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The Dramatic Function Of Comic Elements In Three Shakespearean Love Tragedies
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The Dramatic Function Of Comic Elements In Three Shakespearean Love Tragedies
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This dissertation has been 65-9984
microfilmed exactly as received
SIEGEL, Aaron Howard, 1931-
THE DRAMATIC FUNCTION OF COMIC ELEMENTS I
IN THREE SHAKESPEAREAN LOVE TRAGEDIES.
1
University of Southern California, Ph. D ., 1965 I
Language and Literature, general ?
University Microfilms, Inc., Ann Arbor, Michigan
THE DRAMATIC FUNCTION OF COMIC ELEMENTS
IN THREE SHAKESPEAREAN LOVE TRAGEDIES
by
Aaron Howard Siegel
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
(English)
June 1965
UNIVERSITY O F S O U T H E R N CA LIFO RN IA
T H E GRADUATE SC H O O L
UN IV ER SITY PARK
LOS A N G ELES. CA LIFO RN IA 9 0 0 0 7
This dissertation, written by
.......... Aaron. HQwsj.d.Sisg.e.1. ..........
under the direction of his...~Dissertation Com
mittee, and approved by all its members, has
been presented to and accepted by the Graduate
School, in partial fulfillment of requirements
for the degree of
D O C T O R OF P H I L O S O P H Y
....
Dean
Date Jy-ne,.. 1.9.65.
DISSERTATION COMMITTEE
Chairman
TABLE OF CONTENTS
Page
INTRODUCTION .......................................... .1
Chapter
I. ROMEO AND J U L I E T ...................... 5
II. OTHELLO........................................ 91
III. ANTONY AND CLEOPATRA......................... 152
CONCLUSION.........‘................ 222
BIBLIOGRAPHY.......................................... 237
ii
INTRODUCTION
The present study is an investigation into the "mixed"
form of Shakespearean tragedy. It proceeded from two obser
vations. The first was that Shakespeare had no rigid con
cept of genre. The second was that most Shakespearean
scholars have had something to say about the yoking of
tragic and comic matter in the tragedies, but that few have
actually pursued extensive inductive investigation into the
function of comic matter in individual plays.
When I began my investigation, it was my intention to
develop a theory concerning Shakespeare's use of comic
natter in his tragedies. This proved to be unfeasible. For
cne thing, the tragedies conform to no nice pattern. For
another, the theory of the comic is in itself a large and
complicated subject, upon which many books have been writ
ten. Therefore, I decided to limit my analysis to several
plays. These would be analyzed closely as to sources and
the dramatic functions for which Shakespeare developed comic
matter already in them, or introduced new comic matter which
1
2
he did not find there. The emphasis would be on observable
elements in the plays themselves, inductively considered,
and analyzed as to their importance in the structure of each
play.
The results of my investigation are set forth in the
following pages. Three tragedies written over a period of
thirteen years are its subject matter. These three plays—
Romeo and Juliet (1594), Othello (1604), and Antony and
Cleopatra (1607)— have at least one thing in common: they
all deal with the subject of love. Thus, they represent
ways in which Shakespeare treated this subject in the tragic
mode in the early, middle, and late middle periods in his
career. While I am not concerned to draw parallels between
plays so different, I can hope that my findings will illus
trate aspects of Shakespeare's use of the "mixed" form at
different times in his development as a playwright.
The organization of the three essays is basically the
same. Each begins with a discussion of the author’s narra
tive and dramatic sources for the play under consideration,
with special attention to how Shakespeare changed these
sources. Then there is some notice of theatrical conven
tions prevalent at the time he wrote his play, and consider
ation of how his use of these conventions may have affected
3
the structure of his play. Finally, each essay contains a
detailed analysis of the function of comic elements in the
total structure of the play.
It is necessary to say something about two terms which
occur frequently in the following pages: "comedy" and
"comic relief." The question arises as to whether it is
possible to employ these terms with accuracy without first
elaborating a theory of the comic. I believe that it is.
First, "comedy" will be used in this study to refer to
plays in either the tradition of Latin New Comedy or native
English comedy. A comic "convention" is one which is asso
ciated primarily with stage comedies through the ages, or
with the theatrical comedies of the sixteenth century. If
it occurs in tragedy, it is still a comic convention? and
though it may be transformed to fit the tragic context of
the play, it retains something which is recognizable as
"comic."
As for "comic relief," I had not gone very far in my
investigations before I found that the traditional meaning
of the term is inadequate. The traditional idea of the
comic scene as relief from the tension and pain of the
tragic experience is true so far as it goes, but it is in
adequate as an explanation of the function of comic matter
4
in Shakespearean tragedy. It becomes more satisfactory if
the word "relief" is taken in two senses: as both relief
from pain and implicit comment upon the main action. In the
latter sense it may shadow the tragedy, offering contrast
just as the subordinate figures on a frieze often show the
main action from another point of view, parodying, support
ing, mimicking, or satirizing it. Thus, comic action and
dialogue may make more complex the design of the tragedy.
Finally, there is a tendency for anything which moves-
away from tragic experience to move toward comic experience,
and frequently the comic is simply the reverse of the hero
ic, the idealistic, the dignified. In the following pages
there is analysis not only of the function of character,
scene, and action, but also of dialogue and imagery which
point up the reverse of the grand and tragic. Wit, bawdy
matter, satire, jests, quibbles, and puns are all important
parts of Shakespeare's tragic design. If they act as "re
lief," they may act as statement as well.
CHAPTER I
ROMEO AND JULIET
Except for the chronicle play, Richard III (1593), and
the Senecan melodrama, Titus Andronicus (1594), Romeo and
Juliet (1594-95) is Shakespeare's first tragedy. Here,
instead of the actions of kings and the fall of highborn
personages of myth and history presented in stately lan
guage, the dramatist set forth the love story of a boy and
girl of the lower aristocracy.'*’ Moreover, of the plays
listed as tragedies in the First Folio, Romeo and Juliet is
the first in which Shakespeare attempted to create much
✓
sympathy for his tragic characters. Compared with Titus
and the grotesque Yorkist Richard, the young lovers are
truly tragic characters. The young hero and heroine are
personages who engage our sympathies and whose destruction
we witness with pity and fear, mixed with the perception
H. B. Charlton, Romeo and Juliet. An Experimental
Tragedy (Cambridge, 1949), p. 65.
5
6
that their tragedy is caused by character and fate— though
with too great an admixture of accident.
The play was probably written four years before Julius
Caesar and at least five years before Hamlet and the other
great tragedies. Whether Pollard and Wilson are correct and
Shakespeare's play is a redaction of an unknown dramatist's
play of about 1591, or whether Q1 is simply a highly imper
fect "reported" text of Shakespeare's own work taken direct
ly from Brooke's narrative poem in 1594-95, the play still
significantly bears the marks of the period in which it was
2
written. Shakespeare worked on it shortly after he wrote
his early experimental comedies and history plays, and the
"love-tragedy" belongs to the period of the great romantic
comedy, A Midsummer Night's Dream (1594-95). Romeo and
^See A. W. Pollard and John Dover Wilson, in Times
Literary Supplement. August 14, 1919, p. 434. Most scholars
are agreed that Shakespeare used Brooke's The Traqicall
Hiatorye o£_Romeus_and Juliet (1592). See Robert Adger Law,
"On Shakespeare's Changes of His Source Material in Romeo
and Juliet," University of Texas Bulletin, Studies in Eng
lish, No. 9 (July 8, 1929), pp. 86-102. That there was an
earlier play is evidenced by Brooke's own comment that "I
saw the same argument lately set forth on stage with more
commendation than I can look for" (Arthur Brooke, Romeus
and Juliet, ed. J. J. Munro [New York, 1908], p. xlvi).
However, Law shows that borrowings from Brooke are apparent
in every scene and long speech in the play, and that tabular
compilations of single lines prove Shakespeare's dependence.
7
JulietT containing as it does both marked comic and tragic
matter, presents an intriguing case of Shakespeare's early
experimentation in the tragic mode at a time when he was
perfecting the form of romantic comedy. To this play he
brought many of the elements he had developed in the early
comedies, which accounts for the highly mixed nature of the
play— significantly heterogeneous even in the light of the
limited concept of genre he was to manifest in the later
tragedies.**
It will be necessary to bear in mind throughout this
study that Romeo and Juliet was highly experimental and that
while the comic elements serve important dramatic purposes,
they also pose structural problems, and may well make for
weaknesses in this early tragedy. Taken with the great
element of chance in the play, the comic elements may even
cause it to lack what may be termed " .:he immutable
That Shakespeare had no rigid concept of genre has
become almost a truism of modern criticism. See, for exam
ple, Sir William Henry Hadow, The Use of Comic Episodes in
Traaedv (Oxford, 1915), the English Association Pamphlet 31?
G. Wilson Knight, "Kina Lear and the Comedy of the Gro
tesque," in The Wheel of Fire (New York, 1957); Erich Auer
bach, "The Weary Prince," in Mimesis (New York, 1957); and
Arthur P. Rossiter, Angel with Horns, and Other Shakespear
ean Lectures, ed. Graham Storey (New York, 1961).
8
4
inevitability of tragedy."
A careful inductive analysis of the comic elements in
the play reveals that they function in four principal ways
in relation to the total structure:
1. Comic elements introduce, prepare for, and some
times parody the serious themes and image patterns which
occur, duplicated and deepened, on other levels.
2. Comic elements attenuate the tragic potential in
the play, contributing to a dualistic situation in which the
comic and the romantic seem capable of sliding almost imper
ceptibly into the serious and the tragic. Unlike the effect
of comic matter in Shakespeare's later tragedies, comic
matter here, taken with the romantic tone of the play, con
tinually supports the possibility that things will not end
unhappily; in fact, it constantly revives this hope. The
first two acts in particular, despite the element of doom
established in the Prologue, have a tone not very different
5
from that of comedy. One of the most important questions
^Allardyce Nicoll, Shakespearer An Introduction (New
York, 1952), p. 103.
5H. R. Walley, "Shakespeare's Debt to Marlowe in Romeo
and Juliet/' Philological Quarterly. XXI (July 1942), 258.
Walley points out that Shakespeare's version differs from
Brooke's largely in the events leading up to £he fatal
concerning the dramatic integrity of the play is whether
there is not, indeed, too much comedy for the evocation of
g
tragic effect.
3. Comic elements help to provide (in place of
Brooke's moralistic indictment) a sympathetic feeling for
the young lovers, and a gentle humor which easily slips into
7
pathos. The basic structural phenomenon through which
guarrel in Ill.i. The difference is largely in Shake
speare's introduction of comic and lyrical romantic matter,
which completely alters Brooke's tone and creates sympathy
for the lovers.
6F. M. Dickey, Not Wisely but Too Well: Shakespeare's
Love Tragedies (San Marino, 1957), p. 66. Dickey states
that Romeo and Juliet "remains a comedy for two full acts,
ar very close to half the acting time of the play," and that
"No other tragedy preserves the comic spirit for so long a
time." A view that goes beyond Dickey's is that of J. M.
Nosworthy, in "Two Angry Families of Verona," Shakespeare
Quarterly. Ill, No. 3 (July 1952), 226. Nosworthy argues
that the play contains "tonic imperfections," and that
"There is altogether far more of the trivial and the frivo
lous than any tragedy can hope to carry." He calls the
comic matter a "detrimental obligation" which "disinterested
aesthetic criticism has to face" (p. 225).
^Contrast Shakespeare's depiction of the lovers with
that of Brooke, as stated in his introduction to Romeus and
Juliet, p. Ixvi: "And to this end, good Reader, is this
tragical matter written, to describe unto thee a couple of
unfortunate lovers, thralling themselves to unhonest desire?
neglecting the authority and advice of parents and friends;
conferring their principal counsels with drunken gossips and
superstitious friars (the naturally fit instruments of un
chastity)? attempting all adventures of peril for th' at
taining of their wished lust. ..."
10
Shakespeare accomplishes these ends is the division of
Verona into two different milieux— the world of age and the
world of youth. Each is characterized by its own kind of
irrationality and semi-comic behavior. The difference is
that the world of youth is witty, lyrical, and romantic,
while that of age is (except for Friar Laurence) foolishly
obstinate, pedestrian, and directed by potentially dangerous
conventions. In the world of youth there is a healthy
atmosphere resembling that of Shakespeare's own romantic
comedies.
4. Finally, the comic elements help to provide a
realistic dimension which makes the conventional dramatic
action more life-like. This element of realism, unlike the
more usual effect of comic distancing, creates sympathy for
the young lovers.
The special nature of this play, so unlike Shake
speare's later tragedies, devolves from the fact that in
this, his first effort to write a tragedy with sympathetic
characters in the title roles, he selected a love story as
the basis of his action. Moreover, he made this decision
at a time when he was employing certain dramatic techniques
and themes in his romantic comedies, and when he was strong
ly influenced by Lylean wit and symmetrical balancing of
11
structure, and by Greene’s romantic plot, atmosphere, and
depiction of character. In many ways Romeo and Juliet is
closer to the early romantic comedies than to the later
tragedies.
That a play about love should be conceived of as trag
edy was contrary to the expectations of an audience around
1595. In fact, it is not an exaggeration to say that Shake
speare was, in writing this play, the first English play
wright who "dared to ignore the medieval taboo on the theme
Q
of love in tragedy." His audience would have been "sur
prised and possibly shocked" at seeing lovers taken so ser
iously; for until that time romance had been the stuff of
9
the comic stage. Nevertheless, while Shakespeare was
^Thomas Marc Parrott. Shakespearean Comedy (New York,
1949), p. 198. Charlton, Dickey, and others agree. Narra
tive romances dealing with love had frequently been tragic,
but not plays. In evidence, Dickey (p. 7ff.) makes an ex
haustive study of tragedies in English printed before 1595,
Plays like Medea (1566), Agamemnon (1566), and Hippolytus
(1581), are concerned not with love in the relationship
between man and Woman, but with lust, hatred, and revenge.
Samuel Daniel's Cleonatra (1594) is a stiff Senecan play,
beginning after the death of Antony, and containing long
declamatory speeches, a morality-minded Chorus, and a not
able absence of romance.
^For the many other versions of the story, on and off
stage, see Olin H. Moore, The Legend of Romeo and Juliet
(Columbus, 1950), and Marvin T. Herrick, Italian Comedy in
the Renaissance (Urbana, 1960).
12
making a daring departure and writing a new kind of play in
Romeo and Juliet, he had convention and his audience suffi
ciently in mind to fulfill prevalent expectations, especial
ly in his first two acts. It was a feat to write as a trag
edy a play with so many elements adopted from Plautine and
romantic comedy without a real structural break, and Shake
speare' s innovation may be described as "transcending the
usages of comedy.Again, some have believed that the
effect is not completely successful.
The parallels between Romeo and Juliet. Two Gentlemen
of Verona, Love1s Labor 1s Lost, and A Midsummer Night's
Dream are striking. All have to do with the irrationalities
of love and the obstacles from which the course of true love
is never free. In the early play, The Comedy of Errors
(1591), Shakespeare was already working with the problem of
bringing together the story of incident with its ready
models in Italian drama, and the somewhat shapeless native
play with its elements of romance gathered from hither and
11
yon. In Two Gentlemen of Verona and Love's Labor's Lost
10Charlton, p. 6.
■^See Blaze Odell Bonazza, "A Structural Analysis of
Shakespeare's Early Comedies," unpub. diss. (Univ. of So.
Calif., 1961), pp. 24-25. For development of the comic
13
he continued to develop his powers of plotting and charac
terization, and to gain mastery over language. A Midsummer
Night's Dream and Romeo and Juliet are his highest achieve
ments in romance to this time— the one in comic romance, the
other in tragic.
In an analysis of the nature of love-comedy, R. W. Bone
has said:
In the course of love comedy there is much laughter at
love and sex, much ingenious and burlesque rhetoric for
the amusement of the audience and the cooler characters
of the play. The love play usually contains one or more
commentators who underline the folly of l o v e .
He goes on to note that Romeo and Juliet conforms to this
formula. Moreover, in love comedy there is usually some
obstacle to the course of true love, some irrational law,
person, or other impediment, which the action of the comedy
13
in time reverses. Romeo and Juliet differs from the
romance see Bonazza and Muriel Bradbrook, The Growth and
Structure of Elizabethan Comedy (London, 1955).
l^In the "Introduction" to Two Gentlemen of Verona,
The Arden Shakespeare (London, 1925), p. xxviii.
13Northrop Frye, The Anatomy of Criticism (Princeton,
1957), p. 166. H. Edward Cain, in "Crabbed Age and Youth
in Romeo and Juliet.” Shakespeare Association Bulletin. IX,
No. 1 (October 1934), 186-201, argues that the play is a
variation of the ancient comic theme of "the inability of
crabbed age and youth to understand each other" (p. 186).
Frye notes that the action of comedy works towards the
14
other early love-plays in that the reversal, while it oc
curs, requires the martyrdom of the young lovers. But it is
like other plays of this type in that, while the obstacles
to the achievement of love may vary, the central predicament
in all of them brings to the fore a love-sick and doting
young man, and a courageous, witty, romantically depicted
young woman.
The young hero in these plays is always humorously
portrayed. But whereas in Shakespeare's Plautine farce,
The Comedy of Errors, character was elementary, in his
romantic heroes, Berowne, Proteus, Valentine, Lysander, and
Demetrius, he was approaching fuller development. So, too,
from the shadowy romantic heroine, Luciana, he had gone on
to the more engaging Princess of France, Sylvia, Julia,
Hermia, Helena, and Juliet. Perhaps stimulated by the
romantic heroines of Greene, Shakespeare increasingly
learned to endow his romantic ladies with a quick wit and a
lively intelligence. Each is less comic than her male
establishment of a new social order (p. 166), an order basec
upon the vitality of the younger generation. The marriage
of the hero and heroine symbolizes the promise of fruitful
ness. Tragedy, on the other hand, ends in the death of the
hero and the re-establishment of order and decorum. We
shall see how Shakespeare uses the comic pattern for tragic
purposes.
15
opposite, a tendency Shakespeare would continue in his later
romantic comedies. But in his one effort at tragedy in this
14
lyrical romantic mode, he found it a problem to overcome
the comic characteristics inherent in situation and charac
ter, especially in the character of his hero. The trans
formation of this semi-comic romantic lover into a tragic
hero has been considered so difficult to effect that many
actors have declined to play the part, and many critics have
15
maintained that Romeo never does achieve tragic maturity.
The points of analogy between the plot situations in
these plays are striking. In Love's Labor's Lost the
^The later "love-tragedies," Othello. Antony and Cleo
patra . and Troilus and _Cressida are hardly "romantic" in the
sense that Romeo and Juliet may be called so. For some
striking similarities between Romeo and Juliet and romantic
comedies of the time other than Shakespeare's own plays
(which are discussed below), see Nosworthy's comparisons
with Porter's The Two Angry Women of Abingdon (c. 1590),
and Robert A. Law, "The Shoemakers' Holiday and Romeo and
Juliet." Studies in Philology. XXI (1929), 356-361. Dek-
ker's play was not written until four years after Romeo and
Juliet. but Nosworthy in "Two Angry Families of Verona"
makes a strong case for The Two Angry Women being a possible
source of Shakespeare’s tragedy. All these plays are alike
in their lyrical concept of romantic love, in having in
transigent blocking characters, in tone, minor characters,
and situations.
15See Charlton, p. 225, for example. Charlton main
tains that Romeo's experience of life is too limited for
him to assume tragic stature.
16
obstacle to love is the irrational and unrealistic pact of
the courtiers; in Two Gentlemen of Verona it is Proteus'
desire for a woman he has no right to, an infatuation which
16
breaks the code of friendship and dishonors its victim;
in A Midsummer Night's Dream, in the Jessica-Lorenzo sub
plot of The Merchant of Venice (1595-96), and in the Valen-
tine-Sylvia plot of The Two Gentlemen of Verona, it is the
young woman's father who is the obstacle. Just as Romeo’s
love for Juliet is blocked by the family feud and Juliet's
father, who intends to give his daughter to Paris, so Ly-
sander's love for Hermia is blocked by old Egeus, who in
tends to give his daughter to Demetrius. The Duke in Two
^Stating that "all students of Shakespeare are aware
of the many similarities existing between The Two Gentlemen
of Verona and Romeo and JulietT1 1 Munro cites comparisons:
"Julia is Juliet in comedy; Juliet is Julia with all the
fresh emotions of youth in play, isolated in an unsympathet
ic world which is to crush her. Mercutio . . . probably
came from the lost source, but one element of his character,
his contempt for love, has its counterpart in Valentino,
whose talk with the love-sick Proteus recalls the similar
scenes between Benvolio and Mercutio and Romeo . . (p.
lv). Munro lists two pages of striking comparisons between
the two plays. The subject is also treated by Harry T.
Levin, in "Form and Formality in Romeo and Juliet." Shake
speare Quarterly, XI, No. 1 (Winter 1960), 3-12. In addi
tion to those things mentioned above, Levin cites such
similarities as the locale, a window scene, a friar, a
planned escape by rope ladder, banishment of the young
lover, etc.
17
Gentlemen blocks the love of Valentine for Sylvia, intending
to give his daughter to Thurio. Finally, had Shylock known
of his daughter's attachment to^Lorenzo, he would surely
have prevented her from seeing him, so that Jessica is
17
forced to meet her lover secretly and to elope. Each
father tries to impose his absolute wishes upon his daugh
ter, who faces serious punishment if she fails to obey. The
young man usually has the love of the daughter, but the
enmity, or at least the opposition, of the father; while in
most cases a third young man has the consent of the father
but the scorn of the daughter. Lysander and Romeo are in
parallel predicaments; so are Paris and Demetrius. Hermia
and Lysander decide to go against society by eloping, as do
Romeo and Juliet. Shylock and Capulet do not even know
about their daughters1 lovers until after the weddings.
Furthermore, in all these plays there are similar scenes,
18
characterization, and dialogue.
17
The Merchant of Venice is a good example of how, by
diverse borrowings, Shakespeare might bring in other plots
and thereby create a highly serious effect in a comedy.
IQ
°Paul Vernon Kreider gives an extensive list of par
allels between Romeo and Juliet and the romantic comedies
in The Appendix to Repetition in Shakespeare's Plavs
(Princeton, 1941). An analysis of the parallels between
Shakespeare's tragedy and his most nearly contemporary
18
A basic pattern for these love-stories is to be found
in Roman New Comedy. An analysis of Plautine and Terentian
comedy reveals dozens of parallels to Shakespeare's romantic
comedies and Romeo and Juliet. While there are many vari
ations of the basic story, its outline is clear. A young
man (adulescens) falls in love with and seeks to win a
young girl (vircrens), but is blocked in his efforts by a
19
guardian fsenex) or other relative of the girl. A
typical version occurs in Plautus' Pseudolus and Aulularia.
where the hero is a good-natured if somewhat foolish and
pretentious young man. He is opposed by a father who, in
the structural role of the blocking senex. insists that his
daughter (viraens) marry the man he has chosen for her. In
this comedy, as in Romeo and Juliet and other plays of the
type, the young man is aided by a maidservant (ancilla).
comedy may be found in Samuel B. Hemingway, "The Relation
of A Midsummer Night1 s Dream and Romeo and Juliet." Modern
Language Notes. XXVI (March 1911), 78-80.
■^This plot occurs in fourteen Plautine comedies and
in all six Terentian comedies. George E. Duckworth, The
Nature of Roman Comedy (Princeton, 1952), p. 277ff., discus
ses variants of the basic plot, which will be familiar to
any student of Shakespeare. A comic analogue of the Romeo
and Juliet story is discussed by Winifred Smith, "A Comic
Version of Romeo and Juliet." Modern Philology. VII (October
1909), 217-220.
19
while other young men appear as friends and would-be help
ers, though in serving as foils to the hero, they may point
20
up his folly and distress.
In comedy Shakespeare used the Elizabethan practice of
21
double-plotting to complicate action by blending various
analogous sub-plots having to do with love into one harmon-
22
ious whole. But in Romeo and Juliet he chose to avoid
bringing in sub-plots in order to concentrate on character
and theme. He used the comic convention of sudden falling
out of and in love, but he eschewed the subsequent reversals
which frequently occurred in comedy. The situation in Romec
and Juliet after Act I is as follows: Romeo has loved
Rosaline, but has changed his attachment to Juliet; Paris
loves Juliet, but she loves Romeo. The Rosaline-Romeo and
Paris-Juliet relationships are left in the embryonic stage.
on
Dickey, p. 73, says that Shakespeare developed Mercu
tio from a mere hint in Brooke's poem because he was neces
sary to complete the dramatis personae of the play in the
character of the classical eiron. In Brooke, Mercutio is
mentioned briefly as "one calde Mercutio" who is "courteous
of his speech and pleasant of device."
2J-See William Empson, "Double Plots," in Some Versions
of Pastoral (London, 1950), pp. 27-86.
22Richard Moulton, The Moral System of Shakespeare
(New York, 1903), p. 167.
20
Had Shakespeare brought Rosaline on, as he did Helena, and
had she returned Romeo's love, he would obviously have
altered the nature of his play. But he built tragic effect
by forgetting Rosaline once Romeo fell out of love with her,
making Paris but a shadow and a foil for Romeo, and by con
centrating all his attention upon the love of Romeo and
Juliet, with its ill-fated opposition to the social code of
the elders.
Of equal importance with plot and character types in a
study of the nature of Romeo and Juliet is the language of
the play, so different from that of any other Shakespearean
tragedy. The language of Romeo and Juliet, highly lyrical
yet reaching toward tragic effect, has caused considerable
perplexity. There is what Clemen has called the "co-exist
ence of two styles"— the patterned lyrical romantic and
23
comic, and the naturalistic serious. Shakespeare seems
^^WoIfgang H. Clemen, The Development of Shakespeare's
Imagery (London, 1953), p. 63. On the first, W. H. Auden,
in his "Commentary on the Poetry and Tragedy of Romeo and
Juliet," in the Laurel Shakespeare Romeo and Juliet (New
York, 1958), says: "In so far as Shakespeare intended to
present a highly polished artificial and leisured society,
he succeeds admirably. The trouble is that the play is a
tragedy, not a comedy, and there are occasions upon which
the use of such language seems to be out of place" (p. 25).
21
to be looking at the language of his early comedies and
"assessing its possibilities with a genially critical
24
eye." He may, in fact, be parodying his own language and
contrivances of plot in this play in the "Pyramus and
Thisbe" episode of the play he may have written next. In
the Queen Mab speech, he shows that the "faery" element and
lyrical flights of the imagination were on his mind when he
25
wrote his tragedy. All editors of the text seem to agree
that there is considerable influence of the Lodge-Greene
26
school in Ql, and it still seems to be evident in Q2.
There is also a strong element of Lylean lyricism and eu-
27
phuism, especially in the first two acts.
Ifor Evans, The Language of Shakespeare's Plays
(Bloomington, 1952), p. 57.
^Edmund k . Chambers, William Shakespeare; A Study of
Facts and Problems I (Oxford, 1930), p. 345. For an analy
sis of possible structural function of the Queen Mab speech,
see below, p. 48. Alfred Harbage, A Reader1s Guide to
Shakespeare (New York, 1963), p. 104, gives 1595 as the date
of Romeo and Juliet, thus making improbable any parody of
the play in A Midsummer Night's Dream. For the view that
there is no parody of Romeo and Juliet in A Midsummer
Night's Dream, see George Lyman Kittredge, The Complete
Works of Shakespeare (Boston and New York, 1936), p. 100.
All references to the text in this paper are to Kittredge1s
edition.
^See Chambers, pp. 345-346.
^This subject, like others on this page, will be
22
Moreover, in the verse of the play there is an imposing
quantity of the cross-rhymed, balanced, symmetrical, affect-
28
ed style of the love comedies. If the language of Romeo
and Juliet frequently in the first two acts and not infre
quently thereafter tends to sound like parody of the sonnet-
29
eers, it is perhaps because "the formal quality of the
comedy is reflected in the extensive use of rhymed verse,
which may be compared in formality with the Euphuistic prose
30
periods." The sonnet form itself is used for the Prologue
at the beginning of Acts I and II, and in Romeo and Juliet's
first meeting in the masked ball scene; a form very close
to it is found in Lady Capulet's description of Paris in six
neatly enclosed couplets (I.iii.83-94), and in various
31
speeches of Old Capulet. The lyrical rhymed speeches of
treated in detail below. An obvious parody of euphuism oc
curs in the speech of the servant who delivers Capulet's
invitation to the masked ball, discussed by M. P. Tilley, in
"A Parody of Euuhues in Romeo and Juliet." Modern Language
Notesj XLI (January 1926), 1-8. See below, p. 45.
^®John W. Draper, "Patterns of Style in Romeo and
Julietj" Studia Neophilolocrica. XXI (1948), 198.
O Q
Evans, p. 55.
•^Milton Crane, Shakespeare's Prose (Chicago, 1951),
p. 131.
•^■For example, his elaborate conventionally spun out
1
23
the young lovers recall the sonnets of Armado to Jaquenetta
in Love's Labor's Lost. Longaville's sonnet, and other for-
mal declarations of love in the romantic comedies. If
lyricism in Shakespeare is by no means necessarily comic,
still comedy certainly set the pattern of courtship, as
32
formally embodied in a dance. Comic, romantic, and for
malistic features and overtones are greatly in evidence in
Romeo and Juliet. J
!
I
There has been general agreement that the first two i
j
acts of Romeo and Juliet contain considerable comic matter, j
i
and that beginning with Ill.i there is a strong and consis- j
tent impetus toward tragedy. It has been said, with some
exaggeration, that the play "remains a comedy for two full
acts, or very close to half the acting time of the play,"
and that "No other tragedy preserves the comic spirit for so
33
long a time." While some critics maintain there is an
figure when he finds Juliet weeping in III.v: "In one lit
tle body/ Thou counterfeit'st a bark, a sea, a wind./ For
still thy eyes, which I may call the sea,/ Do ebb and flow
with tears; the bark thy body is . . ." etc.
■^Levin, p. 6. Levin shows the close relationship be
tween comedy and courtship, and between formal balance,
symmetry, and pairing in verse, characterization, and comic
plotting.
^Dickey, p. 66.
24
important change in tone from the balcony scene onward— thus
34
moving the change toward tragedy back to II.ii — comic mat
ter does occur until Act V.
But since tragic potential is never absent even in
scenes having some comic effect, it may be well to cite
first, before making a close inductive analysis of the ef
fect of comic and serious counterpoint in the structure of
the play, the obvious hints of tragedy which occur from the
start.
The structural supports of the over-all tragic action
before III.i. are as follows: (1) the Prologue, with its
portents; (2) the fiery character of Tybalt, who is far more
35
ominous in Shakespeare than in Brooke; (3) the forebodings
36
of the lovers themselves; (4) the apprehension of Friar
34
Clemen, p. 64.
^^In Brooke, Tybalt is merely a structural device,
necessary to bring about the banishment of Romeo, and he
does not appear until the duel with Romeo. However, in
Shakespeare's play, Tybalt is used to build suspense. He
appears in the first scene of the play to challenge Benvolic
(I.i.59-65), recognizes Romeo at the masked ball and wishes
to challenge him (I.v.51-90), and challenges Romeo to a duel
even before they meet (II.iv.6-7).
•^Romeo's words before the ball: "... my mind mis
gives/ Some consequence yet hanging in the stars" which may
lead to "some vile forfeit of untimely death" (I.iv.106-107
and 111); Juliet's "My only love sprung from my only hate"
25
37
Laurence; and (5) the imagery, especially that of light
and darkness, which keeps constantly to the fore the ambi
guous nature of the situation, the dark and the light con-
38
stantly accentuating each other.
From the first scene of the play Shakespeare employs a
comic technique which he had developed in his romances: the
introduction of matter comically which is shortly to occur
in a serious vein. One of the structural devices he had
learned by this time was the balancing of aristocratic
(I.v.136), and, in the balcony scene, "I have no joy of this
contract tonight" (II ,ii.117ff.).
0 7
^'"Wisely and slow; they stumble that run fast" (II.
iii.94), and "These violent delights have violent ends" (II.
vi.9). __
38Caroline F. E. Spurgeon, Shakespeare's Imagery and
What It Tells Us (Boston, 1958), pp. 310-315. "The dominat
ing image is light, every form and manifestation of it: the
sun, moon, stars, fire, lightning, the flash of gunpowder,
and the reflected light of beauty and of love; while by con
trast we have night, darkness, clouds, rain, mist and smoke"
(p. 310). There is a double ambiguity in the early acts in
that the day is, oddly enough, the time of danger, while the
night is the time of love and beauty. Francis Ferguson, in
his General Introduction to the Laurel Shakespeare Romeo and
Juliet, p. 9, says: "Scenes in the still sunny streets,
where the feud breeds in the hot blood of Tybalt and Mercu-
tio, alternate with scenes of starry night or earliest dawn
when the lovers steal their moments of 'extreme sweet.'"
The light imagery may be another connection between Romeo
and Juliet and A Midsummer Night's Dream. In the romantic
comedy the dominant image, the moon, occurs twenty-seven
times.
26
characters with characters drawn from low life and presentee
39
m a comic, and even farcical, way. In order to employ
this technique in Romeo and Juliet, it was necessary for hiit.
to create comic characters that he did not find in his
source. It is some measure of the importance he placed
upon comic elements in this play that his chief divergences
40
from Brooke are in the invention of comic characters.
Since Shakespeare's "low" characters speak in prose, Romeo
and Juliet is the first of the tragedies in which prose
41
plays an important part. Thus, the effect of balancing
"low" and "high" characters is accentuated by the balancing
^Bonazza, p. 156ff. Bonazza shows how the experience
Shakespeare gained in his early comedies taught him to blenc
diverse elements into one harmonious whole in A Midsummer
Night's Dream. Romeo and Juliet is Shakespeare's other
structural success along these lines to 1595.
40Law, "On Shakespeare's Changes of His Source Materia]
in Romeo and Juliet/1 shows through a careful analysis that
Shakespeare's chief divergence from Brooke is in his crea
tion of comic characters. While the Nurse is fairly well
developed in the poem (she is, in fact, one of Brooke's
chief additions to his sources), Shakespeare created Mercu-
tio, Benvolio, and all the "low" comics, except for Peter.
However, in Brooke Peter is Romeo's servant, playing the
part of Balthazar of-the play. By making Peter the Nurse's
man, and giving the part to Will Kempe, Shakespeare devised
a wonderfully comic situation. That Kempe played the part
of Peter is known from a stage direction in Ql.
41Crane, p. 414.
27
of prose and verse— though, obviously, all verse and prose
42
m the play are not cut out of the same fabric.
The juxtaposition of the dark Prologue and the first
eighty lines of the play suggests the counterpoint which
will exist throughout. The first scene— opening with comic
preparation for the feud between the families— may be con
trasted with the heavy-handed expository presentation of
Veronese society in alexandrines with which Brooke opens
his poem. As opposed to the Prologue, "the opening curtain
43
is extravagantly comic," so that the audience must from
the start hold in mind at once the gloomy prophecy and the
hope which comedy here holds out. The prince's heavy
speech (I.i.88-110) comes hard upon both the comic mix-up
of the servants and the dangerous duel of Benvolio and
Tybalt. Thus the audience is surprised by the comic scene
AO
Contrast, for example, the language of the servants
with that of Mercutio. The Queen Mab speech, however, may
have been in verse in Shakespeare's intended version. Ql
prints it in blank verse, but in the three subsequent quar
tos and in the Polio, it is in prose. See J. Malone, "The
Queen Mab Speech in Prose in the Folio," Notes and Queries.
XC (October 13, 1894), 282-283. Malone maintains that the
speech was intended to be in prose and that "the change frorr
verse to prose is a subtle means of indicating the humorous
and eccentric character of the prose speaker" (p. 282).
^Dickey, p. 73.
28 .
and warned at once of the two poles between which it will
44
have to move. It may find the feud irrational, but it is
45
aware of the dangers inherent in it; the prince's heavy
speech (I.i.88-110) comes as the portentous climax of both
the comic mix-up of the servants and the dangerous duel of
the gallants.
The nature of the servants 1 language— a mixture of
46
boastful jibes, foolishness, and sexual puns sets the tone
for much that will come after in the language of the nobles,
and directly prepares for the blustering and foolishness of
Capulet and Montague in the next segment of the very same
scene, where the elders will be just as ineffectual. The
sexual punning of the servants establishes the pattern of
^Crane, p. 138. Crane probably goes too far in claim
ing that the Clowns reduce the feud to absurdity. The audi
ence has been warned of the tragic potential by the Pro
logue .
^Crane does note that ultimately there will be a
deadly parallel between the brawling of the servants and
the aristocratic swashbuckling of Tybalt.
46Allardyce Nicoll, British Drama, A Survey (London,
1949), p. 107,_speaks of "the cheap vaudeville puns of
Romeo and Juliet." The device of a punning match was de
veloped in the romantic comedies. See, for example, the
matches in Two Gentlemen of Verona between Launce and Speed
(II.v.1-63; III.i.280-382).
29
bantering and quibbling which will, in the language of Mer-
cutio and Benvolio, satirize and control the romantic
idealism of the lovers. Moreover, the punning here intro
duces the matter of precipitancy, as well as the implicit
relationship in the play between the climax of dueling and
the sexual act.
Sam. I strike quickly, being moved.
Gre. But thou art not quickly moved to strike.
Sam. A dog of the house of Montague moves me.
Gre. To move is to stir, and to be valiant is to
stand: therefore, if thou art moved, thou
runn'st away.
Sam. A dog of that house shall move me to stand:
I will take the wall of any man or maid of
Montague1s.
Gre. That shows thee a weak slave; for the weak
est goes to the wall.
Sam. 'Tis true; and therefore women, being the
weaker vessels, are ever thrust to the wall:
therefore I will push Montague's men from the
wall and thrust his maids to the wall.
Gre. The quarrel is between our masters and us
their men.
Sam. 'Tis all one, I will show myself a tyrant:
when I have fought with the men, I will be
cruel with the maids; I will cut off their
heads.
Gre. The heads of the maids?
Sam. Ay, the heads of the maids, or their maiden
heads; take it in what sense thou wilt.
Gre. They must take it in sense that feel it.
Sam. Me they shall feel while I am able to stand:
and 'tis known I am a pretty piece of flesh.
(I.i.5-26)
Both conflict between men and the subjugation of woman by
man are explicit here, and we have the first suggestion of
30
that series of remarks relating love and death, to be taken
up in the same scene with Juliet's remark upon seeing Romeo:
"If he be married,/ My grave is like to be my wedding bed"
(I.v.132-133). That women, "being the weaker vessels, are
ever thrust to the wall," will in a tragic sense be proved
by Juliet's fate; or, as Friar Laurence will say at another
comic moment, when he learns of Romeo's sudden falling out
of love with Rosaline and his new infatuation with Juliet,
"Women may fall when there's no strength in men" (Il.iii.
80). So, too, the matter of "maidenheads," introduced here
comically, and to be related serio-comically to the implicit
jests on the verb "to die," will be elevated gradually to a
tragic plane.
The belief that Shakespeare understood the technique
of introducing an image or theme on one level to reiterate
it with variations on others only in the later plays is
47
erroneous. Images and themes stated in the very first
^Ludwig Borinski, "Shakespeare's Comic Prose," Shake
speare Survey. VIII (1955), 57-68, finds the early plays
immature, maintaining that in the later plays "even his
puns and quibbles and riddling dialogue are not merely
traditional or concessions to the vulgar, but are evolved
only gradually as a further means of creating his atmos
phere." M. M. Mahood, Shakespeare's Wordplay (London.
1957), p. 56, takes an opposite view, and one more congenial
to the findings of the present essay. Not only does she
31
scene of Romeo and Juliet create both an atmosphere and a
frame of reference for much of what is to come— and much of
what comes later will add a dimension to and deepen what
preceded it. Moreover, this early comic scene, coming as
it does just after the ominous Prologue and just before the
serious quarrel between Benvolio and Tybalt (which, inci
dentally, anticipates the partly comic meeting of the eld
ers) establishes .the seemingly rhythmic relationship of
serious and comic matter which exists certainly in the first
two acts, and to a lesser extent in the last three. An
atmosphere of humor and hope is established which is in
constant tension with the unfortunate and serious matter.
Although they are treated comically in the first eighty
lines, the themes of anger and submission to force are also
introduced, to be taken up directly in the duel later in
the same scene as well as in those of Ill.i and V.iii, and
indirectly in the themes of the play. In the very first
line of the play, Sampson vows that he and Gregory will not
"carry coals," thus establishing a note of intransigence.
Gregory's retort that then they "should be colliers" brings
find over 175 puns and quibbles in Romeo and Juliet, but
she states that "by proleptic second and third meanings"
they serve to "sharpen the play’s dramatic irony."
32
Sampson's clarification that he meant "choler," which may
also be a reference to the fact that colliers were known fox
playing tricks (I.i.1-3). In fact, the servants do play a
trick almost at once in challenging their Montague counter
parts when they have seen help coming, thus establishing
that pattern of the shadowing of serious matters by comic
which will be taken up in the servants' smuggling in of
their girl friends in the ball scene, in the Nurse's trick
ing of Capulet to aid Juliet, and so on. But most impor
tant, the subject of anger and hot-headedness is broached
at once in the quadruple pun ending with Gregory's remark,
"Ay, while you live, draw your neck out o' the collar" (4).
48
The effort to be free of the "collar," or halter, will be
important throughout the play, just as will the subject
introduced by the quick succession of puns which follows,
having to do with "standing" or "running" from a quarrel.
The question of honor will be crucial at the ball and in
the street-scene which opens the third act. The taunting
of Abraham and Balthasar by their Capulet counterparts pre
pares for the serious taunting of Benvolio by Tybalt (I.i.
^®G. B. Harrison notes that puns on "collier," "chol-
er," and "collar" are common. (Shakespearer The Complete
Works [New York, 1952], p. 474.)
33
59-65), and, again, of Mercutio by Tybalt (III .i .33-62) .
At the same time, in the early part of the play comic
matter contributes to the realistic dimension (as distin
guished from the conventional plot), and sets up a control
ling element for the idealism of young love, soon to be in
troduced. The humorous interchange between the servants
introduces the sexual element. Sampson’s avowal that he is
"a pretty piece of flesh" (I.i.26) brings Gregory's retort,
"'Tis well thou art not fish" (27). His pun, of course,
involves the usual Elizabethan allusion to a girl viewed
49
only as a sex object— probably a whore. Gregory's remark
anticipates Mercutio's jibe when he sees Romeo arrive "With
out his roe, like a dried herring": "Oh, flesh, flesh, how
art thou fishified" (III.lv.34-35). Here the same jest is
used— but now by a gallant and wit— to imply mockingly that
50
Romeo's love is the mere pursuit of sexual desires.
49See Eric Partridge, Shakespeare's Bawdy (New York,
1955), p. 113. Partridge uses this passage as his example
of the bawdy use of "fish."
->°For further comments on the use of piscatorial (and
also nautical imagery), see below, p. 55. Nautical image
patterns, introduced in comic contexts, are later used to
express the relationship between Romeo and Juliet, illus
trating again how related images operate on different lev
els, giving a sense of complexity and multiplicity.
34
Again, Gregory's bawdy double-entendreT "Draw thy tool" (I.
i.28), coming at the end of dialogue with sexual inferences,
anticipates and will be echoed in Peter‘s reply to the Nurse
that he saw no man use her at his pleasure, else "my weapon
should quickly have been out" (II.iv.141-142). In the last
two instances, not only does comic dialogue shadow and con
trol romantic idealism, but it helps to create the environ
ment for the serious duels to come. Antagonistic statements
on a comic level containing references to dueling will be
elevated to a serious plane in Tybalt's opening remark to
Benvolio in Act I— a remark in which the pattern of puns is
continued: "What, art thou drawn among these heartless
hinds?" (I.i.73). Here "hind" can mean either "servant" or
"female deer," and "heartless" implies either cowardly or
51
without harts, and Tybalt's use of "drawn," therefore,
has sexual overtones resembling those of Gregory's and
Peter’s bawdy remarks. The device of introducing quarrels
with witticisms and puns will be carried into the fatal
confrontation between Mercutio and Tybalt in Act III.
This detailed analysis of the first eighty lines brings:
5^-This reading of Tybalt's line is suggested by Harri
son on p. 475.
----
35
us to the entrance of the citizens, among them Capulet (in
i
52
his gown!) and Montague, the conventional heads of conven-
53
tionally feuding families. Their entrance and quarrel, as
I have suggested, repeats on a major scale what has already
been prepared for on a minor; in fact, the quarrel between
the elders is seen to be not qualitatively different from
that of their servants. Capulet in his dressing gown and
calling for his long sword (itself an archaic weapon, and
having the same comic connotations as Tybalt1s Italianate
dueling techniques) is immediately mocked by Lady Capulet's
i
realistic "A crutch, a crutch! why call you for a sword?"
(69). His menacing attitude, like that of the servants, is
j
obviously sheer bluster which he is incapable of backing up.
Montague is restrained by his wife— doubtless for his own
protection. The menacing attitudes of the family heads,
52
L. W. Miles, "Shakespeare's Old Men," English Liter
ary History, VII (December 1940), 28, notes that,Capulet's
entrance in "the least romantic of clothing" to bluster
foolishly sets the tone for the depiction of him throughout
the play. However, as I shall show, he is not all comic.
Ferguson, in his Introduction to the Laurel edition, says:
"The Capulets are such parents as we all know: doting,
apprehensive, always doing the wrong thing with the best
intentions" (p. 13).
similar family feud is found in Porter's comedy,
The Two Anary Women of Abingdon, which Nosworthy considers
a strong possible source for Shakespeare's play.
36
then, are as ineffectual as those of their servants, and
represent a series of gestures which have lost the meaning
which once imbued them.
Thus, while the Montague-Capulet world is potentially
dangerous— especially in that it may breed choleric young
men like Tybalt— it is also held up to gentle ridicule.
For it is a world of exaggerated and extravagant speech and
incongruous action. The easy dispersal of the crowd to the
popular English cry of "Clubs, bills and partisans 1" (66)
and "Down with the Capulets 1 down with the Montagues" (67)
creates the air of a street brawl, and one critic has gone
so far as to argue that there is "more horseplay than sword-
54
play" in this scene. But though this brawl may seem like
horseplay, in Ill.i its continuation will bring death to
Tybalt and Mercutio. That which starts as a brawl ends in
death.
The first street scene sets the tone for subsequent
ones, presenting a strife-filled world— held in delicate
balance by the appropriately named Escalus— into which the
conventionally romantic love of Romeo (as artificial and
exaggerated as the quarrel of the servants and elders) is
Dickey, p. 73.
37
introduced. The stylization, the constant pairing and
counter-balancing, creates an ambiguous tone which will be
carried forth first in the characterization of Romeo as a
comic lover, and then, on other levels, in the relationship
55 ^
of the title characters themselves. There is something
mechanical in the actions of the elders which will have a
comic dimension, in the Bergsonian sense, until they become
harmful; a humorous note will persist in the case of the
young lovers which decreases in direct proportion to the
56
danger to them. In Ill.i there will be a crisscross of
emphasis from comedy to tragedy, but comic elements will
^Levin, p. 8ff., elaborates upon the pattern of dupli
cation .
56Cf. Henri Bergson, Laughter. trans. Cloudsley Brereton
and Fred Rothwell (London, 1921), p. 49, has some remarks
on- the comic which bear upon the humorous dimension of the
Capulets. Bergson says that we smile when we perceive "any
thing inert or stereotyped, or simple ready-made, on the
surface of living society. There we have rigidity . . .
clashing with the inner suppleness of life." This aspect of
the comic— "something mechanical encrusted upon the living"
— helps to explain the comic aspect of this sort of rela
tionship between parents and children. However, as Aris
totle points out, something humorous no longer evokes the
emotions proper to comedy when that thing causes pain or
becomes harmful. This explains why the lovers cease to be
viewed humorously when they are in real danger, and why our
humorous attitude toward the elders is tempered by our know
ledge of the threat to normality that they pose. (See the
"Poetics," in The Basic Works of Aristotle, ed. Richard
McKeon (New York, 1941), p. 1459.)
38
continue even into the last act.
Still, not the true sentiments of Romeo and Juliet, nor
the opposition of the elders will change this world. At the
ball, we shall see even old Capulet maintain decorum and a
sense of hospitality toward a member of a rival house, and
he observes in the same scene that it ought not to be diffi
cult "For men so old as we to keep the peace" (I.ii.3),
while Paris rejoins in the spirit of conciliation that
"pity 'tis you lived at odds so long" (4-5). The young men
crash the ball and the lovers cast aside the entire history
of the feud with the simple question, "What's in a name?"
It will be Tybalt, and not the young lovers, who breaks the
easy, assumed conventionality of this world. Shakespeare
did not employ him solely to dispose of Mercutio, so that
the genial spirit would be dispensed with and there could
57
be tragedy, as Dryden believed. Tybalt is the only char
acter of either house who takes the feud entirely seriously,
58
and the only one at whom we never smile. Like the young
^ Essavs of John Drvden. ed. W. P. Ker (Oxford, 1926),
I, 174. "Shakespeare showed the best of his skill (at por
traying a gentleman) in his Mercutio; and he said himself,
that he was forced to kill him in the third act, to prevent
being killed by him."
^®However, his posturings seem absurd to Mercutio:
39
lovers he inherits the feud of the older generation; like
the lovers, he, too, pays for the sins of his elders.
But tragedy is built very slowly in this play, and the
characters and situations of the title characters at the
beginning seem hardly to presage tragic events to come.
Romeo in particular, in the first act, is in an exceedingly
difficult position for a character who is to be a tragic
hero. He seems to be caught in the mixed and even crossed
purposes of the playwright, who was still working with comic
material, though he was trying to transform it into tragedy.
Romeo's emotions will transform before our eyes from
infatuation to fatal love. However, at the beginning of the
Ben. Why, what is Tybalt?
Mgr. More than Prince of Cats, I can tell you. Oh,
he's the courageous captain of compliments.
He fights as you sing prick songs, keeps time,
distance, and proportion . . . (II.iv.17-20)
Again, Mercutio sees him as one of the "antic, lisping,
affecting fantasticoes" (26), and as one of "these strange
flies, these fashion-mongers, these pardonnez-mois" (30-31).
"0, their bons. their bons." he says in irritation (32).
Significantly, the jibes carry over into his remarks to Ro-'
neo: "Signior Romeo, bon ~iour 1 there's a French salutation
to your French slop" (40-41). Moreover, that which begins
as humorous,.here as elsewhere in this play, may turn into
its reverse, as when Mercutio will taunt his "Good king of
cats" (III.i.72), desiring one of his nine lives, whereupon
the object of his jests will end up destroying him. Strik
ingly similar satire of dueling by the book is to be found
in Porter's Two Anarv Women (II.iv.21-24).
40
play, while Shakespeare was grooming him to be a tragic
figure, he imbued him with certain characteristics which
appear regularly in the heroes of the comic romances. Romeo
seems to be a composite of several stock types, and while it
is difficult to sort out the most salient characteristics of
each— since they derive from such diverse sources-— it is
possible to enumerate the types to which he bears strong
resemblances: (1) the hyperbolic Petrarchan lover in the
59
tradition of fine amor. (2) the Euphuistic wit and gallant
of Lylean prose and drama, (3) the foolish adolescent lover
of romance, (4) the naive but good-natured son of Latin
comedy, (5) the melancholic lover of Renaissance psycholo-
6 0
gy, and (6) the distracted lover of the Latin "characters"
6 X
and "ages of man" traditions.
C Q
“^William G. Meader, Courtship in Shakespeare: Its
Relation to the Tradition of Love (New York, 1954), pp. 93-
94. Meader sees Rosaline as the love-object in the game of
fine amor, and Romeo's disease as "quite clearly artifi
cial"; he loves because "he feels he should be in love with
someone.1 1
^Lawrence Babb, The Elizabethan Maladv: A Study of
Melancholy in English Literature from 1580-1642 (Michigan,
1951), p. 170, lists the symptoms. Dickey, p. 76ff., notes
the comical aspects of the disease.
f t 1
OJ,See, for example, Jaques' speech in As You Lxke It
(II.vii.147-148). Romeo is "the lover,/ Sighing like fur
nace, with a woeful ballad/ Made to his mistress' eyebrow."
41 i
I
Until I.v Romeo is largely a fit subject for the wit |
i
of his cousin and Mercutio, and again it may be maintained I
|
that he never really achieves the stature of a true tragic j
I
hero. Certainly there is evidence, such as his absurd per
formance in Friar Laurence's cell after he slays Tybalt,
f
that he retains traces of his former immature self. How- j
i
i
ever, what may be said with certainty at this point is that j
in his role of innamorato he well deserves the witty darts
of Mercutio, just as Proteus, the King of Navarre, and other
62 I
lovers in the romances are just objects of wit. In mannerj
i
i
and dress he has the symptoms of Shakespeare's Orlando, and j
i
j
he constantly interrupts his "foolish imaginings" with such j
6 3 ' '
irrelevant remarks as "Where shall we dine?" (I.i.166).
He indulges in adolescent self-righteousness, smugness, and j
i
a predisposition to enjoy his own sorrow. When we first seej
him, he has beeri "posing before the mirror of his own self-
consciousness, with tears and sighs and early morning walks
See Mercutio's jibes in II.i.
62paran ei situations may be found in Two Gentlemen of
Verona (I.i.1-60; II.iv.125-150), and Love's Labor's Lost
(IV.iii.20-285).
^ r . W. Bond (p. 69) notes that Proteus and the love
sick Valentine are presented by the same comic devices.
42
64
and an affectation of solitude and the humorous night."
His going off by himself to apostrophize his beloved is like
the actions of the courtiers who bemoan their conditions in
Love1s Labor 1s Lost. He has the comical conceit of the
young lover who assumes that he alone has known the torments
of love. The fickleness of his attachment to Rosaline
parallels that of Proteus, who falls quickly out of love
with Julia and in love with Sylvia; Romeo's vows of eternal
love for Rosaline are to be compared with Proteus’ similar
65
vows upon leaving Julia, shortly before he meets Sylvia.
But Romeo conforms to the depiction of the young lover
of tradition in still another, and redeeming, way. This
character type is usually portrayed sympathetically. This
explains in part the function of the satirical but affec
tionate jibes of Mercutio. He fulfills the role of the
classical eiron, the scoffer at false values, but he does
this as one who sees the merits in Romeo and accepts him
warmly. Moreover, Romeo is like other conventional lovers
64Chambers, p. 71.
sudden falling out of love with one person and into
love with another was a conventional device in comedy. See,
for example, Two Gentlemen of Verona (II.iv.192-214 and II.
vi.1-43); also A Midsummer Night's Dream (II.ii.88-144 and
III.ii.122-344).
43
in being fully conscious, in his love for Rosaline, of the
disadvantages of his position. (Note Romeo's remark that
he can read "mine own fortune in my misery"— I.ii.57).
Thus, while he cannot extricate himself, and while he is
clearly humorous, he is not repellent. What will be of
special importance in his case is the extent to which he is
transformed before our eyes from the stereotyped romantic
hero into a fairly complex figure who is capable of a fatal
love.
Romeo's language helps to set the tone for things to
come. The formal quality of his speech not only recalls
the sonnets of an Armado for a Jaquenetta, but establishes
a milieu out of which the entire tragedy must develop.
Romeo speaks in the idiom of the sonneteers, a pattern of
speech which will be continued after the play has taken a
66
serious turn. So, too, Romeo and Juliet join in a lyrical
^Shakespeare succeeds so well in imitating the lan
guage of the Petrarchists that in two passages Romeo's sim
iles coincide with those of his enamoured counterpart in
Luigi Groto's tragedy, Adriana (1578), which was also in
spired by the story of Romeo and Juliet. See Mario Praz,
"Shakespeare's Italy," Shakespeare Survey. VII (1954), 101.
Praz states that in Romeo's concetti. "much more than in
Shakespeare's sonnets, we find the influence of the conven
tional tropes of the flamboyant sonneteers." While Praz is
not concerned to show satirical intention, its presence
cannot be denied.
44
sonnet upon their first meeting, and speak in conventionally
balanced and rhapsodic patterns in the balcony and aubade
scenes. While the use of oxymoron ("0 brawling love! 0
loving hate! . . . O heavy lightness I Serious vanity! . . .
67
Feather of lead, bright smoke, cold fire, sick health*.")
and of hyperbolic and conventionally elaborated figures
6 8
("Love is a smoke raised with the fume of sighs") is com
ical and apparent in the early scenes, it by no means van
ishes thereafter. It is found, for example, in Juliet's
non-comic speech upon learning that Romeo has slain Tybalt
(III.ii.73-84), in Romeo's hyperbolic lamentations in Friar
i
Laurence's cell (Ill.iii), and in Capulet's rhetorical com-
ments on Juliet's tears (III,v.127-138) and his non-comic
remarks upon her supposed death (IV.v.35-40).
The technique for bringing the lovers together is a
traditional comic device. Delivering a letter to the wrong
party had occurred in Love's Labor's Lost. where Costard
delivered Armado's epistle to Rosaline by mistake; so, too,
in the same play, Berowne's avowal of love was delivered to
Jaquenetta, who, unable to read, gave the communication to
67I.i.169-173.
68II.i.l83.
45
Holofemes. The coincidence whereby the illiterate servant
takes Romeo and Benvolio for the "learned" who can interpret
69 .
his letter is made humorous by Shakespeare's placing in
the mouth of this muddle-headed fellow a confusion of sev
eral "old truths" from Lyly's Euphues: The Anatomy of Wit.
Thus, in addition to one more sop for the sophisticated in
the audience (servants generally appearing foolish in the
play), there is also some parody of the courtly tradition.
The servant's line beginning, "It is written that the shoe
maker should meddle with his yard, and the tailor with his
last, the fisher with his pencil . . ." (I.ii.38-45) is a
misquotation of a typical passage from the "Epistle Dedica
tory" to Euphues, reading: "The shoemaker must not go above
his latchet, nor the hedger meddle with anything but his
70
bill ..." This partially comic scene, incidentally, maj
be considered to encompass the first accident leading to the
tragedy. It also foreshadows Capulet's list of guests for
^This piece of set comic business may have been given
to Kempe, who played the part of Peter, but who may also
have played several of the other minor comic roles in the
play. Kempe's appearing several times in different comic
roles would in itself have been a matter of mirth.
7C>See Tilley, pp. 1-8, for a detailed comparison of
the two passages.
46
Juliet's intended wedding to Paris, which will also be
comic, but in a different way.
Once Romeo and Benvolio learn of the "ancient feast of
Capulet's," everything builds toward that event. The tempo
of these scenes is fast; there is an atmosphere of hasty
preparation. Then in I.iii the Nurse comes on for the first
time to ease the pace somewhat and to contribute to the
dimension of everyday realism with her idle and foolish, but
very human bantering. "The Nurse is practically a member
of the family, and can indulge in her impudent garrulity
71
while Lady Capulet merely groans and bites her lip." As
the lady of the house sounds out her daughter on the
7 1
/J-Ferguson, Introduction to the Laurel edition, p. 13.
Parrott, p. 203, says that "The comic quality of her speech
does not depend on the conventional device of puns and mal-
apropisms, but on the direct disclosure of a gross and sen
sual, but affectionate and essentially human nature." How
ever, puns and malapropisms are important in characterizing
aer, while her most obvious feature is her garrulousness.
Garrulousness as a comic device, and especially as an inter
ference with the dispatching of business, may be found also
in Two Gentlemen (II.iii.1-65; III.i.279-395). The Nurse
is related both to the Nurse of classical drama and to comic
types in the tradition of Gammer Gurton's Needle. In addi
tion to functioning as a go-between, and contributing to the
realistic dimension, the Nurse is also important in that her
lengthy references to past events help to establish the di-
nension of realism in time against which the sudden rush of
events is set. See Raymond Chapman, "Double-Time in Romeo
and Juliet." Modern Language Review. XLIV (July 1949), 372-
374.
47
prospective marriage to County Paris, the Nurse's patter
acts as a comic counterpoint. Ultimately, like the messen
ger of the previous scene, and like the servant in Roman
comedy, the Nurse will fulfill the role of a comic device
72
serving to bring the lovers together. With her man, Peter
(the fisherman, as suggested above), she will serve as a
go-between, and Mercutio will have a delightful time with
do_uhle-entendres describing her as a bawd. But here in
I.iii her sexual humor begins that implicit control of
idealistic love which will be brought to its highest point
in Mercutio. With the subject of marriage in the wind, she
launches into a series of off-color remarks, calling Juliet
a tart ("ladybird'."— I.iii.3— she immediately catches her
self with "God forbid!"); then, all within the framework of
the stock comic device of garrulousness, she describes the
time her own child fell and received a lump the size of a
testicle ("A bump as big as a young cockerel's stone" (53)
— note her precision!) and her husband's licentious jest:
"Thou wilt fall backward when thou comest to age;/ Wilt
70
In Two Gentlemen Shakespeare had developed the part
of the go-between in Speed. Proteus used the disguised
Julia as his messenger to Sylvia. Julia's servant, Lucetta,
played both her confidante and messenger. The other comic
romances, of course, have similar characters and devices.
48
thou not, Jule?" (56-57). Her talk here distresses Juliet
as well as Lady Capulet, thus preparing the way for her la
ter slow, exasperating and tortuous relation of circum
stances (II.v.21-76 and III.ii.31-72).73
Everything to this point, then, has built toward the
ball. In the streets we now witness a scene of gaiety as
the maskers arrive. The young Montagues and Mercutio mingle
among them. Romeo, affecting distress at the effects of
love upon him, dawdles, and speaks of a dream he has had.
This is the cue for Mercutio’s Queen Mab speech. Commenta
tors have been at great pains to explain the presence of
this English faery matter in an Italian love tragedy. Some
74
have maintained that it is simply out of place. However,
in light of the close relationship between Romeo and Juliet
and Shakespeare's lyrical romances, it is clear that here
is one further point of similarity, and that Mercutio's
^3Brooke has the Nurse relate Juliet's biography to
Romeo. Thus, he fails to build suspense with his comic
character.
^Levin Schucking, Character Problems in Shakespeare’s
Plays (London, 1922), p. 97. Schucking feels that the
speech is out of character for Mercutio. However, J. I. M.
Stewart, Character and Motive in Shakespeare (London, 1949),
p. 60, points to the minutely detailed realistic observa
tion in the speech, which is characteristic of the wit.
49
fantastical flight of imagination is related to the jjower of
love— a key theme in a romance such as A Midsummer Night1s
Dream and in Romeo and Juliet. It is significant that when
Romeo rebukes his friend for idle talk, Mercutio replies by
discussing the nature of the imaginative act and its "vain
75
fantasy." Although Mercutio1s argument is not so closely
argued as that of Theseus in A Midsummer Night's Dream, it
76
looks in the same direction (VJL.2-23) .
Shakespeare introduces the ball scene with a piece of
^The Queen Mab speech may have dramatic structural
value in dispelling Romeo's mopish melancholy before the
ball— which was what Mercutio intended to do. In effect,
the "extravagance of Mercutio breaks through Romeo's arti
ficial demeanor," and for the first time Romeo begins to
speak in his own character, rather than as a fashionable
lover. With a prophetic glimpse of the future he speaks of
"Some consequence, yet hanging in the stars." (Herbert
McArthur, "Romeo's Loquacious Friend,1 1 Shakespeare Quarter
ly. X [Winter 1959], 42.) Another possible structural func
tion of the Queen Mab speech is suggested by W. H. Auden in
his "Commentary" in the Laurel edition of the play, p. 22.
He argues for the structural relevance of the scene: "what
is harmless in sleep is dangerous in waking life. Much of
the evil in the world is caused by the refusal of human
beings to accept themselves and the world as it is in favor
of some false picture more flattering to their self-esteem."
Auden, rather doubtfully, connects this idea to a "fatal
weakness" to "show off" which affects all characters, in
cluding the lovers.
^Samuel B. Hemingway, "The Relation of A Midsummer
Night's Dream and Romeo— and Juliet." Modern Language Notes.
XXVI (1911), 211.
50
77
low comic business. It is not accidental that the musi
cians and comic servants enter directly after Romeo's pre
monition of "Some consequence, yet hanging in the stars"
(I.iv.107). A note of precipitancy and haste concluded
I.iv., with Romeo's "On, lusty gentleman" (113) and Benvo-
lio's "Strike, drum" (114). Now with maskers and torch-
bearers already on stage, the musicians and servingmen
enter. (While the musicians have no lines here, it is clear
from their later purely farcical scene at the height of the
tragedy— IV.v— that they are comically conceived, and are
intended to engage in impromptu "business.") The hasty
preparation of Romeo is here immediately shadowed by the
servants' hasty preparation for the banquet. In the se
quence I.iv,104ff. through I.v.1-17, "actual physical pace
issues from Romeo's line on tragic pace, and this in turn is
expanded into lines and action presenting haste on the comic
i .,78
plane.
Making preparations now, with much confusion and re
probation of one of their number called Potpan, who is
^The dialogue of the servants introducing I.v is the
only episode entirely omitted in Ql.
7ft
Brents Stirling, Unity in Shakespearean Tragedy: The
Interplay of Themes and Characters (New York, 1956), p. 14.
51
evidently not doing his share of the work, the servants
remove joint stools, sideboard, and trenchers. (The names
of the servants, of course, are drawn from comedy, and are
reminiscent of such English names in the early romances as
Costard and Dull.) Two remarks made in this brief scene
illustrate again the shadowing effect and ironic import of
comic matter. When the first servant suggests that "the
porter let in Susan Grindstone and Nell" (7-8) he reveals
that the servingmen are going to smuggle their girl friends
into the ball— just as, as we know, the young Montagues are
at the very moment planning their surreptitious entry.
Moreover, this brief thirteen-line scene ends with the thirc
servant's comment, "be brisk awhile, and the longer liver
take all" (13). Here is a comical modification of Romeo's
speech which concluded the previous scene (his foreboding
of untimely death), an ironical echo of the Prologue, and an
ironical suggestion of the course of the tragedy.
The swift pace leading to tragedy is continued with
more light matter in the next scene. We see Capulet with
his old man's sense of humor reminiscing, comparing what was
79
with what is. His genial humor wins over our sympathy,
^Nosworthy, p. 221, points out a parallel in Porter's
52
while at the same time his noisy hospitality and jests form
"a purposed contrast to the shy, serious, and poetic ex-
80
change of greetings between the lovers which follows."
Of course, his good-humored complacency here will contrast
81
sharply with the hot-headed temper he displays later on.
Finally, his pleasant, leisured discussion with his guests,
interrupted by exits and entrances and realistic business,
and ending in an argument as to how long it has been since
they themselves wore masks, supports again the longer view
in the double time scheme, helping to create an over-arching
pattern of realism against which occurs the precipitous
82
events of the tragedy.
Capulet’s warm and human but somewhat humorous conver
sation, then, prepares for and is to be contrasted with the
meeting of Romeo and Juliet— but that meeting is not comic.
5fet, while the predominant tone of the relationship between
comedy, Two Angry Women of Abingdon.
80Parrott, p. 201.
81Ibid.. p. 200.
82capulet's speech here has much the same function as
the Nurse's biographical reminiscences. Throughout the
play, realistic and comic touches lend historical credibil
ity to the events which occur from Saturday to Thursday.
53
the lovers will be lyrical and elevated, there are certain
humorous aspects to it. For one thing, there is a delight
fully refreshing yet almost amusing innocence here. More
over, there is a humorous irony, considering Benvolio's
prediction concerning Rosaline ("I will make thee think thy
swan a crow"— I.ii.84) and Romeo's strong denial, in one of
the young amorist's first remarks upon seeing the one who is
to take Rosaline's place: "So shows a snowy dove trooping
with crows" (I.v.46). It is amusing that he now does, in
fact, see Rosaline as a crow. Again, despite his previous
protestations of eternal love, he hastily dismisses all that
came before:
Did my heart love till now? Forswear it, sight!
For I ne'er saw true beauty till this night.
(I.v.50-51)
No one could be blamed for smiling.
In the conversations between the lovers the conceits
are the equal in ornateness of anything that came before,
so that there is considerable justness in Juliet's teasing
remark, "You kiss by the book" (I.v.107). There is high
comedy in the meeting of the lovers, in their punning son
net, and in "their urbane jesting with the passion which is
54
83
to destroy both of them." So, too, in the balcony scene
the parting of the lovers will bfe not only tender but amus
ing:
Jul. I have forgot why I did call thee back* *
Rom. Let me stand here till thou remember it.
Jul. I shall forget, to have thee stand there . . .
(II.ii.171-173)
Here Romeo is witty rather than the object of wit, and while
the language still carries a gentle parody of the romance
tradition, it is now intended to arouse sympathy rather than
laughter. Shakespeare here creates the same mood as in some
of the most lyrical passages of the romantic comedies.
Speaking of the lyrical passages spoken by Romeo and Juliet,
one critic has said:
It is as if he were here summarizing a whole mood of
sentiment proper to the early comedies and now reaching
its consummation as far as his work is concerned.
The rhythmic alternation of serious and comic scenes
is evident in the second act. A line in the Epilogue to
Act I {sometimes printed as the Prologue to Act II) shows
®^Dickey, p. 89. Ferguson, p. 15, says: "... they
have a delicate duet in the form of a 'Petrarchan' sonnet
in which religious imagery is half-playfully used to express
their human delight ..."
®^Evans, p. 57.
55
85
how intricately comic and serious are mingled. Here, in
a serious context we learn that Juliet must "steal love's
sweet bait from fearful hooks" (150). We recall that in
II.iv Mercutio described Romeo as entering "Without a roe,
like a dried herring" (34) and, again, as "fishified" (35).
There is also an iterative pattern of nautical images,
operating on more than one level. Romeo says, "He that hath
the steerage of my course/ Direct my sail" (112-113), while
in a lighter mood he describes his plan to the Nurse in
these words:
Within this hour my man shall be with thee,
And bring thee cords made like a tackled stair;
Which to the high top-gallant of my joy
Must be my convoy in the secret night.
(II.iv.171-174)
In reply, the Nurse tells him that there is "one Paris, that
would fain lay knife aboard" (II.iv.183). This nautical
imagery is premonitory of Romeo's words in the tomb, as he
®^It is possible that there is an air of indulgent
amusement about the Prologue's observation on the predica
ment of the lovers:
Being held a foe, he may not have access
To breathe such vows as lovers use to swear,
And she as much in love, her means much less
To meet her new beloved anywhere.
But passion lends them power, time means, to meet,
Tempering extremities with extreme sweet.
(I.v.151-156)
56
prepares to take the Apothecary's drug:
Thou desperate pilot, now at once run on
The dashing rocks thy seasick weary bark.
(V.iii.117-118)
So images repeat and on different levels suggest the high
and the low, the bitter and the sweet, the joyous and the
sorrowful. In this way both the tragic potential and that
for a propitious ending exist simultaneously.
In the second act the idealistic and romantic balcony
scene is set off and controlled by being surrounded by comic
scenes. Benvolio has seen the young lover leap the orchard
wall, and Mercutio tries to conjure him by invoking Rosa
line's parts, including her "quivering thigh,/ And the
demesnes that there adjacent lie" (19-20)— obvious bawdy
parodying of the excesses of romanticism, which suggests
what the itch of love may really be. Significantly, the
humor here is in part at Mercutio's own expense, since there
is dramatic irony in his ignorance of the fact that Romeo
no longer cares for Rosaline— thus his cousin's wit is mis
directed. But Mercutio's pointed comments on the condition
of the distracted lover do not miss the mark, and have comic
effect:
Romeo ! humours 1 madman’ , passion! lover!
Appear thou in the likeness of a sigh!
Speak but one rhyme, and I am satisfied;
57
Cry but "Ah me1 ," pronounce but "love" and "dove";
Speak to my gossip Venus one fair word,
One nick-name for her purblind son and heir . . ,
(II.i.7-12)
This is practically a catalogue of the affectations of the
conventional lover, humorously presented. The comic effect
is heightened in this same scene by Mercutio's bawdy humor,
which begins to mount here toward its crescendo in Scene iv.
To Benvolio's remark that love is blind, Mercutio replies
that then he "cannot hit the mark" (33); and he goes on to
depict Romeo as sitting under a medlar tree wishing his
mistress were "that kind of fruit/ As maids call medlars
when they laugh alone" (35-36). Playing on the homophonic
"meddler" and "medlar," and with this lewd allusion to the
86
fruit which can be eaten only when it has grown soft,
Mercutio launches into this apostrophe:
Oh, Romeo, that she were, Oh, that she were
An open et cetera, thou a poperin pear.
(37-38)
The scene following the balcony scene shows Romeo
arriving at Friar Laurence's cell. He arrives just as the
®^Rosaline in As You Like ItT exchanging jests with
Touchstone about the messages she has found on the tree,
says: "I shall graff it with a medlar. Then it will be the
earliest fruit i' the country, for you'll be rotten ere you
be half ripe, and that's the right virtue of the medlar"
(III.ii.126-128).
58
good friar completes his observations— central to the themes
of the play— that "Virtue itself turns vice, being mis
applied," while vice is "sometimes by action dignified" (II.
iii.21-22). Yet the tone of the scene is light. It builds
by dramatic irony to the friar's utter amazement at the
fickleness of the young lover. The good father begins by
conjecturing playfully as to whether Romeo has arisen early
by "some distemperature" or has not been in bed at all. The
series of confusions which follows is delightfully humorous:
Rom. That last is true. The sweeter rest was mine.
Fri. L. God pardon sinl Wast thou with Rosaline?
Rom. With Rosaline, my ghostly father? No.
Fri. L. That's my good son.
Friar Laurence's pleasure in Romeo's presumed casting off of
irrational love is momentarily dismissed by the young man's
declaration in typical romantic figure, that he has been
"feasting with mine enemy,/ Where on a sudden one hath
wounded me/ That's by me wounded" (48-50). When the friar
manages at least to glean the truth from Romeo's "Riddling
confession," and learns that he wishes to be married almost
at once to a new love, he cries in astonishment, "Holy Saint
Francis, what a change is here I" (65). The irony of the
situation— partly comic and partly serious in view of its
consequences— is apparent in the old man's mocking and
59
amazed words:
Jesu Maria, what a deal of brine
Hath washed thy sallow cheeks for Rosaline 1
How much salt water thrown away in waste,
To season love, that of it doth not taste!
The sun not yet thy sighs from heaven clears,
Thy old groans ring yet in mine ancient ears.
Lo, here upon thy cheek the stain doth sit
Of an old tear that is not washed off yet.
(69-76)
Though the situation seems comic, in the imagery which
follows we have suggestions of the serious possibilities
inherent in it. Romeo points out truly that the friar
"bad*st me bury love" (83), and the friar replies wittily
that this is so, but "Not in a grave/ To lay one in, another
out to have" (83-84). The image suggests again the ironic
relationship of death and love in the play. The ambiguous
tone, with the sustained possibility of a happy ending is
again supported in the serio-comic remarks of the friar.
The high point of comedy comes in the next scene.
Here, in II.iv, a number of comic elements which appeared
before are brought together into one imaginative and hilar
ious scene. The controlling wit of Mercutio, the bungling
ineptitude of the Nurse, the almost farcical presence of
her man Peter, and a newly witty and gregarious Romeo are
all brought on together in a scene which strangely resembles
the procurement scenes of Latin comedy. Romeo has now
60
obtained the friar's promise to marry him to Juliet this
very day. It is the comical Nurse who acts as go-between,
while the wit of Mercutio presides over the scene like the
bawdy wit of a bridegroom's single friend on the day before
a wedding.
Now Romeo, happy in the prospect of being soon wed to
his beloved, loses the aspect of a foolish lover, becoming
at once both witty and a man in control of the situation.
This is seen when he not only engages in wit combat with
Mercutio, but actually betters him. In this second quib
bling match, Romeo's puns "if silly, are gay and spontaneous;
in comparison with his labored conceits on the previous
87
evening." To Mercutio's pointed observation that "Such a
case as yours constrains a man to bow in the hams" (56-57)
he rejoins with a series of puns and quibbles that cause
the witty gallant to look for help: "Come between us, good
Benvolio. My wits faint" (71-72). But Romeo, gaining
stature which he will need from a dramatic point of view in
the first scene of the next act, refuses to let him escape
so easily, and pursues the main chance zestfully. If
Mercutio's wit is not sufficient to keep up the wit contest,
®^Mahood, p. 64.
61
then Romeo claims the match.
Rom. Switch and spurs, switch and spurs, or I'll
cry a match.
Mer. Nay, if thy wits run the wild-goose chase,
I have done; for thou hast more of the wild
goose in one of thy wits than, I am sure, I
have in my whole five. Was I with you there
for the goose?
Rom. Thou wast never with me for anything when
thou wast not there for the goose.
Mer. I will bite thee by the ear for that jest.
Rom. Nay, good goose, bite not.
Mer. Thy wit is a very bitter sweeting, it is a
most sharp sauce.
Rom. And is it not well served in to a sweet
goose? (II.iv.61-72)
Here we may see the outline of the "real" Romeo, who never
fully appears in the play. Even Mercutio must admit that a
marvelous change has come over his friend, and avers that
88
"Now art thou sociable, now art thou Romeo" (93-94).
Q Q
° In order to emphasize the change in Romeo, I have
omitted one of the wittiest, and certainly the bawdiest,
exchange in the play. Mercutio has said that "this drivel
ing love is like a great natural that runs lolling up and
down to hide his bauble in a hole." Then, Benvolio:
Ben. Stop there, stop there.
Mer. Thou desirest me to stop in my tale against
the hair.
Ben. Thou wouldst else have made thy tale large.
Mer. Oh, thou art deceived— I would have made it
short. For I was come to the whole depth of
my tale, and meant indeed to occupy the argu
ment no longer. (80ff;)
The conversation here is, of course, part of the general
texture of the bawdy humor which controls the idealism of
the young lovers.
62
Clemen and others have argued that there will be an impor-
89
tant change in Romeo after he meets Juliet. Whether this
is entirely so or not, in this scene we can see Shakespeare
building his adolescent lover into a figure of greater
stature by showing his till now latent wit.
That there is an important change in Romeo— or, at
least, that he has grown in stature— is proved by his ac
tions and wit throughout the rest of the scene. Juliet has
agreed to send to him "at the hour of nine" (II.ii.169), anc
we have seen him at Friar Laurence's cell when "The gray
eyed morn smiles on the frowning night,/ Checkering the
eastern clouds with streaks of light" (II.iii.1-2). Yet
despite the fact that "the bawdy hand of the dial is now
upon the prick of noon" (more of Mercutio1s bawdy stuff to
the Nurse), he is in none of his former impatience, but
remarks upon seeing the Nurse, "Here's goodly gear!" and
stands aside to watch the fun as Mercutio has his moment.
In fact, Romeo's "goodly gear" suggests to Mercutio the tack
tiis introductory remarks on the Nurse will take, and he
®^Once the lovers accept their fate they free them
selves of the conventional world and express themselves in
"a new simplicity and poignant directness of diction" (p.
64) .
63
cries out zestfully, "A sail! a sail!" The nautical imag
ery introduced in jest here will he continued in high spir
its, in Romeo's instructions to the Nurse at the end of the
scene:
And bring thee cords made like a tackled stair,
Which to the high topgallant of my joy
Must be my convoy in the secret night.
(II.iv.201-203)
The humor of this scene of arrangement is enhanced by
Mercutio's and Benvolio's witty insults directed to the
Nurse, and by her indignation and malapropistic use of lan
guage. There is the sharpest contrast between the Nurse's
image of herself, conveyed through stage mannerisms and a
certain haughtiness of speech, and the image created througt
the witticisms of the young men. Playing with one of the
numerous Elizabethan words for a prostitute, "hare," and
with the double-entendre in "hoar," Mercutio spies his game
with a hunting cry of "So ho!" and executes his attack with
the greatest of relish. The high point comes with his song
about "An old hare hoar" which is too much for a score, and
he departs with the derogatory "lady, lady, lady" (141-151).
For her part, the Nurse has come for some "confidence" with
Romeo, and takes Mercutio's comments for mere "ropery."
(Benvolio, taking his cue, remarks that she has come to
64
"indite" Romeo to supper.) She is none of the gallant's
"flirt-gills" or "skainsmates," and she protests to Peter
that he stands by and suffers "every knave to use me at his
pleasure," while he, for his part, protests that were such
the case, his own weapon "should quickly have been out."
The multiple sexual jokes here are evident. Finally, when
left alone with Romeo, her understanding is so weak that it
is only with difficulty that he conveys his intentions to
her.
The wedding in II.vi, then, is prepared for in part by
comical action and dialogue that seems to verge on situatior.
comedy. Structurally, Shakespeare has placed the world of
the young persons— witty, optimistic, and healthy— in con
trast to that of the elders, which is pretentious, bound by
irrational oppositions, and ultimately destructive. We note
again that in Brooke, where the onus was upon the young
lovers for violating the will of their parents, there was
no such comic stuff. Despite the views of those who, like
Goethe, have believed that Shakespeare destroyed the tragic
content of the play through his comic figures and through
"farcical interludes," the comic business creates the im
pression of a joyous and constructive world of youth, as
65
90
opposed to the stultifying society of the elders. The
rest of the play will show how the first world is injured
by the second.
Before the climax of the play in the street scene of
Ill.i, where there is a reversal, and from which point on
ward the action is descending, there occurs still one other
scene which resembles scenes in romantic comedy despite the
consequences toward which it leads. The Nurse now brings
Juliet the news of Romeo's plan. The young woman waits
expectantly. "Love's heralds should be thoughts," gliding
faster than the sun's beams (III.i.4-5), but unfortunately
the herald of her idealistic love is the bumbling and garru
lous Nurse. "Old folks," Juliet knows, are sometimes "Un
wieldy, slow, heavy and pale as lead" (16-17). But to make
matters worse, when the Nurse does arrive at last, it takes
91
her a seemingly interminable time to give her information.
The situation might be tense were not the audience already
^Goethe, like Dr. Johnson, believed that the use of
the comic elements weakened tragic effect. Understanding
of the structural importance of comic matter had to wait
for the twentieth century. Cf. Goethes Werke. trans. Her
bert McArthur (Weimar, 1902), Vol. 41, pp. 67-68.
^On the use of this stock comic device, see above,
p. 48.
66
advised of its happy outcome, but Juliet's anxiety seems
pleasant enough to those who know the happy news which waits
at the end of the Nurse's long-winded and diversionary dis
course. Her complaints of aching bones, head, and back are
trivial compared with Juliet's frustration and expectations;
she bemoans that she has been "jauncing up and down" (53),
and consequently is out of breath, though as her young mis
tress observes, she has breath to say she is out of breath
(31-32). She is interested in everything but the business
of the moment, which is all that Juliet cares about, so
that the incongruity of the situation must necessarily
appear comic. But most important for the structure of the
play, this scene, while it belongs to the world of youth
and hope of the first two acts, prepares for its counterpart
in the next act when once again Juliet tries to pry news
from the Nurse, but this time within a context that begins
to suggest tragedy. The ambiguous reporting of the duel is
prepared for by the frustrating, prattling report of the
marriage arrangements. In both instances a simple comic
device tempers serious circumstances, while in terms of the
development of action, the problems deepen. However, it is
to be noted that the comic reporting of the deaths in the
third act keeps alive the element of hope which is important
67
almost to the end of the play.
As we have observed, comic action in this play tends tc
prepare for serious, and finally for tragic action. So the
precipitancy, hot-headedness, and irrationality introduced
in the very first scene of the play with Sampson and Gregory
are fulfilled in the dueling of Ill.i. One critic who has
analyzed the structure of the play maintains that "The
brawl of Act I is renewed again in the contretemps of Act
92
III and completed by the swordplay of Act V." As in I.i
the duel in the third act is the climax of word-dueling,
and caps a complex series of quibbles and jests; in V.iii
there will no longer be room for jests. The tone of the
first scene in the third act is already somewhat heavy and
oppressive, even before the entrance of Tybalt. The tone
and imagery of Mercutio1s jesting here signal an ominous
turn in the action before it has occurred. His jests here
are in contrast both to the spirit of the Queen Mab speech
and his witticisms on youthful love. His subject on this
hot, oppressive afternoon is quarreling. Mercutio tells
the cautious Benvolio that his wariness seems out of char
acter, since he is "as hot a Jack in thy mood as any in
9^Levin, p. 7.
68
Italy, and as soon moved to be moody, and as soon moody to
be moved" (12-14). When Benvolio protests, his friend re
plies that, indeed, were there two such, "we should have
none shortly, for one would kill the other" (16-17). His
twenty-line catalogue of the things which will cause Ben
volio to quarrel brings a smile to the lips. Yet it is the
prologue to the fatal duel. In a moment, Tybalt enters and
the jesting is intensified, at the same time becoming more
bitter. The rash Capulet says that Mercutio "consort1st"
with Romeo, and Mercutio puns with the word, taking it in
the musical sense:
Consort 1 What, dost thou make us minstrels?
An thou make minstrels of us, look to hear nothing
but discords. (49-51)
Then, drawing (we have seen the comic presentation of the
subject before), he cries "Here’s my fiddlestick, here's
that shall make you dance. 'Zounds, consort'." (51-52).
When Romeo comes upon the scene, the jesting takes on
a more sardonic cast. Tybalt says that now he sees his
man, only to have Mercutio again take his words in another
sense than he intended, rejoining that Romeo will not wear
Tybalt's livery, but will be the man to follow him into a
field for a duel (60-63). But when Romeo refuses to re
spond to Tybalt's taunting challenge, Mercutio is humiliate^
69
and returns the jesting insults he already conceived for
Tybalt at a less serious moment (in II.iv.19ff.). Again he
alludes to the nursery tale of Reynard the Fox, and tells
his King of Cats that he requires no more of him than one
of his nine lives. He draws his sword to a pun: "Tybalt,
you ratcatcherr will you walk?" (78). He scoffs satirically
at Tybalt's Italianate mannerisms, his "Alla stoccata" and
"passado." Mercutio's puns and jests are in sharp contrast
to Romeo's riddling, conciliatory answers:
I see thou know'st me not. (68)
And so, good Capulet— which name I tender
As dearly as mine own— be satisfied. (74-75)
Finally, wounded and dying as a result of Romeo's well-
intentioned intervention Mercutio recites the last and most.
poignant of his puns to the man who is in part responsible
for his death and who now tells him that the hurt cannot be
much:
No, 'tis not so deep as a well nor so wide as a
church door, but 'tis enough, 'twill serve.
Ask for me tomorrow and you shall find me a grave
man. (98-102)
The death of Mercutio marks not only a turning point
in the action, though from this point of view alone it is
important enough in leading to Romeo's revenge and banish
ment. Mercutio was the essence of the spirit of wit,
70
brilliance, and youth in Verona. He was of the world of
lovers even when he mocked it. His death is the first great
blow to that world dealt, though indirectly, by the code of
the elders. With his departure the tone of the play changes
distinctly.
However, while the tone of the play is clearly more
portentous from Ill.i onward, this by no means signals an
end to comic elements. It is difficult to agree with one
critic who says there are bits of "very rowdy comedy even
93
in the last act," yet the last scene of the fourth act is
undeniably farcical. In fact, the comic elements persist,
in general, because they are related to key themes of the
play: (1) the impulsiveness and almost naive idealism of
young love, and (2) the obtuseness and stubborn preten
tiousness of age. At the same time, after Mercutio's death
Romeo is no longer the object of jests, although, again, it
may be argued that he never rises above the part of a young
lover to assume the dignity and stature of Shakespeare's
greatest tragic heroes.
In the scene following upon Mercutio's death, comic
q o
^^Dickey, p. 66. On the other hand, it is certainly ar
over-statement to say, as Crane does (p. 140), that with
Mercutio's death the play "loses all its lightness."
71
action and dialogue again relieve tragic effect. As Juliet
waits, the Nurse enters and, throwing down the cords, begins
the comic revelation of news which will somewhat attenuate
its serious import. The Nurse's prattling, diversionary
presentation of news has been prepared for in II.v. Her
semi-comic presentation of the news prevents intense tragic
effect, as does Juliet's own non-comic quibbling, which,
though it reveals her disturbed mind, is too formal and
94
rhetorical to convey emotion intensely.
Hath Romeo slain himself? Say thou but "I,"
And that bare vowel "I" shall poison more
Than the death-darting eye of cockatrice.
I am not I, if there be such an I,
Or those eyes shut, that make thee answer "I."
If he be slain, say "I" or if not, no.
(III.ii.45-50_
Such a passage is probably simply a manifestation of
Shakespeare's early style, but it shows again Juliet's place
in the witty world of youth as most obviously represented by
Mercutio. Her clever use of language looks forward, too, to
her quibbling with her mother in III.v, The depth and dig
nity of the young heroine is continually being shown by her
94uote, too, her ornate, though non-comic, use of oxy
moron after learning that Romeo has slain her kinsman:
Beautiful tyrant1 Fiend angelical!
Dove-feathered raven! Wolvish-ravening lamb!
{75-76ff.)
72
wit. But most important for the scene in which she learns
of the fatal events which are so important to her is her
awakening realization that the "piteous corse" and "bloody
piteous corse" described comically by the Nurse is, in fact,
not her husband but her cousin, and that it is Romeo who has
slain him. The stages of her reaction as she learns the
truth from the bumbling Nurse and goes through despair,
disillusionment, and finally pity and an affirmation of her
love are designed to produce a mixed effect. Significantly,
it is the Nurse's condemnation of Romeo which brings Juliet
up short in her own strongly worded disappointment in him,
and prompts her to defend him. We are prepared for Juliet's
rejection of the Nurse in the last scene of the act. At the
same time, sadness and relief are here mixed in her emo
tions, and the Nurse's inept and comic reporting supports
the hope that is kept alive. Even Juliet's own shifting of
ground creates a partially comic effect, so that here, even
after the terrible events of Ill.i, the ambivalent nature
of the situation is maintained.
The next scene clearly illustrates one of the chief
problems inherent in this love tragedy which has as its hero
a young and enthusiastic lover. This time it is Romeo who
waits for news— news of the Prince's judgment. But when he
73
learns that he has been banished his histrionic and adoles
cent self-indulgence - causes him to lose some of the stature
he acquired in the second act. The scene is related to the
previous one in that Romeo, like Juliet, seizes upon the
word "banish" and considers the implications of it. How
ever, instead of his bride's resolution and fortitude, Romeo
embarks upon an elaborate series of figures in an outburst
ef self-pity. The effect would almost be comic were it not
— at least to modern audiences— distasteful. Certainly
Romeo's words and actions here seem ill suited to a tragic
hero. "More validity,/ More honorable state, more court
ship," he raves, "lives/ in carrion flies than Romeo" (33-
35); for flies may "seize" (35) Juliet's hand; they are
"free men" (42), but he is banished. "This may flies do,
but I from this must fly" (41). Friar Laurence probably
reflects the audience's view when he points out that Romeo’s
behavior is "womanish" (110), and that he is acting like a
'misbehaved and sullen wench" (143). Romeo's antics in this
scene may well cause the audience to smile, and, in this
avent, would represent the creation of unintentional comic
affect on the part of the dramatist, thereby weakening the
progression toward tragedy at an important moment.
In the remainder of the third act and, in fact, in the
74
entire fourth act both the lovers and the elders make plans,
ytore particularly, with the brief exception of the aubade
and parting in Scene v— fifty-nine lines in all— the rest of
the third and the entire fourth act are devoted to the plans
of the elders and to Juliet's efforts, with the help of
Friar Laurence, to thwart those plans. Romeo will disappear
until the fifth act, so that the last two times we see him,
before he receives news of his bride's death, leave us with
highly mixed feelings about him.
Acts III and IV are Juliet's, as she endeavors to pre
vent the accomplishment of her parents' plans.
In Ill.iv, the senex. Capulet, begins to change from
the foolish but pleasant father who first received Paris'
request for his daughter's hand to an impatient and, in III.
v, cruel type closer to an Egeus. An important factor in
all his behavior after the ball scene is that he is unaware
that Romeo and Juliet even know each other. In ignorance of.
lis daughter's predicament, therefore, and in the best
tradition of the comic father, he believes that "she will be
ruled/ In all respects by me— nay, more, I doubt it not"
(III.iv.13-14). Impulsively in the same breath he bids his
wife announce Paris' love to Juliet and to advise her that
they will be married on Wednesday. True to his nature, he
75
then changes the day to Thursday— one day's difference!—
an absurd token of deference to the death of his kinsman.
Here, with a mixture of trite moralizing ("Well, we were
born to die"— 4), a concern for his sleep ("I would have
been abed an hour ago"— 7), and other such claptrap he
95
seals the doom of his daughter. Capulet's vacillation
prepares for two other comic sequences which will be closely
related and full of serious implication. While his first
impulse was to have but "a friend or two" (in addition to
the family) at the wedding, in but a moment he decides that
"we'll have some half a dozen friends" (27). Soon tempta
tion will be overwhelming, so that just three days after
Tybalt's death— and with partially comic effect— he has
planned a sumptuous, gala feast.
The tender aubade of Scene v in its underlying harmony
contrasts sharply with the disharmony and strife within the
Capulet family which occupies the rest of the act. The
gentle argument of the lovers as to whether it is the
95Cf. G. Joicey, "Mercutio's Death; Juliet's Wedding
Day," Notes and Queries. LXXXVI (July 23, 1892), 63. Capu
let's sudden change of mind points up again the close con
nection in the play between comic impetuosity and the ac
cidents leading to the tragedy.
76
nightingale or the lark they hear is pleasantly amusing,
and we are to smile at Romeo's double-entendre when he says,
"I must be gone and live, or stay and die" (III.v.11). The
young lovers themselves speak here of the increasing dark
ness of their situation, and as they watch the sun rise,
they state one of the fundamental changes which is coming
about in the imagery and tone of the play. Juliet with a
sense of urgency says, "Oh, now be gone, more light and
light it grows," and Romeo replies, "More light and light.
More dark and dark our woesl" (35-36).
The last 200 lines of the third act present the typical
comic situation in which parents try to force their wills
96
upon their daughter. Juliet is seen first with her moth
er, outwitting her with a clever patter of double-entendres
and innuendoes having a partially comic effect. Then her
father, after some misunderstanding as to the cause of her
tears, heaps abuse upon her— abuse liberally salted with the
97
stock epithets of comedy. In the third part of this
? However, the situation may be non-comic even in a
romantic comedy. Cf. A Midsummer Night's Dream (I.i.21ff.),
^While scenes of rejection of the daughter by her
father occur in highly serious contexts, the father's lan
guage is the key to the playwright's intention. For exam
ple, compare the language of Capulet and Brabantio (Othello,
77
scene, Juliet seeks advice and comfort from the Nurse. But
the latter, with her sensual and practical disposition,
advises her, as it were, that a husband at hand is worth two
in the bush. As a consequence, Juliet will secretly reject
her, thus severing her last connection with the world of her
parents. (Friar Laurence can hardly be considered a part of
that world.) From this point the world of the elders will
continue to become less significant as the series of acci
dents evolves which will lead to the deaths of the young
couple.
In the first part of this 200-line sequence, Lady Capu-
let brings Juliet news of the prospective marriage. Finding
her daughter weeping, she naturally assumes that her tears
are for Tybalt. When she speaks of the "villain," she ad
mits that "no man like he doth grieve my heart" (83), and
when her mother interprets this to mean that this is because
the "traitor murderer" lives, the young bride replies, "Aye,
madam, from the reach of these my hands" (86). "Would none
but I might venge my cousin's death 1" she adds; and, indeed,
I.iii.189-294). The latter 1s restrained and reasoned re
plies to Desdemona and the Duke are one measure of the dif
ference in tragic intensity between Romeo and Juliet and
Othello. See also the scene between Sylvia and her "uncom-
passionate sire" in Two Gentlemen.
78
she will "never he satisfied/ With Romeo till I behold him"
(94-95)— quickly adding "dead"— with another nice pun on the
word. Here again we have agile, clever youth opposing
stodgy age. Every line Juliet speaks is brilliantly eva
sive, yet direct. Seemingly, she expresses hatred, but as
the audience well knows, in actuality she is expressing the
deepest love:
Madam, if you could find out but a man
To bear a poison, I would temper it,
That Romeo should, upon receipt thereof,
Soon sleep in quiet. Oh, how my heart abhors
To hear him named and cannot come to him . . .
(97-101)
Finally, she declares that when she does marry, it will be
Romeo, "whom you know I hate/ Rather than Paris" (123-124).
Capulet's speech upon entering, thick with elaborate
and artificial conceits, is, as Clemen points out, charac-
teristic of him— especially "the vain pleasure taken in
painting every detail of the little picture whose fastidious
9 8
construction recalls the conceits of the early comedies."
The "little picture," of course, is the elaborate figure of
the sea and wind and bark he uses to describe Juliet's tears
(131-138). Capulet's pretentious and self-satisfied
9®Clemen, p. 63.
79
language ("When the sun sets, the air doth drizzle dew . .
and "How nowl A conduit, girl?") is incongruous with
the diction he employs a moment later upon learning that
Juliet will not submit to his will. Now, like the father in
dozens of comic plays, he rants and sputters, calling his
daughter "Chop-logic," "you green-sickness carrionJ" "young
baggage," "a wretched puling fool," "A whining mammet,"
"hilding," and other stock abusive terms. If she is his,
he will give her to his friend, but if not, she can "hang,
beg, starve, die in the streets" (194). Such excessive
histrionics, irrational temperamentalism, and inconsistent
language— from the heights of florid conceits to the depths
of stock comic abuse— must necessarily create a grotesque
and partially comic impression, though the comic tone is
tempered by the seriousness of the situation. Once again,
it is necessary to admit that such scenes as this may well
detract frpm the intensity of the tragedy.
Act III ends with a significant dramatic turn. Juliet
severs connections with the last important member of the
world of comic youth of the first and second acts. Mercutio
is dead; Benvolio's wit is silenced. The Nurse now goes
over to the world of the elders. The comic distancing which
detracted from the stature of the young lovers in the
80
earlier part of the play is now at an end. The dramatist's
partly satirical presentation of the world of youth stops.
The young lovers are now isolated. Whatever sense of de
tachment remained with the audience now begins to fade
quickly. Its place is taken by pity and fear, though the
intensity of tragic effect may be somewhat weakened by the
series of accidents which bring about the catastrophe.
The mood is somber in IV.i. Juliet seeks advice of
Friar Laurence. He tells her that there is still hope, and
gives her the sleeping potion. The stage is set for the
catastrophe. Yet, even in this scene Shakespeare keeps a
mixed effect by bringing on Paris to engage in a wit duel
with Juliet. Like Lady Capulet, the young man is unaware
99
of the true double-edge of Juliet's words. Juliet's
subtle stichomythy with him is to be contrasted with her
heartfelt monosyllabic outburst when he is gone: "0, shut
the door'. And when thou hast done so,/ Come weep with me—
past hope, past cure, past help" (IV.i.44-45). As might be
expected, the scene following that of Juliet's dark
^Levin (p. 4) sees Paris as Romeo's foil, and as the
inconvenient third party who, as official suitor, makes
formal speeches which are stilted and priggish when con
trasted with Romeo's.
81
discussion with the Friar, will revert to the comic. Con
trasting with the profound feelings of the young bride, we
will once again have the shallow aspirations of the world
of Paris and the Capulets.
As Juliet's preparations go forward, so do those of the
others. Capulet, having heard from the Nurse that Juliet
has repented her disobedience, makes plans for the wedding.
Juliet's unfortunate situation is shadowed by the good-
natured exuberance of her father. The scene itself is re
lated to the earlier I.v, in which the Capulets and their
comic servants prepared for the ball. Again, from the very
first line there are strong comic overtones. Whereas we
have just heard Capulet vow that for propriety's sake the
wedding would be modest, now we see him give a list of
guests to a servingman (probably the same messenger who was
charged with the responsibility in Act I, and who would re
call the comic sequence there). Then he turns to a second
servant and orders him to go and hire "twenty cunning cooks"
(IV.ii.2)L The wedding banquet has reached monumental pro
portions . The comic servant replies that all the cooks he
chooses will be good, for he will "try if they can lick
their fingers," knowing that "'tis an ill cook that cannot
lick his own fingers" (3-7). When Juliet arrives from
82
shrift with a “merry" look, the tone of the scene becomes
even more convivial. Capulet is now exultant, and he vows
to stay awake all night: "I'll play the housewife for this
once" (43). Oblivious as ever to the dangerous situation
for which they are responsible, the elders continue in their
ways. The scene ends with Capulet's proclamation that his
heart is "wondrous light,/ Since this same wayward girl is
so reclaim'd" (46-47).
The twin strands of preparation continue. In IV.iii
Juliet takes leave of her mother and the Nurse; then, con
quering agonizing doubts and fears, she takes the draught
Friar Laurence has given her. Possessed by a terrible vi
sion of Tybalt seeking out Romeo, she falls upon her bed.
Immediately after this intense and cheerless moment the
action is once again comic 1 In Scene iv the Capulets and
their servants go about their preparations— in a mood of
light-hearted joviality. The serious and the comic continue
to shadow one another. Amid talk of spices, dates, and
quinces, the Nurse protests that Old Capulet is the sort of
a man who meddles with women's affairs and tries to banish
him from her province, saying "Go, you cotquean, go" (7).
Lady Capulet accuses him of being interested in the servant-
girls, of being a "mousehunt" in his time (11); but she will
83
watch him from such watching now. For his part he claims
that this is mere jealousy on her parti Finally, as excite
ment builds toward the time for waking the bride and the
arrival of Paris, there is some comic business between Cap
ulet and the Second Servant. This "merry whoreson" is sent
to bring logs for the fire, and so he is called "loggerhead"
(19-20). There is music and gaiety. The Nurse is sent to
waken Juliet.
Now the two strands of preparation come together.
Perhaps the mixed tone of Romeo and Juliet is nowhere
more apparent than in the scene wherein the Nurse and the
Capulets go to Juliet's bedchamber to arouse her for the
wedding. Actually there could be nothing terribly porten
tous or gloomy— certainly nothing tragic— in this scene,
since the audience is aware that Juliet really lives. The
over-arching tragic theme is building, but once again the
immediate effect is mixed to a degree that is remarkable in
tragedy. First the Nurse attempts to awaken Juliet with
naughty jests about how much she needs her sleep because
the Covinty Paris has "set up his rest/ That you shall rest
but little" (IV.v.6-7). Let Paris but take her in bed and
"He'll fright you up, i' faith" (11). Coming to believe, at
last, that her mistress is dead, what does the Nurse do but
84
pity herself! . While her grief is real, the language in
which she expresses her feelings seems incongruous. She is
concerned for herself ("Oh, welladay that ever X was bornl
— 15) and utters her familiar cry for her cure-all, aqua
vitae. The lamentation of the Capulets, together with the
Nurse's and Paris's stereotyped moanings and wailings, form
what one critic has called a comical "operatic quartet.
However, while it cannot be denied that the language of the
elders and those associated with them is the same sort of
over-embellished rhetorical fustian that has had marked
comic overtones throughout the play, at the same time it is
easy to over-state the case for the comic dimension in this
scene. The truth may simply be that Shakespeare has writter
a bad scene here, and that whatever comedy there may be
stems solely from the audience's knowledge that all the
lamentations are for nothing— Juliet, in fact, lives.
Shakespeare might have ended the fourth act with the
lamentations of Juliet's family, but once again we see that
^■^^Levin, p. 10. He observes that the lamentations
may appear to be simply in a primitive or archaic style,
but that this style is used deliberately here for partially
comic effect, again to underscore the shallowness of the
elders' emotions. See also Ernest Schanzer, "Atavism and
Anticipation in Shakespeare's Style," Essays in Criticism.
VII (July 1957), No. 3, 242-256.
85
he chose to follow this mixed scene with a comic one. The
Capulets and their servants leave the stage to the Musi
cians, who engage, with Peter, in a piece of downright fool
ery. There can be no real dramatic justification for this
scene, except perhaps that once again comedy helps to keep
alive the tone of mirth which implies that all may yet end
well. The scene has in recent years been considered dis
tasteful, considering when it occurs, and it has frequently
been omitted in modern productions.'*’^ ' *" But it does show
once again how closely related Romeo and Juliet is to the
early comedies. In fact, in the names of the Musicians—
Simon Catling, Hugh Rebeck, and James Soundpost— there is a
kind of humor found in the tradesmen's names of A Midsummer
Night1s Dream, but rarely in the later plays.
The scene between Peter and the Musicians is the last
piece of comic business in the play— unless one is prepared
to see a sort of grotesque humor in the Apothecary. For the
rest, hope is kept alive in Romeo's relating of his dream
("My dreams presage some joyful news at hand"— V.i.2), and
in Friar Laurence's effort to arrive at the tomb in time.
The bridal-death image pattern, built throughout in semi-
101Parrott, p. 204.
86
comic and serious speeches concludes in Romeo's discovery
that "death is amorous" and keeps Juliet in the tomb for his
"paramour" (103-105).
The absence of any real dramatic function for the last
comic scene in the play— the rollicking comical scene of
fifty-four lines, between Peter and the Musicians— lends
support to those critics who feel that there is too much
trivia in this play for it to provide sustained tragic
emotions. This last comic scene points up too for the last
time the way in which the audience must move between the
poles of comedy and tragedy. To the end of the fourth act
comic matter sustains the possibility that all may yet be
well. But this possibility exists within the context estab
lished by the portentous prologue and the tragic action
which follows. The ambiguity established by the juxtaposi
tion of unfortunate and optimistic elements persists.
But the comic elements have other functions as well,
which we may now summarize.
They prepare for action on the tragic plane, and con
tinue to shadow and parody that action when it occurs.
Thus, the subjects of anger, intransigency, honor, and the
feud itself are introduced by the comic servants. The quar
reling and dueling of the aristocrats are prepared for and
87
parodied by similar actions on the part of the servants.
Moreover, swordplay is preceded by word-play; verbal ex
changes lead to physical exchanges; what begins in jests
becomes grim and, at last, dangerous and even fatal. So,
too, the entry of the Montagues to the Capulet's masked ball
is prepared for and parodied by the servants1 smuggling in
of their girl friends. Sexual jests on a comic level pre
pare for and control the subject of love on a serious level.
Even the romantic balcony scene is controlled and set off
by the bawdy satirical scene before it, the partially comic
scene in Friar Laurence's cell after it, and the hilarious
street scene which follows the amusing scene at the friar's
cell. The subject of death, and the ambiguities surrounding
the idea of "dying," are introduced by the servants and
iterated by Juliet, her father, and Romeo. Mercutio enters
with merry jests and departs the world with grim ones.
While introducing, preparing for, and parodying serious
action, comic elements tend also, as we have observed, to
attenuate tragic potential. Serving in part as "relief,"
certain scenes bring the action back to a lighter plane.
All scenes in which the servants, Peter, and the Nurse
appear tend in this direction. So do the scenes wherein
Benvolio and Mercutio appear in the first two acts. Right
88
after the confrontation of the families in the street in
Act I Romeo is presented as a comic romantic lover. There
is the high comedy of the meeting of the lovers in the ball
scene, the assignation of the Nurse and Romeo, and Friar
Laurence's amazement at Romeo's sudden falling out of love
and in again. After the fatal duel, there is release from
tension in the Nurse's comic reporting of news, and again
in Capulet's semi-comic preparations for the wedding of
Juliet and Paris. Juliet's witty deception of her mother
and Paris occurs within a serious context, but the young
heroine's sparkling wit provides a kind of relief, neverthe
less. Even the sombre scene in which she takes the potion
is alleviated somewhat by the hyperbolic lamentations which
follow it, and by the audience's awareness that Juliet
lives. This scene is followed by the low comic banter be
tween Peter and the Musicians.
Furthermore, comic elements contribute to the sympathy
Shakespeare creates for his lovers. The comic elements are
not in Brooke, nor is any large measure of sympathy. In
the first two acts of Shakespeare's play, however, even
while romantic love is treated with amusement and satirical
mockery by Benvolio and Mercutio, and while the Nurse's
realistic comments set up a further controlling element,
89
love flourishes as a healthy element in a world of feuding
and irrational enmity. The Plautine opposition of youth and
age is heightened by a number of elements resembling those
current in romantic comedy of the 1590's. Even when Romeo
is in love with Rosaline, and plays the part of an innamor-
atOj he is depicted with amusement rather than condemnation.
His sudden falling out of love and in again, as well as the
love-at-first-sight which occurs between himself and Juliet
are the very stuff of romantic comedy. Juliet is the de
lightful, witty heroine of romance caught in a tragic situ
ation? Romeo transforms before our eyes from a foolish
romantic lover into a sober and serious young man. The
stature Romeo achieves is not only a result of this change,
but also of his becoming witty rather than the object of
wit. Word-play, including puns, quibbles, and other witti
cisms, expresses the robust health of youth. After the
death of Mercutio and the banishment of Romeo, sympathy
based on amused delight and pleasure in the lyrical expres
sion of love is replaced by sympathy that is related to pity
and fear.
Without attempting to answer with finality the question
af whether there is too much in Romeo and Juliet resembling
90
the stuff of romantic comedy for the play to achieve intense
tragic effect, we may say on the basis of this study that
comic elements play a major role in determining the nature
of this tragedy.
CHAPTER II
OTHELLO
In the first part of this study Romeo and Juliet was
considered as an early tragedy closely related to Shake
speare's romantic comedies of his early period. While ele
ments traditional in comedy contributed to the evocation of
sympathy for the young lovers, they also created the atmos
phere of youthful romance— unaccommodating soil for intense
pity and terror. Tragic effect in the play was somewhat
attenuated by comic characterization, witty dialogue, mani
pulative accidental matter, and parody of romantic and
idealistic love. The ultimate effect of the presence of
elements of romantic comedy in Romeo and Juliet, therefore,
was to produce an atmosphere in which hope thrived, and the
total effect of structure was to arouse feelings of pathos,
or tender sorrow.
Othello, on the other hand, was written in Shake^
speare's tragic period, and while comic conventions and
91
92
matter traditionally associated with comedy are in evidence,
the total effect of all structural elements is not pathos,
but pity and terror.'*' As in Kina Lear, which was written
after Othello (in 16 05-06), traditionally comic elements
serve to intensify the tragedy. Moreover, in Othello as in
Lear and more than in Romeo and Juliet, it will be necessary
to keep in mind in this analysis a comic spectrum which in
cludes comic techniques that may not produce laughter, such
as the sardonic, the grotesque (the juxtaposition of oppo
sites, such as Othello and lago in Act I), and varieties of
wit including bitter, naturalistic, and satiric wit. The
problem in a study of the functional significance of comic
elements here is to describe them in an environment
Scholars differ on the probable year of composition
for Othello. A probable terminus pro quern is established bj
a performance before the King on November 1, 1604. However,
this date depends on the validity of a note by the scholar
Malone based on a lost document of the Master of the Revels.
Support of the Malone-Revels document is to be found in A.
E. Stamp, The Disputed Revels Documents (Oxford, 1930).
Some phrases from the play were evidently picked out and
embodied in the pirated first Quarto of Hamlet. published ir
1603, thus indicating a date of composition of 1602 or 1603,
However, see Marvin Rosenberg, "On the Dating of OthelloT"
English Studies, XXXIX (April 1958), 72-74. Rosenberg ac
cepts the 16 04 date, and conjectures that the play may have
been written for Queen Anne, at whose request Ben Jonson in
the same year wrote his Masque of Blackness. In both plays
the main characters appear with darkened skin, which sug
gests that this may have been fashionable.
93
predominantly tragic, and moreover, in a play which has beer
2
felt by some to be the most painful of the tragedies.
As in the case of Romeo and Juliet. Shakespeare found
his source for Othello in a story that was originally Ital
ian. This time his source was Giraldi Cinthio's Hecatomithi
(Hundred Tales), a work he also used as a source for one of
the "bitter" comedies of the tragic period, Measure for
3
Measure. The story of the Moor and his wife was told in
the seventh tale of the third deca of "La Prime Parte" of
Cinthio's cycle, and Shakespeare follows it with extensive
4
literal fidelity. The fact that he does so makes his
p
Peter Alexander, Shakespeare's Life and Art (London,
1939), p. 163. Alexander says, "Othello has always been
felt to be the most painful of the tragedies, and almost
unendurable as a stage spectacle" (p. 163). He stresses the
romantic beauty in the Othello-Desdemona relationship, and
the pain caused by the awful destruction.
■^Like Othello. the dark comedy is concerned with the
degradation of love, while the bawdy, degrading language in
the sub-plot has resemblances to Iago's cynical bawdy humor.
Othello and the "dark" comedy, Measure for Measure, may also
be compared in this respect with Troilus and Cressida
(1602), a third play in this period stressing the degrada
tion of love, and making extensive use of comic matter of
the bawdy variety.
^The original Italian book was published in 1565. A
French translation by Gabriel Chapuys appeared in Premier
Volume Des Cent Excellentes Nouvelles De M. Jean Baptiste
Giraldv Cynthien (Paris, 1584), pp. 323-333. It cannot be
ascertained whether Shakespeare was acquainted with the tale
94
innovations and changes of great interest. As in Romeo and
Juliet— and, indeed, it is almost a general principle— the
changes Shakespeare made in his source are a partial guide
to his dramatic attitude toward his materials, and
what he wished to make of them.
The use Shakespeare made of certain comic conventions
even in so stark a tragedy as Othello is highly revealing
5
of his dramatic method. The most important single charac
ter that he added to Cinthio’s tale is the gull and coward,
in the French or Italian or whether there may have been a
lost English translation. Kenneth Muir (Shakespeare1s
Sources [London, 1957]) thinks it probable that Shakespeare
read the original Italian version. It has been questioned
whether there was not some other source for the play. See,
for example, A. H. Krappe, "A Byzantine Source of Shake
speare's Othello.1 1 Modern Language Notes. XXXIX (March
1924), 156-161. Krappe conjectures that there was an East
ern source for the tragedy, the Byzantine epic, Diaenis
Akritas. However, there is no slanderous villain in the
epic. See also L. L. Bullock, "The Sources of Othello."
Modern Language Notes, XL (April 1925), 226-228. Bullock
disclaims the belief in a source other than Cinthio's tale.
The present essay will try to show that Shakespeare's
changes are probably based on theatrical considerations
rather than the use of other sources.
^Some of the comic elements mentioned here are noted
by Carolyn Herbert in "Comic Elements in Othello." Renais
sance Papers. The Southern Renaissance Conference. April
12, 1957, pp. 32-38.
95
6
Roderxgo. Roderxgo serves as a second instance of Iago's
skill as a manipulator, as a means of having Iago reveal
himself, and as an important element in the plot as Shake
speare has transformed it. Bianca, a courtesan-type derived,
ultimately from Latin comedy, represents a development of
the woman in Cinthio's tale who lived with Cassio and who
copied out the handkerchief for him. She is important in
Shakespeare's crucial eavesdropping scene, where the deluded.
Othello draws imaginative lines between his wife and the
courtesan; Bianca serves also as a foil for the unblemished
wife. The "young, fair, and virtuous lady" who is the En
sign's wife in Cinthio's narrative is transformed by Shake
speare into Emilia, who plays the part of the witty compan
ion. Like the Nurse in Romeo and Juliet, she serves as a
confidante for the heroine although she is witty rather than
talkative. Emilia serves, like Bianca, as a foil for Des-
demona, and she plays an important part in the development
Ci
°The types in this paragraph, derived ultimately from
Latin comedy, are discussed in detail in Marvin Herrick,
"Terentian Character Types," in Dramatic Characterization
in Printed Commentaries on Terence 1473-1600, Illinois
Studies in Language and Literature, XXXV, No. 4 (Urbana,
1951), 63-87.
96
7
of the action. Taking a hint from Cinthio, who mentioned
that Desdemona's parents were opposed to her match with
Othello, Shakespeare developed the character of Brabantio,
who fills the role of the senex of comic tradition, al
though Shakespeare finds special uses for this blocking
character. There is also the Clown, who is of the witty,
courtly type of fool rather than of the rustic or natural
0
types. The Musicians, who appear briefly in Act III, may
have been conceived as comic characters of the sort that
appeared in Romeo and Juliet.
Certain scenes also make special use of conventionally
comic matter. As in Romeo and Juliet. Shakespeare begins
his tragedy with comic business. The senexT Brabantio, is
roused from bed in the middle of the night to be advised by
the jocular villain that "an old black ram/ is tupping [his]
7
Clifford Leech, in a review of G. R. Elliott's Flaming
Minister in Shakespeare Quarterly. V (January 1954), 88-90,
states that Emilia's "untroubled liveliness" supplies con
trast to her mistress' passion and exaltation. Her realist
ic wit acts also as relief for Desdemona's great suffering,
and as a way of cheering up the suffering lady.
®The Clown seems to be related to the Fool of the
Touchstone variety, rather than to the rustic fellow who
brings the asps in Antony and Cleopatrar the "low" but witty
gravediggers of Hamlet, or the natural fool in King Lear.
97 I
!
white ewe" (I.i.87-88). The gulling and awakening scenes j
(the latter liberally salted with Iago's bawdy jests) to
gether with the gulling scene which takes place after the
council meeting (I.iii.302-388) act as relief for this
9
central scene m the first act. The scene which opens the
second act is a traditional wit duel, in this case between j
an exemplary wife and an arch-cynic, on the subject of the j
nature of woman. (Both the second and third acts open with |
i
comic scenes and move toward sinister and tragic ones. Here
i
again is the kind of rhythm we noted in Romeo and Juliet.
One act ends on a serious note and the next begins on a
light one.) In Act II there also occurs the drunken brawl,
with Cassio's nearly farcical drunkenness and Iago's exuber
ant songs. In Act III there are the two Clown scenes. Two
of the three scenes in which Bianca appears contain comic
conventions, especially the eavesdropping and courtesan
scene (IV.i), in which awesome and terrible effects are
produced in both Othello and the audience through cheap
jesting and laughter. Finally, there is the conversation
^Lines 160-184, in which Brabantio laments what has
passed and prepares to wake the town, as well as Scene ii,
in which Othello is established as a man of noble and heroic
stature, contain nothing comic. However, lines 49-55 in
Scene ii contain more of Iago's humor.
98
between Emilia and Desdemona about what provokes a woman to
cuckold her husband, a scene in which Emilia's wit sparkles
despite the tragic context and sets off Desdemona's inno
cence and purity.
But the use of conventionally comic matter in Othello
is more extensive than may be indicated by citing the occur
rence and function of character types and scenes having
comic aspects. Even more than in Romeo and Juliet the con
cept of total structure here must include language and iter
ative imagery as they construct what Heilman has called "an
immensely complicated verbal structure.""^ In the early
love tragedy action which was introduced in language having
comic value— the verbalizing of the feud by the comic ser
vants, the sporting of the wits with romantic love, the puns
which introduced duels, the ironically related possibilities
inherent in the idea of "dying"— came to be iterated in new
contexts. Image patterns which were echoed in later lines
■*-®Robert B. Heilman, Magic in the Web; Action and
Language in Othello (Lexington, 1956). In a complex verbal
structure such as that of Othello words tend to "leap out
ef their own contexts and carry our imaginations into other
parts of the play," and "poetic language functioning doubly
er triply, takes us beyond specific moments of action into
ethers and on into general areas of character, feeling, and
thought . . ." (p. 4).
99
took on darker and deeper meanings. So, too, in Othello
bawdy language, realistic witticisms, and puns, paradoxes
and quibbles in the use of such words as "honor," "reputa
tion" and "virtue," gain complexity as the action develops.
Images which are depreciatory and the reverse of the noble
and heroic— and which are therefore a variety of the comic—
become especially important in the tragic degradation of the
hero's noble spirit. If the language of Othello constitutes
a more complex aspect of the structure of the play than does
that of Romeo and Juliet, the comic language also is more
ambiguous, richer in serious overtones— and in general not
to be laughed at.^
On the structural level of action, Othello begins with
a plot situation observed already in Romeo and Juliet and
Shakespeare's early comic romances. The first act contains
the basic dramatic conflict familiar in comedy from Plautus
and Terence to Shakespeare's own early work. A daughter
^One form of comic language, the satiric, plays little
part in Othello, for the satiric directs itself to particu
lar follies in the realm of temporal relations: Mercutio's
witticisms on Tybalt, for example, or his demeaning of ro
mantic affectations. However, Iago's language is sometimes
satirical, as in his remarks on preferment (I.i.8-40), and
on women (II.i.101-161).
100
(virgens) defies the will of her father (senex) and commits
her love to a man her father finds unacceptable. In OthelloT
as in Romeo and Juliet, an elopement and secret wedding are
involved, although in Othello, this has taken place before
the play opens. In Othello there are no machinations with
the aid of servants and the comments of wits, as in the
typical comic plot and as in Romeo and Juliet. Othello
himself is, moreover, atypical of the adulesnens; whereas
the usual romantic hero is a late adolescent or very young
tian, Othello is not only middle-aged, but also a noble and
dignified individual endowed with a passionate and grandly
poetic nature. (Interestingly, he resembles the youth of
romantic tradition in his inexperience, idealism and basic
simplicity, which, however, lead to tragic rather than comic
resolution.) The enraged and injured father, Brabantio,
speaks lines clearly patterned after those of other deceived
12
fathers such as Barabas, Shylock and Egeus. Like these
Dther senexes he speaks of a warning dream he has had, and
disowns his beloved child when she disobeys him. But Bra
bantio 's chief function in Othello is not to act as a
l^Aerol Arnold, "The Function of Brabantio in Othello,"
Shakespeare Quarterly. VIII (Winter 1957), 51-56.
101
sustained obstacle in the path of young love, but to bring
about the public revelation of the love of Othello and Des-
demona in the council chamber, and thereby to create sym
pathy for the lovers by revealing them as different from
the image of them created by lago and Brabantio. To gain
more sympathy for the lovers after their winning speeches
and the Duke's avowal that "this tale would win my daughter
too" (I.iii.171), Shakespeare could count also upon the
audience1s recognition of the stock situation to place them
13
on the side of the lovers rather than the father.
The testing of the lovers’ faith in one another after
Act I takes place within the structure of still another
conventional plot pattern. In Cinthio's tale the Ensign who
brought about the downfall of the Moor by arousing suspi
cions concerning his wife and aiding him in murdering her,
was a handsome if sombre man who had the misfortune to fall
in love with his superior's wife and, since he could not
•^Arnold, pp. 52-53. Iago's speech "Awake, what ho,
Brabantio 1 Thieves'. Thieves I Thieves 1/ Look to your
house, your daughter, and your bags" clearly echoes Shylock's
"My daughter! 0 my ducats! ..." II.viii.15-22— and Bar-
abas' "0 my girl! My gold . . — II. 47-48. Note that the
technique of winning sympathy for the lovers by employing
comic conventions in the depiction of the senex was employee
also in Romeo and Juliet.
102
14
have her, decided to destroy her. An important change
Shakespeare made when he adapted the narrative was the
transformation of Cinthio's well-motivated and human Ensign
15
into the fiendish Iago. In so doing he opened a multitude
of possibilities for developing his action by bringing it,
in general outline, into approximation with two traditional
plot patterns having strong inherent comic elements.
Iago's resemblance to the character of the Vice in the
old morality plays, and, in fact, the resemblances between
Jthello and the morality play structure, have been generally
16
recognized. Othello is. in fact, from one point of view
a throwback to an earlier form of English drama, the
■^We are told that the Ensign's love for Desdemona
turned to the bitterest hatred. In Giraldi the Ensign mur-
lers the Moor's wife for him by beating her to death and
then caving in a ceiling on her. Shakespeare refused to
attenuate in any way his hero's total guilt for the crime.
Sranville-Barker observes that "nobility must be brought
even lower than the baseness which attacks it, if the tri
umph of evil is to be complete" (p. 9).
•^Iago's character will be considered below. Here we
are concerned primarily with structure at the level of
action.
l^See, for example, Bernard Spivack, "Iago Revisited,"
oh. 12 in Shakespeare and the Allegory of Evil (New York,
1958) .
103
17
allegory, temptation play, or psychomachia. Prom the
point of view of the audience the hero is faced with a clear
choice between placing his credence in the wit of a Satanic
18
figure, or his faith in the angelic virtue of his wife.
The dissimulating Vice takes delight in detaching his victim
from allegiance to virtue and subjugating him to himself and
"the sway of evil." Iago's cynical sense of humor— the
spirit of denial of all human values such as love, honor,
and virtue— as well as his desire to demonstrate and gloat
over his villainy before the audience are characteristic of
19
this type. His bawdy jests, witticisms, jocular songs,
•*-^Spivack, p. 425.
•^Caution against seeing Iago as a pure abstraction is
the main point of F. R. Leavis1 "Diabolical Intellect and
the Noble Hero: A Note on Othello.1 1 ScrutinyT VI (1937),
259-283. To see Iago as pure evil is to see Othello as an
entirely noble being corrupted by an external force. Leavis
emphasizes Othello’s readiness to respond as opposed to
Bradley's view of a purely noble Moor who is the victim of
Iago's intellectual superiority (p. 264).
19
Spivack, p. 435. For the history of how the Devil
and the Vice of the morality play developed into the machi
nating rogue, see, in addition to Spivack, C. M. Gayley,
"The Devil and the Vice," Representative English Comedies,
Malone Society Publications, I (1913), xlvi-liv; L. W.
Cushman, "The Devil and the Vice in English Dramatic Liter
ature before Shakespeare," Studien zur enolischen Philo-
logie. VI (1900); and J. B. Moore, The Comic and the Realis
tic in English Drama (Chicago, 1925) .
104
and general mockery in asides and soliloquys, as well as to
his dupe, Roderigo, are an essential part of structure and
meaning in Othello— though they are completely absent in
Cinthio's sombre tale.
But there is a more immediate connection between the
action of Othello and other plays of its period. Simul
taneously with the Plautine action in Act I, a second plot
line is developed. Here again we see Shakespeare adapting
his source to the conventions of his stage. Just as in
1595 he used in Romeo and Juliet some of the successful
conventions of the romantic comedies of the day, including
his own, so in adapting Cinthio’s tale he found use for
dramatic elements which had currency in 16 04. Othello is
in some respects related to the realistic comedies of Jon-
son, Chapman, and Mars ton, which were in vogue during
Shakespeare's tragic period.
The word "realistic," generally used to distinguish
20
this type of play from romantic comedy, usually involves,
^°Karl Holzknecht, The Background of Shakespeare's
Plays (New York, 1950), p. 269, distinguishes between two
kinds of humor, that of the heart and head. The first is
the spirit of Shakespeare's romantic comedies; it is toler
ant of human foibles, sympathetic, and mirthful. The seconc
applies the whip to folly, exposing hypocrites, fools and
dupes. However, still another distinction must be made
105
in the plays of the dramatists mentioned, a rather strong
21
element of satire. Othello does not, yet there are other
points in which it employs conventions of the realistic
comic drama. The typical subjects of such plays were gull
ing and cuckolding, and the central character was usually a
subtle villain who enjoyed deception and dupery for their
22
own sakes. Jonson's Brainworm, Face, and Subtle, and
between realistic Plautine and Terentian comedy, with their
formula plots of the sort discussed above (Shakespeare's
Homedy of Errors and his romances utilize these patterns of
action) and the sort of plot, original with Jonson and his
fellows, in which the characters are divided into victims
and victimizers. All three kinds of stories rely heavily
on conventional comic types such as clever servants, gulls,
miserly and overbearing fathers, jealous courtesans, para
sites, garrulous women, and so on. For differences between
Shakespeare's romantic comedies and Jonson's realistic ones,
see Elizabeth Woodbridge, Studies in Jonson's Comedy (Bos
ton, 1898), pp. 45ff. Miss Woodbridge calls the Jonsonian
formula "practical joking carried to an extreme." It is
this sort of action, raised to a tragic level, which is
basic in the structure of Othello. Thus, W. H. Auden says,
"What Shakespeare gives us in Iago is a portrait of a prac
tical joker of a peculiarly appalling kind" ("The Joker in
the Pack," in The Dyer's Hand and Other Essays [New York,
1962], p. 253).
2-*-In the War of the Theatres this became personal and
vitriolic. But the "humors" plays in general were content
to lash types.
22^he gull is a conventional character type having
special characteristics of his own. The word "gulling" is
used here in a generic sense to describe a phenomenon com
mon in these plays. (For the characteristics of the stage
gull see footnote 29 below.) Paul Vernon Kreider,
106
Chapman's Rinaldo are fairly typical of the type. All are
out-and-out rogues who derive their livings and pleasure
from posing as honest men while they confuse the minds of
less clever persons and use them to their advantage. The
emphasis in these plays, as distinguished from that in the
romantic comedies of Greene or Shakespeare, is on "intelli
gence" or "wit" rather than on fancy, imagination, and ro
mance. The comedy derives not from plot complications which
place the hero and heroine far apart until they are brought
together in the happy ending— with much bantering concerning
the nature of love and the operations of fancy--but from
the duping of greedy or foolish characters by intellectually
23
superior villains. Neither villaxn nor victim xs admxr-
able, but since the audience does not sympathize with the
Elizabethan Comic Conventions as Revealed in the Comedies of
George Chapman. University of Michigan Publications. _in .Lan
guage and Literature (Ann Arbor, 1935), Vol. XVII, p. 5Iff.,
shows extensive use of the plot formula in Chapman.
23Compare the first fifteen pages of Chapter I above
with the comments on realistic comedy here. Othello and
Romeo and Juliet both contain comic conventions, but from
different kinds of comedy. On the opening of Othello. W. H.
Auden has this to say: "When we first see Iago and Roderigc*
together, the situation is like that in a Ben Jonson comedy
— a clever rascal is gulling a rich fool who deserves to be
gulled because his desire is no more moral than that of the
more intelligent avowed rogue who cheats him out of his
money" (p. 253). For further parallels, see pp. 110-112.
107 ]
victim there is little pity and no pain. Distancing, always
a necessity for comedy, is prevented, and the play moves
toward tragedy rather than comedy.
Obviously, Othello differs from such plays in that we
sympathize with the hero, and especially with the heroine.
Nevertheless, the plot of Othello is similar to the perfect
24
comic plots of the satirical comic writers. It conforms
also to the general pattern of many lesser comedies of the
time having to do with gulling by a knave who seems to be
i
honest. In 1584 there had appeared on the stage a late
morality play by Robert Wilson, The Three Ladies of London,
in which there was a Vice, Dissimulation, who posed as "a
right honest man" in order to dupe various gulls. The play
was so popular that it was printed in a second edition in
1592. The story of a guller who poses as Honesty itself,
24stoll, Art and Artifice (Cambridge, England, 1933),
p. 64. The chief difference between the action of these
plays and Othello. says Stoll, "lies only in the fact that
deception and torment are not made so serious and are not
so prolonged in the comedies." Again, the context here is
only the level of action. The realistic comedies obviously
lack the poetry of Othello. If the tragedy is in any sense
romantic, it is evidently so in quite a different way from
that in which Romeo and Juliet is romantic. And this dif
ference lies mainly in Othello's exotic and soaring lan
guage, as well as in the relationship of the hero and hero
ine in the first two acts, and in Desdemona's attitude to
the end.
108
but who reveals himself in soliloquy, seems to have been a
success, for in 1596 there was produced A Knack to Know a
Knave, or The Triall of True Friendship; or Perfit Mirror.
Wherebv-Jto Piscerne a Trustje Friend__from a Flattering Para
site; Otherwise a Knack to Know a Knave from an Honest Man.
The vogue of this comedy is indicated by the fact that in
the same year a rival company produced another by the title,
h Knack to Know an Honest Man. In the early seventeenth
century the tradition was continued in such plays as The
Honest Lawyer and The Honest Man's Fortune. In all these
plays, the knaves have great reputations for honesty and
their most common disguise and dissimulation is their oath
upon their own honesty. It seems likely that Shakespeare
was well aware of this sort of comedy when he adapted Cin-
25
thxo1s novella to the stage.
It is probable too that the audience had been somewhat
conditioned by these plays about gulling knaves and "honest"
nen, and that the playwright could rely upon a stock
^The discussion in this paragraph is based upon Paul
A. Jorgensen, "Honesty in Othello." Studies in Philology,
tfo. 4 (October 1950), pp. 557-567. Jorgensen suggests that
to the theatregoer of 1604 Othello's tragedy may well, in
jood measure, have been that of a man who lacked the vital
ability to discriminate true from false, an honest man from
a knave (p. 562).
109
response which was partially comic for Iago and Roderigo,
and for the multiple variations played bn the word "honest."
Moreover, the resemblances between Othello and the satiric
comedies of the time would be supported by the stock char
acter types Shakespeare developed from hints in Cinthio's
tale. Othello is exceptional among Shakespeare‘s tragedies
in being limited to domestic matters (after the defeat of
the Turks), and in having for dramatis personae mostly per-
26
sons who are of a "middle station" in life. It is also
the only one of the tragedies without a significant over
plot. Othello, himself, though a general and the governor
of Cyprus, is an outsider, a black man, and not of the
27
Venetian nobility. While he is involved in the disruption
Oft
That tragedy has for its subject high and noble per
sonages and comedy persons of a "middle station," is a dis
tinction which goes back, of course, to Aristotle, and it
is one that playwrights were generally aware of, though it
was many times disregarded in the English theatre. Plays
such as Arden of Feversham and A Woman Killed with Kindness
are noteworthy exceptions in the main plot, while "low" and
"high" characters were frequently mixed in the same play
throughout the sixteenth century in the works of Whetstone,
Preston, Peele, and others. For the persistency of the
mixed play during the Renaissance, see Marvin Herrick,
Tragicomedy (Urbana, 1955), pp. 224-260.
^Othello's color may have been demeaning and grotesque
to Shakespeare and his audience. George Gordon, in Shake
spearean Comedy, ed. Sir Edmund K. Chambers (Oxford, 1944),
notes instances in Titus Andronicus, The Merchant of Venice.
110
of order, and though political decorum is established at the
end, his problems are domestic ones, and the action of the
play is largely limited to his domestic crisis. Of the
other principal characters, Desdemona is a Senator's daugh
ter, but Cassio is merely a lieutenant, Iago but an ancient,
Roderigo a gallant gull, Emilia an ancient's wife, and
Bianca a courtesan.
There are interesting parallels between Othello and
comedies of the time having the special sort of gulling
action in which a character is encouraged to win a certain
28
lady by persons who are in reality trying to gull him.
Shakespeare himself uses the lago-Roderigo pattern of action
in comedy in The Merry Wives of Windsor (c. 1600), with the
gulling of Falstaff, and in Twelfth Night (1600-1601), where
Troilus and Cressida. and A Midsummer Night's Dream wherein
dark skin is either loathsome or ugly. Robert B. Heilman,
"More Fair Than Black: Light and Dark in Othello," Essays
in Criticism, I (1951), 315-355, agrees that Othello's color
nay well have aroused distrust in the audience and in his
own mind, regarding Desdemona.
pQ
coThe basic plot goes back to the English Ralph Roister
Doister (1550-1553) by Nicholas Udall. In this play Matthew
flerrygreek pretends to help the braggart win Dame Christian
Custance, but he is in reality an ally of the lady's. The
play is Plautine, but Udall gave it English characters,
combined in Merrygreek the classical parasite and native
English mischief-making Vice, and added an English robust
ness .
Ill
Maria and Sir Toby delight in gulling Malvolio by convincing
him that Olivia is in love with him. Sir Toby also uses Sir
Andrew as his purse by promising to help him woo Olivia.
The Roderigo action in Othello, in fact, represents one of
the popular situations in the satirical comedies of the
29
time. In A Trick to Catch the Old One (1604-1607),
Middleton has Witgood dangle before a half dozen gulls the
prize of the Widow Medler, in reality a courtesan. In his
realistic city comedy, Volpone (1605), Jonson has Mosca
attempt to obtain the virtuous Celia for his master.
Roderigo's opening statement that Iago has had his
purse as if the strings were his own would have identified
the gull-guller relationship at once, and the subsequent
conversation would have related it to the procurer
^On the characteristics of the stage gull, see the
chapter "Gulling" in Charles Read Baskerville, "English
Elements in Jonson's Early Comedy," Bulletin of the Univer
sity of Texas (April 1911), pp. 108-120. Among his typical
characteristics are a notable lack of conscience, coward
liness, self-esteem, and folly in spending money without
gain. Naturally, there are many variations upon this type.
G. B. Harrison (p. 139) notes the frequent occurrence of
the "silly gentleman" on the stage after the production of
Jonson's Every Man in His Humor (1598). It is entirely
possible, he suggests, that the same actor played Jonson's
Master Stephen, and Shakespeare's Osric, Sir Andrew Ague-
cheek, and Roderigo. Whether or not this is so, the influ
ence of Jonson upon Shakespeare remains.
112
situation. When Iago identifies Roderigo as a "silly gen
tleman" (I.iii.307), the connection is complete. We have
the guller and his "purse." But the Roderigo action is
developed chiefly (like the Gloucester action in Kina Lear
or the Falstaff action in I Henry IV) to universalize the
main action and to touch upon aspects of it. Roderigo is a
kind of "comic underling" who serves to diversify and mul-
30
tiply the theme of deceit. We will see the villain de
ceiving at two levels: in the Roderigo sub-plot he is the
petty guller, whereas in the Othello action he is subtler
31
as well as more invidious. Horribly, Othello becomes
Iago's other gull.
Closely related to the action of gulling is that of
cuckoldry. Precisely speaking, there is no cuckoldry in
Othello, yet the subject is kept constantly before the
audience. Of course cuckoldry is the most common subject
for jesting in Elizabethan and Jacobean plays and there is
hardly a play without jests about "horning" and the cuckoo,
30
Spivack, p. 441.
3lIbid., p. 82. Granville-Barker (p. 6) believed that
Shakespeare invented Roderigo in order that his gulling
might provide "the shadow of an underplot, some comic re
lief— he makes a ridiculous conterpart to the nobler vic
tim ..."
113
so that the audience would have been conditioned to regard
ing the situation as partially comic. But cuckolding also
represents an overthrow of one of the natural bonds uphold
ing order in the Elizabethan scheme of things, and when
Shakespeare took the most common joke of his time and used
it in Othello as a subject for tragedy, he was setting forth
the profound implications of what had in general been taken
lightly. Othello's reaction to his wife's alleged infidel
ity not only strikes a note of terror and fear, but touches
upon questions of "virtue," pride, reputation, honor and
faith.
In its general features, Othello conforms to still
another of the patterns of comic actions which supplanted
the romantic comedies that dominated the English stage unti]
about 1598. The figure of the jealous husband was by 1604
one of the most popular stock characters of the comic
32
stage. Where he has more than a passing role he seems to
32T. W. Baldwin, William Shakespeare's Small Latine
and Lesse Greeke (Urbana, 1944), p. 329, observes that Ter
ence's comedy, The Self-Tormentor. is an early play on the
subject of the jealous husband. In Terence's comedy, a
soldier who is away froih his mistress torments himself with
thoughts of her infidelity. His reasoning is like Othello's
in taking into account her youth and social background. The
revival of interest in classical forms of drama around 1600
may account in part for the great currency of stock types
114
be an elaboration of the common jest. Two usually important
features of this character are his age (he is older than his
wife, and fears that she will take a younger man), and the
fact that he is foolish. As to the latter, he seems to be
universally wrong about his wife's infidelity, so that there
is really more concern with his folly and jealousy than wit!
33
the actual subject of cuckoldry. In both respects Othellc
fits the pattern. His suspicions lead him to consider,
though but briefly and with doubts, that he is "declined/
Into the vale of years" (III.iii.265-266), and his wife is
in reality spotless.
Shakespeare himself had used the jealous husband in
Master Ford of his comedy, The Merry Wives of Windsor
(1599). In 1597, in George Chapman’s Comedy of Humors there
appeared, among other gulls, a jealous man (with a young
wife) who fell prey to a clever knave. The irrationally
such as the self-tormented husband.
33i,ily Bess Campbell, Shakespeare's Tragic Heroes:
Slaves of Passion (New York, 1961), sees Othello as a "trag
edy of jealousy," to be viewed in the light of Elizabethan
physiological and psychological tracts on the subject.
While her argument contains something which is obviously
important, the play is certainly concerned also with wit
and witchcraft (Will vs. Faith), pride, guilt, and judgment,
the corruption of a great and noble nature, and other sub
jects as well.
115
jealous husband appears in Old Kitely of Jonson's Every Man
in His Humor (1598), again in Cornelio of Chapman's second
comedy, All Fools (1599), and in the insanely jealous usur
er, Security, in Chapman, Jonson, and Marston's Eastward
Ho 1 (1605). Infidelity is also the main plot interest in j
Chapman's comedy, Sir Giles Goosecap (1600). Invention in |
i
the treatment of the subject seems to have been ingenious. |
l
!
In Eastward Ho! . the jealous husband sets out in a storm to !
|
find his missing wife and ends up taking refuge in a place j
called Cuckold's Haven— surely one of the more amusing uses
of the convention. All Fools ends with a speech in honor
of "the most fashionable and authentical" symbol, the horn.
There were also signs before Othello that domestic
subjects, including jealousy and cuckoldry, were becoming
suitable subjects for plays other than comic. One year
before Othello there appeared Thomas Heywood's domestic
tragedy, A Woman Killed with Kindness. In Heywood's play,
Mistresse Anne, though devoted to her husband and sorrowful
in her sin, actually does commit adultery with the villain
ous Wendell. But her husband is a cultured and temperate
country gentleman, and when he discovers his wife's infidel
ity he sends her off to a manor he owns, where he will "kill
her" with kindness. At the end Mistresse Anne repents and
116
her husband restores to her the names of mother and wife,
but she dies of remorse and a broken heart.
It is beyond the scope of this study to trace changing
tastes in Jacobean drama, but it may be said that a signifi
cant change had come about since Shakespeare ventured to
treat the subject of love tragically in Romeo and Juliet, a
34
change that would continue in the seventeenth century.
Othello itself probably influenced plays written after it
in presenting an extended and serious treatment of a jealous
husband.
34Stoll, Art and Artifice, p. 9, notes non-comic in
stances of the subject of marital jealousy in Shakespeare's
own Much Ado About Nothing (1598), Cvmbeline (1610), and
The Winter 1s Tale (1610-1611). Chapman1s Bussy d'Ambois
(c. 1604) has as its central interest the illicit affair of
Tamyra and the upstart courtier hero, d'Ambois. Love will
also be a central interest in the tragedies of Tourneur and
Webster, and in the tragi-comedies of Beaumont and Fletcher.
^Harriet Brocker Durkee, "The Influence of Othello in
Jacobean and Caroline Drama," unpub. diss. (University of
Minnesota, 1957), in DA, Vol. 17, No. 6. Miss Durkee notes
that Othello was also important as an influence in provid
ing "the figure of vice in the form of a Machiavellian
villain masquerading as a malcontent and honest soldier,"
See also Stoll, "Iago Not a Malcontent," Journal of English
and Germanic Philology. LI (April 1952), 163-167. The mal
content was usually justified in seeking revenge, and was
melancholy, whereas Iago, says Stoll, is cheerful and live
ly (P* 165). Moreover, Iago does not deplore the evils he
contemplates. On the contrary, he enjoys them.
117
But historical perspective cannot explain the total
structure which results from the combination of the various
conventions Shakespeare used in his play. What is important
in regard to the function of comic elements is the use of
contrast made possible by the mixture of diverse matter.
By raising the stature of Cinthio's Moor to that of a dig
nified, noble and heroic man who is at the same time a
foolish, jealous husband, and by transforming the sombre
Ensign into a fiendish Vice and guller with a sardonic
sense of humor, Shakespeare has created a situation at once
terrible and grotesque. By juxtaposing the dignified and
exotic words of Othello formed in "beautifully modulated
36
cadences," with the irreverent profanity of Iago he
^Moody E. Prior, "Character in Relation to Action in
Othello." Modern Philology, XLIV (May 1947), 226-227. G.
Wilson Knight, in "The Othello Music," The Wheel of Fire,
p. 106, speaks of "the noble cadence and chiselled phrase
of Othello's poetry." Clemen (p. 125) notes that Othello's
allusions are to the heavens, the celestial bodies, the
wind and the seas. See also Henry J. Webb, "'Rude Am I in
My Speech,'" English Studies. XXXIX (April 1958), 67-72.
There is general agreement on Othello’s mode of speech, as
well as on what has been called Iago's "gross and contempt
ible" profanity and sexual imagery (Evans, p. 125). "The
prosaic brevity of Iago's images," says Clemen, "stands in
contrast with the swelling opulence and poetic force of
Othello's imagery" (p. 122). Philip A. Smith, "Othello's
Diction," Shakespeare Quarterly. IX (Summer 1958), 428-430,
emphasizes the differences between Othello's speech and
that of Iago, Cassio, and Roderigo. The familiar accents
118
creates a spectacle far more painful that that in Romeo and
Juliet. The low and anti-heroic language of Iago heightens
contrasts of character. The use of a common domestic object
such as a handkerchief in the destruction of the sublime
Desdemona and the foolish Othello makes the tragedy seem
bizarre:
The horror is the intricacy of the contrivance— the
devilish use which is made of actions and objects pro
tected, one would suppose, from such criminal conver
sion by their mere simplicity and familiarity.37
Effect, then, is achieved through the use of seeming
trivia, through juxtaposing the gulls Roderigo and Othello,
through having the villain's manipulations resemble those
in comedy (his arrangement of Cassio's drunken brawl and
his use of the laughter of a soldier gallant at his courte
san) though they bring about the destruction of the hero
and heroine. All these devices are so incongruous with the
great passion of the hero and the purity of the heroine as
38
to be appalling. So, too, is the simultaneous
of everyday speech are absent in Othello's language before
he falls under Iago's sway.
37George Gordon, "Othello, or the Tragedy of the Hand
kerchief," in Shakespearean Comedy and Other Studies, p.
104.
38it may be conjectured that the use of contrasts with
119
presentation of beauty and ugliness, with "the tremendous
reversal from extreme, almost over-decorative beauty, to
39
extreme ugliness."
The manipulation of action and characters discussed
40
above depends primarily upon Iago. In creating him, as
we noted above, Shakespeare gave Cinthio's Ensign charac
teristics of the plot-spinning dissimulator and knave of
41
realistic comedy, and the Vice of the morality plays.
their complex ironies (white seems black, while black be
lieves itself to be white, "seeming" is not "being" and
illusion takes on the appearance of reality) are signs of
the maturity Shakespeare had achieved in the tragic mode.
The problem of appearance and reality is also central in
Hamlet. Macbeth and King Lear. While the mixing of conven
tions seems nowhere so complete as in QthellOj one may men
tion in this context the use of the Fool in Lear. Hamlet's
sardonic humor, and the "low" scenes in the other tragedies.
Wilson Knight, "The Othello Music," p. 104.
^However, note Knight's observation that "Othello is
dominated by its protagonist. Its supremely beautiful
effects of style are all expressions of Othello's personal
passion" (p. 97).
^iago's Italian name and his consummate villainy also
identify him with the popular Machiavellian villain of the
Elizabethan stage. Moreover, speeches such as his "Virtue!
A. fig! 'Tis in ourselves that we are thus or thus . .
(I.iii.21) associate him with the "new man" or indepedent
man of the Edmund variety. Both the Machiavellian villain
and the "new man" have a mocking, cynical sense of humor,
and resemble somewhat the types discussed above.
120
Iago's dramatic consistency, based upon the acceptance of
the conventional stage types to which he bears resemblance,
obviates any need for naturalistic psychological consisten-
42
cy. Iago is a stage-type with sufficient human charac
teristics to make him acceptable within the total structure
of the play. And if he is not exactly, as Coleridge be
lieved, engaged in "the motive-seeking of a motiveless
43
malignity," he has nevertheless "bagged far more than the
44
legal limit." While the mechanics of revenge are a lesser
subject than the emotions produced by sexual wrong, Iago
mentions his motives in parentheses, while he is preoccupied
^Heilman observes that Shakespeare gives Iago his
motivations to keep him from being a conventional villain
or an abstraction (pp. 35-36). For the argument that Iago
is actually well-motivated, see Kittredge, The Complete
Works j . p. 1242. Kittredge sees Iago as "actuated by re
sentment for injustice." However, compare Kittredge with
Spivack, who says that Iago's motives "come crowding in
frivolous profusion and jostle each other off into obliv
ion" (p. 7). Aside from hatred, mirth is his only real
emotion (p. 23). Elliott goes even further: "The audience
laughs and, at the same time, discounts the villains' sense
of humor . . . for even the dullest spectator knows enough
of Othello by now to sense the ridiculousness of that cheap
rumor" [i.e., that Othello has cuckolded Iago], p. 45. _ .
43Samuel T. Coleridge, in Coleridge's Shakespearean
Criticism. ed. T. M. Raysor (London, 1930), Vol. I, "Notes
on the Tragedies," p. 49.
44Heilman, p. 35.
121
with his machinations.
The point to recall here is that this grammatical rever
sal, this ostentatious subordination of an element of
intrinsic importance, is a standard comic device espe
cially in popular entertainment. Not only is the griev
ance unimportant to Iago, but also he knows that he is
syntactically demoting it and thus in effect making a
conscious joke of his profession of fear.45 (My ital
ics .)
How can such grotesque jesting even with his own mo
tives be explained? The answer seems to lie in Iago's stage
deportment, and this, in turn, develops out of the blending
of conventions from which he is made. Iago has the inclina-
i
tion of the Vice to let the audience in on his fiendish
plots, and to gloat over the folly of his victims. The
English stage tradition of eschewing the creation of an
illusion of reality in the theatre, the absence of the pros
cenium arch, and the convention of self-characterization
led to the creation of a certain rapport between the machi-
46
nator and the audience. The method of direct self-
4^Heilman, p. 34. Again, Spivack observes that when
Iago says, "I fear Cassio with my nightcap too" (II.i.315),
the audience laughs aloud (p. 75). Spivack says the audi
ence laughs because of the impossible picture of the fastid
ious Cassio doing such a thing. It seems, however, more
likely that they would smile at the very profusion of Iago's
motives, taken with the fact of his obsession and jealousy.
He would here resemble the suspicious, jealous husband.
45Arthur Sewell, Character and Society in Shakespeare
122
characterization was also a common practice, especially in
depicting the manipulator, in the plays of Chapman, and
other comic writers. ^
Iago is a "lover of footlights who delights in con
scious histrionism and takes an 'egotistic relish' in his
48
'artistry m seduction.'" Having won over his gull,
Roderigo, to his purposes he speaks to the audience in his
first soliloquy:
Thus do I ever make my fool my purse,
For I mine own gained knowledge should profane
If I would time expend with such a snipe
But for my sport and profit. (I.iii.388-391)
The word "ever" here lets the audience know that gulling is
(Oxford, 1951), p. 81, identifies Iago with earlier villains
whose relationship to the audience is "not unlike that es
tablished by the comedian in the music hall." The Eliza
bethan stage conventions of the villain's and Vice's ad
dressing the audience is discussed in Daniel Seltzer,
"Elizabethan Acting in Othello," Shakespeare Quarterly. X
(Spring 1959), 202-210.
4^Kreider, Elizabethan Comic Conventions, p. 8ff.
4®Heilman, pp. 41-48.
49The use of the word "snipe" here suggests hunting.
Iago delights in speaking of hunting and trapping his vic
tims, or prey. The word "trash" (in "this poor trash of
Venice"— II.i.311) may be the hunting term "trace." See
r. S. Dorsch, "This Poor Trash of Venice," Shakespeare
Quarterly. VI (Summer 1955), 359-360.
123
a long-time habit with Iago, and the word "sport" indicates
the delight he takes in it. Evidently Iago intends to dem-
50
onstrate his prowess m using men for his own ends. In
II.i when Cassio takes Desdemona's hand, Iago turns aside
to the audience, saying: "With as little a web as this will
I ensnare as great a fly as Cassio" (168-169). When his
plan has begun to progress in Act II, he demonstrates with
delight his employment of "my sick fool Roderigo,/ Whom
love have turned inside out ..." (iii.52-53). Then, when
he has both maneuvered Cassio into a drunken brawl and per
suaded him to appeal to Desdemona for help in gaining re
instatement, Iago turns to the audience and asks in a sar
donic and ironically humorous voice:
And what's he then that says I play the villain?
When this advice is free I give and honest . . .
(II.iii.343-344)
The unusual syntax of the last sentence is evidently de
signed to emphasize a pause before "and honest," as Iago
^One of the most salient facts about the Vice was his
delight in demonstrating his cleverness to the audience.
Spivack, p. 440, observes that he often began by promising
to make a fool out of the hero. When he succeeds, as in
The Castle of Perseverance and Macnificence f he gloats over
the prostrate form of his victim, and preaches a diabolical
homily to the audience. So, too, does Iago in Act III.
124
51
delights in jesting about his reputation for honesty.
How am I then a villain
To counsel Cassio to .this parallel course,
Directly to his good?
(II.iii.354-356)
In this little address, which of course depends on dramatic
irony, Iago probably jokes with the audience in order to
remind them of his cleverness. Again, when Othello and
Desdemona are re-united and embrace on the shore of Cyprus,
Iago gloats over what he has in store for them, and this
time in an aside mocks his own pose of innocence, while at
the same time relishing it:
Oh, you are well tuned now,
But I'll set down the pegs which make this music
As honest as I am. (II,i.200-203)
In Act IV after Iago has convinced Othello that his wife is
unfaithful, and Othello has fallen into a trance, the
^While Iago is here openly demonstrating his unde
served reputation, he will also, of course, use it to gain
dominance over Othello's mind. What begins with a kind of
"in-joke" with the audience becomes a complex series of puns
with terrible implications. It has been maintained that
Iago is not essentially a symbol of Evil, but "a critique on
an unconscious pun." See William Empson, "The Best Policy,"
in Life and LettersT XIV (1937). Empson notes forty-eight
uses of the word "honest" in the play, and demonstrates
some of the intricate paradoxes involved in it. Note also
how Iago perverts and toys with words such as "reputation"
and "virtue." There may be something comic in his taking
completely opposite positions in regard to the merits of
reputation when speaking with Cassio and Othello.
125 -
villain, gloating over his victim, turns to the audience and
says with relish of his own cleverness:
Thus credulous fools are caught,
And many worthy and chaste dames even thus,
All guiltless, meet reproach. (XV.i.45-47)
Iago's deadpan innocence— totally hypocritical— is
bound to have a partially comic effect, for it is such a
patent and outrageous sham. It is related to the Vice's
constant protestations of love and honesty and his weeping
at his victim's misfortunes even as he gloats over them.
Typical of Iago's pose of saintliness is his reply to
Emilia, who says that "some eternal villain/ Some busy and
insinuating rogue,/ Some cogging, cozening slave," has
slandered Desdemona (IV.ii.130-132). The villain replies,
"Fie, there is no such man, it is impossible" (134). Before
this, when Cassio told Iago of the drunken brawl (which Iagc
arrangedl) the villain said, "Is it possible?" (II.iii.289),
a remark he repeats word for word when Othello sounds his
farewell to tranquillity and war, a renunciation Iago has
provoked.
Iago constantly employs religious terms and calls upon
Heaven to prove his innocence, which must appear grotesque
when juxtaposed against his patent knavishness. When
Othello charges Iago to prove his accusations in III.iii,
126
he cries "Oh, Gracel Oh Heaven defend mel" and then "O
monstrous worldl Take note, take note, 0 world, to be di
rect and honest is not safe" (376-378). When Cassio is
wounded in the drunken brawl, Iago cries, "Marry, Heaven
forbid'." (II.iii .260); and he repeats the very same words
when Cassio is wounded in Act V (i.73). When it appears
that it is Roderigo who has stabbed Cassio, Iago cries with
self-righteous astonishment, "Oh Heaven'. Roderigo" (V.i.
90). And when Othello asks him if he mocks him, Iago says,
"I mock you 1 No by Heaven," (IV.i.6l). At the end of the
dreadful temptation scene, he tells Othello with mock humil
ity and awful irony, "I am your own forever" (IV.iii.478).
One of the most salient facts about Iago is his smil
ing, his easy-going affability, his light jesting and
52
friendliness. In depicting him Shakespeare is still pre
occupied with Hamlet's perception that "one can smile and
smile and be a villain." In Cinthio's tale it takes a long
time before the Ensign hits on his plan, so that he is not
a sardonic and humorous villain, as Iago is, from the
53
start. Iago not only smiles from the very first scene,
^Muir, p. 138.
53lbid. Iago's sardonic sense of humor has been
127
but there are in him "recurrent traces of the comedian,
54
which may heighten the shock of his savagery."
The evidence of his sense of humor occurs not only in
his bawdy jests and depreciatory cynicism, but in petty
contexts in puns and in his excellent sense of timing.
Thus, for example, in the first scene when Brabantio berates
him by saying, "Thou art a villain," Iago retorts, with a
pause and reliance on the element of surprise, "You are— a
Senator" (i.117-118). In the next scene, when Cassio in
quires about Othello's presence in the street, Iago in
jocular humor replies that the General "hath boarded a land
carrack" and is "made" forever. When Cassio replies that
he does not understand (perhaps annoyed at Iago's off-color
remarks), Iago carries his jesting a step further:
Iago He's married.
Cas. To who?
Iago Marry, to— ..."
(I.ii.52-54)
Here the villain combines the casual oath alluding to the
compared with Hamlet's critical wit by Thomas F. Connolly,
in "Shakespeare and the Double Man," Shakespeare Quarterly
I (January 1950), 30-35. Connolly views Iago as "the sar
donic half of Hamlet running rampant" (33).
54Heilman, p. 22.
128
Virgin with a pun on Othello's new condition. In Act II,
quibbling with Desdemona on the subject of woman, and amus
ing her with doggerel which she takes to be "old fond para-
55
doxes to make fools laugh i' the alehouse," Iago says with
jesting intention that no matter how black a woman may be,
"She'll find a white that shall her blackness fit" (Il.i.
134). His pun on "white" or "wight" here is fairly typical
of the good-humored affability which is the mask of his
56
villainy. He seems always to be cheering up Desdemona,
Cassio, or Roderigo.
Iago is essentially petty in nature, and his habits of
57
speech are those of the barracks. Shakespeare did not
55For further discussion of this scene, see below, pp.
135-136.
~^He is also contributing further in this comic context
to the complex ironies involving white and black on the
tragic level.
57
Granville-Barker, Prefacesf Vol. II, emphasizes
Iago's pettiness (p. 98). Clifford Leach observes that
"Iago has breathed the atmosphere of the barrack-room; he
wants not a kingdom, but a lieutenancy" (p. 89). Granville-
Barker is in general agreement, maintaining that Iago is
"a common fellow, foul-minded and coarse-tongued . . . bit
terly envious, pettily spiteful, morbidly vain" (p. 99).
Elliott, in Flaming Minister (p. 45) perhaps gives too much
credence to Iago's suspicions concerning Othello's relations
with Emilia, and goes beyond the context of the play to
conjecture that the "crude, jocular soldiers in the field
made the tale current, and the audience must laugh aloud
i29
simply give him comic lines "to make the Audience laugh, who
5 0
had not yet learnt to endure to be serious a whole play."
Rather, Iago's sense of humor is as much an aspect of his
stage personality as his diabolical wickedness. And his
sense of humor in trivia is simply another aspect of his
destructive, cynical, and naturalistic humor in matters of
greater importance. But this humor has many moods. To
Cassio he is almost droll, as when he suggests that Desde
mona is "sport for Jove" (16), and "full of game" (18), with
an eye that is a "parlay to provocation" (21-22), and speech
that is an "alarum to love" (25-26). (He tries to get
Cassio to join in his gross talk, but Cassio remains re
spectful.) Or he may be shockingly vulgar, as when he makes
when Iago thinks Cassio too has been Emilia's lover ..."
5®Francis Gildon, Miscellaneous Letters and Essavs
(London, 1694), p. 88. Gildon says also he was told that
Shakespeare put some words and expressions "perhaps not so
agreeable to his Character" into the part of Iago, for the
benefit of a comedian who played the part. The conjecture
is really not fantastic, though the comic speeches are, as
this paper attempts to show, in character, For the view
that Iago may have been created for Robert Armin, see F. W.
Sternfeld, Music in Shakespearean Tragedy (London, 1963),
pp. 141-143. "His [iago's] intellectual delight in his own
maneuvers was shared by an audience that was half delighted,
half aghast" because they saw in him "Overtones of the ele
gant court fool."
130
jests involving the bodily processes. There is the "colo-
quintida" allusion where he suggests that Desdemona will
act like purgative gherkins, and there is his ironic wish
for Cassio's sake that the lieutenant's fingers were enema
syringes ("clyster pipes"— II.i.177). He has also the capa
city to be deadly witty in suggesting far more than he says,
as when he begins his insinuations by taking up Othello's
remark that Cassio "went between" himself and Desdemona
(III.iii.lOOff,).
The counterpoint and antithesis to the noble and roman
tic love (at least at the beginning of the play) of Othello
and Desdemona is found in the naturalistic, anti-heroic and
destructive wit of this villain. The idealistic love of
Othello is opposed not by the indulgent humor of a gallant,
but by the base and bawdy mentality of a coarse fellow whose
barracks-room language "renders gross and contemptible the
59
sexual act," as well as all affections pertaining to the
relationship between man and woman. Much of Iago's language
can be classed as bawdy wit— a common, if not necessarily
laughable, variety of the comic.
From the first scene we see Iago delighting in
59Evans, p. 125.
131
tormenting Roderigo and Brabantio with sexually gross and
suggestive language. Brabantio discerns at once that he is
a "profane wretch" (I.i.114), just as will Desdemona in her
first conversation with him when she describes him mockingly
as "a most profane and liberal [licentious] counselor" (II.
i.163-164) (though she cannot be aware of the irony in her
bantering with this man who is to destroy her through licen
tious counsel) . Iago reveals himself through hi's animal
imagery as one who has contempt for man. His attitude would
have been shocking to an Elizabethan, who saw man as super
ior to the beasts. For Iago is a "cynical naturalist" who
sees the relationship of man and woman as one of "rutting
6 0
animals." Having resolved to plague Brabantio with flies
(I.i.7.), he wakes him to the warning that "an old black
ram" is "tupping" his "white ewe" and that if he does not
awaken "the snorting citizens, the Devil will make a grand-
sire" of him (90-91). When Brabantio protests, the villain
gives free rein to his wit:
'Zounds, sir, you are one of those that will not serve
God if the Devil bid you. Because we come to do you
service and you think we are ruffians, you'll have your
6 0
The phrase "cynical naturalist" is Spivack's (p.
426). Clemen uses the term "rutting animals" to describe
Iago's mode of visualization (p. 128).
132
daughter covered with a Barbary horse, you'll have your
nephews neigh to you, you'll have coursers for cousins,
and jennets for germans. (108-113)
The black man and Brabantio's fair daughter are, as the
witty villain puts it, "making the beast with two backs"
(116-117). Brabantio's observation that his house is not a
grange (105) shows how precisely he apprehends the tone of
Iago's imagery. Later Iago will use similar language in
tormenting Othello when he asks him if he would "grossly
gape on" while Desdemona is "topped" (he uses the word
"tupped" to Brabantio and Roderigo), and tells his victim
it is impossible to take them in the act,
Were they as prime as goats, as hot as monkeys,
As salt' as wolves in pride, and fools as gross
As ignorance made drunk. (III.iii.395ff.)
/
What began in bawdy jests and taunting ends in tragic emo
tion when Othello himself cries "Goats and monkeys'." (IV.i.
274), calls Desdemona "chuck," says he esteems her honest
"as summer flies are in the shambles" (IV.ii.656), and at
last, using Iago's word, vows in the face of reason that
Cassio did "top" his wife (V.ii.135). Thus bawdy language
becomes a sign of dramatic progression.
Iago's bawdy and cynical remarks about Desdemona are
but aspects of his larger cynicism concerning human motiva
tions, but the action of the play results in much of his
133
mockery being directed to the subject of woman. His jests
and inferences about the lasciviousness of women represent
an exaggeration of the Elizabethan idea that they are more
61
sensual than men, and he sometimes treats the subject with
a jocular and thinly veiled sarcasm not unlike pleasantry
or ingratiating levity. There is, for example, his rela
tionship with his wife. Setting aside the seriousness of
Iago's accusations in soliloquy, we have in the Iago-Emilia
relationship the conventionally comic situation of the
chiding husband and the shrewish (at least Iago says she is
so) wife. When Cassio makes a "bold show of courtesy" (II.
i.100) and kisses Emilia, with apologies to her husband,
Iago remarks:
Sir, would she give you so much of her lips
As of her tongue she oft bestows on me,
You'd have enough. (100-103)
3e goes on to complain that Emilia keeps him awake at night
^Carroll Camden, "Iago on Women," Journal of English
and._G.ermanic Philology. XLVIII (1949), 56-71. Camden places
Eago's witty remarks about women in the tradition of the
sophisticated anti-feminist writers rather than that of the
Improvised witticisms of mystery plays and popular tradi-
bion. He discounts Desdemona's remark in Act II that Iago's
ioggerel verse is made up of "old fond paradoxes to make
Fools laugh i' the alehouse" as not the general truth con
cerning Iago's view of women.
134
with her chatter, along with a catalogue of other alleged
womanly shortcomings. Again in Act III when Emilia is going
to tell her husband she has the handkerchief he has wanted,
the following amusing dialogue takes place:
Iago How now! What do you here alone?
Emil. Do not you chide, I have a thing for you.
Iago A thing for me? It is a common thing—
(iii.299-301)
In two lines here, Iago voices the distrust of the suspi
cious husband who finds his wife alone and suggests that
she is guilty of promiscuity— "It's a common thing— ." But
Emilia is used to his insinuations, and she catches his
direction:
Emil. Hal
Iago To have a foolish wife.
Emil. Oh, is that all? (302-304)
Thus Iago wittily absolves himself of accusation, and uses
timing amusingly again.
Cuckoldry is, in fact, one of Iago's favorite subjects
and it occurs on all levels of his relationships. This ob
session sometimes prompts the audience to smile. He himself
desires Desdemona and he says of her husband that "it is
thought abroad that 1twixt my sheets/ He has done my office"
(I.iii.392-393), and that "the lusty Moor/ Hath leaped into
my seat" (II.i.303-304); he won't be satisfied "Till I am
135
evened with him, wife for wife" (307). Moreover, he says,
"I fear Cassio too with my nightcap." To Roderigo he says,
speaking of Othello, "If thou canst cuckold him, thou dost
thyself a pleasure, me a sport" (I.iii.374-375). While
such remarks are not to be regarded as either pretexts or
motives on a realistic level, they are important in reveal
ing Iago's mode of thought. When his victim observes that
"A horned man's a monster and a beast," (IV. i,22ff.), Iago
replies with nearly twinkling wit, "There's many a beast
then in a populous city and many a civil monster" (IV.i.
22ff.). Othello himself comes to speak of "the forked
plague" (III. iii.275) and in Act IV when he falls down in a
trance for the second time and then rises, Iago asks with
brutal cynicism implying horning, "Have you not hurt your
head?" (50). Understanding the allusion, Othello asks,
"Dost thou mock me?" (60), and the villain comforts him with
these cynical words:
Good sir, be a man,
Think every bearded fellow that's but yoked
May draw with you. There's millions now alive
That nightly lie in those unproper beds
Which they dare swear peculiar. (IV.i.67ff.)
Some of Iago's wittiest but less insidious remarks on
women come in his dialogue with Desdemona at the beginning
of Act II— a dialogue resembling the traditional wit debate
136
except that the anxious wife merely feigns interest in her
opponent's wit. The scene opens with Iago's allegation that
wives are shrewish, garrulous, and promiscuous. After his
presentation in a light vein of the faults of wives ("You
are pictures out of doors . . "You rise to play, and go
to bed to work"— 109ff.), Iago is asked playfully by Desde
mona (who would relieve her anxiety for her husband) what he
would say of her were he to "praise her" as he has done his
wife. Here Iago improvises six couplets of clever doggerel
concerning the guiles of women, concluding in essence that
a witty but ugly woman will use her wit to catch a man, and
that there never was such a thing as a fair and foolish
62
woman, "For even her folly helped her to an heir" (129ff.).
Then, this arch-cynic paints a verbal picture of the perfect
wife as one who is fair but not proud, rich yet modest, able
to possess and yet full of restraint, not vindictive, con
tent, and devoid of conceit. Having proved that one may
^Granville-Barker views Iago's six couplets of im
promptu rhyming as semi-comic relief which helps to ease
the strain on Desdemona (p. 141). Cassio, too, jests, try
ing to cheer up the General's wife. Heilman, p. 51, notes
that in entertaining Desdemona and Emilia with his "jocular
description of women," Iago "undermines all distinctions
between fair and foul, witty and foolish."
137
conceive of such a person, he concludes that she were fit
only "to suckle fools and chronicle small beer" (160). Her
6 3
life would be but a history of trifles; she cannot exist.
Such idle mockery takes on tragic implications when it is
considered that the woman with whom Iago jests is in fact
just such a perfect woman, and that the mocker is plotting
to undo her.
Turning from mockery, bawdy jests, lewd puns, and jocu
lar sarcasm, we come to the last four matters to be consid
ered in a discussion of comic conventions in Othello. These
are, in the order that they will be considered, the drunken
brawl, the two Clown scenes, the Courtesan scene in which
jesting and laughter torment Othello, and Emilia's realistic
remarks on cuckoldry in her conversation with Desdemona in
Act V.
The comic drunk scene, which Kittredge notes is often
6 3
Camden, p. 57, sees the entire tour de force as beinc
divided into three parts: (1) a hackneyed diatribe against
wives in general, but directed at Emilia, (2) a verse com
position of witty paradoxes after the Euphuistic manner,
and (3) a list of the qualities of the good wife, with iron
ic intention, since she doesn't exist. Elliot, perhaps a
bit too concerned with Iago's psychology, remarks: "Thus
Iago assures himself that Desdemona is an exemplar and po
tential breeder of the world's fools" (p. 60).
138
64
played as caricature, is pivotal in the action, for it
will lead to Cassio's suit to Desdemona and Iago's grounds
for alleging dishonesty. In Cinthio the Captain is wounded
as he returns from a courtesan's house, but Shakespeare
tries to maintain sympathy for him, since he will in the end
be elevated to commander on Cyprus and must restore stabil
ity. So he brings about Cassio's "lapse from duty without
6 5
too much alienation of our sympathies." Cassio's vices
come to appear moderate and even amusing next to Roderigo's,
Iago's, and, finally, Othello's. Though he is susceptible,
he is generally temperate and good-natured.
Aside from drunkenness, which is always a comic spec
tacle in Shakespeare— and more comical when it involves a
singing and drinking boutDO— we have here the spectacle of
64.
George Lyman Kittredge, ed., The Tragedy of Othello
(Boston, 1941), p. 170.
6!5Muir, p. 134.
^Cases in point are Falstaff, Lepidus, Sir Toby Belch,
and the porter in Macbeth. We do not actually see the
drunken soldiers who guard Duncan's door,—but there would
be nothing comic in them if we did. However, comic drink
ing and singing bouts occur in 2 Henrv IV (V.iii.1-148);
Twelfth Niaht (II.iii,1-208); and Antony and Cleopatra (II.
vii.1-142). The drinking scene in Othello is given an added
comic effect by the duel in which it ends— a duel between a
cowardly gull and a drunken soldier who threatens to beat
him into a bottle. However, comic action takes a serious
turn almost at once.
139
a drunken man insisting that he is not drunk, even while he
momentarily becomes drunker. Of course comic effect is at
tenuated by the fact that the audience is aware of Iago's
machinations and of the possible adverse consequences of
Cassio's behavior, so that despite the drunken business and
songs, the scene has serious overtones. Important questions
are touched upon, as usually occurs even in Shakespeare's
comic scenes. There is Cassio's drunken wandering: "Well,
God's above all, and there be souls must be saved and there
be souls must not be saved" (104-106). Salvation is a key
question in the play, as is evidenced by Iago's role as a
devil-figure, and, notably, the last scene of the play.
Moreover, in Iago's response that he hopes to be saved too,
we have an obvious irony. In Cassio's reply that he must be
saved before Iago because lieutenants must be saved before
ancients, we are reminded again of the injury Iago claims
to have received through Cassio's advancement. Thus, the
jesting has also a bitter taste for Iago.
But perhaps the most interesting serio-comic aspect of
this scene is Iago's merry drinking song, which does not
seem to have been discussed much. In order to achieve his
purpose, "Iago assumes a bonhomie that mingles banter,
140
67
drinking and singing." His song has to do with King
Stephen, a worthy peer who acquired his clothes cheaply,
yet was ready to find fault with them. The second verse is
especially interesting.
"He was a wight of high renown,
And thou art but of low degree.
'Tis pride that pulls the country down.
Then take thine auld cloak about thee."
(96-99)
The "wight of high renown" suggests Cthello, for Iago
is "but of low degree," yet well Iago knows that "'Tis pride
that pulls the country down" when such as his general think
their virtue injured. There is a mocking ironic ring to
Iago's song which is premonitory of destruction even while
it is merry.
The Clown appears twice, both times in the critical
third act. The two scenes in which he appears total but
fifty-one lines, but they come shortly before the temptation
scene and immediately after it. It might be concluded,
^Sternfeld, p. 147. The song about King Stephen, as
Kittredge notes fOthello, p. 169), is part of an old song
entitled "Bell My Wife," familiar to the audience. Bell
advises her husband to be less extravagant in his dress,
for he is uneconomical. See Bishop Percy1s Folio Manu
script, ed. Hales and Furnivall, II, 320ff.
141
go
therefore, that the Clown scenes act as mere comic relief,
providing a rest from tension and heightening tragic matter
by contrast. But the principle of the intricate relation
ship of scenes through verbal patterns applies here, too.
The first of the two Clown scenes opens the third act
and, coming as it does after the sinister tone of the con
clusion of Act II, continues the alternation of "high" and
"low" scenes which occurred in the first two acts, but which
will diminish in importance after the temptation scene. The
scene is divided into two parts. The Musicians have been
placed beneath Othello's window by Cassio as the first step
in his endeavor to be reinstated; his failure with the Musi
cians is but the first in a series of failures. Still, the
Clown's punning on "wind instruments" and "tale," with his
conventional joke about the Neapolitan disease, seem to be
so much comic business. So, too, are his remarks that "the
General so likes your music that he desires you, for love's
^®This view is held by Granville-Barker: "For relaxa
tion before the tense main business of the tragedy begins,"
Shakespeare has Cassio bring on the Musicians. Of the sec
ond Clown scene, he says: "After the prolonged and close-
knit tension some such unqualified relief as the Clown now
brings with his antic chatter will be welcome" {p. 46).
This is certainly correct, but in light of the verbal over
tones of the Clown's language he cannot be considered "un
qualified relief."
142
sake, to make no more noise with it" (10-12), and "If you
have any music that may not be heard, to 't again" (15-16).
However, his observation that the General does not care to
hear music may recall Iago's promise to "untune" the strings
of harmony, and soon, indeed, Othello's life will fall into
69
a sort of horrid cacophony. Comic dialogue is thus pre
monitory of tragic action. In the second part of the scene
Cassio asks the Clown, "Dost thou hear, my honest friend?"
and the Clown replies, "No, I hear not your honest friend,
I hear you" (21-22). The choice of the word "honest" here
cannot be accidental, and the scene is not without tragic
overtones:
This perverse miscomprehension is comical, but that
through which Othello is victimized is far from being
so, a fact which we cannot forget, and which thereby
lends a certain grimness to the Clown's jests, even
while we laugh at them . . . If only Othello would not
hear his "honest" friend, but rather the true Iago.7®
In the second Clown scene, Desdemona seeks out Cassio
to tell him that she has moved Othello on his behalf. Her
®9Comments on the Clown scenes her are in general
suggested by Leonard Prager, "The Clown in Othello.1 1 Shake
speare Quarterly. XI (Winter 1960), 94-96. Suggestion of
impending cacophony is on p. 95. On this subject, see
Knight's "The Othello Music."
70Ibid.
143
words have a dreadful irony when juxtaposed with what has
just passed between Iago and Othello. She asks the Clown
if he knows where Cassio lies, and in the first twelve lines
of this scene the word "lie" is used seven times. The
Clown's trite punning with the double meaning of this word
("to fabricate" and "to dwell") might appear trivial, but
not if it is recalled that the difference between reality
and falsehood, truth and fabrication, is as much a part of
the total structure of the play as the various meanings of
the word "honest." Moreover, the Clown's bit of relief here
follows immediately upon Iago's monstrous lie to Othello
about Cassio's dream, which brings about Othello's commis
sioning the deaths of both Cassio and Desdemona. It also
precedes a whole series of lies on the part of almost all
the major characters: Emilia tells Desdemona she does not
know what happened to the handkerchief (III.iv.24); Othello
tells Desdemona that there is nothing wrong with him, when
71
he is really ill; and Desdemona lies by saying that the
7 1
/xOthello's elaborate and beautiful description of the
magic in the web of the handkerchief may be a lie. Compare
III.iv.55ff. with V.ii.215-216, where Othello says the hand
kerchief was not the gift of a gypsy, but of his father.
However, Shakespeare may simply have forgotten the earlier
account he put in Othello's mouth.
144
handkerchief is not lost. In all this there is the making
of a moral chaos created by Iago's lies, in which even the
72
virtuous characters become involved in complex untruths.
The courtesan, Bianca, appears in three scenes, two of
73
them having mixed comic and tragic effects. We have seen
how Shakespeare removed the wife Cassio had in Cinthio's
story, so that his wenching would not seem reprehensible.
Now at the end of Act III Shakespeare brings on his conven
tional and comic courtesan in order to devise a sequence of
events which improves greatly upon his source. Instead of
having the Moor merely see a woman in a window copying the
^Prager, p. 95. The relationship of the word "lie"
in this scene to the total verbal structure of the play can
be illustrated by comparing this scene which opens Act III
with a portion of the one which opens Act IV. Iago claims
that Cassio has boasted of lying with Desdemona:
Oth.
Iago.
o th .
I age?
Oiii.
iago
Oth..
^Her third appearance occurs in V.i, after Cassio is
wounded by Roderigo, and Iago mortally wounds Roderigo.
There is nothing comic in her appearance here. She is com
passionate to Cassio, but is charged with complicity in his
stabbing by Iago.
What hath he said?
Faith, that he did— I know not what he did.
What? What?
Lie—
With her?
With her, on her, what you will.
Lie with her'. Lie on her! --We say lie on her
when they belie her.— Lie with her!
145
handkerchief, Shakespeare develops the Cassio-Bianca rela
tionship, using the convention of the railing courtesan of
Latin New Comedy. Bianca rails at Cassio for remaining
74
away from her for an entire week. He tries to appease
her, and even attempts to persuade her to copy the pattern
of the handkerchief he has found in his chamber. She ac
cuses him of being unfaithful (again a major theme played
in a minor key), and charges that he has received the hand
kerchief as a gift from some hew mistress. Cassio denies
the charge, and asks her to leave him, for he does not wish
to be seen "womaned" at such a time: "Not that I love you
not," he says, and she replies "But that you do not love
me" (195-196). Still, she takes the handkerchief, com
plaining that she is being put off.
And so a key scene is prepared for— a scene in which
the clever villain uses a conventionally comic case of mis
understanding. An overheard conversation (Othello here is
a sort of tragic peeping Tom), mimicry of a courtesan's
wiles by her soldier lover, jocular laughter, and the
^This is, of course, impossible, since the entire
action on Cyprus takes only two days. Once again we have
an instance of comic dialogue establishing the illusion of
"historical time" as distinguished from "dramatic time."
146
railing of the courtesan all combine to torment Othello to
the verge of insanity, and perhaps even into it. The tone
of the scene is made poignant by Cassio's zestful laughter
as contrasted with Othello's furious rage. Othello cannot
hear the words of the conversation, yet he draws imaginative
lines between his wife and the woman Cassio calls jestingly
"a customer" (122), "the monkey" (130), "the bauble" (138),
and a "fitchew" (a "perfumed one" at that— 149-150). Cas
sio 's pantomime of how Bianca falls about his neck, and
"hangs and lolls and weeps upon me" (138-143)xis grotesque
in view of the construction Othello places upon his ges
tures . Bianca's returning the handkerchief as some "minx's
token" (157) and bidding Cassio return it to his "hobby
horse" (159) are conventional business of the sort found
in New Comedy, but they are appalling when the handkerchief
is Desdemona's and it is Othello who is confounded.
The final use of a comic convention in Othello occurs
in the last scene of Act IV. Here, right after the Willow
Song, Emilia and Desdemona discuss marital fidelity and
cuckoldry. Emilia's role as a confidante has already been
established. She has been identified by the dramatist
rather clearly as a foil for the pure innocence of the
147
75
heroine. Her view of men is of the realistic rather than
the idealistic sort:
They are all but stomachs and we all but food.
They eat us hungerly, and when they are full
They belch us. (III.iv.103-105)
Thus, Emilia plays a role somewhat akin to that of the nurse
or witty waiting maid of comedy, and her comments on romance
and love function like those of the Nurse or Mercutio in
Romeo and Juliet, to act as contrast for idealistic or noble
statements.
In IV.iii Desdemona asks Emilia if she believes that
there are women who actually deceiive their husbands. Emilis
I
knows that there are. When Desdemona says that she would
not do so "by this heavenly light!" Emilia replies that she
would not do so either, but she "might do11 as well i' the
dark" (64-66). Trying to comfort and cheer her suffering
mistress, Emilia proceeds to weave her wit around Desde
mona 's idealism. Desdemona asks her if she would do such a
deed for the world, and she replies that "The world's a huge
7-*While Emilia is depicted as a dutiful wife to Iago,
her keeping quiet about the handkerchief cannot be easily
reconciled with the great compassion she shows for her
mistress; we must assume that she does not connect Othello's
jealousy with her husband's actions.
148
thing. It is a great price/ For a small vice" (69-70).
Besides, she could "undo ’t when I had done," and "who woulc
not make her husband a cuckold to make him a monarch?"
(70ff.). Thus she engages in a nicely witty piece of ca
suistry:
Why, the wrong is but a wrong i' the world, and having
the world for your labor, 'tis a wrong in your own world
and you might quickly make it right. (79-82)
Emilia ends with a warning to husbands who "pour our treas
ures into foreign laps" (88). Her words constitute a witty
commentary on sexual weakness and the relativity of stan
dards, highlighting Desdemona's purity at a time when her
husband is about to murder her for falseness. Here for the
last time in the play Shakespeare precedes tragic action
with a kind of comic verbalism, and thereby provides further
insights into the complexity of experience.
Thus, as in Romeo and Juliet, Shakespeare ends his
fourth act with a scene of witty repartee. Both scenes
serve as a last release from tension, a brief interlude
before the catastrophe in the final act. But Desdemona's
conversation with Emilia, unlike the scene with the Musi
cians and Peter that ends the fourth act in the earlier
play, has significant structural value. And the contrast
established by Emilia's realistic witticisms and Desdemona1s
149
steadfast purity suggests a further comparison between the
function of comic elements in the two plays. The humor in
Othello has darker accents than that in the earlier play.
Throughout Othello comic matter touches upon evil itself,
rather than upon folly and mistaken good intentions. (In
Romeo and Juliet only Tybalt may be said to be a bad per
son.) Disloyalty and infidelity between men, Or between
man and woman, are of a different order from the romantic
excesses of youth or the errors of old men. The former,
whether operating on a comic level in much of Iago's talk
and in his relations with secondary characters, or on a
tragic level in the tremendous passions of Othello, seem to
have the potential for creating more intensely tragic ef
fects .
These effects, moreover, are related to the fact that
Shakespeare retained the outline of Cinthio's tale of jeal
ousy and Italianate villainy, but wrote a play which re
sembles in certain structural features the morality play
and the pattern of realistic comedy of the sort being writ
ten around 1600. Like the morality play, Othello presents
a man in bliss who falls victim to a witty corrupter, or
Vice, who delights in demonstrating his prowess while he
ensnares his victim, and gloats over the success of his
150
machinations. Like the realistic comedies of Jonson and
Chapman, it presents a clever rogue and dissembler who de
ceives and tricks various persons for his own sport and
profit. Iago, unlike Cinthio1s melancholic and psychologi
cally well motivated Ensign, is a low, coarse fellow with a
bawdy, naturalistic sense of humor that expresses the nega
tion and denial of all human values. Shakespeare's audience
would probably have been appalled at the Vice-villain's
ungodly assertions and jests; yet it would probably have
smiled until the hero fell under the sway of evil. Thus,
the increasingly evident implications and effect of verbal
and active trickery, would have been an important mark of
dramatic progression.
In this progression, contrast would heighten effect.
The Roderigo action not only shadows and parodies the main
action, but reveals even more clearly the nature of the
villain. Iago's success with his other victim and gull,
Dthello, becomes grotesque and terrible. Imaginative lines
are also drawn between the railing courtesan and the virtu
ous wife, and between the various "realistic" comments on
fidelity, and the unsullied character of the heroine. Fi
nally, the fairly trivial nature of the villain's ruses and
of the objects he employs— joviality and confidential
151
jesting, drinking songs, the relation of a lascivious dream,
a handkerchief, laughter over a courtesan, and the hero's
eavesdropping— heighten and make grotesque and terrible
Othello's torrential passions and his murder of his innocent
wife.
CHAPTER III
ANTONY AND CLEOPATRA
Antony and Cleopatra, the third love tragedy to be
examined in this study from the point of view of the func
tion of comic elements, was written in 1607-08, after the
period of the "high" tragedies.'*' It has an atmosphere of
luxuriant beauty, brilliance, and, at times, near levity,
which sets it off from Othello. Kina Lear, and Macbeth. the
tragedies which immediately preceded it. Bradley refused
to place Antony and Cleopatra with the great tragedies be-
2
cause it does not arouse intense pity and fear. In
Antony and Cleopatra was entered in the Stationers’
Register in 1608. No quarto is known, and the play was
published first in the Folio of 1623.
2A. C. Bradley, Shakespearean Tragedy (New York, 1955),
p. 14. Bradley considers Antony and Cleopatra along with
Richard III. Richard II. Julius_Gaeaar. and Coriolanus to
be tragic histories or historical tragedies. Evans, p. 168,
observes that the darker accents of Kina Lear. Hamlet and
Macbeth have disappeared in Antony. Absent, too, are the
cataclysms of nature in these plays, and the questionings
of the gods. The arena df Antony is more that of the tem
poral world.
__________________ ' ___________ 152
153
comparison with the last play we studied, Othello, this is
certainly so. And although the play has been interpreted
many ways, it is true that one of the features of Antony
and Cleopatra which marks it as different is the occurrence
in it of many comic elements which attenuate pity and ter
ror, and even cause laughter. In this the play is more like
the first love-tragedy we examined, Romeo and Juliet, than
Othello— although the effects of both the serious and comic
elements are quite different.
The structure of Antony and Cleopatra is in some ways
diametrically opposed to that of the play we studied last.
Perhaps on the most obvious level, one can employ adjectives
to describe it which could not be even remotely applied to
Othello. It is splendid, expansive, wonderful entertain
ment, infinitely various, even charming. Compared with it,
Othello seems compressed, tense, and terrifying. There is
nothing hideous in Antony as there is in OthelloT and noth-
3
ing seems unnatural. The hero and heroine bring about
O
^Theodore Spencer, Shakespeare and the Nature of Man
(New York, 1942), p. 169. Spencer emphasizes that Antony,
unlike the heroes of the other great tragedies, is never
disillusioned, because he had no great illusions to begin
with. We see him gradually being stripped of his huge and
glamorous world, but there is nothing which induces a sense
that the acts being witnessed are unnatural and terrible.
154
their downfall by their folly, irrationality, and self-
indulgence. Moreover, they do not shrink more than momen
tarily from the consequences of their actions, but rather
embrace them with a kind of zestfulness . They see compen
sations for their losses so that there is no great pain or
suffering; no great crimes are committed and there is no
4
really bad character, no symbol of negation xn the play.
Almost every distressing element is balanced by some com
pensating, pleasant or comic element, so that there is no
unrelieved pain, no sustained suffering. There is greater
sustained comic effect than in either Romeo and Juliet or
Othello. In fact, as we shall see, the play may even be
considered high comedy.
Comic elements in Antony and Cleopatra tend in general
to support a relaxation of tension and a diffusion of in
tensity, but they are but one element working toward this
effect. Against the compressed action of Romeo and Juliet
or OthellQj we have an action that is expansive and diverse
On the other hand, Antony is one of the highly flawed heroes!
of Shakespeare's late tragic period. For elaboration of
this view, see Willard Farnham, Shakespeare1s Tragic Fron
tier (Berkeley and Los Angeles, 1950), p. Iff.
^G. Wilson Knight, The Imperial Theme (London, 1931),
pp. 263-264.
155
Whereas the action of Romeo and Juliet takes four days, and
that of Othello takes three (aside from the time lost in
traveling between Acts I and II), the action of Antony takes
years. Moreover, there is a kind of unity of place in both
Othello (after Act I) and Romeo and Juliet (except for V.i
where Romeo is in Mantua), whereas Antony ranges back and
forth from Alexandria, to Rome, to Syria, to Athens, to
Actium, at a breathtaking pace. In Romeo and Juliet there
are twenty-four scenes; in OthelloT fifteen. In Antony
there are eighteen scenes in Act III alone, and forty-two
altogether in the play. Contrasted with the effect of com
pression, tension, and unity in the earlier love tragedies,
then, there is one of spatial and temporal fluidity in An
tony . The early and the late love tragedy have more spec
tacle, mixed matter and secondary business than Othello.
Analysis of the use of comic matter in Antony and Cleo
patra must begin with mention of sources, of pre-existing
Elizabethan and Jacobean views of the legend and of how
Shakespeare treated it. The main source of the play is Sir
Thomas North's translation of Plutarch's "The Life of Marcus
5
Antonius." More important, however, than any specific
5
E. A. J. Honigman's "Shakespeare's Plutarch,"
156
matter in the source is the prevailing early seventeenth
century attitude toward the lovers. Shakespeare1s contem
poraries seem to have been almost unanimous in condemning
Cleopatra as a harlot who was punished for her immoral ways,
while Antony was considered an example of the man who fol-
g
lows pleasure and sensuality to his own destruction. Most
Shakespeare Quarterly. X (Winter 1959), 25-33. Shakespeare
used the Parallel Lives in Sir Thomas North's 1579 transla
tion of Amyot's French edition. Both Plutarch and Amyot re
garded their story as moral philosophy. See Amyot's Preface
in Tudor Translations. ed. W. E. Henley (London, 1895), Vol.
VII, p. 8. References to Plutarch in this chapter are to
Shakespeare1s Plutarch, ed. Walter W. Skeat (London, 1875).
Shakespeare may also have used the Countess of Pembroke's
translation of Garnier's Marc Antoine. M. W. MacCollum,
Shakespeare's Roman Plavs and Their Background (London,
1910), pp. 413-414, attempts to show that Shakespeare also
used Appian's Ancient Historie. trans. 1578. See Shake
speare 's Appian. ed. Ernest Schanzer (Liverpool, 1956), pp.
76-77. Schanzer cites verbal parallels.
^Harshly critical sixteenth-century views of the lovers
are to be found in the following works: J. Sleidan, A
Briefe Chronicle (London, 1563); Sebastian Brant, Ship of
Fools, trans. A. Barclay, ed. T. H. B. Jamieson (Edinburgh,
1874), I, 80-81; Balthazar Castiglione, The Courtyer. trans.
Thomas Hoby (London, 1561); Thomas Nashe, Works, ed. Ronald
B. McKerrow (London, 1904), I, 217. A sympathetic treat
ment of the lovers' story occurs in G. Pettie, A Petite
Palace, ed. H. Harlmar (London, 1938), p. 146, 174-175.
Dickey, pp. 144-179, traces the tradition of condemnation
from Cicero and Plutarch down to the Renaissance. An im
portant influence during the latter period was Boccaccio's
depiction of Cleopatra as a cruel and self-centered woman
in De Casibus Virorum Illustrium. In Book I of the Faeyy
Oueene. Spenser placed the lovers in Lucifera's House of
Pride.
157
of the stories about the lovers contained a sort of popular
morality, although there were always overtones of more ser
ious and fundamental Renaissance views concerning the defeat
of Reason by Passion, and the violation of Christian moral-
7
lty m regard to lechery and gluttony. When an author like
Samuel Daniel felt a degree of sympathy for the lovers, he
began his action after the death of Antony so that he might
dwell upon the mental anguish which follows immoral conduct
8
and the way in which God punishes sins. Compared with
Dolora G. Cunningham, "The Characterization of Shake
speare's Cleopatra," Shakespeare Quarterly, VI (Winter
1905), 1-17. Miss Cunningham subsumes all subjects of the
play under the Christian conflict between Reason and Pas
sion, a theme Shakespeare read into his pre-Christian
source. Antony confuses lustful desire for Cleopatra with
religious devotion. For the view that Antony suffers from
a complex of vices which Elizabethans popularly called
"pleasure," see J. Leeds Barroll, "Antony and Pleasure,"
Journal of English and German Philolocrv. LVII (October
1958), 708-720.
^Daniel's Senecan play was written in 1594, and was
produced in a new edition in 1607, with alterations resemb
ling passages in Shakespeare's play. Whether Daniel or
Shakespeare moved first is not known. R. H. Case and Wil
lard Farnham list many parallels of language between the
two plays. See Case's Introduction to the 1900 Arden Edi
tion of Antony and Cleopatra, re-edited by M. R. Ridley
(London, 1954), p. xxviii. Certain scenes, such as Cleo
patra's determination to hoodwink Octavius, are in both
Daniel and Shakespeare. However, as far as the present
study is concerned, Daniel has no comic elements of the sort
discussed below. Originally, Daniel (even had Cleopatra's
death described by a messenger, but in the revised edition
158
Daniel's play, Shakespeare's is high romance and high com
edy. Daniel has none of the witty dialogue and "low" comics
found in Shakespeare's play; nor does he have the iterative
images which lend an air of frivolity to the hero and hero
ine (see below, p. 167ff.). Despite Shakespeare's almost
merciless exposure of the failings and shortcomings of the
lovers, his is the most sympathetic treatment of their story
of the age, and the only one with extensive use of comic
matter. It may be suggested at the outset, therefore, that
this comic matter, as in Romeo and Juliet, helps to build
sympathy for the lovers— sympathy absent in the sources.
There are striking differences between the comic mattei
in Antony and Cleopatra and comic elements in the first two
plays analyzed in this study. The third love-tragedy has
not a hint of action resembling that of Latin New Comedy.
There are no blocking characters, no elders. There is no
witty parody of romantic love, of Petrarchan idealism and
hyperbolic language as in Romeo and Juliet, nor anything
like the cynicism of Iago. There is no structural element
of 1607 he presented it on stage, though without the comic
business of the Clown. Daniel does not even present Char-^
mian, Iras, Mardian, or Enobafbus, who provide so much com
ic counterpoint in Shakespeare's play.
159
such as manipulation by a clever villain; nor does Antony
and Cleopatra bear any resemblance in structure to the ro
mances of the Romeo and Juliet period or to Jonsonian com
edy.
On the other hand, there are certain similarities in
the use of non-tragic matter. Once again Shakespeare takes
liberties with his source in introducing comic characters,
situations, and language that provide a realistic dimension
while creating contrast through relief. As in the earlier
love tragedies, the reverse of idealistic and heroic lan
guage is placed in the mouths of "low" characters to provide
contrast and comparison for the main action. Supporting
characters in Shakespeare's play are barely hinted at in
Plutarch, and when they are mentioned they lack completely
the liveliness and wittiness with which Shakespeare— unlike
any of his contemporaries--endows them. Charmian, Iras, and
Mardian are developed from two or three remarks in Plutarch,
the lengthiest of which is this:
And Caesar said furthermore that Antonius was not master
of himself, but that Cleopatra had brought him beside
himself by her charms and amorous poisons: and that they
that should make war with them, should be Mardian the
eunuch, Photinus, and Iras (a woman of Cleopatra's bed
chamber, that frizzled her hair and dressed her head)
and Charmian, the which were those that ruled all the
160
9
affairs of Antonius' empire.
Shakespeare invented the sardonic remarks of the soldiers,
the wit of Enobarbus and the waiting maids, and whatever is
amusing in the dialogue of Cleopatra herself. Furthermore,
he rearranged certain scenes and omitted some that he found
in his source, as we shall see, in order to make Cleopatra
less cruel and more amusing and human.10 He enlarged some
scenes, such as that aboard Pompey's galley, again intro
ducing comic elements to make his play more realistic, and
creating a strong element of satire— something he used
sparingly in the two plays considered first in this study.
As in the other love-tragedies we have examined, comic
Q
Life of Marcus Antonius," p. 206. Charmian and Iras
are mentioned in a passage of about equal length toward the
end of Plutarch's narrative: "But when they [the soldiers]
had opened the doors, they found Cleopatra stark-dead, laid
upon a bed of gold attired and arrayed in her royal robes,
and one of her two women, which was called Iras, dead at her
feet: and her other woman (called Charmian) half dead, and
trembling, trimming the diadem which Cleopatra wore upon her
head. One of the soldiers seeing her, angrily said unto
her: 'Is that well done, Charmian?' 'Very well,' said she
again, 'and meet for a princess descended of the kings of
Egypt.' She had no sooner said this, than she fell down
dead" (p. 227). From these sketchy suggestions, Shakespeare
developed his delightfully witty waiting maids.
■*-®For example, Plutarch has Cleopatra trying out her
poisons on condemned criminals. He also has her blubbering
on her knees before Caesar.
161
elements in Antony and Cleopatra occur for the most part in
the first two acts. This is to be expected, even in the
mixed form of the Shakespearean tragedy.^ In Act III the
tone deepens and the serious overshadows the comic elements
which preceded it. However, in Antony and Cleopatra comic
matter is sustained longer than in the other two plays.
Laughter is played for even in the last scene of the play,
a scene which is more functional than the Musicians scene
at the end of Act IV in Romeo and Juliet, and helps to
create a mixed tone at the end totally different from the
tragic conclusions of the other two plays.
In fact, the deaths of the lovers in Antony and Cleo
patra illustrates the great difference in tone between this
tragedy and the ones we have already examined. All three
plays move toward the union of the lovers in death. But
against the pathos and reconciliation of Romeo and Juliet
and the terrible, constricted atmosphere of Othello, here we
■^However, in Hamlet, Macbeth, and Kina Lear. the dark
er possibilities in the story begin earlier and are sus
tained more intensely, though there are strong comic ele
ments in Hamlet and King Lear. In the three love tragedies
under consideration, the climax of the story occurs in Act
III. Until then the action seems to rise. The death of
Tybalt, the corruption of Othello, and the first defeat of
Antony all occur in Act III.
162
have a rambling action in which the lovers have years to
gether, moments of great pleasure, and, finally, exuberant
deaths. In their union in death and their discovery of a
kind of new heaven together, they contribute to what Pro-
12
fessor Knight has called the "optimism" of this tragedy.
In Othello, as in Romeo and Juliet, the hero dies upon the
bosom of his beloved, but the ending is far more intense
because of the horror of Othello's deeds and his recognition
of his guilt. Both Othello and Antony imagine that they
13
will meet the woman they loved in the next world. But
opposed to Othello's conviction that Desdemona's look will
hurl him down to where fiends will snatch at his soul, An
tony's vision is happy. Believing his Queen dead though she
is not (Cleopatra's partially comic whimsicality will be
discussed below), Antony provides us with this pleasant
pagan conception of what death holds in store for him:
Where souls do couch on flowers, we'll hand in hand,
And with our sprightly port make the ghosts gaze.
Dido and her Aeneas shall want troops,
And all the haunts be ours. (IV.xiv.50-53)
12The Imperial Theme, p. 199.
•^This is noted by Professor R. H. Case in his Intro
duction to the Arden edition of Antony and Cleopatra (Lon
don, 1906), p. xv.
163
He goes almost eagerly to his death:
. . . I will be
A bridegroom in my death, and run into 't
As to a lover's bed. (IV.xiv.98-100)
His optimism is matched by Cleopatra's own:
Husband, I come.
Now to that name my courage prove my title 1
I am fire and air. My other elements
I give to baser life. (V.ii.199-202)
The stroke of death is as a lover's pinch,
Which hurts, and is desired. (297-298)
Her only fear upon dying is the amusing one that Iras will
reach Antony before her:
If she first meet the curled Antony
He'll make demand of her, and spend that kiss
Which is my Heaven to have. (303-305)
Thus, Enobarbus' early axiom, "Under a compelling occasion
let women die" (I.ii.141) with its pun on "die," comes full
circle at last with the death of the lovers. To the end
there is an element of optimism, a joy in sensuality, and a
high exuberance. These provide accommodating soil for the
14
comic matter.
Another important difference in the use of comic mat
ter in Antony and Cleopatra is in the occurrence of satire.
^4For the more ethereal side of the lovers' relation
ship, see "The Transcendental Humanism of Antony and Cleo
patra" in The Imperial Theme, p. 199ff.
164
We have noted the element of satire in Mercutio's parodies
of Petrarchanism and Italianate manners, and in Iago's jibes
on preferment and women. But in Antony and Cleopatra,
satire is widespread. The passions and misfortunes of the
hero and heroine are absorbed in part into the interest of
the over-plot, the struggle for power among the "politic
men" of the world. Tragic potential is diffused because
historical and political matter vie for interest with the
suffering of the chief characters (to an extent that they
do not, for example, in Macbeth and Kina Lear). It is
diffused still further by satirical presentation of and the
demeaning of the great themselves through a profusion of
realistic details, many of them partially comic. If Antony
is not, as one critic has called him, "the most splendid
* 15
type in literature of the aging lecher, or roue," still
we cannot overlook the satire in his portrayal. The depic
tion of both Antony and Cleopatra may be an expression of
the current of satire which was directed into the theatre
around 1600, and in his portrait we may have a presentation
X6
of the theme of the morbid disease of lust.
^ a . L. Rowse, William Shakespeare (New York, 1963),
p. 390.
_____ ^Daniel Stempel, "The Transmigration of the___________
165
Yet Antony is redeemed in part both by his own boun
teousness, and by the contrast Shakespeare has presented in
depicting Antony's foils as he has. Of Octavius we shall
have little to say— for there is little comic about him.
(We may recall, however, his witty insult upon entering the
court at Alexandria: "Which is the queen of Egypt?"— V.ii.
112.) Octavius' cold-blooded, rational character makes
Antony appear irresponsible by comparison, though this is
not entirely to Octavius' good; for it is apparent that to
be sensible like him one must sacrifice much that is mean-
17
xngful in life. Furthermore, Octavius does not escape
totally unscathed by satire, for as a "politic man" he
destroys Lepidus under the pretext that he has grown "too
Crocodile," Shakespeare Quarterly, VII (Winter 1956), 59-
72. Stempel applies the critical approach of Oscar J.
Campbell, Shakespeare1s Tragic Satire (New York, 1943).
According to Eugene M. Waith, "Manhood and Valor in Two
Shakespearean Tragedies," English Literary History. XVII
(1950), 262-273, Antony is satirized for his devotion to
womanly pleasures rather than to manliness ("virtue").
-^John F. Danby, "The Shakespearean Dialectic: An
Aspect of Antony and Cleopatra." Scrutiny. XVI (1949), 196-
213. MacCollum, p. 453, says: "Antony and Cleopatra with
all their errors are lovers and partake of beauty, which
we cannot say of the arid respectability of Octavius."
166
cruel" and for sending letters to Pompey on a former occa
sion, hangs Alexas for deserting Antony for his own side,
and intends to deceive Cleopatra so that he may parade her
18
in Rome. Leprdus, for his part, is made fun of by the
soldiers in a comic scene for thinking he can effect a
reconciliation between Octavius and Antony, and he becomes
practically a buffoon when Antony toys with him in the
drinking scene (Il.vii). In this same scene, and in the
disunity which follows hard upon it, the great of the world
are depicted satirically as self-seeking men who, though
they may compromise at times, follow their own interests
where they may lead.
But the element of satire which pervades the play is
subtler than the facts of the action indicate. It is deeply
l®This is not to demean Octavius 1 firm grip upon the
situation. Shakespeare had no delusions about what may be
necessary for success in the political world. He is not
unsympathetic to Octavius. As opposed to Octavius1 realis
tic point of view, the dualism of Antony's position and its
disastrous consequences are mirrored in the fates of the
minor characters. See Lawrence A, Bowling, "Duality in the
Minor Characters in Antony and Cleopatra." College English.
VIII (February 1957), 251-255. Bowling shows that Pompey,
Lepidus, Octavia, and Enobarbus all attempt to pursue dual
interests and fail. Pompey is divided between honor and
ambition; Octavia tries to love and be dutiful to both
Caesar and Antony; Enobarbus is divided between good sense
and loyalty.
167
involved in the language of the play. Scholars have empha
sized the highly poetic language through which Shakespeare
transforms his source into tragedy. For example, Clemen
dwells upon the iterated images which describe Antony in
terms which suggest his relation to the stars and his equal-
19
ity with the gods. Miss Spurgeon emphasizes soaring
images of magnificence and grandeur, sea imagery and the
20
way m which they exalt the hero and heroine. Knight,
21
too, emphasizes the images of grandeur and magnificence.
^Antony's eyes have "glowed like plated Mars" (I.ii.
2); he is described time and again as the "Herculean Roman"
(I.iii.84), "the God of Jupiter" (III.ii.10), and other
ennobling comparisons. He is himself constantly mentioning
the moon and the stars. His death is described as the
quenching of a light. The stars grow dim (III.xiii.145)
and the world darkens (III.xiii.153); "the torch is out"
(IV.xv.85); "His face was as the heavens, and therein stuck/
A sun and moon" (V.ii.79); "the star is fallen" (IV.xv.107),
and so on. See Clemen, pp. 162-164.
PO
tvPp. 350-355. Miss Spurgeon notes that Antony is the
"demi-Atlas of this earth" (I.v.23), the "triple pillar of
the world" (I.i.12) and the "crown o' the earth" (V.ii.81),
and is described in a number of other terms of splendor and
nobility, many having to do with the seasons and the plan
ets, keeping his stature before us. The word "world" is
used forty-two times. Spencer, in Shakespeare and the Na
ture of Man. p. 169, emphasizes that Antony and Cleopatra
see themselves as a microcosm of the macrocosm.
p 1
The Imperial Theme, pp. 199ff. However, note the
further comments of Knight cited in footnote 26 below.
168
However, one aspect of the imagery of the play does not
seem to have attracted much attention. This is the imagery
which is the reverse of the heroic and noble. It is vital
and it has comic overtones. It is essential in the concep
tion of character and theme.
In each of the first two plays examined, the anti
heroic language had special qualities of its own. In Antony
and Cleopatra this language- takes the form neither of parody
of Petrarchanism and romantic young love, as in Romeo and
JulietT nor of naturalistic and destructive wit, directed
at idealistic love as in Othello. It has some relation to
the former in presenting the antithesis to the romantic
outlook in demeaning and comic language that is not unnat
ural (as it is in Othello) but it differs in two important
respects. First, while there is considerable comic con
trolling matter in the lines of witty servants and "low"
characters, there is not the scintillating wit of a gallant
like Mercutio. Instead, the controlling anti-heroical lan
guage is placed in the mouths of many characters, including
the lovers themselves. Second, there is a close relation
ship in the play between the language which reduces love to
a sensual and pleasurable level and that which defines the
political sphere.
169
The central pattern of iterative images controlling
both the love and political spheres has to do with competi
tion. Rather than elevating the stature of the love inter
est and the seriousness of the political interest, this
pattern of images depreciates both and, in fact, reduces
them to the level of a contest. The image of gaming per
meates the whole play, and as much as anything, attenuates
the tragic effect. It conveys a sense of irresponsibility,
and of gambling with love and empire. Juxtaposed against
the image patterns noted by Clemen and Miss Spurgeon,
Knight, and others, it contributes to the total structural
22
effect of imagery in the play.
^At the same time, the gaming images may support the
grandeur of Antony and Cleopatra, the superiority of their
unearthly bond to mere pragmatic and sensible considerations.
They are careless as Octavius is not, but he lacks their
romantic delight in experience. This is why Knight, after
citing the splendid imagery of love, observes: "Antony and
Cleopatra are both essentially sportive. There is, indeed,
sometimes a delicate, sometimes a boisterous humour running
throughout. The spirit of the romantic comedies is here
blended with tragedy. A certain sportive spirit stirs the
play's surface into ripples of shimmering laughter. The
worst vices are but boyish 1 sports 1: tragedy is a game.
Life is all 'chance and hazard' (III.vii.48) and men 'laugh
away their fortunes' (II.vi.109)" (p. 254). On p. 298,
Knight emphasizes the merriment in Egypt; on p. 203 he says:
"Tragedy is taken lightly, almost playfully: yet this
lilting merriment of diction holds, strangely, a more in
tense fire than the solemn cadences or curbless passions of
the sombre plays."
170
Antony in particular is seen in these terms. To him
the world is something to be won, lost, and divided up.
After losing at Actium, he looks back upon the time when he
was one who "With half the bulk o' the world played as I
pleased . . (III.xi.63), and who, "with my sword/ Quar
tered the world . . ." (IV.xiv.56-57). (The design of the
play is to remind us constantly of the Antony who was.)
After Actium, Scarus declares that "The greater cantle
[slicel] of the world is lost/ With very ignorance" (III.x.
5-6). When Antony is patching up differences with Octavius,
Maecenas observes that Octavia is to Antony "a blessed lot
tery" (II.ii.248). When he asks the Soothsayer whose for
tunes shall rise higher, Caesar's or his own, he is told:
If thou dost play with him at any game,
Thou art sure to lose, and, of that natural luck,
He beats thee 'gainst the odds. (II.iii.24-26)
The Soothsayer’s advice fits Antony's own observations. He
describes his predicament in terms Of games of chance:
The very dice obey him,
And in our sports my better cunning faints
Under his chance. If we draw lots, he speeds.
His cocks do win the battle still of mine
When it is all to naught, and his quails ever
Beat mine, inhooped, at odds. (II.iii.33-38)
3aesar describes Antony as being at "his sport," and as one
who is "to be chid/ As we rate boys who . . . Pawn their
171
experience to present pleasure" (I.iv.30ff.). In their
temporary amity, the Triumvirs draw lots to decide who will
feast the others. Before the battle of Actium, Enobarbus
tells Antony that to fight by sea is to give himself up
"merely to chance and hazard" (III.viii.47), and before
23
Alexandria he tells him he will strike and cry "Take All."
Later, Enobarbus decides in an hour of crisis to follow a
little longer "the wounded chance" of Antony (III.xi.35).
("Chance," to be sure, may also mean "fortune.") After
losing the first battle at Actium, Antony forgives Cleopatra
for flying the battle, saying that one tear of hers is worth
"all that is won and lost" (III.xi.69). Soon he will look
back upon a time when he was "lucky" in this game of poli
tics and "men did ransom lives/ Of me for jests" (III.xiii.
180-181). When Cleopatra submits to Caesar in Act III, she
sees herself as "hazarded" to Caesar (xii.18). Caesar in
structs Thyreus to try to "win" Cleopatra from Antony (III.
xii.26). When Antony's forces score a temporary victory
before the walls of Alexandria, Scarus says, "'Tis sport to
maul a runner" (IV.viii.11-13). Finally, when Antony dies
^George Lyman Kittredge, ed., The Tragedy of Antony
and Cleopatra (Boston, 1941), p. 189, says this is "The cry
of the gambler when he throws down his last stake: 'Here is
mv all1 . Take it if you can win it I 111_________________________ |
172
his queen in part expresses her grief by saying that "The
odds is gone" (IV.xv.65); about to die herself, she gives
Charmian leave "To play till Doomsday"; Charmian will mend
her crown and then "play" (V.ii.232; 222).
Many sports are alluded to in describing the love and
political interests. Competition seems to be pervasive at
every level, much of it conveying an air of levity and even
irresponsibility. Antony is a fish for which Cleopatra
angles (II.v.lOff.). On one occasion when they have "wa
gered" on angling, she has a diver place a salt fish on his
hook as a jest (II.v.14ff.). Cleopatra's hand is Antony's
"play-fellow" (III.xii.27). She has, he says, "Packed
cards" with Caesar and "false-played my glory" (IV.xiv.18-
20), but Antony recognizes that his fate was "to [her] rud
der tied by the strings" (III.xi.57). It seems appropriate
when we consider that Cleopatra also plays billiards (II.v.
4ff.), hops through the streets (II.ii.234ff.), and boasts
of out-fishing, out-jesting, and out-drinking Antony (II.v).
It is all highly competitive and somewhat amusing. But it
becomes more serious when Antony and Caesar compete in
devotion ("Come, sir, I'll wrestle with you in my strength
of love" (III.ii.61-62) but quickly come at odds again—
though Antony marries Octavia, competitively, "For the best
173
turn in the bed" (II.v.59). When Cleopatra flies the battle
Antony flies after her: it is no longer as in the old days
when Caesar "kept his sword e'en like a dancer" (Ill.xii.
34-35). Folly and frivolity enter the sphere of politics;
or, as Scarus says, "We have kissed away/ Kingdoms and pro
vinces" (III.x.6-7). At last, the game is up. But not
before the competitive and sports imagery creates a counter
point to the elevated imagery of grandeur in love and poli
tics, which reveals the other side of greatness. The dia
lectic is emphasized at the end in Cleopatra's moment of
glory when she thinks she hears Antony "mock/ The luck of
Caesar" (V.ii.287-288).
Closely related to the competitive imagery is the ani
mal imagery of the play, which creates the same belittling
effects. The piscatorial imagery on the tongue of Mercutio
was a witty but good-natured and sympathetic kind of criti
cism; the imagery of hunting and preying, and of rutting
animals on Iago's tongue was naturalistic and destructive
24
of human values. The animal imagery in Antony and Cleo
patra qualifies and vitiates the heroic actions of the great
^The animals in Othello hunt and prey upon one another
and seem to reflect the human predicament in the play on all
levels of nature. See Spurgeon, pp. 335-336.
174
without ever making them appear ugly. Despite the vast
struggles which take place during the course of the action,
there is little predatory imagery, but what there is conveys
no sense of revulsion and unnaturalness as does Iago's lan
guage. The total effect of the animal images is amusing
and relatively harmless, though the context is serious. . .
The resulting tension attenuates tragic effect, especially
since the hero and heroine use the terms to describe their
own actions.
The most consistent pattern seems to be the equestrian
25 ~ ~
imagery. We have seen how Antony regards the world as a
horse to be ridden. Interestingly, horses associated with
Antony seem to bespeak weakness, as well as nobility. To
Cleopatra's query as to why the women ought not to do bat
tle as well as the men, Enobarbus says aside sardonically:
Well, I could reply.
If we should serve with horses and mares together,
The horse were merely lost, the mares would bear
A soldier and his horse. (III.vii.6-9)
25
Knight sees this imagery as indicating nobility (pp.
212-214). However, it may have been developed from a hint
in Plutarch: "And in the end, the horse of the mind, as
Plato termeth it, that is so hard of rein (I mean the un
reined lust of concupiscence) did put out of Antonius1 head
all honest and commendable thoughts” (p. 184). Note the
close connection in the play between pleasure-seeking and
political failure.
175
Seeing his star fade in Act IV, Antony looks to the heavens,
notes the changing shape of a cloud and says, "That which is
now a horse even with a thought" becomes as water in water
(IV.xiv.8-9). When Caesar and Antony part, and Agrippa
comments that "He has a cloud in 's face," Enobarbus, know
ing his master better than to think him capable of senti
mentalism, replies cynically, "He were the worse for that
were he a horse./ So is he, being a man" {III.ii.52-53).
Antony weeps only at what he overthrows— and then only
because he is "troubled with a rheum" (57). Cleopatra,
missing Antony when he is at Rome, envies the horse he
rides: "0 happy horse, to bear the weight of Antony'."
(Here the horse is used to express Cleopatra's sexual long
ing for Antony; the way she puts it is sensual and yet
amusing [l.v.20].) And she herself when she leaves the
battle is described by Antony as "Yon ribaudred nag of
Egypt" (III.x.9). When Lepidus falls, Enobarbus says:
Then, world, thou hast a pair of chaps, no more,
And throw between them all the food thou hast,
They'll grind the one the other. (Ill.v.13-15)
The world is a cud to be chewed on by the great. In Act V,
after Antony's death, Octavius observes that such a pair as
they could not "stall together/ In the whole world." This
cannot be accidental on Shakespeare's part. Even as
176
Octavius speaks of the greatness of Antony, he partially
detracts from the image of both men by the image he uses.
A good point of comparison between the language and its
effect in Othello and that in Antony and Cleopatra is the
serpentine imagery. In Othello this imagery had no comic
overtones and was related to the figure of Iago as a
26
Devil. In the later tragedy it is important in the fer
tility symbolism of Egypt and in the image patterns of
27
eroticism and productivity. The total harmlessness and
really benign way in which the imagery is conceived can be
inferred from the union of Cleopatra, "the old Serpent of
the Nile" with "The pretty worm of the Nile" brought by the
Where is that viper?" Lodovico asks in Act V, and
Dthello cries out, "I look down toward his feet, but that's
a fable" (ii.284-285). Othello continues, "If that thou
be'st a devil, I cannot kill thee" (286). He lunges for
Iago, but, indeed, cannot kill him. "I bleed, sir, but not
killed," mocks this "demidevil" who has corrupted Eden.
27Knight, The Imperial Theme, pp. 228-229: "First,
there is the Serpent, often associated with the Nile. Which
river is often here in our imaginations fsic 1. The name
'Nile,' with its tenuous soft vowel sound, brims with the
very emotional colour of the river itself sinuously winding
through the rich desert ooze, and both suggest the serpent
to which it gives birth . . . Here, there is always some
thing strangely beautiful, a rarefied yet vivid life-appre-
hension. Though ethereal, our life-images are to be related
to our erotic theme. They are physical and ethereal at once
. . . The natural imagery thus reflects our love-theme: the
blending of elements reflects the blending of sexes in love.'
177
harmless, foolish rustic in the last scene of the play. The
serpent and the crocodile represent Egypt. Cleopatra is
fruitful and delightful: her tears are in fact "crocodile
tears," as Enobarhus says. But the most amusing use of the
crocodile image is in Antony's description to Lepidus in
Act II, when Antony makes a fool of Lepidus. The healthily
jocular tone of this passage sheds its effect upon the other
uses of the symbol in the play:
Lep. What manner o' thing is your crocodile?
Ant. It is shaped, sir, like itself, and it is as
broad as it has breadth. It is just so high
as it is, and moves with its own organs. It
lives by that which nourisheth it, and the
elements once out of it, it transmigrates.
Lep. What color is it of?
Ant. Of it(s) own color too.
Lep. 'Tis a strange serpent.
Ant. 'Tis so. And the tears of it are wet.
Caes. Will this description satisfy him? (Il.vii.
45ff.)
Again in contrast with the cruel, low, and repellent
animal images of Iago, those of Antony and Cleopatra have
to do for the most part with barnyard, domestic, common
garden, and other animals of a pleasant enough sort, not at
all on the order of grandeur. The totality of these images
creates an effect very different from terror or even pity,
for the images seem so inappropriate to the magnitude of the
action, in one sense, so common and even casual, that they
178
cast a partially satirical, partially pleasant glow over the
action. To Antony, his queen is a "nightingale" (IV.viii.
18), and his "chuck" (IV.iv.3). (The latter may be compared
with Othello's terrible and scornful repudiation of Desde-
mona as "chuck" when he believes she is a whore.) "Swallows
have built/ In Cleopatra's sails their nests" (IV.xiii.2-3).
When Pompey charges Antony with stealing his father1s house
he lightens the accusation by observing humorously (ironi
cally, calling himself a cuckold) that "the cuckoo builds
not for himself" (II.vi.10). To Enobarbus, who mocks Lepi
dus1 efforts to unite the triumvirs, Antony and Octavius
are "his shards" (horny wings), while Lepidus is the beetle
who tries to keep his wings going in harmony (III.iii.18).
A soldier advises Antony to let the enemy "go a duckin',"
while they fight by land (III.vii.64). Antony's mariners
are "muleters" (III.vii.35) and when Antony follows Cleo
patra from the battle at Actium, from which she flees like
"a cow in June" (III.x.13), he is described as going like a
"doting mallard" (19). When he comes safely from the bat
tle at Alexandria, Cleopatra says that he comes from "The
world's great snare uncaught" (IV.vii.18). But when he
loses, he observes that:
179
The hearts
That spanieled me at heels, to whom I gave
Their wishes, do discandy, melt their sweets
On blossoming Caesar, and this pine is barked,
That overtopped them all. (IV.xii.20ff.)
Even when a predatory animal is mentioned, as when Enobarbus
describes Antony's rage and his treatment of Thyreus,*it is
not fearful: 11'Tis better playing with a lion's whelp/ Than
with an old one dying" (III.xiii.92-93).
What all these competitive and animal images do is to
contrast with the heroic and romantic language, thereby
belittling the great and making them appear slightly humor
ous. A key concept in the structure of Antony is "duality"
— a duality very different from that of the positions of the
lovers in either of the other tragedies examined in this
study by virtue of its partially satirical intention.
Shakespeare deliberately created Antony and Cleopatra as
28
ambiguous in their greatness and in their lesser moments.
This dualism, whereby the grand and heroic are con
stantly being placed side by side with the common and de
meaning is, of course, employed elsewhere in Shakespeare,
but what seems exceptional in Antony and Cleopatra is that
pO
Benjamin Spencer, "Antony and Cleopatra and the Para
doxical Metaphor," Shakespeare Quarterly. IX (Summer 1958),
377.
180
not only do other characters speak of the lovers in demean
ing terms, but that they tend also to speak of themselves in
this way. In a sense, therefore, the realistic dimension of
prose commentary is elevated to the main action, and the
protagonists themselves seem to be more realistically pre
sented. They seem to be "distanced" even as they are made
more realistically human. Thus they take on somewhat the
air of characters in comedy whose quarrels, wrangling, and
foibles give the audience a feeling of indulgence even as
they observe their shortcomings.
The question of dualism arises at once in the first
scene. The ambiguities in the first sixty lines reflect
29
the main features of the rest of the play. Once again we
see Shakespeare introduce major action with "low" charac
ters . The soldiers, in discussing their general and the
queen, serve essentially the same functions as the comments
^Danby, p. 199. John Dover Wilson says: "The two
soldiers who introduce the protagonists to us at the openinc
of the play as a lustful 'gypsy' and a ’strumpet's fool'
reveal what the prosaic and bawdy world thinks of the love
that binds them. Nevertheless, when the lovers enter im
mediately after we learn from their lips that this same lovei
is more spacious than 'the wide arch of the ranged empire'
more precious than kingdoms or the whole 'dungy earth' and
so boundless that it requires 'new heaven, new earth' to
contain it. And the initial contradiction, or antithesis,
runs throughout" (p. xviii).
181
*
of the Capulet servants which open Romeo and Juliet, and
those of the gull and the machinator which open Othello.
They arouse suspense concerning the main action, and suggest
things which will be either proved or disproved. In the
early tragedy the servants' presentation of the feud in a
foolish vein was confirmed by the appearance of the elders,
while their bawdy jests prepared for and were the opposite
of the idealism of the lovers. In Othello the off-color
and cynical comments about the Moor were immediately proved,
upon his first appearance, to be ignoble slander, and the
love of Othello and Desdemona proved to be far different
from the impression given by Iago and Roderigo. In Antony
and Cleopatra the comments of the soldiers will be both
substantiated and disproved. The lovers will be both noble
and as the soldiers represent them.
The opening statement of Philo that his general's "dot
age" "o'erflows the measure" (I.i.1-2) creates the impres
sion of an Antony caught in the toils of excess and sensual
ity, an impression that will not only be confirmed by Antony
himself two scenes later (when he condemns his excesses and
recognizes how he overlooks his duty), but by many comments
throughout the play. The picture is presented of a once
noble general who has bent his Mars-like gaze upon a "tawny
182
front" and has become "the bellows and the fan/ To cool a
gypsy's lust" (5ff.). While the audience recognizes the
fault (or even the sin), it may smile at the picture.
The soldiers' comments will themselves be implicitly
commented upon in a moment, when Antony and the Queen enter.
They are noble and apparently dignified, and their grandeur
presents a stark contrast to the views of the common sol
diers. Yet, at the same time we perceive at once that they
are worldly, experienced, and somewhat old for lovers. In
the first lines they speak, they wrangle— and the rest of
their first scene together is a mixture of Cleopatra's
jealousy and suspicions, and Antony's grand protestations of
love and somewhat nervous insistence on the pursuit of
pleasure.
Thus there is established at once a dialectic involving
ironies which will persist throughout the play. But it is
much different from the dialectic in Othello. where the
question is one of evil or good. In Antony and Cleopatra
the dialectic concerns whether the lovers are really noble
and above common standards of judgment, or whether they are
in fact an aging, doting general and a concubine— albeit a
queenly one. In this dialectic the anti-heroic imagery,
much of it clearly satirical and imbued with the comic
183
spirit, plays an important role.
The question of whether Antony is a "strumpet's fool"
clearly depends upon what Cleopatra is. And if Cleopatra
were really common, then the play would lean toward satiri
cal comedy; for it is difficult to envision a tragedy in
which the hero is no more than a "strumpet's fool" and the
heroine a concubine. (The problem thus arises in Troilus
and Cressida, where "All the argument is but a cuckold and
a whore" (II.iii .77-78). However, in that play, if there is
tragedy, it is the tragedy of Hector, not the title charac
ters .) But the character of Cleopatra is ambiguous. It is
ambiguous from beginning to end. She is perhaps best char
acterized by Agrippa when he calls her "Royal wench" (Il.ii.
231), and by Charmian when she says her mistress is "A lass
unparalleled" (V.ii.319). There is considerable imagery to
justify either epithet, and the truth is a combination of
30
both notions.
30
Spencer, p. 373. This is important because Professor'
Schucking has maintained that there is inconsistency in the
presentation of Cleopatra in that the self-centered and
selfish harlot of the early acts could not rise to the her
oic dignity of the last act. (Levin L. Schucking, Character
Problems in Shakespeare's Plavs [New York, 1948], pp. 126-
127, 132.) In the first acts she has "hardly a trace of
nobility," and is incapable of magnanimity, Schucking main
tains that Shakespeare has given her no attractive
184
The language used to describe Cleopatra, like that
which describes Antony, emphasizes both grand and admirable
qualities, and those which are low and even demeaning.
31
Thus, while Cleopatra is a noble queen, she is also de
scribed as a lustful gypsy (I.i.9), "a whore" (III.vi.66),
a "girl" (IV.vii.19), a "boggier" (shifty thing) (Ill.xiii.
104), a "kite" (III.xiii.90), "triple-turned whore" (IV.xii.
12), "trull" (III.vi.95), Antony's "chuck" and his "night
ingale" (IV.iv.2 and IV.viii.18). The story is recounted
of how she was brought to Caesar on a mattress (II.vi.70).
All of this does not, of course, imply that these images
place Cleopatra in a comic light, but they do point up the
qualities, no scenes in which she is admirable. A refuta
tion of Schucking's view is in E. E. Stoll, Poets and Play
wrights (Minneapolis, 1930), pp. 1-30, and J. I. M. Stewart,
Character and Motive in Shakespeare (London, 1949). Stoll,
for example, believes that Cleopatra is consistent in her
inconsistency throughout the play: "Caprice, conscious and
unconscious, is her nature, as to be queen and coquette is
her station in life. La donna e mobile, and she is quint
essential woman" (p. 13). In fact, a study of the language
of the play seems to show ambiguity in her character from
beginning to end. Thus, Clemen says that Cleopatra is
"neither solely queen, nor solely harlot, nor solely witch,
but unites in her person all these contrasting natures" (p.
167) .
■^Cleopatra is "Sovereign Egypt" (I.v.34), "Rare Egypt"
(II.ii.223), "Royal Egypt" (IV.xv.70), "most noble Empress"
(V.ii.7l), "day o' the world" (IV.vii.13), "eastern star"
(V.ii.
185
side of her which is less than regal.
The food imagery has a similar effect. Antony's great
consumption of food is described in Plutarch, but Shake
speare's Antony is constantly being described as the eater,
32
and Cleopatra as the food. This imagery expresses the
lushness and spirit of generation which is Egypt. But at
the same time it is partially satirical in calling attention
to the gluttony and self-indulgence of the hero and hero-
33
ine, and also remarkable and amusing in showing their
tremendous lust for life. Cleopatra admits that her youth
was her "salad days" (I.v.31), but she maintains that she
was nevertheless a "morsel for a monarch" (31). When she
has deserted him, Antony rebukes her in scornful terms,
charging that he found her "as a morsel cold upon/ Dead
Caesar’s trencher . . . a fragment/ Of Cneius Pompey's . . ."
•^a detailed analysis of the food imagery is in Leo
Kirschbaum, "Shakespeare's Cleopatra," Shakespeare Associa
tion Bulletin. XIX (October 1944), pp. 161-171.
•^•^Again, only the demeaning side is emphasized in this
paper. On the romantic and splendid side, she seems invest
ed with divine attributes. She is a great sorceress (IV.
xiii.44), a "spell" (IV.xiii.29), and "this great fairy"
(IV.viii.11). Pompey speaks of her "witchcraft" (II.i.22),
and Scarus sees Antony as "The noble ruin of her magic"
(III.x.19). Knight, in The Imperial Theme, sees Cleopatra
as the "life force" or "love's resplendence, love's fruit
fulness" (p. 248).
186
(III.xiii.ll6ff.). When Antony has made a temporary peace
with Caesar, Enobarbus knows that he "will to his Egyptian
dish again" (II.vi.133).1
The food imagery extends into the political sphere,
linking satirically the love and political interests. Pom-
pey's hope for victory depends in large measure upon An
tony's remaining "tied up in a field of feasts" where "Epi
curean cooks sharpen with cloyless sauce his appetite" (II.
i.22-24). Later, jesting with Antony, Pompey says he has
heard that "Julius Caesar/ Grew fat with feasting" in Egypt
(II.vi.64-66). Enobarbus, telling of how Antony came to
live there, recalls amusingly how Antony came to dinner at
Cleopatra's palace and paid his heart "For what his eyes eat
only" (II.ii.230-231). The blunt soldier's sardonically
critical tone is hardly the sort of thing to arouse pity and
fear, although his reasons for believing that Antony will
return from Rome to Egypt are not at all demeaning:
Other women cloy
The appetites they feed, but she makes hungry
Where most she satisfies. (II.ii.240-242)
"'Tis not a time/ For private stomaching," says Lepidus,
but the profusion of imagery seems to imply, somewhat amus
ingly, that it is.
The truth of Scene i lies not solely in the soldiers'
187
(or public) view of the lovers, nor in the lovers' view of
themselves. It is made up of both, besides the complex
pattern of images through which the hero and heroine will be
depicted in subsequent scenes. The pattern of reciprocal
implicit commentary is set from the opening curtain. It is
fortified and emphasized in Scene ii, where the theme of
love and pleasure is taken up in another key to play like
counterpoint upon those statements which have already been
heard. If the atmosphere of the first scene in its presen
tation of noble but wrangling lovers in gorgeous surround
ings is close to high comedy, that of the second scene pro
vides implicit comment upon its predecessor through low
comic dialogue. Throughout the play, the major figures are
created in part by reflection in the views of the minor
34
characters. One of the most important aspects of the
structure of Antony and Cleopatra is the way in which the
minor characters comment upon the major ones.
•^The comments of the "low" characters work both ways.
The bounteousness and dignity of Antony is partly estab
lished by the admiration .and fidelity of his closest sol
diers. An apparent exception is Enobarbus, but his deser
tion provides an opportunity to display Antony1s bounteous
ness; and Enobarbus dies regretfully of a broken heart.
Cleopatra's servants too help to establish the nobility of
her character by their devotion even to death.
188
In the first scene the soldiers commented explicitly,
but now in a scene of "love belowstairs" we have a more
subtle kind of exposure of certain facets of the relation-
35
ship of the lovers. Our second view of the Egyptian world
provides new insights, just as the word-duel between the
Montague and Capulet servants and the gulling of Roderigo
by Iago provided insights into the main actions in the ear
lier love tragedies. In Scene i we have seen the high ro
mance of love. Now we see the subject presented "realisti
cally." To be sure, the love of Antony and Cleopatra is
also "realistic,1 1 but the function of low comic prose is to
set up certain contrarieties against which noble actions
may be judged. The bawdy jesting in the scene with Charmi
an, Iras, Alexas, and the Soothsayer presents another di
mension to major themes of the play, just as the bawdy wit
of Mercutio provided a contrast and controlling element for
the idealism of young love. At the same time, the "realis
tic" scene performs certain other basic functions: (1) it
makes the atmosphere of pleasure and mirth seem pervasive
throughout the Egyptian world, from top to bottom, (2) it
■^Danby, p. 202, is concerned to show the interplay of
"low" and "high" scenes.
189
supports the erotic imagery which describes the main charac
ters, and (3) it does both of these while providing a pre
monitory statement of the end of the tragedy.
Sensuality, excessive drinking, and infidelity are the
subjects of jovial conversation in Scene ii. All are im
portant questions in the main action, but here they are the
subject of light comic talk. An important preoccupation at
36
the Egyptian court seems to be merely to kill time. Cleo
patra and Antony have passed countless hours in pleasure and
mirth, and we will see Cleopatra seeking aimlessly for di
versions in her impatience when Antony is away (Scene v).
The servants in Scene ii are drinking wine and taking
light refreshments as they jest. Charmian is idly question
ing the Soothsayer as to the identity of her future husband,
who, says Alexas, she is already thinking of making a cuck-
37
old. She would rather, she says, "heat my liver with
^Maurice charney, Shakespeare's Roman Plays (Cambridge,
flass., 1961), p. 109. One aspect of Egypt, says Charney, is
its indolence, "full of shifting moods and sudden violence,
and always seeking variety to stave off boredom. Indolence
is, in fact, the psychological state the moralists call
Sloth, a sort of paralysis of the will produced by Lust and
Sluttony. In this sense Cleopatra is an ‘enchanting queen'
(1.2.132) who holds Antony's will in bondage to the 'idle
ness’ of Egypt."
■^^Kittredge, Antony and Cleopatra, p. 130, says:
190
drinking" than be more beloving than beloved (21-22), a jest
which is made more pointed by the fact that the liver was
considered the seat of love, while at the same time it was
believed that to heat it with wine would spoil one’s com-
38
plexion. Charmian is, it seems, as fertile as her mis
tress, and equally enthusiastic about sex. To her query as
to how many "boys and wenches must I have?" the Soothsayer
replies, "If every one of your wishes had a womb,/ And
fertile every wish, a million" (36-38). In ii.35-36, how
ever, Charmian has said that if the predictions come true,
her children "will have no names," i.e., they will be bast
ards. Tragic irony will prevent her jest from coming true.
Iras mirthfully shows her own palm and declares that it
"presages chastity, if nothing else," but Charmian— a "wild
bedfellow"— retorts, "E'en as the overflowing Nilus presages
"Alexas, it appears, has been declaring that Charmian's
future husband will meet this fate, but that he will be so
thoroughly deluded by her as to wear his horns proudly and
even to hang garlands upon them. This is a clear allusion
to the ancient practice of decorating with garlands the ox
that was led to the sacrifice. The Folios have change
(for charge, i.5), which Warburton and Theobald corrected."
At line 66, Charmian will retaliate by wishing that Alexas
may marry a woman who cannot "go." Kittredge notes that
this is a clear pun on two common meanings of the word:
"to walk" and "to bear children" (p. 131).
3®Kittredge, Antony and Cleopatra, p. 130.
191
famine" (47-50). Iras protests that she cannot soothsay,
but Charmian insists that her friend's moist palm is a sign
of her lusty nature: "a fruitful prognostication" (51-
39
52). The provocation leads the conversation to a bawdier
turn as the two of them turn upon the Soothsayer to discover
which of their fortunes is better:
Iras Am I not an inch of fortune better than she?
Char. Well, if you were but an inch of fortune
better than I, where would you choose it?
Iras Not in my husband's nose. (59-62)
The obvious allusion to the male genitals provokes Charmian
to more licentious jesting. She now cries for Alexas' for
tune, wishing that he will marry a woman "that cannot go,"
and that she "die" (a doubtful pun here, for it defies the
logic of the context), and give him a worse until he is
laughed to his grave "fiftyfold a cuckold" (63ff.). Iras
for once agrees, for "as it is a heart-breaking to see a
landsome man loose-wived, so it is a deadly sorrow to behold
a foul knave uncuckolded" (73-75). Attacked on both sides,
Alexas declares:
■ ^ C o m p a r e with Othello. Act III, Scene iv:
Oth. Give me your hand. This hand is moist, my lady.
Des. It yet has felt no age nor known no sorrow.
Oth. This argues fruitfulness and liberal heart.
Hot, hot, and moist . . . (35ff.)
192
Lo, now, if it lay in their hands to make me a cuckold,
they would make themselves whores but they’d do 't.
(79-81)
Aside from the obvious connections between the sensual
and irresponsible but lively (and perhaps admirable) devo
tion to pleasure, several matters of structural importance
occur in this comic scene. It may appear to be merely a
lusty interlude, but for one thing the fortune which Char
mian wishes for herself seems to predict and parody Cleo
patra's destiny: "Let me be married to three Kings in a
40
forenoon, and widow them all" (25-27). Furthermore, amid
all the jesting and without the knowledge of the characters
on stage, the Soothsayer is predicting the end of the trag
edy:
Sooth. You shall outlive the lady whom you serve.
Char. Oh, excellent I I love long life better than figs.
Sooth. You have seen and proved a fairer former fortune
Than that which is to approach. (30-33)
As always in Shakespeare, the predictions of a Soothsayer
will come true.41 Charmian is enchanted, but she can see
^Danby notes that Charmian's wish is like a parody
of Cleopatra's aspirations, which, he says, is a "succes
sion of rich, powerful, and sexually adequate males" (p.
202). Danby does not note that Antony calls his queen
"triple-turned whore" for she has been "wed" to "three kings
in a forenoon"— Pompey, Julius Caesar, and Marc Antony.
^Compare, for example, the Soothsayer in Julius Caesar.
193
neither the irony of the prognostication nor of her reply.
She will, in fact, outlive by a few seconds the lady she
serves, and the asps will be brought in a fig basket.
Finally, the teasing of Alexas by the waiting maids
will be elevated to the main plot in a moment with the
entrance of Cleopatra, who begins her own coquettish game
with Antony by going off, pretending not to see him. More
over, when Cleopatra enters, Enobarbus says jestingly,
"Here comes Antony." Thus, he implies mockingly that Cleo
patra is. Antony: the great general is ruled by a woman,
and has bound his fate inextricably with hers, Kittredge
and others have placed the line before the queen's entrance,
but in the First Folio it occurs immediately after the stage
direction, "Enter Cleopatra."
Cleopatra's wrangling disposition— an aspect of her
infinite variety— was suggested in the first scene, but is
elaborated in the third. "Here we are to smile even while
we admire her conscious art which conveys comic rather than
42
tragic implication." The gap between her and a Juliet or
a Desdemona could be measured in terms of her wily, but
the Witches in Macbeth, and Queen Margaret in Richard III.
42Dickey, p. 182.
194
humorous, worldly ways. When she sends to seek out Antony,
it is with cunning instructions:
I did not send you. If you find him sad,
Say I am dancing; if in mirth, report
That I am sudden sick. (I.iii.3-5)
Her amusing chicanery leads to a lecture to Charmian on how
to win a man. The gist of her wisdom is, evidently, to be
peevish and even disagreeable, to keep him guessing and
stirred up. When Antony arrives, she is "sick and sullen,"
displays enormous jealousy at the news he has received from
his wife and berates him for being unfaithful to herself
with FulviaI Using Iago's logic she questions why Antony
should not be false to her since he has been false to his
wife for her— but the logic is ludicrous and partially comic
here. She has barely launched into her elaborate declara
tions of injury when Antony interrupts her to advise her of
the truth: there are troubles abroad and Fulvia is dead.
Again her reaction is consistent only in its inconsistency,
Now she is fretful that Antony sheds no tears for his wife,
for "Now I see, I see,/ In Fulvia's death, how mine re
ceived shall be" (64-65). Finally, this excellent queen of
dissembling tells Antony to "play one scene/ Of excellent
dissembling, and let it look/ Like perfect honor" (77-79) .
195
43
The scene has been called a "magnificent burlesque,"
yet such a view seems to disregard Cleopatra's sudden use
of clipped sentences that have the ring of sincerity. It
is difficult to assess her "Oh, my oblivion is a very An-
y 44
tony,/ And I am all forgotten." The shift of mood is
sudden, and yet this is no reason to suspect that she is
unmoved. Rather, it seems another example of the sudden
changes in the play from the amusing and trivial to the
heartfelt and noble, each working upon the other to lend
complexity to characterization and theme.
That the somewhat vixenish, coquettish, and even shrew
ish nature of Cleopatra in these early scenes is conceived
in an amused but not necessarily condemnatory vein is shown
by the response of Enobarbus to the events which have passec
to this point. Enobarbus is the sort of blunt, honest
^Dickey, p. 18. "She chides Antony for loving Fulvia
and for not sorrowing enough at Fulvia's death, wrings com
pliments from him and pretends to reject them. After Eno
barbus' ironic insight and her careful preparations for a
'scene,' the grand farewell she has staged is a magnificent
burlesque."
^^Cunningham sees the line as a fleeting realization
of mortality and the transiency of earthly pleasure. Her
unswerving interpretation of the play as Christian moral
teaching seems to miss the delightful changes in mood which
lend sympathy to the lovers even while exposing their flaws.
196
45
soldier that Iago pretends to be. He has, moreover, an
ordered sense of the importance of things. With him duty
comes first, pleasure after. Yet he seems content to remain
a devotee of the pleasures of Alexandria.
Through an acute eye for the comic aspect of things as
they are, he beholds his master's infatuation with under
standing, yet remarks upon it with detachment and jus
tice.46
Enobarbus seems to regard Cleopatra more as a plaything of
Antony's than as a queen, and he does not hesitate to blame
his general for allowing "the itch of his affection" to
affect his generalship (III.xii.6-7); yet in Act I Enobarbus
is in no rush to leave Egypt. In Scene ii, when Antony
tells him of his decision to leave, the blunt soldier re
plies with great levity. "Under a compelling occasion,"
46Harrison, p. 1221. For an analysis of Enobarbus as
the accurate and reasonable commentator, see Elkin Calhoun
Wilson, "Shakespeare's Enobarbus," in Joseph Q. Adams Memor
ial Studies, ed. James G. McManaway, et al. (Washington,
1948), pp. 391-408. Of Enobarbus, Kittredge says: "Eno
barbus, like Lear's fool, is Shakespeare's translation of
the chorus of Renaissance neo-classical drama into dramatic
character. Both the Fool and Enobarbus live in that elu
sive borderland between pure comedy and high tragedy. Both
smile wryly at the absurdity of the proud passions that
strut about them, baldly tell truth about things as they
are and speak for sanity in the midst of madness and infat
uation" (p. 407-408).
46Wilson, p. 393. Enobarbus' language is colored by
his "characteristic wit and jocosity, terse and salty."
197
he says (with a sexual pun), "let women die" (141).^ While
the news of Fulvia's death puts a momentary halt to his
humor, in a moment he resumes his witticisms. If Fulvia is
really dead, then Antony should give the gods a thankful
sacrifice, for the gods are like tailors, and "when old
robes are worn out" they provide new ones. If there were
no more women, Fulvia's death would be an injury. But the
case is otherwise:
This grief is crowned with consolation. Your old smock
brings forth a new petticoat. And indeed the tears live
in an onion that should water this sorrow. (174-176)
Such levity must be guided by tact, but Enobarbus is not
fearful, for he knows Antony as a man who is aware of his
own vices, not as a sentimentalist. As for departing Egypt,
Enobarbus observes with amused cynicism that if they depart,
the women will die: Cleopatra herself has died "twenty
times upon far poorer moment" (45-46) . . . "she hath such
a celerity in dying" (149). He knows well that Antony is
right in observing that a break will not be easy, for the
Queen is "cunning past man's thought" (150). Yet he pro
tests (contrary to his knowledge) with satirical intention:
^Kirschbaum, p. 170, observes that commentators have
in general missed the equivocal meanings and sexual puns in
Enobarbus' lines in this scene.
198
Alack, sir, no, her passions are made of nothing but
the finest part of pure love. We cannot call her winds
and waters sighs and tears, they are greater storms and
tempests than almanacs can report. This cannot be
cunning in her. If it be, she makes a shower of rain
as well as Jove. (151-157)
The lines are amusing, and yet there seems to be in them
more than a little honest admiration. Again, despite the
sarcastic tone of his voice, which gives a limited credi
bility to his words, Enobarbus replies to Antony's wish
that he had never seen her:
Oh, sir, you had then left unseen a wonderful piece of
work, which not to have been blest withal would have
discredited your travel. (I.ii.159-161)
There is admiration here, as there will be in his reporting
later of the splendors of Egypt and her Queen. But until
this point there has been no flying from the face of adver
sity, no ignoble "unvirtuous" behavior. Enobarbus can still
be wittily critical. He evidently feels they have as yet
done no great offense.
Despite the protestations of the women, Antony departs.
Shakespeare might have ended the act with compassionate and
noble partings. Instead, again he writes a scene partially
comic— one with bawdy matter that again iterates the sensual
and lighter side of the queen. Compared with her earlier
appearances at the court, Cleopatra is presented, as it
199
were, "at home" as the waiting maids were presented "below
stairs," and her jesting— intended to ward off boredom and
while away the time— seems to reveal her at an off-guard
moment, a moment of relaxation such as Juliet or Desdemona
are not allowed. Cleopatra thus seems to be realistically
depicted to a greater extent than they.
Toward the beginning of the scene, Mardian asks the
queen what her pleasure may be, and she replies lightly -
(though quite correctly) that she takes no pleasure "in
aught a eunuch has" (8-9), with a possible sexual pun on
48
"aught." "Hast thou affections?" she inquires, amusing
herself out of boredom, and when he replies that indeed he
has, she at once conceives how she may further play upon
connotations:
Cleo. Indeed!
Mar. Not in deed, madam, for I can do nothing
But what indeed is honest to be done.
Yet have I fierce affections, and think
What Venus did with Mars. (13-17)
^Partridge fails to cite this common term. But it
and its variant, naught, occur frequently in Shakespeare.
There is a probable pun in Hamlet's words to Ophelia: "1
never gave you aught" (III.i.96); also in his repeated use
of "nothing" ("That's a fair thought to lie between maids'
legs"— cf. 118ff.). Of the present scene, Dickey is criti
cal, stating that Cleopatra "jests outrageously" with Mar
dian (p. 184).
200
But the queen is restless, and this talk of sex reminds her
of Antony. She wonders what position he may be in, and
surmising that he is riding, envies the horse that bears
his weight. Perhaps he thinks of her— she who is "with
Phoebus' amorous pinches black and wrinkled deep in time"
(27-28). Finally, after the Messenger comes from Antony,
she asks Charmian if she ever loved Caesar so, and Charmian,
with her usual sprightly wit and delight in teasing implies
that she did. "By Isis," cries the queen, "I will give thee
bloody teeth" (69). Charmian protests that she but repeats
Cleopatra's own sentiments. Dialogue here seems to call
for a piece of exuberant stage business, as it does later
when the queen threatens blows again, this time to the
messenger who brings news of Antony's marriage. All this
is satirical, delightful, and the other side of the sublim
ity of the "lass unparalleled."
By the end of the first act, it has been said, there
is little appealing about Antony or Cleopatra: "He appears
as a man weakened by lust. His paramour appears as a fas
cinating but calculating woman, no longer young, whose
49
thought runs continually to her present conquests" (185).
^Dickey, p. 185.
201
This hardly seems right, for it overlooks the great attrac-
■ m
tiveness of the lovers and their very human qualities. Yet,
there is nothing in the first act that seems ripe with
tragic potential; there is hardly anything of high serious
ness except for a few lines of Antony's in which he express
es his need to return to Rome because of pressing business,
and Cleopatra's moving farewell.
Except for one brief scene verging on farce (II.v) at
Cleopatra's palace, Act II has largely to do with the patch
ing up of the differences between the triumvirs. The po
litical theme is here in the ascendancy, but the quarrels
of the "great," involving pettiness and self-interested
maneuvering for position, in some respects merely mirror on
a different level the relationship of the-lovers. Enobar
bus' realistic cynicism in II.ii is met with reproach, for
his humor comes too near the truth: "That truth should be
silent, I had almost forgot" (I.ii.109). "You shall have
time to wrangle in," says Enobarbus, "when you have nothing
else to do" (II.ii.107). The use of the word "wrangle"
applied to the meeting between Caesar and Antony is an echo
of Antony's "Fie, wrangling Queen!" (I.i.49). The adjective
has sardonic connotations which link the spheres of love
and politics.
202
The scene on board Pompey's galley is the first climax
of the action. Antony has made his choice, though we know
both from his own words and those of Enobarbus that the
choice is merely temporary. Given the conditions— the tem
porary accord of self-seeking political leaders, celebrated
by a Bacchanal--the scene is the high point of satirical
political exposure in the play. T. S. Eliot has described
50
it as a "prodigious piece of political satire."
Like the banquet scene in Romeo and Juliet, the banquet
scene in Antony is introduced by a conversation between
servants, and more specifically, with a pun. Serving des
sert and wine, the first servant remarks of the guests that
"Some o' their plants are ill-rooted already" (II.vii.2),
meaning that their feet are unsure, but suggesting, con
sciously or not, that their futures too are uncertain— "the
least wind i 1 the world will blow them down" (3-4). Like
the words of Charmian and Iras in Act I, the servant's words
are premonitory of the course of the action. For Lepidus
will indeed fall soon. However, for the time being, this
conversation of low personages merely underscores his
humorous position as mediator:
^In 1933, quoted in Rossiter, p. 202.
203
2. Serv. As they pinch one another by disposition,
he cries out "No more," reconciles them
to his entreaty and himself to the drink.
1. Serv. But it raises the greater war between him
and his discretion. (7-11)
That all is not well, and that the amity in this scene
is superficial and forced is indicated first by the fact
that the others have induced Lepidus to "drink alms drink,"
51
playing a practical joke upon him. Their amusement is
best expressed by Pompey, who warns Lepidus, "These quick
sands, Lepidus— / Keep off them, for you sink" (65-66).
Antony enjoys making a fool of Lepidus, amazing him with
his. meaningless description of Egypt and particularly of
the crocodile. Comic effect here seems to arise, as
throughout the play, from the difference between Lepidus'
eminent place and his rather ludicrous position as a fence-
sitter. He wishes to be all things to all men, and is
amusing in his essential weakness and conciliatory gestures.
His repetition here of the word your in referring to the
51Kittredge, Antony and Cleopatra, p. 159, says: "In
accordance with the old theory and practice in drinking
bouts, it was each man's duty to drain his cup whenever any
one had drunk to him. To relieve a man of this duty by
drinking in his place was to drink alms-drink . . . In the
present passage the meaning is that the others have (as a
practical joke) tricked Lepidus into drinking more than his
share by pledging him frequently. Pompey continues the
joke (see 11.33, 45, 90)
204
"serpent of Egypt," lends to his words the "comic air of a
drunken attempt to speak in an off-hand manner, as if thor
oughly familiar with the subject," and his use of Pyramises
is a drunken misuse of the plural form, while the word
croodly (handsome) is a "ridiculously inadequate adjective
52
to apply to the pyramids." At last Lepidus is carried
off in a drunken coma, while Enobarbus, the blunt, honest
soldier, says in amusement in commenting on the man who
carries him:
Eno. There's a strong fellow, Menas.
Men. Why?
Eno. A' bears the third part of the world,
man, see1st not? (II.vii.94-96)
The sardonic asides of the soldiers underline the basic
disagreement among the great. Menas is sorry that they have
turned to drinking, for in his view, "Pompey doth this day
laugh away his fortune" (II,vi.109-110), and Enobarbus adds
that "sure he cannot weep 't back again"(111). Though the
feast is not yet an Alexandrian revel, "It ripens toward
it" (3). This method of characterizing by drunkenness is
one Shakespeare had employed in the cases of Falstaff, Sir
Toby, and Cassio, as well as in depicting the court at
52Ibid.. p. 160.
205
Elsinore. But his use of it here involves satire, related
to the theme of the anti-heroic as discussed above. The
great of the world must, indeed, present an incongruous
spectacle when they are drunk. Their less noble side is
shown and the audience laughs that, after all, here are mere
men.
Finally, only Caesar objects that they are all nearly
turned into clowns (131), and complains that the business
of the hour "Frowns on this levity" (128). But levity is
the spirit of the hour. Enobarbus wants to "increase the
reels" (100), for every drunken man brings the whole world
closer to going on wheels. He places the great men hand in
hand (they are incapable of doing it themselves at this
point!), and they all sing a song to the "monarch of the
vine" (120). The song they sing is a parody of hymns like
"Come Holy Ghost, Eternal God," and shows the rulers of the
world to be under the spell of Bacchus, rather than God or
53
reason. As they go their ways, only Caesar is disgusted
with their self-indulgence and undignified actions. The
behavior of the others is parodied by Enobarbus, who throws
5^F. w . Sternfeld, Shakespeare and Music (London,
1963), pp. 86-87.
206
his hat in the air and shouts "Hool" But his caution to the
others has a strange premonitory and ironic ring: "Take
heed you fall not" (136). Too much pleasure and levity
will, in fact, bring about Antony's downfall.
The various hypocrisies and follies of the Roman lead
ers are balanced against the follies of the queen of Egypt—
though hers are of another order. The scene in which she
receives news of Marc Antony's marriage to Octavia stands
structurally almost in the middle of Act II. There are 352
lines before it and 285 lines after. For the second time we
see Cleopatra at home, waiting idly for news of Marc Antony.
She calls for music— "music, moody food/ Of us that trade
in love." When she asks Charmian to play billiards with
her and when she begs off because her arm is sore— probably
because she has played too much already— Charmian suggests
that Cleopatra play with Mardian; but the queen replies
wittily and naughtily that "As well a woman with a eunuch
played/ As with a woman" (II.v.3ff.). More merriment and
bawdy puns follow— all in an effort to dissipate boredom.
Sardian wants to play, but the queen changes her mind, al
though with an obvious reference to his asexuality she
commends his good will "though 't come too short" (my ital
ics). Instead, she decides to fish, recalling a time she
207
and Antony enjoyed themselves angling, and other times they
had together, such as the occasion on which she drank him to
his bed and changed clothes with him. Until the messenger
arrives at line 23, the scene is an amusing model of present
boredom and longing for past pleasures.
The second part of the scene verges on farce. It is a
scene Shakespeare invented, by moving back Plutarch's ac
count of the beating of Seleucus, and he probably did so in
order to give another instance of Cleopatra's completely
feminine temperament, which we at once admire, smile at, anc.
deprecate. The Messenger arrives, bearing news that Antony
is bound to Octavia "for the best turn i' the bed" (57).
Cleopatra rages furiously and histrionically.
Hence,
Horrible villain1 Or I'll spurn thine eyes
Like balls before me, I'll unhair thy head
(She hails him up and down.)
Thou shalt be whipped with wire, and stewed in brine,
Smarting in lingering pickle. (61ff.)
Cleopatra has been regarded here as "merciless, a Jeze-'
54
bel of wrath." But the scene need not be viewed as an
55
exhibition of terrible cruelty and meanness. Once again,
^Knight, The Imperial Theme, p. 299.
5^See Joseph S. Stull, "Cleopatra's Magnanimity: the
Dismissal of the Messenger," Shakespeare Quarterly, VII
208
we have an aspect of Cleopatra's "infinite variety." Though
/ •
she apparently strikes the messenger, hails him up and down,
and even draws a knife on him, her recovery of her cunning
instincts is another of her sudden changes of mood, and her
changeability has throughout a somewhat amusing aspect. At
the same time, she shows her love of Antony by her jealousy,
a love previously obscured somewhat by her coquettishness.
The only scene in Act III which can be said to be
amusing is that in which Cleopatra receives news of Octa-
5 6
via. Her attitude toward the messenger has been prepared
(Winter 1956), 73-78. Stull does not believe that the Mes
senger is a merchant, and that the Queen ruins him by cut
ting off his means of livelihood, a possible interpretation
of her lines in dismissing him:
Get thee hence.
The merchandise which thou hast brought from Rome
Are all too dear for me. Lie they upon thy hand,
And be undone by 'em I (103-106)
Instead, he maintains, a stage direction has been lost, ac
cording to which the Messenger would enter with a small
casket, which Cleopatra takes to be another gift from An
tony, and to which her lines refer. However, the "merchan
dise" may merely be the news he has brought, so that there
is no need for such a conjectural interpretation.
^However, there is the sardonically presented triumph
of Ventidius in Syria. In his estimation, it is better not
to pursue victory too far, for in succeeding better than
one's superiors it is possible to place oneself in great
danger (III.i.12ff.). So, too, Enobarbus and Agrippa mock
the hypocritical gestures of honor and compassion among the
great, while at the other side of the stage the great make
209
for by her treatment of this same fellow in II.v. Now she
is disposed to interpret his news as she wishes and she
intimidates him into coloring his information to her liking.
The report that Octavia is "low-voiced" and not so tall as
herself she quickly interprets to signify that she is "Dull
of tongue and dwarfish" (19). Seeing where his advantage
lies, the messenger is quick to take a hint and add that
Octavia "creeps," and that her face is "Round even to
faultiness," her hair uninspiring brown, and her forehead
so low as to signify a lack of intelligence. The question
of age Cleopatra quickly passes over, for she can make no
advantage of an absolute fact. Her conclusion amusingly
reverses her former judgment of the messenger; he is now
"Most fit for business" (39), though clearly she has no more
evidence to go on:
He's very knowing,
I do perceive 't. There's nothing in her yet.
The fellow has good judgment. (27-29)
Here, then, we have an image of a queen who thrives on
flattery and who, believing herself the paragon of women,
judges all others as falling short of emulating her: "The
man hath seen some majesty, and should know" (44). Yet,
their pledges of lasting love.
210
withal, Shakespeare has not created a completely unpleasant
picture. In fact, Cleopatra is pathetic in her need to be
more beautiful than her rival. She is every inch a woman,
and though she is depicted in a somewhat humorous light,
she never ceases to fascinate.
Despite the less than heroic depiction of the title
characters in Act IV, there are several scenes in which they
are presented realistically and win sympathy along with
criticism. The scene in Cleopatra's bedchamber on the morn
ing of the first day of battle at Alexandria is such a one,
and here humor again works to win sympathy. Antony has
awakened and calls for his armor, but Cleopatra is petulant
and calls him back to bed. There is a touch of domestic
comedy here. She tells him to "Sleep a little" (IV.iv.2),
the request having a realistic touch to it. When she sees
that Antony is determined to prepare for battle, she helps
Eros to dress him, pretending ignorance of war accoutre
ments . Antony is amused, but she persists in her exagger-
57
ated fumblings to feed his sense of humor (305). There
is some farcical business as she tries to put his right
'Thomas Bowman, "Antony and the 'Lass Unparalleled,'"
Shakespeare Newsletter, VII (1957), 47.
211
leg-piece on his left leg, and Antony, praising her fumb-
lings, tells Eros that he might learn a thing or two from
her. Humorous bantering here is used to conceal the anxi
ety that each feels, and covers with a pretense of well
being the apprehension that death and defeat may well be
their fortune on this day. Through the warm, subdued humor
of this scene, Shakespeare is preparing his audience for
the "lass unparalleled" of the last act, for here Cleopatra
58
begins to feel closer to Antony than ever before.
But on the second day of battle Cleopatra's fleet goes
over to the enemy, and Antony, a storm of rage and bitter
words, proclaims that she will die. In fear, she sends the
eunuch, Mardian, to tell him she has slain herself, with
orders to bring back news of how Antony takes her death.
While the issue is serious, her feminine device here looks
back to her feigned indispositions in Act I and her wiles
throughout. Duality is sustained: the issue is sombre,
but the tactics, the message, and subtle conflict of wits
between man and woman are still human and partly amusing.
One of the best arguments for considering the play high
eg
Ibid. Knight, in The Imperial Theme, p. 305, sees
Cleopatra as "mothering" Antony in this scene.
212
comedy is the Monument scene. The characters of the hero
and heroine have been developed with all their flaws, incon
sistencies and foibles. In IV.xiv, the hero has bungled his
suicide and lies a pathetic creature begging someone to
finish him. Even if we assume that there was no act of
cowardice in his having Eros first attempt the deed instead
59
of doing it himself, his bungling of it and lying pathet
ically on the ground begging for someone to finish him must
of necessity evoke mixed emotions— not all of them complete
ly serious. Further complicating the action and detracting
from tragic effect is the audience's awareness that Antony
is dying because of another of Cleopatra's tricks. Certain
ly no other Shakespearean tragic hero gets himself into such
^This possibility is discussed by Wallace A. Bacon,
in "The Suicide of Antony in Antony and Cleopatra." Shake
speare Association Bulletin. XXIV (July 1949), 193-202. He
points out that Antony says "I come, my queen!" and then
tells her to wait until Eros arrives. When Eros has done
his noble deed, Antony vows to become his scholar, but then
he bungles the job. However, Bacon simply raises the ques
tion. In the end he agrees with most critics that Antony
is not cowardly, though he "lies agonized upon the stage, a
mighty soldier reduced to the most abject of spectacles"
(p. 195). Another denigrating view is that of Barrol, "An
tony and Pleasure." He feels that Antony dies "unreclaimed
and deluded, in the lap of his fatal lure, his head swimming
with self-deceptive thoughts" (p. 720). This view seems
narrowly moralistic, and seems to miss the imagery of light
and of the stars, as well as Antony's own thoughts on his
death.
213
an awkward position, and it may be so undignified as to be
almost embarrassing.
The hoisting up of Antony to Cleopatra's Monument in
6 0
an extemporaneously contrived contraption is in Plutarch.
Shakespeare follows his source in having Cleopatra fearful
at first to have Antony enter the monument. But the situa
tion is more ambiguous in the play than in the narrative.
One of the more interesting questions about this scene is
the nature of the lovers1 feelings toward one another. Is
Cleopatra concerned primarily for her life and does she
still see some possibility of bargaining with Caesar? Her
language belies this: it is elevated, rhetorical, noble.
"O sun,/ Burn the great sphere thou movest in. Darkling
stand/ The varying shore o' the world. 0 Antony . . ." (IV.
>cv.8-11) 7 "The crown o' the earth doth melt" (63); "Our
Lamp is spent, it's out" (85):
The odds is gone
And there is nothing left remarkable
Beneath the visiting moon. (65-67)
There is her talk of the gods, and her noble declaration:
We'll bury him, and then, what's brave, what's noble,
Let's do it after the high Roman fashion,
And make death proud to take us. (85-87)
60P. 221.
214
This has the noble ring. Still, how did Shakespeare intend
that his audience react to her refusal at first to admit
Antony, even given her great fear of being made a mockery
of, if taken by Caesar? And what of her ambiguous "Here's
sport indeedl" or her remarkable "... woo’t die?/ Hast
thou no care of me?" (32, 58). Perhaps in the first remark
she is recalling ironically the grand times they have had
together, contrasted with the present; and the second may
be an all too human plea wrung from the heart, rather than
a kind of humorous selfishness. But there seems to be in
her remarks a sort of purposeful ambiguity on the author's
part, the object of which is to keep in mind at once both
the regality and the womanly weaknesses of the queen. At
the moment of tragedy, a touch of humor humanizes and makes
Cleopatra appealing on several levels.
As for Antony, his very dying words are put in doubt
by the nature of his advice to his mistress. He tells her
to seek her honor and her safety with Caesar. Yet Antony
knows Caesar well enough to know that he will display the
queen as a symbol of his triumph. In the light of Cleo
patra's most recent betrayals, is Antony perhaps betraying
her? He advises her to trust none about Caesar but Procu-
leius, a man who Antony must surely know is unflinching in
215
his devotion to Caesar. Is it probable that Shakespeare was
unaware of the irony in Antony's advice when considered
against the picture he has drawn of Proculeius in Act V?
Why does Antony not mention Dolabella? Is he in death seek-
61
ing an ignoble revenge on his queen for betraying him?
It seems improbable, and the idea seems far-fetched, but the
paradox remains, and suggests the possibility of satire and
even humor in the death of the hero. Infinite variety is
again the heart of the matter. It is maintained when An
tony dies in the arms of Cleopatra. The queen faints, and
Iras cries, "Royal Egypt,/ Empress"; but Cleopatra awakening
replies:
No more, but e'en a woman, and commanded
By such poor passion as the maid that milks
And does the meanest chares. (70ff.)
Act V is Cleopatra's. The double ending makes possible:
her rise to the pure ethereal, unlike anything she achieved
before. The act has been termed "a coda to the tragedy of
6-1-This is maintained by David Berkeley, in "On Over
simplifying Antony," College English. XVII (November 1955),
96-99. Berkeley notes that Antony has already told her
that Caesar would "hoist thee up to the shouting Plebeians
. . ." (IV.xii.32ff.). Furthermore, Antony is certain that
"this foul Egyptian" has betrayed him, and he has declared
"The witch shall die," and "To the young Roman boy she hath
sold me, and I fall/ Under this plot. She dies for "t"
(IV.xiii.46-48).
216
Antony which many consider the most wonderful movement in
62
any of [Shakespeare's] great symphonies." The queen's
relation of her dream to Dolabella is description of rare
beauty; in her images throughout the act she elevates Antony
to love's dais with herself. Even those who have seen the
play as satire on the theme of self-indulgence concede that
in the end Shakespeare succeeds in winning our sympathies
for Cleopatra.^
Two scenes in the last act require attention in regard
to comic matter. The first is the scene with Caesar, in
which Cleopatra withholds her treasure, and is betrayed by
Seleucus; the second is that with Cleopatra and the Clown.
As to the first, Shakespeare may be following Plutarch
in having Cleopatra concerned for the future of her chil
dren, although Shakespeare does not emphasize the matter,
probably because his queen is sufficiently complex as it is,
But there are two other possible interpretations of the
scene. If Cleopatra does, indeed, hold back a large portion
of her treasure out of meanness, or smallness of spirit,
then the scene may be taken as further expose of her
^Introduction to the Cambridge edition, p. xxxii.
®^See Dickey, p. 197.
217
64
selfishness. In this case, Shakespeare intended the audi
ence to smile. If the withholding of so much wealth as
would purchase what she has made known expresses her desire
to live, then it may well be that here we have another exam
ple of her infinite variety, again partly amusing. But
there is still another possible interpretation. Plutarch
makes it clear that Cleopatra deliberately stages this
scene, knowing that Seleucus will betray her, in order that
she may trick Caesar by convincing him that she wishes to
6 5
live. Shakespeare seems to follow his principal source in
this. For at the end of Act IV the queen has decided to do
"what's brave, what’s noble . . . after the high Roman fash
ion" (xv.86-87); and immediately upon Caesar's departure in
V.ii, she shows that the humility she has shown is merely a
pose: "He words me, girls, he words me, that I should not/
C.A
It opens with a piece of comic business. Caesar,
entering, says, "Which is the Queen of Egypt?" (V.ii.112).
This must be humorous in the light of Cleopatra's obvious
place as the center of attraction. We may compare this with
Antony's reaction on first seeing Cleopatra. But while we
smile, Octavius' words tell us what to expect of him in re
gard to the queen. His obvious insult also lets Cleopatra
know that here at last is a man who will not fall subject
to her spell.
^ S h a k e s p e a r e ' s Plutarch, p. 226. Caesar took his
leave of her, "supposing he had deceived her, but indeed he
was deceived himself."
218
Be noble to myself" (191-192). This being the case, we are
to smile not at her selfishness and pettiness, but at the
way in which she has outwitted Caesar.
In the scene with the Clown, once again we are shown
the woman beneath the royal robes? Cleopatra's basic human
simplicity is re-inforced by the rural fellow who brings the
basket of figs, but at the same time she remains every inch
66
the empress. Shakespeare developed this scene from a hint
in Plutarch; but in the Parallel Lives there is nothing
humorous in it:
Now whilst she was at dinner, there came a countryman
and brought her a basket. The soldiers that warded at
the gates, asked him straight what he had in his basket.
He opened his basket, and took out the leaves that cov
ered the figs, and shewed them that they were figs he
brought. They all of them marvelled to see so goodly
figs. The countryman laughed to hear them, and bade
them take some if they would. They believed he told
them truly, and so they bade him carry them in.^?
That is all Plutarch has to say of the Clown. In his
aTheodore Spencer, p. 175. Bradley has this to say
about the Clown: "The old Countryman comes at a moment of
tragic exaltation, and the dialogue is appropriately brief.
But the moment, though tragic, is emphatically one of exal
tation . . . And therefore our amusement at the old Country
man and the contrast he affords to these high passions, is
untroubled, and it was right to make him really comic" (p.
395) .
^7Shakespeare1s Plutarch, p. 227.
219
Cleopatra^ Samuel Daniel has the figs delivered by the Nun-
68
tius, who relates to the Chorus how he passed the guards.
Only Shakespeare saw possible humor in the situation. His
Clown is, as one writer has said, "a yokel with a glimmering
that the lady is in trouble and is choosing a way out which
69
he does not intend to see too clearly." At another level,
he is "the essential mechanism in a movement of history,
the ultimate agent to make great Caesar into 'ass unpoli-
70
cied.'" As Cleopatra observes, and in accord with the
duality we have seen throughout the play, it is evident
"what poor an instrument/ May do a noble deed" (V.ii.236-
237).
Any pain which might result from Cleopatra's death is
obviated by her conversation with the Clown, which modulates
the tragic note, and tends to support the exultation and
triumph she feels in death. The Clown's naivete and de
lightful malapropisms act as "relief" for her noble ending.
The worm's bite is "immortal," he assures her, and indeed,
there is an ironic overtone of truth here; the queen will
^®Daniel, The Complete Works. Ill, p. 82ff.
^Rossiter, p. 283.
70ihid.
220
71
herself remark that she has "immortal longings" in her.
But first the Clown provides us with one last interlude in
which we see Cleopatra relaxed and admirable. The worm is
"immortal," and "Those that do die of it do seldom or never
recover" (V.ii.247-248). It is most "fallible" that it is
an "odd worm" (259) . In her capacity for enjoying the rus
tic fellow, Cleopatra is once again revealed as joyous.
Her last moments are happy, almost exuberant. We smile
when she worries that Iras will reach Marc Antony before
her. She mocks the luck of Caesar, and compares death to a
lover's pinch. In contrast to the deaths of Juliet and
Desdemona, Cleopatra's is quiet and inspiring: "As sweet
as balm, as soft as air, as gentle . . ." (314). The comic
elements contribute to a feeling of joy.
The last scene in Antony and Cleopatra presents further
evidence that comic elements in this play, far more than
those in the other plays we studied, contribute to a relax
ation of tension and the attenuation of tragic effect.
Antony seems almost to be organized more by iterative images
and the unfolding of character than by plot. In both imagery
and characterization the key concept seems to be "duality."
71This is noted by Knight in The Imperial Theme, p. 316
221
There is a constant dialectic between presentation of the
characters as admirable and as unworthy of their great of
fices. At one moment their grand passion and vital humanity
seem justification enough for their flagrant excesses? at
the next moment their excesses seem inexcusable, pathetic,
or at best humorous. Against the grandness of their love
is balanced the demeaning comments of almost everyone else
in the play, the image patterns of sport and frivolity,
Cleopatra's own bawdy dialogue, the pleasure-seeking of
Egypt, and finally the wrangling, whimsical, and erratic
temperaments of the lovers themselves. Against the heroic
and noble there is set the unheroic and even the ignoble.
The playwright's admiration vies with his satirical sense.
The characters are somewhat distanced so that complete em
pathy is impossible; and tragic effect is diffused by sat
ire. But in the end comic effects contribute to a portrayal
of the fabled lovers more sympathetic than that to be found
in any other writer of Shakespeare's age.
CONCLUSION
Of the three love-tragedies considered in this study,
there is more comic matter having comic effect in the early
and late tragedies, Romeo and Juliet and Antony and Cleo
patra. than in Othello, which was written in the "high"
tragic period. While there is considerable use of matter
traditionally associated with comedy in all three plays, in
the early and late tragedies comic characters, dialogue, and
situations tend to contribute far more to a context itself
at least partly comic. Romeo and Juliet may be termed an
"experimental" tragedy, for it was written at a time when
Shakespeare was writing chiefly chronicles and romantic
comedies, and the play has many features in common with
Elizabethan romantic comedy. Antony and Cleopatra is a late
tragedy in which satire, dualistic depiction of the lovers
involving an anti-heroic side, and an element of "optimism"
bring about a lessening of tragic intensity. But in
Othello, while there are certain elements common in Jacobean
realistic comedy, as well as comic aspects of the morality
222
223
play, the total effect of all structural elements is to
heighten the grotesque and awesome nature of the tragedy.
In the composition of all three tragedies Shakespeare
made bold innovations, not the least of which was the intro
duction of comic matter. One of his chief divergences from
Arthur Brooke's Romeus and Juliet was in his use of elements
resembling those having currency in the romantic comedies of
the time. Among these are the characters of Mercutio and
Benvolio, the comic servants, the partially comic depiction
of the elders, the full realization of the character of the
Nurse, the presentation of Romeo at first as an innamorato
in the tradition of fine amorT and an admixture of lyricism
and wit which wins sympathy for the cause of love and youth.
In fact, Shakespeare seems to have been among the first to
use love as the central interest in a stage tragedy, and
the first to see comic possibilities in the often told story
of the "star-crossed" lovers. Moreover, in Othello he was
apparently among the first of his age to write a domestic
tragedy; and the fact that he chose a subject from the
"middle estate" probably led to his incorporating into his
play elements from the realistic comic theatre of the early
1600's. The "honest" rogue, the silly gentleman, the cour
tesan, the deceived father, the husband who believes he is
224
cuckolded are all characters who have analogues in Eliza
bethan and Jacobean comedy, although they are employed for
tragic effect in Othello. Finally, in Antony and Cleopatra
Shakespeare was the first to treat the tale of the famous
lovers with consummate sympathy. He did this in part by
developing certain characters, but briefly mentioned in
Plutarch's "Life of Marcus Antonius," who contribute to the
sense of joy which is Egypt, and support the theme of the
superiority of grand passion to mere worldly considerations.
Charmian, Iras, Mardian, and Enobarbus, with their engaging
witticisms and appreciation of the transcendent qualities
of their lord and lady, add to our sense that the world is,
indeed, well lost for love. The follies of the lovers, too,
even when they are satirized and exposed, sometimes amuse
and win admiration or sympathy.
None of the plays considered in this study has a well-
developed secondary action, as.do many Elizabethan plays,
including many of Shakespeare's own. But all have comic
secondary matter which shadows, parodies, and tends to
"universalize" the main action. "Low" characters and witty
characters provide a critique by contrast or comment. In
Romeo and Juliet the realistic dialogue of the Nurse, the
bawdy puns of the servants, and the witticisms of the
_ _ 225
gallants are balanced against and control to a certain ex
tent the idealism of romantic love. The quarreling and
trickery of the servants is set against similar actions and
words of the aristocrats. Word-duels prepare for and shadow
sword-dueIs. Both love and feuding are seen, therefore, at
more than one level, so that they become more complex and
also more generalized. In addition, the partially comic
preparations for Juliet's marriage to Paris shadow the
desperate efforts of the heroine to escape the onerous
alliance and to be re-united with Romeo. In Othello the
Iago-Roderigo action shadows and tends to parody and make
grotesque and even more terrible the Iago-Othello action.
False play and deceit seem to operate at all levels. More
over, slanderous implications link Cassio with both the
virtuous heroine and the comic courtesan. The unswerving
devotion of Desdemona is also heightened by contrast with
the witty realism of Emilia. The Othello-Desdemona rela
tionship, with its vast potential for arousing great admir
ation, is contrasted implicitly with the humorous relation
ships between Cassio and Bianca, and Iago and Emilia. The
language of love that rises far above sensuality (Desde™
mona's language rings far truer than Othello's, for his is
always tainted with pride) is contrasted with cynical,
226
naturalistic wit. So, too, in Antony and Cleopatra, the
late love tragedy, comic elements shadow, parody, and "uni
versalize ." Love on the grand scale exists concurrently
with comments on love "belowstairs," and with the realistic
comments of various characters. "Low" image patterns shadow
"high" ones, comic remarks sometimes foretell serious con
sequences, and satire in politics and love exists side by
side with the qualities of greatness.
It should not be assumed, therefore, that comic matter
acts as mere relief." It does not by any means merely
provide interlude-like pauses in the development of the
tragedy. On the contrary, characters and situations gener
ally associated with some variety of comedy, such as roman
tic comedy or satire, may be intimately involved in tragic
action. This becomes clear when we reconsider what has been
said in these pages about characters who appear in the three
tragedies, but who are variations upon types deriving out of
either Latin New Comedy or native English comedy. That
these characters are not merely bystanders, but have a stake
in the fortunes of the main characters, is evident in the
cases of the garrulous Nurse, the senexes (Capulet and Bra
bant io), the adulescens and innamorato (Romeo), the eiron
(Mercutio), the servants, the gull and "silly gentleman"
227
(Roderigo), the courtesan (Bianca), the witty waiting maids
(Emilia, Charmian, and Iras), the eunuch (Mardian), the
Vice-villain (Iago), and the blunt, honest, and witty sol
dier (Enobarbus). All these characters add dimensions to
the main action and complicate its meanings. They serve not
merely as relief from pain, but also as bas reliefT making
more complex the design of the story.
In the three love tragedies examined above Shakespeare
seems to have employed an interesting structural method.
He tends to open an act with a "low" scene or with comic
dialogue which anticipates and prepares for the main action.
Then he proceeds to build tension, while at the same time
maintaining a kind of rhythmic balance of serious and light
matter. Aside from the Prologue, who introduces Acts I and
II of Romeo and Juliet, the first three acts open with comic
scenes. Those which open the first two acts are really
funny, but an atmosphere of tension and anxiety casts a pall
over the witticisms of the young aristocrats at the begin
ning of Act III. Within the first two acts, scenes which
forebode trouble are set against those which are romanti
cally lyrical or humorous. Scenes of satirical jibes are
balanced against scenes of lyrical and rhetorical expres
sions of love. In OthelloT too, the first three acts open
228
with scenes containing comic business. But the humor in the
Iago-Roderigo scene which opens the first act, and in Iago's
jests about women at the beginning of Act II, is a depraved
humor which reveals a corrupted intelligence. We may note
that the Roderigo-Iago action surrounds the main events in
Act I— the act beginning and ending with it. The Roderigo
action also follows the beautiful reunion of Othello and
Desdemona in Cyprus, and the cashiering of Cassio. Aside
from brief soliloquys by Iago, the Roderigo action ends
both Acts I and II. Thus, Act II contains Iago's witticisms
on women, then the beautiful lyricism of Othello's arrival,
then some comic business between Iago and Roderigo, then
the partially comic drinking scene, Othello's great anger,
Iago's partially comic persuasion of Cassio, and finally
Iago's further deception of Roderigo. The terrible tempta
tion scene of Act III is set between the two Clown scenes—
Scenes i and iv. Then, once again Shakespeare ends an emo
tionally tumultuous act with a light scene, bringing on the
courtesan, Bianca, to receive the handkerchief that has just
caused Desdemona such distress. Toward the end of the
fourth act, after the successive cruelties of Othello to his
wife, there is some relief in Iago's further gulling of
Roderigo, while the act ends, once again, with matter at
229
least partly comic— Emilia's witty, realistic remarks on
cuckoldry. In the third play considered in this study,
Antony and Cleopatra, the entrance of the lovers is preceded
by the comments of the "low" soldiers and followed by the
comments of the waiting maids. Act I ends with the witty
exchange between Cleopatra and Charmian. In Act II the
political action is shadowed by the comments of the blunt
soldiers (not all comic, however, considering Enobarbus'
description of Cleopatra); the news of the messenger is pre
ceded by considerable comic business; and finally, the
entire act builds toward the rollicking, if satirical, scene
aboard Pompey's galley. Act IV builds toward a non-comic
but grand optimism, and the last scene in the play is shaped
in part by the rustic clown. Thus, the rhythmic pattern we
abserved seems to be present in all three plays.
While there is considerable and important use of comic
natter in all three tragedies, in each play a turn for the
worse in the fortune of the hero and heroine occurs in Act
IV and thereafter there is far less comic matter. Yet it
should be observed that tragic action is in part prepared
for by intricate verbal structures, including puns, quib
bles, and other kinds of witticisms. And these same comic
verbal patte ns persist late into the play, though within a
........ - 230
darker context. Thus it is with the image patterns of
"drawing," "dying," and the sea in Romeo and Juliet/ with
the patterns of reputation, honor, blackness, and animals
in Othello, and with those of competition, gambling, sports,
animals, and food in Antony and Cleopatra. Like the pre
dominantly comic characters who appear even in the last acts
of the plays under consideration— the Musicians, the Nurse,
the various rustics and low characters— these verbalisms now
have more serious connotations.
Of course, certain uses of the art of language have an
inherent comic element. Puns and quibbles seem to involve
an element of surprise and novelty related to the jest. The
joking of the Capuiet servants with the concept of "maiden
head," while it prepares for the main action, falls into
this class. So do Mercutio's parodying of Petrarchanism
and his bawdy jests on ideal love, the equivocating of the
Clown in Othello with the word "lie" or his putting off of
the Musicians, and the jesting of Charmian and Iras about
chastity and cuckoldry. Iago's quibbling with the word
"honest" is a far more serious occurrence of the same sort
of punning; Emilia's jesting about cuckoldry just before the
tragic moment is an example of _a poignant and suggestive use
of witty dialogue. Malapropisms are a traditional comic
231
device, and occur in the speech of the Nurse in Romeo and
Juliet and the rustic Clown in Antony and Cleopatra. Garru
lousness and slowness in reporting news is another comic
device which appears in Romeo and Juliet.
Certain kinds of scenes in these plays tend toward the
comic. Such, for example, are drunken revels and drinking
bouts. Two important scenes in the plays under considera
tion are the drinking and singing bout in Othello and the
Bacchic revels of the great in Antony and Cleopatra. In
both scenes, physical humor is accompanied by a general air
of abandonment and by merry drinking songs. These scenes,
like that of the drunken Porter at the gate in Macbeth, have
structural importance and are not mere "relief." Messengers
bringing news are also used for partially comic effect in
two of the plays under study. The illiterate servant who
carries the list of intended guests for Capulet's masked
ball is probably a sop for the more sophisticated members
of the audience, and the Nurse is a highly comic envoy for
the youthful lovers. The servant in Antony and Cleopatra
who brings news of Antony's marriage, as well as the rustic
fellow who brings Cleopatra the asps, are further examples.
Musicians appear in comic scenes in Romeo and Juliet and
Othello. Witty interludes occur in Desdemona's conversation
232
with Iago as they wait for Othello's ship to arrive, and in
Cleopatra's jesting with the eunuch and her maids to ease
her boredom while Antony is away. Scenes in which low char
acters appear are likely to contain some comic matter,
though not always.
In all three plays scenes having.largely comic effect
occur late in the action. Capulet's comic preparations for
Juliet's planned wedding to Paris occur in Act IV, while
the farcical and structurally unimportant scene with Peter
and the musicians ends that act. In Othello the two Clown
scenes occur in Act III, and the Iago-Roderigo sequence
continues into the last act. Typical of the highly mixed
nature of Antony and Cleopatra is the fact that the rustic
Clown appears in the last scene of the play.
The high point of comedy in Romeo and Juliet occurs in
II.iv, the hilarious scene of assignation between Romeo and
the Nurse, a scene that flashes with the witticisms of Ben-
volio and Mercutio. The high point of comedy in Antony and
Cleopatra occurs in the drinking bout on board Pompey's
galley, the last scene in the second act. This scene pre
cedes the reversals in Act III, thus contributing to a pat
tern similar to that in the earlier tragedy. In Othello
there is really no high point of comedy, since all the humor
233
is somewhat distasteful and essentially of a piece. How
ever, we may note that the comic Clown scene shortly pre
cedes the reversal.
One use of comic matter which occurs in the plays but
which could not be discussed extensively in this study is
physical appearance and obviously implied stage business.
For example, one can expect the servants in the first scene
of Romeo and Juliet to belie their bravado with foolish
movements. There is comic business in their daring of their
opposites to duel and in arranging for the banquet and the
wedding. The Nurse, to judge by her constant condition of
exhaustion, complaints of physical ailments, and cries for
medicine, may simply be old; but one may guess that she is
overweight and ungainly. Peter dogs her steps in a humor
ous way. Romeo, himself, as described by Mercutio in Act I,
has the distracted air and disarray of the humorously pre
sented lover of the early romantic comedies. Iago accom
panies many of his bawdy jests with vulgar gestures, punc
tuating his highly visual images. Roderigo is dressed like
the dandy and gull he is; his mannerisms are probably fop
pish. Brabantio, when he is awakened in the middle of the
night, appears (like Capulet) in his nightcap in the role
of the senex of comedy. In Antony and Cleopatra the
234
messenger who delivers the news of Antony's marriage has a
meek manner ill sorted to the mighty responsibility he
bears. The eunuch probably accompanies his humorous remarks
with fitting mannerisms. The rustic Clown has a humble,
simple and foolish appearance which, taken with his language
and contrasted with the serious import of his business, can
be expected to bring smiles. Scenes of physical humor have
already been noted, as in the drinking and singing bouts in
Antony and Cleopatra.
Finally, a variety of the comic which seems to be
little present is satire. Satire is usually aimed at the
vices or follies of the playwright's age or at particular
individuals, as in the War of the Theatres, and it is in
tended to correct excess by implied or stated standards of
reason and common sense. Satire has to do with manners.
In the three plays studied, the aims of tragedy take pre
cedence over any such topical or corrective purpose which
may exist. , There is satire in Mercutio's remarks on Ty
balt’s Italianate style of fencing, in some of Iago's re
marks on preferment and women, and in much of the political
business of Antony and Cleopatra. But the dramatist's con
cern is to depict the web of circumstances in which his hero
and heroine are caught, and to evoke pity, fear, anxiety,
235
terror, and other emotions. And in the last analysis,
satire, like all varieties of the comic, requires a certain
distancing, while tragedy must overcome distancing to bring
about empathy.
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The Dramatic Function Of Comic Elements In Three Shakespearean Love Tragedies
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