His heart and mind have been shaken by rejection, but this is only the prelude to madness. The succeeding scenes on the heath (III, ii, iv, vi) are a prolonged reaction to the rejection. Lear does not mount steadily to another stage of madness, but reveals multiple effects of this madness: rage, bewilderment, fantasy, vengefulness, helplessness. Instead of self-realization at the climax, we find passionate release. Lear exceeds the limit of emotional endurance; he can go no further in anguish. That is the reason why he disappears from the play for the succeeding six scenes (III, vii; IV, i-v).[23] During this absence Gloucester loses his sight, the disguised Edgar comes to nurse his father, Goneril and Regan separately conspire to satisfy their passions for Edmund, and the British and French armies prepare to do battle. After the climactic plateau comes story progression.
The distinctness of this central climactic grouping is less clear in the non-Shakespearean plays, but the elements are there, if only in rudimentary form. Even where the “plateau” is not sustained, the intensification of action and the change of direction in the middle of a play are present. Perhaps the clearest and most consistent evidence of this is the split structure of many plays, that is, the progression of the story in one direction, followed by a full or partial shift of direction after the first half. A Larum for London, a not particularly well constructed play, is composed of such interlocked halves. The first half deals with the Spanish conquest of Antwerp through the improvidence and selfishness of the city’s burghers (scenes i-vii). At this climactic point the Spaniards revel in their triumph as the Duke d’Alva parcels the town among the conquering leaders. The second half concerns the hopeless, yet valiant struggle of a lame soldier to fight for the town (scenes viii-xv). This same type of division is reflected in The London Prodigal. Scenes i-viii relate the trick by which Flowerdale gains the hand of Luce; scenes ix-xii depict his descent into the depths of prodigality before he is finally redeemed. Here, however, the climactic scene (scene viii) involves more anticipation than response though there are three relatively equal heights of intensity: the father’s rejection of the daughter who remains faithful to her husband the prodigal, the daughter’s plea for her husband’s freedom from arrest, and the prodigal’s abuse of his wife. Among the other plays which display the split structure are Thomas Lord Cromwell and, in part, The Revenger’s Tragedy.
Of all the non-Shakespearean plays, Jonson’s Sejanus comes closest to duplicating Shakespeare’s use of the climactic plateau. The rise of Sejanus is steady. He encompasses the death of Drusus, he effects the destruction of his opponents, and finally he attempts the conquest of Tiberius himself by seeking permission to marry Livia of the imperial house. Blocked in this, he urges Tiberius’ departure from Rome, and in a closing soliloquy, seeing himself conqueror of those who hate him, exults:
Sejanus shows excessive pride in his own power, a joyous release of self-esteem. After this speech he disappears from the play until the opening of the fifth act. Meanwhile, Tiberius secretly turns to Marco as a supplementary and independent agent, thus effecting a change of direction in the play. Just when Sejanus expects to “draw all dispatches through my private hands,” Tiberius crosses him. Jonson, following the classical models more closely than Shakespeare, has his greatest climax fall during the last scene. Nevertheless, clear traces of a “center of action” can be found.
The architectonic superiority of Shakespeare can be seen in the way he raises his entire center of action to a markedly intensified level. Potential climactic “plateaus” can be found in all the Globe plays cited, but some are underdeveloped and do not reach the rich florescence that makes the center of a Shakespearean play such an overwhelming dramatic experience. Perhaps the absence of superior poetic powers prevented the minor playwrights from realizing the full possibilities of this form. Nevertheless, despite the gap between the levels of their achievements, Shakespeare and his fellow playwrights of the Globe generally built their plays along the same structural lines.
The absence of linked causation naturally meant that the action was not linear. Incidents leading to the finale or to the climactic plateau did not follow one another in a succession of tightly meshed events but in a series of alternating scenes. To illustrate, between the first expression of Maria’s scheme against Malvolio (II, iii) and the first working of the scheme (II, v) intervenes the lyrical scene between Viola and Orsino (II, iv). Such separation of parts of the story encouraged the independence of one scene from another, the very thing complained of by some scholars. Schücking suggests that Shakespeare shows “a tendency to episodic intensification,” that is, the development of a scene at the expense of the whole.[24] F. L. Lucas expresses the same idea in his introduction to the works of Webster, asserting that the Elizabethan audiences reacted to separate scenes rather than to a whole play. The tendency to which they refer can be found in the three Falstaff-Merry Wives scenes. In the first of the scenes, Falstaff, caught in his love-game, hides in the buck basket, only to be dumped into the Thames. Here we have a complete action. Falstaff makes an advance, and he is repulsed. There is no counteraction on his part. If he were in a Roman comedy, he would have plotted how to punish his offenders or how to encompass the women again, and thus the second scene would have resulted from a counteraction on the part of Mistress Ford and Mistress Page. Instead Falstaff is persuaded to repeat the same adventure with similar results. The second scene is not more farcical or more extravagant than the first; it is merely different. In place of intensification we find fresh invention. The third scene again does not grow out of the preceding scene, but out of the husbands’ decision to shame the fat man publicly. All of the Falstaff-Mistress Page-Mistress Ford scenes have a beginning, a middle, and an end. They make themselves felt at the conclusion not by intensification but by accumulation.
Though in other plays of Shakespeare the scenes may be more closely joined, yet there is always a sense of their independence from one another. As I have said, Othello, of all the tragedies, is probably the most closely interwoven in plot. The deception scene (III, iii) is an example of an extended scene tying together several actions. But even in this play, we find an autonomous scene, and that near the end of the play. Half mad, playing the gruesome mockery of a visitor to a brothel, Othello questions first Emilia, then Desdemona (IV, ii). Othello arrives convinced of Desdemona’s guilt; he leaves with the same conviction. It is neither augmented nor dispelled. That the scene does not advance the action in no way detracts from its dramatic effectiveness, but it does reflect on the handling of the story. In the advancement of the classical drama, all scenes are integrated into a single line of action. In the progression of the Shakespearean play, scenes may be regarded as clustering about the story line. If this suggests an image of a grapevine, perhaps it is apt, for the scenes often appear to be hanging from a thread of narrative.
But a scene that may be semiautonomous insofar as the story line is involved may be central insofar as the climactic plateau is concerned. Such is the closet scene in Hamlet. Note how quickly Shakespeare disposes of Polonius. The murder of the old man does advance the plot, of course, for it causes Ophelia’s madness and brings Laertes back from France. But the murder is a minor part of the closet scene. Of its entire 217 lines, the action involving Polonius occupies, both at the beginning and at the end, forty lines (1-33, 211-217). Another eleven lines are occupied with Hamlet’s recollection that he must go to England (199-210). The remaining 166 lines are devoted to the relation of mother and son and the visitation of the ghost. Certainly the scene is dramatic, in fact, one of the most dramatic in all literature. Yet it does not carry the action on to a new stage, but allows Hamlet to express his disapproval and suspicion of his mother. In fact, the central portion of the scene leaves no trace on the plot. Though Gertrude is shaken by Hamlet’s accusations against his uncle and herself, there is no indication that her attitude toward Claudius changes as a result. Nor is Hamlet purged by the meeting. Neither is the decision to send Hamlet to England brought about by it, for the King had determined to send him there immediately after the nunnery scene (III, i, 175-183). The closet scene opens with Polonius’ murder and closes with a return to Hamlet’s responsibility for the act. In between Hamlet relieves his soul of the stifled passion against his mother.
Certainly a drama composed of these semiautonomous scenes loses not unity necessarily, but compression. What it foregoes in that direction it makes up for in extension. Instead of the story eliminating incidents not strictly contributing to a final climax, it serves as a point of departure. When Orestes meets his mother, his behavior must follow the demands of the plot, and Aeschylus allows him only one pitiful question to Pylades: Must he kill his mother? The Elizabethan form permits the full relationship of the mother and son to be explored. Like a mirror the scene casts an additional reflection of the image that is Hamlet. For this advantage of multiplicity of implication the Elizabethan sacrificed concentration of effect. Unable to grasp this shift in emphasis, many critics have treated the lack of concentration in Shakespearean structure as evidence that the poet did not know how to construct plays. As we saw, Dr. Johnson dismissed the construction of Antony and Cleopatra with the comment that the events “are produced without any art of connection or care of disposition.” Schücking, about a hundred and fifty years later, dismisses Shakespeare’s structural practices as primitive. The conclusion is the same though the reasons may differ. But until we can meet Elizabethan structure on its own terms, we really do not know what its failures were. When we deprecate the skill of the playwrights, let us remember that the University Wits, men trained in the Terentian, Plautine, and Senecan manner, were the ones who developed the popular Elizabethan mode. The fate that awaited them if they did not adhere to it is keenly illustrated by Kyd’s failure as a classicist.
Within the general form of extension and contraction, extension to a climactic plateau, contraction to a ceremonious finale, appear variant structural patterns. To reduce the total structural pattern of Elizabethan drama to a single form, or even to two or three forms, is virtually impossible. The age was multiple in its artistic means. Yet the inability to do this does not mean that no structural form existed, but that many existed. Not only was there structural variety in the works of different men, but there were differences within the work of one man. Nevertheless, certain dominant patterns emerge, and while the following descriptions are not exhaustive, they include a large proportion of the Globe plays.
Three structural patterns recur frequently in the Globe plays: the episodic, the “river,” and the “mirror” patterns. In a crude form the episodic pattern can be found in the early Shakespearean histories. There its basic nature can be anatomized. On the thread either of a historical or of a biographical sequence a series of events is arranged in succession. The most marked characteristic of this form is that one event or incident is completed before another one is begun. Among the Globe plays of our period Thomas Lord Cromwell is a typical example of this type. Cromwell passes through a series of events complete in themselves: his kindness to a distraught woman in Antwerp, his succor of an Italian merchant, his success in freeing the Earl of Bedford from capture, his service to Wolsey, and his downfall at the hands of Gardiner. Although the Earl of Bedford reappears during Cromwell’s conflict with Gardiner, and remembering his rescue, endeavors to help Cromwell, the two sections of the play are not really joined. In this play, despite the fact that Cromwell himself provides the mechanical unity that binds the play, the dramatic unity, if there is any, is multiple. The various scenes reflect Cromwell’s virtues of honesty, humanity, and loyalty, thus giving a thematic wholeness to the entire play.
Since Aristotle penned his notes called Poetics, the episodic play has been in disrepute. Today it is difficult to imagine that it could rise to dramatic heights. Yet if we closely examine the structure of such a play as Macbeth, we shall realize that it is episodic in form. Of course, there are vital alterations in that form. Primarily, there is preparation for on-coming events. Instead of one event being completed before another one is initiated, we find that brief scenes are planted earlier to make the development plausible. The potential danger of Banquo to Macbeth’s ambitions is established by the witches. It is touched on before the murder of Duncan, but it is not woven into the fabric of the action at that time. At first, the overwhelming emphasis is upon the triangle of Macbeth, Lady Macbeth, and the crown. Once Duncan is disposed of, the Banquo action comes into prominence, and full attention is devoted to it. Early hints of Macduff’s defection are introduced, but not until Banquo is dead does the play really concentrate on Macduff. For Macbeth’s second meeting with the witches there is almost no preparation. Until the end of the banquet scene, we do not even know he is aware of their abode. Until this moment, although the play reveals an episodic structure, it is more tightly knit than most of Shakespeare’s other works. After the visit of Macbeth to the witches’ hovel, the episodic pattern becomes more distinct. The conception of Macbeth as a character accents the episodic quality. He struggles only to reach the immediate goal; there is no ultimate point in the universe toward which he moves. Sejanus, in comparison, reduces the episodic quality of his drama because his eyes are always upon becoming Caesar, the symbol of a god on earth. Immediate intrigues are but part of the larger aim. For this concentration Jonson lost the opportunity for those very magnificent scenes which make Macbeth a great play. Among other of Shakespeare’s plays of this period which employ the episodic pattern are Hamlet, Coriolanus, and Julius Caesar. What strikes many critics as a lack of unity in Hamlet is its particular pattern. Once the conditions imposed on Hamlet by the Ghost are revealed, we witness the following sequence: the place of love in Hamlet’s mind, the testing of Claudius at the play, the relation of mother and son. Each event is prepared for, but each in turn gains full emphasis. Nor does one event bear causative relationship to another. Though Claudius is suspicious of Hamlet at the conclusion of the nunnery scene, he indicates no unusual watchfulness over Hamlet during the play-within-the-play scene. It is as though the conflict of the previous scene has been resolved with Claudius’ determination to send Hamlet to England. As a point in the story this idea is established and comes into the play when needed at the end of the closet scene. And, of course, the closet scene is not a dramatic result of the play scene. The idea that Hamlet be summoned to his mother is advanced by Polonius earlier, and whether or not Hamlet had offended the King, the meeting would have taken place. Here, then, is a skillful manipulation of the structural characteristics of the episodic pattern.
The second pattern I have named the “river” pattern. I use the term because its dramatic action resembles the flow of various tributaries into a single stream. Perhaps the best example of this type of structure can be found in Twelfth Night. Two streams of action are of almost equal breadth and depth; the third is merely a trickle until it joins the main flow. One main stream we may call the Orsino-Olivia-Viola action. The other is the Toby-Andrew-Malvolio action. The minor stream is the Antonio-Sebastian sequence. The principal determinant of such a structure is the length of time during which each action remains independent of the others. The first two actions remain completely independent through Acts I and II. A slight link is provided in Act III, scene i, when Malvolio courts Olivia. The full merging of the two actions takes place in Act III, scene iv. Meanwhile, the Antonio-Sebastian thread was introduced into the story in Act II, scene i, and in Act III, scene iii, and partly integrated with the main action in Act III, scene iv. In the fourth act the development of the two main threads remains suspended, Viola disappearing from the stage to enable the Sebastian element to be more fully integrated with the Olivia-Orsino-Viola triangle. Finally, in the fifth act, every element is brought together, including the Malvolio sequence, even though this necessitates the unprepared revelation that Viola’s womanly garments are in the hands of a captain who “upon some action/Is now in durance, at Malvolio’s suit” (V, i, 282-283).
Although this form is not as prevalent as either the episodic or the “mirror,” it can be found in a number of Globe plays, for example, The Merry Wives of Windsor, The Revenger’s Tragedy, and partly in All’s Well. Twelfth Night remains, however, its model.
Last of the three dominant forms and the most popular one is the “mirror” pattern. Usually it consists of two stories, almost equal in emphasis. Both are introduced independently and maintain a large degree of independence throughout the play, sometimes never fully coming into plot relation with each other. Their fundamental connection derives from a similarity of theme and story development. Through sharp comparison or contrast one story casts reflections upon the other as though one were the image in the mirror and one the reality. The distinctness of each story is sometimes obscured by the fact that the same individual may appear in both stories and yet maintain independence of action in each case, at least early in the play. For example, through the first two acts Gloucester functions independently in each of the two stories in Lear.
Fair Maid of Bristow, among the works of the Globe repertory, is an excellent example of this pattern. In fact, here we have striking evidence of the structural care with which a minor play could be organized, despite Bradbrook’s assertion that structure is possible only through “literary means.” This play follows the mirror pattern almost slavishly. In the first scene Challener shows his beloved Anabell to Vallenger who falls in love with her. The two men come to blows over the girl. Challener wounds Vallenger and then flees while Vallenger is taken into Anabell’s house by her father. In the second scene Harbart tries to persuade Sentloe not to remain with the courtesan, Florence. But Sentloe, blind to her fickleness and confident of her devotion, rejects Harbart. Harbart vows to follow Sentloe in disguise. In the third scene Vallenger gains the promise of Anabell’s hand. In the fourth scene Challener, learning of the impending marriage, returns to Bristow in the disguise of an Italian doctor. In the fifth scene Sentloe engages Blunt alias Harbart as a servingman, and Sentloe and Florence are invited to Anabell’s wedding. At this point in the play we can identify two parallel centers of action. Each contains a “loving” couple, and a friend in disguise. In one Challener hates Vallenger and loves Anabell; in the other Harbart hates Florence and loves Sentloe.
Scene vi (nearly the middle of the play, since there are fourteen scenes in all) dramatizes the first blending of the two actions. Immediately after his marriage, Vallenger falls in love with Florence and suborns the doctor to poison Sentloe and Anabell. Later, in scene vii, Florence seduces Blunt to slay Sentloe. In each case the sworn protector is asked to commit the murder. In scene vii we have a typical “digression,” a comic courting scene of two servants. The theme, however, is faithfulness. Douse, the maid, asks whether Frog, after their marriage, “will ... not prove unkind?” Frog, in comic doggerel, vows, among other things, that only “when Lawiers have no tongues at all” will he prove unkind. The idea contrasts with the succeeding scenes in which Vallenger proves unkind to Anabell, only to have Florence subsequently prove unkind to him. The two stories are more tightly joined when Blunt contrives to have Vallenger arrested for the “death” of Sentloe. The rest of the play proceeds by contrasting action. Anabell seeks to save the life of Vallenger and Blunt seeks to have Florence held responsible for her part in Sentloe’s “death.” The finale is brought about when King Richard, the judge-figure, permits a champion to appear for the condemned Vallenger. The final contrast comes when Anabell assumes a disguise to free Vallenger, and Challener throws off his disguise for the same purpose. Only when Florence is moved to contrition by the nobility of Anabell and Challener, does Blunt unveil the still-living Sentloe, thus assuring a happy conclusion. Throughout, one line of development balances the other, and though the symmetry is not perfect, as it is rarely perfect in any Elizabethan play, the basic situations contrast with one another. Obviously the author had taken some care in organizing the plot. The disguises are well worked out, as are the balancing and interweaving of the two stories. Further evidence of the care in plotting can be seen in the foreshadowing of King Richard’s appearance in the plot when Harbart, in scene ii, urges Sentloe to abandon Florence and join Richard in the Holy Land. Richard’s first words are a blessing for being permitted by God to return home. Both in the larger construction and in smaller details the anonymous poet formed his work with care. What the play lacks is not organization of the story but strength of characterization, richness of poetic texture, and fresh outlook upon the prodigal son theme.
Among Shakespeare’s plays of the Globe period this pattern frequently appears. As You Like It, Troilus and Cressida, King Lear, and, in some respects, Antony and Cleopatra reveal such a form. In As You Like It, Lear, and Troilus and Cressida, it is particularly well defined. Although this type of organization is best adapted to plays with double plots, it is only a little less effective in other plots. As You Like It, while it possesses rudimentary double plots in the Orlando-Oliver story and the Duke Frederick-Rosalind story, relies principally upon the balance of love relationships that grow in the Forest of Arden. Lear, on the other hand, contains a full double plot. The parallel of the two stories with the balance of cruelty of father-to-daughter and son-to-father is too well known to need repetition here. It is sufficient to point out that in situation after situation one story highlights and reflects the other. The stories join in the storm scenes, separate, join again when blind Gloucester meets mad Lear, separate, and join again when Edgar’s defeat of Edmund leads to the disclosure of the plot against Lear and Cordelia. If the form does not appear to be as mechanical as I have described it and if much of the cross-reflection is implicit in the poetry and characterization, this is attributable to Shakespeare’s genius, not to the absence of structural underpinning.
In an earlier part of this chapter I emphasized the importance of the separate scenes as distinct units. At this point I should like to draw attention to certain characteristics of the scenes. Usually a portion of one action or story is not followed by an advance or counteraction, but by a new line of development, often containing completely different characters. This we take for granted in Elizabethan drama. The absence of liaison is emphasized by the way in which scenes are arranged. Some scenes, such as the one which Hamlet brings to a close with the cry
conclude with a strong emotional lift at the same time as they thrust the interest forward. Some scenes, which I shall call “leading” scenes, produce a forceful dramatic or theatrical pointing. The brief scene in which Artimedorus prepares to give Caesar a petition warning him of the conspirators is such a scene; so is the one in which Duke Frederick thrusts Oliver out of doors until he can produce Celia. These “leading” scenes are usually brief and drive the story forward with great energy. But most scenes in Shakespeare contain an anticlimactic conclusion: they are rounded off, relaxed, brought to a subdued end. Here we must distinguish between dramatic force and story development. It is the dramatic force that is softened at the same time that the story line is brought to the fore. Upon Viola’s first visit Olivia falls in love with the “youth” (I, v). She sends a ring after “him” through Malvolio, then closes the scene with four lines:
Yet compare this with her feeling before she sends Malvolio off:
Clearly there is a diminution of intensity toward the end. The same thing occurs in the center of the play (III, iv). Viola denies knowing Antonio, but after his arrest she realizes that he has confused her with Sebastian. The scene does not end on that uplift of discovery. Viola goes off in delight; Toby sends Andrew after to beat the page. Fabian and Toby remain for a moment:
The final remark is almost desultory. By gradual stages the emotional pitch of the scene is lowered. Shakespeare could easily have given Toby a final line that would have carried the play forward with more vigor. But this was not the way of Shakespeare or, for that matter, of his colleagues.
The falling off of intensity toward the end of a scene is even more marked in the tragedies. In sequence the arrangement of the subdued and pointed endings of scenes helps determine the rhythm of the play. For example, the “plateau” in Hamlet is unified by the way in which the endings of the play-within-the-play scene and the prayer scene point forward, not only in story but in emotional level, each one concluding with Hamlet passionately wrought. Another variation, vital to the rhythm of performance, occurs in the “climactic plateau” of Lear. The first storm scene (III, ii) with Lear ends subdued. It is followed by a “leading” scene of only twenty-six lines in which Edmund decides to betray his father. The next storm scene (III, iv) also ends subdued after Lear’s meeting with poor Tom. Another leading scene, again of twenty-six lines, drives forward with Edmund’s betrayal of Gloucester to Cornwall who orders him to “seek out” his father. The last storm scene (III, vi) concludes with Edgar’s realization of the similarity of his plight to that of Lear. Though the end is keyed low, the note struck is ominous. The very next scene rises to a pitch of frenzy in the blinding of Gloucester. In the Folio it concludes abruptly with Cornwall’s order to drive out Gloucester, but the Quarto has a dialogue between two servants which, serving to round out the action, seems more typical of Shakespeare.
Within the framework of an Elizabethan scene, perhaps the most marked characteristic is the placement of emphasis not on the growth of action but on the character’s response to crisis. This, as we noted before, was a distinguishing feature of the climactic plateau. Anticipation means little to the Elizabethan dramatist. This is no more clearly seen than in the handling of the individual scenes. Even where suspense is inevitable, it is muted. The Revenger’s Tragedy contains a scene (III, v) in which Vindice, at long last, plans to take revenge upon the lascivious old Duke who murdered his beloved. The trap is set, the Duke is near. Vindice strains forward,
The Duke dismisses his train; the trap in the guise of a “lady,” actually a poisoned manikin, is sprung; the Duke kisses “her” and falls. All this occupies twenty-five lines. In this it reminds us of the closet scene. Once the Duke is poisoned, Vindice and his brother, Hippolito, triumph over the dying man; they reveal the trap and then Vindice unmasks himself. To top these horrors Vindice discloses to the Duke that his bastard son “rides a-hunting in [his] brow,” and moreover that the son and the Duchess are about to hold a rendezvous at the very spot:
They arrive. The father-husband watches their love-making, hears their mockery of him, and, immediately after their departure, dies. All this takes eighty-three lines. In the structure of the scene, intensification comes from double response: the horror and pain of the Duke and the diabolical delight of the revengers as they witness his pain.
Elizabethan scenes are not unique merely because they give more time to response to a situation rather than to its development. Their uniqueness comes from the fact that the full intensity and implication of the theme is realized not in the accomplishment of the event but in the effects it produces. After Caesar is assassinated, Antony comes to terms with the conspirators. Dramatic though his meeting with them is, the most intense moments are not where Antony composes his differences with Brutus and Cassius, but where he views the body of Caesar. The most compelling section of the scene is Antony’s soliloquy where he envisions the ravages of war which will plague the earth as revenge for the foul deed. A glance at the proportion of lines devoted to the various parts of the scene indicates where Shakespeare placed his emphasis. Seventy-seven lines are devoted to all the tension leading to the assassination, 220 to the reactions and realignments that are its results. Ultimately we find Shakespeare dispensing completely with showing the act of murder and concentrating wholly on the psychological and philosophical responses, as in Macbeth.
The repetition of dramatic forms in the Globe plays shows that there is a structural foundation for the concept of multiple unity, that unity can be found not in compression of action but in its extension. The story line links the experiences but is not identical with them. Rather the events frequently are extensions of the implications of the story exactly as the shattering of glass may be the effect of an explosion. Consequently, as the scenes seek to reach beyond the limits of the subject, it becomes requisite that means be discovered to set limits to the extension of story and theme. The Elizabethans were well aware that the dimensions of the plays threatened to overwhelm the audience. This is the essence of serious charges by Sir Philip Sidney and Ben Jonson against the popular drama. In this they may well have been following Aristotle who introduced into his definition of tragedy the concept of “magnitude.” A work of art must be able to be perceived as a totality by the audience. Here, of course, we have the true determinant of unity. Training in witnessing the extended sequences of miracle plays or in listening to Sunday sermons must have contributed to a broadness of perception. Nevertheless, a major problem of the Elizabethan playwright was to observe a proper magnitude, to keep within the bounds that his plays always threatened to break. To aid him in maintaining proper magnitude he had several means at his disposal.
One of these means is the story itself; it is always brought to a conclusion. Another means, and one I have not discussed, was the concentration on character. The fact that the story is happening to Hamlet or Vindice or Sejanus is in itself a unifying factor. But I shall discuss the relevance of character to the play in the chapter on Elizabethan acting. Three other means contributed to keeping the play within perceptible bounds.
The first of these, unity through poetic diction, has been amply treated by present-day critics. Both Stoll and G. Wilson Knight have written of Shakespeare’s plays as metaphorical forms.[25] Bradbrook sees the only unity as a poetic unity. Yet verbal expression is but one element of structural multiple unity. There is a close link between the dramatic form of the climactic plateau and the poetic expression, for the second requires the first. Where the playwright fails as a poet, the climactic extensions result in rant and sentimentality. But it is this form that enables the poetry to range freely, or perhaps we may consider that the same compulsion which drove the Elizabethans to copious, lyrical expression caused them to develop this particular dramatic form.
The second means relevant to multiple unity has been the subject of this chapter, precisely the arrangement of scenes about the story line. Some of the scenes that a playwright chooses to dramatize are those primarily concerned with propelling the play, such as the play-within-the-play scene in Hamlet. Some scenes develop traits of a character, as in the scene of Portia’s plea to Brutus for confidence. But a central, repeating element within the rhythmic pattern of extension-contraction is the arrangement of scenes or incidents in a combination of contrasting and comparable circumstances. Whether the scenes used are central or peripheral to the story, they repeatedly gain illumination through mirroring similar situations. Hamlet unable to avenge his father is contrasted with Laertes too ready to avenge his father, Hamlet mad is contrasted with Ophelia mad, Rosalind’s mocking love-play is heightened by comparison with Phebe and Silvius as well as with the earthy affection of Touchstone and Audrey, while Touchstone’s professional mockery of the pastoral life casts light upon Jaques’ melancholy. One could go on endlessly pointing out the contrast of situation with situation. Frequently we encounter scenes whose only relationship to the story is to provide dramatic contrast. I have cited the scene in Fair Maid of Bristow in which the servants woo each other. The Porter’s scene in Macbeth, about which there has been “much throwing about of brains,” is an example. Another is the scene where Ventidius refuses to outshine Antony, another the lynching of Cinna the poet or the valor of Lucilius (Julius Caesar, V, iv). Great events produce many ripples. These ripples, which found expression in the Greek choral odes, the Elizabethans sought to dramatize.
Contrast in the Globe plays, it is essential to note, is a contrast of situations, not a contrast of characters. It is true that Hamlet is contrasted with Laertes as well as Fortinbras, but the character contrast is effected by the participation of each in distinct though related incidents. In Fair Maid of Bristow Challener’s conflict with Vallenger is contrasted with Harbart’s relationship to Sentloe. Vallenger’s asking the disguised Challener to murder Sentloe and Anabell parallels Florence’s attempt to seduce Blunt alias Harbart to murder Sentloe. Modern drama like classic drama, however, contrasts characters caught within a single situation. Antigone and Ismene face the same dramatic circumstance; so do Electra and Chrysothemis. Character contrast is achieved through the different ways in which each person reacts to the same crisis. Lövborg and Tesman are sharply differentiated: in their reactions to the same appointment, their manner of loving, the kinds of books they write. The same holds true for Stanley and Mitch in A Streetcar Named Desire, or even for Stella and Blanche. But in Shakespearean drama not only is light thrown on the comparison of situations, but at times the characters are aware of this inter-reflection. At the end of the last storm scene in Lear, Act III, scene vi, Edgar has a speech which appears only in the Quarto. After witnessing the sorrow of Lear, he soliloquizes:
Certainly the Elizabethans felt that one event mirrored another, and probably that together they mirrored the common meaning of both events. This interconnection of reflected incidents contributed metaphorically to a unified impression.
The final means of achieving unity is the most difficult to define, the method of handling theme. For that reason let us turn to a play where the theme is clearly expounded. A Larum for London has a simple, obvious point to make: the English people will be destroyed by external enemies (the Spanish) and internal treachery unless they become aware of their dangers, forego their desire for personal profit at the expense of the defense of the commonwealth, and rally the faithful honest citizens and soldiers to their support. The point is made through dramatizing the siege of Antwerp. The scenes that are introduced arise from the initial force that propels the story: the determination of the Spanish to take advantage of the improvidence of the citizens of Antwerp. Individual scenes, however, are not causally linked. Rather they are chosen because they reflect and illustrate the basic theme. A burgher, formerly unkind to the hero, is rescued by him. This is the only scene in which the burgher appears. The play is episodic in structure but unified in theme. But the unity is a multiple one. Instead of employing the story of one family and one incident to illustrate the ravages of war, as Gorki did in Yegor Bulichev and Others, this play uses a multiple reflection of its theme in a number of independent scenes, each having equal emphasis. Thus the single theme is given multiple dramatization.
The weaker plays of the Globe reveal obvious ways of treating a theme. Dramas of the prodigal son reiterate their morality ad infinitum, providing multiple reflections of fall and redemption. The otherwise haphazardly constructed play, The Devil’s Charter, is bound together by the theme of Man’s soul sold to the devil and the final retribution that befalls him. Jonson’s predilection for purging mankind with a pill of satire imposes thematic unity on disparate incidents in Every Man Out of His Humour. But in his other plays as well as in the plays of Shakespeare there is a more subtle interweaving of structure and theme. At the core of each play there seems to be a point of reference of which the individual scenes are reflections. Though a play moves temporally toward a conclusion, each scene may like a glass be turned toward a central referent. G. Wilson Knight has expressed fundamentally the same idea.[26] Unfortunately, he divorces this concept from the dramatic organism, with the result that his projected productions of Shakespeare’s plays seem like academic and sophomoric, if not fantastic, exercises. But Shakespeare seems to have avoided, at least in his later plays, so schematic an illustration of theme as in Richard III. Instead, he allows the theme to permeate the characters, situations, and poetry. He concentrates on the dramatic situations and on the characters, allowing the theme to be struck off indirectly like spark from flint. That is perhaps the reason that it is so difficult to reduce the theme of any Shakespearean play to a concise statement. Macbeth certainly deals with the theme of the source and effects of evil, yet no single statement of this idea is sufficient, because Shakespeare dramatizes various aspects of this subject. Since, to the Elizabethan, the world was a manifold manifestation of a God whom he was unable to compress into one idea or image, in a similar way the Shakespearean play was a manifold reflection of a theme irreducible and unseen. Yet every element in a great Shakespearean play—character, structure, speech—individually and collectively, is brought into an artistic unity through a structural and poetic expression of an unseen referent at its center.