Shakespearean Tragedy: Lectures on Hamlet, Othello, King Lear, Macbeth
the battlefield. Even if his use of this expedient were not enough to
show that battle-scenes were extremely popular in the Elizabethan
theatre, we know it from other sources. It is a curious comment on the
futility of our spectacular effects that in our theatre these scenes, in
which we strive after an 'illusion' of which the Elizabethans never
dreamt, produce comparatively little excitement, and to many spectators
are even somewhat distasteful.[22] And although some of them thrill the
imagination of the reader, they rarely, I think, quite satisfy the
_dramatic_ sense. Perhaps this is partly because a battle is not the
most favourable place for the exhibition of tragic character; and it is
worth notice that Brutus, Cassius and Antony do not die fighting, but
commit suicide after defeat. The actual battle, however, does make us
feel the greatness of Antony, and still more does it help us to regard
Richard and Macbeth in their day of doom as heroes, and to mingle
sympathy and enthusiastic admiration with desire for their defeat.
(_g_) In some of the tragedies, again, an expedient is used, which
Freytag has pointed out (though he sometimes finds it, I think, where it
is not really employed). Shakespeare very rarely makes the least attempt
to surprise by his catastrophes. They are felt to be inevitable, though
the precise way in which they will be brought about is not, of course,
foreseen. Occasionally, however, where we dread the catastrophe because
we love the hero, a moment occurs, just before it, in which a gleam of
false hope lights up the darkening scene; and, though we know it is
false, it affects us. Far the most remarkable example is to be found in
the final Act of _King Lear_. Here the victory of Edgar and the deaths
of Edmund and the two sisters have almost made us forget the design on
the lives of Lear and Cordelia. Even when we are reminded of it there is
still room for hope that Edgar, who rushes away to the prison, will be
in time to save them; and, however familiar we are with the play, the
sudden entrance of Lear, with Cordelia dead in his arms, comes on us
with a shock. Much slighter, but quite perceptible, is the effect of
Antony's victory on land, and of the last outburst of pride and joy as
he and Cleopatra meet (IV. viii.). The frank apology of Hamlet to
Laertes, their reconciliation, and a delusive appearance of quiet and
even confident firmness in the tone of the hero's conversation with
Horatio, almost blind us to our better knowledge, and give to the
catastrophe an added pain. Those in the audience who are ignorant of
_Macbeth_, and who take more simply than most readers now can do the
mysterious prophecies concerning Birnam Wood and the man not born of
woman, feel, I imagine, just before the catastrophe, a false fear that
the hero may yet escape.
(_h_) I will mention only one point more. In some cases Shakespeare
spreads the catastrophe out, so to speak, over a considerable space, and
thus shortens that difficult section which has to show the development
of the counter-action. This is possible only where there is, besides the
hero, some character who engages our interest in the highest degree, and
with whose fate his own is bound up. Thus the murder of Desdemona is
separated by some distance from the death of Othello. The most
impressive scene in _Macbeth_, after that of Duncan's murder, is the
sleep-walking scene; and it may truly, if not literally, be said to show
the catastrophe of Lady Macbeth. Yet it is the opening scene of the
Fifth Act, and a number of scenes in which Macbeth's fate is still
approaching intervene before the close. Finally, in _Antony and
Cleopatra_ the heroine equals the hero in importance, and here the death
of Antony actually occurs in the Fourth Act, and the whole of the Fifth
is devoted to Cleopatra.
* * * * *
Let us now turn to _Othello_ and consider briefly its exceptional scheme
of construction. The advantage of this scheme is obvious. In the second
half of the tragedy there is no danger of 'dragging,' of any awkward
pause, any undue lowering of pitch, any need of scenes which, however
fine, are more or less episodic. The tension is extreme, and it is
relaxed only for brief intervals to permit of some slight relief. From
the moment when Iago begins to poison Othello's mind we hold our breath.
_Othello_ from this point onwards is certainly the most exciting of
Shakespeare's plays, unless possibly _Macbeth_ in its first part may be
held to rival it. And _Othello_ is such a masterpiece that we are
scarcely conscious of any disadvantage attending its method of
construction, and may even wonder why Shakespeare employed this
method--at any rate in its purity--in this tragedy alone. Nor is it any
answer to say that it would not elsewhere have suited his material. Even
if this be granted, how was it that he only once chose a story to which
this method was appropriate? To his eyes, or for his instinct, there
must have been some disadvantage in it. And dangers in it are in fact
not hard to see.
In the first place, where the conflict develops very slowly, or, as in
_Othello_, remains in a state of incubation during the first part of a
tragedy, that part cannot produce the tension proper to the
corresponding part of a tragedy like _Macbeth_, and may even run the
risk of being somewhat flat. This seems obvious, and it is none the less
true because in _Othello_ the difficulty is overcome. We may even see
that in _Othello_ a difficulty was felt. The First Act is full of stir,
but it is so because Shakespeare has filled it with a kind of
preliminary conflict between the hero and Brabantio,--a personage who
then vanishes from the stage. The long first scene of the Second Act is
largely occupied with mere conversations, artfully drawn out to
dimensions which can scarcely be considered essential to the plot. These
expedients are fully justified by their success, and nothing more
consummate in their way is to be found in Shakespeare than Othello's
speech to the Senate and Iago's two talks with Roderigo. But the fact
that Shakespeare can make a plan succeed does not show that the plan is,
abstractedly considered, a good plan; and if the scheme of construction
in _Othello_ were placed, in the shape of a mere outline, before a
play-wright ignorant of the actual drama, he would certainly, I believe,
feel grave misgivings about the first half of the play.
There is a second difficulty in the scheme. When the middle of the
tragedy is reached, the audience is not what it was at the beginning. It
has been attending for some time, and has been through a certain amount
of agitation. The extreme tension which now arises may therefore easily
tire and displease it, all the more if the matter which produces the
tension is very painful, if the catastrophe is not less so, and if the
limits of the remainder of the play (not to speak of any other
consideration) permit of very little relief. It is one thing to watch
the scene of Duncan's assassination at the beginning of the Second Act,
and another thing to watch the murder of Desdemona at the beginning of
the Fifth. If Shakespeare has wholly avoided this difficulty in
_Othello_, it is by treating the first part of the play in such a manner
that the sympathies excited are predominantly pleasant and therefore not
exhausting. The scene in the Council Chamber, and the scene of the
reunion at Cyprus, give almost unmixed happiness to the audience;
however repulsive Iago may be, the humour of his gulling of Roderigo is
agreeable; even the scene of Cassio's intoxication is not, on the whole,
painful. Hence we come to the great temptation-scene, where the conflict
emerges into life (III. iii.), with nerves unshaken and feelings much
fresher than those with which we greet the banquet-scene in _Macbeth_
(III. iv.), or the first of the storm-scenes in _King Lear_ (III. i.).
The same skill may be observed in _Antony and Cleopatra_, where, as we
saw, the second half of the tragedy is the more exciting. But, again,
the success due to Shakespeare's skill does not show that the scheme of
construction is free from a characteristic danger; and on the whole it
would appear to be best fitted for a plot which, though it may cause
painful agitation as it nears the end, actually ends with a solution
instead of a catastrophe.
But for Shakespeare's scanty use of this method there may have been a
deeper, though probably an unconscious, reason. The method suits a plot
based on intrigue. It may produce intense suspense. It may stir most
powerfully the tragic feelings of pity and fear. And it throws into
relief that aspect of tragedy in which great or beautiful lives seem
caught in the net of fate. But it is apt to be less favourable to the
exhibition of character, to show less clearly how an act returns upon
the agent, and to produce less strongly the impression of an inexorable
order working in the passions and actions of men, and labouring through
their agony and waste towards good. Now, it seems clear from his
tragedies that what appealed most to Shakespeare was this latter class
of effects. I do not ask here whether _Othello_ fails to produce, in the
same degree as the other tragedies, these impressions; but Shakespeare's
preference for them may have been one reason why he habitually chose a
scheme of construction which produces in the final Acts but little of
strained suspense, and presents the catastrophe as a thing foreseen and
following with a psychological and moral necessity on the action
exhibited in the first part of the tragedy.
4
The more minute details of construction cannot well be examined here,
and I will not pursue the subject further. But its discussion suggests a
question which will have occurred to some of my hearers. They may have
asked themselves whether I have not used the words 'art' and 'device'
and 'expedient' and 'method' too boldly, as though Shakespeare were a
conscious artist, and not rather a writer who constructed in obedience
to an extraordinary dramatic instinct, as he composed mainly by
inspiration. And a brief explanation on this head will enable me to
allude to a few more points, chiefly of construction, which are not too
technical for a lecture.
In speaking, for convenience, of devices and expedients, I did not
intend to imply that Shakespeare always deliberately aimed at the
effects which he produced. But _no_ artist always does this, and I see
no reason to doubt that Shakespeare often did it, or to suppose that his
method of constructing and composing differed, except in degree, from
that of the most 'conscious' of artists. The antithesis of art and
inspiration, though not meaningless, is often most misleading.
Inspiration is surely not incompatible with considerate workmanship. The
two may be severed, but they need not be so, and where a genuinely
poetic result is being produced they cannot be so. The glow of a first
conception must in some measure survive or rekindle itself in the work
of planning and executing; and what is called a technical expedient may
'come' to a man with as sudden a glory as a splendid image. Verse may be
easy and unpremeditated, as Milton says his was, and yet many a word in
it may be changed many a time, and the last change be more 'inspired'
than the original. The difference between poets in these matters is no
doubt considerable, and sometimes important, but it can only be a
difference of less and more. It is probable that Shakespeare often wrote
fluently, for Jonson (a better authority than Heminge and Condell) says
so; and for anything we can tell he may also have constructed with
unusual readiness. But we know that he revised and re-wrote (for
instance in _Love's Labour's Lost_ and _Romeo and Juliet_ and _Hamlet_);