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The concept of an ordered universe appears widely in Elizabethan and Jacobean literature, and the comedies and romances of Shakespeare are shown to be typical in this respect, since they use disorder extensively in their plots. Contradictions of natural order centre on a hierarchical system in which a land's ruler or governor has supreme authority, and denial or usurpation of this authority causes serious disorders throughout the community. At lower levels, other figures of authority function similarly, with control of subservient members being necessary for the maintenance of order: thus parents control children; husbands their wives; and masters, servants. Disorder arises whenever this hierarchy is disrupted, and the conflicts in Shakespeare's comedies and romances may frequently be traced to such disruption, which therefore functions as the primum mobile of the plot.
Conflict is shown to be fundamental to these Shakespearean plays, operating in both the principal action and the sub-plot, which usually reflects or comments on the central conflicts. Clashes arise between members of the hierarchy when those below contradict their superiors, or aspire to their positions; but other important conflicts are those between appearance and reality; Art and Nature; nobility and virtue; love and friendship; love and war; and male and female values. These form the basic materials around which Shakespeare constructs his comedies and romances, ensuring dramatic tension and sustained interest.
Violence is the expression of conflict, and it may manifest itself verbally or physically. It is not used gratuitously by the playwright; rather, it is seen to point conflicts and heightened states of emotion. In the earlier plays violence is most often comic, presented farcically; while later, when the treatment of subject matter takes on tragic overtones, it is more ominous, promising serious consequences.
Shakespeare's comedies and romances concern themselves with the movement form disorder, with its associated conflict and violence, to an ordered, harmonious resolution, often incomplete or qualified. The initial state threatens sterility and even death, which, in the comic catharsis brought about by trial and suffering during a period of disruptive activity, give way to fecundity and regeneration.
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My greatest debt is to Professor Ferguson: his careful reading of my original manuscript and his detailed, perceptive comments contributed in no mean way to the shape and clarity of the finished thesis. It was at his suggestion that I compiled the first appendix and the index, and I have indicated my debt to his insight in the interpretation of the texts in numerous places in the notes; but a great many minor points, turns of phrase and nuances of expression must be acknowledged here to keep the notes in reasonable proportion.
My wife has patiently allowed me to study at the expense of household chores, holidays and countless other little things, all of which only love could endure. In addition, she proof-read the first copies submitted to Professor Ferguson as well as the final text, and from both she eliminated a multitude of errors: I claim as my own those that remain.
Studies of this nature would be impossible without access to primary texts, journals and works of reference and criticism: for these I must thank the staff of the various libraries in which I have studied. The majority of the works I have consulted were obtained through the postal service offered by the library of the University of South Africa, and I must thank both the Librarian and the Computer for their patience in granting extensions of loan periods necessitated by postal delays and Zimbabwe Customs Postal Detention Notices. In addition I am grateful for the services given by the British Library, the Westminster Central Reference Library, the library of the University of Cape Town, the Dugmore Memorial Library at Falcon College, the Bulawayo Public Library, and the National Free Library of Zimbabwe.
Finally, I would like to thank the administrators of the G.W.A. Chubb Memorial Trust of Falcon College for their sponsorship of my studies.
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Disorder, conflict and violence are closely related in Shakespearean comedy and romance, and were used by the dramatist throughout his career. It is remarkable, therefore, that while the idea of Elizabethan order has received some critical attention, I.1 the relationship of disorder to conflict and violence, and their presence and function in Shakespeare's comedies and romances have never been the subject of an extended study.
The Elizabethan concept of order which we find so widely assumed in contemporary writings is the basis of the tenth homily in the 1547 edition of Certayne Sermons, or Homilies, Appoynted by the Kynges Maiestie, To Bee Declared and Redde, by All Persones, Vicars, or Curates, Euery Son Daye in Their Churches, where Thei Haue Cure. This homily is 'An Exhortacion, Concernyng Good Ordre and Obedience, to Rulers and Magistrates':
Almightie God hath created & appointed al thynges, in heauen, yearth, and water in a most excellent and perfect ordre. In heauen he hath appointed distinct orders and states .... In yearth he hath assigned kynges, princes, with other gouernors vnder them, all in good & necessary order. ... Euery degree of people, in their vocacion, callyng, & office, hath appoynted to thẽ, their duette and ordre. Some are in high degree, some in lowe, some kynges & princes, some inferiors and subiectes ... and euery one haue nede of other, so that in al thinges, is to be lauded & praised ye goodly ordre of God, without ye whiche, no house, no cite no common wealth, can cõtinue & endure. For wher there is no right ordre, there reigneth all abuse, carnall libertie, enormitie, syn, & babilonicall confusiõ. I.2
It is hardly surprising, when the insistence of this homily on the divine sanction of royal supremacy is appreciated, that the 'Kynges Maiestie' directed the regular use of the homilies in church services. Political motives cannot be ascribed, however, to the extension of this idea, in secular works, from the realm of human affairs to the animal kingdom, and even to inanimate objects: we find this in de la Primaudaye's The French Academy, published in 1586:
Amongst all kindes of birds the Eagle is president, amongst beasts the Lion. In fresh and salt waters the mightiest fishes rule, as the Whale in the sea, and the Pike in pooles. Man ruleth over all living creatures. I.3
The importance of the Elizabethan concept of order is acknowledge by Winny: '... it would be very difficult to consider sixteenth-century outlook apart from its deeply ingrained concern with order and degree', I.4 and Shakespeare's awareness and use of order in his plays makes it an important critical consideration.
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The concept of order was an ideal: in real life order was continually being threatened and disrupted, at least within the body politic, by those who aspired to higher ranks, and those who fell short of the standards of behaviour required by their elevated position. Homily X predicted dire consequences resulting from such disturbances: 'there reigneth all abuse, carnall libertie, enormitie, syn, & babilonicall confusiõ'. Shakespeare, we will find, paid tribute to the notion of divine order by depicting the results of disorder in his comedies and romances.
Although conflict is fundamental to Shakespearean drama, it is not something which springs readily to mind when we think of the comedies: a consideration of conflict in the histories and tragedies is crucial to an understanding of those plays, but less attention has been paid to the conflicts which engaged the playwright in his comedies and romances. MacQueen identifies 'one primal and essential conflict, the struggle between the relentless drive of the universe toward movement and change and the equally persistent human desire for stasis and security', I.5 and this is seen to underlie the various conflicts which are the basis of not only Shakespearean drama, but the material from which it derives. This generalisation may be useful in discussing the wider significance of conflict, I.6 but its relationship to other frequently appearing conflicts is at best tenuous: how does it relate, for example, to the confrontation between male and female values, or the opposition of appearance to reality? My discussion shows that the range of conflicts found in Shakespeare's comedies and romances is considerable, and their intensity of presentation and dramatic functions vary widely.
Violence is closely related in Shakespeare's plays to disorder and conflict: as Homily X makes clear, a disturbance of order should induce violence. We do not usually expect to encounter such harsh consequences in the world of comedy or romance, but in fact they are by no means foreign to the genre. Jonson justifies the place of violence in comedy: Cordatus, the commentator in Every Man out of His Humour, points out that comedy is 'Imitatio vitae, Speculum consuetudinis, Imago veritatis' (Every Man out of his Humour III.vi), I.7 and in view of the level of violence prevailing, we may wonder that more did not find its way into contemporary comedy. The domestic brawls, drawing of weapons in public disputes, and references to punishments, whether capital or merely corrective, which are so widely scattered through Shakespeare's plays, are firmly based on daily experience. Bristol observes that 'if the
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frequency with which sureties of the peace were asked and usually granted is any indication, the ambient level of social and domestic violence must have been relatively high'. I.8 To this may be added Brown's account of capital punishment:
There was plentiful hanging. The condemned were driven to Tyburn from the various prisons in an open cart with the rope round their necks. This provided a popular spectacle. Then they were 'turned off'. That is to say, the cart was driven from under the gallows to which the rope had been attached. Death was not usually immediate and the friends of the victims, or any merciful spectators, ran in to pull down the feet of the dangling body so that 'the drop' might be made quickly effective. I.9
Such violence was an integral part of life, and so earned its place in Shakespearean comedy: the word 'death' appears 118 times in the comedies and romances, I.10 while 'kill' or 'kill'd' occurs 112 times. I.11 The contexts will reveal to what extent these references are serious or comic, but an indication of Shakespeare's attitude to violence may be gauged from his use of the words 'whip' and 'beat' (and their derivatives), which appear with approximately equal frequency in the comedies and romances which I am studying, compared with the remaining plays. I.12 These two words do not have the cruel, serious implications of the word 'scourge', which is found exclusively in the histories and tragedies, I.13 being less suited to the comic world. Wertham remarks that in Shakespeare's plays violent 'deeds do not occur for themselves, but are entirely subordinate to the plots. Antiviolence tendencies ... are strong'. I.14 My study will examine the relationship of violence to plot, revealing its function in expounding Shakespeare's comic vision of life.
Clowns were a popular source of disorder, conflict and violence in drama, as may be seen from this episode in The Pilgrimage to Parnassus:
Enter Dromo, drawing a clowne in with a rope.
Clowne
What now, thrust a man into the co˜mon wealth, whether hee will or noe? What the deuill should I doe here?
Dromo
Why, what an ass art thou? Dost thou not knowe a playe cannot be without a clowne? Clownes haue bene thrust into playes by head & shoulders, euer since Kempe could make a scuruey face, and therfore reason thou shouldst be drawne in with a cart rope.
Clowne
But what must I doe nowe?
Dromo
Why if thou canst but drawe thy mouth awrye, laye thy legg ouer thy staffe, sawe a peece of cheese asunder with thy dagger, lape vp drinke on the earth, I warrant thee, theile laughe mightilie. Well, Ile turne thee loose to them, ether saie somwhat for they selfe, or hang & be non plus.
(Pilgrimage to Parnassus 662-674) I.15
The disorder and violence here typify the comic use of disruption found in contemporary drama, and the cutting remark about Kemp suggests that
Shakespeare may have been thought guilty of the inclusion of irrelevant farcical material in his plays, or at least condoning the type of acting the clown stands accused of. My study reveals remarkably little of such extraneous action in the comedies and romances, and Shakespeare's own views on the matter were probably expressed by Hamlet:
And let those that play your Clownes, speake no more then is set downe for them. For there be of them, that will themselues laugh, to set on some quantitie of barren Spectators to laugh too, though in the meane time, some necessary Question of the Play be then to be considered: that's Villanous, & shews a most pittifull Ambition in the Foole that vses it.
(Hamlet III.ii.38-45) I.16
As will be seen, the clowns in Shakespeare's plays are sources of comic disruption used to comment on, or offset in some way, the conflicts in the main plot, maintaining the dramatic integrity of the play.
Berry has related the action of Shakespeare's comedies to van Gennep's 'rites of passage ... subdivided into rites of separation, transition rites, and rites of incorporation . ... Rites of separation are prominent in funeral ceremonies, rites of incorporation at marriages. Transition rites may play an important part, for instance, in pregnancy, betrothal, and initiation'. I.17 Berry identifies the three types as characteristic of comic plots, which involve for the characters an initial separation from familiar surroundings; a transition through a chaotic, reforming process during the body of the play; and an incorporation back into the original environment, in which a wiser, happier existence is possible, through the trauma experienced during the play. I.18 In my thesis, the first stage in this tripartite action is brought about by an inversion or contradiction of order, either already established or presented at the outset. The central section concerns the resulting conflict and violence, and entails a further proliferation of disorder, bringing about the final resolution in which harmony and order are re-established. Rites of passage are closely associated with the natural cycle of birth, growth, death and dissolution, and regeneration through fertility, and in Shakespeare's comedies and romances this cycle is shown to be an underlying motif.
I have chosen to include in my study all the commonly accepted romantic comedies; of the problem plays, or dark comedies, I have included All's Well That Ends Well and Measure for Measure, which have happy endings, but I have excluded Troilus and Cressida, which does not, despite its undeniably comic content. Disorder, conflict and violence naturally feature prominently in a drama of this type, and I have
inevitably referred to it in passing; but Wheeler's observations about Troilus and Cressida are worth repeating here:
Its action ... does not have close formal affinities to the comic actions of All's Well or Measure for Measure, nor does it share the close relations of those plays to the earlier comedies or the late romances, all of which move through comic actions that culminate in marriage and some form of social reconciliation, however fragile or problematic the endings in some cases may seem. I.19
Although Pericles is probably not entirely by Shakespeare, I have included it in my study because it gives valuable insight into his early dealings with romance. In summarising my findings in the chapter on romances, I have referred extensively to Henry VIII, as this play, too, reflects the playwright's dramatic vision late in his career, despite the presence of another hand in its composition. I have discussed the plays in what I consider to be their chronological order of composition, my ideas on this matter being derived largely from the prefatory discussions in the Arden editions of the plays.
Quotations from the plays derive from the 1623 folio edition, supplemented by quarto editions and later folios where this has been considered desirable. Biblical quotations are taken from the Geneva Bible, as this seems to me the version with which Shakespeare was likely to have been most familiar. I.20 I have given texts, as far as possible, unchanged; the following should, however, be noted:
1. Except in speech headings, names are not italicised.
2. Mislineation of verse is corrected, but punctuation of such passages is left unaltered.
3. Terminal punctuation is changed when this suits the context of the quotation.
4. Halves of words split between two lines by means of a hyphen are silently reunited in quotations, and no new hyphens are introduced.
5. ∫, ſ and vv are set in modern type as s, s and w respectively.
6. Stage directions are occasionally omitted from quotations where they are considered irrelevant.
7. I have carried out judicious separation of words and contractions inadvertently joined in the original text.
Act, scene and line numbers are taken from the Arden editions of the plays, cited at the first mention of each play in the text. Full details of works cited are given in the notes at their first appearance in the text, with the exception that those cited in this introduction have, for
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the reader's convenience, been cited in full again if they appear later. The use of capital letters in all titles has been standardised, as has the punctuation.
- - - NOTES: INTRODUCTION - - -
I.1 See Eustace Mandeville Wetenhall Tillyard, The Elizabethan World Picture, 1943; rpt (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1963); and James Winny, ed., The Frame of Order: An Outline of Elizabethan Belief Taken from Treatises of the Late Sixteenth Century (London: George Allen and Unwin, 1957). return
I.2 Homily X from Certayne Sermons, or Homilies, Appoynted by the Kynges Maiestie, To Bee Declared and Redde, by All Persones, Vicars, or Curates, Euery Son Daye in Their Churches, where Thei Haue Cure (1547). return
I.3 The edition cited it that of Winney, p.106. return
I.5 Gay Shults MacQueen, 'Shakespeare's Scene of Confrontation: The Encounter of Absolutes and Complexity', thesis, Ph.D. (Princeton University, 1981), p.1. return
I.6 MacQueen herself uses it in her thesis, discussing the confrontation of 'absolutes and complexity' - that is, stasis and change - in particular scenes at the ends of Shakespeare's plays. return
I.7 The edition cited is Benjamin Jonson, The Workes of Beniamin Jonson, (London: Will Stansby, 1616). return
I.8 Michael D. Bristol, Carnival and Theatre: Plebeian Culture and the Structure of Authority in Renaissance England (London: Methuen, 1985), pp.43-44. return
I.9 Ivor Brown, Shakespeare in His Time (Edinburgh: Thomas Nelson, 1960), p.113. return
I.10 Marvin Spevack, The Harvard Concordance to Shakespeare (Cambridge, Massachusetts: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 1974), pp.274-277. return
I.11 Ibid., pp.659-660. return
I.12 Ibid., pp.97 and 1499: 'whip' - total 95, comic 49; 'beat' - total 191, comic 75. return
I.13 A total of 18 times: ibid., p.1095. return
I.14 Fredric Wertham, A Sign for Cain: An Exploration of Human Violence (New York: Paperback Library, 1969), p.315. return
I.15 The edition cited is J.B. Leishman, ed., The Three Parnassus Plays (1598-1601) (London: Ivor Nicholson and Watson, 1949). return
I.16 Line numbers are taken from William Shakespeare, Hamlet, ed. Harold Jenkins (London: Methuen, 1982). For details of the text quoted see p.vii. return
I.17 Arnold van Gennep, The Rites of Passage, trans. Monika Vizedom and Gabrielle Caffe (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1960), pp.10-11. return
I.18 Edward Berry, Shakespeare's Comic Rites (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1984), p.2. return
I.19 Richard P. Wheeler, Shakespeare's Development and the Problem Comedies (Berkley: University of California Press, 1981), p.2. return
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I.20 See Richmond Noble, Shakespeare's Biblical Knowledge and Use of the Book of Common Prayer as Exemplified in the Plays of the First Folio (London: Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge, 1935), p.58. Noble concludes from his study that Shakespeare undoubtedly used the Geneva Bible and the Bishops' Bible, as well as The Book of Common Prayer. return
Proceed to Chapter One