Sit in a full Theater, and you will thinke you see so many lines drawne from the circumference of so many eares, whiles the Actor is the Center. [My italics.]
Gesture for specific communication rather than general reinforcement of the speech was not feasible. For example, the comic actor could not rely on a visual gag. A humorous walk or risible situation, such as the tavern scene in I Henry IV, could be managed. But the type of farcical routine represented by the commedia dell’arte lazzi would have been lost to a large part of the audience.
The sightlines not only prohibited certain types of gestures, they also required a certain orientation of the body. Today as much as possible the actor will try to maintain the illusion that he is facing a fellow actor and not facing the audience. The flat picture frame of our theater encourages this illusion. In the Elizabethan theater the actor had to turn out, that is, orient himself to the circumference of auditors, if he were to be seen at all. This condition reinforced the conventional or ceremonial manner in acting.
By turning out, the actor emphasized the stage as a setting behind him rather than as an environment around him. This was in accord with the demands of the plays. As I have pointed out, most of the scenes were set in a generalized locale. The actor did not have to maintain an illusion of place. He could concentrate wholly on the action and the passion of a scene. To achieve verisimilitude it was not necessary that he project time and place. Standard practice in movement and delivery would fit every play, for they would never seem out of harmony with the conventional façade. The result was that the actor did not adapt himself to every environment, as the actor does now, but translated every environment into a theatrical form.
These tendencies towards simplification and systemization were reinforced by the conditions of repertory. In Chapter One I showed how many plays were maintained actively in the Globe repertory. A member of the company, who was likely to be in every play, had to learn a new role every other week. At the same time, he had to keep in mind thirty or forty others. We do know that the players were used to preparing a script rapidly. Augustine Phillips, in the course of testimony offered on the Essex conspiracy, reveals that the Lord Chamberlain’s men had only a day or a day and a half to revive Richard II, a play long off the boards.[19] The fact that the play was actually presented at the Globe is proof of the actors’ adaptability.
But the player’s task was still more arduous. There was no opportunity for him to fix a role in his memory by repetition. Rarely would he play the same role two days in succession. Even in the most popular role he would not appear more than twice in one week, and then only in the first month or two of the play’s stage life. The consequences of such a strenuous repertory were twofold. First, the actor had to cultivate a fabulous memory and devote much of his time to memorization; various plays testify to the scorn of the playwright for the actor who is out of his part. Secondly, the actor had to systematize his methods of portrayal and of working with his colleagues. How far this could be done will have to be considered below in light of the variety of roles the actor played.
If we could have a glimpse of an actual rehearsal, we should learn a great deal about Elizabethan acting. The closest that we can come to such a glimpse is to examine various players’ scenes in the drama of the period. From A Midsummer Night’s Dream (I, ii, 101 ff.), we learn that it was the practice to distribute the sides to the actors and, after these had been memorized, to rehearse the company. That this was normal procedure is indicated by the surviving part for Orlando from Orlando Furioso.[20] Used by Edward Alleyn, it embodies the system adopted by the professional companies. The part, inscribed on a narrow sheet of paper, was originally arranged on a long roll. From this roll Alleyn studied his part and from it we can learn some of his methods, particularly by comparing the part to the extant copy of the play.
The part contains Orlando’s speeches, together with the cues for each speech and some stage directions. The cues are extremely brief, consisting of no more than two or three words of the preceding actor’s speech. If the speeches of more than one actor separate two speeches of Orlando, only the last cue is inserted. Of the presence of any other actors on stage there is no indication. The stage directions, usually written in the third person, are not as descriptive as in the text of the play. Entrances of other actors are not noted. In effect, the part is shorn of almost everything but the speeches of the character.
As Dr. Greg has pointed out, the part does not rely upon quite the same text as the full copy of the play. Therefore, a word-by-word comparison cannot be made. Yet there is some evidence that short replies by the other actors were conventionalized in the part. Compare the following extract, for example:
In several other places short lines of the other actor have been omitted.[21] There is one instance, in an otherwise satisfactory section, where a cue is omitted (after Part, 344, compare with Play, 1311–1312). Another set of omissions involves brief interchanges between Orlando and another character. The brevity of the speeches where the omissions occur indicates that they are not cuts in the script. Perhaps these lines were picked up by the actors in rehearsal.
The uncertainty governing the relationship of part to play makes it difficult to depend too much upon the evidence of the comparison. But a few tentative deductions can be made. We must remember the little time available for rehearsal. Nowadays when extensive rehearsals in the Moscow Art Theatre manner are the ideal, the few hours that were available to the Globe actors appear to be an insurmountable obstacle to dramatic art. However, long rehearsals of an entire dramatic company are a comparatively recent innovation. In the last century, for instance, a rehearsal or two was deemed sufficient. An actress who was asked by Edwin Booth to rehearse the closet scene in Hamlet was so insulted that she left the production. Concentration upon the individual player rather than the play, which this anecdote illustrates, is also reflected in the part of Orlando. It is trimmed to provide the actor with the information he needed as a solo performer, not as a member of a group. Since the full copy of the play was difficult to secure, the one copy being zealously guarded by the bookkeeper, the part was all the actor had to rely on. From it he got his familiarity with the play. In it he put the essentials of his role. The absence of more stage directions in the part than are in the play indicates that the acting was free from any but the most relevant business, an observation with which B. L. Joseph seems to agree. Altogether, the evidence points to a type of acting which emphasized the individual performer, minimized his relationship to the other actors, and placed great emphasis upon the delivery of speeches.
The organization of the Globe company may have somewhat mitigated the emphasis upon the individual. Between 1599 and 1609 the company became stabilized and won the prestige of a royal patent. From the opening of the Globe to the accession of James in 1603, the sharers, who were the principal actors, remained the same. They were Thomas Pope, John Heminges, Augustine Phillips, Richard Cowley, William Shakespeare, Richard Burbage, William Sly, Henry Condell, and Robert Armin. At the time the company received the royal patent in May, 1603, it was enlarged to twelve members. Entering at the same time was a replacement for the deceased Pope, Laurence Fletcher. The three new members were John Lowin, who had been a member of Worcester’s men in 1602–1603, Alexander Cooke, who may have been the “sander” of the Seven Deadly Sins of 1592, and Nicholas Tooley, who spoke of Richard Burbage as “master.” E. K. Chambers conjectures that the Samuel Grosse whose name appears in the Folio actor list preceded Tooley into the company, but that he probably died of the plague almost at once. This history is doubtful, but even if true, it made little difference. Since it is generally accepted that Fletcher did not act with the King’s men, only three actors joined the company. One was clearly an outsider, one was probably an apprentice, who had grown up in the company, and one, Cooke, may have been an apprentice. On the death of Phillips in 1605 either Samuel Gilburne or Robert Goffe succeeded him. To account for Gilburne’s name in the Folio actor list, Chambers places him after Phillips, to be followed by Goffe before 1611. Baldwin believes that Goffe, who was Phillips’ brother-in-law, entered the company in 1605. He was possibly the “R. Go.” of Seven Deadly Sins, and may have remained with the company as apprentice or hired man throughout. In 1608 William Ostler replaced Pope, who was buried August 16, and John Underwood replaced Fletcher, who was buried September 12. Both men came from the Revels company, where they had been boy actors. However, since they entered during the period when plans for placing the King’s men at Blackfriars were under way, we can exclude them from our consideration. Thus, in the ten years we are treating, three new actors joined the company and one replaced a former actor. Two of the new actors had probably appeared with the company previously, another possibly had, but only one had been definitely associated with another group, and that one of the popular companies. The hired actors have not been considered, it is true, but the sharers who were the principal players made a tightly knit, relatively unchanging group.
Determination of the identity of the boys of the company who played the ladies is somewhat difficult. Baldwin lists seven names of boys who acted the female roles between 1599 and 1609.[22] In 1599 Samuel Gilburne, Ned (Shakespeare?), and Jack Wilson were boy actors. Samuel Grosse joined them in 1600, shortly after which Gilburne and Ned ceased playing women. In 1603 John Edmans, John Rich, and James Sands began playing women’s parts. Grosse in 1604 and Wilson in 1605 in their turn ceased performing as women. This rapid turnover is to be expected, since the span of a boy’s ability to play a feminine role was relatively short. However, since each of these boys was apprenticed to one of the members of the company, his training and performance would probably have harmonized with the adult acting.
What effect, then, did this closed and intimate group have upon the style of the acting? Baldwin proposed that each actor had a special character “line” to which he devoted himself and to which the playwrights, particularly Shakespeare, trimmed the roles. Baldwin points out that the same actors consistently took the major roles. In this I believe he is correct. Richard Burbage invariably played the leading role, Robert Armin the leading comic role, Robert Cowley played important secondary roles. Lowin seems to have come in to play leads or second leads just below the rank of Burbage: Baldwin gives him the role of Enobarbus to Burbage’s Antony. Although this designation may not be strictly accurate, the relation it reflects is likely. It is apparent that a modified star system obtained in the Globe company. This arrangement had two advantages. On the one hand, it enabled the company to develop virtuoso acting. On the other, it ensured a high level of general competence throughout the production. The competitive conditions which drew actors away from the King’s men after 1615 did not exist at this time, so that actors who received minor roles year after year had little opportunity to separate from the company.
The distribution of prominent roles to the same actors at all times, however, does not constitute a “line.” By a “line” Professor Baldwin seems to mean the recurrent appearance of a type of role, requiring certain definite characteristics in the player. Although he applies the conception of “line” rigorously, he never defines the term clearly. The criteria which he apparently considers in establishing a line are prominence of role, physique, age, genre, temperament, and special skills. First, actors distinguished according to prominence of role was a fact of Globe organization as we have seen. But instead of aiding the formation of an actor’s “line,” it interfered with it, for a leading actor would assume a leading role regardless of its type or nature. Secondly, Shakespeare may well have kept the physiques and ages of the actors in mind as he wrote, but, though such a practice may have aided naturalism, it hardly affected the type of role. In effect, the practice is no different from the kind of casting that occurs today. Thirdly, Baldwin distinguished an actor’s line according to the genre in which he specialized, comedy or tragedy. Probably the clown was a comic specialist who had to be given a role in most plays. But that there was any general tendency to specialize in one genre or the other is unlikely in view of the alternation of plays, some of which call for almost all comedians, others for almost all tragedians. The Merry Wives of Windsor was performed about the time of Hamlet, and Volpone about the time of Lear. Fourthly, special talents may be dismissed, for they involve such abilities as Kemp’s dancing. Finally, we are left with one criterion for the actor’s “line”: his temperament. Baldwin links the temperament of the actor to the temperament of the “line” that he played. Sly was the player of jolly, roisterous roles; Lowin, the player of blunt, honest soldiers. Ultimately Baldwin rests his case for a “line” upon the playwright’s adherence to distinct character types and his imitation of the actors’ temperaments.[23]
The Elizabethan playwright, however, could not adhere to types, for the actor had no tradition of playing clear-cut types, as we have seen. The actor did not specialize, but he portrayed a wide range of characters. This practice persisted into the Shakespearean era. For example, Dogberry may be regarded as a comic type, the bumbling constable. The character who most nearly approaches him in type is Elbow in Measure for Measure. He too is the inept comic constable, malapropisms and all. But the original actor of Dogberry, Will Kemp, was not in the company when Measure for Measure was presented. Obviously, in this case at least, the type was not shaped by the actor, that is Kemp, but the actor fitted the generic type.
Nor did the playwright imitate the actors’ temperaments, for the host of different roles which a single actor was called upon to play could not have been shaped to one personality. The four Shakespearean roles that are assigned to Burbage upon reliable evidence are Richard III, Hamlet, Othello, and Lear. I think no one would care to describe the personality that could serve as a model for these four roles. Moreover, when we add to this repertory, Baldwin’s assignments to Burbage of the parts of Claudio in Much Ado, Ford in Merry Wives, and Bertram in All’s Well, we must give up any idea that these characters were fitted to a personality except that of a sensitive, capable actor. Instead, the Globe company seemed to have distributed roles without attention to personal traits of the actors. This is evident in II The Return from Parnassus. Philomusus, after he has been auditioned by Burbage and Kemp (IV, iii), is considered suitable for parts as different as a foolish justice and Richard III. The scene may be mockery, but it accurately reflects all we know about role distribution. In contrast to this method, Molière, in his public plays, kept the number and distribution of roles fairly constant, evidently to meet the needs of his company. But neither the number, distribution, nor type of role was consistently repeated by Shakespeare or any other writer for the Globe company. Consequently, I fear that Baldwin’s “line” is a fiction which bears little relation to reality. His insistence upon it betrays an ignorance of histrionic method.
We must not, however, presume that the stability of the company and the absence of rigid types gave rise to ensemble acting in the naturalistic sense. The arrangement within the plays was suitable to individual playing. Most scenes in Shakespeare’s plays involve less than five active players on stage at one time. Even where there are a large number of actors on stage, the action is confined to a scene between two or three. For example, only 24 per cent of the lines in As You Like It are spoken when more than three actors are active on stage. In Twelfth Night the percentage is higher, 34 per cent, but in Hamlet it is only 19 per cent and in Lear, 31 per cent. These percentages are as high as they are because the final scene in most plays is a formal resolution of the story involving a public revelation or judgment. In Lear half the lines involving more than three active players occur in the first and last scenes of the play. The actor generally had to play with one or two others. When on stage, he was involved in the action. When on stage and mute, which was rare, he was excluded from the immediate sphere of action. In most scenes, one or more of these actors were likely to be virtuosi performers, for though the Globe plays require large casts, they rely upon relatively few performers to carry the bulk of the play.
IV. ACTING AND THE ELIZABETHAN VIEW OF HUMAN BEHAVIOR
The dramatic tradition, however, affected the general type of character rather than its specific form. In evolving this form the actor was guided by two influences: his own understanding of behavior and thought and the poet’s image of behavior and thought. In the first instance we must deduce the actor’s understanding from the outlook of Elizabethan society as a whole. In the second we can analyze the poet’s image in his plays. The poet’s unique outlook, infused in his image, is still a part of society’s conception of behavior and thought, and in the case of Shakespeare has come to represent the larger conception of the age. Together, age and poet present the psychological and philosophical foundation which the actors and audience took for granted and thus upon which the actors built their roles.
Study of characterization is complicated by the absence of decisive evidence. The literary practice of the time does not encourage a ready formulation of a poet’s idea of character. As Hardin Craig says:
One sees no evidence in the field of knowledge of the art of characterization as it is known in modern criticism. The art of characterization, as distinguished from simple biographical narrative, was there, but often not as a conscious factor.
Craig goes on to relate this lack of development to the Elizabethan idea of personality:
Indeed, the conception of human character as set down in formal psychology, and often evident in literature, taught instability in the natures of men, taught that there was no such thing as consistency of character, except in so far as it might result from “complexion” or be super-induced by training.[24]
It is in the works of “formal psychology” that the most explicit statements of the Elizabethan conception of human character can be found. But in offering a detailed exposition of how Elizabethans thought man functioned, the works are inconsistent. Miss Louise Forest has pointed out the contradictions in the theories and definitions of the Elizabethan and Jacobean writers. Instead of a scientific system with which the dramatists were familiar, we find that “Elizabethan popular psychology was simply every man’s private synthesis of observations of human behavior understood in the light of whatever selections from whatever authorities appealed to him.”[25] Although her criticism has won general approbation as a healthy corrective for facile and mechanistic application of “psychological” theory to literature, it has not undermined the conviction of scholars that the evidence of Elizabethan psychology can prove illuminating in revealing not necessarily what the Elizabethans thought, but how they thought.
Mr. R. A. Foakes admits that although the disagreement in detail hinders the application of Elizabethan psychology to literature, it does not hinder an understanding of “the general habit of thought from which the detail springs.”[26] The exposition of this “general habit of thought” has been set forth in part by Theodore Spencer, Lily B. Campbell, E. M. W. Tillyard, and John W. Draper, and most fully by Hardin Craig in The Enchanted Glass.[27] Against the broad and deep background painted by them, I shall consider the “general habit of thought” as it affected three aspects of character: decorum, motivation, and passion.
a. Decorum
Classical decorum in literature sought to reflect a broader decorum in life. As it came down to the playwrights of the Renaissance, however, it implied little more than a trite correspondence between character type and nature. Edwardes in The Prologue to Damon and Pithias (1565–1571) refers the audience to Horace as his model in the observance of “decorum”:
George Whetstone seconds this propriety in his Epistle to William Fleetwood, prefixed to Promos and Cassandra:
For to worke a Commedie kindly, grave olde men, should instruct: yonge men, should showe the imperfections of youth: Strumpets should be lascivious: Boyes unhappy: and Clownes, should be disorderlye.
Both statements of the principle of decorum rigidly match character type with nature or behavior. By simplification of character, consistency could be assured. It is obvious that this view of dramatic character did not prevail in Elizabethan drama, but not because it was completely out of harmony with Elizabethan thought. When Timothy Bright approvingly noted that “butchers acquainted with slaughter, are accepted therby to be of a more cruell disposition: and therefore amongst us are discharged from iuries of life & death,”[28] he was reflecting a type of thinking in keeping with the principle of decorum.
It is against such Idols of the Tribe that Bacon inveighs. But even when he attacks such habits of thought, he gives us a clear concept of them.
The spirit of man (being of an equal and uniform substance) pre-supposes and feigns in nature a greater equality and uniformity than really is. Hence the fancy of the mathematicians that the heavenly bodies move in perfect circles, rejecting spiral lines. Hence also it happens, that whereas there are many things in nature unique and full of dissimilarity, yet the cogitation of man still invents for them relatives, parallels, and conjugates. Hence sprang the introduction of an element of fire, to keep square with earth, water, and air. Hence the chemists have marshalled the universe in phalanx; conceiving, upon a most groundless fancy, that in those four elements of theirs (heaven, air, water, and earth,) each species in one has parallel and corresponding species in the others.... Man is as it were the common measure and mirror of nature. For it is not credible (if all particulars be gone through and noted) what a troop of fictions and idols the reduction of the operations of nature to the similitude of human actions has brought into natural philosophy; I mean, the fancy that nature acts as man does.[29]
For the Elizabethans, as Bacon laments, external and internal experiences were manifestations of a single spirit which had parallels in the natural and moral universe. Consequently, in depicting and understanding character, the Elizabethans looked for similarities, not differences. What made one man like another and like the macrocosm was a habitual way of estimating character.
However, instead of the simple formulae of “decorum,” the Elizabethans employed a complex system of correspondences. For them, man was volatile. Potentially he was capable of absorbing concepts shared by other men. This reduced the possibility of matching thought and character. He was also capable of experiencing passions common to all mankind. This made it impossible to match nature and character. In so dynamic a philosophy the meaning of decorum had to change. Professor Lily B. Campbell has rightly pointed out that decorum in Elizabethan drama was “not a law of aesthetic theory but a law of moral philosophy.” To extend her definition, it was also a law of social organization and political life.
In the highly stratified Elizabethan society, precepts and models of behavior were strictly developed. Bearing, speech, and dress reflected class status. Ceremony was not only appropriate but necessary, for, as Sir Thomas Elyot admonished:
Lette it be also consydered, that wee bee men and not Aungelles: wherefore we know nothyng but by outwarde signification. [Honor is not everywhere perceived] but by some exterior signe, and that is eyther by lawdable reporte, or excellency in vesture, or other thing semblable.[30]
In this context ceremony is not unnatural, and in fact, to the Elizabethan, ceremony signified the natural order of the universe. Man constantly saw his corresponding reflections in the “outward signification” of society, nature, and morality.
That this central habit of thought was deeply ingrained in Elizabethan nature is reflected in Bacon himself. Despite his recognition of the fallacy of such thought, he still finds general similitude between feature and nature. He still thinks that the deformed person must be evil, although he tries to provide a scientific explanation of the causes of this correspondence. It is true that this form of logic was falling before the development of inductive thought, particularly in the sciences. Nevertheless, through most of the Renaissance and certainly in the period with which we are dealing, it prevailed.
Its effect on the decorum of character was twofold. First, character fitted into a group. Whatever his individuality might be, a man was a member of a class and his behavior conformed to the behavior of the class. Second, external features implied internal qualities. Man carried the mark of his class and his nature, in his walk, talk, features, and costume. The outer man was the inner man; therefore, the inner man tended the form and bearing of the outer man carefully. In these ways decorum still functioned in Elizabethan thought and served as a basis for the portrayal of character by the actor.
b. Motivation
The habit of generalized thinking operated also in the explanation of human motivation. Thinkers and writers were not concerned with the unique impulse that drove a man to certain ends but with the broad desires that all men experienced. This aspect of personality was understood in terms of the struggle between passion and reason which went on in each man.
It was an Elizabethan commonplace that reason allied man with God, passion with the beasts. Imagination, which receives images of experience and relays them, should be subordinate to reason. Unfortunately, since it is often allied with the affections, the affections rule man. As Bacon explained it:
The affections themselves carry ever an appetite to apparent good, and have this in common with reason; but the difference is that affection beholds principally the good which is present: reason looks beyond and beholds likewise the future and sum of all. And therefore the present filling the imagination more, reason is commonly vanquished and overcome.[31]
This “good which is present” is often the satisfaction of the senses or passions without concern for the consequences. When the affections, like the imagination, are under the control of reason, all is well. When the passions lead man, they often lead to disaster.
Man, therefore, was moved either by his reason or his affection. If he were learned in or persuaded by a moral or politic course, he could measure the particular good in terms of the enduring good. Thus reason, moved by consideration of ethics or policy, obeyed objective and rational motivations which, individual though they might have been in particular circumstances, had in common with all cases the attainment of goodness or power. But if affection ruled, then man was moved to satisfy it. Although his personality might make him liable to certain passions more readily than to others, he could give way to any of them. His past life did not accumulate motivations which impelled him or influenced his reception of new motivations. Instead, immediate and direct contact was effected between the object of desire and the governing passion.
Functioning in such a way, man was moved by generalized ends. The habit of seeing motivations in general terms is reflected in the titles of essays by such men as Bacon, Charron, and Sir William Cornwallis: “Of Ambition,” “Of Envy,” “Of Affections,” etc. Although a physio-psychological theory in part replaced temptation by the devil as an explanation of motivation, entities such as pride, lust, ambition, and envy, among others, continued to be regarded as genuine temptations by the Elizabethan. By and large the motives for man’s actions were taken for granted or symbolized. Often in the drama they are never made explicit. Here too correspondence was observed. Women were easily given to lust, unpromoted men to envy, young men to prodigality, Italians to revenge. An Elizabethan audience would assume or ignore the reasons for Iago’s or Antony’s or Bertram’s actions. They would be interested in what they did and how they felt.
c. Passion
In concentrating on what happened to the characters, the audience found its attention directed toward the passions that the characters experienced. Passions were divided in kind and number. They were either concupiscible or irascible, that is, arose either from coveting or desiring some end, such as Love, or from accomplishing or thwarting some end, such as Anger. However, there was disagreement over the number of passions. Coeffeteau lists more than fifteen, Bright only six, some writers even fewer.[32] In the matter of detail there is no concurrence, but the difference arises from the degree of subordination observed by the different writers. Behind all their thinking is the habit of regarding a passion as an autonomous quality which is either operative or not. An inclination toward or a repulsion from an object induces physiological changes in the bodily humors. These changes feed the passion so that it dominates the individual entirely. But the passion is a fixed thing. It betrays external symptoms; for example, fear leads to trembling and love to sighing. It affects internal operation, such as the contraction of the heart and the acceleration of breathing. It alters the view of reality, for passions are like “greene spectacles, which make all thinges resemble the colour of greene; even so, hee that loveth, hateth, or by anie other passion is vehemently possessed, iudgeth all things that occure in favor of that passion, to bee good and agreeable with reason.”[33]
Moreover, a particular passion was the same for all persons affected by it. Fear in one was the same as fear in another. Love in one man was not very much different from love in another. One man was not distinguished from another by the quality of a passion, but by his propensity toward it. Man was thought to have a dominant temperament or complexion. It might fall into one of four principal categories: the sanguine, the choleric, the phlegmatic, or the melancholic. The Elizabethan physiologists developed a series of correspondences, of course disagreeing among themselves, between temperament and physique, intellect and passion. Supposedly each type was liable to certain passions more readily than others. Yet, when a man is carried away by a passion uncongenial to his temperament, he assumes the quality of the passion fully. “Each passion alters the complexion of the entire body, which assumes, at least temporarily, the very qualities which excite the emotion.”[34] Thus, in Elizabethan thinking, there was a range of distinct passions and a range of distinct temperaments. Although there was a tendency for certain passions to cluster about a certain temperament, any passion could enter into any temperament. When it did, it transformed the temperament into its quality.
Some disagreement existed over the completeness and ease with which a temperament could be transformed. Bright considers the complexion strictly fixed. Other writers believe that there is a strong tendency toward a specific temperament, but that an uncongenial passion could overpower natural resistance to it. As Forest has observed of these discrepancies in the Elizabethan views about complexion, it is difficult to establish any firm conclusions about the details of the subject. Generally, it can be said that each man was thought to have some definable central temperament which arose from the disposition of humors in his system, that his external and internal faculties corresponded in a broad sense with his temperament, and that he was liable to passions which were sympathetic to his temperament. And yet it was accepted that his natural temperament could be overpowered by passions in disharmony with it, that one passion could drive out another, and that the nature of the passion was not affected by his temperament. These two groups of concepts are at bottom mutually contradictory; the first visualizes relative stability and consistency in character, the second, virtually complete subordination of the individual to immediate impulses. These views reflect the desire for similitude and order on one hand and the awareness of the power of passion on the other. Without reconciliation they continued as habits of thought throughout the English Renaissance.
Both views acknowledged the swiftness with which passion could overwhelm an individual. Professor Craig explains sudden changes in Bellafront in The Honest Whore I and in Hamlet by reference to “the theory that one emotion or passion drives out another, and that the substitution is immediately operative.”[35] One passion yields readily to another, the concupiscible passion often giving way to the irascible, as hatred may give way to anger or grief to despair. Love at first sight, as R. A. Foakes points out, is a convention based on a reality and the “common and ancient thought-habit that the sight is the chief and most powerful of the senses.” Sudden emotional changes were either the daily acts of Elizabethan behavior or the usual explanation of more gradual alterations. In either case, the potential for such immediate transformation was thought to be ingrained in every man, just as at present the potential for repressed infantile conflicts is thought to exist in every man.
Furthermore, the ability to suppress the mounting passions within oneself was thought to be very slight. Once a passion subdued the reason, the reason was virtually powerless to control the passion. It coursed through the entire body, expressing itself in external signs. An individual of extraordinary will could suppress these signs, but the vast majority of people was helpless to hide the play of passion within their souls. A correspondence between the passions and the external signs was assumed, but as we found in the study of rhetoric, there was no clear codification of passions and symptoms. Instead, the habit of expecting an expression of emotion in recognizable symptoms rather than the repression of emotion in enigmatic behavior marked the Elizabethan age. The volatile and pervasive nature of passion, then, was one of the crucial assumptions of the Elizabethan period.
Thus, the Elizabethan conception of how human beings function and feel shows two principal tendencies. In a strictly regulated society such as the Elizabethan, the members were keenly aware of degree and order. So urgent was the impulse to find order in the universe, that an elaborate series of correspondences was observed between man and all other forces in nature as well as between man and all forces within himself. It was natural for the Elizabethan to look for correspondences, no matter how farfetched, and to insist on decorum, no matter how trifling. In conflict with this tendency toward order was the recognition of the tendency toward disorder. Largely, this was thought to arise from man yielding to passion. The orderly arrangement of the moral and political world could be destroyed by the unrestrained passions of man. As a result, the description and analysis of passion became a central function of Elizabethan psychology and philosophy. Bacon carries the condemnation of passion to such an extreme that he condemns love almost entirely. It is a weak passion, it is a “child of folly.” As we turn to a consideration of the plays themselves, we shall find that by and large the tendency toward order subsumed the actions, and the depiction of passion occupied the forefront of the Globe stage.
V. THE EFFECT OF THE GLOBE PLAYS UPON THE ACTING
The drama that appeared on its stage is the single most important witness to the acting style of the Globe company. Through this drama the general style of acting, which was a product of the conditions I have outlined heretofore, became refined into the specific style of the company. The wide gap between the quality of the Shakespearean and non-Shakespearean plays in the repertory makes the delineation of this style extremely difficult. The differences are those of subtlety, insight, and penetration. Probably the acting wavered between the more obvious requirements of the non-Shakespearean plays and the modulations of the Shakespearean.
For the actor an important part of the drama was the distancing of the action. Almost every popular pre-Globe play is distanced in time or place or both. Plays such as Orlando Furioso and A Knack to Know an Honest Man are set in France and Italy respectively. The Troublesome Reign of King John and Fair Em are set back in English history, the latter to the days of William the Conqueror. Plays such as Selimus and The Battle of Alcazar are set back in time and place, to Islamic Turkey and Moorish Africa. Sometimes the action was placed in a mythical or semimythical land. But only three of the pre-Globe plays are set in London. Two are moralities of Robert Wilson, Three Ladies of London and The Three Lords and Three Ladies of London. In these the allegory distances the action. Only A Warning for Fair Women is placed in contemporary England. Its realism, however, is somewhat removed by a morality framework in which Tragedy as a presenter moralizes upon the sins of lust.
This practice is followed by the Globe plays. Of the Shakespearean plays The Merry Wives of Windsor is usually thought to picture contemporary England. However that may be, the action is actually placed in the days of Henry IV or Henry V. Falstaff’s presence and Page’s references to Fenton’s escapades with the young prince identify the period. The compliment bestowed at the end of the play upon the worthy owner of Windsor Castle is anachronistic. Of the non-Shakespearean plays, four may be considered as taking place in contemporary England. Three of these are prodigal son plays, still close to the morality theme. The fourth, Every Man Out of His Humour, is clearly set in England, as the scene at Paul’s shows. But the characters have Italianate names. The effect is one of a double image, a removed intimacy.
The characters who are distanced are also typed. Most of them fall into one of several categories: the tyrant, the tyrant-father, the gull, the beloved, the lover, and so on. Usually they stem from generic types. Unlike the practices in the commedia dell’arte where the characteristics of the stock figures dictated the plot, in the English drama, as I have shown in Chapter Two, the story dictated the handling of character. The types that existed were a function of the story. That is why the generic types did not develop into stock characters. As long as the story could wrench a character as it required, the stock type could not become solidified.
In Shakespeare the generic types are blended and enriched. An examination of all the characters in the Globe Shakespearean plays reveals the presence of a definite group of related characters. They are more than the repeated figures of any author’s art, for they hark back to the traditional types. The most frequently recurring and most sharply marked are the lovers, villains, clowns, gulls, loyal advisers, faithful friends, chaste maids, faithful wives, tyrant fathers, tyrant princes, and politic princes. One could go on multiplying subsidiary classes of characters as Polonius does classes of drama. Though certain types, such as the faithful servant (Adam, Provost in Measure for Measure, Corin in As You Like It), recur with some frequency, many do not. One type, the elderly grande dame, has only two representatives: the Countess in All’s Well, and Volumnia in Coriolanus. Nor do the types recur in the same form. Horatio is the faithful friend in Hamlet; Kent is also the faithful friend, but he has something of the court adviser in him too. From this it follows that the types are not differentiated clearly. Antony in Julius Caesar has some of the faithful friend in him, but as his character develops, he reveals something of the Machiavellian politician, and in battle shows himself the honest soldier. Furthermore, the same generic type may show strong differences in temperament. Lafeu, the court adviser of All’s Well, is a merry gentleman; Escalus, the same type of adviser in Measure for Measure, is sober and serious. They are both members of the same type whose quality is dictated by the function that it performs in the story. But the full range of the character does not remain within the confines of the types.
The combination of distanced action and generic type served to romanticize and symbolize the Shakespearean stage figures. No matter how reminiscent of a contemporary Londoner a character may have been, the audience reposed in the fiction that he was an Italian, a Roman, or an ancestor. With the Elizabethan’s insularity, the fiction took on imaginative reality and tinted the action of the plays with romance. The characters of this romance, who had a generic base, were not only individuals but also symbols of the host of kings, lovers, and clowns who peopled the world. Again, this is a reflection of the Elizabethan habit of seeing similarities rather than differences in human behavior. The interaction of these two qualities alone would have elevated the action into a wondrous world of imagination, untouched by real experience. But, as we shall see, other elements were at work.
Within the broad boundaries of the generic type, individualization of character took place. But in what manner was this accomplished by the dramatists, particularly by Shakespeare? Today we place great stress on motivation. Our plays constantly search the past to explain the present. In A Streetcar Named Desire Blanche is revealed and drawn in terms of her tortured past and her unfulfilled desires. In the Elizabethan period, as we found, there was little awareness of specific motivation. The plays reflect this condition. The motivation is usually generalized. Viola wishes to love and be loved, and Sir Toby wants to have an easy life. Antony wishes to love Cleopatra, Coriolanus to satisfy his pride. But little attention is directed to probing or developing these motivations. At the conclusion of these plays we do not understand the motives of these characters one whit better. Motivation is often assumed, as in Lear’s partition of his kingdom, or promised for the future, as in Othello when Iago persuades Roderigo to kill Cassio. In the same type of character there is little distinction in motivation. The motives for Horatio’s loyalty to Hamlet are no different from the motives for Kent’s loyalty to Lear. In the prodigal son plays, the motivations for the prodigality are barely noted. It is considered a condition to which all youth is liable. Motives for any act were so often assumed that they could not have demanded concentrated attention by the actors.
Another way in which the modern playwright individualizes character is through speech and gesture. This does not seem to have been a regular practice at the Globe playhouse. Here and there are hints that status may have been indicated by carriage and accent. In As You Like It Orlando questions “Ganymede” about his life.