the world of Lear would look like this:
1.World of impotent or nonexistent gods, which tend to collapse into deified
personifications of Nature or Fortune.
2. Social or human world with the elements the more enlightened can see to be essential to a human world, such as love, loyalty and authority. In particular, the world represented by Cordelia’s and Edgar’s love, Kent’s loyalty, Albany’s conscience, etc.
3. World of physical nature in which ,am os born an animal and has to follow the animal pattern of existence. (i.e. join the lions and eat well, or the sheep and get eaten)
4. A hell-world glimpsed in moments of madness or horror
Great example of this Edmund’s rejection of astrology; there’s no need for it in his nature
Storm plays a key role in that such natural disasters were thought to come from God at crucial times in human life
What it comes to symbolize in pre-Christian God times, is that Lear is moving into an order of nature that’s indifferent to human affairs.
His madness brings him insight into this new existence
With his abdication, whatever links there may be between the civilized human
world and the one above it have been severed.
Question lies now, what is a “natural man”?
Own proper human level it is natural to be clothed, sociable, and reasonable
Response to Goneril and Regan’s questions about need for all the knights, “Oh,
reason not the need” indicates that civilized life is not based simply on needs
The storm world descends him past this civilized level into the base world of
earthly nature.
Speech from Act III, iv about Poor Tom creates imagery of world worse than that
of Hamlet.
Poor Tom is a kind of ghastly parody of a free man, because he owes nothing to the amenities of civilization.
Lear starts at one end of nature and descends to the lower, with the removal of his clothes lying at the terminus.

Nothing
Harkens also to Richard II (see upcoming notes on this)
In both plays “nothing” seems to have the meaning of being deprived of one’s social function, and so of one’s identity.
A king who dies is still something, namely a dead king;
A king deprived of his kingship is nothing, even if he goes on living.
The train of knights to Lear represents his on-going kingship; he wants both to have and not have his royal powers.
Daughters at first don’t want to kill him, they’d prefer to let him live without power
To kill him would be murder; to let him survive without his identity is a kind of
annihilation.
Key question here, what is the cause of any of the essential human virtues (love, loyalty, etc.)?
Nothing: There is no “why” about them; they just are.
Lear is obsessed by the formula of something for something
Love and loyaty don’t have motives or expectations or cause, nor can they be quantified.
Cordelia’s answer to Lear in IV, vii “No cause, no cause” is one moment of supreme drama.
By saying this she also indicates she will have nothing to do with “these silly games”

Fool
Term is in time applied to practically every decent character in the play
Those who are not fools are people like Goneril, Regan, and Edmund who live according to the conditions of the lower or savage nature.
Albany called a “moral fool” by Goneril because he doesn’t accept this nature
Fool himself is natural ---> as a “natural” in this world, he is deficient enough, mentally, to be put in a licensed position to say what he likes.
In his kind of “natural” quality there is a reminiscence of a still coherent and divinely designed order of nature, a world in which the truth is “natural”
There is nothing funnier than sudden outspoken declaration of the truth
“Fool” here also applies itself to a victim, the kind of person to whom disaster happens
everyone who is on the wrong side of the wheel of fortune is a “fool” in this sense
Lear calls himself “the natural fool of fortune”
Gloucester is no atheist; he postulates gods, divine personalities, and if he replaced them with a mechanism of fate or destiny he couldn’t ascribe malice to it.
He feels horror of whats happened to him, and that goes beyond all human causes
Edgar and Albany are moralists
They look for human causes and assume that there are powers above who are
reacting to events as they should.
Albany is decent man, but in Goneril’s world he is weak and ineffectual
After the deaths of Goneril and Edmund he tries to postulate the workings of
providence. ---> this fails badly, as Lear launches the bombshell of Cordelia’s
death.
The Gloucester tragedy can be explained in moral terms (went into a whorehouse to beget Edmond), but the Lear cannot.
Both Edgar and Albany are fools in the sense that they are victims.
They utter the cries of bewildered men who can’t see what’s tormenting them, and
their explainations are at best random guesses.
In this dark, meaningless world, everyone is as spiritually blind (as Gloucester is physically) ---> blindness appears often throughout play.
There appears two versions of time in the play:
1) the events in the foreground summarizing slower and bigger events
2) the background events that take longer to work due to their size
An idea that seems to harken back to Richard II and Henry V: “a second fall of cursed man”
This second fall refers to the movement of man to the lower of the two states of
Nature
Storm in Act III is an image of nature dissolving into its primordial elements, losing its distinction of hierarchies in chaos. ---> a reverse crossing of the Red Sea
Central image of this descent is that of the antagonism of a younger and older generation.
Shakespeare is also playing here with the important “natural” virtue of honouring one’s parents, which in key to hereditary succession
Ambiguity in all tragedies: death is both punishment of the evil and reward for the virtuous, besides being the same end for everybody.
Edgar and Albany, the moralists, are survivors of the play and speak as though the length of human life has been shortened. (V. iii 323-26)
Language appears to the last remainants of the upper level of nature
Lear has entered a world in which the most genuine language is prophetic language: language inspired by a vision of life springing from the higher level of nature.

More Displaced Shakespeare

For all of those who have yet to see it, the new movie release V for Vendetta has a shocking amount of displacement of the Bards works. Don't wish to ruin it for those yet to see it, but the quotes of Twelvth Night and Macbeth are in the movie for a reason. This was an incredible trip into the literature for me. Little Dr.Faustus, and yes ...... even the Tempest can be seen in this place.

Some thoughts on Cymbeline

Just finished reading Cymbeline, and there is a good chance this is my new favourite Shakespearean Play. The complexity of its plot alone leads me to salivate. There is no clear single catalyst character that drives the plot. Though it could argued that the role is taken by the rather Medea-esque Queen, I would argue that a large portion also comes to lie on Iachimo. There is just such beauty in the complexity of this piece. The Green world as the cave. You really are seeing this balancing the evils of the court life that we see in both England and Rome. This play really builds on the momentum started is Alls Well That Ends Well. Just received Bloom's book, so I'll be doing a little note posting on that bad boy.