Filling the Cheap Seats
Page 8
flaw, the display of hubris that we would find in any tragedy. In asking for a man's life as a surety, and then expecting to collect when the man defaults, Shylock goes too far.
Certainly Shylock’s grievances are just and Shakespeare discretely shows for him both empathy and sympathy. However, Shylock is trying to make his own justice outside of the courts, usurping the privilege of both the sovereign and God.
Shylock pays a terrible price. His own words trick him and he must forego his revenge. Worse, he also loses his fortune, he is forced to convert away from his faith, and his daughter repudiates him. He is brought down as surely as are any of Shakespeare's other great tragic heroes such as Macbeth, King Lear, and Hamlet.
And what of Antonio? His ships finally come in, and he ends where he started: as the leading local business man. No change, no progress.
The Roman Plays
Coriolanus—A profile in courage or in pride?
Even in Shakespeare's day, England's monarch answered to the House of Commons, a body not so different from Rome's Senate. In the time of Coriolanus, Rome had no kings, so Shakespeare could not be accused of attacking the principle of royal rule. Still, it was risky for ordinary citizens like Shakespeare and his fellow players to say that rulers must submit to popular custom.
Coriolanus is a great general and his success in battle should ensure his success in politics. He wants to be consul, the highest elected magistrate in Rome, but he is too proud to ask the electors to choose him. The people do in fact want Coriolanus as consul. They stand in awe of his prowess and they enthusiastically welcome his triumphant return to Rome, but no one stands above Rome. Roman law mandates properly conducted formal elections. Coriolanus must don the candidate’s white toga to show his purity and he must humbly ask the Roman people to choose him as their consul. He feels his victories, which have saved Rome and enriched it, entitle him to the position and wants it simply given to him.
He half-heartedly complies with electoral customs but he is soon disgusted with himself. He leaves Rome and joins the enemy to march and conquer his native city republic.
John F. Kennedy wrote Profiles in Courage, a book about politicians who have stuck to their principles and refused to pander to the will of the people when they felt the people were morally in the wrong. Coriolanus doesn't fit this profile. He sticks to his principles all right, but his chief value is personal pride. There's no question Coriolanus is courageous but he is also self-centered. He looks to his honor, not to the people's; he looks to his glory, not to Rome's.
If anyone shows courage in Coriolanus, it is Shakespeare himself. Shakespeare questions the right of the greatest man in the land to hold any position simply because he feels entitled to it. The people must be heard and leaders must accept. Shakespeare gets away with this because Coriolanus isn't a king, but his theme is clear.
Julius Caesar—Cry HAVOC ! ! !
“Cry HAVOC! And let slip the dogs of war.” (Act III, scene i line 276)
With this call to arms following Caesar’s death, Mark Antony signals that he will give no quarter to Caesar’s murderers. Antony is weaker than they are and he is without an army, but he will rally all the people to hunt them all down.
After a civil war, Julius Caesar imposed order and returned Rome to prosperity. He was transforming an overstretched city-state into a well-managed empire. Caesar instituted an astronomically accurate calendar, one that we still use today almost unchanged. We’ve named a month after him: July. He reformed agriculture, commerce, the courts. He worked tirelessly, directing myriad reconstruction projects. Though he was dictator for life, he packed the senate with his own men to bypass the reactionary old guard and still maintain a constitutional legislative body.
They never forgave him for it. Accusing him of royal ambitions, a group of them led by Cassius and Brutus murdered him. Caesar’s moment of death is surreal. When he recognizes Brutus coming at him with his dagger, Shakespeare abandons English and switches Caesar’s line to Latin: “Et tu, Brutè? Then fall Caesar.” The switch indicates that the world has just changed.
Throughout the play, Brutus seems to agonize over the decision to join the conspiracy. He finally does. Vanity was holding him back. How would it look if he betrayed Caesar, his close personal friend? He spares Antony, whom he hated. By striking down only Caesar, he wants to appear to aim only at tyranny. He wants the people to see in him his ancestor, the original Brutus who deposed the last Roman king, Tarquinus. But is this Brutus noble? Are his motives pure? Did he really want to strike down tyranny or did he want to be the hero his ancestor was?
A storm has been unleashed. Civil war resumes. Chaos returns to Rome. Caesar’s work will have to wait until every last opponent has been brought down with the full fury of Antony’s revenge.
At the end of the play, Antony stands victorious over Brutus’s body.
This was the noblest Roman of them all.
All the conspirators save only he
Did that they did in envy of great Caesar.
He only in a general honest thought
And common good to all made one of them.
(Act V scene v lines 67~71)
This presents a bit of a problem. If Brutus is not noble, why would Antony praise him? Perhaps as the victor he is showing magnanimity. Or perhaps, as I prefer to think, he is being ironic. After all, his famous eulogy to Caesar (“Friends, Romans, countrymen, lend me your ears…”) drips with irony aimed at Brutus. Why shouldn’t he be just as ironic when eulogizing Brutus? By overstating that Brutus was an honorable man, Antony made it quite clear Brutus was not at all honorable. Now at the end, it would not do to directly speak ill of the dead, but it would not do either to have Brutus’s memory stand over Caesar’s. Brutus was as noble as he was honorable, which is to say not at all.
Antony and Cleopatra—Lust, caution
I cannot see this play as a tragedy; there is no tragic flaw.
In Richard II, the king chooses to stop a trial by combat. In King Lear, Lear voluntarily relinquishes his royal authority. In Hamlet, the prince of Denmark chooses to postpone revenge to ensure his uncle goes to hell. They all display hubris, the presumptuous will to go beyond one’s station. Antony never does.
Antony is bewitched by Cleopatra and she by him. They can’t get enough of each other. Antony’s men open the play by complaining of “this dotage of our general”. A soothsayer predicts the end of Cleopatra and her court, and later the same soothsayer tells Antony that though he is the better soldier, Octavius Caesar will always have the advantage because Antony’s qualities leave him when Caesar appears. When Antony’s friend Enobarbus leaves him, Antony points to fate as the cause: “O my fortunes have corrupted honest men!” he cries in despair (Act IV scene v lines 16~17). He doesn’t resent fate so much as he simply accepts that it is the cause of his woes.
It is fate and fortune that rule Antony, and also his lust for Cleopatra. When he battles Caesar at sea, Cleopatra follows him against his wishes. Yet, when she sails away from the battle, he turns his ship around to follow her and abandons his men.
Certainly Antony makes mistake after mistake and loses everything, but he is conscious the whole time of his mistakes, of his failings. His mistakes come because his wild, uncontrolled passions move him away from his duty. He is prey to the Furies. He has no choice in the matter. He must follow Cleopatra even knowing he will fall and lose the respect of history. There is pride but he is not seeking to be a god; he does not presume beyond his station. He is the toy of inner forces and there is no hubris.
Titus Andronicus—Hannibal Lecter’s role model
Titus Andronicus's daughter is raped, has her hands cut off, and her tongue ripped out. The culprits, the Emperor's stepsons, are taken by Andronicus, tortured, killed, and cooked into pies served to their mother. Is it any wonder that after “The Silence of the Lambs” appeared, Anthony Hopk
ins, who played serial killer and cannibal Hannibal Lecter in that film, was given the lead in a film version of Shakespeare’s most violent, goriest play?
Titus Andronicus is a Roman general, a man of integrity and honor. He has just conquered the Goths but the Emperor Saturninus falls under the spell of their captured queen Tamora, who wants revenge and deceitfully feigns to submit. Andronicus thinks the emperor unwise and falls into disfavor. Tamora plots for his complete fall and that of his family. Her sons woo, rape, and maim his daughter Lavinia. To keep her quiet, they rip out her tongue. But with branches attached to the stumps of her arms, she tells her father who did this to her. She can still write.
Driven mad by Lavinia’s ordeal, Andronicus breaks. He betrays his discredited emperor, kills his stepsons, and serves up their flesh to the mother.
If one looks to Shakespeare for civilizing inspiration, for elevated thoughts that speak to our better nature, then there isn’t much to redeem Titus Andronicus with all its blood and violence. It’s a horrifying play.
But inspiring us to better ourselves is only one of the things literature can do. It can also terrify us into realizing the world is a dangerous place and that evil lurks in the heart of men. As a warning of the horrors of life, Titus Andronicus is a masterpiece.