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Content THE CONSTRUCTION OF TRAGEDY
by
Mary Anneeta Mann
A Dissertation Presented to the
FACULTY OF THE GRADUATE SCHOOL
UNIVERSITY OF SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA
In Partial Fulfillment of the
Requirements for the Degree
DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY
(Communication— Drama)
May 1982
UMI Number: DP22935
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UNIVERSITY OF SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA
T H E G R A D U A TE S C H O O L
U N IV E R S IT Y PARK
LOS A N G E LE S. C A L IF O R N IA 9 0 0 0 7
This dissertation, written by
under the direction of h.& X i.. Dissertation Com
mittee, and approved by all its members, has
been presented to and accepted by The Graduate
School, in partial fulfillm ent of requirements of
the degree of
ph -P-
D .
f i K ' l B 2 ---
^gosD
D O C T O R O F P H I L O S O P H Y
Dean
N COMMITTEE
Co Chairman
to/ C h a ' i ' r man
\
ACKNOWLEDGMENT
With thanks to Dr. John Hospers
for his patience and understanding.
TABLE OF CONTENTS
ACKNOWLEDGMENT ........................................... ii
INTRODUCTION ............................. 1
CHAPTER
I. THE FORMAT OF THE STUDY ....................... 9
I. Introduction ............................... 10
II. Tragedy - a conscious art form........... 12
III. The five stages of tragedy ............... 13
IV. The action of the prepared material ..... 14
V. The elements of the universe correspond
ing to dimensions in a tragedy .......... 17
VI. The relationship between the beginning
and the ending of a play ................. 18
VII.. An ideal aspiration - preservation and
ennoblement of the type .......... 20
VIII. Tragedy an organic whole - the perfectly
constructed tragedy ...................... 22
IX. Character - its ethical nature ........... 24
X. Beyond the Poetics - a tragedy's relat
ionship to its audience . ..... 26
XI. The function of language ............ 27
XII. The production ............................ 28
XIII. The aftermath of tragedy ....... 28
II. A N T I GONE ................................ 30
A structural analysis with particular
emphasis on the nature of the mimesis
and its contemporary relevance.
i ii
I. The overall sequence of events. The
raw material from which the play is
prepared ...... 31
II. The state of affairs in the play ........ 33
III. The plot. Its relationship to a univer
sal truth. The meaning of fidelity of
correspondence through all dimensions
from inner-personal to cosmic ........... 34
IV. The energy drive of honor due to the
dead as motivated by Antigone in her
heightened role as sibling ............... 37
V. The role of Teiresias, seer and
intermediary ............................. 46
VI. The energy drive of Creon's bid for
power .............. 49
VII. The role of the chorus .................. 54
VIII. The average mortal ............ 55
IX. The contemporary relevance of Antigone . 56
III. H A M L E T ............. 62
A structural analysis with particular
emphasis on the nature of the mimesis
and its contemporary relevance
I. The state of affairs. Its relation
ship to an overall sequence of events .. 63
II. In the matter of the prepared material . 64
III. The beginning and the ending. The plot . 66
IV. Reduplicative tendencies in the
criminal acts of Claudius .............. 67
V. The cosmic imbalance caused by murder
and its mortal reflectors .............. 71
VI. The energy drive not to kill and its
counterpart revenge ............. 76
iv
VII. Shakespearean fortifiers of the action.
Variations upon a theme. The family
of Polonius .............................. 78
VIII. The political structure of Denmark and
the art of survival ............. 82
IX. The contemporary relevance of Hamlet ... 86
IV. KING LEAR ............ 92
A structural analysis with particular
emphasis on the nature of the mimesis
and its contemporary relevance.
I. The raw material. The initial state of
affairs in the prepared material ....... 93
II. The political unifier and its relation
ship to Shakespeare's audience ......... 94
III. The source of conflicting energy drives.
Setting aside of primogeniture. Dis
avowing paternal love. Denial of friend
ship ....................................... 96
IV. Conflict in the political dimension. Ap
pointment to office versus hereditary
responsibilities and consent of the
governed - Cornwall ..................... 98
V. The ethicality of Albany's contribution
to the highest energy drive .......... 100
VI. Where nature doth with merit challenge.
The roles of the sisters. The personal
and political deviations of Goneril and
Regan. The mean of Cordelia . .......... 103
VII. Political awareness in Albany and Cor
delia. Kent and his relationship to the
common mortal ............................. 109
VIII. Fortifiers of the action. The parallels
of Gloucester and Edmund................ 115
IX. The art of personal survival in post-Lear
Britain. Edgar the dispossessed ........ 121
X. Survival of the kingdom. Lear, his fool
and metaphysics . . . . . ....... 123
XI. The tragic affirmation and the contem
porary relevance of King Lear........... 125
V. M U R D E R IN THE C A T H E D R A L 132
A structural analysis with particular
emphasis on the nature of the mimesis
and its contemporary relevance.
I. Introduction ............................... 133
II. The raw material. The historical seq
uence of events ...... 133
III. The prepared material ............... 135
IV. The state of affairs. The importance
of the women of Canterbury and their
relationship to Thomas. The difference
between the Greek chorus and the women
of Canterbury ..... 136
V. The relationship between an organic
universe and functional orders imposed
by mortals .............. 139
VI. The mystic circle. The relationship of
the priests to Thomas ..... 141
VII. The function of the temptors ............ 144
VIII. The moment of choice for Thomas ........ 148
IX. The significance of timing in tragedy.
The suffering involved in tragic con
flict versus suffering by way of a
victim syndrome . . . ...... 149
X. Fidelity of dramatic correspondence
versus hypocricy or a dramatized
unthinking acceptance of cosmic
disharmony ....... 151
XI, Deference to fact and what the mystic
and the martyr ignore in the organic
universe ......................... 153
vi
VI. A M A N F O R A L L SEASONS... 155
A structural analysis with particular
emphasis on the nature of the mimesis
and its contemporary relevance.
I. The raw material. The overall sequence
of events . ............................... 156
II. The story of the play ..................... 157
III. The state of affairs. The double
affirmation. The nature and paths of
the energy drives ................ 157
IV. The beginning and the ending. The
tragic circle. The role of human
assumptions concerning conduct .......... 161
V. The energy drive of More. How it is
affected by human assumptions concerning
conduct .................... 164
VI. The energy drive of Henry VIII with the
political strength of an hereditary
crown and the law of primogeniture ...... 167
VII. The role of the common man. The contrast
between the common man and the Duke of
Kent in King Lear ......................... 169
VIII. The role of the woman. Her assigned
importance versus her organic potential . 174
IX. The individual conscience of the 20th
century as a guide to action. The role
of philosophy in a self-conscious age ... 176
X. The philosophy of martyrdom contrasted
with the philosophy of tragedy .......... 182
XI. The natural paradigm for classical
tragedy . . ......... . 185
XII. A structural alternative for A Man for
All Seasons to give it the eternally
relevant impact of a classical tragedy .. 186
vii
VII. T H E C O N D E M N E D OF A L T O N A 188
A structural analysis with particular
emphasis on the nature of the mimesis
and its contemporary relevance.
I. The state of affairs. The human dimen
sions involved in the play. The two
affirmations .............................. 189
II. The highest energy drive. Economic growth
and the will of Von Gerlach. Its dram
atic isolation opposed to tragic action .. 191
III. The victim syndrome. The relationship
between old Von Gerlach, Franz and
Werner. Werner and the tragic climax. .. 199
IV. From Franz to Hitler and back. Dicta
torial prevailing versus the organic
unifier. Plot versus character in
tragedy .................... 204
V. Fortifier of the will of Von Gerlach.
The role of Leni .......................... 211
VI. The inability of Johanna to be an energy
drive that ensures tragic conflict. The
sameness of a philosophical projection
versus the multifariousness of organic
nature and tragic portrayal ............. 214
VII. The responsibility of the tragedian to
portray tragic conflict. The philos
ophy of tragedy and the science of being
versus the philosophy of existentialism . 217
VIII. A structural alternative for The Con
demned of Altona that would place the
play in the tradition of classical
tragedy .................................... 220
VIII. SUMMARY ......................................... 222
I. Choosing the raw material. The role of
the dramatist at the point of con
ception .................................... 223
viii
II. Structuring the prepared material.
Deciding upon the unifier or the highest
energy drive and plotting its path or
its prevailing ......................
III. The necessity of fidelity of dramatic
correspondence among the various parts .
IV. The nature of tragic conflict. The
assumptions people make and how it
affects their actions. Gradations of
scientifically untenable assumptions and
how they contribute to tragic conflict..
V. The scientific role of the audience as
affirmation of the highest energy drive.
The contemporary relevance of the Greek
and Shakespearean classical tragedies.
VI. The state of the art. The importance of
the study of the art form. ..............
VII. The preservative feature in the highest
form of classical tragedy. Its sig
nificance for the survival of this
civilization .............................
BIBLIOGRAPHY
224
227
229
232
234
237
240
INTRODUCTION
The pilgrim fathers of the scientific
imagination as it exists today, are the great
tragedians of ancient Athens, Aeschylus,
Sophocles, Euripides, Their vision of fate,
remorseless and indifferent, urging a tragic
incident to its inevitable issue, is the vision
possessed by science. Fate in Greek Tragedy
becomes the order of nature in modern thought.
Let me here remind you that the essence
of dramatic tragedy is not unhappiness. It
resides in the solemnity of the remorseless
working of things. This inevitableness of
destiny can only be illustrated in terms of
human life by incidents which in fact involve
unhappiness. For it is only by them that the
futility of escape can be made evident in the
drama. This remorseless inevitableness is what
pervades scientific thought. The laws of physics
are the decrees of fate,
Alfred North Whitehead, Science and the Modern World
Many literary critics of the twentieth century
consider tragedy to be a dead art form. One of the reasons
for this is that the meaning of the word "tragedy" is
blurred. Even very respected critics, on many occasions,
do not draw clear distinctions between a work of art called
a tragedy and the common usage of the term. This makes it
difficult for potential dramatists to find role models in
the contemporary world. In addition to this, Aristotle,
the great structural analyst, is for the most part
interpreted so narrowly that most tragedies since those
of the Greeks find themselves outside of his working
1
definition,
Aristotle spent twenty years at Plato's academy,
Plato was the student of Socrates and there were pre-
Socratic philosophers, particularly Herakleitos,
Parmenides, Empedocles, Anaxagoras and Pythagoras who
preceded Plato. All of these philosophers contributed
to a general body of Greek thought, the most significant
feature of which appears to be an integrated view of the
universe, which recognizes the interdependence of all of
the parts. Aristotle*s first translators were Syriac and
Arabic and the west did not study him with reference to
the Greek originals until the fifteenth century.
After this, literary critics for the most part,
studied the Poetics exclusively. Study of the Poetics
exclusively led to large amounts of literature devoted to
speculation about‘the meaning of some key terms as
"katharsis" and "hubris" among others. This persisting
speculation led to uncertainty about the true worth of the
treatise, even up to the present time.
In critical terms, it also led to the imposition
of a prescriptive tone over Aristotle's purely descriptive
treatment. For some time, particularly in France, this
prescription had enormous ramifications on creativity,
the most favous of which is the controversy over The Gid
where the great tragic genius of Corneille was stul
tified as he became embroiled in the Academy's
2
demands for the so-called unities. Ironically this
occurred in the seventeenth century, not long after
Shakespeare the barbarian had broken all of the so-called
rules and still written tragedies that at a later date
are shown to be in the same pattern that Aristotle had
described.
However, the most far-reaching and inaccurate
interpretation arising as a result of exclusive study of
t^ie Poetics has been the substitution of a plot-narrative
for Aristotle's plot which seems to have occurred as a
result of studying its critical content rather than its
structural directives, The plot-narrative is unable to
communicate effectively the primacy of an inevitable
energy drive and the nature of conflicting energy drives.
In this paper, the forces which propel people
forward dramatically are called "energy drives,'5 For
instance, the edict of Creon and its enforcement is an
energy drive which is in conflict with the energy drive
of Antigone which is her action in burying her dead, In
tragedy the dramatist chooses which energy drive is going
to prevail in the end. Tracing the movement of the action
that results in the prevailing of the highest energy
drive is the function of the plot, "Prevailing'' is an
action word however and is non-describable narratively,
The "unifier" of a tragedy is the highest energy drive
or that which is going to prevail in the end, It is; an
3
action or movement. In dramatic analysis by this method,
the first task is to determine what energy drive has
prevailed in the end or what general truth has been
enunciated by way of the play’s action or movement.
The known universe of the twentieth•century is
vastly expanded from that of the Greeks where gods and
goddesses still captured the imagination and the explor
ation of the solar and the stellar systems had not opened
up the vastness of space that is known to humans now.
Nevertheless this paper attempts to determine whether the
structural guidelines offered by Aristotle, and relevant,
for the Greek and Shakespearean tragedies are still rele
vant today. It also attempts to discern whether what
distinguishes a great tragedian is not solely adherence to
a tragic structure but also the unmistakable dramatic
portrayal of an integrated universe where the enunciation
of a general truth has a meaningful application in the life
of mortals and also of a civilization.
At the close of the 20th century, we are facing
the possibility of, if not extinction, at least mutilation
effected by nuclear accident incurred by human beings. This
paper is based upon an assumption that an integrated view
of the world is what humans need to have in order to become
aware that destruction by mortals of any of its parts could
result in a mutilation of all. If this assumption is true
then the availability of an art form which addresses itself
4
to organic unity embodying human beings in action, could be
an invaluable resource at this time. This is not to ignore
however the critical question in the emergence of clas-' - :
sical tragedy in the late 20th century, of whether aud’ i1
iences would recognize or accept such a microcosm as re
flects cosmic integration.
The plan of the paper is to analyze structurally
in a similar format, several of the great tragedies, such
format being based upon an operating method evolved from
free study of the Poetics dealing with an area that has not
attracted a great deal of critical attention in the past.
The method used is not critical but operational, This
means that the critical brevity of the Poetics is often
expanded in the interest of operational clarity. For in
stance, Aristotle mentions a "beginning." In this study j
the beginning is called the "initial state of affairs" tak
ing up a whole section of the study and so on. The trag
edies selected are chosen because they deal with life
situations which may be relevantly duplicatable in the
contemporary environment. For instance, Antigone is
chosen over the generally more favored Oedipus Rex because
the conflict occurs between a powerful king who controls
the law, and a woman, with no power at all but with the
strength of a human bond which prevails through its
intensity in the end, Hamlet and King Lear are chosen as
they reveal with great structural clarity, conflicting
5
political situations and they show how and why the master
dramatist chooses the unifier that he does.
Following these three classical tragedies, three
other more contemporary tragedies are analyzed in the same
format in order to determine if they deviate from the
classical pattern and if they do, how and why.
If Alfred North Whitehead is indeed correct in
his belief that the great tragedians are the pilgrim
fathers of the scientific imagination as it exists today,
then it becomes important to the development of our culture
and possibly the survival of our civilization that their
tragic method and their sense of an integrated universe
become psychically available to potential tragedians
of our own age.
Finally, if the analysis of each play reveals in
sights not available by other methods, then the study is
useful. If the analyses through the clarifying of struc
tural choices, can advance the state of the art of tragedy,
then the study is valuable, If the overall study could
point to a method in microcosm through which human beings
may creatively resolve their conflicts even in a nuclear
age, then its contribution to scholarship may be defended,
BOOKS CONSULTED:
Because of the nature of this paper, any review
of literature could provide only a foundation for the
6
thought which then operates almost exclusively on the
Poetics, Since the Poetics does not spring from a vacuum
however, perhaps it is relevant to mention something
concerning the Greek foundation. An understanding of
Greek society seems to lie at the base of an understanding
of Greek tragedy. We are fortunate in the 20th century
in that from the middle to the end of the last century,
there has been an explosion in the study of Aristotle
from the Greek originals as well as much scholarly effort
devoted to a study of the Greeks and their culture, One
cannot of course fully appreciate Aristotle without reading
the pre-Socratic philosophers and Plato, The following
books are very helpful in understanding the life and times
of the Greeks including Aristotle. It is to be noted
however that because of the nature of this dissertation
which deals primarily with the structural aspect only of
Aristotle’s Poetics, annotated references to these books
will not be found in the body of the paper, W,D, Ross
r
edited The works of Aristotle which was completed in 19,52,
His book Aristotle published in 1923 is also very infor
mative not only for the Poetics but for a basic under
standing of the main features of Aristotle’s philosophy,
A manageable book. The Basic Works of Aristotle by Richard
McKeon was published in 1941., Invaluable books for an
intuitive understanding of many trouble spots in the
Poetics are S, H, Butcher's Aristotle's Theory of Poetry
_____________________ 7
and~ Fine Art first published in 1894, Ingram Bywater's
Aristotle on the Art of Poetry, 1920 and Gerald Else’s
Aristotle * s Poetics ; ' The Argument, 19 57. Some Aspects of
of the Greek Genius, by S, H, Butcher, 1891 reveals the
importance to the dramatist of a sense of a felt universal
moral order which takes precedence over codified law.
This sense of personal destiny within each mortal makes
tragic conflict an aspect of Greek life itself,
Shakespeare gave a new dimension to tragedy and
considerably broadened literary criticism, The
Shakespearean foundation is rooted in many brilliant
studies which, while this paper could not have been
written without them, are not visible or referred to here.
One person writing in English who has been able
to elucidate an area of Aristotle's thought is Samuel
Taylor Coleridge. His two books on Shakespearean
criticism, his Biographia Literaria, 1816 and other papers,
particularly his distinction between the imagination and
the fancy are invaluable resource materials in under
standing the functioning of the plot.
There are also many resource books on dramatic
techniques, not specifically used here but undeniably a
part of the foundation without which this paper could not
have been written,
8
CHAPTER I
THE FORMAT OF THE STUDY
I. Introduction.
II. Tragedy - a conscious art form.
III. The five stages of tragedy.
IV. The action of the prepared material.
V. The elements of the universe corresponding
to dimensions in a tragedy.
VI. The relationship between the beginning and
ending of a play.
VII. An ideal aspiration - preservation and
ennoblement of the type.
VIII. Tragedy an organic whole - the perfectly
constructed tragedy.
IX. Character - its ethical nature.
X. Beyond the Poetics - a tragedy's relation
ship to its audience.
XI . The function of language.
XII. The production.
XIII. The aftermath of tragedy.
9
THE FORMAT OF THE STUDY
I. Introduction
If we are to break out of the dead
center in which the interpretation of the Poetics
is becalmed at present, we must stop repeating
what has been said before, simply because it has
been said before, and concentrate again, soberly
and without preconceptions, on what Aristotle
himself says,
Gerald F, Else, Aristotle"s Poetics:^The
Argument,
A study of the structural directives of the
Poetics together with a study of the structure of some of
the great tragedies reveals such a high correlation that
this dissertation endeavours to select passages from the
Poetics and use them as guidelines to analyze in a similar
format, several tragedies, that for the reasons explained
in each chapter, are•particularly relevant today.
This particular method of analysis begins with
two assumptions. The first is that the plot of a tragedy
concerns structure while character does not and so
character per se is not a key feature of this study. This
is not to negate any of the great interpretations of
tragedies in terms of character such as those of A. C,
10
Bradley. It means only that this study deals primarily
with the structure of the incidents and not with the
interpretation of character. The second assumption is that
this method of analysis endeavours to clarify a way by
which classical tragedy may be written in our age. This
method is attempting to break new ground in the sense
that it is not aimed at the demonstration of professional
scholarship concerning the Poetics per se but it does try
to loosen the Poetics from what Else calls its "fable
convenue." There is no interpretation offered of the
Poetics. There is a statement following each selection
from Aristotle offering a method by which the end result
stated in the Poetics may be achieved. For instance
Aristotle simply says "a general truth is enunciated".
The structural method offered for achieving the enunciation
of a general truth dramatically is that the general truth
has a higher energy drive dramatically than any other
truth enunciated in each play. The dramatist simply
selects that which is to prevail in the end and the judge
ment of the ages determines whether it will endure for all
time. The judgement of the ages is critical assessment.
This paper concerns itself with structure only. The
methodological statement following the selection from the
Poetics is then carried to each of the tragedies under
consideration and used as a constant in each structural
analysis,
11
XI. Tragedy a conscious art form.
Aristotle makes it very clear that tragedy is
a conscious art form.
We must proceed to consider what the poet should
aim at, and what he should voice, in constructing
his plots; and by what means the specific effect
of Tragedy will be produced.
Most important of all is the structure of the
incidents. For Tragedy is an imitation, not of
men, but of an action and of life, and life
consists in action, and its end is a mode of
actions, not a quality.
Thought is required wherever a statement is proved
or, it may be, a general truth is enunciated.
Thought, on the other hand is found where something
is proved to be or not to be, or a general maxim is
enunciated.
With human beings in action, a general truth or
maxim is enunciated through the prevailing of the highest
energy drive over other energy drives. The dramatist
decides which energy drive is going to prevail in the end.
This is the unifier of the tragedy. For instance, in
Antigone, the energy drive of the sibling bond prevails
in the end and in this way illuminates a law of nature or
a general truth which is more significant than an imposed
political will.
* * * *
12
We must not therefore, at all costs keep to the
received legends, which are the usual subjects of
Tragedy. It clearly follows that the poet or 'maker'
should be the maker of plots rather than of verses,
since he is a poet because he imitates, and what he
imitates are actions.
He may not indeed destroy the framework of the received
legends - but he ought to show invention of his own and
skilfully handle the traditional material.
In constructing the Plot and working it out with the
proper diction, the poet should place the scene, as
far as possible, before his eyes. In this way, seeing
everything with the utmost vividness, as if he were a
spectator of the action, he will discover what is in
keeping with it and be most unlikely to overlook
inconsistencies.
As for the story, whether the poet takes it ready
made or constructs it for himself, he should first
sketch its general outline and then fill in the
episodes and amplify in detail.
Poetry, therefore, is a more philosophical and a higher
thing than history, for poetry tends to express the
universal, history the particular. By the universal
I mean how a person of a certain type will on occasion
speak or act according to the law of probability or
necessity.
Ill The five stages of tragedy.
There are five distinct stages in the construct
ion of tragedy. The tragedian meditates upon the selected
event or an analogy of it in order to approximate a gen
eral truth or a unifier which is going to prevail in the
end. Second, the tragedian constructs a sequence of
events which constitute a complete action using this moving
unifier that tends to affirm a universal truth. Third,
this prepared sequence of events is then embodied in the
13
form of language into a play. Fourth, the play becomes
a production. Last, the production reaches out to an
audience which then is made aware of the moving unifier or
the dramatist's sense of a general truth and the circle
is complete. The closer the poet's transmitted approxim
ation has come to a universal truth, the more enduring the
work of art will be.
* * * *
When the tragic incident occurs between those who
are near or dear to one another - if, for example a
brother kills, or intends to kill, a brother, a son
his father, a mother her son, a son his mother, or
any other deed of the kind is done - these are the
situations to be looked for by the poet.
"Reversal of the situation" is a change by which
the action veers round to its opposite, subject
always to our rule of probability or necessity.
"Recognition" as the name indicates, is a change
from ignorance to knowledge, producing love or hate
between the persons destined by the poet for good
or bad fortune.
The scene of suffering is a destructive or painful
action, such as death on the stage, bodily agony,
wounds and the like.
IV. The action of the prepared material.
Having decided upon the unifier, the artist
begins the construction of a tragedy. Since a tragedy
deals with the actions of human beings, the tragedian
14
needs to plot or plan a series of events in which the
highest energy drive prevails inithe end. It is the
unifier that makes the series of events into an action
which is whole and complete. The strength of the tragedy
depends upon how clearly this highest energy drive is pre
sented and how close it is to a universal truth as well
as how strong are the drives which it finally draws to
itself. The idea that a mortal's bond to a sibling pre
vails over a temporary political strategy, is the highest
energy drive in Antigone. To do to others maxim is also
inherent in it. The British law of primogeniture in
England in the 17th century prevails in King Lear over an
old man's attempt to abandon it without sanctioned
precaution. Having established the highest energy drive
running through the chosen dimensions as personal,
political etc,, other energy drives are brought into the
play which present extreme conflict. The greatest emot
ional conflicts arise from people near and dear to each
other, Clytemnestra violates the more of fidelity but
the more is stronger, Orestes not only violates the mode
of conduct that forbids murder but he magnifies the
violation by killing his mother and the mode of conduct is
stronger than Orestes, There are discernable deviations
from the general truth exemplified by the unifier, A
deviation is hurting another person, magnified to the
extent of killing another, additionally magnified in the
killing of kin. These deviations take the form of human
arrogance or defiance of the unifier or general truth.
The greater the arrogance,the greater the deviation, the
greater is the fall as the unifier's strength begins its
inexorable drive. At some point in the action the pro-
ponent on the antogonistic energy drive realizes that there
is a code of conduct, an ideal mode of conduct, an
energy drive which is stronger than the one of the an
tagonist. The RECOGNITION of this is vivid, the antagon
istic action is halted and then REVERSED as the highest
energy drive draws the other energy drive relentlessly
toward it to end the play with an affirmation for the code
or mode of conduct originally intuited and incorporated
into the unifier. This is an analysis of the energy drives
and the way they work in the action of tragedy. There may
be two strong energy drives as in Antigone, there may be
several as in Hamlet. Events or stories may be found
which already approach these requirements. The extraneous
material may be dropped from such stories and the essential
action lines strengthened to display this affirmation of/
the code or mode of condiact, Thus selecting and imagining
a series of events or actions is the second part of the
construction of a tragedy. It is the prepared material
for the play. Since historical events often consist of
isolated events that do not necessarily by themselves
reveal a general truth, although history may be used and_^
altered, the best prepared material comes from little
known events so that the dramatist may shape them in
deference to a whole as in'" King Lear, The continuing
potential difficulty is in keeping the material imagin
atively relevant as history or isolated truth is abandoned,
V, The elements of the universe corresponding
dimensions in a tragedy. — —
For the tragedian, the elements of the universe
can be categorized bearing in mind that the end of tragedy
is a mode of action and not a quality. The following are
dimensions which may be classified in the interest of
organic complexity. It is not necessary that a particular
tragedy use all of these dimensions. There is the
cosmos (or the whole which includes space), the scientif-
cially determinable expanse in which the solar and stellar
systems are situated; the environment of the earth, the
oceans, the rivers, the mountains and deserts, the trees
and the animals, the grasses and the rocks, the very earth
itself; the international dimension, the relationship
among nations, the cross-cultural influences(at the moment
nationhood could be predominant yet other elements are
also very strong such as religions or beliefs); the
national dimension and intra-nhtional concerns (this in
volves the system of government of a country consisting of
; 17
law or mores, the method by which people join themselves
together for the preservation, enriching and ennobling
of their lives); the social dimension, part of the nat^ ■
ional dimension but more immediate and may focus more
upon personal survival within an immediate group; the
personal dimension or what is relevant to the human being
alone as that person acts within these other surroundings;
the inner personal or phychological dimension, the mortal
to the inner self,
* * * *
A beginning is that which does not itself follow
anything by causal necessity, but after which
something naturally is or comes to be.
An end, on the contrary, is that which itself
naturally follows some other thing, either by . i > .
necessity or as a rule, but has nothing following
it,
VI. The relationship between the beginnings and
the ending of a play.
In constructing the action, there is a distinct
correspondence between the beginning and the ending such
that an element of the action appears to have come a full
circle. The beginning is what sets this action moving and
the ending is what closes it. Everything else lies between
18
these two points. The middle of the play is the movement
from the one to the other. The beginning reveals a certain
state of affairs and soon introduces what the conflicts
will be, through which dimensions they will range and hints
at the unifier. The final scene reveals what the unifier
is, how it has prevailed and the price paid for its pre
vailing, The price paid is the scene of suffering. In
Antigone, the primary dimension is the social one. In the
study of Hamlet and King Lear .one can see how Shakespeare
takes the national dimension of the English monarchy and
weds it to the universal unifier so completely, that in a
social sense and in-the sense of government, this is per
haps the dramatist's greatest contribution to the preser
vation and ennoblement of the human race. What Shakes
peare does for renaissance England, a contemporary tra
gedian can do for a 20th century world in terms of govern
ment, once a state of affairs is established such as could,
for the purpose of a play, be molded on the United Nations.
Hamlet and King Lear in such transferable context or in
terms of contemporary relevance are discussed in their
respective chapters,
* * * *
Again, since Tragedy is an imitation of persons
19
who are above the common level, the example of
good portrait^-painters should be followed. They,
while reproducing the distinctive form of the
original, make a likeness which is true to life
and yet more beautiful. So, too, the poet, in
representing men who are irascible or indolent
or have other defects of character, should pre-^
serve the type'and yet ennoble it.
VII. . Mb ideal' aspiration - preservation and' en-
noblement of the type.' " ^ ^ .
One can develop methods by which preservation and
ennoblement of the type may be dealt with in a tragedy,
particularly a contemporary one which has a much more
complex model of human beings in action than the Greeks
had or Shakespeare. The highest energy drive running
through the dimensions of mortals may be described in part
by the following examples. In all dimensions in which
humans find themselves, the golden rule approximates the
unifier, to do to others as you would have them do to you.
On the personal and psychological dimension this takes
into «account most of the ten commandments that Christians
use as guidelines, not to kill, to honor father and mother,
for these things aid in the preservation and ennoblement
of the race. Whenever the tragedian finds conflicting
codes of conduct among the various religious sects, here is
subject matter for a tragedy. The eye for an eye and
tooth for tooth can be juxtaposed with turning the other
cheek as Shakespeare exemplifies in Hamlet. In the
interest of preservation of the species, those who sub^<
scribe to one of these two maxims need a performed tragedy,
providing the interpretation is communicated, that through
the awareness it brings, ; i " can deflect or avert an
actual tragedy (common usage). In intra-national affairs,
the federal law prevails over that of the state in the
interest of preservation of a nation, A federal law on
integration will prevail over a state one. If it does
not in practice, here is material for a tragedy, to
reveal the necessity of preserving the nation and the
human rights of all who live in it and to test the
approximation of the law to the organic unifier. On the
international level, the whole is the preservation of the
human race and the maxim not to kill is as valid as it is
on a personal level. When leaders of powerful nations
accelerate preparations for a war game by lining up de
fences as children do, here is material for a tragedy to
reveal that the art of mutual diplomacy gives a much more
secure assurance of the preservation and ennoblement of the
human race irrespective of an accidental place of birth.
The Greeks lost a civilization as they lost their aspir
ation to ennoble and preserve while the 20th century can
now lose the world itself, A Greek play which clearly
portrays this aspiration to ennoblement is Antigone. Two
Shakespearean plays which deal with personal ennoblement
and preservation of a social system are Hamlet and King :
Lear. The total loss of this drive to enrichment 0,
spearheaded by tragedy, would foretell the loss of a
civilization.
* * * *
A whole is that which has a beginning, a middle,
and an end.
The plot, being an imitation of an action, must !
imitate one action, and that a whole, the struc
tural union of the parts being such that if any
one of them is displaced or removed, the whole will
be disjointed and disturbed. For a thing whose
presence or absence makes no visible difference
is not an organic part of a whole.
A well constructed plot should, therefore, be
single in its issue rather than double, as some
maintain, The change of fortune ,.. should come
about as the result, not of vice, but of some great
error or frailty. A tragedy, then, to be perfect
according to the rules of art, should be of this
construction.
The last case is the best .... when someone is
about to do an irreparable deed through ignorance
and makes the discovery before it is done,
A perfect tragedy should, as we have seen, be
arranged not on the simple but on the complex
plan. It should, moreover, imitate actions which
excite pity and fear, this being the distinctive
function of tragic imitation. Pity is aroused
by unmerited misfortune, fear by the misfortune
of a man like ourselves.
VIII, Tragedy an organic whole - the perfectly
constructed tragedy.
Aristotle's description of an organic whole is
22
one of the more complete parts of his treatise# What is
often mis-interpreted is the idea that the best constructed
tragedy is not the one where a great loss actually occurs
but rather the one where the loss is apprehended on the
pulses but does not occur in actuality, (The only
detraction from perfection in King Lear is that Cordelia
does die in actuality). It is this aspect of the Poetics
that needs to be particularly clarified in the 20th
century because of the fact that the model for a tragedy
is human beings in action and the activities of human
beings now include the working knowledge of how to ter
minate not only an entire civilization but other species
as well.
Contemporary tragedians then have a great pot
ential and some might say a responsibility to write
tragedies in which the thing of value is not lost in
actuality although the loss is apprehended on the pulses.
In this way performed tragedies could inspire audiences
to go back to the world of their own activities to try to
find creative methods of dealing with their conflicts so
that the thing of value now in jeopardy is not lost but
instead the civilization is ennobled and preserved.
* * * *
23
Hence the incidents and the plot are the end of
tragedy? and the end is the chief thing of all.
Again, without action there cannot be a tragedy;
there may be without character.
Character is that which reveals moral purpose,
showing what kind of things a man chooses or avoids.
Speeches, therefore, which do not make this mani
fest, or in which the speaker does not choose
or avoid anything whatever, are not expressive of
character,
In respect of character there are four things to
be aimed at. First, and most important, it must
■be good. Now any speech or action that manifests
moral purpose of any kind will be expressive of
character; the character will be good if the pur
pose is good. The second thing to aim at is fit
ness of character. Thirdly a character must be
true to life. The fourth point is consistency.
By character I mean that in virtue of which we
ascribe certain qualities to,the agents. Now
character determines men's qualities, but it is by
their actions that they are happy or the reverse.
Character comes in as subsidiary to the actions.
There remains, then the character .... of a man
who is not eminently good and just yet whose
misfortune is brought about not by vice or
depravity, but by some error or frailty. He
must be one who is highly renowned and prosperous.
IX. Character - its ethical nature.
The most important thing coming out of the
Poetics is that character is secondary to plot and this
study is concerned primarily with structure or with plot.
A character is so-called "good" as it strives to act in
harmony with those tenets or maxims elaborated in the
section on preservation and ennoblement of the race. If
a character acts in a way that tends to preserve and
24
ennoble, then that character has moral significance,
Hamlet is a very relevant play in the contemporary world
because Hamlet refuses to act in a destructive manner
even though the cross current of the energy drives or the
structure of the play is going to take his life in the end.
The error or the frailty is determined by the
moral truth the dramatist structures as the unifier and
as a character deviates from it so is that character
going to fall in the end. For this to have meaning, the
character recognizes the validity of the general truth
enunciated. King Lear recognizes what he has done and so
does Creon, Von Gerlach however does not, nor does Franz
or Leni in the sense that none of them submit to a moral
truth in the end.' So in The Condemned of Altona the
dramatist structures a certain unifier but unless that
unifier enunciates a general truth, there is no neces
sity for characters to submit to a sense of morality.
Again free will is essential to tragedy because
characters are known by their actions and either they are
free to choose or else the choice has no meaning.
Antigone, Lear and Hamlet are all morally free to choose
which course of action they will. More is free to choose
but Von Gerlach though he appears to be free and thinks
he is free to choose is not because the unifier robs him
of moral choice by wedding him to economic growth which is
a-moral.
25
A highly renowned and prosperous man is one in
a position to influence the lives of others through such
eminence as is bestowed by the dramatist. There is no
problem in any of the plays studied with this and it
would take another paper to show how in the 20th century
a common mortal such as Lech Walesca can gain eminence,
It is not necessary that tragic heroes come from great and
illustrous families provided that they move to a position
where they can influence the lives of others,
* * * *
X. Beyond the Poetics - a tragedy's relation-*
ship to its audience.
To give a contemporary audience a play of a cer
tain magnitude, is something the tragedian gives attention
to. It appears that in Greece the meaning of a good life
was debated by the citizenry and after being raised on the
intricacies of the relationship between gods and mortals
in the Iliad and the Odyssey, audiences were not strained
in their ability to remain attentive and engaged for a
whole day or a Greek trilogy. In renaissance England with
the childless queen Elizabeth on the throne, the issue of
succession, the bloody history of the English monarchy and
- 26
the devastation caused by civil war, was debated in every
tavern. Audiences were eager and prepared to listen to
long arguments on the rights of succession and a pattern
of life that provided a haven for all classes of people.
The peace of tragedy occasioned by the return to the mean,
was skilfully wedded by the master dramatist into an
affirmation that provided a blue print for preservation of
the monarchy and survival and ennoblement of the finest
enduring democracy in the modern world. Contemporary
audiences however have diminished attention spans since the
advent of television and are also accustomed to intrusion
of their thought processes occasioned by the interjection
of commercials. While the shaping of the plot is still the
single most difficult thing in the construction of tragedy,
a contemporary dramatist also cannot ignore the scattered
and generally uncohesive interests of potential audiences.
XI. The function of language.
Having now obtained the plot, the mimetic
sequence of events, together with a means of engaging a
contemporary audience, the art work takes its final form
for the tragedian through the medium of language. This
final form is an imitation of the sequence of events or
the action in the prepared material with due consideration
of the audience's needs and capacity concerning magnitude.
27
Particular attention is paid to the fidelity of language
to its subject matter. ^ing^LOar^is a magnificent example
— —
of fidelity. Tragedy is unable to function effectively
without fidelity of correspondence as described in the
relevant chapter.
XII, The production.
At this point in time, the play leaves the
tragedian and is ready for production. The work of art
is brought to temporal life at the hands of others, If the
approximation to a general truth is close and has been
accurately imitated through language, the play has moral
stamina and potential eternity. If the communicative
elements defer to the enjoyment, needs and capabilities
of contemporary audiences and the production actualizes
them, the tragedy lives. Production closes the circle of
the work of art that embodies the mimetic strength of a
universal truth.
XIII. The aftermath of tragedy.
What is drawn from tragedy by way of felt thought
after the event is the test of its moral significance. As
there is an increased awareness of the interrelatedness
28
of all things coupled with the felt thought or the felt
rational drive to ennoble and preserve the civilization
and the universe, so is the tragedy performing its function.
29
CHAPTER II
A N T I G O N E
A structural analysis with particular
emphasis on the nature of the mimesis
and its contemporary relevance.
I. The overall sequence of events.
The raw material from which the
play is prepared.
II. The state of affairs in the play.
Ill. The plot. Its relationship to a
universal truth. The meaning of
fidelity of correspondence through
all dimensions from inner-personal
to cosmic.
IV. The energy drive of honor due to the
dead as motivated by Antigone in her
heightened role as sibling.
V. The role of Teiresias, seer and
intermediary.
VI. The energy drive of Creon's bid for
power.
VII. The role of the chorus.
VIII. The average mortal.
IX. The contemporary relevance of Antigone.
30
I, The overall sequence of events, The raw
~ r ~~materiaT from which~tHe~play is prepared.
In Greek myth the time of glory for Thebes pre-*-
ceded the Trojan War, Creon was the brother of Jocasta,
the wife of King Laius and later, King Oedipus of Thebes,
When Jocasta died and Oedipus went to Colonus, Creon ruled
Thebes but when the two sons of Oedipus were old enough,,
he relinquished the throne to them arranging for them to
rule in turns, This proved to be unsatisfactory and one
son Polyneices gathered warriors together and stormed the
seven gates of Thebes. Six of the attackers were killed,
Creon refused to give any of them burial, Sophocles
deals with the burial rite finally afforded Oedipus' son
Polyneices. The families of the other five slain warriors
went to King Theseus of Athens for assistance in urging
Creon to give burial to the others. Creon refused and they
were not buried until Theseus stormed Thebes, recovered
the bodies and personally supervised the burial. The sons
of the slain warriors later stormed Thebes and razed it.
There are always difficulties in using raw
material from well known stories and some are more
significant than others. It would hardly have been pos
sible to allow Antigone and Haemon to live in the play
because in the overall sequence of events Creon also
refused to give burial to the other warriors and it took
the King of Athens himself to force him to comply with
31
this universal law, Antigone and Haemon as rulers would
not have acted in this way, Sophocles had to forego the
writing of a finer tragedy which would have allowed
Antigone and Haemon to live because of deference to the
story or the myth.
In shaping the prepared material, the dramatist
can easily give traits to the character that belong to the
mortal yet might have been altered within the strictures
of the play. For the movement of the play to progress to
a chastened Creon, each time that Creon encounters conflict
he could move a little toward understanding. He does not.
At the end of the play Sophocles asserts a chastened Creon
because the tragic form requires it but historically Creon
remains a tyrant and the way he acts historically as never
yielding until defeated, is the way Creon acts in the play
and a deference to history or myth appears to be the
reason.
A clarifier to something in the play is also
provided by history or the myth. Polyneices and Eteocles
are both young men and it is likely that Creon himself
helps create the confusion about how and why each should
rule in turn. Polyneices is coming not as the foe or
stranger that Creon asseits but to claim something that
he feels he has a right to have. He is also the older
brother,
The play prophetizes the fall of Thebes which
does occur in myth and had occurred before the play was
written. Could it have been otherwise?
Sophocles however lived in Athens and in 445BC
the first Peloponnesian War was ended by a treaty/peace
between Sparta and her allies and Athens, Antigone was
written in 443BC or 441BC, Sophocles could not help but
be responsive to the burning issues of his day which
centered around politics and government with the statesman
Pericles elected year after year. There were problems
within the Greek civilization however and they concerned
the ability of the city states, particularly Athens, to be
able to work out harmonious relationships that would
ensure survival for all. Pericles engaged in virtual one-
man rule and during his era the Council of the Areopagus,
the great hope of Aeschylus, was stripped of much of its
authority and many of its treaty obligations to other
city states were abandoned, Yet the Greek states did
have common bonds and Antigone addresses itself to these
particularly as the play is viewed in an overall sequence
of events. The aftermath of this tragedy emphatizes the
need to be aware of these immortal bonds or face the
destruction or loss of a cherished way of life such as was
held by an Athens of the fifth century,
II, The state of affairs in the play.
The state of affairs in Antigone is revealed as
33
i.t exists in several dimensions. The city is Thebes, The
edict published throughout all Thebes that the corpse of
Polyneices is. not to be given burial „ is intimately
affecting the two royal women who are his sisters. This
is in the personal dimension. The chorus of Theban Elders
establishes a cosmic dimension, the cosmic dimension for
the Greeks going as far as Zeus in the heavens down to the
underworld, Creon and the guard establish the social and
the political dimensions. The action of the play ranges
through all of these dimensions and establishes corres
pondences between them all that maintain their fidelity
throughout.
Ill* The plot. Its relationship to a universal
truth. The meaning of fidelity of cor-
respondence~~~t hrough ~a 11 dimensions from
inner-periohai to cosmic.
The highest energy drive or the honor due to the
dead particularly a sibling, is carried forward primarily
by Antigone with reinforcement increasing from the
chorus and violently strengthened by Haemon and Teiresias.
The conflicting energy drive comes in the form of a mortal
edict firstly established by Creon and secondly rigidly
maintained by him in the face of mounting forces of
opposition, In the overall sequence of events, Creon*s
edict comes immediately prior to the opening of the play.
As far as the play is concerned, that edict has created a
34
cosmic imbalance which, the action of Antigone adjusts,
Within the play each action causes another action or a
reaction until the highest energy drive or the honor due
to the dead particularly a sibling, prevails and the price
paid for its prevailing is the life of Antigone and
necessarily the life of Haemon accompanied by the life
of Euridice,
Antigone1s motivation is clear and uniquivocal.
Antigone has two choices, to Igury or not to bury her dead
brother and she must act immediately. Her sister Ismene
equivocates, weighing the alternatives in the realm of
expediency, but for Antigone there is a pending violation
of an immortal bond and her action restores harmony, She
herself does not set a price on the maintaining of this
harmony but she understands there may be one in the
dimension of immortal human values with cosmic reverber
ations, She understands cosmically that the dead belong
to the dead and the dead flesh of a human could be carried
by birds and animals to polute a living city and country
side, Social mortals are not wanderers as the animals
are and cannot move away from carrion flesh, The dead for
Antigone have an influence that goes beyond the grave, In
a certain sense she is asserting a scientific principle
■/ i
here also held by the pre-Socratic philosophers and .va-lid
today that in the matter of the universe everything remains
as part of the whole forever, What changes is place and
. .35
fcCoo only but not the matter itself, Mortals are on the
earth and alive or under the earth and dead but in both
cases they remain a part of the universe and cannot be
ignored because they are beyond our ken or beyond our
empirical capacity to apprehend. The claim of the universe
for its dead matter to be in a sense re^cycled is a valid
claim and a cosmic claim whose faithful correspondence on
a personal level is for the mortal to bury its dead, to
keep the dead matter away from the living, to re^cycle it
into the earth, Antigone's burial rite for Polyneices
approximates a universal truth in the sense that she is
voluntarily performing an act which approximates to the
best of her ability, what she understands this universal
truth to be. This universal truth is valid for all time,
for as long as mortals inhabit the earth and band them-V
selves together into societies, cities and nations.
Antigone re-establishes harmony in the cosmic dimension.
At the opening of the play this harmony on the eternal
level is not having a similar correspondnece in the
political dimension because of Creon's edict which VV’\
violates it. Harmony on all levels depends on the fidelity
of correspondences among all of the several dimensions that
make up the cosmic or universal whole, Harmony does come
to the political dimension but only after Creon has set in
motion forces which he then becomes unable to halt, A
higher form to the tragedy would be where Creon is indeed
36
able to rescue his son and Antigone from the brink of
destruction yet having experienced the full force of the
loss by way of emotional depletion apprehended through
the imagination, This would show in effect a more just
representation of a whole effected mimetically since the
whole or the universe endures in the end, Thebes endures.
It is not necessary to its endurance that this sacrifice
occur. It is necessary that harmony be maintained and
that mortals are aware of how to maintain harmony in the
interest of their speciel survival within this cosmic
universe•
IV, The energy drive of honor due to the dead
as motivated by Antigone in her heightened
role as sibling.
Antigone finds herself in a key position in
several different relationships that are moving through
different dimensions* She has a harmonious relationship
between herself and her mother, father and brother all of
whom she has duly helped to convey to the earth where they
now belong. She has a harmonious relationship with her
second brother and she now stands at a point of action to
preserve it. This is on the personal dimension. On the
cosmic dimension a body has to be re-cycled and she stands
at a point of action to do it. On the political level
Creon's edict blocks the way, She must act against the
37
edict to assert the other values or maintain the other
harmonies. On the social level she maintains harmony with
her act but it is a temporarily disguised harmony because
Creon’s edict is operating overtly in this dimension. The
people of Thebes on a personal level wish to support
Antigone but only gradually attain the strength to do it,
such strength being motivated by Antigone herself and
violently asserted by Teiresias,
Antigone is acutely conscious of the primacy of
this bond to her brother to take him to where he now
belongs since he cannot do it himself. She asks Ismene,
Wilt thou aid this hand to lift the dead?,,,
I will do my part - and thine, if thou wilt not -
to a brother f
Antigone’s vision focusses only on this immortal relation
ship as it is exemplified in how she must act in the burial
rite. Her action in insisting on burying her brother
reveals this, Ismene*s vision is not so far-reaching, It
balks at Creon'-s edict,
Thou wouldst bury him ? when ’tis forbidden to
Thebes?
Antigone notes immediately the distinction between an
immortal bond and a human law or edict,
He hath no right to keep me from mine own,
This is her personal bond to her brother, There is also
the right of eyery human being to burial and this is a
bond she shares with all of Thebes who rise up in recognit-
ion of it as she spurs action by example. She asserts
her position,
I owe a longer allegiance to the dead than to
the living;
In that world I shall abide forever.
In a sense this is a scientific principle that all matter
remains with the universe.
"Politics" is the science or art of government
and it is to be distinguished from government by power
or "power politics" which, as our civilization has grown
older, has often been shortened to 'politics'. In this
play, the distinction between these two kindred concep-'
tions is clearly drawn and it is a crucial distinction in
terms of its relevance to the 20th century, Ismene,
conscious of her own powerlessness says,
To defy the State - I have no strength for that,,.
She also measures the effectiveness of an immortal value
by whether or not there is sufficient power to make it
prevail in a physical sense. She says to Antigone,
Thou wouldst what thou canst not... A hopeless
quest should not be made at all,
This is an utterly alien position for Antigone whose
primary concern is maintaining a harmony in human and
cosmic relationships as described above. In the mainten
ance of such a harmony physical power is irrelevant and
death is incidental.
I know that I please where I am most bound to
please..,.-*
Then when my strength fails, I shall have done,,
for I shall not suffer aught so dreadful as
an ignoble death.
The physical powerlessness of the two women is thus set
in contrast. To the one it is all important, to the
other it is irrelevant. By yielding, Ismene allows her
heart to be dislodged from her actions. By refusing to
yield, Antigone maintains personal harmony, sets an
example for social and political harmony and eventually
succeeds in overriding the conflicting but initially
physically more powerful, energy drive.
When the guard reports that someone has indeed
given Polyneices burial, Creon hardens his position and in
exercising his new found power, he asserts again that
death awaits whoever disobeys. When Antigone is caught,
her simple statement to Creon is one of the finest examples
in all tragedy of the meaning of a universal law or that
mode of conduct of mortals which is an ideal. The aware-;
ness of this natural mode of conduct and the striving to
live in harmony with it by conscious choice is what
Antigone here explains. If a mortal such as Creon makes
a law which violates this universal law, then it is the
human responsibility of those who understand the
deviation to make their stand, knowing that they may pay
a temporal price but knowing also that this temporal
price is of little consequence when weighed in the scales
of preservation and enrichment of the species, Antigone
40
says to Creon f
Nor: deemed I that the decrees were of such force,
that a mortal could override the unwritten and
unfailing statutes of heaven. For their life is
not of to-day or yesterday, but for all time,
and no man knows when they were first put forth.
Not through dread of any human price could I answer
to the gods for breaking these.
The role of the woman from the Greeks to the
present day is double-edged. As discussed in more detail
with Creon's energy drive, a woman is considered by the
male to be inferior in power and strength. Power is used
here in the sense of domination primarily - domination over
others. For the male of the human species, domination over
others is often a goal and a source of pride. It is thus
for Creon and this is discussed in the section on Creon1s
energy drive. Where the male errs however is in the
assessment of woman's strength or woman's ability to intuit
the unifier or the universal and to hold fast to it in
spite of all obstacles such as power which may destroy her
in a temporal sense. Two of the greatest tragedies of all
time, Antigone and King Leartjassert the validity of woman's
claim to strength in this universal sense which leads to
the preservation and enrichment of the species. In both
of these plays as in life generally, the woman is
suppressed or destroyed by the power of the male operating
in the temporal dimension only. Antigone and Creon are
even to this day probably the best dramatic examples of
the distinction between the male and the female contribut
ion to the development of the human species, in its social
and political context, Antigone, accurate though she is
in maintaining the fidelity of her position to universal
law, fails to make the communicative concession to the
male's apparently inherent need for a feeling of power
to define his existence, Cordelia also fails in this as
discussed in King Lear, Antigone says to Creon,
And if my present deeds are foolish in thy sight,
it may be that a foolish judge arraigns my folly.
Accurate she is but diplomatic, considering the state of
affairs in her environment, she is not. Creon, in the
21st century might not be offended but a necessary
characteristic of this play when written and up to the
20th century, is the pride of the male in the attainment
and holding of power, Creon is offended. He pushes him
self farther away from the mean in ordering the death of
his kin., Unaware of how she has triggered this violent
reaction in Creon, Antigone tries again and again to bring
him to an understanding of the primacy of her position or
the ethically more accurate stand she is taking in the
interest of ennoblement of the species,
Brother by the same mother and the same sire,,
It was his brother, not his slave, that perished,,,.
'Tis not my nature to join in hating, hut in loving,.
She even assures him on his own level, that of expediency,
that Thebes itself is not upholding his edict, it is
simply cowed by his exercising his powers. Concerning
her act, she says.
All here would own that they thought it well,
were not their lips sealed by flear, But
royalty, blest in so much besides, hath the
power to do and say what it will.
One of the attributes of power is that it is capable of
mechanical responses and once an action is taken as with
the winding up of a mechanical toy, its stilted responses
cannot be halted until the mechanism itself is destroyed.
The mechanism of Creon is not vulnerable to Antigone and
Ismene even though they are his kin. They are not close
enough. Even his son is not close enough for Creon. The
mechanical person is standard raw material in the construct
ion of comedy yet here in Creon is a mechanical man that is
symbolic of raw power'itself and this reveals a similarity
of basic subject matter and technique for tragedy and
comedy. The difference is that in comedy each action is
set off against its counterpart whereas in tragedy each
action is mechanically cumulative and the counterpart is
the moving unifier or the universal law which finally
clashes against this accumulated and thus distanced
deviation from the mean. This is what happens to Creon,
When Haemon tries to reach him to urge him to bend to the
strength of organic nature in its enexorable drive
toward completion and unity, he simply becomes more en
raged and throws up another example or need of power or
the dominance over others,
Men of my age - are we indeed to be schooled, then
■ , by men of his?
43
Haemon pleads with him,
Though a man be wise, 'tis no. shame for him
to learn many things, and to bend in season,,
but if I am young, thou shouldst look to my
merits, not to my years »,,.,
Haemon too as Antigone, moves in Creon's own temporal
dimension toward him,
That is no city, which belongs to one man,
but Creon now deviates so far as to order the death of
Antigone in the full awareness that he is also banishing
his' own son even though he is without the depth of per
ception at this point, to know that banishment means death.
When Antigone's fate is sealed, as she faces
death itself she is- acutely aware of her loneliness and of
the fact that no-one appears to share her understanding of
her own code of conduct which she views as an approxim
ation of a universal truth such as leads to enrichment and
ennoblement of the species. She attempts to liken herself
to Niobe the daughter of Tantalus whose seven sons and
seven daughters were slain by Apollo and Artemis and she
herself was turned into a weeping rock, childless. An
tigone will never have children and is about to be en
tombed. Yet there is something taunting in the reply of
the chorus as it reminds her that she is not a goddess but,
'Tis great renown for a woman who hath perished
that she should have shared the doom of the god
like, in her life, and afterward in death.
Ennoblement consists of aspiration toward the god-like,
for a translation of the god-like is the ability to live
in harmony with the universe or the God, There are those
like Antigone who understand it from within. They have
the imaginative ability as described by Coleridge. There
are those like Creon who live in the realm of association
of fixities and definites and items of the fancy, For
this person to be moved to an approximation of a universal
truth, it needs the example to be set by someone or some
thing sufficiently respected to command followance. In
this play Antigone has Teiresias in this capacity but at
the moment the chorus of Theban Elders is moved to pity by
her appearance and her plight but is still unable to grasp
exactly what it is she is asserting. She then calls on
the city, the home of many immortals to draw the dis
tinction for her between a universal law and the man-made
law of Creon,
Ah, fount of Dirce, and thou holy; ground of Thebe
whose chariots are many; ye, at last, will bear
me witness, in what sort, unwept of friends, and
by what laws I pass to the rock-closed prison.
How can she really know whether she will meet her parents
and brother in Hades,
I cherish good hope that my coming will be
welcome to my father, and pleasant to thee,
my mother, and welcome, brother to thee.
All she really knows is what she knows from this earth,
And yet I honored thee, as the wise will ■deem,
rightly.
She knows the reason why a brother is so valuable to her,
Father and mother hidden with Hades, no brother's
4 5
life could ever bloom for me again.
That is all she really knows as she goes to her death,
Oh, ye gods, eldest of our race! -is.ee
what I suffer, and from whom, because X
feared to cast away the fear of Heaven!
V, The role of Teiresias, seer and intermediary.
Antigone sets the example with her life. Had
Creon had the feeling for her that he has for Teiresias
she might have been able to move him to her position
sooner, Yet even Teiresias is scorned at first. He re
asserts what is asserted by the first speech of the chorus
that political harmony is already restored in the slaying
of Polyneices,
Nay, allow the claim of the dead; stab not
the fallen; what prowess is it to slay the
slain anew?
He does not mention the negative quality of revenge but
he declares that it is good counsel that Creon needs to
lead him to desist from desecrating the dead and he,
Teiresias, is now giving good counsel to Creon. How does
Creon-.'.re;act? “ -Mechanically and fixadv '>ihv.his " -latest .edict ,he
takes the name of Zeus in vain,
Ye shall not hide that man in the grave - no,
though the eagles of Zeus should bear the carrion
morsels to their master's throne.,»
Up until now Teiresias has mentioned only one terror, that
of failing to bury Polyneices, Correction of that error
would have automatically meant freedom for Antigone.
46
Failure to correct that error means that Creon is now
attempting a greater violation in killing his kin, For
this violation Teiresias warns him, he will pay clearly,
Thou hast thrust children of the sunlight to the
shades, and ruthlessly lodged a living soul in
the grave; but keepest in this world one who
belongs to the gods infernal ,,.., therefore the
avenging destroyers lie in wait for thee ,,,,,
It takes this extreme curse to move Creon and even then
is his decision a difficult one,
!Tis dire to yield; but, by resistance, to smite
my pride with ruin - this, too, is a dire choice.
When he yields, he yields characteristically not to
Teiresias but to the chorus.
What should I do, then? Speak, and I will obey.,,,
He rushes to release Antigone. He could have found
Antigone and Haemon entombed together as one version of
the myth reports but in the play Antigone takes her own
life and Haemon, his.
It is in the second stage of the construction of
tragedy that the dramatist considers the audience for whom
the play is written and brings the communicative element
into the work o© art. The role of Teiresias is symbolic
here for it is also predicting the fall of Thebes and the
Greek civilization if the way cannot be found to move into
harmony with a unifying God in the governance of mortals.
Later, historically, Creon"s position is that of the
Greeks themselves as they attempt to expand their empire.
47
Antigone the woman, sets the example of adherance to a
philosophy of life that could have faithful correspondence
on the political level. It is the dramatist who writes
her and so creates her as destroying herself. Yet does
Thebes survive in some form and in this symbolic sense the
price paid is a civilization as it existed in its glory.
In the play Creon is left old, broken and chastened,
Antigone is gone and what she represented is gone. That
her qualities were rare qualities was adequately demon
strated in the play. Even to the very end few apprehended
on the pulses what she was prepared to give her life to
uphold.
A higher form to the tragedy would be the terror
of Creon building to the removal of the last stone but to
find Antigone alive. What this symbolizes is the survival
of Thebes and of Greece in a more humane form than it was
before. Thebes does survive and so does Greece. It is not
necessary for the losses to include the end of a royal
line or the death of one of the most creative if not the
most creative civilization that mortals have ever known.
With the progress of our civilization up to the 20th
century, the tragedian recognizes that survival of a more
humane civilization in a work of art could in itself act
as a prophesy as Antigone does, not toward destruction of
a civilization but toward survival of the species itself.
The role of Teiresias the seer is vital in this
48
Greek tragedy. It is almost like the blinding flash of the
mystic who sees momentarily, though in all clarity, a path
to follow, Shakespeare has his fool. The 20th century
tragedian also needs such a character. It could come from
one of the religious cults or doomsday prophets. Whatever
the form, such a character has a vital role to play in
tragedy because of this ability to intuit a universal
truth simply and clearly where actions of expediency can
only trace again what is embodied in the rock of human
immortality.
VI, The energy drive of Creon's bid for power.
Creon is the brother of Jocasta and comes to the
throne of Thebes only after the death of Eteocles and
Polyneices who were to have ruled the city in turns and
Creon is aware that he needs good counsel in order to be
able to rule well and he is also aware that his kingship
is to be judged by others,
For if any, being supreme guide of the State,
cleaves not to the best counsels, but, through
some fear, keeps his lips locked, I hold, and have
ever held, him most base ...
No man can be fully known in soul and spirit and
mind until he hath been seen versed in rule and
lawgiving....
In the overall sequence of events however, in an action
that immediately precedes the opening of the play, Creon
creates an organic imbalance by issuing an edict that the
body of Polyneices is not to be given burial. As
__________ _ ___________________________________________________ 49
Teiresias is later to emphasize, refusal to give burial
to a mortal goes beyond the political dimension and offends
the cosmic world and the spiritual well being of humans
individually and collectively, collectively being repre
sented by the city of Thebes,
The altars of our city and of our hearths have
been tainted, one and all, by bird and dogs, with
carrion from the hapless corpse, the son of Oedipus.
Why does Creon do this? The play does not give a reason
any more than life gives a reason. Mimetically it is an
accurate representation of a discrepancy that often exists
between the actions of mortals and their words, Creon
speaks of heeding the best counsel yet he acts alone. In
the personal dimension or in the area of the common mortal,
such discrepancies may affect the personal, the inner-
personal and perhaps social dimensions. However in such
cases they usually do not have the ripples sufficiently
extended to affect the political dimension and h&nse the
lives of others in a significant way. One of the require
ments of a tragedy is that the imbalance created by the
actions of a human being is of sufficient magnitude that
it affects the lives of others beyond the merely personal
or social dimension. This action of Creon has its most
painful effect on the lives of Antigone and Ismene but it
is also affecting the well being of the entire city of
Thebes as well as the underworld and the cosmos up to
Zeus which is the whole cosmos for the Greeks,
___________ ' 5 0
In the first scenes of the play, Creon errs and
creates a cosmic imbalance when he refuses to bury
Polyneices,. Creon speaks in one way and acts in another.
Upon attaining the throne he speaks of the need for good
counsel yet he repeatedly spurns good counsel.
After establishing these initial qualities
about Creon the play proceeds through its sequence of
events to trace the various clashes or conflicts which
occur as this mechanical or fixed position of Creon is
thrust against opposing human positions in all levels
from the personal to the cosmic. When the guard comes to
tell him that someone has scattered dust over the body of
Polyneices, Creon has his own reasoning. The first
possibility is absurd,
Was it for high reward or trusty service that they
sought to hide his nakedness, who came to burn
their pillared shrines,
In the second alternative by using the word 'wicked'
he provides his own mechanical reason for rejection of the
possibility,
Dost thou behold the gods honoring the wicked?
It cannot be.
The third alternative is the one he arbitrarily selects to
believe and to act upon,
From the first there were certain in the town
that muttered against me^j./'tis by them, well I
know that others have been beguiled and bribed to
do this deed.
Throughout the entire play Creon remains fixated on this
: 51
third alternative , this assumption that the burial rite is
performed by an enemy of his and probably for money as :
well. All actions of others are judged by him from this
single perspective and each different viewpoint represents
only a threat to him which has to be countered. When
Antigone asserts she is obeying,
The unwritten and unfailing statutes of heaven,
and dares to suggest that Creon may be less than wise,
And if my present deeds are foolish in thy sight,
it may be that a foolish judge arraigns my folly,
she only arouses a tirade of male chauvinism, Creon says,
Verily I am no man, she is the man, if this
victory shall rest with her.
This demonstrates his unequivocally held feeling of
superiority and her careful and clear attempt to explain to
him the primacy of her act only elicits a further revel
ation of the dicotomy in his mind,
A foe is never a friend - not even in death.
He is speaking here not about a stranger but his own
nephew, the child of his sister. What else can Antigone
say but,
"Tis not my nature to join in hating, but in loving.
Creon fires off another missile from his arsenal of who
is not friend is enemy,
Pass, thep to the world of the dead, and if thou
must needs love, love them, While I live, no
woman shall rule me,
It is as if he considers she is speaking of her position
r. 52
only, when indeed she is speaking of universal law,
Antigone is now his enemy, woman is his enemy, Haemon
tries to establish that in governance, humans need good
counsel,
That is no city, which belongs to one man,,.
For if any man thinks that he alone is wise - * •
that in speech, or in mind, he hath no peer -
such a soul, when laid open, is ever found empty,.
Wert thou not my father, I would have called thee
unwise,,,
It is all to no avail as his anger turns now to the younger
man,
Men of my age are we indeed to be schooled, then,
by men of his?
Nothing is moving Creon, Even Teiresias is wrongfully
accused in a flagrant irrationality,
The seer'-tribe hath long trafficked in me, and
made me their merchandise.
Each one of these conflicts which.beats against Creon1s
power and challenges it, but is not sufficient to overcome
it, only winds the powerful clock further and acts as
cumulative intransigence in Creon. The tyranical
mechanism is not snapped until Creon challenges the gods
themselves,
Ye shall not hide that man in the grave - no,
though the eagles of Zeus should bear the carrion
morsels to their Master's throne
and Teiresias responds with his curse that prophetizes
destruction and the breaking of Creon that is beyond
a creative chastening of him.
53
VII. The role of the chorus.
The chorus of Theban Elders gives the play its
cosmic dimension as the actions of mortals are imagina-i
tively lifted out of the commonplace into this expanded
universe where they are equally at ease. The elders do not
judge Polyneices as they say,
The warrior of the white shield ,, by reason the
vexed claims of Polyneices, like a shrill-
screaming eagle, he flew over into our land,
in snow-white pinion sheathed with an armed
throng, and with.plumage of helms.
Yet is the chorus bound to Creon1s will and even while it
so much as voices the possibility that the burial rite
might indeed be an act of the gods, it follows with a
marvellous praise of the human being and then says,
When he honors the laws of the land, and that
justice which he hath sworn by the gods to uphold,
proudly stands his city.
It does not question Creon at this point and is holding
two conflicting laws in reverance. The chorus does not
recognize the dicotomy until it is moved by Haemon,
Sire, 'tis meet that thou shouldst profit by
his words, if he speaks aught in season, and
thou, Haemon, by thy father's for on both parts
there hath been wise speech.
Yet it still does not understand Antigone's position
and indeed tells her that in her suffering she is paying
for her father's sins. The chorus does not focus on
Creon's actions until it too is jolted by the cosmic
nature of the curse of Teiresias, Where the chorus might
54
have been good counsel for Creon it does not become that
until Teiresias leaves and the previous actions set in
motion by a dictator have gone too far for him to halt.
The chorus does not generally act as a mover of the action
although it does for a brief moment when Teiresias leaves.
The chorus, since it consists of Theban elders and is
present throughout the play, could have offered counsel
and acted as a form of senate for Creon had the dramatist
had a different objective,
VXXI. The average mortal.
The average mortal in Antigone is represented
by the guard and also in many aspects by the chorus and
perhaps Ismene, Perhaps in the 20th century we lay too
much stress on the meaning of "averaged", Could it simply
mean that person who may be found in any random selection
of individuals? Is the average mortal really just
concerned with the self? Creon's guard certainly is.
He says,
Howbeit, all such things are of less account to
me than mine own safety,
Ismene is just concerned with the outcome,
A hopeless quest should not be made at all.
Throughout all the expressions of the chorus there is a
thread of the commonplace, a non'-caring attitude about
those eternal qualities that help enrich and preserve a
55
race or a civilization,
No man is so foolish that he is enamoured of death.
The average mortal as does- Creon, also needs an inter
mediary, someone to interpret or to clarify a universal
mode of conduct. The average mortal in this sense cannot
be a tragic figure for two reasons. Firstly, nothing that
the guard could say or do would profoundly affect the lives
of others because he has circumscribed himself with Creon's
decree. Similarly, strict adherance to this decree is what
prevents Ismene from comprehending the vastness of the
universe that Antigone comprehends. Ismene could not dev
iate from the decreed norm nor challenge one who deviates
from an eternal one.
IX. The contemporary relevance of Antigone ,
What distinguishes a great writer from a
pedestrian one, is the imaginative ability described by
Coleridge, to place the immortally finite mortal within the
cosmic universe infinite though that may be. It is not the
mere placement that is significant. It is the sense of
belonging, for that to which we belong, we guard and
protect. We accept responsibility for its preservation.
The chorus of Theban Elders places the assault against
Thebes in the perspective that engages Zeus himself or
indeed the whole cosmic world as it was known to the
Greeks,
: 56
Zeus utterly abhors the boasts of a proud
tongue ,,, he smote with brandished fire one who
was not hasting to shout victory at his goal upon
our ramparts,
Thebes endures this onslaught. There are losses and there
is a new ruler but harmony is restored though the city has
changed,
Since Victory of glorious name hath come to us,
with joy responsible to the joy of Thebe whose
chariots are many, let us enjoy forgetfulness
after the late wars,
Here we now have personal and cosmic harmony but
the most difficult, that of political placement, is still
to come. Another way to describe Antigone is as a move
ment which reveals the role of politics in a cosmically
harmonious universe. The politics in Thebes are simple by
20th century standards and so the issues may be clearly
analyzed, Creon understands the necessary correspondence
between the divine mover or Zeus and a whole country which
consists of governance,
The vessel of our State, after being tossed on
wild waves, hath once more been safely steadied
by the gods,
Yet is he motivated to attempting to perpetrate the
dicotomy of who is not friend is enemy and enemy even in
death, For Creon, what Polyneices had done is of greater
consequence than what Polyneices is or was, For Antigone,
what Polyneices is, the fa,ct that Polyneices is; a human
being, is of greater consequence than what he has done•
now that harmony is restored by his defeat,
. 57
The role of governance is the most difficult
role of all to place in cosmic harmony because complete
governance needs the vision of an Antigone to apprehend a
cosmic law coupled with the ability to frame laws that
approximate it and the ability to enforce them, Creon is
well aware of how he is to be tested,
No man can be fully knowi>,in soul and spirit
and mind until he hath been seen versed in rule
and lawgiving,
He errs immediately in attempting to go beyond the
adjustment that nature has given him and he moves to the
eternal hazard of mortals, revenge.
This play is an early study of a tyrant in
action but it shows clearly that there is a point in the
sequence of events where creative chastening is no longer
possible and destruction alone is the inexorable outcome.
Up until Creon defies Zeus, Teiresias is still hoping to
move him to be chastened rather than destroyed. Where the
play is indeed mimetic, this symbolically predicts the
fall of the civilization as mentioned earlier. This play
is a very clear study of the nature of despotism which is
still valid. The Shakespeare plays attempt to develop the
role of governance as a natural extension of the personal
and social dimension. In the 20th century such an
extension is still possible although it is complicated
somewhat by various forms of government that are sometimes
incompatible though they can overlap each other,
358
In view of the progress of western civilization,.
Antigone coining as it does at the dawn, is a very interests
ing play to study as it depicts the natural milieu of
tragedy and the source of imbalances or so-called tragic
errors which occur whenever human beings act in capacities
that affect the lives of others. Tragedy’s highest
potential is naturally in the milieu of politics or extends
to politics because it is in politics or the science or art
of government that human beings find themselves acting to
the full realization of their human potential and ramific
ations of their acts extend through the cosmic dimension
which in the 2 0th century includes space. It is in the
political dimension that acts of one person can influence
the lives of others. It is very important to emphasize
at this point that the meaning given to politics in this
paper is the science or art of government. It is not the
common usage of "politics" or "power politics^'! Creon
is a political figure married into the illustrious family
of Oedipus and he immediately reveals two important
characteristics which are seminal in western civilization
but can be studied most productively in such a play as
this because the overlay of succeeding ages has not
obscured the central issues, Creon errs or creates a
tragic imbalance in the universe when he refused to bury
Polyneices, There is no evidence in the play that he ever
understands from his own heart what he has done. Creon is
; 59
in sharp contrast to Antigone who understands immediately
what he has done, , It is not depravity in Creon that
causes him to act as he does, It is error or frailty
that could exist in any mortal or the average mortal.
No one with. Creon's sensibilities is immune from the
possibility of incurring such an error or imbalance as
Creon incurs, The second significant point is that Creon
speaks in one way and acts in another, He speaks of the
necessity of employing good counsel in the art of govern
ment yet he acts alone and spurns good counsel on many
occasions. To a dramatist like Shakespeare the fidelity
of language to meaning which is action in a play is a very
closely knit union. In his similar situations Shakespeare
points out the discrepancy out of sheer love of the
language and indeed it is in this area that much of the
comedy in his tragedies originates, In Antigone the
difference between Creon's language and action is not
emphasized, He simply spurns good counsel after promising
to heed it. If there is anything in western civilization
that the common mortal despises about politicians it is
that politicians have a language that is divorsed from its
equivalent in action, Inv Antigone this is a simple dis
crepancy and points out a human frailty more than deliber^
ate deceit, Encrustations over the ages often obscure this
but what Antigone reveals that is of potential use in the
20th century is that a selected politician holds ideal raw
60
material for a character in a classical tragedy
61
CHAPTER III
HAMLET
A structural analysis with particular
emphasis on the nature of the mimesis
and its contemporary relevance.
I. The state of affairs. Its relat
ionship to an overall sequence of
events.
II. In the matter of the prepared
material.
. The beginning and the ending.
The plot.
IV, Reduplicative tendencies in the
criminal acts of Claudius.
V. The cosmic imbalance caused by
murder and its mortal reflectors.
VI. The energy drive not to kill and its
counterpart revenge.
VII. Shakespearean fortifiers of the action.
Variations upon a theme. The family
of Polonius.
VIII. The political structure of Denmark and
the art of survival.
IX. The contemporary relevance of Hamlet.
62
I , The state of ahf fairs , Its relationship
to an overall Sequence of events»
Unlike Antigone, the story of Hamlet is not
taken from a well known myth or an historical event with a
recognized outcome. Several versions of a play like Hamlet
had been in existence but as far as the structure of the
play is concerned, Shakespeare was free to organize it as
he wished.
The action of the play is part of an overall
sequence of events however. These preceding events,
described in the play, become part of the temporal inter
relatedness of the action within the play and the actions
which have preceded it and so partially define what is
circumscribed in the art work.
In the first scene of Act I we learn from
Horatio that Hamlet's father, the King of Denmark, had
had a wager with Fortinbras the King of Norway in which
both had pledged certain of their lands to the victor in a
duel between them, Fortinbras was slain and his lands fell
to King Hamlet,
Shakespeare himself however is writing this play
at the dawn of the 17th century in England where the law of
primogeniture is becoming part of the national character
with its royal family already able to trace its lineage
back some seven centuries. This yen for inheritance by
the law of primogeniture is offset in the play against what
63
has actually happened in-'the sequence of events , inher
itance by conquest and death.
First^"^ young Fortinbras makes the claim for
primogeniture as opposed to conquest, when he begins an
advance across Denmark's land. It is these previous
events and these actions which are somewhat beyond the
boundaries of the play itself, which nevertheless define
a state of affairs existing in the first scenes of Hamlet.
Horatio and his fellow officers are keeping watch at the
battlements because it is believed that Fortinbras is
about to try to recover the lands lost by his father in the
wager, because he feels he has a right to them. Horatio
says,
Now, sir, young Fortinbras ......
But to recover of us, by strong hand
And terms compulsatory, those foresaid lands
So by his father lost; and this, I take it,
Is the main motive of our preparations,
The source of this our watch and the chief head
Of this post-haste and romage in the land.
11, In the matter of the prepared ^material
It is the prerogative and indeed the respon
sibility of the dramatist to determine what the unifier
of the action will be, or what eternal human value is
going to prevail in the end. To do this, the dramatist
may range through any of the dimensions as previously
discussed. The unifier or the prevailing of the highest
__________________________________________________________________________
energy drive is usually a single drive or movement. As
described in Antigone however, the most difficult dimension
in the reaLmy of human awareness, is the political dimension.
For the Greeks, the political dimension is comparatively
simple as mortals still have close ties to the gods and
only Aeschylus in the Oresteia seriously concerns himself
in the play with the potential need to place the realm of
politics or the science or art of government, within a
cosmic universe in which there could be faithful corres
pondence to a mean prevailing in all dimensions.
For Shakespeare, the political dimension is a
very important dimension and the art of governance has a
special place in his great chain of being. What Shakes
peare attempts to do in fact, is allign government with
a dramatically universal unifier primarily and the
Christian God secondarily, with the necessary characteristic
being in most of his plays, the rule of primogeniture in
this political dimension.
What makes Hamlet a significant play to study
structurally with particular reference to the nature of
its mimesis, is that the eternal code of conduct not to
kill is wedded to its necessary characteristic on the
political dimension, the law of primogeniture and they act
as twin unifiers. One or the other would have been suf
ficient for a unifier, and primogeniture takes precedence
in the end, but the universal human canon not to kill is
explored in great depth in this play, constituting most of
the middle. How it yields to primogeniture points out for
us in the 20th century that the political dimension itself
holds several strata of governance and a gap in one strat
turn can affect the whole. The gap in the political state
of affairs in Hamlet is the non-existence of something in
Denmark resembling Magna Carta, some recourse or inter
mediary between king and subject that addresses itself to
justice, Hamlet has nowhere to turn to register his
grievance against Claudius, A mechanism in government has
broken down and he has no remedy or even potential remedy,
Creon is a tyrant too but Antigone has Teiresias who acts
as the flash to show that there is a correspondence between
eternal human values and political actions, Hamlet has
noone in this capacity,
III, The beginning and the ending. The plot,
The state of affairs at the beginning of the play
reveals the existence of an imbalance in the international
dimension in terms of an established dramatic mean of
primogeniture. King Hamlet has acquired lands of Norway
by way of wager and killing, Young Fortinbras is
attempting to adjust this imbalance by reclaiming the lands
and asserting his right to them by way of primogeniture.
There is also a cosmic imbalance exemplified by the ghost
66
of King Hamlet remaining distracted and unable to pass
over the river into Hades or Hell because he has been
murdered and his killer is still at large. Claudius in
fact has killed his kin. In the final scene the murderer
of Hamlet is apprehended and Fortinbras regains his lands,
The twin unifiers move from this beginning through
the machinations of Claudius to secure his position back
to the adjustment of the original imbalance, The canon
not to kill yields in the end as Hamlet kills Claudius as
his dying act thus adjusting the dramatic cosmic imbalance
which has a political motivation and assuring the pre-=-
vailing of primogeniture exemplified in this play by
Fortinbras,
IV. Reduplicative tendencies in the criminal
acts of Claudius ,
A crime against one is a crime against all and
a crime is particularly intensified when it is also com
mitted against kin. In the chain of events immediately
preceding the play, Claudius has murdered his brother, He
has secured himself against recourse by the citizenry by
marrying his brother's wifef Queen Gertrude and assuming
the throne of Denmark.
We do not know for sure what Claudius has done
until the third scene of Act III, although the act itself
6 . 7
precedes the play, As a character, Claudius is the
opposite of Antigone, Antigone would not incur the wrath of
the gods for the sake of any mortal advantage and would
risk death itself rather than deviate from an immortal
code of conduct, For Claudius, however, the things of this
world are far too attractive to forego.
But, 0, what form of prayer
Can serve my turn? ’ ’Forgive me my foul murder?”
That cannot be; since I am still possess’d
Of these effects for which I did the murder,
My crown, mine own ambition, and my queen.
At the time that he speaks these words Claudius has already
decided to dispose of Hamlet and has commissioned Rosen-
crantz and Guildenstern to take letters to England which
will assure the death of Hamlet, Having achieved one
murder without apprehension, Claudius is now trying for a
second, demonstrating how such a person will not volun
tarily submit to accountability,
In the corrupted currents of this world
Offence’s gilded hand may shove by justice,
And often 'tis seen the wicked prize itself
Buys the law.
There is no law in Denmark to apprehend
Claudius, Yet he is aware that there is another code of
conduct he is also answerable to and this constitutes a
form of conflict in the Christian sense. The passage
above continues,
’but ’tis not so above;
There is no shuffling, there the action lies
In its true nature; and we ourselves compelI’d,
Even to the teeth and forehead of our faults,
68
To give in evidence.
It is during this speech that Hamlet suffers his
moment of greatest temptation to kill Claudius but he
desists. Since there is no law to apprehend Claudius, the
way it appears to Hamlet is that he himself has to kill
him since he owes it to his father. There is no revenge in
it if Claudius is praying and is perhaps obtaining some
divine forgiveness,
A villain kills my father; and for that,
I, his sole son, do this same villain send
to heaven,
0,this is hire and salary, not revenge.
There are three energy drives fighting for dominance at
this point. There is Claudies1 lust for power which
motivates him to kill King Hamlet prior to the play's
action and is motivating him to kill Hamlet now. Opposing
this, there is the Christian ethic to which he apparently
subscribes, that he has to concern himself with his
immortal soul. This Christian ethic is in harmony with
creating nature as already mentioned. The third energy
drive is the one of vengeance urged upon Hamlet by the
ghost of King Hamlet, The moment passes, Hamlet does not
act, Claudius is not being chastened, nor is he changing
his ways. His lustful energy drive now turned criminal,
has reduplicative tendencies. He is simply intent now on
killing Hamlet by whatever means, fair or foul.
In the return of Laertes, he sees another chance,
69
He spurs Laertes on to a thirst for vengeance for his own
father's death., After a long inflamatory speech to Laertes,
he says.
What would you undertake
To show yourself your father's son in deed
More than words,
Laertes replies ,
To cut his throat i' the church,
King,
No place, indeed, should murder sanctuarize;
Revenge should have no bounds.
These are interesting words coming as they do after Hamlet
has refused to kill Claudius when he was praying, Laertes
then goes on to say,
I'll anoint my sword ....
........I'll touch my point
With, this contagion, that, if I gall him slightly,
It may be death,
Even this is not enough for Claudies as his villany in
creases with the judicial freedom afforded it through lack
of social structures to assure justice,
When in your motion you are hot and dry , , , ,
And that he calls for drink, I'll have prepared him
A chalice for the nonce, whereon but sipping,
If he by chance escape your venom'd stuck
Our purpose may hold there.
His duplicity is revealed when his very next words are to
Hamlet's mother Gertrude,
How now, sweet queen.
Here is the concrete justification for what Marcellus has
intuited in the fourth scene of Act I,
70
Something is rotten in the state of Denmark,
Claudius of course is slain in the end but not until he is
openly accused by Laertes, The open accusation gives
Hamlet sanction and justification for killing Claudius yet
even then Hamlet kills him as his dying act. In terms of
action and inaction, Hamlet's one real action comes in
this final moment to halt the transgressor who has used all
of the assurances of a free society to pursue his own
violent purposes,
V . The cosmic Imbalance Caused by rriurder and its
mortal reflectors.
One of the very significant features of the
Shakespeare plays is the way in which the activities of
mortals are somehow reflected in the great creating nature
and vice versa, Hamlet is one of the plays in which an
atmosphere created by reference to nature itself antici
pates revelation of human actions which are not in har
mony with an immortal code of conduct and this disharmony
appears at first by way of a cosmic unrest.
The first important signal of unrest in1 - Hamlet
is the walking abroad of the ghost of the king, Horatio
says: of it,
In what particular thought to work I know not;
But in the gross and scope of my opinion,
This bodes some strange eruption to our state,
71
This cosmic unrest is reflected in the inner personal
meditation of Hamlet as he tries to come to grips
emotionally with the untimely death of his father and his
mother's, hasty marriage to his uncle,
How weary, stale, flat and unprofitable.
Seem to me, all the uses of this world
Fie on it, ah fie. lTis an unweeded garden
That grows to seed; things rank and gross in nature
Possess it merely. That it should come to this.
What has happened is unnatural,
0 god, a beast, that wants discourse of reason
Would have mourn'd longer,«....
It has destroyed Hamlet's world. His father is gone and
his mother has committed such an act as to dislodge
completely Hamlet's personal life from the cosmos,
0 most wicked speed, to post
With, such dexterity to incestuous sheets.
It is not nor it cannot come to good.
But break, my heart, for I must hold my tongue,
This personal dislodgement for Hamlet is strengthened
in its significance as Horatio describes I to him how the
ghost is armed. Hamlet replies,
My father's spirit in arms, All is not well
1 doubt some foul play. Would the night were come
Till then sit still, my soul. Foul deeds will rise
Though all the earth overwhelm them, to men's eyes,
What Hamlet intuits in his inner soul is now having for
him a ghostly counterpart. Yet it is a ghost and as
Horatio says to him,
What if it tempt you toward the flood, my lord,
Or to the dreadful summit of the cliff
And there assume some other horrible form,
72
Which might deprive your sovereignty of reason
And draw you into madness?
The ghost describes to Hamlet the manner of his death., Can
Hamlet believe Him? Certainly he is concerned about the
way in which his mother has moved affections so rapidly but
does that in itself accuse Claudius of murder and perhaps
Gertrude as an accomplice? Hamlet cannot know.
An opportunity presents itself to allow him to
resort to a play, the age old reflector of the macrocosm.
The play can hold the mirror up to the picture that the
ghost paints. Players arrive at the castle and Hamlet
himself writes in some dialogue. He says to Horatio,
If his occulted guilt
Do not itself unkennel in one speech,
It is a damned ghost that we have seen,
And my imaginations are as foul
As Vulcan's stithy,
When Claudius is visibly disturbed by the play, Hamlet
turns to his friend,
0 good Horatio, I’ll take the ghost’s word for a
a thousand pound, Dids’t perceive?
Very well, my lord.
Upon the talk of the poisoning?
1 did very well note him,
Out of Claudius' reflection from the enactment
of the mouse trap, Hamlet moves to understand his mother’s
role in what has happened,
Come, come, and sit you down; you shall not budge;
You go not till I set you up a glass
Where you may see the- inmost part of yon,
73
When Hamlet has finished describing what is reflected
in the mirror for her, Gertrude says,
0 Hamlet, speak no more.
Thou turns’t mine eyes into my very soul,J
And there I see such black and grained spots
As will not leave their tinct,
Hamlet and the ghost of his father both try to separate
Gertrude from Claudius. The ghost appears again to urge
Hamlet to proceed against Claudius,
Do not forget’ This visitation
Is but to whet thy almost blunted purpose f
Yet Hamlet cannot simply go and kill Claudius, First he
has to survive in the political structure in Denmark as
described later.
Meanwhile the death of Polonius and the seeming
madness of Hamlet have their own reflectors in Ophelia,
She is already deeply affected by Hamlet's most recent
rejection of her. How can she know that his own mother is
uppermost in his thoughts and reflected in her as he rejects
her,
If thou wilt needs marry, marry a fool; for
wise men know well enough what monsters you
make of them. To a nunnery, go, and quickly, too,
Ophelia herself is in harmony with the universe and in~
capable of deception and she is deeply affected by
Hamlet’s apparent transformation,
And I ,,,,,
Now see that noble and most sovereign reason
Like sweet bells jangled, out of time and harsh;
0, woe is me,
To have seen what I have seen, see what I see?
74
When this very soon after is followed by the untimely
death of her father, Ophelia passes over into madness as
the only way to retain her harmony with the cosmos in a
society that has become so disoriented as to destroy her
noble father. She speaks to her brother out of a madness
originating from a core as desperate as Hamlet's but
without the rational understanding that allows Hamlet to
hold fast with his intelligence to a hope of being able
to act constructively at some time in the future. For
Ophelia there is no understanding of what has happened
and no hope of finding any with her father dead and her
brother away at the time of the devastating action, Yet
eyen in her madness she acts as a cosmic reflector to
Laertes to alert him to the imbalance,
There's rosemary, that's for rememberance; pray,
love, remember; and there is pansies, that's for
thoughts,
The cosmic reflectors in Hamlet demonstrate
how the great creating nature is able to override the
sickness or the dislocation in any of its parts or
correspondences. Whenever the social structures fail, the
mortal can go directly to the moving God, In
Antigone, the action that has caused the imbalance is a
published one, in Hamlet it is obscured and is not
revealed until the end of the play. Yet knowledge on the
part of a mortal is not a necessary characteristic to the
understanding of a cosmic imbalance. The great strength
75
of Hamlet comes from the apprehension of a politically
motivated cosmic imbalance without the knowledge of it,
The movement to knowledge is the middle of the play which
ends when knowledge explodes with the accusation of
Laertes and Hamlet acts at the moment when he is morally
justified,
-iyjlv The energy drive not to j^ill and its
* Counterpart, revenge.
Tragedies may occur and do often occur when one
person kills another and the action is particularly
poignant if the people concerned are kin. In Hamlet
there has been murder of kin preceding the play's action.
This imbalance has to be adjusted and the political
structure within Denmark is such that for a long time the
only way that Hamlet can act is to place himself in an
Orestes situation where in ajusting one imbalance, he
creates another. He cannot kill his uncle without some
social sanction which he does not get until the final few
moments of the play. The middle of the play is concerned
with the energy drive of Hamlet to adjust a cosmic imbal*-
ance without killing in a duplicity ridden environment.
First the ghost urges him to kill his uncle in
revenge for the death of the king. It says to him?
0, list'
If thou didst ever thy dear father love
76
Revenge his foul and most unnatural murder.
He is a ghost, What he has revealed is shattering news to
Hamlet who has the presence of mind to seal the lips of
his friends to silence and to deflect them from pursuing
the matter with him too closely until he has decided what
to do about what has just been revealed to him by way of
the cosmic mist that surrounds the area of mortals’
rational knowledge. To himself he says,
The time is out of joint: G cursed spite,
That ever I was born to set it righti
A ghost is still a ghost, Hamlet cannot act
without additional knowledge. He cannot simply accuse
Claudius, yet the ghost’s call to vengeance is setting
up a powerful conflict in his mind because he feels the
accusation to be true although he does not know it to be
true. No inner conflict in all Christendom is more
eloquently enacted than that of Prince Hamlet,
Bloody, bawdy villain I
Remorseless, treacherous, lecherous, kindless villain2
0, vengeance I
This is soon followed by,
The spirit that I have seen
May be the devil? and the devil hath power
To assume a pleasing shape; yea, and perhaps
Out of my weakness and my melancholy,
* t « ♦ • « • * * * • t « f , % i.
Abuses me to damn me. I’ll have grounds
More relative than this. The play’s the thing
Wherein I’ll catch the conscience of the king.
He does catch the conscience of the king and
Horatio is his witness yet there is still no way to
______ 77
move this knowledge out of the personal dimension to .the
social and political one where Claudius can be brought to
account without damnation for Hamlet,
Again the ghost urges him to revenge. Again he
does not act. What he preserves to the end is his own
integrity. Yet is he caught in the cross-fire of revenge
at the end. Claudius, benefiting from Hamlet's mean that
keeps him from violating the code of conduct that excludes
killing, inflames the vengeance in Laertes to such a pitch
that he, Laertes, one of Hamlet’s childhood friends, slays
the prince in an extreme deviation from the mean or Ham^-
let's own code of conduct,
Hamlet's life is forfeited as the political
structure of Denmark fails to uphold his eternal human
values, As Denmark loses Hamlet it also yields up not
only the lands gained through King Hamlet’s killing of
King Fortinbras but also the rest of Denmark to boot as
Fortinbras arrives and Hamlet gives him his dying vote,
VII. Shakespearean ■fortifiers of-the action.
Variations upon a theme. The family of
Polonius.
The role of Polonius in the political structure
is discussed in the next chapter, Polonius as Lord
Chamberlain is very close to the king, He has children
the same age as Hamlet and the family is used as a
78
parallel to or a fortifier of the main action, as Gloces-^
ter is used in King Lear. His advice to Laertes could
have been that of King Hamlet to Hamlet when he was first
leaving for England, He literally /defines a mean or a
code of conduct that is true for all time, from" Antigone,
to the present,
To thinfe own self be true,
And it must follow, as the night the day,
Thou canst not then he false to any man.
What he is insisting on is a fidelity of correspondence
between a mortal and a mortal's actions and it describes
the Christian more or the golden rule of doing to others
as you would have them do to you,
Denmark is not the Britain of King Lear however
and it has few exemplifiers of a mean of human conduct
which move toward being exemplary or ah ideal, Polonius
is not one of them, After saying goodbye to Laertes with
his challenging words, he immediately advises Ophelia not
to pay attention to the words of Hamlet,
Think yourself a baby
That you have ta'en these tenders for true pay,
Which are not sterling,
A couple of scenes later, Polonius is urging Reynaldo on
his trip to France, to lie a. little about Laertes,
And there put on him
What forgeries you please? marry, none so rank
As may dishonour him? take heed of that?
But sir, suclr wanton, wild and usual slips
As are companions noted and most known
To youth and liberty,
79
Even to his own kin, Polonius does not behave in a
straightforward manner as. described in detail later and he
is slain by Hamlet,
Ophelia, the victim, a true soul in the sea of
’indirections" as is Hamlet, is unable to cope with the
pressures of a society out of joint and is lost,
Laertes, the friend of Hamlet but the son of
Polonius, is so loved in the kingdom that when he returns
from France there are even some disgruntled citizens who
shout for him to be king, Where he differs from Hamlet is
in his desire for revenge, He knows his own father is dead
as Hamlet knows his father is dead. He does not know how
his father died and Hamlet does not know how his father
died but he commits himself immediately to revenge,
How came he dead? I111 not be juggled with
Let come what comes; only I'll be revenged
Most thoroughly for my father,
Claudius uses him as he is unable to use Hamlet, He
inflames him toward revenge against Hamlet not just by
comparatively fair means as a duel, but also with a
poisoned sword and a poisoned drink. The actions of
Laertes in this preparation give the outer extreme of
Hamlet's position, Hamlet refuses to act out of regard
for an eternal code of conduct that he is not even com*-
pletely sure exists while Laertes flies straight to the
easier way for this world,, the way of revenge, with the
80
finer position, the position that leads to the ennoblement
of the species, left to Hamlet alone, ,
Apart from their meeting at the grave of Ophelia
where Laertes takes Hamlet by the throat, they do not
meet again until they are ready to duel, Laertes does not
go to Hamlet for an explanation of his act, Hamlet gives
it to him as they prepare to fight,
Give me your pardon, sir. I've done you wrong;
But pardon't, as you are a gentleman
♦ ♦ * t » . * I I I • t . • • » « f « , » .
What I have done,
That might your nature, honour, and exception
Roughly awake, I here proclaim was madness,
Laertes replies,
I am satisfied in nature
Whose motive, in this case, should stir me most
To my revenge,
So Laertes makes personal peace with Hamlet but what of his
commitment to the king? He is caught up in the villany of
Denmark as Hamlet is not. He still touches Hamlet with his
poisoned sword,
And yet 'tis almost 'gainst my conscience,
Laertes like his father, does not have the moral strength
to turn from the easier way yet he does blame the king in
the end and in this accusation he gives Hamlet his chance
to personally kill Claudius with the necessary justifica-*i <
tion,
Whereas a Kdrvt in King Lear, and Edgar of Gloces^
ter hold to, the mean for Lear, Polonius in Hamlet and his
Laertes sway with the current but in doing so aid in
defining Hamlet's position, Ophelia remains true and >
offers an extension of Hamlet himself in the personal and
inner personal dimensions and soaring to the cosmic
dimension, without access to and so without participation
In, the political dimension which in this play, is the
corruptor„
VIII, The political structure of Denmark and the
axt of survival.
That there is a citizenry in Denmark is alluded
to with some strength when Claudius explains to Laertes
why he does not move against Hamlet for the murder of
Polonius,
The other motive,
Why to a public count I might not go,
Is the great love the general gender bear him.
Apart from this allusion, what is built into this play is
the non-existence of any political tool such as a senate
hearing which may act as a curb against abuse, That
Hamlet is well aware of this and accepts the reality of it,
is clear at the moment he returns from his visitation with
the ghost on the battlements. He refuses to reveal what
he has heard to his friends not so much because he does not
trust them as because he does not want them to be used by
others. Sir Thomas More when he refuses to tell things to
his wife Alice takes a similar position in A Man For All
82
Seasons, .Hamlet simply says to Horatio ,
Here, as before, neverf so help you'mercy,
How strange or odd soe'er I bear myself
9 , f * * f * • - 9 ? *
That you, at such times seeing me, never shall note
That you know aught of me; This not to do.
Later to himself he says,
The time is out of joint; 0 cursed spite,
That ever.I was born to set it right I
Hamlet assesses the situation and makes the rational
judgement to feign madness in order to weave his way i - .
through the "corrupted currents of this world". Yet
whereas Polonius urges Reynoldo,
By indirections find directions out,
out of something that represents capricious curiosity,
Hamlet chooses this method in deference to the art of
survival within this political structure that consists of
a dictator king and fawning courtiers from Polonius to
Rozencrantz and Guildenstern or Osric,
The nature of the mimesis in this political
dimension in the palace of Denmark makes an interesting
study as it portrays human beings in action where they have
either failed to establish valid communicative mores or
else refuse to. In such situations people cannot fit the
word to the action or the action to the word because of
some restriction that is a deviation, Claudius is king.
His word is law. He surrounds himself with people who do
his bidding without question, Failure to do his bidding
83
or failure to please him results in death, He has no
compunction about sending Hamlet's death warrant to England
with Hamlet's supposed friends Rosencrantz and Guilden-
stern after he has spied upon Hamlet and Ophelia and
decided that Hamlet is not as mad as he appears, In such
a situation duplicity is the norm. It is normal for
Polonius to put out false stories about his own son by way
of another. It is normal for Polonius and the King - the
King - to stand in hiding to overhear Hamlet's conversation
with Ophelia, Why should a king stoop to hiding behind an
arras? The king has murdered and lied. From his own real
position of extreme deviation from the mean, he is no
longer able to apprehend how it feels to act from ,'the
mean and thus he not only condones but participates in
this bizarre behaviour. It is normal in this environment
for Polonius to stand behind the arras to overhear a
conversation between the Queen and her son5 Even Hamlet,
on guard against everyone could not believe that the old
man would have the arrogance to do that for any king,
Polonius plays directly into the king's hand and all the
others follow suit.
Such a play as Hamlet however would be almost
reduced to nothingness without language. So many things
are overheard. Language in this play is in fact action.
Hamlet tests the members of the court by way of language.
He forces Rosencrantz and Guildenstern to admit to him
84
that they were sent for which means that he Hamlet, can no
longer trust them. As in" Antigone, with the marvellous
speech of the chorus, so Hamlet utters his eulogy on the
virtues of the human being as he himself is approaching
the depths of despair concerning the same,
What a piece of work is a man! how noble in
reason' how infinite in faculty! , ,,,,
And yet, to me, what is this quintessence of dust?
Naturally Rosencrantz and Guildenstern report back to the
king. Even though the arrangements have now been made to
have Hamlet murdered in England, Claudius has to double
his assurances as he does with Laertes and the drink, to
try to discover what Hamlet does know. He sends Rosen
crantz and Guildenstern again in the name of the queen to
sound out Hamlet and the scene ends with Hamlet's emot
ional plea concerning the duplicity of their method,
How unworthy a thing you make of mej
you would play upon me; you would seem
to know my stops; you would pluck out
the heart of my mystery; ..... and there
is much music, excellent voice in this
little organ, yet cannot you make it speak,
Hamlet tests Polonius in the comical little
scene where he makes the old man say the shape of a cloud
moves from resembling a camel to a weasel and up again to
a whale. Polonius is not to be trusted even now and Ham
let discerns this by way of language alone.
In the next meeting with Rosencrantz and
Guildenstern, Hamlet's language is so metaphorical that
they must choose to ignore it and so they get nothing ^
from him except utter contempt for the king which is
scarcely translatable in rational language. When Osric
comes to call Hamlet to the duel, Hamlet tests him too
with language, Hamlet gets him to say firstly it is hot,
then indifferent cold and then very sultry. Hamlet sums
it all up,
Thus has he - and many more of the same
breed that I know the drossy age dotes on -
only got the tune of the time and outward
habit of encounter; a kind of yesty collection
which carries them through and through the most
fond and winnowed opinions,
So goes the political and social structure of the palace
of Denmark, At the end, Hamlet implores his one true
f ri end, Ho rat iorg
In this harsh world draw thy breate in pain,
To tell my story ........
report me and my cause aright
To the unsatisfied ...... ,
IX, The contemporary .relevance of Hamlet x
The political structure is different from that
; * - n Antigone. Claudius is progressing through deceit and
lies and cover-up. There are encrustations of political
structures between the worlds of the Greeks and the Den
mark that Shakespeare writes of. The audience too is
English and not only does it understand the law of primo
geniture but it also understands the need for curbs on
kingly power as evidenced by Magna Carta. Otherwise the
situation in Denmark closely resefribles England, Within the
boundaries of a prison, for Denmark does become a prison
for Hamlet, where creativity is coerced, mundanity is
glorified. Where the drive toward enrichment and ennoble
ment is stultified, the mediocre, the commonplace, the
deceitful, flourish in their move toward degradation.
Because of the dual nature of the unifiers
or the dominating actions, or the prevailing of the
highest energy drive, it is not easy to structurally
assess what a higher form to this tragedy would be.
Mimetically it would be more just to the science of being
if politically, Claudius is brought to account without the
death of Hamlet and the loss of Denmark to Norway, This
would necessitate building into the tragedy some
political strata between king and subjects such as does
exist for instance in the 20th century in democratic
countries. President can have a dramatic equivalence to
king with the unifier being currently, popularity, as
opposed to primogeniture. Prime Minister could be
substituted, with.; the unifier being party strength. By
way of the cosmic imbalance however, the lack of these
strata provide such vastness to the ranging of the human
mind that it seems academic to discuss the relevance of
a higher form structurally. Nevertheless dramatic art is
creative as is the universe and whenever a key unifier
as ^-n Hamlet has a cosmic negative such as not to kill,
87
preceding the action, it places a great strain on the
creative process to establish harmony in an ongoing
creative or fulfilling universe. Not to kill preceding
the action, is different from not to kill following the
action. Claudius has already killed and he has created a
cosmic imbalance. Not to kill for Hamlet means he is
attempting to avert a cosmic imbalance with the great
conflicting forces of his father's urging and his rational
knowledge that Claudius has to be brought to account. In
such a situation of missing strata or dislodged strata as
exist in the 20th century, the dramatist needs to imagine
a creative whole and project toward that even thoughj. it
is mimetically impossible, Such probable impossibilities
are the ideals or the visions to which mortals aspire when
the contemporary state of affairs is incomplete or dis
lodged as just mentioned.
Hamlet remains popular because dramatists since
Shakespeare have not seriously addressed themselves to
this need for political harmony within a cosmic universe.
Many human beings with deep ethical convictions as Hamlet
but finding themselves within a political system that
appears to be circumscribed in this unjust way, identify
with Hamlet and find in his death a death in part of
themselves as they are unable to break out of this seeming
prison of circumstance,
A higher form to a tragedy such as that of
88
Hamlet would indeed break out of the apparently fixed
pattern, here primogeniture and unchecked tyranny, and
project by way of the imagination, a political tool for
Hamlet to take hold of which would assure the survival of
Denmark and that form of government which Hamlet might
bring to it. In this way Hamlet’s actions, rather than
holding back or acting by refusing to act physically,
could move forward in a creative way, Hamlet refuses to
act physically because the only action available to him is
killing Claudius, If he kills Claudius, his kin, he is in
an Orestes situation one imbalance being replaced by
another. Thus he acts in a way which keeps him in personal
harmony, only in refusing to act physically with the ac
companying difficulties mimetically as mentioned above.
If there is anything that Hamlet can bring to
the 20th century it is a demonstration of what really
happens when the political dimension is dislodged from its
place in the cosmic universe. The cosmic imbalance created
when Claudius kills his kin is securely united with the
political dimension when Claudius weds Gertrude and be
comes King stultifying any moves to bring him to account
ability. The social structure in this play is not built
upon tiers of accountability such as is evident in other
Shakespeare plays and as the gardener carefully explains
in the Duke of York's garden in-King Richard II. What the
play demonstrates is that the code of conduct in gover
89
nance requires fidelity at all levels. If a yoeman kills
his kin he is punished by the law and so on up through
petty officials and governors, to the king himself. No
political figure acts with less accountability than the
lowliest of the people without repercussions and subjection
to the energy drive of the universal code of conduct which
prevails for all people from the lowest to the highest,
politically. Claudius answers for his act, What is lost
in the prevailing is the life of Hamlet, Hamlet’s life is
clearly the price of the previous failure of the govern*-
ment of Denmark to build accountability into its structure.
The state of affairs in Denmark is the state of affairs ex
isting wherever guarantees of life and liberty are not
built into the political system. That Hamlet's values
are important for the enrichment of the species is clearly
demonstrated in the play. For the adjustment of the cosmic
imbalance created by Claudius, it is not necessary that
Hamlet be destroyed and Denmark lose its line of succession ,
Nevertheless such a loss is,an outcome to be expected
where a political structure does not offer equal guarantees
at all levels or adherance to an eternal code of conduct
at all levels. The consequences of murder are the same on
a personal level for a trash collector as for a senator.
The rippling effect of a refusal to kill on the part of a
person of power and influence can have a salutary effect
on a whole nation for it approximates a god-like aspir-
90
ation which is the preservation of the speciesP Hamlet is
a complex play but an analysis of these intertwining
energy drives can give many clues to 20th century
dramatists to assist them in structuring a contemporary
tragedy that builds upon the groundwork of the Greeks and
Shakespeare plays not in an analogy of a pyramid but in
an analogy of mimetically depicting a contemporary state of
affairs where the political ;structure of mortals is far
more 'complicated and also much more at variance from the
path of survival of the species itself.
91
CHAPTER IV
KING LEAR
A structural analysis with particular
emphasis on the nature of the mimesis
and its contemporary relevance.
I. The raw material. The initial state of
affairs in the prepared material.
II. The political unifier and its relation
ship to Shakespeare's audience.
III. The source of conflicting energy drives.
Setting aside of primogeniture. Disavowing
paternal love. Denial of friendship.
IV. Conflict in the political dimension. Ap
pointment to office versus hereditary
responsibilities and consent of the gov—
erned - Cornwall.
V. The ethicality of Albany's contribution to
the highest energy drive.
VI. Where nature doth with merit challenge. The
roles of the sisters. The personal and
political deviations of Goneril and Regan.
The mean of Cordelia.
VII. Political awareness in Albany and Cordelia.
Kent and his relationship to the common
mortal.
VIII. Fortifiers of the action. The parallels of
Gloucester and Edmund.
IX. The art of personal survival in post-Lear
Britain. Edgar the dispossessed.
X. Survival of the kingdom. Lear, his Fool
and metaphysics.
XI. The tragic affirmation and the contem
porary relevance of King Lear.
92
I, The raw material. The initial state of
af f airs in the prepared'material. ^ ~
King Lear is an important play in terms of its
structure because the story is not taken from any well-
known myth or from history and there is no action beyond
the boundaries of the play. This is in sharp contrast
with Antigone, A Man for All Seasons and Murder in the
Cathedral all of which are taken from well known raw
material and whose total action extends before and after
the parameters of the play. In King Lear Shakespeare is
free to mold the material as he wishes without regard for
any factual incongruity that could arise and also without
regard for the necessity of compliance with history or
myth in some important detail. An anonymous play, The
True Chronicle of King Leir and his Three Daughters had
been produced in 1594 and there were other versions, one
of which is in Holinshed’s Historie of England, but the
story was not very well known and Shakespeare was able to
change it considerably, particularly the ending.
The shaping of a work of art such as a tragedy,
requires the closing of the circle or the unifying of all
the various strands of the action at the end. This is
in contrast to continuation of the various strands in real
life or in historical narrative. The strictures of the
shaping are what give potency to the dramatic action. In
King Lear the strictures are dramatically motivated solely
93
and the outcome is a much purer structure than exists in
the other plays mentioned above.
In the prepared material, King Lear of Britain
is an old man with three daughters, . two of whom are married
and a third about to be married. The third or the youngest
child, is his favorite. Her suitors are coming to the
court and Lear would like to give her a dowry. As the play
opens there is evidence of a harmonious kingdom. There is
a close filial relationship existing between Lear and his
daughter Cordelia, There is an apparently close relation
ship between the daughters Goneril and Regan and Lear,
There are loyal and close relationships between Lear and
Kent and Lear and Gloucester, In the fortifying action
line, there is a close relationship between Edgar and his
father Gloucester and an overt split between Edmund and
Gloucester, Being old, and having as his favorite his
youngest daughter, Lear plans a strategy for dividing his
kingdom among his daughters to override the law of primo
geniture, The action begins as he attempts to implement
his plan.
II. The political unifier and its relationship to
Shakespeare's audience.
While the state of affairs exists as it does
in this play, solely in the work of art, the dramatist does
94
have a particular audience in mind and the unifier of the
total world to which the audience belongs, is the law of
primogeniture. It is only about fifty years prior to the
writing of the play that King Henry VIII of England has
proclaimed himself head of the church in England which
makes him spiritual as well as political leader in England.
Ideally then he places himself on the mean of a code of
conduct which exemplifies personal, social, political and
spiritual harmony. The survival of a clear line of
succession which guarantees this fidelity of correspon
dence through all of these dimensions depends upon the
acceptance at all levels of the law of primogeniture for
the head of the state and the church in England. This law
of primogeniture, taken from the state of affairs existing
in England at the time of the writing of the play and
still existing today, is what Shakespeare uses as the
unifier in King Lear. If the succession in Britain moves
through the law of primogeniture, then the successor to
Lear is his daughter Goneril and her husband, the Duke
of Albany. It is this succession that prevails at the end
of the play. The beginning scene establishes a kingdom
where the ruler is about to step down. The final scene
shows the kingdom where the new ruler, the husband of the
eldest daughter takes his place.
95
Ill, The source of conflicting energy drives.
Setting aside of primogeniture. Disavowing
paternal love. Denial of friendship.
a*'
King Lear loves his youngest daughter the most
and now that she is about to be married, he wishes to
settle a part of his kingdom upon her as a dowry. How
can he do it? He divides his kingdom so that her sisters'
shares are equal, Gloucester says,
In the division of the kingdom, it appears not
which of the Dukes he values most; for equal-
ities are so weighted, that curiosity in neither
can make choice of either's moiety.
The largest share he is reserving for Cordelia,
That we our largest bounty may extend
Where nature doth with merit challenge,
. ........ What can you say to draw
A third more opulent than your sisters? Speak.
Lear is endeavouring to set aside the law of primogeniture,
which involves responsibility as well as territorial
acquisition. Territories he can bestow upon his daughters
by edict but continuance of their reigns depends upon the
sense of responsibility accompanying political power that
protects the rights of the meanest citizen and moves
consent of the governed into harmony with the edict.
Neither Goneril nor Regan have this sense of responsib
ility toward the old king, the court, their stewards and
citizens. Strengthening the conflicting energy drive of
Lear endeavouring to overrule primogeniture, is the in-
competance of his older daughters in their new roles.
96
Primogeniture would make Albany consort to Goneril but he
is not that in the play until the final scene,
The weight of this sad time we must obey;
Speak what we feel, not what we ought to say.
The preceding is in the political dimension,
Lear has extended himself to an opposite ex
treme of primogeniture in carving out the most opulent
territory for Cordelia, When he is rebuffed before all
of his court the pendulum swings its full distance and he
disowns his deepest love.
Here I disclaim all my paternal care,
Propinquity and property of blood,
And as a stranger to my heart and me,
Hold thee, from this, . for ever.
This natural imbalance that Lear creates at the begin
ning of the play is to run its full circle as the old man
returns to Cordelia at the end and is united with her,
A plague upon you, murderers, traitors alii'
I might have saved her; now she's gone for ever!
Cordelia, Cordelia} stay a little.
Lear's imbalance with Cordelia is primarily on the per
sonal dimension although there are some political im
plications as discussed later.
The next imbalance is created primarily on the
courtly, social dimension with the banishment of Kent.
The relationship between Lear and Kent begins as a very
close one. Kent says,
Let me still remain
The true blank of thine eye,
97
. - . -------------- ..... ...---------------------------------------------------------------------- M
A close courtly social relationship still needs to be
aware of political strictures, Lear has set up a certain
political code of conduct which Kent is now violating
with his frankness and neither one has the finese just as
Cordelia does not, to avoid an open confrontation, Lear
emphasises his political situation,
Since thou hast sought to make us break our vow,
Which we durst never yet, and with strain'd pride
To come between our sentence and our power,
Which nor our nature nor our place can bear,
Kent suffers the extreme rejection juSt as Cordelia does.
Yet in the end the imbalance is adjusted as Lear in his
(Jeep sorrow recognizes Kent as his true friend,
You are welcome hithepfYT^
These early actions of Lear set in motion
forces or energy drives which he is then unable to halt.
Primogeniture prevails as do the eternal human values of
paternal love and loyalty to kith and kin. The price paid
for the prevailing is the life of Cordelia primarily
and other losses as Cornwall, Edmund, Oswald and others.
IV. Conflict in the political dimension. Ap
pointment to office versus hereditary
responsibilities and "consent of the “ governed -
Cornwall.
Cornwall appears only in Acts 2 and 3. He has
no sense of a necessary order in governance which is
attained through consent of the governed and which pro
ceeds by way of adherance to a defined code of conduct,
98
Although Kent is Lear’s friend he is more importantly
his subject and when Kent chastises the king publicly, he
pays a very high price not because he is wrong but because
he violates a code of conduct which preserves authority for
royalty. Kent chastising Lear in private or in a different
manner as is the Fool’s habit, might have accomplished it
with impunity. This sense of authority is what is now
cast off in post^Lear Britain, Goneril makes her servant
Oswald her confidante and Cornwall says to Gloucester,
,,,,,,,,,,,, Make your own purpose
How in my strength you please.
When Kent reveals that he is in the service of the king,
Cornwall says,
Fetch forth the stocks' As I have life and honour
There shall he sit till noon,
Gloucester reminds him that the stocks are for
,,,,,,,, , . , , . basest and contemned’st wretches
For pilferings and most common trespasses,
but Cornwall simply replies,
I’ll answer that.
The king is no longer king, Soon he is denied even the
dignity of being human as he is shut out in the storm,
Lock up your doors, my lord? 'tis a wild night;
My Regan counsels well. Come out o ’the storm.
This forfeiture of human worth in the interest of
political expediency and revenge is further exemplified
by Cornwall as he mutilates Gloucester, Yet is he halted
by his own servant as Lear is checked by Kent,
99
% « f . t» . * . i s ? , * % t , t % » Hold your hand^ my lord
I have served you ever since I was a child;
But better service have I never done you
Than now to bid you hold ,» ,
He is killed by this servantt by this rising up as it were,
of the common mortal standing on the mean of a code of
conduct which, sees such physical abuse as intolerable. In
both of these instances, with Kent and with this servant,
the imbalance is noticed immediately and an instant
remedy attempted. These two occasions contribute among
others to the establishing of King' Lear as one of the great
ethical tragedies of all time providing stasis in the
midst of horror. The putting out of Gloucester's eyes is
perhaps: the most violent act on stage in all of Shakes
peare yet it is at the same time accompanied by this
self sacrifice on the part of the common mortdl,
V . The ethicality of Albany's contribution to
the highest energy drive, ■
The relationship existing between the human
being and creating nature, is best represented by the
lyric poet, It does not need the movement of tragedy, the
tracings of the human beings in action as they range
through all their possible dimensions, However the ideal
tragic dramatist simply expands upon the dimensions of
the lyric poet and does not alter their essential char
acteristics, This is to say that if a character has a
100
rapport with, creating nature and lives or acts upon the
mean or acceptance of a certain mortal role in the mortal-
to-nature or in the lyrical dimension, that harmony or
fidelity of correspondence is maintained through the other
dimensions. A character that understands the natural
filial bond can be expected to behave with similar under
standing in a social and political dimension. Shakespeare
in King Lear chooses: a dramatic unifier that is dear to the
heart of his country, the law of succession in England
governed by primogeniture. There are great conflicting
forces as described earlier, and there is Albany, the
husband of Goneril, the heir apparent to the throne.
Albany is completely overshadowed by Goneril in the early
scenes. He is not born into the political responsibility
that Goneril is, yet he understands that Lear is not only
royalty but also loving father,
A father, and a gracious aged man,
Whose reverence even the head-lugg'd bear would
lick,
He moves to a full awareness of Goneril's duplicity and
begins to predict the ethical outcome of the play,
She that herself will sliver and disbranch
From her material sap, perforce must wither
And come to deadly use.
When he is advised of what has happened to Gloucester
and also Cornwall he reveals his strong awareness of the
lyrical relationship or the bond between mortal and
creating nature. He says,
101
This shows you are above ,
You justicers, that these our nether crimes
So speedily can venge]
Finally when he is absolutely sure that Goneril
plans to murder him, he rises up, throws out Edgar's
challenge and vows to honor it if Edgar defaults,
If none appear to prove upon thy head
Thy heinous, manifest, and many treasons,
There is my pledge (throwing down a glove); I’ll
prove it on they heart,
This is a far cry from Goneril’s earlier assessment of her
husband,
Milk~liver'd manj
Albany, honored by Lear in the first scene,
scbrned by others because of his passive nature, is never
theless a very consistent character even at times bearing
a close resemblance to Hamlet, He maintains a fidelity
of correspondence through all the dimensions as mentioned
above. It is he who would have been prince consort had
primogeniture run its natural course, It is he who at the
end has the kingdom thrust upon him with the audience
fully aware that much of the beautiful is gone with the
loss of Cordelia but also all of the chaos is purged
away with the death of the deviant sisters and their
consorts and followers,
There is'an ethicality in this that cannot be
ignored, Shakespeare is a tragic dramatist who makes
the finest attempt to reconcile the dimensions of
mortals that come with civilization, to the ultimate ,n
relationship of mortal to nature, Albany, a critically
neglected character and his fortifier Edgar, are key
characters to opening up a whole range of relationships
that the master dramatist has constructed. Awareness of
these relationships provides enormous learning potential
for tragedians in the 20th century,
VI, Where nature doth With merit challenge,
The roles of the sisters. The" personal
and political deviations of Goneril and
Regan,- The mean of Cordelia.
As soon as the ceremonies of the division of the
kingdom are over, Goneril and Regan reveal themselves to be
what Kent and Cordelia earlier predicted, Goneril says,
We must look to receive from his age, not
alone the imperfection of long«-engrafted
condition, but there withall the unruly
waywardness that infirm and choleric years
bring with them.
They plan their strategy immediately,
If our father carry authority with such
dispositions as he bears, this last surrender
of his will but offend us,
The first scene at the Duke of Albany's palace
does not open with Albany but with Goneril and her ser^
vant — confidante, Oswald, This is the beginning of
Goneril's deviation from the mean of authority, the begins
ning of the undermining of the social and political order
necessary to maintain effective governance, Goneril gives
103
her servant free license to abuse her father(
If you come slack of former services f .
You shall do well; the fault of it I’ll answer
* « ' • ?, • » • 9. 9, 9- « f, 9.
Put on what weary negligence you please
You and your fellows*
It is an undermining on the social and political dimension
that is masking a greater deviation in the area of filial
love. It appears that Goneril neither loves nor respects
the old king her father and this deviation weaves in with
others to push the old man completely out of the personal,
social and political dimension to his great encounter
with nature and the cosmos itself. In this he bypasses all
of these dimensions and stands alone in his appeal for
cosmic redress for all of these mortal imbalances.
After having Oswald prepare the way, Goneril
herself then chides Lear concerning the behaviour of his
knights,
Here do you keep a hundred knights and squires;
Men so disorder’d, so debosh’d and bold,
That this our court, infected with their manners,
Shows like a riotous inn .,,.
You strike my people? and your disorder’d rabble
Make servants of their betters.
It is a planned strategy to rid herself of responsibility
for the old man and is in direct conflict with the mean
of filial love, Albany comes in of course but he is not
fully aware of what is happening. He is no match for
Goneril at this point but at the same time it is very clear
that he does not approve, Thus even though Goneril’s
104
energy drive or the movement against filial love appears
to be gaining ground, the forces which are on the mean
are quiescent only,
Goneril's energy is preparing to join forces
with that of Regan, Regan on her part is already joined
to Cornwall who not only violates the social and political
mean or code of conduct but also personally mutilates
Gloucester in his final action, Regan thus has more mom’ -
entum than Goneril at the moment and also enlists the
energy of Edmund as it is irrevocably severed from the life
of his father the older Duke of Gloucester,
The point of extreme conflict comes when the
forces of Goneril, Regan and Cornwall have combined in
common violation of the mean in all dimensions and Lear
stands virtually alone as his supporters, Kent, the Fool
and Gloucester, are politically powerless. At this moment
Lear in the full assurance of his secure position as a
human being within the realm of the universe calls upon
the moving God the unifier of the entire cosmos to affirm
his mortal integrity',
You heavens, give me that patience, patience I need,
You see me here, you gods, a poor old man,
............. Touch me with noble anger
As he finds himself on the heath in the storm, he says,
Blow, winds, and crack your cheeks I rage I blowI
You cateracts and hurricanes, spout
Till you have drench'd our steeples, drown'd the
cocks
You sulphurous and thought-executing fires,
105
yaunt couriers to oak^-cleaving thunderbolts,
Singe my white headj
At the very moment that the forces of Goneril, Regan and
Cornwall appear to have total control as they have
evicted the king, it is revealed that Cordelia is returning
and Albany and Cornwall do not have the harmonious relate
ionship they appeared to have, Kent says,
. , . . ........ . There is division,
'twixt Albany and Cornwall
But, time it is, from France there comes a power
Into this scatter’d kingdom,
Regan joins with Cornwall in the extreme
violation on the person of Gloucester, She loses Cornwall
in this endeavour and the loss of Cornwall triggers the
action by Goneril to poison her sister as she then be
comes a too potent rival for Edmund of Gloucester, Just
as Goneril does, Regan also takes Oswald into her con
fidence and gives him license beyond his station, en^-
couraging him to violate the code of conduct of effective
governance,
My lord is dead; Edmund and I have talk'd;
And more convenient is he for my hand
Than for your lady 1s, You may gather more,
The letter that Oswald is at that very moment carrying
from Goneril to Edmund;; is a plot on Albany's life.
You have many opportunities to cut him off.
If your will want not, time and place will be
fruitfully offered.
While the energies of Regan and Goneril at first
are set against-vthe king, as deviants from the mean, , ‘ J
106
they are not teleologically directed as Cordelia^ is
as explained presently.' • As soon as Lear is dispossessed,
both Goneril and Regan turn against each other not so
much to acquire the kingdom as might be their political
objective but to acquire Edmund, a personal objective at
least in the first instance, Edmund is the Shakespearean
reinforcer for Goneril and Regan as explained later and
they gravitate toward him as kind to kind, Cornwall
elevates him to Duke of Gloucester after he has betrayed
both brother and father. As soon as Cornwall dies, Regan
desires him as her consort, Goneril however recognizes
the honor in Albany which though quiescent is still power
ful, and endeavours to be rid of him in order to join with
Edmund, This conflict between the two sisters comes to
its climax at the moment when Regan says to Edmund,
Let the drum strike, and prove my title thine,
Albany is there and, backed by Edgar, he throws out the
challenge to Edmund. The value of human life is of so
little consequence now that Goneril poisons her sister,
Edmund too is mortally wounded and the extreme deviation
from effective governance is voiced by Goneril as her plot
is exposed by Albany, She says,
The laws are mine; not thine,
Who can arraign me for’it?
As she takes her own life and Edmund dies, the entire
deviant energy drive is eliminated. The mean prevails,
107
that clear teleological line reinforced by Cordelia, Kent,
Edgar, Gloucester, Albany and latterly, Lear, There are
still losses to come as the prevailing of primogeniture,
the strength of filial love and the loyalty of friendship
affirm again the ethical positive or the enrichment and
ennoblement of the species offered by King Lear. Cordelia
is banished at the beginning of the play and returns at
the end. In a sense she is a victim but not through other
irrevocable actions as in Hamlet. There are qualities in
her own nature which are not equal to the demands of the
moment. When Lear's kingdom is already divided to give
her the greatest portion, she says,
Unhappy that I am, I cannot heave
My heart into my mouth. I love your majesty
According to my bond; nor more nor less.
The words underlined above are elaborations upon the theme
and not necessarily called for any more than the discourse
about her sisters,
Why have my sisters husbands .........
A few simple and true words would have sufficed from her
at this crucial moment. She does not even indeed speak
entirely truly. When she says, "nor more nor less" she
encloses her love in her bond. Later in the play however
she puts her own life in jeopardy as she visits Lear
personally instead of staying with ‘ her army. She goes
beyond her bond in doing this and she pays for it with her
life. On the battlefield a gentleman reports to Edgar,
108
Though, that the Queen on special cause is here f
Her army is moved on,
Lear and Cordelia are taken prisoner and for a brief time
come under the control of Edmund the arch opponent of the
entire social and political structure and he gives out the
unauthorized order for their death. So Cordelia is lost.
She originally stands to benefit from a setting aside of
primogeniture but she is politically not equal to the
demands thus placed on her. When she returns to Lear in
person before a victory,, she also errs politically,
Cordelia is an example of personal fidelity to a mean
unaccompanied by the awareness of the need for the social
and political strata as partial definers of mortals'
actions necessary to human governance in the interest of
speciel survival,
VII, Political awareness in Albany and Cordelia.
Kent and his relationship to the common
mortal.
Albany, Cordelia and Kent are generally on the
mean of human conduct. They act on the personal dimension
according to the golden rule of doing to others as you
would have them do to you, All of them have difficulties
in adjusting to a code of conduct on the personal dimension
to meet the requirements of the social and political
dimensions. In the 20th century people say they wear
109
different hats f that is, they change in some way as they
take on roles that are primarily concerned with one or
another of the strata of human conduct that alli '.together
contribute to effective g overnance or the ability of
people to coexist harmoniously as their numbers expand T
/> . . /V. • /
beyond the iirmediatey'famiiy^or/ ,/'culture •or/Jnata.on.
It is in King Lear that Shakespeare demonstrates
his commitment to portraying character according to the
nature of the mortal not according to the mortal's en-
vironment, As already demonstrated, Cordelia errs pol
itically when she elaborates, with few words to be sure,
upon her declaration of love for her father. She says,
"nor more, nor less". She is also motivated at the time by
an antagonism towards her sisters and their deliberate
sophistry in declaring with large speeches, their all-
encompassing love for their father. She knows they do not
love their father and she has to comment publicly upon it,
Why have my sisters husbands, if they say
They love you all?
At this moment she loses sight of the political fact
that Lear himself knows that her sisters are not likely to
act according to the golden rule and is trying to protect
her, Cordelia, by giving her a share of his kingdom,
"more opulent" than the others. He is also trying to set
aside primogeniture for her. He might have succeeded had
she accepted the larger portion and been able to hold sway
110
oyer the otherst He fails when the kingdom is divided
between Cornwall and Albany« Then the sense of order is
dissipated and authority and consent of the governed*;; is
replaced by the bid for superior power* Cordelia is also
a very young woman and in a sense is trying to woo her
suitors ,
....... When I shall wed,
That lord whose hand must take my plight shall carry
Half my love with him.
What can King Lear do after that? He has set up a very
elaborate and carefully planned procedure for the peaceful
transference of the governance of his kingdom with full
knowledge of a law of primogeniture as well as an aware
ness of the political acumen of his two older daughters.
All is blasted when Cordelia rejects him before all his
court. True though her word and her character may be in
the personal dimension, she heeds to show more care in the
selection of her language on the political dimension, Lear
as king is much more at home in the political dimension
and without the skill to turn her language around, he errs
in the personal dimension when he casts her from him
for ever,
It is in this opening scene in King Lear that
much can be learned about the importance of communicative
or rational language and emotive language or that lan
guage which expresses feeling but does not advance the
action, The action or life in King Lear moves forward.
Ill
The next day must come in which Cordelia has no rights
or lands in Britain, What King Lear says to Kent and
Cordelia is emotive utterance expressive of temporary
feeling, not necessarily true with only one rational word,
''banishment" which applies to the action.
Kent too is a true man and a "plain" man,
without awareness of the need for political restraint. To
observe political restraint does not mean to change
character but simply to recognize that personal or social
freedoms allowed by consent in a small circle may need to
be voluntarily withheld when operating outside this immed
iate circle. For instance, when Kent arrives at Glouces
ter's castle and is questioned by Cornwall, he says,
Sir, 'tis my occupation to be plain.
I have seen better faces in my time
Than stands on any shoulder that I see
Before me at this instant.
Cornwall does not even pick up the deep insult offered
here but what Kent does is throw out a political challenge
that has to be answered and he leaves no alternative but
punishment.
Kent of course while a close parallel to
Cordelia has the advantage of being a common mortal in
the sense that political awareness for him is of no great
consequence. He is not individually a mover of the action
as Cordelia is potentially. Political awareness is not a
necessary characteristic of his life as it is for Lear,
Cordelia and Cornwall for instance. When he explodes in
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the first scene he does so in the same way that Cornwall's
servant does when Cornwall is mutilating Gloucester. This
is Shakespeare's way of giving strength to the common
mortal, The common mortal in this play and indeed in most
of Shakespeare walks on the ethical mean of a code of
conduct. In A Man for All Seasons the common mortal loses
this sense of the mean and is shaped by the environment.
In Shakespeare the common mortal is a deep underlying
strength, an affirmation of the inherent value to human
life, an underground resource for the poet and nowhere is
the common mortal better exemplified than in Kent who rises
up against the king when he errs but who loves him with
the loyalty of a brother that never has to venture beyond
the family circle. The common mortal does not need to
venture too far yet there is also responsibility in this.
It is the responsibility to preserve the sense of the mean,
the deep awareness of the golden rule to do to others
which alone ensures the survival of family, society,
nation, civilization. The ethicality of King Lear is
particularly exemplified by Cornwall's servant in the one
critical instance and by Kent as he accompanies the
movement of the play defining the mean at every step.
He is aware of the art of sophistry. He warns
the older sisters,
. ............... And your large speeches
May your deeds approve,
When he is chastised by Cornwall for his bluntness even
_________________________________________________________________113
though Cornwall misses the true implication of his words,
he continues with deliberate and mocking sophistry,
Sir, in gopd sooth, in sincere verity
Under the '"’ allowance of your great aspect,
Whole influence, like the wreath of radiant fire
On flickering Phoebus' front -
Kent is not to be shaken from what he knows to be the way
a mortal acts who is in harmony with the mean of the code
of conduct for mortals that springs from within and is not
affected by circumstance, He is in sharp contrast to
Goneril*s servant Oswald who is governed by circumstance.
Goneril gives Oswald license and when Kent asks him who
Lear is he answers,
My lady's father,
Oswald, although he retains a deep loyalty toward Goneril
to the end is moved by circumstance and allows Goneril to
draw him away from the mean of a human code of conduct
that recognizes the existing political hierarchy. It is
his deviation that Kent attacks,
............. « you base foot-ball player . . .
1*11 teach you differences .........
Later he is more explicit,
You come with letters against the king; and
take vanity the puppet's part against the
royalty of her father.
In this way Kent shows the importance of the average
mortal to the maintenance of a state of affairs in the
kingdom that offers a check upon those in political power.
For Kent, the common mortal is the guardian of a code of
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conduct which ensures survival of a society, culture or
nation,
VIII, Fortifiers of the action. The parallels
of Gloucester and Edmund,
Gloucester belongs to the king's court and has
two sons. The actions of Gloucester parallel those of
Lear, In the beginning, Lear is endeavouring to advance
the fortunes of his youngest daughter and Gloucester is
recognizing his bastard son.
If we feel that King Lear acts in an extreme
manner when he dispossesses his favorite child what can we
say about Gloucester? Lear moves to an extreme to protect
Cordelia and then the pendulum swings its full course as
he disinherits her, Lear errs in. an extreme measure,
Gloucester too. errs in believing the contents of Edmund's
letter, jumping to the conclusion that the handwriting
is indeed that of Edgar and exploding,
0 villain, villain! Abhorred villain!
Unnatural, detested, brutish villain! worse
than brutish!
Why does he not have more faith in his son to whom'; he
spoke only the evening before? He errs in the same way
that Lear errs. He is less than a tragic figure not
because there is any appreciable difference on the personal
and perhaps social dimensions but because his action in
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disinheriting his son does not have the political implicat
ion that Lear’s action has. It does not affect the lives
of others as Lear’s action affects the lives of others.
When Lear disinherits Cordelia, the kingdom of Burgundy
is touched, the kingdom of France is affected and the line
of governance is Britain becomes irrevocably altered. All
of this occurs in the political dimension. In the social
and personal dimensions, people’s expectations are shaken
and changed. Gloucester is already moved by what happens
at the palace. He makes his own assumption,
These late eclipses of the sun and moon portend
no good to us Love, fools, friendship falls
off, brothers divide ,,,,, palaces, treason; and
the bond cracked ’twixt son and father. This
villain of mine comes under the prediction;
there’s son against father. The king falls from
bias of nature; there’s father against child ...
And the noble and true-hearted Kent banished I
his office, honesty, ’Tis strange.
He does not realize that he errs against Edgar as Lear errs
against Cordelia yet he is deeply affected by Lear's
behaviour on the emotional level. His meditation upon
the action attempts to move it into the cosmic dimension
in an effort to understand it. This anticipates Lear's
night on the heath,
Close pent-up guilts,
Rive your concealing continents, and cry
These dreadful summoners grace.
Both of these parallel endeavours place the mortal in a
universe that is much more than the personal through
political dimensions. This reaching out is at two levels,
116
On one level it is almost an attempt to assign blame for
human actions that deviate from the mean. This in part
is what Gloucester is trying to do and his son Edmund jeers
at him for it.
This is the excellent foppery of the world, that
when we are sick in fortune ■ * - often the surfeit
of our own behaviour we make guilty of our
disaster the sun, the moon,' and the stars, as if
we were villains by necessity, fools by heavenly
compulsion, knaves, thieves and treachers by
spherical predominance, drunkards, liars and
adulterers by an enforced obedience of planetary
influence, and all that we are evil in, by a
divine thrusting on,
Edmund uses only a part of the reference. The other part
is acknowledgement by denial, of the existence of the
cosmos. When Lear later moves himself into the cosmic
dimension, he does it in his appeal for justice and
understanding to a force that lifts him completely out of
the mortal dimensions to the rarefied air of mystics and
mad people. He has never prepared himself for such an
encounter and he has never before had it thrust upon
him,
......... Take physic, pomp;
Expose thyself to feel what wretches feel,
That thou mayst shake the superflux to them,
And show the heavens more just.
When Lear appeals to the cosmos, he goes far beyond
Gloucester, Gloucester simply prepares the ground so that
Lear’s appeal is more credible. Far from detracting from
the main energy drive, Gloucester reinforces it.
In the first scene, Lear thrusts out his
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youngest daughter. His thrusting out violates an immortal
bond whose strength is going to prevail in the end,
spurred on by his thrusting out however, his other daughters
in their turn violate the same immortal bond by thrusting
out their father. Whereas Lear’s exiling of Cordelia
operates in the political, social and personal dimensions
there is still some part of the mortally made world to
receive her and take her in, France says,
Love's not love
When it is mingled with regards that stand
Aloof from the entire point ......
Thy dowerless daughter, king, thrown to my chance,
Is queen of us, of ours, and our fair France,
It is not the character of Lear that provides Cordelia
with a haven but the plot constructed by the dramatist.
The character, says,
Thou hast her, France, Let her be thine; for we
Have no such daughter, nor shall ever see
That face of hers again.
Later the character of Cornwall says,
Shut up your doors, my lord; 'tis a wild night;
My Regan counsels well. Come out o' the storm.
The difference between the two situations is that Lear has
no place to go, Gloucester knows the country and tells
Regan and Cornwall,
......... . For many miles about
There's scarce a bush.
Lear himself is now about to experience the logical con
clusion of what he himself begins when he thrusts Cordelia
out. This time however there is nothing in the mortally
118
made world to receive him and he is about to become aware
on the pulses of the great creating nature that continues
to survive despite the actions of mortals,
Thou, all-shaking thunder,
Smitfe flat the thick rotundity o'the worldJ
Crack nature's moulds, all germens spill at once,
then finally there comes the immortal bond that exists
between the mortal and this nature,
That makes ingrateful man}
King Lear is a valuable play to study in the
20th century because it clearly reveals this relationship
between the mortal and the creating nature of the universe,
There is a certain arrogance in western mortal that reads
into taming nature, dominance over it, Lear partially
exemplifies it,
I tax not you, you elements, with unkindness I
I never gave you kingdom, call'd you children,
You owe me no subscription.
Then the true relationship reveals itself,
............. Here I stand, your slave,
A poor, infirm, weak, and despised old man;
Lear now stands before this inexorable energy drive seek
ing its justice and understanding. He finds it. The play
finds it. Cordelia returns and reconciliation occurs if
in death. The natural relationship exemplified by Albany
prevails in the end. When he hears of what has happened,
Albany says,
If that the heavens do not their visible spirits
Send quickly down to tame these vile offences,
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It will come.
Humanity must perforce prey on itself
Like monsters of the deep,
Edgar's role on the heath is discussed later.
Gloucester leads Lear to a farmhouse. If Lear's
raving may be obscuring the rational reason for his madness
Gloucester's remarks to Kent leave no doubt,
Thou say'st the king grows mad. I'll tell thee,
friend,
I am almost mad myself, I had a son,
Truth to tell thee,
The grief hath crazed my wits,
Gloucester errs only in the way he accepts
without question, the false information given to him by
Edmund. He remains loyal to Lear and on the mean of the
code of conduct that recognizes the deviations from the
filial mean of Generil and Regan. For his indignant
outburst against the sisters he is blinded. At the point
of choice when Gloucester takes Edmund's word about Edgar
he makes his only critical error in the play just as Lear
does with Cordelia, At this moment however he releases
from control, or sets in motion, deviant energy drives
which then gain ascendance and are not checked until
Cornwall is killed by his servant. Thus Gloucester erring
on one dimension only, the personal one, allows an energy
drive, that of Edmund to join forces with the deviant
drives of Goneril and Regan,
Edmund, Gloucester's son is one of Shakespeare's
clarifiers of the action. What Regan and Goneril are
attempting to do by subterfuge, he openly declares he 19_
is going to do. He is, in the school of Richard II, one
of the ways in which the master dramatist makes sure that
the action line is followed and understood by all of the
audience,
? , Fine word, ’ ’legitimate",
Well, my legitimate, if this letter speed,
And my invention thrive, Edmund the base
Shall top the legitimate, I grow; I prosper.
Now gods, stand up for bastards!*
Soon after we see him revelling in the multifariousness of
chaos or expediency as opposed to the, one way of the
mean, here virtue, honesty and the lawCof primogeniture,
A credulous father! and a brother noble,
Whose nature is so far from doing harms
That he suspects none; on whose foolish honesty
My practices ride easy, I see the business,
Let me, if not by birth, have lands by wit;
All with me’s meet that I can fashion fit.
IX. The art of personal survival in post-Lear
Britain. Edgar the dispossessed.
How credible is Edgar's acceptance of his
brother's duplicity?
I hear my father coming, pardon me;
In cunning I must draw my sword upon you:
Draw; seem to defend yourself; now quit you well,
Yield, come before my father, light, ho, here!
Fly, brother.
We have nothing to go on concerning the character of Edgar
since he has only a short exchange with Edmund before this
moment. This is a master touch of the dramatist. In the
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dominance of the plot, certain elements are subordinated
by necessity, The plot requires that we take Edgar’s
gullibility as given,, He is dispossessed almost as soon
as he comes upon the stage, Yet it is in Edgar and Albany
that growth occurs in the play, Being dispossessed with
the word out for his apprehension and death, Edgar too is
in some way a parallel of Lear. He feigns madness in his
effort to escape detection, With the anarchic elements
predominating at this point there is personal safety in
madness only or in the total retreat from, or rejection of
participation in, the events of the kingdom. There is
literally no one that may be safely trusted. Yet in this
removal of oneself from events of the day there is still
nature. Edgar turns to nature and a life style that is
non-threatening to anyone. Lear is forced back to nature
and there as his heart breaks in his inability to under
stand the cruelty of his daughters, he becomes the madman
that Edgar feigns. Yet for Edgar it is only a cover,
a chance to survive undetected while he conducts his
father to safety and then alerts Albany to Goneril's plan
for his, Albany's death. At the end he fights and kills
his brother. With the death of Edmund, all of the forces
of anarchy and chaos are destroyed. The plot has run its
full cycle and returns the kingdom to its sadder and
wiser stasis with the sole royal survivor, Albany, the
one, who would have been ruler with his queen Goneril had
122
Lear not tried to change the natural course of events.
While all of the forces of chaos are destroyed, Gloucester,
Edgar and Kent all survive. While the loss of Cordelia
is particularly painful, it cannot overshadow the fact
that those forces which are on the mean of virtue prevail
in the end,
X, Survival of the kingdom. Lear, his fool and
metaphysics.
As described earlier, King Lear has action
activity in all dimensions in the inner^personal through
the personal, social, political to the cosmic.
With the fool there is also activity in the metaphysical
dimension or that dimension which provides commentary
upon an action, classifying it, assigning it a meaning
by reference to the science of being. Action characters
and metaphysical characters are traditionally represented
as being poles apart, at times almost belonging to a
different universe. In King Lear there are two human
dimensions that are rare ones in art as in life. The one
is the naked confrontation of a human being with creating
nature unaided by any protective buffers of personal or
social relationships. Lear finds himself in this situation
on the heath as discussed earlier, Edgar chooses it as a
survival tactic. The second very rare human dimension in
123
art as in life is the metaphysical dimension, non-action
producing in itself but in this play interweaving with the
action line, clarifying it and predicting its outcome.
Since it is non-action producing, it cannot use rational
action language. It is not charged with emotions so it
cannot use recognized figures of speech. What can it use
but the meta-language of one quite outside of the course
of human events yet tied to the action line with the fine
thread of human ingenuity. Would we could use fools in
the 20th century to comment in the meta-language of riddle
and fable on the vagaries of some of our would-be tragic
heroesJ By lifting his speech to the fiddle and fable,
the fool is able to lay bare the real significance of
Lear's actions, to hold the mirror up to deviating and
complex characters and reveal them as clearly defined as
a child's value tale,
Now thou art an O without a figure, I am
better than thou art now; I am a fool, thou
art nothing,
How prophetic that becomes as Lear is turned loose on the
heath. The fool recognizes Kent's failing. When Kent
asks him,
Where learned you this, Fool?
he replies,
Not i' the stocks, fool,
The fool gives in meta-language a whole discourse on the
art of governance, of the need of self protection and the
124
need of character assessment in governance. All of these
qualities Lear is deficient in which makes him mortal and
a human being like ourselves, a person to be pitied because
he is so like us, in a situation to be feared because it
could be ours,
If thou were my fool, nuncle, I'd have thee
beaten for being old before thy time.
L: How's that?
F: Thou shouldst not have been old till thou
hadst been wise.
XI. The tragic affirmation and the contemporary
relevance of King Lear.
The nature of the theatre is such that even
though, as in classical tragedy, the plot is predominant,
production values are carried by characters.
The loss of Cordelia at the end of King Lear is
so poignant that it can overwhelm an audience and in most
productions overshadows very real affirmations of the play,
particularly the elimination of all of the characters of
chaos and anarchy. Yet even this is mimetic. As in life,
the travails of a single individual can so elicit feelings
of pity and fear that the role of the rational movement
of the universe is obscured at least temporarily.
If the feeling is one of a great loss only, then
the production has not fully revealed the dramatic
unifier, the affirmation of a way of life and the gover
125
nance of a country that has now at this time prevailed
in England for some thousand years, Cordelia is gone and
Lear is gone but the kingdom survives, England has behind
it a very bloody history caused by the rights of succession
yet the kingdom survives, Mary Queen of Scots is executed.
Are there not people who mourn for her? Is she that very
different from Cordelia? Aged kings die and new rulers
succeed them. Is it not more life sustaining for future
generations to know that the kingdom survives though
leading characters may pass like Exeter and Cordelia?
It is in this aspect of survival that King' Lear
is particularly relevant in the 20th century, Leading
characters gain their stature from their particular
- "» • j
relationship to the world around them* It is in King?- Lear
that one is able to see what distinguishes a tragic hero
from a common mortal, It is not kingship but the range
of dimensions through which the character operates and it
is in the political dimension that the character is able
to influence the liyes, of others;, King Lear gives three
parallel characters as emanations of an ideal tragic
figure. The first is King Lear who errs in the personal
dimension with reverberations through all the other
dimensions up to the cosmic. The second is Gloucester,
operating at the mid-rlevel of human adventuref erriug
primarily on the personal dimension, true to the mean in
everything else with some excursion into the political
126
dimension. He opens up the floodgates to chaos without
having the strength to halt the loosened deviant energy.
It is in the character of Gloucester,, a parallel of and
in a sense an emanation of Lear, that the modern civil
ized mortal becomes cognizant of social responsibility
or an existential and post^xistential awareness that in
the strata of society impelled by civilizations, one’s
actions, controllable at the source, may yet set in motion
societal forces that then become personally uncontrollable.
The third character which is a parallel of Lear is Kent,
a duke like Gloucester but without the material substance
of Gloucester such as a castle and children who become
part of the action, Kent represents more the common
mortal the "plain" man, the closer link to Shakespeare’s
groundlings who fails only in the social dimension in that
he does not learn political restraint. His is not so much
error as failure or inability to adjust to the realities
around him in such a way as to assure survival, Yet he
is one of the truest characters ever penned and a character
that the full blooded English audience could enthusiastic
ally identify with. His failure is a dramatic convention
only to set him on a collision course with the characters
of chaos who are all eventually destroyed.
The characters of chaos and anarchy, Regan,
Goneril, Cornwall and Edmund represent general deviations
from the mean of human conduct. Almost every action
127
violates the code of conduct which leads to governance
that ennobles and preserves , Not only do they violate the
persons of Lear and Gloucester but they betray each
other and actualize chaos,
Lear, Gloucester, Kent, Cordelia and Albany
on the other hand, all represent aspects of a character who
is generally on the mean of a moral code of conduct which
leads to ennoblement and preservation of the species,
Gloucester and Kent remain loyal to their friend and
ruler and to a line of authority and the political code
of conduct in Britain, Albany has governance thrust upon
him but throughout the play he acts in harmony with a code
of conduct on a personal level which follows the golden
rule uniquivocally yet is ineffectual politically against
the magnitude of the teamwork, of the conflicting energy
drive, Lear errs only once in casting out Cordelia
with reverberations in the banishment of Kent, In all
other actions he is essentially noble, Gloucester errs
only once in losing faith in his son. Kent fails only in
diplomacy oh the political level. Thus while the
opposing forces are chaotic and anarchic those characters
which tend toward the unifier deviate only in one respect.
It is in this deviation on the mean of virtue
which determines a tragic figure, The difference between
a Lear who is a tragic figure and the others, is that
Lear is in a political position to affect the lives of
128
others. In this play that position happens to entail
kingship. Yet kingship is an accompanying characteristic
not a necessary one. Such a person could be a governor,
a member of parliament or congress or a senator in
another political environment. The mid-position or that
position which Gloucester occupies reveals the need for
social responsibility in preserving a certain code of
conduct, A. flaw in the personal dimension with social
repercussions can open the flood-gates for deviations to
gain ascendance that can reverberate politically as with
Edmund, The role of Kent or in a sense the common mortal,
as well as Albany, who becomes elevated by circumstance,
is to preserve the awareness of the mean and to be able
to stand firm on the mean in spite of temporary political
disfavour as the stocks for instance, Kent or the common
mortal however has varying degrees' of diplomacy in terms
of social and political interrelatedness and political
restraint is one of the preservers of the species. Kent
shows that the common mortal can indeed interact from
the personal to the political dimensions, intra-national
and international. With Kent the failing is not on the
personal dimension in the sense that the man is true and
loyal but the deviation occurs in the area of preservation
of the species by way of co-existence or political res
traint, This involves the recognition that behavioural
adjustments are made whenever the social and political
129
dimensions interact with the personal one* Failure to make
a political adjustment can be significant or comparatively
insignificant. It is comparatively insignificant that
Kent is placed in the stocks for failure to modify his
language with Regan and Cornwall* It is very significant
when he moves to oppose Lear in the first scene. It
cannot be said that he errs as Lear errs* He simply fails
to halt the imbalance at its source even though he is
thoroughly aware of the imbalance and of the ttlode of
conduct of the universe which is eventually corrected, He
does not have the skill and. the political restraint to
move Lear at this point. His lack of political res
traint is one of the consistencies of his character* It
places him on a collision course with all the chaos
characters described above. Since this code of conduct is
on the mean he is going to prevail in the end yet the pre
vailing involves losses because the opposing forces are
not modified but destroyed,
A contemporary Kent, the model for a character
on the human mean but also with political restraint
necessary for survival rather than destruction in conflict
is Lech Walesca in Poland, Thus it is not impossible for
the common mortal to attain tragic stature. The necess
ary characteristic for this to happen or become possible,
is action by a character on the mean with a single flaw
as just described, operating in the political dimension
130
or in that dimension where an action can influence the
lives of others,
One of the most important contributions of King
Lear to the modern world is the strong moral stamina of
the common mortal, Kent is clearly a preserver of a mode
of conduct that enriches and preserves the species, This
is in sharp contrast to the common man i n or Ai 1
Seasons who engages in conduct determined by the enyironr
ment. If a change has occurred from the world of Shakes
peare to the literary 20th century f it is here. Without
this deep seated assurance that the common mortal is
aware of a inode of conduct geared to a preservation of the
species, tragedy is scarcely possible at all. Yet whether
the common mortal is still able to discern and hold fast
to the mean , only a great tragedy is able to determine,
King bear provides a classic blue print and the Polish
situation an encouraging working model in the necessary
cultural transition from hereditary governance in the
classical tragedies to a contemporary environment of
election by and consent of the governed,, or ideal democracy
131
CHAPTER V
M U RDER IN THE C A T H E D R A L
A structural analysis with particular
emphasis on the nature of the mimesis
and its contemporary relevance.
I. Introduction.
II. The raw material. The historical sequence
of events.
III. The prepared material.
IV.
The state of affairs. The importance of
the women of Canterbury and their relation
ship to Thomas. The difference between the
Greek chorus and the women of Canterbury.
V. The relationship between an organic universe
and functional orders imposed by mortals.
VI. The mystic circle. The relationship of the
priests to Thomas.
VII. The function of the temptors.
VIII. The moment of choice for Thomas.
IX. The significance of timing in tragedy. The
suffering involved in tragic conflict versus
suffering by way of a victim syndrome.
X. Fidelity of dramatic correspondence versus
hypocricy or a dramatized unthinking accep
tance of cosmic disharmony.
XI . Deference to fact and what the mystic
and the martyr ignore in the organic
universe,
132
I, Introduction
A play like Murder in the Cathedral brings the
whole idea of tragedy into focus to where clear distinction
can be drawn between tracing a course of events that
features the multifariousness of human beings in action
versus the singlemindedness of mysticism, between present
ing a natural organic universe and a universe that is
restricted by dogma or restricted to a predetermined and
codified code of conduct and between dramatic poetry and
poetic drama i ,
11 * The raw material, The historical sequence
of events -
Murder in the Cathedral is narratively mimetic
Lri; the sense that the segment taken from the play belongs
to a whole historical action that occurred in 12th
century England, Thomas a Beckett, previously a very good
friend of King Henry II, had been his Chancellor and then
was made the Archbishop of Canterbury, Even at this time
there was a problem of divided allegiances where bishops
and arch-bishops gave their spiritual leadership to Rome,
It was not so much the fact that spiritual allegiance
v^ent outside the country as that the pope being human,
found himself with political ties that were capable of
creating international confusion whenever human beings
133
were tempted into using political power gained by way of
affiliation with Rome, for their own ends, Henry II who
gained his crown through his mother Matilde, had had to
win back his hereditary title from his uncle Stephen who
was not in the direct line of succession but who had been
confirmed by the Pope, Henry II then was understandibly
sensitive to the boundaries which existed between lay and
ecclesiastical jurisdictions. Papal interference had in
a sense taken the rightful crown of England away from his
mother and indeed his own accession would have been more
difficult had Stephen's own son lived, Shakespeare's
King-John (Stephen) also deals with this period of
British history. The reason why Thomas fled to France was
because in 1164 he had first agreed to constitutions
drawn up by Henry which would control appeals to Rome and
conserve royal rights in episcopal and monastic elections
and then gone back on his word when the pope refused to
approve the constitutions. What brought him back to
England was the fact that Henry caused the Archbishop of
York instead of the Archbishop of Canterbury to crown the
heir-apparent. The hierarchial predominance of Canter
bury was thus put in jeopardy and Thomas had to return,
not to make peace with Henry but to allow this imbalance
to right itself in England, It could happen only in his
death. The whole action is subject matter for a tragedy
with the energy drive of Henry prevailing in the end by
134
way of ahereditary crown and the rule of primogeniture
and Thomas going down because he is unable to recognize
before his position hardensr that spiritual harmony is not
necessarily incompatible with temporal governance.
This is the underlying raw material from which
the prepared material of Murder in the Cathedral is molded
or constructed. The crisis in the raw material comes in
1169 when Henry I has his son crowned heir-apparent by the
Archbishop of York. It is at this point that Thomas
recognizes that Henry's energy drive is indeed stronger,
that even though he might yield to Canterbury in a papal
edict, nevertheless the governance of the kingdom moves
inexorably forward and would drop Canterbury from the
supreme head of the church in England if it stood in the
way of the rule of primogeniture. At this moment Thomas
decides to return to England. Canterbury has to remain
the head of the church in England, The man himself recog
nizes that the office is to be preserved, Thomas returns
to England after this climax, this recognition of the
strength of the higher energy drive. He returns in
submission to this drive,
III, The prepared material,
Murder in the Cathedral begins when Thomas
arrives back in England in 1170, He cannot resign his
135
officet He has to be killed so that a new Archbishop of
Canterbury can be appointed that will carry out the duties
of the office in a spirit compatible with that of King
Henry IT, In terms of. depicting human beings in action
the climax is already past when Thomas returns to England,
He submits to Henry's energy drive by returning. The
dominant energy drive accepted by the character in the
play is that of the unseen king as he is harnessed to the
laws of heredity and primogeniture with a necessary char
acteristic being the see of Canterbury,, the head of the
church in England, Thomas is little more than victim in
the path of this energy drive. The nobility in Thomas
exerts itself in the manner in which he submits to the
higher energy drive in the Christian tradition. The main
action is Henry's action. For Thomas, it is merely
reaction in the organic sense but yet is a form of action
in the mystical sense and it is the mystical that sets the
tone of the play.
IV, The state of affairs. The importance^of the
women of Canterbury and their relationship
to Thomas. The difference between the Greek
chorus and the women' of Canterbury ^
The immediate state of affairs in a temporal
sense is established by the women of Canterbury, They
reveal primarily an outsidedness in the position of the
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average or common person f to the main course of events in
the country,
King rules or barons rule?
We have suffered various oppression,
But mostly we are left to our own devices ,,,
For us, the poor, there is no action,
But only to wait and to witness.
When', the priests enter, the condition of the common mortal
is laid on the problems of governance,
King rules or barons rule}
The strong man strongly and the weak man by caprice.
They have but one law, to seize the power and keep it.
Generally everyone is simply waiting for Thomas to return
and wondering what will happen when he does.
In the Greek plays the choruses are extensions of
the main characters and ebb and flow with the movement of
the action. First they argue on one side then they argue
on the other. They feel sorry for themselves and they
wonder what will become of theip,their city or their country
Always they follow the action. The women of Canterbury
begin in the temporal dimension that includes governance.
They take up the cry that irrespective of who rules, all
they try to do or :gype-^fei'e-ta to, :is to .try -to survive,
And we are content if we are left alone.
We try to keep our households in order,
At the same time they are mystical. They are closely tied
to the seasons yet they make the assumption that the har
mony of the universe is dislodged at the point of mortal
governance,
Destiny waits in the hand of God^ shaping the still
unshapen;
I have seen these things in a shaft of sunlight,
Destiny waits in the hand of God, not in the hands
of statesmen.
For the Greeks , the common mortal was still actively in-*-
volved in and part of the affairs of their world, but the
women of Canterbury seem to be on the outer fringe of the
mystic circle that has Thomas at its center,
Archbishop, secure and assured of your fate,
unaffrayed among the shades, do you realise
what you ask, do you realise what it means
To the small folk who live among small things ,,,
First they want Thomas to go back to France and not draw
them into the doom that they f eel is coming. Yet is their
existence bound to that of Thomas and after he is tempted
they say,
,,,,,,,..Save yourself that we may be saved;
Destroy yourself and we are destroyed,
When Thomas delivers his message about martyrdom the
chorus is moving closer to him or his position,
The peace of this world is always uncertain, unless
men keep the peace of God,
And war among men defiles this world, but death in
the Lord renews it.
And the world must be cleaned in the winter ,, , ,
The final song of the chorus is a mystical affirmation of
the presence of God followed by something of a definition
of the common mortal which has taken hold of the 20th
century,
we acknowledge ourselves as type of the common
man,
Of the mean and women who shut the door and sit by the
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fixe »,.
Who fear the injustice of men less than the justice
of God ....
Blessed Thomas, pray for us.
The chorus members move from the outer fringe to the still
center end then, back to themselves as common mortals
againf in need of whatever help and guidance they can get
to overcome their fear of life, This conception of the
common human being is taken up again in A Man for All
Seasons. It is a view of the average mortal that is un
flattering and one might indeed have some cause to wonder
at how accurate it is scientifically. As it standsf it
does little to inspire the average human being to seek
after or attempt to become something better or more ideal
than the actualIn other words f it does not stimulate a
movement to enrich and ennoble which is one of the func
tions of tragedy b ut rather it* tends to stereotype and
help perpetuate a victim syndrome which carries on through
the 2 Oth century.
V. The relationship between an organic universe
and functional orders imposed by mortals.
In an overall conception of an organic universe,
a conception for instance that the aborigines have in
Australiaf a human being is simply part of a whole, A
human being has a place or a space and in living or in
death is in harmony with the great Being that gives the
first breath and takes the last one, In this sense, living
and dying are natural occurrences, The unifier or the God,
always, present, is always being paid attention to. There
are. no great deviations possible that are possible when
human beings , because of their need to structure their own
governancef can give primary allegiance to matters other
than living in harmony with the only activity or movement
common to all mortals , that of the giver of the first
breath and the receiver of the last one , or the organic
or moving God,
What is civilization if not an order imposed upon
their primitive instincts, to enable mortals to live in
harmony with each other as their numbers become greater
than can be encompassed by a single tribe. As tribe meets
tribe or culture meets culture, another stratum is added
and so on until in the 20th century we need international
treaties to ensure preservation of those species living in
the oceans that are vulnerable to the marauding instincts
of mortals,
Somewhere between Shakespeare and T,S,Eliot
there occurs a dislodging of mortal’s primary awareness of
a moving God, so all-encompassing for the aborigines,
so central to Shakespeare, Those strata of human con
ventions which, ideally would reflect harmony become for
T*.S♦ Eliot, mortal contradictions of the cosmic order.
This is described in detail in the sections dealing with
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the women of Canterbury and the priests,
The strata of human conventions however is the
domain of tragedy. The raw material : .'from which tragedy
moulds itself is that area of the universe that involves
human beings in action or human beings as they operate or
function through all their potential dimensions from the
inner personal( through the personal, the social, the
political both intra^-national and international as the
world exists today. What is also vital however is that
the code of conduct of characters retain a fidelity of
correspondence through these various strata or dimensions
in an organic universe. The area of direct communion
with the life force is the domain of the mystic and the
lyric poet,
VI, The mystic circle. The relationship
of "the priests to Thomas,
There are radiations from Thomas and what he
represents, These radiations move by way of the priests
through the women of Canterbury and thense to his flock
or the people who are waiting for him, strewing flowers
in his path and taking hairs from his horse’s tail as
relics of this event. Radiations however are not temporal
and linear but outward circular movements from the still
point of the center. In the world of the mystic the
141
Diety is everything and the endeavours of mortals are of
little consequence. Human responsibility is almost ir
relevant. Thomas says,
The fool, fixed in his folly, may think
He can turn the wheel on which he turns.
So when Thomas is returning there is only commentary on
the state of affairs and speculation about hefew it might
have been different. This speculation however is passive
and not active. It is not active in the sense that there
is an air of resignation about all the reporting. These
particular humans, these priests, are not able to change
anything and do not even contemplate the possibility that
they might have in themselves, any chance of actually
doing anything. The first priest does however make the
observation that the seven year deadlock occurs because
of the almost equal strength of the two opposing energy
drives of Henry and Thomas,
Had the King been greater, or had he been weaker
Things had perhaps been different for Thomas.
Of the three priests, the first has some political aware
ness, some understanding of the cross currents between
spiritual and temporal allegiances. Speaking of Thomas
he says,
Loathing power given by temporal devolution
Wishing subjection to God alone.
The second priest foregoes the temporal entirely and
considers only the overlay of a spiritual stronghold,
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Our lord is at one with the Pope, and also
the King of France.
We can lean on a rock, we can feel a firm foothold.
This is clearly a non-organic overlay on the rational mind
and is an example of dogma in operation. The priest leans
on his rock and attains his own self imposed peace. Yet
the price is a contradiction of political terms, This
is Canterbury and how can any oneness with the King of
France give a person security in England?
The third priest moves to mysticism entirely,
For ill or good, let the wheel turn
For who knows the end of good or evil?
When Thomas does arrive he has moved out of the
realm of acceptance of responsibility for his actions into
this mystical universe where,
The pattern may subsist, for the pattern is the action
And the suffering, that the wheel may turn and still
Be forever still.
He is not unaware of the political situation however or of
his own danger. From the outer circle of mysticism he
moves to his own temporal position,
For a little time the hungry hawk
Will only soar and hover, circling lower,
Waiting excuse, pretence, opportunity.
It is still a mystical position however and he goes on,
End will be simple, sudden, God-given ....
All things prepare t he event. Watch,
The position is prepared for someone other than
a human being for at this moment Thomas enters the world
of his inner self. The action here is the movement of
143
the mind not as it acts, but as it contemplates the pos^
sibilities of various potential actions. Contemplation or
the movement of the mind can be considered a form of
action. Tragic action however involves an inexorable
drive which compels a choice. The timing is from without,
the force is from without and the strength of the external
force is going to prevail. Contemplation does not occur
in a vacuum and that which prevails is not death, for
death is an individual phenomenon but also is that which
in its movement ensures organic renewal and growth,
Thomas contemplates upon how he will choose to die. The
function of tragedy is to approximate this organic movement
which is directive towards how to live,
1 * The function of the temptors.
All the characters make the assumption that
governance is not in harmony with the will of God or
spiritual peace, that to engage in governance runs counter
to engaging in union with God, that the Chancellorship
and the Archbishopric are at odds with each other by way
of a given not by way of human imperfection. If these
positions are accepted or are assumed to be by definition
adversary positions, then mortals have the choice of
moving from one to the other or removing themselves
utterly from those dimensions and seeking the God directly,
_________________________________________________________________144
, The first temptor suggests an acquiescence with
the King’s wishes meaning perhaps to refrain from the
wholesale excommunications that Thomas had previously
engaged in or a movement by Thomas to the King’s
position,
The easy man lives to eat the best dinners,
Take a friend’s advice. Leave well alone
Or your goose may be cooked and eaten to the bone.
However when Thomas assures him that he has come twenty
years too late to renew the friendship, he exits without
further ado,
The second temptor suggests that the Chancel
lorship should be retained. This position stays in the
temporal dimension of statesmanship and of course offers
a temporal reward,
Think, my lord
Power obtained grows to glory,
Life lasting, a permanent possession,
A tempted tomb, monument of marble.
The second temptor does however offer a potential in the
Chancellorship which approaches an ideal of harmony in
the correspondences from God through the King and
Chancellorship to the poeple. He does urge however that
in order to achieve benefits for the people, the king
be allowed to make the decisions,
To set down the great protect the poor,
Beneath the throne of God can man do more?
Disarm the ruffian, strengthen the laws,
Rule for the good of the better cause...,
................. Real power
Is purchased at the price of a certain submission.
145
This is the pattern that does come to English governance
after the break with Rome and suggests diplomacy both in
the temporal dimension and the spiritual dimension. At
one time this position might have tempted Thomas but that
was before the Pope had given him far reaching powers of
excommunication and Thomas had used them and in this sense
he now feels himself higher than the king.
What was once exaltation
Would now be only ^tean descent,
Thomas has put his own interpretation on the meaning of
what might be done,
Temporal powers, to build a good world,
To keep order, as the world knows order.
Those who put their faith in worldly order
Not controlled by the order of God
The language here is as self contradictory as that of the
second priest, "To build a good world, to keep order" has
a clear meaning. It is immediately diluted with the
qualification "as the world knows order" and negated
with "not controlled by the order of God1 .!’- In total it is
a self contradictory statement and revealing of the
"confident ignorance" that Thomas lays on others.
The third temptor addresses himself to the pride
of birth as opposed to foreign allegiances and urges
Thomas to take sides with the barons in their attempt to
curb the authority of the King. He calls it "a happy
coalition of intelligent interests.^' Not only has Thomas
damaged his own chances of reconciliation with the barons
146
but he also recognizes in this position the clear potential
for civil war,
If the Archbishop cannot trust the Throne
He has a good cause to trust none but God alone,
and he is ready for the fourth and last temptor who places
before Thomas the vision of martyrdom,
„.When king is dead, there ^s another king , , ,
Saint and Martyr rule from the tomb
Think, Thomas think of enemies dismayed,
Creeping in penance, frightened in a shade;
Think of pilgrim, standing in line ».,
From generation to generation
Bending the knee in suplication,
The temptors of course are nothing more than Thomas's
own thoughts, This is indeed what Thomas really wants
but is there not some sense of damnation in this active
seeking after martyrdom?
Is.there no way, in ray soul's sickness
Does not lead to damnation in pride? ,,,,
......,... Can I neither act nor suffer
Without perdition?
In the chorus of the four temptors there is one of T.S.
Eliot's classical negations of the worth of all things and
of all human endeavour. From this precipice of the soul
only martyring presents some future hope, tenuous though
it may be and Thomas tries to adjust his position so that
he might be considered worthy of what is to befall him and
be judged not by what he is but by what he represents,
or his office,
Servant of God has chance of greater sin
And sorrow, than the man who serves a king.
For those who serve the greater cause may make
147
the cause serve them,
Still doing right; and striving with political mean
May make that cause political, not by what they do
But what they are*
There is still the negation of the value of all things
political, a negation that persists deep and long into
the 20th century,
VIII. The moment of choice for Thomas.
Thomas gives his address on Christmas morning
1179 and he endeavours to convince himself and his con
gregation that "Saints are not made by accident" and "a
martyrdom is never the design of man; for the true martyr
is he who has become the instrument of God, who has lost
his will in the will of God, not lost it but found it, for
he has found freedom in submission to God'
If there is a climax to Murder in the Cathedral
it is here for here Thomas rejects the other alternatives
and chooses "the way of submission to God" which is also
the way of the continuing inevitability of the sequence of
events in which Henry’s drive prevails and the price paid
for its prevailing is the life of the mortal,a one-time
Archbishop of Canterbury.
Thomas waits to be killed. His philosophy of
life is inconsistent if not internally contradictory to
the end. He says to the priests,
148
You argue by results r as this world does,
To settle if an act be good or bad.
You defer to the fact. For every life and every act
Consequence of good and evil can be shown.
And as in time results of many deeds are blended
So good and evil in the end become confounded.
Yet has Thomas projected his own teleological God, He
becomes a martyr as he surmised and desired with the last
line of the play beingr
Blessed Thomas, pray for us.
IX, The significance of timing in tragedy. The
suffering involved in tragic conflict ver
sus suffering by way of a victim syndrome.
The play itself traces the inner personal or
the psychological dimension almost exclusively but it
occurs after the climactic action which forces Thomas to
realize that he has to return. In"Waiting-for Godot two
human beings try to decide how they are going to go on
living after the world passes them by. In Murder in the
Cathedral Thomas tries to decide how he will die after a
sequence of events has rendered him politically expend
able, This is not the subject matter for a tragedy in the
classical sense because the movement in the play is un-
dramatizable in terms of characters in action or char
acters operating in the various dimensions as described
earlier. The main character in Murder in the Cathedral
is not in action. Conflict does occur but it is not
. - . • ' 149
conflict in the social and political dimensions which are
the main haunts of tragedy. It is conflict in the inner-
personal dimension which, is the domain' of the lyric poet
and the mystic.
The area of mortal concern explored in Murder
in the Cathedral is that area where a human being who has
concerned himself with other matters in his life, for
Thomas, affairs of state and international intrigue, now
recognizes that death is near and peace has to be made.
It is the area also explored by Everyman and Pilgrim * s
Progress, Rather than a tragedy, it is a dramatized
pursuance of possible futile alternatives before accep
tance of a known inevitability, death, TO be futile does
not negate suffering, in fact it could enhance it. The
significant thing in terms of a contrast with tragedy is
that the protagonist is a victim. The hero is a victim.
The hero is to be destroyed. This is what occurs in the
Christian tradition of martyring beginning with the death
of Christ, While the phenomenon of martyrdom continues to
be glorified, it could be the single most damaging effect
of the Christian religion upon this civilization for the
following reason. In an organic universe there is always
the struggle to survive and to enrich and improve or
ennoble the species, Whichever view one chooses to accept
concerning the origin of a human being, all agree that the
human being is the finest creation of the entire universe
150
and the finest of the fine might in some way be expected
to be able to reveal a dominant energy drive, an energy
drive that is capable of overcoming the odds and not
being destroyed by them, knowing that they are of lesser
caliber.
It is in this area that the 20th century
Murder in the Cathedral finds itself, The unifier of the
play's action of course is not to kill. The problem for
the 20th century is how to reveal the unifier in a more
satisfactory way than through the death of the nobler
character. The Christian pattern sets one example, the
tragic pattern sets another. They are not necessarily
conflicting patterns but they have not been reconciled in
dramatic theory, Shakespeare of course reconciles them in
practice but today’s world consists of international and
cosmic dimensions that were scarcely dreamed of in
Renaissance philosophy. Another play that is in this area
and works in the Christian pattern is A Man for All Seasons
Two other plays that reject a Christian pattern but are
unable to find the organic unifier are Incident at Vichy
and The Condemned of Altona,
X . Fidelity of dramatic correspondence versus
hypocricy or a dramatized unthinking
acceptance of cosmic disharmony.
One of the assumptions of tragedy and indeed
of temporal living is that human beings reveal their
character by way of action, King Lear for instance, has
a very active inner personal life and he reveals it by
way of such a choice in any dimension as can have faithful
correspondence through all other dimensions to the cosmos.
This is an effective technique because Shakespeare main
tains strict fidelity to his established correspondences
as well as a language fidelity to each dimension as
discussed in the relevant chapters. T, S. Eliot however
is writing in the 20th century where the social and
political dimensions are for the most part, dislodged from
their cosmic interrelatedness, to the point where the
dislodgement is accepted as the norm.
Acceptance of this dislodging is incorporated
into the prepared material of Murder in the Cathedral. It
is accepted by the dramatist and not questioned by him.
Shakespeare questions it because it is at variance with
his organic view of the world as exemplified in Hamlet
and King Lear. Evidence of the acceptance of dislodgement
comes from the women of Canterbury, the priests and
Thomas himself. From the women,
Destiny waits in the hand of God, not in the
hands of statesmen,
from the priest,
I see nothing quite conclusive in the art of
temporal government,
But violence, duplicity and frequent malversation,
152
and from Thomas himself f
From generation to generation
The same things happen again and again
Men learn little from their experience ?
XI, Deference to fact and what the mystic and
the martyr ignore in the organic universe.
The historical Thomas becomes a martyr. This
fact is too significant for the dramatist to ignore or to
change. Fact then in this instance becomes a dictator.
For the tragic dramatist however the dictator is an
organic whole and fact is incidental or an accompanying
characteristic only,
Thomas becomes a Christian martyr. The unifier
not to kill is common to Christianity and to the science
of being. In Christianity the martyrdom results from the
death in office. In the science of being the death of a
human being is placed in a broader perspective that pays
attention to the progression of events and the assessment
of the responsibility of a mortal to the ennoblement of the
race whose preservation depends upon its strength in
governance. Governance is a part of the science of being.
Thomas in a mystical sense removes himself from the
dimension of governance of mortals.
In as much as each work of art alters all of the
other art that comes before it, as T.S, Eliot himself
153
says then Murder in the Cathedral sets an example of the
mystic not so much escaping from the travails and demands
of governance as choosing to ignore them in the interest
of self preservation. In all civilizations however as in
the universe, no single part is displaced without loss.
While mystics and visionaries continue to ignore the
natural phenomenon of governance, the civilization suffers
from this loss of clarity and teleology which is obtain
able from no other source. Murder in the Cathedral does
not point a way in this respect but allows Thomas his
individual glory only.
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CHAPTER VI
A M A N F O R A L L S E A S O N S
A structural analysis with particular
emphasis on the nature of the mimesis
and its contemporary relevance.
I, The raw material. The overall sequence
of events.
II. The story of the play.
III. The state of affairs. The double affir
mation. The nature and paths of the
energy drives.
IV. - The beginning and the ending. The tragic
circle. The role of human assumptions con
cerning conduct.
V. The energy drive of More. How it is affected
by human assumptions concerning conduct.
VI. The energy drive of Henry VIII with the
political strength of a hereditary crown
and the law of primogeniture.
VII. The role of the common man. The contrast
between the common man and the Duke of
Kent in King Lear.
VIII. The role of the woman. Her assigned
importance versus her organic potential.
IX. The individual conscience of the 20th
century as a guide to action. The role
of philosophy in a self-conscious age.
X. The philosophy of martyrdom contrasted
with the philosophy of tragedy.
XI. The natural paradigm for classical tragedy.
XII. A structural alternative for A Man for All
Seasons to give it the eternally relevant
impact of a classical tragedy.
155
I, The raw material. The overall'sequence of
events.
The period of British history that provides the
base for A Man for All Seasons is the reign of Henry VIII.
The British law of succession had always given the crown
to the first born son in a royal family and then to the
heirs, Henry I had a daughter as his sole heir and the
line of succession went through her to her son Henry II
but that was in the 12th century and Henry VIII was very
reluctant to see the succession go through his daughter
Mary particularly when Charles V of Spain broke off his
engagement with her and Henry could not find a husband
suitably strong enough. In addition, Henry's older sister
Margaret had married James IV of Scotland and it looked
as though the succession might go there if Mary were
childless. To be sure of the line of succession and to
avert a potential civil war, Henry had to have a son.
These are the facts of the overall action that are not
dealt with in the play yet are needed to explain the ur
gency of Henry's desire which is a very powerful energy
drive in the play. Politically, Henry had to eliminate
any vestige of internal opposition because if he did not,
his international enemies could use what excuse they could
find to attempt to gain power in England. Spain did in
fact attempt this in 1588 during the reign of Henry's
protestant daughter Elizabeth. So Henry's action is
156
politically justified and successful. It is not humanly
justified because he kills and this deviation by Henry is
part of the strength for More in his stand for justice.
The prepared material of the play does not expose and
capitalize upon these wider dimensions but restricts it
self primarily to circumscribed actions of More within the
confines of his immediate environment. This places the
play in the tradition of Murder in the Cathedral rather
than the Shakespearean tragedies even though it is very
close to the Shakespearean tradition as is described later.
II, The story of the play.
In the action of the prepared material, Sir
Thomas More, recognized throughout England and Europe as
personally incorruptible, is unable to acquiesce in King
Henry's resolution to divorce his Spanish wife Catherine
because she has provided him with no male heir. More
resigns his position as Chancellor and is finally be
headed.
111• The state of affairs, Thev double affirmation.
The nature and paths of the energy drives,
The state of affairs in the beginning sees an
157
apparently harmonious kingdomr with the only imbalance
being the king's unwillingness to recognize a possible
line of succession through his daughter Mary,
The king as protagonist moves toward divorce and
all the international ramifications involved in it but he
succeeds in the end, The oath of Supremacy is adminis-
tered and oppostion within England is eliminated.
More as protagonist is part of the beginning
harmony but the harmony most vital to More is that between
himself and his Roman Catholic God, That harmony is not
dislodged even though, since it is imposed and not organic,
is fixed and certain in a changing world, it is not able
to offer the organic conflict necessary for a classical
tragedy. More's values are also upheld in' the'.end.
The predominant affirmation intended in this
play stems from Sir Thomas More and his Christian belief in
the line of grace from God, through the Pope to the bishops
and people, More believes in this line of grace at the
beginning of the play and also at the end. The man
adheres to his principles and beliefs. This adherance
prevails in the end and the price paid for its prevailing
is More's life and the suffering inflicted on his family.
This is the energy drive as it is harnessed to a super
imposed morality which is a fixed morality and unchanging
in an organic sense, The affirmation stemming from More's
position is tempered however, by the felt need for a
158
human being of More's tenacity to be more in tune with the
organic unifier that is not locked into a code of conduct
irrevocably defined in an earlier age and unable to adjust
and move as the universe adjusts and moves in its drive
toward survival of the whole,
The energy drive of the king is double edged.
In the intended affirmation it functions as a foil to More
and is in this sense a lesser energy drive because More's
values are affirmed in the end. It is the dominant and the
prevailing energy drive however as it functions historically
Historically it moves inexorably toward preservation of a
selective line of succession in England. As in Hamlet
this play breaks out of its incorporated boundaries in the
sense that a total action begins with Henry's marriage to
Catherine and the inbalance in the line of succession does
not right itself until Henry's two daughters have ruled
England and died childless. The crown then passes from
the Tudors to the Stuarts. In the play the king preserves
the selective line of succession. Preservation of the line
of succession involves overcoming political energy drives
from Spain which is the birthplace of Catherine the
discarded queen and from the Pope in whose power rests
the ability to annul or divorce. More, as Hamlet, is
caught in the cross fire not because he errs although he
does err, but because he and his contemporaries subscribe
to the human assumption of right versus wrong with
159
nothing in between, no third parth of conduct, In this
sense the preservation of the line of succession prevails.
More is eliminated. His failure to speak does not forge
a middle path but is presumed to be denial and not assent
as he had hoped. In the organic sense More does err or
does deviate from the mean in his refusal to actively seek
a way in which the line of succession might be preserved
without the extreme measures finally devised by Henry VIII.
This is dealt with only slightly in the play yet it is an
important historical energy drive, Characters such as Rich
and Cromwell are lesser drives that coalesce into a power
ful one not because of their inherent worth but because
they gravitate toward power.
Accompanying characteristics or characters who
are not movers of the action but yet fill out the play's
sequence of events, are More's wife Alice and his daughter,
Margaret, Norfolk and Rich, Cromwell is discussed as he
executes the king's intentions or so-called intentions.
King Henry himself does not appear after Act I, There
after his energy drive is reported or moved forward by
others. No doubt the dramatist does this deliberately yet
if the art form is mimetic, as indeed this play is, then
omission within the play cannot negate any consequences
of actions in the original material and implicitly in
the prepared material, International energy drives which
oppose the succession drive, are represented by Chapuys
160
whose path on the surface is. identical with that of More 5
IV, The beginning and the ending; The tragic circle.
The role of human-assumptions' concerning conduct.
The beginning of the play plants all the seeds
of future actions. It is immediately established that Sir
Thomas More knows that Rich has his price , that More
despises him for it and that Rich is also acquainted with
Thomas Cromwell, At the end, it is Rich in the pay of
Cromwell who betrays him to his execution,
The dimensions through which the action ranges
are established. The home environment for More is an
accompanying characteristic, in the sense that it is not
a mover of an action, While it is clear from the outset
that More does indeed love his wife and child, his relig-
ious commitment is of greater significance to him. He is
worshipped by them in the beginning as they hastily help
him to dress for the king and he is worshipped by them
at the end as he leaves them bereft of all comfort and
without the faith that sustains him and renders him
imperious to their real needs,
Conditions in England and overseas are estab^
lished in the first scene, Chapuys the Spanish ambas
sador roust be concerned about the alliance between Spain
and England partially occasioned by the marriage of
161
Catherine of Aragon to King Henry VIII, The Spanish
ambassador as well as Cromwell both are spying on More
and give bribes for information. When the Spanish
ambassador endeavors;7 ; to determine how the government is
functioning with his question , "Ah, but then why these
Justices, Chancellors, Admirals?", Cromwell replies, "Oh,
they are the constitution. Our ancient English constit
ution, I merely do things.” This establishes that it is
not the place or the time to pin one's life on the in
violability of the law and that the inevitable consequence
of doing that must result in betrayal if an opposing energy
drive is strong enough. Yet right up to the end More says,
"The law is a causeway upon which, so long as he keeps to
it, a citizen may walk safely'.'.’ When Rich lies and every
one knows he is lying, his single accusation is taken as
proof of guilt. The codified law does not protect More
in his hour of need:,;,. In an organic sense, if this law
gives under him, what guarantee does he have that the other
spiritual law is not flawed also? Alice- in her sim
plicity and directness comes as close as a human being
can to question this adherance to a code of conduct that
provides peace only as a human being conforms to a pre-set
ideal, Alice, close to nature, who loves to ride and
hunt and cook says, "And if you go - well, God knows why
I suppose - though as God's my witness God’s kept deadly
quiet about it..”
162
In the first act, three paths are open to the
characters, not two as they all assume. More has his con
formity to a Roman Catholic ideal of faithful correspond
dence from God, through the Pope to the bishops and people,
Clouds are symbolic in this religion. Visions appear in
clouds and paintings depict religious characters in clouds.
Yet in Act I here is a falcon stooping from the cloud, a
predator and it is Aristotle who according to Rich, has
something to say about mists and clouds, "The opinion of
Aristotle is that mists are an exhalation of the earth
whereas clouds -• it is Norfolk who dismisses a possible
third path when he says, "I've never found much use in
Aristotle myself, not practically; The second path of
course is that of Machiavelli, The narrow Norfolk says
of Machiavelli, "Oh, the Italian. Nasty book, from what
I hear,’” to which Margaret replies, "Very practical, Your
Grace:". Without Aristotle, there is the Roman Catholic
way and Cromwell's Machiavellian way. It is now immed
iately disclosed that these two paths may not be as in
compatible in human application as More supposes them to
be when Rich informs the company that Cromwell has just
become Cardinal Wolsey's secretary and More is summoned by
the Cardinal on the king's business. The human assumptions
of rightness versus wrongness or who is not friend is
enemy pervades this play and provide two energy drives
which conflict and yet become intertwined while the organic
163
unifier or the natural way which Aristotle could provide,
is discarded several times during the play, In the
beginning of the play, Moref Suffolk, Rich and Cromwell
by implication are maintaining an harmonious relationship
while Machiavellir: and Roman Catholicism are becoming
somewhat confused, In the final scene it is Rich who
betrays More, Cromwell who reads the charge and Norfolk
who pronounces sentence, The circle closes where it be
gins with the inevitability of betrayal, inherent in
the first scene, running its full course to the end,
V • The energy drive of More. How it is affected
by human assumptions concerning conduct.
The moral stamina of Sir Thomas More provides the
energy drive which it is the intention of the play to
affirm. More however is not the mover of the action as,
for instance, Antigone is, Henry VIII acts, More reacts.
The rest of the country acquiesces, More!s reaction sets
him apart from the crowd, which Henry cannot have because
he needs the backing of the whole country in the radical
step that he finally decides to take, Henry needs backing
not just because he wants unanimity but also because,
working within the human assumption that who is not friend
is enemy, anyone who opposes him within England is
assumed to be friend to his international enemies, More
164
knows that his opposition to the king is viewed with favor
by the King of Spain although not for the same reason.
Because of the depth of his own conviction however, he
discounts this fact while it contributes to the energy
drive that takes his life. The first clash of the two
main energy drives comes when More is summoned to visit
Cardinal Wolsey and he is asked directly, "The king wants
a son; what are you going to do about it?" More evades
the intent, "I'm very sure the king needs no advice from
me...." Wolsey is more blunt, "D'you think two Tudors
is sufficient?" There are three roads that may be taken
not two as the characters suppose. Wolsey says, "My
efforts to secure a divorce," while More replies, "All
we have to do is approach His Holiness and ask him," but
it is Henry himself who explains the real intertwining
of the spiritual and the political worlds, "Am I to burn
in Hell because the Bishop of Rome with the King of Spain's
knife to his throat, mouths me Deuteronomy?" The Pope will
not yield on this and everyone knows it, including More.
Why does he evade the issue? To Henry he says, "I see so
clearly that I can not come with your Grace that my
endeavour is not to think of it at all," to which Henry
replies, "Then you have not thought enough." Henry is
correct. There is another way and history proves it.
Henry's daughter by Catherine does indeed become queen of
England as does her step-sister Elizabeth. Why does
165
Sir Thomas More not go back to the family Henry already
has? Why should Henry's version of primogeniture exclude
the woman? History does not. Why is Sir Thomas More so
intent on opposing Henry that he cannot offer a natural
solution, the solution that history itself affords. More
is the natural person to do it because he has a daughter
himself; he loves her and cherishes her and has educated
her. Here the overlay by dogma of a natural condition is
very apparent. While in Roman Catholicism the woman is
honored as giving birth to the Christ child, she has no
part in the holy trinity or governance of mortals. In
nature however no deficiency exists sufficient to exclude
her from equal participation in governance other than the
dogmatic acceptance of this culturally imposed overlay.
More, in failing to see in his own daughter, a natural
solution to the king's dilemma, fails not only himself,
for had the king listened it would have saved him his
life but he fails also his religion, his daughter, his wife,
all the things in fact that are dear to him.
In the historical affirmation, when the king
says "you have not thought enough,” he marks the moment of
greatest conflict or the crisis, or the point at which the
greatest energy drive establishes itself as such and pro
ceeds along its inexorable drive to the end, drawing all
the lesser drives to it.
In the affirmation of martyrdom, the crisis comes
166
When JStore takes off his chain , symbolically breaking with
the line of supremacy posited by Henry, choosing and
asserting the spiritual supremacy of the Pope instead. He
adheres to this position to the end and the price paid for
this adherence is his life,
VI. The energy drive of Henry VIII with the
political strength of a > hereditary
crown and the law of primogeniture.
As far as A Man for All Seasons is concerned, we
have to accept the fact that Henry's drive is strong enough
politically to sweep everything before it and there are
strong concerns voiced in the play about the ultimate out
come of his actions reaching beyond the immediate action
in the play. When Wolsey summons More in the first act
he reminds More that perhaps indeed he has already accepted
responsibilities that preclude him from acting for himself
alone, He says, "Oh, your conscience is your own affair;
but you're a statesman! Do you remember the Yorkist
Wars,,,,there is much in the Church that needs reformation"
It is clear even here that a break with Rome is coming.
More can go with England, he can go with Rome or he can
proceed alone, Wolsey goes further to explain the king's
power when he mentions the possibility of Thomas Cromwell
assuming his office. More does become chancellor but
Thomas Cromwell moves into the king's service, Henry's
______ lb /
strength is growing and it is single minded. More mentions
to his daughter Margaret, "What we want is a really sub^-
stantial attack on the church." Such an attack would have
allowed him to side with the king yet he is not the states
man himself to do it, He stands still while Cromwell
Busies himself about carrying out Henry’s so-called
wishes and the international connections represented by
Chapuys are also hardening their position.
Henry himself makes his position very clear to
More, "I have no son, It is my bounden duty to put away
the Queen, and all the Popes back to St. Peter shall not
come between me and my duty!" Yet it is not just a
question of the religion. It is a question of the inter
national struggle for power and the Pope at this par
ticular time is influenced by the King of Spain, Cather
ine’s relative, Henry warns More, "Mind they do not take
you in, Thomas*" Not only must Henry preserve the line of
succession in England but also he must be sure that any
opposition within England is not fanned by his enemies
abroad. He can judge people by their actions only and
he tells More, "They that say she is my wife are not only
liars ,,, bmt traitors I Mind it, Thomas,"
King Henry does not appear in the play after
this. His presence is evident after Act I but his resolve
is carried out by others. He himself is very fond of
More but if he does not intend to allow all of the Popes
168
back to St, Peter tq stop him, neither is he going to al^
low anyone like Sir Thomas More to stop him. With Cromwell
at his elbow there is no way that More can avoid downfall
without yielding to his will.
What Henry wants' to to is divorce Catherine and
marry Anne in the hope of acquiring a son. What he does
do in fact is sever the entire English church from Rome
with ramifications far greater than Henry or even any of
his contemporaries could ever have envisaged.
VII* The role of the common man. The contrast
between the common man and the Duke of Kent
in King Lear.
I can keep honest counsel, ride, run, mar a
curious tale in telling it, and deliver a plain
message bluntly. That which ordinary men are
fit for, I am qualified in; and the best of
me is dilligence, Kent,
Weil for a proposition of my own, I need a
costume .., The Sixteenth Century is the
Century of the Common Man, Like all other
centuries, And that's my proposition.
Common Man,
After the death of Lear, Kent says,
Vex not his ghost, 0, let him pass? he hates
him much
That would upon the rack of this tough world
Stretch him out longer.
After the death of More, the Common Man says,
I'm breathing ,,,, Are you breathing too? I .
It's nice isn't it? It isn't difficult to
169
keep alive, friends ^ just don’t make trouble„
One of the most significant things about King
Lear is the fidelity of correspondence of all the dimen-r
sions from the inner personal through to the cosmic. What
might be called the spiritual dimension or that dimension
where the mortal embraces the God as in the Christian
plays of Murder in the Cathedral and A"Man for-All Seasons,
is merged into the cosmic dimension in an organic play like
King Lear, For instance, the storm on the heath concret
izes the storm of Lear’s inner self. The king and the
next king Albany find themselves in harmony with the mode
of operation of the universe. When Cornwall is killed by
his servant Albany says,
................ . , ,This shows you "are above,
You justicers, that these our nether crimes
So speedily can vengej
In A Man for All Seasons there is no clear organic sym
bolism as already illustrated and the political and
spiritual dimensions vie with each other about which is
the more correct code of conduct. Both are deviations, the
political Henry in seeing the Pope solely as an adversary
and the spiritual More in discounting his political res
ponsibilities which are a part of his human inheritance.
In the situation which, if not created by the principal
characters at least is encouraged and perpetuated by them,
what inspiration does the average mortal or the Common
Man have to seek the meaning of a universe where there is
___________ 170
an inviolable place for everyone? For as long as there is
conflict between these dimensions at the governmental
level, survival for the common mortal could and does in
this play, depend upon the ability to change costumes
quickly enough to move from one side to the other as
expediency dictates, There '..are .manyV characters who
do this from Cromwell through Rich to the Common Man. The
goal for these characters is to stay alive or survive or
take care of the personal self irrespective of the over
all organism of humanity of which they are a part, More
himself is in this line with the difference that he is
extolling personal salvation in a life beyond while the
others extol personal survival in this one.
Would Lear ever in or out of the play have
treated Kent as More treats Rich and the Common Man, as
Matthew, observes. More says, "Oh for a moment I thought
you were being profound*’ More judges Rich according to
his shortcomings and reminds him of his shortcomings all
the time. The very worst and the most painful thing that
Henry V says to his former companion is "Old man, I know
you not" There is judgement in humanity here and it is
in humanity that More exhibits his own shortcomings, which
reverberate in the Common Man who addresses Rich contemp
tuously, as he announces his arrival so much so that the
first thing that Rich later requires when Matthew seeks
employment with him is respect, He says, "I'll permit
171
no breath of insolence.” There is no question here of any
deep affection between people. It does not exist in the
characters governed by expediency such as Rich and Crom^
well and even as notedf Sir Thomas More himself does not
show it towards Rich,
In each of the characters or costumes assumed by
the Common Man there is alienation o'r> divorce from the
moving forces of the action not only by way of the Common
Man himself, but also in the manner in which he is treated
by others, In the beginning More is not unkind to his
butler Matthew but Matthew is not moved by More to exhibit
any kind of loyalty when More suffers reverses and
Matthew leaves him without much compunction. When Matthew
later gets work with Rich whom he has treated very sar
castically in More’s house, Matthew again assumes his pose
of attentive servant with the audience clearly aware now
that it is a pose or a costume only and there is a clearly
identified rift between the real man and his costume.
We are not able to study the common man longitudinally as
we are able to study Kent, We have crossectional studies
of characters that are not a part of the core of the
action as Kent is but are periferal to it.
The next is the boatman, patrolled by Cromwell
to see he is not making more than the fixed price for his
late night run and yet he is not contented with the way
in which the price fixing has been calculated. He is
172
alienated and. does not feel a part of how his society is
organized,
In the next scene with the Common Man, Cromwell
the former policeman, gives Steward money for information
about Six Thomas as does Chapuys and also Rich, As the
steward remarks he has received three bribes for common
knowledge. The only thing the Common Man can glean from
this is withdrawal from the action, not so dissimilar
from that of Edgar in-King Lear. It is a survival tactic.
He says, "When I can't touch the bottom I'll go deaf,
blind and dumb" He is even implicated by Rich for sup--
plying information but this does not- pfevent his working
for Rich later. Bonds between human beings are reduced
to employment contracts,
Moved from what might have been expected to be a
secure human relationship with More, through the material
ones’ influenced by Cromwell and Rich, it is not not sur
prising to find the Common Man as Jailer calling it "a
job like any other, job,,", meaning that it pays money but
the person he now has some form of authority over is none
other than the former employer of the Common Man, Sir
Thomas More. The ultimate moment of insensitivity comes
when More's family pleads for a few more moments of time
but the jailer forces them to leave on the last stroke
of seven saying, "I'm a plain, simple man and just want to
keep out of trouble"
173
What a contrast with, the plain, simple man that
is Kent who is loyal to a code of conduct that offers
emotional security to the highest politically and spirit
ually and also to the lowest.
There is no emotional security for anyone in A
Man for All Seasons. The common man is a pawn moved from
hand to hand, donning his costume not to identify with the
well spring of the action as does Kent, but to ensure
periferality to it. In periferality there is no acceptance
of responsibility and what is a more serious thing for the
construction of tragedyf there is a breakdown in the cor
respondences between the dimensions and there is the loss
of the mortal touchstone, the apprehension in the common
person of a human code of conduct which approximates the
mode of operation of the universe* Such an apprehension is
felt and acted upon by Kentf Albany, Edgar and the common
servant who kills Cornwall in King Lear. Such an organic
apprehension is not dreamed of in the philosophy of A Man
for All Seasons.
VIII. The role of the woman. Her assigned
importance versus her organic potential.
Margaret and Alice, again because of the as
sumption that women are second class citizens, can only
__________________________________________________ 174
provide an accompanying characteristic or a filling out
of the state of affairs without participating in the
action or the energy drives, Her second class status
is affirmed by Margaret when Henry says to her, ■ "They
' S' ' s
told me you were a scholar^' and she replies, ”Among
women I pass for one” Her Latin however is better than
Henry's and he notices it to his displeasure,
Alice and Margaret have everything stripped from
them piece by piece, no servants, no heat, no respect,
no husband, no father, nothing, They pass out as they
come in, unheeded, of no consequence, They remain however
an untapped potential for More, Had the spirituality of
More not lifted him out of participation in the other
dimensions, particularly the personal and the politiccLl
dimensions, he may have been able to recognize the solution
to a political problem in the personal dimension as men-r
tioned earlier. The difference between this play and a
Shakespearean tragedy lies here. In Shakespeare there is
a fidelity of correspondence running through all the
dimensions. For instance, what is valid in the personal
dimension is valid in the political one. If Lear loves
Cordelia most he plans to reflect it in a more opulent
political kingdom than that afforded her sisters. In
A Man for All Seasons as in Murder' in - the Cathedral, there
is a schism between the dimensions. More loves his
daughter, has educated her to- where she is more knowledg-
175
able in Latin than the king himself yet he fails to trans-^
fer this confidence in.a woman’s ability to the political
dimension and recommend to Henry that he marry his
daughter Mary to the best ally he can find and shore up any
weaknesses, She is after all in the direct line of suc
cession and history does place her on the throne of
England.
IX, The individual conscience of the1 20th century
as a guide to action. The role of philosophy
in a self-conscious age. ’
It is this failure to apprehend the unifier of
an organic whole that majrks A Man for All Seasons as a
product of the 20th. centuryT In the classical pattern,
More would haye been brought to the realizationf perhaps
by his daughter Margaret, that everything he believes in,
namely his Catholic God and his family is brought down
not only for himself but for his country and he. More,
could have prevented it, for the King was listening to him.
Kings always had mistresses but Henry wanted a son and a
Christian marriage was necessary for that. The individ
ual conscience in the 20th century takes precedence over
love of country, love of a whole greater than the sum of
its parts. This occurs because of the schism now existing
between existential human beings and the teleological
176
mortals that Aristotle describes and Shakespeare exem^
plifies, The individual conscience is affirmed in this
play. That individual conscience ignores the greater
whole or a conscience of the whole country which More
is a part of at the beginning. He cuts himself off from
it rather than attempt through deep thought and concern
for it, to bring it with him. Yet is his action laudable
in the 20th century. Why? Sir Thomas More in A Man for
All Seasons affirms a quality of tenacity and perhaps faith
that this .age seeks. The play is considered a fine tragedy
and could be, considering the philosophical climate in - , -
which it is written for if the dramatist is not guided by
the awareness of the audiencef or the contemporary
philosophical climate in terms of magnitudef the play does
not move to production since people other than the dram
atist are responsible for the fourth, stage of tragedyf the
enactment of what the dramatist offers in language,
It is not for the dramatist in the first instance
but perhaps the philosopher to reveal that such; an af^'vt.
fi.rma.tion. while laudable in an indiyidula sense is in*.' •
>
sufficient in a communal sense to reach, out to a universal
unifier that comprehends the needs of a country or a
monarchy or governance of a country and of the personal
family. The. aftermath of this play while affirming More’s
ability to hold on in the face of insuperable odds, does:
nothing to establish him as standard bearer for the
177
immortal affirming of a human right that no king can ignore
without peril and no government can suppress. When An-*-
tigone dies she brings down king and government with her,
When More dies, he dies alone.
In A Man for All Seasons Henry pimply takes
More's life. It is significant politically because it
helps quell any hope of serious internal dissension but 5
it achieves little emotionally because More does not yield.
It is his sanction that Henry wants, his life is merely
symbolic. Yet in More's death Henry is able to appoint
another chancellor, someone who will agree with him and
strengthen him in his specifically stated resolve. The
organic unifier or the third way available but not
considered reveals clearly that human beings make assump
tions about the world around them and base their actions
upon these assumptions. The significant assumptions in
this play are that Henry must be succeeded by a male heir
and that who is not friend is enemy or there are only two
ways to go in any given situation. These assumptions
restrict the play's comprehensiveness. What potential
does Rich have to being an Iago? Rich is thrust off un
mercifully in the first act, bitterly scorned because
he is weak, knows he is weak yet must be near the center
of power. Within the play's structure, he can simply go
from one camp to the other. He is not allowed to reveal
the gradations of his weakness, that probing into the
178
human being that would have been possible had More for
instance been kind to him in a human way. If someone had
been kincj to Rich as Othello is to Iago or Duncan to Mac
beth, what a potential for the revelation of human nature
is available, Would he follow through with a man who puts
his arm over a candle or would he have some compassion for
a man who had helped him in his own hour of need. More
was once offered a "whole village" but Rich ends up with
Wales and there is little in between in terms of grad
ations of character.
The closest More gets to considering a more
organic solution is when he says to Wolsey, "There must
be something simple in the middle of it" which Wolsey
immediately throws his judgement upon when he says, "If
you could just see facts flat on, without that horrible
moral squint" When Wolsey asks him "You'd like that,
wouldn't you? To govern the country by prayers" and More
replies, "Yes I would" what he is asking for is what Henry
is achieving and what Shakespeare describes with his
correspondences in the great chain of being. He is
asking for a human codified law which is not at variance
with an eternal law. Henry's Act of Supremacy removes
i
the foreign political element from the church in England
and does indeed allow a Shakespeare to build upon this
ideal social and intra-national base. Wherever the artist
is in tune with eternal law, art and nature complement
179
each other, the art form explains or clarifies to mortals
the processes of nature. The subject matter of A Man for
All Seasons precedes the Shakespearean age so closely and
intimately that it is ripe and bursting with potential for
a tragedy of the magnitude of those of Shakespeare once
Shakespeare1s view of the universe can be given its
philosophical equivalence,
W h i f e a King Henry comes to More in his youthful
exhuberance, he comes for help. "I have a daughter, she's
a good child, a well-set child - but I have no son". His
need is urgent. The descendants of his older sister
Margaret do indeed come to the English throne as the
Stuarts after the Tudors but only because both Mary and
Elizabeth die childless and the child king Edward does
not reach maturity. Why do More, Henry and in fact all
the characters, go along with the assumption that by
changing wives Henry will indeed have a son? As he himself
says, he already has "a good child, a well-set child" A
clear alternative is to concentrate on Mary’s potential
yet everyone passes it by. History does not. When Alice
asks More what has happened in his interview with the
king, he says, "I couldn’t find the other way," It is
indeed More's duty as chancellor to find another way as
Alice reminds him, "if you won't rule him, be ruled."
More is unable to think creatively about the
codification of human law. The law of the Roman Catholic
180
church and the law in England are both clearly unable to
cope with the existing state of affairs and both need
changes. More himself says so to Margaret, "What we want
is a really substantial attack on the church/" , yet in a
strangely equivocal way for someone in his position, he
says soon after, "I know what's legal not what's right.
And I'll stick to what's legal,"
When More baits Norfolk with his personal oath
taking he says to him, "I show you the times* He does
know the times in a practical way, He understands them
very well. He knows what Rich is capable of and Crom
well and yet he still stays with his own "legal" position
and does not creatively seek to go beyond it to help frame
a new code of conduct for mortals that better reflects
the times and guarantees some form of personal security,
a state of affairs all are searching for.
Even Chapuys asks, "There's no third alter
native?" and when More asks him about the letter from the
king of Spain he says, "Is this another 'personal' visit
Chapuys, or is it official?" to which Chapuys replies,
"It falls between the two Sir Thomas," The art of dip
lomacy does indeed depend on the assumptions people make
and how they act upon them.
In the end More pronounces sentence on himself
first, "To what purpose? I am a dead manj1 Yet why?
It is still the word of Rich against his. Why does he
181
not try to discredit Rich, Everyone knows that Rich is
lying. Why does he not try to open up the whole vista of
anguish that is there for him through his friend Norfolk
and through Rich whose actions could have been structured
differently, as explained before and through Cromwell who
knows he has no legitimate case? More himself cuts it all
off without a fight at the end. He makes it easy for them
to pronounce sentence. He gives them in fact his life
without a murmur and without the great tragic soul-
searching on the part of the other characters that is
available waiting to be called upon,
X . The philosophy of martyrdom contrasted with
the philosophy of tragedy.
The strongest energy drive in A Man for All
Seasons historically is that carried by Henry VIII as he
is harnessed to the British law of governance or as it
evolves to titular head by way of primogeniture. This
places the play securely in the tradition of British
tragedy that goes back to Shakespeare and is exemplified
particularly by Hamlet, Macbeth and King Lear. What A Man
for All Seasons does that is different from the Shakes
peare plays is to affirm the prevailing of selective
primogeniture not true primogeniture and to offer in
addition an affirmation of a human characteristic, noble
182
in itself, but of universal and immortal significance
only as it could be harnessed to a natural characteristic
that endures for all time and beyond the confines of cul
tural transience. In addition, the Shakespeare plays
even though they affirm political matters of human gover
nance, also place the human being in an inviolable place
within the science of being or within the framework of the
universe itself which in its totality is an harmonious
whole. Shakespeare does this by evoking cosmic images
or even cosmic ghosts to assure mortals that "there are
more things in heaven and earth than are dreamed of in
your philosophy" and that there is a whole natural universe
to which the human belongs and the code of social conduct
is simply a part of it. This cosmic dimension is lacking
in A Man for All Seasons yet it is the dimension which
raises the human being beyond the more of mediocre mud-
dlings into the realm of communion with the prime mover
or the active God, the source of strength for the traged
ian, the area in which universals are intuited.
Sir Thomas More does not soar beyond the muddle
of the Richs and the Cromwells and the Norfolks but rather
remains within their limited framework and salvages the
only thing he can, his own integrity. Because of this,
he places himself in the mold of martyr cherished in the
Christian religious tradition but alien to Shakespeare
the great exploiter of every dimension available to the
183
human mind,
The significant thing about martyrdom as far
as classical tragedy is concerned, is that the martyr is
not the mover of the most powerful temporal action but can
only react to it. Henry acts in A Man for All Seasons.
More reacts.
Action in martyrdom consists of a stand against
this powerful temporal force, a stand which asserts a
spiritual value opposed to the temporal one without es
tablishing the eternal validity of either one. Dramatically
it creates a schism between spiritual and political
dimensions and its very existence depends upon this schism.
In the end a mortal must die in order for the pattern to
exist. The implication is that what is lost is of greater
value so that martyrdom carried to its logical conclusion
could result in extinction of noblest characters spirit
ually and perpetual survival of those strongest in
physical power devoid of spirituality.
The prepared material for classical tragedy
however is geared to harmony between these dimensions in
an organic sense. For instance, the path of a mortal to
God §oes by way of the personal, social and political
dimensions. Conflict occurs as mortals deviate from a
unifying force of the dramatic universe. A human being
may hold to a spiritual force as opposed to a political
one but one or the other in its prevailing, reveals its
184
closer approximation to the unifier or an increased under-"
standing of how the universe itself functions and the
emotional security it affords for those who become aware
of its ways even though this awareness may arise as a
result of the loss of a thing of value. Tragedy reinforces
a way to live through this felt awareness of a possible
better way had another decision been made at the moment of
choice.
XI. The natural paradigm for classical tragedy.
This play would be a tragedy in the classical
sense if at any point along this drive, More would have
realized that there is indeed a third way and the natural
solution lay in the daughter, a fact he was eminently
qualified to understand having raised, loved and educated
his own daughter. Can one look to the play or to life or
to philosophy for this failure td apprehend or intuit the
natural unifier? What would Shakespeare have done with
this historical material had he considered it after 1603
or the death of Elizabeth and the end of the Tudors?
The historical More of course could not know that history
itself and the law of primogeniture would in fact correct
the imbalance that Kenry creates in divorcing Catherine,
and disinheriting her child Mary and thereafter acquiring
another daughter Elizabeth. However any dramatist
after 1603 considering the natural material, ■ knows that
the total action from which the prepared material is sel
ected, arranged and altered, proceeds from Henry's attempt
to thwart primogeniture selectively and ends when history
and the built in laws of the land correct the imbalance.
XII, A structural alternative for A Man for All
Seasons to give it the eternally relevant
impact of a classical tragedy.
To establish More structurally as a tragic hero
of the magnitude of Antigone, the aftermath of the play
would be the sense of the country's loss of the clear
connection to God by way of the Pope and Christ. This
historical imbalance is being adjusted in a diluted form
in the 20th century, A Roman Catholic dignitary attended
the marriage of Prince Charles to Lady Diana Spenser,
There would also be the sense of loss of the
country's clear commitment to the law of primogeniture
since the king's daughter Mary is cut off by enforced
illigitimacy from the line of inheritance.
In such a play Henry might have his way as he
does in A Man for All Seasons but his victory is hollow if
the play's action goes beyond the historical date of More's
death to show in some way that Mary does indeed become
queen and the spiritual lifeline is inclusive rather than
186
exclusive, to the degree that Henry's politicalf^maiiauvres
are unable to affect the mortal's communal attachment to
the well spring of life or the moving God,
187
CHAPTER VII
T H E C O N D E M N E D OF AL T O N A
A structural analysis with particular
emphasis on the nature of the mimesis
and its contemporary relevance.
I. The state of affairs. The human dimensions
involved in the play. The two affirmations.
II. The highest energy drive. Economic growth
and the will of Von Gerlach. Its dramatic
isolation opposed to tragic action.
Ill. The victim syndrome. The relationship
between old Von Gerlach, Franz and Werner.
Werner and the tragic climax.
IV. From Franz to Hitler and back. Dic
tatorial prevailing versus the organic
unifier. Plot versus character in
tragedy.
V. Fortifier of the will of Von Gerlach. The
role of Leni.
VI. The inability of Johanna to be an energy
drive that ensures tragic conflict. The
sameness of a philosophical projection
versus the multifariousness of organic
nature and tragic portrayal.
VII. The responsibility of the tragedian to
portray tragic conflict. The philosophy
of tragedy and the science of being versus
the philosophy of existentialism.
VIII. A structural alternative for The Condemned
of Altona that would place the play in the
tradition of classical tragedy.
188
I. The state of affairs. The human dimensions
involved in the play. The two affirmations.
The first word in The Condemned of Altona is
"attention" and it is established immediately that the
father old Von Gerlach dominates a personal environment
that he has created and is planning to perpetuate after his
death. Beyond the boundaries of the play's action he is a
giant ship builder and has created something of an inter
national empire. The play's action takes place primarily
in the personal dimension, the family environment of the
Gerlachs and also in the inner-personal dimension of the
incarcerated elder son Franz. Originally it is Franz who
is trained to succeed his father but now with Franz re- ^
ported dead it is the younger son Werner who has been re
called from a law practice in Hamburg to work in the
business.
At the beginning of the play a family conference
is called to plan the succession for the ship building
empire now that the father expects to die in six months.
What Von Gerlach feels he must do is secure the contin
uation of this business. He is severely hampered by the
fact that Franz is not dead but voluntarily incarcerated
upstairs. His younger son Werner and his daughter Leni
have been trained since childhood to abide by his decision
so he knows that they will do what they promise to do if
they swear it on the bible which they do. The daughter
189
in law, Johanna offers some resistance but the old man has
to take the chance that she will remain y^K\fie)r>v husb.^Ld'
and be loyal to the agreement primarily because she will
be the wife of one of the kings of this world.
Towards the end of the play old Gerlach has
himself written up in the papers as one of the greatest
men of the new industrialized Germany.
F , What' s that
L, The Frankfurter Zeitung. There's an article
about us.
F. You and me?
L, The family. They're doing a series: "The
Giants Who Have Rebuilt Germany," Honor
■ where it is due. They start with the
Gerlachs.
All that is necessary now is for Franz to die in actuality,
Gerlach says to him,
G, Both your life and your death are merely
nothing, You are nothing, you do nothing, you
have done nothing, and you can do nothing.
The play ends with the death of old Gerlach and
Franz, the business extremely prosperous, a Gerlach at the
helm. This is in the temporal area of the personal
dimension projected overtly to the social and political
dimensions,
In the inner personal dimension of Franz, the
human being enters into an inverse mystical relationship
with a higher energy source, exemplified in the play as
the 30th century. This resolves itself in the willing
190
submission to death by Franz*
II, The highest energy drive * Economic growth and
the will of Von Gerlach. Its dramatic
isolation opposed to tragic action.
• The Condemned of Altona is a very symbolic play
and a whole paper could be written about the ability of
art to survive in a society that is not free. Symbolic
ally, the characters could represent countries and the art
form could hold a special meaning for people who are unable
for whatever reason, political or otherwise, to express
themselves openly. However, whenever events of a par
ticular historical period are used as the raw material for
a play, then future generations are going to analyze it in
relationship to those events.
A structural analysis of The Condemned of Altona
in terms of tragedy reveals non-mimetic characteristics
which go to the heart of the most significant char
acteristic of the tragic form, its plot, or the movement
of events controlled by the highest energy drive.
The highest energy drive in The Condemned of
Altona, is economic growth intertwined with and partially
impelled by>: the will of Von Gerlach. The will of old
Von Gerlach is revealed in the dramatic isolation of the
personal dimension already mentioned. The on-going
relationships between the personal dimension and the
social, political and cosmic dimensions are only alluded
to in the play. The method of allusion however masks the
fact that the dominance of the will of Von Gerlach over
other poeple is non-mimetic or accidental in an organic
sense in the same way symbolically as Hitler is an
accident of nature organically. Symbolic relationships of
this nature are not explored in this paper for the reason
given. They are noted because a structural analysis of
this play might otherwise appear to ignore their vital
importance and also because they provide social commen
tary on the age which is a critical function of the art
form. Tragedy, while it arises from events of each age,
transcends those events which are accidental by revealing
their accidentality even though at the same time such
events may be so overwhelming as to suggest that they are
universals and not accidents.
The will of Von Gerlach is an imposed will, It
is a human code of conduct which does not approximate the
workings of the universe. The universe is creative and
thus encourages survival of its organic parts, As far as
the tragedian is concerned a human code of conduct which
encourages organic creativity follows the golden rule of
doing to others what you would have them do to you,
Werner speaks of it when he says,
When I look a man in the eyes I become incapable
of giving him orders ,,, I feel that he is my equal,
192
Franz speaks of it,
Father you frighten me. You do not feel the
suffering of others enough.
These two characters however and also Johanna, together, do
not have an energy drive that is strong enough in an or
ganic sense to engage the will of Von Gerlach in tragic
combat. In The Condemned of Altona the will of old Von
Gerlach easily overrides the other characters and reduces
them to victims. Considering the age of Nazism and pos
sibly the Algerian war, the play is mimetic symbolically
but not tragically.
The will of Von Gerlach goes back to the example
of Bismark the great German statesman who was the founder
and first chancellor of the German Empire,
L. Bismark was stilL alive when our poor
father acquired his habits.
The children also call him Hindenburg, the name of the
famous commander of the German army in World War I who
refused to admit that Germany was defeated. Old Von Ger-a
lach rules his household and his shipyard as a dictator.
The relationship he establishes in this way with his
children is both love and hatred,
L. I hate victims who respect their executioners,
yet respect her father she does, and obey him she will.
Three years earlier the father had reported the
death of Franz and recalled Werner the younger brother
from a law practice in Hamburg to run the business. As
193
Gladstone says about Bismark, "He made Germany great and
Germans small" Von Gerlach is going to perpetuate this
business and if Franz is unable to head it then Werner
will,
VG. When Franz died, I called on you for help,
and you left the Bar without hesitation.
That deserves a reward, You will be master
of this house and head of the firm,
A little later he says,
VG. The estate is to remain intact. You are
strictly forbidden to sell or hand over
your share to anyone whatever. You are
forbidden to sell this house. You are
forbidden to leave it. SwearJ
This scene is dramatically isolated in the sense
that the forward movement temporally is arrested while
old Von Gerlach imposes his will on the other characters
and cuts off their freedom of choice. When Johanna asks
him,
J. I should like to know why you dispose of
my life,
he answers,
VG. I dispose of his because it belongs to me,
It is a scientifically untenable position for a father to
propose that he owns the life of his son and so can dispose
of it as he chooses. The parallel to this position in the
political dimension is Gerlachrs selling off his land to
the Nazis to enable them to build extermination camps
and so dispose of the lives of other people as well. This
is an accident of nature perpetuated not only because Ger-
194
lach attempts to dominate but also because Werner t Leni
and Johanna allow themselves to be dominated, and again not
only because the Nazis rose to dominance but because other
people allowed themselves to be dominated or refused to
engage in tragic conflict to prevent it.
Tragic mimesis requires that the subject matter
be human beings in action in which their own choice deter
mines their character. Free choice is dramatically ex
cluded in this play so that character is not revealed by
way of action. Werner and Leni are deprived of or give
away their ability to choose freely before the opening of
the play. What occurs in the first scene is the dictator
ial laying down of an edict, the imposition of the will of
Von Gerlach upon other characters dramatically deprived of
their organically ensured ability to exercise some control
over their own actions. Because Johanna is tied to Werner
by marriage she too is under some of the spell, Johanna
is told some of the reasons for the voluntary incarcer
ation of Franz but not the main one. Beguiled by Von
Gerlach into hoping that Franz could be recalled, she
agrees to try to get Franz to meet with his father.
Johanna is cheated out of her ability to choose freely by
not being given all of the facts that would enable her to
do so. In the case of all three characters Gerlach
imposes his own will. He has to meet with Franz because he
has to arrange for his death. Leni opposes him in this
195
one thing but Johanna unwittingly prepares to assist him.
Through the flash backs it is revealed that
on two earlier occasions Von Gerlach has imposed his will
on his children, and has chosen the continuance of his
business over concern for human life. When Franz harbors
a Jew, Von Gerlach saves his son’s life and his own
business by reporting the incident to Goebbels, Franz has
to go into the army immediately as a result of this in
cident but at this time something happens which is beyond
Von Gerlach’s control. It triggers the second affirmation
of the play and is discussed in the section on the victim
syndrome. It is the murder of the Jewish rabbi.
The way the play is structured to incorporate
this second affirmation marks it as a product of the 20th
century where the drive toward organic unity is no longer
of primary importance, Dramatically Gerlach's will and
tangentially economic growth is going to prevail in the
temporal sense but now the indictment springing from Franz'
inner personal dimension is to run parallel with it.
The second occasion in which the will of Von
Gerlach prevails as it is directed toward preservation of
his empire, comes when Leni £ills an American suitor, Male
chauvinism is so accepted that there is no question on
anyone's part that Leni be held responsible for her
action. Instead, Franz takes the full blame but again
Von Gerlach preserves the family name by suppressing news
196
of the incident and arranging for Franz to leave the
country immediately.
The energy drive of Franz is growing at this
point and while he still poses no threat to his father's
empire he refuses to go to Argentina and instead incar
cerates himself in his room, refusing to see his father
for thirteen years.
If there is an explanation or understanding of
the will of Von Gerlach, it comes from what he tells
Johanna,
VG. All I can tell you is that the Gerlachs are
victims of Luther. That prophet filled us
with an insane pride. Franz used to walk
across the hills arguing with himself, and
once his conscience said yes, you could
have cut him into little pieces and you
wouldn't have made him change his mind.
I was like him when I was young.
Gerlach's admiration for individual conscience shapes his
judgement of people. He bases the actions of his life on
certain assumptions about the nature of human beings,
He divides the world into the weak and the strong,
VG. The weak serve the strong. That's the law.
Werner is weak, Franz is strong. That can't
, be helped.
He makes an assumption about or has an idiocyncratic
defintion for human strength too and it includes the
beast. Speaking of the impending death of Franz he says,
VG. With him will disappear the last of the
true Von Gerlachs ... I mean the last
monster,
; v . ' \ . r /y.. v ^ 197
His will operates primarily as it is directed
toward survival of his empire. When he finds out what
Franz has done in Russia he realizes that this son cannot
head the empire. He is shrewd enough to know at the same
time that the discarded son deprived of respect and at
tention from birth will jump at the opportunity. The
business is structured so that it needs only a figurehead.
Werner is recalled from his law practice in Hamburg.
Franz' death certificate is forged and the continuation of
the empire is secured. For three years however Franz can
not be lured from his room. The spiritual or mystical
energy drive is beyond the boundaries of the human dimen
sions of society and politics. Franz has to die in ac
tuality for the plan to be safe from exposure and the
death of Franz becomes the more imperative when the old
man realizes that he himself is dying and Leni and Johanna
do not share his drive to preserve the shipbuilding empire.
He does finally succeed in luring Franz from his
room and he does succeed in crashing the Porsche into the
Teufelsbrucke but not before Franz has recorded his
indictment on the age that is so devoid of a creative
philosophy as to allow the spiritual fracture between
mortal and universal, enduring nature, as has occurred in
the 20th century.
198
Ill, The victim syndrome. The relationship
between old Von Gerlach, Franz and Werner.
Werner and the tragic climax.
In a tragedy, the revelation of character occurs
as a person chooses at a moment when an energy drive com
pels a choice. When a play is structured in such a way
that the choice is not revealing of character, then such
a character becomes less than a tragic character. It-
becomes a victim of either the energy drive otherwise
called circumstance, or else the victim of the will of
another character-become-energy drive,
Prior to the play's action, old Von Gerlach has
made choices for Franz which have deprived Franz of the
ability to accept full responsibility for his own actions,
Gerlach boasts how he raised his son to be a "little
prince* There is something however in the inner personal
dimension of Franz that old Von Gerlach can influence but
not control. It provides the parallel affirmation in the
play which springs from the spirituality of a char
acter as it plummets to the depth of the victim-beast
relationship,
Gerlach himself claims that he is a victim of
Luther who influenced him into becoming a proud dictator
devoid of human compassion. He also claims he is the
victim of Goering since even though he is co-operating
with the Nazis, his shipyards are bombed,
199
In terms of the play's action however the first
clash which could resemble tragic combat between Gerlach,
intertwined with economic growth, and Franz, occurs when
Franz disapproves of the sale of his father's land for
use as an extermination camp, Franz says,
F. You work for the Nazis.
V.G. They are at war to find us markets, and I
am not going to quarrel with them over a
bit of land,
F. You shouldn't have become mixed up in it,
Franz now acts upon his disapproval and that action triggers
an action by Gerlach which is part of the energy drive of
the prevailing of his will but it also triggers another
action beyond the personal dimension which the play's
structure does not allow as a significant energy drive
dramatically (although it does philosophically) but which
nevertheless is the action which splits the play into two
parts. The energy drive which Gerlach does not have con
trol over is that of Nazism or the beast. It is the
energy drive of the beast which kills the Polish rabbi in
front of Franz and activates in his psyche his own beast
like reaction to the treachery he attributes to his
father. Father and son in this sense are both victims
of Nazism, They are reconciled inthe end when Von Gerlach
says,
»
VG. Tell your Court of Crabs that I alone am
guilty - of everything,
F. That's what I wanted to hear you say, „nn
They go to their death together. What still remains
unreconciled is atonement for Franz the Butcher of
Smolensk, His voice at the end says,
F, Where does it come from, this rancid, dead
taste in my mouth? From man? From the
beast? From myself? It is the taste of
the century.
The younger son Werner does not become part of
the pattern of victim until his father recalls him from
Hamburg. Apparently neglected as a child, or raised as
an "ornamental' Werner is nevertheless able to establish
his own law practice in Hamburg, to marry, to be success
ful and happy.
J. He was free, he was open and he was gay.
Not only has he apparently escaped the pride of his father
but he has also managed to reconcile himself to severance
from the ship-building empire. Von Gerlach1s action in
recalling him however places him in the first instance in
the role of magnate. In addition, when Werner first comes
to Altona he is simply given a modern office and remains
an "ornament" while his father controls everything. In
the year and a half that Werner has been in Altona his
father has apparently passed on nothing to him in terms
of how to run the business. Now the father is forced to
make the decision.
VG. You will be master of this house and head
of the firm.
Werner is well aware of the low estimate his father has
201
of him,
W, Nothing is perfect. Here are so many cogs
in the machine. Suppose one of them were
to j am,
VG, For repairs, Gelber will be there, A
remarkable man, you know, who has been with
us for 25 years.
W. I'm lucky, in fact. He will give the orders.
VG. Gelber ^ You're mad.' He is your employee.
You pay him to let you know what orders to
give.
W. Oh father, not once in your life have you
trusted me. You thrust me at the head of the
firm because I am your sole male heir, but you
first made sure of turning me into an ornament.
Werner however is no potential ornament. He has the
human compassion that his father discarded and that Franz
destroyed.
W. When I look a man in the eyes I become in
capable of giving him orders,
VG, Why?
W. I feel that he is my equal,
Later when his father once again slights him as he speaks
of Franz,
VG. With him will disappear the last of the true
Von Gerlachs (at a gesture from Werner) /i""
mean, the last monster,
Werner reveals his true and suppressed feelings towards
his father,
W. I have been filled with loathing for you from
the day I was born.
In front of Werner's wife the father insists,
202
VG. Werner is weak, Franz is strong. That can’t
, be helped.
Yet in spite of his father's callousness,. Werner cannot
condone Leni when she insists that Franz hates his father,
W. I won't have my father insulted in my presence.
Human dignity is still alive in Werner although it is all
but obscured in Von Gerlach and Leni,
Organically the tragic climax occurs towards the
end of Act I when Werner accepts the offer to head the
firm and to remain in the family home,
W, Have you any further questions to ask me?
J . No,
W. Then I do as I wish? (Johanna nodds, exhausted)
Very well, (On the bible), I swear to abide
by the last wishes of my father.
Werner becomes attached to the life force of the business
or economic growth which has endured the war and is going
to move ahead through the peace. The will of old Von Ger~
lach initiates this energy drive and the will of Werner
Von Gerlach carries it on, Johanna clashes against this
force but fails to halt it. In the drive of economic
growth, Franz and Leni and their moral guilt are the
flotsum and jetsum. Their energy drive does for a brief
moment, challenge Werner when he suspects that his father
may be attempting to recall Franz into the business but
the realization Werner comes to at the end of Act II is
that it is he, Werner, who is strong and will endure.
No longer will he defer to Franz, 9n_
W, We’ll stay hereJ Until one of the three of us
dies - you, my brother, or me,,,, 1 shall love
when I have won you. And I'm going to fight,
don't worry I shall win. You only like
strength, you women. And I'm the one who has
strength,
There is no question all through the play that
Werner and Johanna love each other. When they come
together at the end as the voice of Franz is coming from
the tape recorder and Leni goes upstairs to take his place,
there is a sense of loss and pain. The pain is as Franz
says, the pain of this century that no one can escape and
that all feel who belong to the human race but life for
Werner and Johanna and the life for their children has
shed itself of guilt and can go forward now to what could
be a new world. Johanna the structural loser, becomes part
of the new empire. Franz and Leni originally destined
for an enhanced survival, are cast aside as is the
spiritual dimension which could have defined their
condition.
IV. From Franz to Hitler and back. Dictatorial
prevailing versus the organic unifier. Plot
versus character in tragedy.
Insomuch as the will of a particular character
approximates an energy drive of an ongoing action, it may
appear that the will of the character is the highest
energy drive or is represented as a universal in a play,
; 204
In the opening scenes of The Condemned of Altona
the will of old Von Gerlach appears to be all powerful.
He collaborates with the Nazis selling land for extermin
ation camps and he is even able to buy his son’s freedom
after Franz was caught harboring a Jewish rabbi. No wonder
the old man appears to be a giant among men, appears to
hold the destiny of others in his hands and appears to
have the ability to victimize other people.
Structurally with Shakespeare there is no doubt
that the dramatist himself is aware of the organic nature
of the universe and the mortal’s place in it. When Lear
and Albany evoke the power of the gods they are recognizing
that no human will can oppose the driving force of the
universe or the organic unifier and survive and function
in the various dimensions of a mortaliss;ae£ivellife, In
other words, Shakespeare is a step removed from his art
and the art form is autonomous because of it, There is no
inter-'-twining between art and life as far as structure is
concerned.
In The Condemned of Altona, the distinction
between the dramatist and the art is not so clear. It is
particularly apparent where the will of Von Gerlach oper
ating in the personal and political dimensions attempts
to impose itself upon the total being of his son Franz,
Does the dramatist structure the play to reveal what
Shakespeare reveals, that no human will can successfully
__________________205
oppose the ; driying force of the universe or does the
dramatist structure the play in the belief that one human
being can victimize another. In the general, if not the
particular sense, Sartre’s events actually happened so
the dramatist is copying nature where victimization occurs.
It is of crucial importance to an analysis of the play's
structure however to be able to determine in which mode
the dramatist is writing. In the Sh&kespearean mode what
occurs in such an instance, in an accident of nature and
not a universal, In The Condemned of Altona, victimiz
ation is not clearly identified as an accident even though
the events lend themselves more positively to the inter
pretation of accident while at the same time the dram
atist appears to behighlighting the actual posited as a
potential universal.
Without this clear structural differentiation
between art and life which entails an understanding of and
a philosophy for structural unity, such a merger between
art and life can occur and the concept Of winner loses
can prevail. As it stands however, this concept is amoral
whereas the life of tragedy springs from mortal
morality,
Old Von Gerlach while apparently enforcing his
will on everyone actually loses the most important thing
in his life, the;' continuing whoieless of his son Franz,
The principle of loser wins or winner loses is posited
206
many times in the play but each time without the reason
for its being so or without the revealing of the univer
sal which characterizes the plays of Shakespeare.
When Von Gerlach telephones Goebbels to report
the Jewish rabbi incident he brings in forces over which he
has no control. He can save his son's life and have him
shipped off as a soldier to Russia but he cannot stem or
divert the energy of the beast which kills the rabbi in
cold blood while Franz watches. This moment marks the
death of Franz as a whole person. It is caused by his
father and atoned for by his father. Atonement by another
however is not enough. Having witnessed the beast, Franz
becomes the beast.
F. Four of them held me down while the others
beat him to death ... A curious experience,
but I wouldn't recommend it for future
leaders. You never get over it. You made
me a prince, father, and do you know
who made me a king?
VG. Hitler.
F. Yes; through shame. After that ...
incident, power became my vocation. Do
you know also that I admired him?
VG. Hitler?
F. Didn't you know? Oh, I hated him, before
and after. But that day he possessed me ...
The rabbi was bleeding, and I discovered
at the heart of my powerlessness some strange
kind of approval.
When Franz arrives in Russia, he assumes a role
of power, not to defend the humanly innocent but to tor
207
ture them using the pattern he witnessed in Altona. In
another paper this particular revelation of human char
acter could become the highlighted aspect of a tragedy
focussing on a contemporary phenomenon of what appears to
be random violence and brutality. In The Condemned of
Altona, this Altona incident plunges Franz into the role
of Butcher of Smolensk where he tortures and then escapes
and returns home. His lapse is a temporary one. In his
heart he knows he must atone and must pay the price as
must all of those who acted likewise.
The problem for the world is not so much to
assess a punishment but to determine the degree of personal,
collective and national responsibility. Both Franz and
his father are aware of this. The temptation to elude
peer punsihment also marks the play as a product of the
20th century where the mortal's role as an integral part
of an organic universe is clouded over by concerns of
individual existence and justifiability. This is in sharp
contrast to Shakespeare and also the Russian masterpiece
of an earlier age Crime and Punishment where Doestoevsky
highlights the mortal cohesiveness of mutual respon
sibility and accountability.
Franz is left to devise his own punishment, the
extent of his own humanity shaping the nature of it. Old
Von Gerlach is ignorant of this episode, the one time in
his life where Franz acts alone and alone is responsible.
208
By way of the sequence of events however which
takes account of the energy drives of Nazism and of the
Allied rehabilitation, the unifier of The Condemned of
Altona is economic growth. Germany is prosperous. The
character Von Gerlach happens to participate in this
highest structural energy drive,
F. You work for the Nazis.
VG. They are at war to find us markets, and I
am not going to quarrel with them over
a bit of land.
Concerning the second incident involving Leni he says,
VG. There were big interests at stake which
weighed more heavily than a captain's
skull. Even if I had not intervened,
the occupying forces would have hushed
up the scandal.
If the dramatist does not highlight the organic unifier,
it can appear that this is a play structured around
character and not events as in tragedy. The organic
unifier, rooted in events, renders the deviation of Franz
as an accident of nature, Hitler an accident of nature and
the future in the hands of Werner, Johanna and their
children and counterparts. Structured around character,
the road back from Hitler turns in on itself, sets no
limit on punishment and lives and relives the agony in the
phantasy of Franz and then Leni. The two affirmations are
both present in The Condemned of Altona.
210
The next significant incident in the chain of events which
mold and determine the nature of the Gerlach dynasty, is
the killing by Leni of an American officer of the oc
cupation force. By now, the pattern of selfhood apart
from that of a society is so powerful that old Von Gerlach
arranges to shift responsibility from Leni to Franz and
then buy out the energy drive that might bring Franz to
accountability by arranging for him to leave for Argen
tina. It does not occur to Leni or anyone else that she
too is responsible for her own actions and in allowing
Franz to shoulder the blame she too has to devise her own
punishment.
For Franz once again his father enforces his will,
depriving him of the sense of security obtained only by
acting with accountability in a personal, social and
political environment. Betrayed once again, Franz re
treats to his room to live out the horror of his own
actions and the immorality of those of his father, to try
to justify them, to try to ease the pain of them. He
establishes a tribunal of crabs, crabs that walk sideways
and not forward, with large eyes that see everything. In
his own mind atonement has to be made for the atrocities
perpetuated and that atonement involves a country and its
people. In the phantasy world of the four walls of his
room Germany for Franz is atoning by being destroyed and
in ruins.
209
V,. Fortifier of the will of Von Ger 1 ach. The
role of Leni.
Leni is structurally deprived of activity in all
human dimensions other than the personal one. Her relat^
ionships consist of those with immediate family members,
She could be deprived of social and political dimensions
and still reach out to the cosmic dimension as does
Antigone but Leni forfeits her ability to leap to the
cosmic dimension when she deviates from the mean by kil-r
ling a man and then allowing another to stand accused
even though bribery and not punishment pays the price in
actuality. There is no cosmic dimension for Leni,
L, I have only one judge - myself and
I acquit myself.
Old Von Gerlach functions through several dimensions and
there has been a time in his life when a god or a cosmic
dimension was a part of his life,
J. You had a conscience?
VG. Yes, I lost it. It is a luxury for princes.
FEanz Von Gerlach metamorphorizes the cosmic dimension
into his Crustacean court and attempts to justify his
existence and to appeal to a future world for understand
ing, The crabs are still.his judges however for as long
as he retains his humanity and seeks the mover of the or
ganic universe alone without going through the social and
political dimensions 'in which his .initial deviation has
211
occurred, Leni urges him to rid himself of this dimension,
L, Challenge their compliance„ I beg you? it’s
your only weakness. Tell them "you are
not my judges" and you’ll have no one to
fear - either in this world or the next.
When Franz takes the blame for Leni’s action in
killing the American, Leni apparently initiates an
incestuous relationship with him and agrees to provide for
him for the rest of his life, Franz has three choices not
two as he assumes at the moment. He could ^o to Argentina.
He could give himself to his society for retribution or
he could incarcerate himself, Leni encourages and assists
in the incarceration yielding to the strictures of it
through the years. She cannot leave the house. She too is
subjected to the madness and horror of a cosmic dimension
she does not even recognize and she must continue to lie.
This is the price she pays because as she says, she is
a Von Gerlach, a shadow or parallel of her father.
L. I was born a Gerlach which means I am mad
with pride - and I cannot make love to
anyone but a Gerlach, Incest is my law
and my fate,
Leni shares the will of her father which is the price of
the egocentric self. Being cut off from the other dimen
sions which her father enjoys, her pride turns in on
itself encircling the object of her desire as a spider
draws its prey to itself, As her father seeks to in
corporate Franz into his own past so does Leni seek to
incorporate Franz into her own future, Von Gerlach cares
212
primarily for Von Gerlach and Leni cares primarily for Leni,
Neither one cares for the dignity of Franz, Neither one
helps him to become a whole person, to pay the price for
his deviation, to atone for his own action. In order to
maintain his phantasy world, Leni lies to him for thirteen
years about the prosperity in Germany, She knows about
the Smolensk torturing and declares she still loves Franz.
The victimization that her father begins, Leni continues.
Leni becomes Hitler's wife and in doing so cuts off all
hope of return. It is not until his death is inevitable
that old Von Gerlach says,
VG, Tell your Court of Crabs that I alone
am guilty — of everything.
Yet even to the end the Von Gerlach pride retains its
egocentricity. The old man says,
VG. I made you. I will unmake you, My death
will envelope yours and in the end I
shall be the only one to die.
Leni also dies symbolically. She is free now to live her
own life but she chooses death in life,
L, Someone must occupy that room. It shall
be me.
Von Gerlach is unable to control, just as Hitler is unable
to control, that part of the human being that seeks its
God. The end of the play finds Franz uttering the great
truth, the single most powerful indictment of the art of
war,
F. Legitimate self-defence. I surprised the
beast. I struck. A man fell, and in
__________________________________________________ 213
his dying eyes I saw the beast still living -
myself,
Leni is incidental to this,
VI, The inability of Johanna to be an energy :
drive that ensures tragic conflict. The
sameness of aphilosophical projection
versus the multifariousness of organxc
nature and tragic portrayal.
While it can happen, it does happen and it did
happen with remarkable frequency from 1933 to 1945, dom
ination by one person over others is a deviation from the
mean of ideal human co-existence. The Condemned of Altona
takes its subject matter from this historical period and
it copies dominance both in the highest energy drive of
economic growth and in the will of Von Gerlach and his
fortifier Leni. Werner Von Gerlach has been dominated by
his father from childhood. There is only one character
in the play who has any chance of engendering another
powerful energy drive which would place the success of
such dominance at least in some jeopardy. That character
is Johanna, Werner's wife. What she is fighting for
however, is a life-style of Hamburg opposed to Altona and
a husband a lawyer opposed to a ship-builder. There is
not enough at stake for Johanna to be able to grow to a
proportion that would enable her to endanger the existence
and continuing flourishing of the Von Gerlach ship
214
building business which has survived and expanded through
both the war and the peace and is the highest energy drive
in the play. Johanna, as Leni, is structurally deprived
of the ability to function in the social and political
dimensions and also as with Leni she does not aspire to
the cosmic dimension,
In the first scene Johanna is used primarily
to bring past events to the attention of the audience. It
is not until it becomes clear that Werner is to head the
firm ithat Johanna as part of the energy drive of personal
freedom clashes with the will of Von Gerlach as it appears
to be acting autonomously and not acting as part of the
energy drive of economic growth. Johanna cannot make a
decision because her love for Werner is greater than her
bid for personal freedom. She is not able to leave Werner.
All she can do is try to influence him against staying in
Altona because in Altona he is a cog in the wheel of the
old man and in Hamburg he is free. Johanna does not
understand that Werner really wants his office and wil
lingly will try to head the firm.
She is tricked into believing that the old man
wants to see Franz in the hope of inducing him to lead
a normal life. Franz is a murderer and there can be no
return. When she finds this out Johanna, unlike Leni,
cannot condone it.
It is in the cosmic or the spiritual or the
215
merger of the two that a challenge to the ethicality of
economic growth of the ship—building enterprise might
come. Johanna could soar to these dimensions as Antigone
does and expose the human price paid for such a past
survival and growth or put in jeopardy the continuing sur
vival and growth of such a business,. There is fine
tragic potential in this but it does not occur in The
Condemned of Altona. Why? The dramatist is copying actual
events which appear to exclude the possibility of a signif
icant challenge to the primacy of economic survival.
If it were a position posited as the play's single affir
mation The Condemned of Altona could find itself classified
as propaganda. In propaganda one position is posited to
the exclusion of all others structurally. The Condemned of
Altona however while being structured so that there is no
significant challenge to the primacy of economic survival,
also holds a second affirmation which is the voice of the
live but encased spirit of a human being unable to break
through the barriers of the other dimensions as Antigone
breaks through but yet refusing to accept the privacy, of
economic survival with a voice that is the voice of a
victim. The second affirmation removes the play from
the classification of propaganda and places it in a pos
ition where it appears that a philosophical projection
dominates the play's structure and moulds it along the
lines of this held belief. The mimetic nature of the play
216
shows its paradigm to he this philosophical projection,
a theory, rather than creating nature or the movement of
nature to its fulfilment where the whole is greater than
the sum of its parts and the highest energy - / ‘ drive sub
ordinates accidents towards survival of the many in the one
whole«
VII, The responsibility of the tragedian to portray
tragic conflict. The philosophy of tragedy
and the science of being versus the phil
osophy of existentialism.
In creating nature and the history of this
civilization, human beings have structured their lives and
their societies in such a way ideally as to ensure survival
of the human spirit physically as well as mentally. The
turn of events in 1945 brought back into some balance, the
deviations of the twelve years or so preceding it. The
events of the war then cannot be taken as a whole in them
selves but rather as an accident or deviation from the
natural mean begun in approximately 1933 and ended in 1945,
In dealing with survival of the human spirit it is the
responsibility of the tragedian to present one action
whole and complete and of a certain magnitude, such action
to hold within itself the reason for its being so] The
reason for its being so goes beyond the actual events in
this case, The events of 1933 to 1945 are not their
217
own reason, The one action tragically cannot allow two
affirmations. If the affirmation of economic survival and
growth is made, the human spirit is subordinated to it but
the human spirit cannot be subordinated as'The Condemned
of Altona demonstrates, As in Antigone the human spirit
can overcome the accidents of political and social
decisions which are not in harmony with the movement of an
organic nature. However whether or not a character
appeals to this cosmic and or spiritual strength as is the
case in Antigone, King Lear, Hamlet, A Man for All-f y*
Seasons and" Murder in the Cathedral, each in its own way,
depends upon the life philosophy of the dramatist. It is
this single philosophical awareness glossed over by liter->
ary critism, that determines the survival of tragedy as
an art form. Not until the 20th century and such a play
as The Condemned of Altona has it become demonstratably
clear that the science of being itself, as first des
cribed by Aristotle, forms; the basis of the philosophy
of tragedy. Aristotle as structural analyst, establishes
a relationship between art and nature and it is the mutual
adherence structurally to the science of being.
The nearness to the event and the overwhelming
magnitude of the event itself can sometimes overpower the
artist to such a degree that creativity itself is mutil
ated. When this occurs as it has occurred in dramatists
of this period, the responsibility shifts to those artists
218
of generations that follow, to clarify the relationship
between the art and contemporary events and to analyze
the structure of those plays which approach tragedy in
such a way that the art form itself can live again.
Future artists can learn from these plays the difference
between the philosophy of the science of being as it is
held by Aristotle the structural analyst and other phil-
osphies as existentialism and martydom which each in
its own way excludes some portion of organic nature,
Aeschylus and Shakespeare take their structural mimesis
from the science of being. Their total universe is still
the universe of the 20th century. The accidents of nature
that we have experienced in the 20th century could also
have occurred for them. Potential excursions into an
expanded cosmos and potential global and cosmic humane
inflicted mutilations are potential challenges to their
philosophies as it is to ours. However the structural
analysis of tragedy can now predict in art form what
Aristotle began as empirical description some 2,000 years
ago. Tragedy in this sense can be viewed as the fore
runner and potential preserver of this civilization.
219
VIII, A structural.alternative for The Condemned
of Altona that would place the play in the
tradition of classical tragedy,
At the beginning of the play there is a ship
building business and at the end of the play there is a
ship-building business. At the beginning of the play old
Von Gerlach has a brother perhaps the father of Werner,
or who has an affinity with Werner, who ,'is for cutting
back or suspending operations during the war and who en
gages in tragic combat with Von Gerlach concerning
collaboration with the energy drive of the beast that
would dominate and destroy human beings. Franz agrees with
him. He might lose the first confrontation when the land
is sold but he could harbor the Jew with Franz1 knowledge
or he could take the blame for it. At the time of the
rabbi incident he could make his stand and show Franz the
alternatives to his father's action. He could also be
the older brother to Von Gerlach and could have started
the business so that it is originally his business. He
could try to save the rabbi through some network of co
operation with others. He could posit the human position
that a family name and business is not more important
than peace of mind that comes from the belief in the
human birthright of mortal co-existence. He is caught
and killed with Franz suspecting his father and Franz
220
voluntarily going to Russia. The other events could be
essentially the same with Werner being the nephew or if
not the nephew of Von Gerlach at least having human
affinities with the murdered brother. This brother's
presence however pervades the whole atmosphere providing
the structural balance to the philosophy of dominance and
egocentricity. His picture could be on the wall too
with a flashback providing his prediction that his brother
would destroy his most precious possession. This does
happen through the loss of innocence by Franz and his
refusal to yield himself up to his society for punishment
and atonement. The life force of the brother however
prevails in the end for it is his son Werner or his child
in terms of affinity who inherits the business and the
beast passes with Franz. The tape of Franz, still an
indictment on the age and those destroyed by it then tends
to reinforce the strength from on-going creativity which
can and does overcome the forces of destruction in what
ever dimension they operate, physical, spiritual, mental.
It is not a different affirmation from where the events
lead. It is the same.
221
CHAPTER VIII
SUMMARY
I.
Choosing the raw material. The role of
the dramatist at the point of conception.
II. Structuring the prepared material.
Deciding upon the unifier or the highest
energy drive and plotting its path or
its prevailing.
III. The necessity of fidelity of dramatic
correspondence among the various parts.
IV. The nature of tragic conflict. The
assumptions people make and how they
affect their actions. Gradations of
scientifically untenable assumptions and
how they contribute to tragic conflict.
V. The scientific role of the audience as
affirmation of the highest energy drive.
The contemporary relevance of the Greek
and Shakespearean classical tragedies.
VI. The state of the art. The importance of
the study of the art form.
VII. The preservative feature in the highest
form of classical tragedy. Its signif
icance for the survival of this civilization.
222
I, Choosing the raw material. The role of
the dramatist at the point of conception,
Greek tragedians were able to choose their raw
material from the banquet of Homer and English speaking
tragedians from the annals of the British monarchy. The
choice of the raw material is critical to the outcome of
a tragedy as these plays reveal. While a well known story
frees the dramatist from exposition and allows concen
tration upon treatment, it can also adversely affect the
tragic affirmation, or deference to fact may cause
the dramatist to sacrifice the most pure ending. In A Man
For All Seasons, the raw material itself provides a
double affirmation, that of the prevailing of selective
primogeniture or the position held by Henry VIII as well as
the prevailing or the uncorrupted endurance of Sir Thomas
More. The dramatist, in choosing to work within the time
frame of the actual action presents the double affirmation
in dramatic actuality while highlighting one intention
ally. In Murder in the Cathedral the natural historical
climax has already passed when the play begins and de
ference to fact causes the dramatist to sacrifice the
tragic form altogether. In Antigone, because the story
or myth is so well known, it would be almost impossible to
save Antigone's life. In the death of Antigone and Haemon
however, the highest form for tragedy is lost as the thing
of value is destroyed in actuality. The finest raw
material for a tragedy appears to be that where the
dramatist takes little known material and is free to
structure it according to the requirements of the form
itself as in King Lear, Wherever there are events oc
curring before and after the events of the play which are
made known to the audience, a total action or an organic
whole may require that they be included and some confusion
may arise because of it such as happens in Hamlet where the
law of primogeniture prevails through a total action ex
tending beyond the actual events of the play before and
after. Whenever the events of the raw material are so
scientifically untenable that if they were to occur in an
advanced stage, they would herald in the extinction of the
species, such as the extermination processes of the early
1940s in Germany, then the tragedian's responsibility
toward fidelity to a whole and complete universe is more
critical and more painful. Such is the case with The
Condemned of Altona. If such events are to be incorpor
ated, the tragic form cannot be used without going beyond
the actual occurrence.
II. Structuring the prepared material.
Deciding upon the unifier or Highest
energy drive and plotting" its path or
its prevailing.
Having chosen the raw material, the dramatist
224
has to decide exactly what is going to prevail. In cric-?
ical terms this is the play's affirmation. Structurally it
is which energy drive will be dominant or will prevail in
the end. In Antigone there is the political drive of
government or Creon1s edict which he believes is in ’ the
best interest of good governance. Opposed to this is the
energy drive of the primacy of the sibling relationship.
The dramatist must choose. The present life and future
survival of the play can depend upon the choice for one
path is closer to an accepted mode of human conduct than
the other. In King Lear Shakespeare had two choices for a
unifier, primogeniture or government by the most qualified.
Primogeniture prevails in England today titularly and the
most qualified of the candidates, ideally, prevails par
ticularly in England and also in other countries as the
United States, Australia and Canada for instance. The
dramatist could not desert primogeniture and in doing that
he had to sacrifice Cordelia, If he were less bound to
kingship he could have chosen government by the most qual
ified and saved her, It is very clear that he was torn at
the end. The highest form however is sacrificed as Cor
delia or the thing of value is destroyed. In Hamlet
Shakespeare is comparatively free to make primogeniture
prevail as he does or to allow Hamlet to seize back the
throne and then deflect Fortinbras for although the ■
strength of Fortinbras is always present, it prevails in
225
the end through default, It is indeed Hamlet and not
Murder in the Cathedral or A Man for AH'-Seasons which pro
vides the finest model for a character going down or des
troyed in actuality yet remaining true to his beliefs to
the end. As discussed more fully in the section dealing
with human assumptions, Hamlet refuses to pre-judge any
situation or character and refuses to take the law into his
own hands as is the case with so many revenge plays of this
period. Whatever critical interpretations may be given to
this play, structurally, or the way in which the dramatist
has constructed the play, this is perhaps the most reveal
ing of the depth of Shakespeare1s humanity forged as it
is in a political environment of bloodshed and struggle for
power before primogeniture became the political unifier
it has continued to be in England. In A Man for All ' -
Seasons and Murder in the Cathedral, the dramatists could
alter history only at their own risk. In Murder in the
Cathedral while the mystical dimension does contain its own
internal conflict for Thomas, it is divorced from the >
play's action which moves historically through the ac
tivities of mortals, In A Man for All Seasons again
history cannot be ignored. Henry's will prevails his
torically and indeed dramatically yet can the dramatist
strengthen Sir Thomas More and his position so that
critically More's character may appear to overshadow the
plot which has traced this double affirmation structurally.
226
In The Condemned of Altona again the dramatist works to
override the structure. The structural unifier is
economic growth for the ship building business which
survives and flourishes through war or peace but the final
word is given to Franz a victim yet at the same time the
master of his own destiny in that since the end of the war
he has followed his own will alone with utter separation
from his society,
III. The necessity of fidelity of dramatic
correspondence among the various parts.
Tragedy seems to require fidelity of corres
pondence in relationship of language to action and in
relationships of the various dimensions. For instance, in
King Lear, the most structurally perfect of all the plays
discussed, each character's moral position is made very
clear and remains consistent throughout the play. Char
acters are chastened by events but there is an order to
the dramatic universe. The characters portray it, the
language describes it. What is described is what is. In
The Condemned of Altona, that fidelity of correspondence is
non-existent. There is no order to the universe. Mortals
are not held socially accountable and responsible for their
own actions. Political expediency on the part of Von Ger
lach and other periferal influences, render actions non
22 7
revealing of character but only harnessed to a social move
ment of economic growth which is a^moral, The personal
lives of characters are severed from their social and
political lives. There is no code of conduct or even mode
of conduct that succeeding generations could relate to,
Yet the sheer strength of the mind that conceived this
play compels attention from tragedians that follow. These
two plays are the two extremes in the plays studied here.
Hamlet often does not know what to do. Each side or each
potential choice is examined in .detail . Yet it is account
ability and responsibility that define Hamlet's character.
While London is packing its theatres with revenge plays,
Shakespeare's Hamlet presents a character acting according
to the golden rule and because of it inevitably caught in
the flood of a dramatic structure that must eliminate him
because only in changing his character or in being incon
sistent could he survive, Shakespeare might have yielded
to the tastes of his contemporary audience, In doing so he
would have robbed future generations of this great affir
mation of unyielding humanity, Only in The Condemned of
Altona is this lack of fidelity of correspondence so
glaring that it renders the art form itself dramatically
impossible if this infidelity were to become a given.
228
IV, The nature of tragic conflict. The
assumptions people make and how it affects
their actions. Gradations of scientifically
untenable assumptions and how they- contribute
to tragic conflict.
Tragic conflict arises as there is a deviation
from a mean code of conduct which can be scientifically
affirmed by contemporary and succeeding audiences. The
dramatist's structural unifier is an approximation to a
movement in a creative or organic universe. Most of the
deviations occur as a result of the assumptions people
make about the nature of their world and their acting
upon these assumptions. In Antigone Creon assumes
Antigone acts in defiance of his edict. She does not,
In King Lear Gloucester assumes momentarily that his son
Edmund is speaking the truth and his son Edgar desires his
death. This is not the case in actuality. These as
sumptions are deviations from a mean with the dramatist
stressing the mean. Only in Hamlet does Hamlet refuse to
make assumptions about people's actions. This holding off
by Hamlet in his particular situation where to act is much
easier than to not-act, shows a remarkable tolerance of
uncertainty in the interest of seeking the mean or that
path which most closely approximates ideal conduct, In a
certain sense it is affirmation by negation in a struc
tured universe, Hamlet and the audience know that action
constitutes revenge but a civilized society and an ad-
229
vanced civilization cannot condone pre-^ judgement or revenge
This most civilized play structurally and the one from
which most can be learnt in the area of tolerance con
tinues to be critically interpreted in many different
ways, In A Man" for All Seasons all the characters assume
that there is no third way besides divorce or not-divorce
and the tragic plot itself hangs on these two assumptions
which history and the natural sequence of events prove
to be both in error. Here the dramatist does not stress
the organic unifier. In The Condemned of Altona assump’-
tions reach gigantic proportions, Von Gerlach assumes he
has control over the destiny of his children. He does not.
The rabbi is murdered in front of Franz and at this moment
Gerlach!s control is forever lost. He does not realize
it. Franz assumes he can live his life away from his
society. He cannot. In this play there is no clear moral
unifier.
A study of these plays reveals very distin
guishable gradations of scientifically untenable conduct.
Where the unifier is on the mean as in Antigone, King
Lear and Hamlet and contemporary and future audiences
affirm it, the departures or deviations from it define the
magnitude of tragic conflict. Creon is deviating as he
is attempting to take the life of Antigone. He reaches
the maximum deviation when he takes her life and the price
he pays as the pendulum swings the same distance to
230
adjust the imbalance, is the life of his own son Haemon,
Yet is Creon still a human being. He has paid the price anc.
he can continue to live however diminished. King Lear
deviates from the mean when he banishes Cordelia and wishes
her dead. Shakespeare's political dimension is much more
sophisticated than that of the Greeks but personally Lear
pays the price in the loss of her life in actuality.
Audiences can relate to that, understand it and affirm it
in an empirically scientific way as they have done through
the ages as they revive and flock to productions of the
play. Even though the structural reason might remain
unanalyzed, audiences are endlessly fascinated by Hamlet's
refusal to act or to kill, The measure of the tragic
conflict in this play is the distance between the inevitable
force of politically temporal progression and the heart
of that human being who is not protected by law, Hamlet
has no legal recourse and will not violate the dictate of
his own heart which will not allow him to kill except in
self defence. He pays with his life but also Denmark,
his kingdom, reverts back to Norwayv, There is a pol
itical lesson here that would take another paper to ex
plore in terms of potential contemporary relevance. The
rift between church and state that Shakespeare struggles
so desperately to bring into harmony and which is
harmonious for the Greeks, is widened by T.S, Eliot and
taken up by Bolt in A Man for All Seasons who presents
231
two affirmations while still working within a recog
nizable structure in terms of the Greek and Shakespearean
worlds, To the degree that he opposes the king he is
destroyed but this destruction lacks depth because the
depth or the heart of More is structured into the
second affirmation which deals with the imposed criteria of
Roman Catholicism. This is non-organic and the magnitude
of tragic conflict is confined by it. Ultimately it is
not possible to-measure magnitude in The* Condemned of Al
tona because the correspondences lack fidelity and an
eternal unifier is dramatically excluded.
V. The scientific role of the audience as
affirmation of the highest energy drive.
The contemporary relevance'of- the Greek
and Shakespearean classical tragedies.
Tragic conflict takes many forms. The highest
energy drive or that force which is going to prevail in
the end may be codified law as primogeniture in England,
or an accepted dominant mode of conduct as Antigone's
giving burial rights to the dead, or a superimposed code of
conduct adhered to by a certain religious sect, as Sir
Thomas More's allegiance to the canons of Roman Catholicism
or the social force of economic growth which Von Gerlach
alligns himself with in The Condemned of Altona. This
highest energy drive may be accepted or not accepted by an
232
audience. The audience in this sense is the empirical
verification of the degree of truth attained by the pre-
vailing energy drive, If the highest energy drive has
a high degree of ftruth to it, the play survives through
the ages and through the acceptance of succeeding audiences
Even well into ..the 20th century for instance, the bond
between siblings is held sacred and can prevail over a
political edict that is at variance with it, Antigone
is still relevant today. The filial bond appears to be
a so-called universal or an energy drive with eternal
applicability. The fact that scientists have not turned
their attention to it in terms of expanding our knowledge
of this world does not detract from its empirically
scientific potential. In other words it is no misnomer
to say that audience reaction to a particular tragedy is
scientifically affirmable. The art form contains nec
essary characteristics such as the script which does not
vary and accompanying characteristics in terms of pro
duction values that are assessable, It is not at all
impossible to obtain control audiences to experience a
King Lear and a Condemned of Altona and submit to certain
questionaires. These scientific exercises are not nec
essary of course unless one wished to analyze the quality
of our life as it has been captured by the great tragedies
yet are they possible. The canon not to kill is a uni
versal, prevailing from the Greeks to the present day.
233
Most of the imbalances in the great tragedies occur when
one character kills another. In the Greek and Shakes-
pearean tragedies it is the ultimate deviation and when
people respond to these plays it becomes the ultimate
deviation for them too even though their contemporary
world may not affirm it. This is to say that their con
temporary world may be a violent one in terms of killings
that are unapprehended. Yet if an art form reinforces
the sanctity of the individual life existing in an ad
vanced civilization which means within encircling en
vironments of social, political and spiritual dimensions,
it is relevant as an ideal toward which mortals may aspire
in the interest of self preservation where the self also
means the civilization. In this sense the Greek and
Shakespearean tragedies are very relevant today and more
relevant even than The Condemned of Altona which does not
reinforce the idea of an advanced civilization,
VI. The state of the art, The importance of
the study of the art form,
•■■■■*■— ! ...... ' I'. .............. “ i. — -r-1 . ' « ! * 1 - —
What is a very ihteresting phenomenon in the
study of tragedy is the fact that the Shakespearean
tragedies find themselves near perfect examples of the
form that the Greeks wrote' in, that Aristotle analyzed,
and that Shakespeare never studied in all probability,
234
This is a tribute to the scientificality of the form
itself or the scientific accuracy of its potential mimesis
in that it can be relevant and accurate through so many
centuries of the activities of mortals, Might Shakes
peare have benefited from a study of the art form itself
which his own tragedies now are helping to define? Could
Cordelia's life have been saved structurally? Would
Shakespeare have saved it had he known that it could have
meant a nearer perfect tragedy than his already near
perfect tragedy? He aspired to immortality, that we know.
No, Time, thou shalt not boast that I do change?
This I do vow, and this shall ever be;
I will be true, despite thy scythe and thee.
Of all,the plays analysed, it is not until The
Condemned of Altona that the life philosophy of the dram
atist assumes great magnitude and an understanding of the
metaphysics of tragic construction takes on such signific
ance that it is conceivable that the future life of the
art form could depend upon it. From the study of these
plays, a philosophy of tragedy emerges as the science of
being altogether, and it also appears to be the life
philosophy of the tragedians. In other words, if the
life philosophy of the dramatist is not the science of
being altogether, it is unlikely that that dramatist will
write classical tragedies, so closely is the art form
related to human life itself. As mentioned previously,
_______________________ 235
the three early plays iri^the group studied her^■ , Antigone,
King Lear and Hamlet belong inextricably to an organic
universe or an organic whole where the art form is a mic
rocosm capable of being scientifically affirmed to the
extent of mortals' knowledge. In A Man for All Seasons
however, the organic unifier is noted but rejected by the
dramatist. In the interest of the state of the art, one
might ask whether the assumptions which are acted upon
in this play might not be the result of the dramatist's
own philosophy of life? Is Bolt's mimesis for instance,
an organic reflection, a copy of history or a personally
held belief in the primacy of the individual conscience?
However valid any personally held belief may appear to be
in other circumstances, it now appears that only the
science of being altogether can provide the impetus toward
approximation of an eternal unifier necessary to the con
struction of an enduring or classical tragedy. Could
he not have seized upon the organic unifier already in
the raw material had he desired and been able to study
the art form itself structurally? It is to be remembered
at the same time that a structural study of the art form
for a dramatist involves the metaphysics of it which is
helpful although not so absolutely necessary for critical
studies of the finished product. However it is The
Condemned of Altona that poses the greatest threat to the
continued existence of tragedy for in The Condemned of
__________________ 236
Altona there is no organic universe. Now potential tra
gedians must return to Shakespeare and the Greeks and if
they desire to write tragedy, must first create their own
organic philosophy in the shifting seas of the 20th century
and out of this ideal creation, draw the threads of an
organic unifier perhaps staying very close to those values
which are tested survivors,
VII. The preservative feature in the highest
form of classical tragedy.' its sig
nificance for the survival of this"
civilization.
One might of course wonder why anyone should
take such great pains to attempt to reestablish the
stature of any art form least of all tragedy when many
people in the 20th century are revelling in the abandon
ment of the Aristotelian ideals and c oncept of a
structured universe however flexible that structure may be,
There is a preservative feature in tragedy however, that
no other art form is able even’ - ' to approach. Psychologists
in the 20th century have made great advances in studying
the idea of reinforcement in learning. Because of the
nature of its mimesis, tragedy is able to present in mic
rocosm, the activities of mortals and project through the
inevitability of the unifier, a specific conclusion.
Aristotle is not in error when he says that the highest
237
form of tragedy is that where the loss of a thing of
value is apprehended but yet does not take place in ac-
tuality. For Shakespeare, the world itself was in no
imminent danger of extinction and this particular feature
of a tragedy is not of primary importance for him although
as mentioned previously, it is more than a chance state
ment to say that had he studied the art form he might have
given the world a perfect classical tragedy structurally.
In the 20th century however, the extinction of the
iuman;race is imminent and so the role of the tragedian
could take on more epic significance. Dramatists could
engage in the creation of tragedies which deal with those
forces which have the inherent potential of terminating
this civilization, in such a manner that the loss is
apprehended but does not occur in actuality. Such tra
gedies which end or conclude with the preservation of the
thing of value could give a reinforcing momentum to the
human spirit that could stimulate it to struggle creatively
toward that ideal. There is no other art form capable of
dealing with this raw material which now must look beyond
the present into an imaginary future world in which the
human race has managed to creatively encompass philosoph
ically, the scientific knowledge that now includes the
capability of its own total extinction. Thus if future
tragedians can study the art form structurally, meditate
upon the metaphysics of it emotionally and acquire the
______________________ 238.
skill technically, tragedy can be alive and well wherever
people are creative and free,
239
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