Language most shows a man: speak,
that I may see thee. It springs out of the most retired and inmost
parts of us, and is the image of the parent of it, the mind. No glass
renders a man's form or likeness so true as his speech.
Incluido el lenguaje del psicoanalista o del analista del discurso.
Consciousness as simplification, of decision, of making
the world manageable. (See my
theory on Attention). And then, the
mystery of our awareness of this process, the reflexivity of the whole.
With Zizek:
"The subordinate mediator becomes the subject". That seems to be
a
quite general law governing human action and attention, or, to be more
precise, what becomes the subject
(and the object of attention) is a successful subordinate mediator.
In this respect, we might consider Malabou's reading of Hegel's
linguistic anthropology: "Chapter 3 [of The
Future of Hegel]
then raises the question: if humans are not the only animals that
develop habits, what is it that gives us a capacity for
self-determination that other animals lack? Chapter 4 responds that the
use of language differentiates human beings from other animals and
makes our habitual behavior unique: "Man is exemplary because the human
formative power can translate the logical process into a sensuous form"
(74). This, Malabou concludes, makes each of us capable of plastic
individuality, of transforming our own singular essence in
unforeseeable ways by incorporating what was formerly accidental."
Note btw that Malabou's reading is consistent with my own view of Hegel
as a demythologizer in religion, and as a philosopher who acknowledges
the productive dimension of reflexivity.
____
Philosophy understood by Heidegger in the sense of the way in which
meaning opens itself for us. Historicized by Zizek in the sense of the study of meaning as it opens itself
for us in our precise historical moment. Thinking
on the edge, as it were, from a standpoint which did not exist before
but has opened just now. That is another reason why there can be no
ultimate metalanguage—the standpoint keeps changing.
____
And Zizek rambles on, on Hegel&Otherness:
Zizek: "History means there is no metalanguage" —you cannot stand on
your own shoulders, cognitively speaking, and any panorama of
philosophy, any reading of another philosophy, is done from a
situated philosophical standpoint. For Hegel, the meaning of an act
arises through the act itself; meaning is not pre-existing: it is
created retroactively. History is
one big process of exaptation.
In
Hegel's theory of drama, Comedy reveals the meaning of Tragedy. What Hegel exemplifies with
his analysis of Antigone is the
retrospective nature of the meaning of our acts. Antigone does
not act out of strategy, but out of the need of her nature, out of her
understanding of "natural law", her immediate
ethical substance. Antigone
is not compelled, either, she does not experience a distance between
herself and her act. (Cf. Schelling on the responsibility of our acts:
we act not intentionally, but out of our deeper unconscious nature, but nevertheless we are responsible for
our acts—Judas was destined to betray Christ, but nonetheless he
is responsible).
(But of course both the destiny and
the responsibility can only be perceived and determined—are
constituted, in fact—retroactively).
In classical ethics you act according to your nature, you cannot
do otherwise. In contrast, Modern ethics for Hegel is a matter of
reflexive choice: i.e., Kant: a matter of rational choice and
intentional responsibility, we must not only acknowledge our duty, but
give an account of it.
Kant's extreme of rationality—Lacan said that Sade was the truth of
Kant, meaning not that Kant was a sadist, but that Sade was a Kantian.
Don Giovanni, another Kantian: his choice of hell is ethical, he sticks
to his own responsibility and to the truth of his actions (rationally)
even though it will not benefit him.
Antigona, then, embodies for Hegel the complete identification of the
subject with his ethical nature, with no distance from it, no space for
decision or for rational doubts about the ethical nature of her
actions: no suspicion about whether her motives are right, etc.: this
self-doubt or suspicion would be modern.
But there is a crack in Antigone's position: through the act (of
burying her brother, confronting the law, etc.) she discovers the
significance of her action, the law which she has broken. There is here
an element of the retrospective. Hegel (unlike Goethe, Judith Butler,
etc.) is not taken aback by Antigone's declaration that she would have
done this only for her brother.
And no suggestion of incest either, not at all. It is a matter of
Antigone becoming aware of the law which has been moving her.
Awareness: retrospective, retroactive. In Hegel always after the fact,
like Athene's owl taking flight at night.
The Act, the Deed, clarifies or retroactively brings to light its
motives.
Moreover, Antigone goes on to poeticise her own story, in analogy to
another story she rememebers: this way she starts interpreting her story,
mythifying herself, and (for Hegel) signalling the passage from tragedy
to comedy. She is not merely caught in her act, but rises beyond it to
an understanding and evaluation of it once its true nature becomes
clear to her. She starts to play Antigone, and therefore displays on
the stage the distance between herself and her act—which is the
Hegelian definition of comedy. You lose the organic immediacy, you
no longer are what you are (as in tragedy), rather you play the role of
what you are.
_______
A new definition of human complexity and lying by Lacan: man is the
only animal who can lie by telling
the truth.
(Cf. the theory of mind— That is the Jewish joke about the two rabbis,
"why do you tell me you are going to Cracow if you are really going to
Cracow? So that I may think that you are going to Warsaw, i.e. you're
deceiving me unfairly!). This reflexive complexity would seem to be
inherent to the human condition.
_______
And Zizek's new definition of authenticity: the tragic identification with one's mask.
Example: Rossellini's film about spies and impersonation, General Della
Rovere plays his role to the end and becomes identifies with the
character he impersonated. Zizek prefers the idea of full
identification with the mask, rather than tearing down the mask.
(Audience suggests a story by Borges, "Tema del traidor y el héroe").
_______
Zizek criticizes the simplistic narrative of historical development at
work in Ernesto Laclau and in Judith Butler, seeing in history a
process of gradual groping after the Enlightened attitude that we
finally reach in their work.... (i.e.
that would be a kind of Whiggish theory of history - ) a
contradiction between their emphasis on constructedness and the linear narrative they are themselves
telling. Do
we see the truth finally today? Why is it that people were stupid
essentialists before, and now we finally see it? Is the constructedness
they advocate a universal theory, valid for all history, or is it the
theory of a specific historical moment? The worst interpretation
is the PSEUDO-Hegelian one—that
the state of affairs applies to all of history, but now we finally see
it. Their theoretical constructs are symptomatic of our cultural phase,
for Zizek, and they are themselves ideological.
A rambling lecture on Hegel and historicity (& Marxism &
Malebranche & Masturbation, etc.), with an emphasis on the
retroactive dimension of the historical process, which is what I'm
interested in:
"You can only discover a necessity
retroactively"."Necessities only take place retroactively". "Once
things happen, then they become necessary" (3rd video).
Something unique happened in Hegel:
post-Hegelian philosophy is an attempt to obliterate what Hegel did, in
part by constructing a ridiculous image of Hegel—a kind of screen
memory which conceals a (Lacanian) traumatic excess.
The beginnings of the anti-Idealist critique of Hegel in Schelling: the
Idea is a secondary process, the natural process including the
unconscious & the world's body so to speak is the primary process.
(Of course one can argue that Hegel's perspectival focus on the idea is
an axiomatic perspectival choice, a focus of attention).
Kant: "Man is an animal who needs a master" to tame a certain excess of
non-natural instinct (what Freud calls the "death drive" or
immortality, something that insists beyond life and death). It's not
that culture breaks with nature, there is in between these instincts
which are no longer purely animal, the death drive, the sex drive...
We humans do many things which do not have a utilitarian value (Zizek
is looking for the word exaptation, spandrels, etc.—mixing it up a bit
with the concept of sexual selection). Pinker and the "chocolate fudge"
idea of the mind, exaptation gone wild. Our mind did not emerge to
understand itself, Pinker says, but to deal with practical purposes.
But we do bother about impossible tasks from the very beginning,
metaphysics, philosophy. All great inventions emerge from an
unusual logic of discoverty: you invent something out of metaphysical
speculation, and later practical uses appear. It doesn't work the
Marxist way.
(And I suppose that's the beginning of a return to Hegel). Humans internalize desire in an irrational way—not like
the apes' rational choice or partners— humans stick it out to the end,
in an irrational way. The other world, immortality, the Undead...
Freud's problem was to deal with that, that excess of desire.
What Zizek tries to do is to combine German idealism and
Freudianism—not in order to demean German idealism, but to raise Freud
to the category of a philosophical thinker.
For Hegel, Kant's recognition of an excess of negativity is not just a
starting point which then leads to perfect reconciliation. NO.
Hegel does not believe in the possibility of perfect reconciliation.
Radical negativity, excess, is everywhere, it explodes again and again.
It is neither nature nor culture— but it is the engine of the Hegelian
progress. Once you are in culture, you retroactively
de-naturalize nature. Culture becomes a suicidal, repetitive drive,
which needs to be reacted against. E.g. in sexuality—derived into
foreplay, denaturalization, masturbation, etc.; what is peripheral
tends to become central.
The example of Leader's psychoanalytical patient's slip of the tongue,
taking a woman to dinner, said to the waiter "bed for two"—Leader's
interpretation is that the slip of tongue is due to a defense against
enjoying too much the foreplay, a protest against the logic of the
deviation of desire so to speak. Hegel's critique of concrete universality: he believes
that the concrete content of the world derives from the universal
notion. (I.e. his idealism). Zizek explains this via Deleuze's
anti-Hegelian concept of repetition. Deleuze claims that the new
emerges out of absolute repetition. (The example of a new melody
arising virtually out of the pure repetition of a melody by a virtuoso
pianist playing Augenmusik).
What changes is what you don't hear, what is written only for the eyes.
This is what Deleuze means by virtuality. In the same way, the
ideological revolution consists in changing the implicit rules, the
background, even if we say the same thing the virtual resonance is a
different one.
I suppose this radical change can be linked to what he says before
about historicity—not possible to think again the same after Hegel (or
composing the same way after Schoenberg, as Adorno said).
Another example of Deleuze's virtuality: a bad book by Doctorow adapted
by a bad film nonetheless gives rise to a virtual effect: through the
(bad) film we (retroactively) intuit the good book which should have
existed but didn't, except now, in a virtual state. (One
might add here Benjamin's notion of the original modified by the
translation, or the deconstructive meanings identified by De Man I comment upon here).
(Later Zizek brings up another example of virtuality from
Benjamin: the meanings of works of art which can arise only with
historical distance, as they are snapshots for which de developing
technique has not been yet invented).
Yet another example: Bergson's fascination with the fact that a war
(1st WW) could actually emerge, from a collective idea, only an idea,
to an actual reality—reality as a shock in its actual efficiency. What
was thought but seemed impossible, suddenly becomes possible and
necessary, in a retroactive way. (Like Zizek's military service:
actually being there and its
naturalization). Bergson's beautiful formula: not a standard
linear logic of a possibility among many becoming actualized, but
rather...
... something that we considered (symbolically) impossible actually happens, (—pongamos la independencia de Cataluña, por
imaginar—) and then, when it happens, it becomes possible.
This is the best definition of what Lacan calls an act:
something which seems impossible when it happens, but retroactively
creates its own conditions of possibility.E.g. Nixon's
visit to China.
Bergson's formulation: a reality inserts itself into the past as a
possibility, farther and farther, it inserts itself as having been
possible all the time, but only when it emerges it begins to "always
already have been" (Two Sources of
Morality and Religion).
The example of being in love: your previous life is structured as if
waiting for this moment. Jean-Pierre Dupuy's notion on the theory of
confronting catastrophes: one must accept them as inevitable and change
the very past, working retroactively. (Muy en línea con mi
propia teoría de las catástrofes).
Hegel too: in development a thing becomes what it already was. (Well,
that's a way of reading him—perhaps he's actually failing to articulate
the retroactive argument, but he says it NOW, in a way, you know,
retroactively...).
(And now Zizek goes on to quote T. S.
Eliot, and borges, etc.—pity David Lodge didn't get credit for
that! or myself, since we're at it, Borges & Kafka & the rest.
Really we're treading the same ground, only I "been there, done that"
in the 1990s...)
"Tradition and the Individutal Talent" as read by Zizek: radical change restructures not just the
present but the past as well. Any
radical event radically recreates its own possibility. Hegel's
historical idealism means not only that you are influenced by the past:
you change the past, not the real past, but the past as it exists now.
The properly Hegelian interpretation of the relationship between
necessity and contingency. Not "reality is necessary but it realizes
itself in contingent ways" i.e. "a necessity of contingency"—this is a
vulgar Marxist interpretation, e.g. Napoleon as a contingent historical
figure which embodies a historical necessity. Instead, the deeper
Hegelian insight is the contingency
of necessity. Things become
necessary in a way which is ultimately contingent. The
necessity emerges retroactively.
"Judith Butler's" question: Is Zizek retroactively creating the Hegel
he needs? (Listen to the solution,
between the lines:)
If you come too close to things, reality blurs. Both in video games and
in reality. Some aspects of reality have been left "unprogrammed". The
best argument against reductionism, is that you cannot reduce
indefinitely, things get blurry. If there's a lesson in Heisenberg etc.
it's the incompleteness of reality itself. And this is the basic
recognition of Hegel's, his basic operation: our epistemological
limitation; we solve the
problem not by solving it, but by showing how the
problem itself is its own
solution.
Let's leave it there. Slowly petering
out...:
Adorno claims that you cannot find a global unifying theory which takes
either global mechanisms or actual phenomena as the ultimate
reality—neither Hegel nor the phenomenologists so to speak, taking the
other way round, going from phenomena and authentic experience to its
sedimentation. (From a Lacanian point of view there is not basic
authentic experience). Adorno's solution: it's wrong to try to develop
a global theory, because what we misperceive as a lack in our
understanding of reality is the itself the actual experience of
reality.
Zizek's critique of "alternate modernity" and alternative capitalisms:
they want capitalism without paying the price. There was already an
experiment in that line: Fascism. The Hegelian interpretation of the
relationship between universal and particular here is close to Deleuze:
the universal is a question, and the particulars are the answers. This
is the way Marxists should assess capitalism: not responding to
capitalism in general, but to specific modes of capitalism. The
struggle is not between the particulars, the struggle is between the
particulars and the universal, the particulars are possible answers to
the deadlock caused by the general. This is what Hegel means by
concrete universality—a struggle between universality and its
particular content.
Tengo estos
huesos hechos a las penas y a las
cavilaciones estas sienes: pena que vas,
cavilación que vienes como el mar de la
playa a las arenas.
Como el mar de la
playa a las arenas, voy en este
naufragio de vaivenes, por una noche
oscura de sartenes redondas, pobres,
tristes y morenas.
Nadie me salvará
de este naufragio si no es tu amor,
la tabla que procuro, si no es tu voz,
el norte que pretendo.
Eludiendo por eso
el mal presagio de que ni en ti
siquiera habré seguro, voy entre pena y
pena sonriendo.
Y también Juan Bau:
Martes 30 de octubre de 2012
CUANTO MAS SUBES...
Educación de príncipes al modo renacentista, muy a cuento ahora que a
uno se le ha subido el poder a la cabeza. Una escena de Sir Thomas More(c.
1601), de Shakespeare et al. Entra en escena Mas:
A table being covered with a green
carpet, a state cushion on it, and the Purse and Mace lying thereon,
enter More:
MORE.
It is in heaven that I am thus and thus;
And that which we profanely term our fortunes
Is the provision of the power above,
Fitted and shaped just to that strength of nature
Which we are borne withal. Good god, good God,
That I from such an humble bench of birth
Should step as twere up to my country's head,
Ad give the law out there! I, in my father's life,
To take prerogative and tithe of knees
From elder kinsmen, and him bind by my place
To give the smooth and dexter way to me
That owe it him by nature! Sure, these things,
Not physicked by respect, might turn our blood
To much corruption: but, More, the more thou hast,
Either of honor, office, wealth, and calling,
Which might excite thee to embrace and hub them,
The more doe thou in serpents' natures think them;
Fear their gay skins with thought of their sharp state;
And let this be thy maxim, to be great
Is when the thread of hayday is once 'spon,
A bottom great would up great undone.—
Come on, sir: are you ready?
Primero un
trailer, y luego un par de reseñas preliminares de la película Stage Beauty (Belleza prohibida) escritas por los
usuarios de IMDb, antes de comentar la escena que me interesa:
'Without beauty, there's nothing.
Who could love that?' (Ned Kynaston, Stage
Beauty)
Don't expect an elegant historical
romp from Stage Beauty; it's much more than that. Director Richard Eyre
(Iris) and screenwriter Jeffrey Hatcher have loosely interpreted true
events to deliver a passionate, romantic journey of gender-bending
self-realisation set in the bawdy world of the British Restoration,
circa 1660.
In a time when women are banned
from acting on stage, King Charles II is on the throne, accompanied
everywhere by his vulgar but merry mistress, Nell Gwnn. Meanwhile Ned
Kynaston (Billy Crudup) is the most celebrated leading lady of his
time. He is adored…by his audiences, by his lover and patron the Duke
of Buckingham, and secretly loved by his dresser Maria (Claire Danes).
But when aspiring actress Maria's illegal performance as Desdemona in
Othello triggers royal permission for women to act on stage, Kynaston's
fall from grace is swift.
This
is an actors' film, where the talents of Danes and in particular,
Crudup, shine. (Their remarkable relationship triggered an off-screen
romance.) Crudup is taut as the bisexual Kynaston, trained to be a
calamity and actress since early adolescence, and emotes powerfully as
he struggles with his sexuality and identity in an unfriendly new
political landscape. He is alternately a catty drag queen, angry young
man and committed thespian, without ever straying beyond credibility.
In contrast, Danes is luminous but unsure as Maria. A talented
supporting cast includes Rupert Everett, providing comic relief as the
languid King, while Ben Chaplin is sensual as the self-serving Duke.
Stage Beauty has been compared to Shakespeare in Love, but although
it's less successful, it's far less contrived. Although Stage Beauty
is a love story, you don't know how things will resolve. The pace is
less brisk than in a more manufactured film, but it's also more
realistic, enhanced by production design and costuming which depicts
both the grit and the sumptuousness of the time.
While at first the on stage acting
grates, it is deliberate. As Stage
Beauty
progresses, the acting technique evolves to resemble 19th Century
Naturalism – not true to life, but faithful to the emotional journey of
the characters. It's a special film that will take you on an emotional
journey too.
(Reseña de Collette Corr)
"All the world's a stage," wrote
the Bard, "and all the men and women merely players that strut and fret
their hour upon the stage."
"Stage Beauty" is set in the world
of seventeenth-century Restoration theatre, but the stage serves as a
microcosm for life itself, and the roles played by the actors before
the public mirror the roles they play in their private lives. The
question is, do they create their roles, or do their roles create them?
Ned Kynaston (Billy Crudup) is an
actor who takes on women's roles, since real women are not permitted to
do so. He has been thoroughly trained and schooled in the then highly
stylized technique of portraying women -- to such an extent that any
trace of masculinity seems to have been drummed out of him.
His
dresser Maria (Clare Danes) yearns to be an actress herself, but is
prevented from doing so by the narrow conventions of Puritan England --
until Charles II is restored to the throne and decrees that,
henceforth, real women shall play women's roles on the stage. A whole
new world opens up for Maria, but it looks like curtains for Ned.
What happens next is pure
anachronism: Ned and Maria are able to rise above the limitations and
constraints of their era. Not only do they transcend their gender or
sex roles, but they overcome their classical training and, in effect,
engage in Method acting, a technique still three hundred years away in
the far-distant future. When he teaches Maria how to break the mold and
play Othello's Desdemona in a whole new, natural way, Ned becomes a
seventeenth-century Stanislavsky.
But, by George, it works. Their
performance of the celebrated death scene from "Othello" sends shock
waves through an audience accustomed to pantomime and exaggerated
gestures -- and it electrifies us as well.
Not since Joseph Fiennes and
Gwyneth Paltrow in "Shakespeare in Love" have an actor and actress so
shimmered and shone simultaneously on stage and screen. One hopes that
Billy Crudup and Clare Danes will be remembered for their luminous
performances at the 2005 Academy Awards.
(Reseña de LiveWire 6)
Aquí
está también la reseña positiva pero no entusiasta de Roger Ebert.
La película es excelente para ilustrar los primeros momentos de
Shakespeare como clásico, en el siglo XVII, y sirve para hacerse una
ligera idea del ambiente teatral de la Restauración, aunque si nos
atenemos a ella no se representaba otra cosa que Shakespeare, idea que
sería altamente inexacta, es pena que no haya alguna pequeña escena
alusiva a la comedia de la Restauración, aunque por ser justos está
ambientada, supuestamente, en una fase muy temprana en la que el teatro
está básicamente reviviendo los éxitos anteriores tras la prohibición
puritana. Esto no deja de introducir una contradicción de base en la
película—pues a la vez nos muestra un mundo teatral experimentado y
establecido, mientras que se nos habla de los dieciocho años en que los
espectáculos han estado prohibidos… El interregno republicano
1642-60 supuso una interrupción de la profesión teatral mucho mayor de
la que nos permite suponer esta película. Y la carrera de Edward Kynaston,
con la edad con la que aparece en la película, es una imposibilidad en
la Inglaterra de los años 1650. En fin, quédese esto a título de
"tiempo teatral" indeterminado y de ficción poética.
Para lo que sí sirve la película modélicamente es como reflexión sobre
la teatralidad del sujeto y de los roles de género, para mostrar el
continuo teatro/vida que se da en los papeles que asumimos en la
comedia de las relaciones entre los sexos. Y también para mostrar
cómo el efecto de realidad está interpenetrado por el juego de
representaciones semióticas, de ilusiones dramáticas, y de esquemas y
de marcos ficcionales.
La escena que me interesaba comentar es la
representación final de
Otelo,
en la que la nueva actriz Maria Hughes representa el papel de
Desdémona, en el que antes había triunfado Kynaston, mientras que
Kynaston hace de Otelo. A lo largo de la obra se nos ha preparado para
esta escena, con Maria primero como la discreta ayudante de cámara de
Kynaston, a la vez enamorada de él y de la posibilidad de ser actriz un
día. Su frustración al descubrir la homosexualidad (o bisexualidad) de
Kynaston. Luego, el triunfo de Maria como actriz, el favor real, y el
resentimiento de Kynaston, maltratado por el rey y apaleado por los
aristócratas. En un episodio se dedica al strip-tease de barrio
bajo, y lo rescata de allí Maria, que también hace lo posible por
reconvertirlo a la heterosexualidad, sacándole las posibilidades
teatrales a los roles eróticos ("hacer de hombre" o "hacer de mujer" en
la cama). Por allí parece que se le puede atacar a Kynaston, que en una
interesante conversación con Pepys explica que la masculinidad se
experimenta por contraste con la feminidad—no ya en el comportamiento
social, sino en la experiencia
interna, y que en su caso incluso cuando se comporta como un "hombre"
está actuando, representando un papel deliberado (algo familiar a la
experiencia de muchos gays en la teatralidad de la vida cotidiana):
Samuel
Pepys:
You know, Mr. Kynaston, the performance of yours I always liked best?
As much as I adored your Desdemona and your Juliet, I've always loved
best your 'britches' parts. Rosalind, for instance. And not just
because of the woman stuff but also because of the man sections. Your
performance of the man stuff seemed so right, so true. I suppose I felt
it was the most real in the play. Ned Kynaston:
You know why the man stuff seemed so real? Because I'm pretending. You
see a man through the mirror of a woman through the mirror of a man.
You take one of those reflecting glasses away, it doesn't work. The man
only works because you see him in contrast to the woman he is. If you
saw him without the her he lives inside, he wouldn't seem a man at all. [pause] Samuel Pepys: Yes. You've obviously
thought longer on this question than I.
La tensión entre Kynaston y Maria Hugues es un modelo de comedia
rómántica "guerrera"; el erotismo es ambivalente e incierto, dada la
bisexualidad de Kynaston, y la rivalidad profesional adquiere a veces
tinte de pelea entre verduleras. Así pues hay una incertidumbre
ambiental sobre el final de la obra, que si bien parece comedia muy
bien pudiera derivar en tragedia como sucede en Otelo.
Y aquí es donde la obra usa inteligentemente una vuelta de tuerca sobre
una vieja convención dramática—el drama que se vuelve real. Un ejemplo
clásico de este recurso se ve en La
tragedia española
de Kyd, donde los asesinatos supuestamente fingidos sobre la escena
resultan ser reales. La escena final del duelo-espectáculo de Hamlet
también tiene algo de esto. Esta escena de Repo! The Genetic Opera
recurre a un episodio análogo, y el público representado en la obra
queda desconcertado. Y una variante más inquietante, donde la ficción
teatral se rompe de verdad y la muerte en escena desconcierta no sólo
al público ficticio sino al real, la comento en esta nota sobre Edipo de Dryden,
otra obra que un día tuvo un final inesperado. El asesinato del
presidente Lincoln en un teatro también parece tener algo de teatral,
por ponerlo suavemente, y de irreal. Sale en Intolerancia, de Griffith.
La escena dramática que resulta volverse real es un recurso
intensamente teatral, es algo que parece pedir la propia idea del
drama: el teatro es el sitio donde pasa lo imprevisto, donde la
presencia física incontestable de los actores en un espacio que a la
vez es el mismo que el del público, y otro, permite esa tensión de
incertidumbre donde el guión podría escapar de control en cualquier
momento. Fernando Savater lo dice muy bien en esta conferencia sobre La
utopía teatral.
Una solución utópica a esa imposible decadencia del teatro hoy en día
es intermedializarlo y aportarle la energía de otros medios—por ejemplo
del cine. El cine es ya teatro intermedializado, pero este cine sobre
temas teatrales permite extraer ciertas posibilidades al teatro como
tal teatro, no como teatro evolucionado en cine. Es lo que pasa en Stage Beauty
con la representación del asesinato de Desdémona, que funciona de
manera mucho más efectiva como teatro filmado que como teatro en carne
y hueso. En un teatro el público no creerá nunca que el asesinato
de la la actriz que interpreta Desdémona ha sido real, por mucho que se
esfuerce el director: la única manera en que podría creerlo es si tal
cosa se produjese realmente, y el efecto estético no quedaría
precisamente intensificado, sino destruido a la vez que la
representación de la obra. En la misma escena filmada en una película,
en cambio, el resultado es incierto para el público cinematográfico.
Esperamos una buena actuación, y experimentamos la incertidumbre sobre
si Kynaston va a bordar su papel hasta el punto de matar a su rival con
la escena del cojín. (Sobre todo vistas las analogías que se han
establecido a lo largo de la película entre el cojín de Kynaston y el
pañuelo de Desdémona). A ello se suma la experimentación con estilos
teatrales más realistas, que también introduce la película. Kynaston es
aquí como el Conde de Rochester en El
Libertino,
enseñando a actuar a Elizabeth Barry de modo realista. El realismo
impacta al público teatral de la película, aunque (para mayor
efectividad) no les hace creer en ningún momento que se haya producido
un asesinato en la escena realmente. Sólo están impresionados por una
actuación inesperadamente intensa. En cambio, el público de la
película, más al tanto de la trastienda y de las pasiones
descontroladas entre bambalinas, no sabe realmente si la película va a
recurrir al truco de la muerte en escena (ver un ejemplo representativo
de la incertidumbre lograda, en
el foro de IMDb).
Por eso la actuación de Otelo y Desdémona es inesperadamente intensa
para ambos públicos, el del teatro en 1660 y el de la película en el
siglo XXI, si bien por razones diferentes. Y de la experiencia sale un Otelo (y una Desdémona, claro)
inesperadamente resucitados, remediados
o remediated
como dicen en inglés, por el efecto de la superposición de
representaciones, el teatro pasado por el cine con un resultado
inesperadamente teatral, y cinematográfico a la vez.
Por eso el estilo de actuación que trasciende a la pantomima gestual
del principio no es realmente ni el realismo decimonónico ni el method acting
de Stanislavsky (como decían las reseñas iniciales) aunque debe algo a
los dos—es una actuación filtrada a través de las convenciones del
medio teatral y del cinematográfico, y que se basa esencialmente en la
ambivalencia compleja entre realidad y representación que permite el
juego dialéctico de los dos medios artísticos.
Se aplica aquí a la estética teatral, y a la cinematográfica, la misma
lógica que Kynaston aplicaba a las relaciones entre los sexos: vemos el
teatro a través del espejo del cine visto a través del espejo del
teatro. Si eliminas uno de esos espejos reflectantes no
funciona— y por eso no acabo de entender que esta película se
base en una obra teatral; lo que está claro es que ese drama pedía ser
una película para añadir más tensión genérica a la relación. Al final,
como Ned Kynaston en su juego de papeles, ya no sabemos si lo que
estamos viendo es teatro, cine, o un juego complejo entre ambos que
sería imposible sin su tensión, pero que a la vez los lleva a una
complejidad superior que de por sí no alcanzarían.
____________
Aquí comienza Stage Beauty en
YouTube:
____________
Stage Beauty. Dir.
Richard Eyre. Written by Jeffrey Hatcher, based on his play Compleat Female Stage Beauty.
Cast: Billy Crudup (Ned Kynaston), Claire Danes (Maria Hughes), Rupert
Everett (King Charles II), Hugh Bonneville (Samuel Pepys), Richard
Griffiths (Sir Charles Sedley), Edward Fox (Sir Edward Hyde), Tom
Hollander (Sir Peter Lely), Zoë Tapper (Nell Gwynn). Music by George
Fenton. Cinematography by Andrew Dunn. Ed. Tariq Anwar. Prod. Des. Jim
Clay. Art dir. Keith Slote, Jan Spoczynski. Set Decoration by Caroline
Smith. Costume design by Tim Hatley. Exec. Prod. Rachel Cohen,
Richard Eyre, Michael Kuhn, Amir Malin, James D. Stern. Coprod. Michael
Dreyer. Prod. Robert de Niro, Hardy Justice, Jane Rosenthal. Lions Gate
Films / Qwerty Films, Tribeca Productions / N1 European Film
Produktions / BBC Films, 2004.* (Spanish title: Belleza prohibida).
Director: Ben
Affleck Interpretes:
Ben Affleck, Bryan Cranston, John Goodman
Ben Affleck
ha pasado de ser tan solo un inexpresivo pedazo de carne delante de la
cámara a confirmarse como gran talento del cine americano detrás de
ella. Su tercera película como director, Argo, recrea un
extraño episodio en la historia del espionaje norteamericano. El 4 de
noviembre de 1979, con la revolución islámica en su punto de
ebullición, un grupo de iranís irrumpieron en la embajada
estadounidense en Teherán y tomaron 52 rehenes. Seis americanos
lograron escapar y refugiarse en la residencia del embajador
canadiense. La CIA recurrió entonces a su especialista Tony Mendez
(Affleck), para llevarlos de regreso a casa. ¿El plan de Mendez? Ni más
ni menos, utilizar como coartada el rodaje de una película de ciencia
ficción cutre llamada Argo para viajar a Irán en la piel de un
productor en busca de localizaciones y luego volver con los seis
americanos disfrazados de equipo cinematográfico canadiense. Tan
improbable peripecia demuestra hasta qué punto el mundo de los
servicios de inteligencia se parece al del cine, en tanto que ambos se
basan en la creación de ficciones y mentiras suficientemente plausibles. Pulsa
aquí para leer la crítica de Argo Pulsa
aquí para ver el trailer
Url:
http://www.warnerbros.es
______
Y sigo comentando. La película es
histórica, con convenientes aderezos de suspense y huídas en el último
minuto. La primera secuencia del asalto a la embajada americana es
extraordinariamente efectiva y angustiosa, y hay otras muchas buenas
escenas por toda la película. El montaje de los espías deja bien a la
CIA, de modestos y todo, pues el mérito de toda la operación secreta se
lo lleva el gobierno canadiense, para evitarles acusaciones de
espionaje. Con lo cual la película deja en buen lugar a la CIA, a
pesar de su incompetencia cuando no detectaron la proximidad de una
revolución en Irán; al final son menos intrigantes y poderosos de lo
que parecían, y bastante eficaces e imaginativos a la hora de burlar el
enemigo. Así que supongo que la CIA la habrá financiado en parte o
autorizado, es desde luego de la hornada patriótica. Ahora que estamos
a un tris de si se declara o no se declara la guerra a Iran—en realidad
ya parece cosa decidida según a quién escuches— es una película que de
por sí forma parte del arsenal propagandístico norteamericano.
No digo que sea ciencia ficción cutre, pero sí busca dar una idea
lamentable del régimen iraní, cosa bastante fácil, no hay que irse a
las estrellas a buscar inspiración. La población iraní aparece
mayormente fanática y enloquecida de rabia, y aunque se nos dejan oír
sus argumentos no se nos da una idea favorable de la revolución de los
chiítas, es lo menos que se puede decir. Alguna pincelada nos deja ver
también a la gente de a pie que sufre el régimen, con las ejecuciones
sumarias, la brutalidad ambiental, la atmósfera opresiva... así, la
criada de la embajada canadiense de la que desconfiaban los embajadores
y rehenes, no se fuese a chivar, en realidad arriesga su propia
seguridad por mantener el secreto, y elige el exilio antes que
traicionar su confianza (su confianza no dada, vamos). Más visibles
son, desde luego, las ratas de cloaca que salen en toda revolución a
subirse a lomos del sistema y organizar purgas y chekas.
Mala idea sería, de todos modos, que todo este mal de hace treinta años
o de hoy les sirviese a los americanos para montar una guerra nuclear.
Ademas ojo con las celebraciones por anticipado, porque hay un episodio
histórico que la película omite mencionar: el fiasco del intento de
rescate de los demás rehenes, con marines y helicópteros, ordenado por
Jimmy Carter. La operación
Eagle Claw
se llamó, y fracasó por fallos de maquinaria, organización y ejecución,
con accidentes y militares americanos muertos en Irán. La operación se
suspendió; supongo que no la han mencionado por no mentar la bicha y
dejar todo en un tono de victoria sobre los barbudos. Pero ojo, que la
historia tiene sus ironías. Por cierto, Ben Affleck también sale con
barba.
Maquiavelismo religioso en Polibio. Y el triunfo de la demagogia:
En el libro VI de sus Historias
comenta Polibio la superioridad de la constitución romana, que con la
fortaleza que da a la nación romana ha hecho posible el desarrollo de
su imperio universal. Y vean lo que opina este pragmático, y
maquiavélico griego sobre el papel político de la religión; escéptico
es Polibio, pero no en el sentido actual (o dieciochesco) de querer
desacreditar la influencia social de la religión argumentando
racionalmente contra ella. Es su texto un locus classicus
de la religión entendida al modo elitista como control de las masas
ignorantes y de las mentes simples mediante historias insensatas y
absurdas—pero convenientes para el orden social. Y ya de paso lean sus
juicios sobre la corrupción política y la decadencia de una nación,
parece escrito para hoy:
§56. También entre los romanos los
usos y costumbres referidos al dinero son superiores a los de los
cartagineses. Entre éstos nada hay vergonzoso si produce un lucro;
entre aquéllos nada hay más afrentoso que la venalidad o el hacerse con
ganancias ilícitas. Los romanos alaban tanto la riqueza adquirida
honradamente como desprecian el provecho extraído por medios
inconfesables. Prueba de esto es el hecho de que entre los cartagineses
se llevan las magistraturas los que distribuyen sobornos sin disimulos;
esto, entre los romanos está castigado con pena de muerte. De donde
resulta que, si en los dos pueblos se proponen premios opuestos para la
virtud, han de ser desiguales los medios de llegar a ella. Pero la diferencia positiva mayor
que tiene la constitución romana es, a mi juicio, la de las
convicciones religiosas. Y me parece también que ha sostenido a Roma
una cosa que entre los demás pueblos ha sido objeto de mofa: me refiero
a la religión. Entre los romanos este elemento está presente hasta tal
punto y con tanto dramatismo, en la vida privada y en los asuntos
públicos de la ciudad, que es ya imposible ir más allá. Esto extrañará
a muchos, pero yo creo que lo han hecho pensando en las masas. Si fuera
posible constituir una ciudad habitada sólo por personas inteligentes,
ello no sería necesario. Pero la masa es versátil y llena de pasiones
injustas, de rabia irracional y de coraje violento; la única solución
posible es contenerla con el miedo de cosas desconocidas y con
ficciones de este tipo. Por eso, creo yo, los antiguos no inculcaron a
las masas por casualidad o por azar las imaginaciones de dioses y las
narraciones de las cosas del Hades; los de ahora cometen una temeridad
irracional cuando pretenden suprimir estos elementos. Para no explicar
otras cosas: entre los grigos, a los que tienen la administración, si
reciben un talento en depósito, en presencia de diez escribanos,
sellado con diez sellos y delante de veinte testigos, a pesar de todo,
no se les pueden exigir garantías; en Roma, por el contrario, estos
mismos depositarios pueden entregar una suma mucho más fuerte de dinero
a los magistrados o a unos legados y, por la sola fuerza del
correspondiente juramento, el depósito se conserva intacto. Entre los
demás pueblos es difícil encontrar un hombre político que se haya
mantenido alejado del dinero público y esté limpio de delitos de este
tipo, pero entre los romanos es difícil hallar un político que no haya
observado una conducta así.
§57. No precisa insistir en la
demostración del hecho de que todas las cosas sufren cambios y llegan a
decaer; la misma naturaleza, en efecto, nos impone esta convicción.
Ahora bien, las constituciones perecen, alternativamente por dos
procesos, uno inherente y otro ajeno a ellas. Este último es
difícilmente determinable, pero el inherente es un proceso regular. El
primer tipo de constitución que se origina, el segundo y el paso de uno
a otroya
los hemos expuesto,
de manera que los que sean capaces de conectar el principio y el final
de la exposición podrán indicar también el futuro; de esto no cabe la
menor duda. Siempre que una constitución ha superado muchos y grandes
peligros y alcanza una supremacía y una pujanza incontestadas, es claro
que se produce una gran prosperidad que convierte a los ciudadanos en
enamorados del lujo y en pendencieros fuera de lo común, por su afán de
desempeñar cargos y de otras ventajas. Estos defectos irán en auge y
empezará la involución hacia un estado inferior, por la apetencia de
magistraturas, por la vergüenza de no ser famoso y, además, por la
soberbia y el despilfarro. Sin embargo, el que hará culminar la
evolución será el pueblo, cuando opine que hay quien gana injustamente yle
hiche la adulación de otros que aspiran a obtener sinecuras. Enfurecido,
entonces, y en su rabia codicioso de todo, el pueblo creerá que los
gobernantes no están a su altura, se negará a obedecer, se tendrá a sí
mismo por el todo, dueño del poder soberano. El estadio siguiente
recibirá el nombre más bello de todos, libertad y democracia, pero la
denominación de la realidad será lo peor, la demagogia.
Entre secesionistas-revolucionarios e "internacionalistas" anda el
juego, y siempre con el derecho a la autodeterminación de los pueblos
por delante. Partidarios abiertos de España, no parece que los
haya, o si acaso los hay, son vergonzantes. Gusta más el respeto
a la autodeterminación de Cataluña, o un internacionalismo bonito y
vaporoso. "No se puede someter a Cataluña, aunque no digo que Cataluña
esté sometida," "Mejor darles más participación en el gobierno a los
nacionalistas e independentistas", etc. La voz estudiantil, a favor del
"anticapitalizmo" y de la "opción rupturista". No digo que no sean
representativos de lo que hay, nuestros pensadores. Y así avanza el
Proceso.
Esto viene de uno de los mejores musicales de la historia bíblica, Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor
Dreamcoat. Mejor ir aprendiéndosela—aquí
está la versión del disco, con letra incluida, aha há.
La Ronda de Boltaña en Biescas
—los grabé el pasado domingo, en la feria. ¡Hola,
Montse!
Se va mi familia por el parque
Jueves 25 de octubre de 2012
Académica pataleta Paco Umbral ya tiene sucesor por mérito propio. Le dan el Premio
Nacional de Narrativa a Javier Marías y
éste lo rechaza,
con un argumentario de rebelde inconformista y antinacionalista. Que él
no acepta nada que venga del Estado, que no está por premios
institucionales, etc. Desde luego premios no le faltan, pero oyéndole
más bien se diría que considera que éste lo debería haber ganado hace
tiempo. Lo del rechazo al Estado Español y demás, me parece una
incoherencia viniendo de un Académico. ¿No sería más coherente dejar su
sillón de la Real Academia Española, si le han cambiado los criterios
con respecto a las instituciones nacionales, desde que aceptó
entrar? Vamos, que es una incoherencia que me suena a pataleta de
enfant terrible
cabreado con el mundo. Porque puede y porque le sobran los premios,
eh... que si no a la fuerza ahorcan. Pero como oportuno y como
elegante, poco oportuno y poco elegante ha quedado Marías, supongo que
él pensará lo contrario. Quizá piense Marías que las otras
instituciones que le dan premios no son instituciones. O igual es que
se
ha pasado al desprecio a España, que ahora se lleva tanto. O a mirar a
todos los Estados y todo lo que hacen au-dessus de la mêlée. Qué
penica. Me gustan las novelas de Marías, pero esta historia prepotente
que se ha montado me parece una página penosa. Igual es porque gano
pocos premios.
____
En fin, que me parece un gesto de una prepotencia y de una incoherencia
notables. "Una cosa así un poco tontarrona", sentencia la Dra. Penas,
otra fan de Marías. Aquí
más detalladamente las declaraciones y explicaciones del
a-premiado. Viene a ser como curarse en
salud, preventivamente, de que no le vayan a dar el Cervantes, en plan
profecía autocumplida. Ahora que, vayan a saber, ahora que el PP le da
la medalla de oro de la guardia civil a la Virgen del Pilar, igual
también le dan el Cervantes a Marías, por ahorrarse unas pelas—y todos
contentos.
Me ha llegado este correo por la web, dando algunos consejos y
opiniones sobre cómo reaccionar contra el separatismo catalán: con un
boicot que haga reaccionar a los propios catalanes contra los
secesionistas por quienes se dejan guiar mansamente. Sintomático de la
situación sí que es, sí. El separatismo catalán, y el gobierno catalán
en pleno y quienes le han votado, dan tal vergüenza ajena, que no queda
más remedio que mostrarles la patita con su propia medicina. Yo pienso
mirar el origen de los productos antes de comprar; el cava catalán ya
hace años que no lo compro, y eso que es bueno y barato.
>
A continuación presentamos una lista de productos que sólo representa
una muestra de la infinidad de productos existentes en el mercado, con
el objetivo de facilitar la identificación rápida de algunos productos
fabricados en Cataluña. ....
sI LOGRAMOS PASAR ESTOS TRES MENSAJES, CADA UNO DE
NOSOTROS, A 8 PERSONAS, DARÁ LA VUELTA A ESPAÑA EN MENOS DE 8
DÍAS Y EL FAMOSO
"ESTATUT"… VAMOS A VER LO QUE HACEN CON
EL. ¡PÁSALO!
1º.
Mensaje: Informativo
NOSOTROS: nos portamos como hermanos:
1.
LES FINANCIAMOS LOS JJ.OO DEL
92.
2.
LES FINANCIAMOS LAS INFRAESTRUCTURAS PARA LOS
JUEGOS.
3.
LES TRASPASAMOS TODAS LAS COMPETENCIAS QUE HAN
PEDIDO.
4.
LES COFINANCIAMOS EL FORUM BARCELONA
2004.
5.
LES ESTAMOS FINANCIANDO EL AVE (les han quitado la "E" de
España)
ZARAGOZA-LÉRIDA-BARCELONA-FRANCIA.
6. 7. 8.
9. ..................... Y MÁS Y MÁS..
ELLOS: ( los nacionalistas) maltratan al resto de España
1.
HAN INTENTADO QUITAR A VALENCIA LA COPA AMÉRICA
2007.
2.
ACONSEJAN A SUS CIUDADANOS NO CONSUMIR VINO DE LA
RIOJA.
3.
ACONSEJAN QUE SUS DEPORTISTAS NO COMPITAN CON LA
SELECCIÓN
NACIONAL.
4.
DESMEMBRARON EL ARCHIVO DE
SALAMANCA.
5.
NO QUERÍAN QUE SE CELEBRASEN LOS JJ.OO EN
MADRID.
6.
SON IMPERIALISTAS QUERIENDO ANEXIONARSE A LA
COMUNIDAD
VALENCIANA, BALEARES Y MURCIA. ¡SÍ! COMO LO OYES. ELLOS
LOS
DENOMINAN: LOS PAÍSES
CATALANES...
7. Y
LO MÁS IMPORTANTE: ESTAN TOMANDO EL CONTROL DE
LAS
MEJORES EMPRESAS DEL PAÍS ¿CÓMO ?.... POR MEDIO DEL DINERO QUE LOS
ESPAÑOLES TIENEN DEPOSITADO EN "LA CAIXA" (DAROS DE BAJA COMO CLIENTES
COÑO!), DEL QUE SE SIRVEN PARA COMPRAR Y TOMAR EL CONTROL
DE LAS MAYORES EMPRESAS DEL PAÍS:
-
TELEFÓNICA (1ª EMPRESA DE TELECOMUNICACIONES DE ESPAÑA): 5,03 %
-
REPSOL YPF ("PETROLERA"): 15
%
-
ENDESA ("ELÉCTRICA"): 5
%
-
GAS NATURAL("DE GAS"): 34,5
%
-
ABESTIS ("DE AUTOPISTAS"): 24
%
-
AGBAR ("DE AGUAS"):
23,1%
Y.....OTRO GRAN NÚMERO DE EMPRESAS DE ESPAÑA ESTÁN
CONTROLADAS
POR: LA
CAIXA:
-
BANCO SABADELL (EN ASTURIAS = A BANCO
HERRERO)
-
INMOBILIARIA
COLONIAL.
-
CAPRABO
-
PANRICO, BOLLICAO Y
DONUTS.
-
HOTELES
OCCIDENTAL
-
PORT
AVENTURA.
QUE
LA BOLSA DE "LA CAIXA" NO
SONE.
______
2º
Mensaje: Explicativo
EL 70 % DEL EXCEDENTE DE PRODUCCIÓN CATALANA SE
VENDE
EN EL RESTO DE ESPAÑA. EL DESCENSO EN SUS VENTAS DE SÓLO UN 10%,
ENTERRARÍA EL ESTATUT PARA
SIEMPRE.
CAMPAÑA NACIONAL: 1 MES SIN PRODUCTOS
CATALANES.
INICIO DE LA CAMPAÑA?: ¡SIEMPRE!
ENTRE TODOS, PODEMOS ACABAR CON ESTA LOCURA.
3º Mensaje: Consecuencia y plan de actuación “en
verso”
NADA
CATALÁN COMPRARÁS, NI EN CAPRABO TE
AVITUALLARÁS,
NI
CON CAVA BRINDARÁS, NI CASA TARRADELLAS
PROBARÁS,
DEL
FUET TE OLVIDARÁS, NI TU DINERO EN LA CAIXA
GUARDARÁS.
ASÍ,
BUEN ESPAÑOL SERÁS Y A LOS NACIONALISTAS
CATALANES
JODERÁS, PORQUE POR DONDE MÁS LES DUELE... LES
DARÁS.
(Los
productos catalanes van a empezar a llevar código de barras nº
15,
recuerda...compra solo 84 = ESPAÑA)
Pasadlo: HACEDLO ahora
mismo, por favor ¡YA!: España… se la juega.
¡Ánimo!. Empecemos por hundir a los separatistas
!!!!.....Qué se vayan a la
mierda ya!!!...la culpa la tenemos también los demás
por hacerles la cama!!
Pues ya saben. Un rollo, pero hay que hacerlo. Hay que
hacerlo no por España, excluida Cataluña, sino por España incluida Cataluña. Y
para que no pasen cosas más gordas de las que están pasando ya mismo.
De la Britannica al Kindle Fire Debo
estar un poco esquizofrénico. En el mismo día me he comprado un Kindle
Fire para electrocutar libros y que no me ocupen espacio en el estante,
y, contradictoriamente, un
facsímil de la primera edición de la Encyclopaedia Britannica
(Edinburgo, 1778-1771).... para celebrar quizá que han anunciado este
año que ya
no volverán a editarla en papel, quedándose
como última edición impresa la de 2010. El facsímil lo sacaron en los
años 70, para celebrar el 200 aniversario; supongo que también irá al
rincón de las curiosidades. Igual le ha pasado a otro clásico, el Oxford
English Dictionary– que también lo tenemos completo, debe pesar
más que mi bibliografía.
______
El Kindle Fire es una maravilla. Lo estreno bajándome Tempest, de Bob Dylan. Buenos
altavoces tiene el aparato, invisibles pero bien audibles—como el disco
de Dylan. Y el comentario de Oscar sobre el Kindle Fire: "De repente
parece que lo hubiéramos tenido toda la vida". Así pasa con lo bueno,
se acostumbra uno pronto.
—pasada a Scribd por alguien, ahora comes home again, on better judgmement
making. No
había probado esto del autoembedding, pero también puede consultarse aquí en el
original, o en el original del original, aquí http://bit.ly/abiblio/
(From The Oxford Companion to
English Literature:)
Changeling, The, a tragedy by Thomas Middleton and
William Rowley, printed 1653, but acted as early as 1622.
Beatrice Joanna, daughter of the governor of Alicant, is ordered by her
father to marry Alonzo de Piracquo. She falls in love with Alsemero and
in order to avoid the marriage employs the ill-favoured villain De
Flores, whom she detests but who cherishes a passion for her, to murder
Alonzo. To the horror of Beatrice, De Flores exacts the reward he had
lusted for. Beatrice is now to marry Alsemero. To escape detection she
arranges that her maid Diaphanta shall take her place on the wedding
night; and to remove a dangerous witness, De Flores then kills the
maid. The guilt of Beatrice and De Flores is revealed to Alemero, and
they are both brought before the governor, whereupon they take their
own lives. The title of the play is taken from the sub-plot, in which
Antonio disguises himself as a crazy changeling in order to get access
to Isabella, wife of the keeper of a madhouse. The main plot is taken
from John Reynolds's God's Revenge against Murther (1621).
Cet
article examine la représentation des personnages dans deux chansons de
geste médiévales françaises, "Le Couronnement de Louis" et "Le
Pèlerinage de Charlemagne". On prête une attention spéciale aux
conventions de ce genre épique en concret, et à l'idéologie implicite
dans ses valeurs positives aussi bien que négatives, comme par exemple
la représentation ahistorique des Sarrasins.
_______
Este
artículo examina la representación de los personajes en dos poemas
épicos medievales franceses, "Le Couronnement de Louis" y "Le
Pèlerinage de Charlemagne", con atención especial a las convenciones de
este género épico específico, y a la ideología implícita en sus valores
tanto positivos como negativos, como por ejemplo en la representación
ahistórica de los sarracenos.
_________
This paper examines the representation of characters in two medieval
French epic poems, "Le Couronnement de Louis" and "Le Pèlerinage de
Charlemagne", with special attention to the conventions of this
particular epic genre, and the ideology implicit in their positive as
well as in their negative values, such as the ahistorical
representation of the Moors.
—oOo—
El artículo lo escribí en 1990 cuando estudiaba literatura francesa
medieval y leía estos cantares de gesta ambientados en Tierra Santa o
en Barbastro. Lo colgué en mi
web al
inaugurarla hace ocho años y ahora lo mando a los repositorios.
En SSRN: http://ssrn.com/abstract=2165406
—de Boltaña, que la estuvimos oyendo ayer en Biescas, tras una
multitudinaria sesión familiar... Hasta en el escenario tocando con la
ronda teníamos familia:
Nunca he visto salir más gente llorando, a mitad de concierto. Estuvo
conmovedora la cosa, y animada también, que de todo cabe en un
concierto y hasta en una canción.
Hay varias ideas claves o centrales en la Fenomenología del Espíritu de Hegel—muchas, muchísimas—pero a ver si las enfocamos lo más
posible para centrarlas en una sola: la reflexividad del conocimiento y
la manera en
que trasciende a su objeto una vez lo ha expresado en una
representación determinada. La relación del conocimiento con el objeto
que ha constituido mediante su acción se convierte en un nuevo objeto
de conocimiento, y el proceso prosigue a modo de espiral dialéctica o
hermenéutica. Sobre este tipo de espirales o círculos hermenéuticos retroalimentativos puede verse mi artículo "La espiral hermenéutica".
En el prólogo a la Fenomenología del Espíritu, escrito tras la obra
misma, Hegel introduce no tanto la obra sino todo su sistema. Aparte
del prólogo, está la Introducción a esta obra. Según su comentador J.
N. Findlay, "el objetivo de la introducción es proporcionar una noción
preliminar, justificada sólo cuando se completase la obra, sobre cómo un
estudio de las formas de la mente que nos conducen desde la experiencia
inmediata hasta lo que se proclama como conocimiento científico, podría
disipar dudas sobre la posibilidad real de todo el proyecto" (xiii,
traduzco). Es decir, Hegel es consciente de un problema de reflexividad
o de regressus in infinitum planteado por la idea misma de un análisis
del conocimiento, o por una fenomenología del espíritu.
"Might not the finally corrected shape which emerged from such a process
be as remote from things 'as they in themselves are' as the first,
uncorrected, immediate shape? And how could the projected work abolish
Kant's view that an examination of human knowledge only shows, not that
such knowledge can really reach some standpoint where 'the Absolute' or
'the Thing in Itself' will be accessible to it, but that this is for
ever and in itself impossible, that there are and must be aspects of
things that we can indeed conceive negatively, or perhaps have beliefs
about, but of which we can neve have knowledge?" (xiv)
La solución ofrecida por Hegel me parece propiamente fenomenológica en
el sentido husserliano—una reducción fenomenológica del problema del
conocimiento y de sus objetos. Los supuestos objetos trascendentales
son, también, un producto y objeto del conocimiento:
"Hegel's criticism of this critical view of knowledge is simply that it
is self-refuting, that it pronounces, even if negatively, on the
relation of conscious appearances to absolute reality, while claiming
that the latter must for ever transcend knowledge. To this
self-refuting view Hegel opposes the view that the distinction between
what things in themselves are, and what things only are for
consciousness or knowledge, must itself be a distinction drawn within
consciousness, that the former can be only the corrected view of an
object, while the latter is merely a view formerly entertained but now
abandoned as incorrect. The progress of knowledge will then consist in
the constant demotion of what appeared to be the absolute truth about
the object to what now appears to be the only way that the object
appeared to consciousness, a new appearance of absolute truth taking
the former's place. (xiv).
—así Hegel, a modo de un T. S. Kuhn del siglo XIX, relativiza el
conocimiento y sus absolutos, y los muestra como etapas de un
autoconocimiento, una vez se comprenden como tales, claro está, y así
el espíritu va continuamente sufriendo revoluciones epistemológicas,
superándose a sí mismo y dejando atrás sus antiguas representaciones y
certidumbres, que quedan reinterpretadas, reenmarcadas y concebidas
ahora como fases de un proceso que lleva hasta el Saber
Absoluto—obtenido cuando abandonamos la concepción dogmática o ingenua
del conocimiento, para pasar a una concepción dialéctica y reflexiva
del mismo.
En
la Introducción encontramos esta reflexión hegeliana sobre la
reflexión, o sobre la reflexividad, y sobre la manera en que el
conocimiento lleva a su propia autosuperación sin límite ni final
posible, a no ser esta comprensión reflexiva de lo que significa
conocer y lo que significan los avances en la comprensión:
§78.
(...) The series of configurations which consciousness goes through
along this road is, in reality, the detailed history of the education of consciousness itself to the standpoint of Science. (...)
§80. But the goal is
as necessarily fixed for knowledge as the serial progression; it is the
point where knowledge no longer needs to go beyond itself, where
knowledge finds itself, where Notion corresponds to object and object
to Notion. Hence the progress towards this goal is also unhalting, and
short of it no satisfaction is to be found at any of the stations on
the way. Whatever is confined within the limits of a natural life
cannot by its own efforts go beyond its immediate existence; but it is
driven beyond it by something else, and this uprooting entails its
death. Consciousness, however, is explicitly the Notion of
itself. Hence it is something that goes beyond limits, and since these
limits are its own, it is something that goes beyond itself. With the
positing of a single particular the beyond is also established for
consciousness, even if it is only alongside the limited
object as in the case of spatial intuition. Thus consciousness
suffers this violence at its own hands: it spoils its own limited
satisfaction. When consciousness feels this violence, its anxiety may
well make it retreat from the truth, and strive to hold on to what it
is in danger of losing. But it can find no peace. If it wishes to
remain in a state of unthinking inertia, then thought troubles its
thoughtlessness, and its own unrest disturbs its inertia. Or, if it
entrenches itself into sentimentality, which assures us that it finds
everything to be good in its kind, then the assurance
likewise suffers violence at the hands of Reason, for precisely in so
far as something is merely a kind, Reason finds it not to be
good. Or, again, its fear of the truth may lead consciousness to hide,
from itself and from others, behind the pretension that its burning
zeal for truth makes it difficult or even impossible to find any other
truth but the unique truth of vanity—that of being at any rate cleverer
than any thoughts that one gets by oneself or from others. This conceit
which understands how to belittle every truth, in order to turn back on
itself and gloat over its own understanding, which knows how to
dissolve every thought and always find the same barren Ego instead of
any content—this is a satisfaction which we must leave to itself, for
it flees from the universal, and seeks only to be for itself.
Se
hace extraña la formulación de Hegel a veces por la manera en que
presenta esta aventura del espíritu como la de una consciencia que se
va superando y conociendo a sí misma—cuando (en nuestra concepción más
usual hoy) es la confrontación entre distintas consciencias, el
encuentro con la alteridad no en uno mismo sino en las concepciones de
otros, lo que lleva a superar las concepciones concretas. Pero es otra
manera de ponerlo, quizá: después de todo, la conciencia que se vive
como alteridad ha de ser representada como una fase de la conciencia
crítica que la supera. Y esta reconceptualización o esta nueva
experiencia del objeto ya es, bien observa Hegel, la experiencia de otro objeto, de un objeto transformado por la nueva manera en que se lo conoce, el nuevo punto de vista desde el cual se ve:
§85.
(...) in fact, in the alteration of the knowledge, the object itself
alters for it too, for the knowledge that was present was essentially a
knowledge of the object : as the knowledge changes, so does the object,
for it essentially belonged to this knowledge. Hence it comes to pass
for consciousness that what it previously took to be the in-itself is not an in-itself, or that it was only an in-itself for consciousness. Since
consciousness thus finds that its knowledge does not correspond to
its object, the object itself does not stand the test; in other
words, the criterion for testing is altered when that for which it was
to have been the criterion fails to pass the test, and the testing is
not only a testing of what we know, but also a testing of the criterion
of what knowing is.
§86. Inasmuch as the new true object issued from it, this dialectical movement
wheich consciousness exercises on itself and which affects both its
knowledge and its object, is precisely what is called experience [Erfahrung]. (...)
El conocimiento viene a ser una transición sucesiva de puntos de vista, o un juego de marcos, de frames como
diría Goffman, reenmarcando la experiencia anteriormente asimilada en
una nueva relacion al sujeto, a su mundo y a su nueva comprensión. Aquí
es interesante la teoría de Hegel como fundamento filosófico de la
noción de topsight o perspectiva dominante, entendida aquí
como aplicable a la comprensión de la realidad última de las cosas o de
formulación de la verdad de una situación. No es sorprendente que esta
posición de topsight la identifique Hegel con su propia
concepción reflexiva y dialéctica de la experiencia y del conocimiento
de la misma, de la fenomenología del espíritu por decirlo con los términos que dan título a la obra:
§87. (...) From the present viewpoint, however, the new object shows itself to have come about through a reversal of consciousness itself [y no de un encuentro con la alteridad sin más.] This way of looking at the matter is something contributed by us, by
means of which the succession of experiences through which
consciousness passes is raised into a scientific progression—but it is
not known to the consciousness that we are observing.
Es en cierto modo lo que Paul de Man formulará en términos de blindness and insight—sólo que Hegel deja claro que el insight pertenece a la conciencia observadora de la primera conciencia superada, en la percepción de la blindness podríamos
decir. La anulación o superación de una fase de la consciencia supone
también la pervivencia de lo que había de cierto en esa modalidad del
conocimiento, aunque se manifieste en forma diferente.
(sigue
§87) It shows up here like this: since what first appeared as the
object sinks for consciousness to the level of its way of knowing it,
and since the in-itself becomes a being-for-consciousness of
the in-itself,, the latter is now the new object. Herewith a new
pattern of consciousness comes on the scene as well, for which the
essence is something different from what it was at the preceding stage.
It is this fact that guides the entire series of the patterns of
consciousness in their necessary sequence. But it is just this
necessity itself, or the origination of the new object,
that presents itself to consciousenss without its understanding how
this happens, which proceeds for us, as it were, behind the back of
consciousness. Thus in the movement of consciousness there occurs a
moment of being-in-itself or being-for-us which is not present to the consciousness comprehended in the experience itself. The content, however, of what presents itself to us does exist for it; we comprehend only the formal aspect of that content, or its pure origination. For it, what has thus arisen exists only as an object; for us, it appears at the same time as movement and a process of becoming.
(—o sea, la fenomenología del espíritu propiamente
dicha). Este es el razonamiento que aplica Hegel, por ejemplo, para la
desconstrucción de las creencias religiosas, pero también a todas las
demás fases del espíritu. Constituye con ello una filosofía
esencialmente narrativa, de una narratividad guiada por la reflexividad
y la ironía romántica, en la que el juego de sucesivos puntos de vista
y el rechazo de las formas de experiencia y representación que se han
vuelto inauténticas es la dinámica misma y sustancia del progreso del
conocimiento, y el ser mismo del espíritu en tanto que espíritu activo
y pensante.
Así
comenta Findlay la manera en que Hegel incorpora la reflexividad a su
sistema para a la vez darle un cierre conceptual a su concepción, sin
por ello pasar a concebir el conocimiento como algo que pueda cesar en
su movimiento de autosuperación:
"Hegel, however, assumes that this progress must
have a final term, a state where knowledge need no longer transcend or
correct itself, where it will discover itself in its object and its
object in itself, where concept will correspond to objet and object to
consciousness (see §80 (p. 69)). Such a conception might seem to go too
far, for surely an endless inadequacy of knowledge to its object would
not destroy all meaning and validity in such knowledge, nor would this
vanish were there to be aspects of things of which, as Kant held, we
could only frame negative, regulative conceptions but of which we could
never have definite knowledge? Hegel will, however, marvellously include
in his final notion of the final state of knowledge the notion of an
endless progress that can have no final term. For he conceives that,
precisely in seeing the objet as an endless problem, we fortwith see it
as not being a problem at all. For what the object in itself is, is
simple to be the other, the stimulant of knowledge and practice, which
in being for ever capable of being remoulded and reinterpereted, is
also everlastingly pinned down and found out being just what it is."
(xiv).
O, dicho con las palabras de Hegel que cierran la Introducción (y en cierto modo abren y cierran la Fenomenología),
§89.
The experience of itself which consciousness goes through can, in
accordance with its Notion, comprehend nothing less than the entire
system of consciousness, or the entire realm of the truth of the
Spirit. For this reason, the moments of this truth are exhibited in
their own proper determinateness, viz. as being not abstract moments,
but as they are for consciousness, or as consciousness itself stands
forth in its relation to them. Thus the moments of the whole are patterns of consciousness.
In pressing forward to its true existence, consciousness will arrive at
a point at which it gets rid of its semblance of being burdened with
something alien, with what is only for it, and some sort of 'other', at
a point where appearance becomes identical with essence, so that its
exposition will coincide at just this point with the authentic Science
of Spirit. And finally, when consciousness itself grasps this its own
essence, it will signify the nature of absolute knowledge itself.
—oOo—
Se me ocurre que esta formulación hegeliana de la relación entre la
mente y el objeto la podemos leer como una teoría hermenéutica sobre el
significado de los textos también—son objetos al fin y al cabo, en
sentido amplio—y por tanto, más en concreto, como una caracterización
de nuestra propia respuesta a la Fenomenología
del Espíritu. En tanto que teoría hermenéutica, está en la
dialéctica hegeliana la base del
interaccionismo simbólico como teoría del significado de los objetos:
significado no objetivo (no residente en el objeto) ni subjetivo (no
asignado por la mente del intérprete sin más) sino precisamente
dialéctico y dialógico, una respuesta a un proceso de interacción entre
el intérprete y otros intérpretes—en el caso estudiado por Hegel, las
interpretaciones recibidas que hacen que el objeto sea para nosotros lo
que es, antes de ser transformado por nuestro reposicionamiento y
nuestra reconceptualización del mismo.
Tiene la empresa de Hegel un fuerte componente retrospectivizante, o
retroactivizante, como todo proceso basado en la dialéctica
reinterpretativa, o en la circulación hermenéutica. Distingue
constantemente la mente observadora del fenomenólogo analista (el autor
Hegel, o el "narrador" de la obra si se quiere) de las aventuras del
héroe, el Espíritu sólo parcialmente consciente de sí, encarnándose en
un avatar tras otro: "It is important to realize that the sensing,
perceiving, understanding and self-conscious mind does not perceive the
logical connections which lead from each of these stages to the next.
It is we, the
phenomenologists, who perceive them. (....) It is the watching
phenomenologist who discerns all these transitions, and who above all
performs the difficult, non-formal transition from 'Things are
interacting in a manner X' to
'We all are understanding
things as interacting in a manner X"
(xvi). Como en otras narraciones, es el discurso el que guía nuestra
atención aquí y nos lleva de la mano por una colección de experiencias
que no podríamos tener si no por el hilo conductor que nos proporciona,
su control del tiempo, de los personajes, del punto de vista, y del
comentario evaluador.
Llama la atención Findlay sobre la crítica de Hegel al
reduccionismo—algo dijimos ya sobre esto a cuenta de Raymond Tallis y la
nueva refutación de la frenología.
Hoy en día el reduccionismo aparece en forma de la neurociencia
cognitiva, las resonancias neuronales, etc., a las que en última
instancia podemos aplicar el mismo razonamiento hegeliano que Findlay
propone aplicar prospectivamente a los behavioristas, Watson y Tolman y
Skinner, a saber, que "The manoeuvres of reductionism are accordingly
vain: if mind can be modelled by matter, matter must be possessed of
every intricate modality of mind. Nothing has been achieved by the
'reduction', and, since the phenomena of self-consciousness are richer
and more intrinsically intelligible than the limited repertoire that we
ordinarily ascribe to matter, it is matter rather than mind that is
thereby reduced" (xix).
Pero puedo dispersarme. Para dirigir la atención al centro mismo de la
cuestión, transcribo aquí dos secciones relacionadas: al ya citado final de la
Introducción de Hegel a la Fenomenología,
§80-88, compararemos y superpondremos el final de la sección sobre el Conocimiento Absoluto, §§
800-808, bonita simetría o correspondencia. Con estos párrafos termina la Fenomenología del Espíritu:
§800. But as regards the existence of
this Notion, Science does not appear in Time and in the actual world
before Spirit has attained to this consciousness about itself. As
Spirit that knows what it is, it does not exist before, and nowhere at
all, till after the completion of its work of compelling its imperfect
'shape' to procure for its consciousness the 'shape' of its essence,
and in this way to equate its self-consciousness with its own consciousness. Spirit that is in and for itself and differentiated into its moments is a knowing that is for itself, a comprehension in general that, as such, substance has not yet reached, i.e. substance is not in its own self an absolute knowing.
§801.
Now, in actuality, the substance that knows exists earlier than its
form or its Notion-determined 'shape'. For substance is the as yet
undeveloped in-itself, or the Ground and Notion in its still unmoved simplicity, and therefore the inwardness of the Self of the Spirit that does not yet exist. What is there, exists as the still undeveloped simple and immediate, or as the object of the picture-thinking consciousness in general. Cognition, because it is the spiritual consciousness for which what is in itself only is, in so far as it is a being for the Self and a being of the Self or
Notion, has for this reason at first only a meagre object, in contrast
with which substance and the consciousness of this substance are
richer. The disclosure or revelation which substance has in this
consciousness is in fact concealment, for substance is still for self-less being and what is disclosed to it is only the certainty of itself. At first, therefore, only the abstract moments of susbstance belong to self- consciousness;
but since these, as pure movements, spontaneously impel themselves
onward, self-consciousness enriches itself till it has wrested from
consciousness the entire substance and has absorbed into itself the
entire structure of the essentialities of substance. And, since this
negative attitude to objectivity is just as much positive, it is a
positing, it has produced them out of itself, and in so doing has at
the same time restored them for consciousness. In the Notion that knows
itself as Notion, the moments thus appear earlier than the filled [or fulfilled] whole whose coming-to-be is the movement of those moments. In consciousness, on the other hand, the whole, though uncomprehended, is prior to the moments. Time is the Notion itself that is there and
which presents itself to consciousness as an empty intuition; for this
reason, Spirit necessarily appears in Time, and it appears in Time just
so long as it has not grasped its pure Notion, i.e. has not annulled Time. It is the outer, intuited pure Self which is not grasped by
the Self, the merely intuited Notion; when this latter grasps itself it
sets aside its Time-form, comprehends this intuiting, and is a
comprehended and comprehending intuiting. Time, therefore, appears as
the destiny and necessity of Spirit that is not yet complete within
itself, the necessity to enrich the share which self-consciousness has
in consciousness, to set in motion the immediacy of the in-itself, which
is the form in which substance is present to consciousness; or
conversely, to realize and reveal what is at first only inward (the in-itself being taken as what is inward), i.e. to vindicate it for Spirit's certainty of itself.
§802. For this reason it must be said that nothing is known that is not in experience, or, as it is also expressed, that is not felt to be true, not given as an inwardly revealed eternal verity, as something sacred that is believed, or whatever other expressions have been used. For experience is just this, the content—which is Spirit—is in itself substance, and therefore an object of consciousness. But this substance which is Spirit in the process in which Spirit becomes what it is in itself ; and it is only as this process of reflecting itself into itself that it is in itself truly Spirit. It is in itself the movement which is cognition—the transformation of the in-itself into that which is for itself, of Substance into Subject, of the object of consciousness into an object of self-consciousness, i.e. into an object that is just as much superseded, or into the Notion.[Compárese este aserto con el proceso resultante del psicoanálisis según Freud: "donde estaba el ello, allí estará el yo"].
The movement is the circle that returns into itself, the circle that
presupposes its beginning and reaches it only at the end. [De ahí el dicho de Hegel de que la lechuza de Atenea emprende el vuelo sólo al llegar la noche.] Hence,
so far as Spirit is necessarily this immanent differentiation, its
intuited whole appears over against its simple self-consciousness, and
since, then, the former is what is differentiated, it is differentiated
into its intuited pure Notion, into Time and into the content or into the in-itself. Substance is charged, as Subject, with the at first only inward necessity of setting forth within itself what is in itself, of exhibiting itself as Spirit. Only
when the objective presentation is complete it is at the same time the
reflection of substance or the process in which substance becomes Self.
Consequently, until Spirit has completed itself in itself,
until it has completed itself as world-Spirit, it cannot reach its
consummation as self-conscious Spirit. Therefore, the content of
religion proclaims earlier in time than does Science, what Spirit is, but only Science is its true knowledge of itself.
§803. The movement of carrying forward the form of its self-knowledge
is the labour which it accomplishes as actual History. The religious
community, so far as it is at first the substance of absolute Spirit,
is the uncultivated consciousness whose existence is all the harsher
and more barbarous the deeper its inner Spirit is, and the deeper its
Spirit is, the harder the task that its torpid Self has within its
essence, with the alien content of its consciousness. Not until
consciousness has given us hope of overcoming that alienation in an
external, i.e. alien, manner does it turn to itself, because the
overcoming of that alienation is the return into self-consciousness;
not until then does it turn to its own present world and discover it as
its property, thus taking the first step towards coming down out of the
intellectual world,
or rather towards quickening the abstract element of that world with
the actual Self. Through Observation it finds, on the one hand,
existence in the shape of Thought and comprehends it, and, conversely,
in its thinking it comprehends existence. When, to begin with, it has
thus expressed the immediate unity of Thought and Being, the unity of abstract essence and the Self, abstractly; and when it has expressed the primal Light in a purer
form, viz. as unity of extension and being—for extension is the simple
unity which more nearly resembles pure thought than light does—and in
so doing has revived in thought the Substance of the Orient, Spirit at once recoils in horror from the abstract unity, from this self-less
substantiality, and against it affirms individuality. But only after it
has externalized this individuality in the sphere of culture, thereby
giving it an existence, and establishing it throughout the whole of
existence—only after Spirit has arrived at the thought of utility, and
in its absolute freedom has grasped existence as its will, only then
does it turn the thought of its inmost depth outwards and enunciate
essence as 'I'='I'. But this 'I'='I' is the movement which reflects
itself into itself; for since this identity, being absolute negativity,
is absolute difference, the self-identity of the 'I' stands over
against this pure difference which, as pure and at the same time
objetive to the self-knowing Self, has to be expressed as Time. So
that, just as previously essence was declared to be the unity of
Thought and Extension, it would now have to be grasped as the unity of
Thought and Extension, it would now have to be grasped as the unity of
Thought and Time. But the difference left to itself, unresting and
unhalting Time, collapses rather within itself; it is the objective
repose of extension, while extension is pure identity with itself, the 'I'. In other words, the 'I' is not merely the Self, but the identity of the Self with itself; but this identity is complete and immediate oneness with Self, or this Subject is just as much Substance. Substance,
just by itself, would be intuition devoid of content, or the intuition
of a content which, as determinate, would be only accidental and would
lack necessity. Substance would pass for the Absolute only in so far as
it was thought or intuited as absolute unity;
and all content would, as regards its diversity, have to fall outside
of it into Reflection; and Reflection does not pertain to Substance,
because Substance would not be Subject, would not be grasped as
reflecting on itself and reflecting itself into itself, would not ne
grasped as Spirit. If a content were to be spoken of anyway, it would,
on the one hand, only be spoken of in order to cast it into the empty
abyss of the Absolute, and on the other, it would be a content picked
up in external fashion from sense-perception. Knowledge would seem to
have come by things, by what is different from itself, and by the
difference of a variety of things, without comprehending how and whence
they came.
§804. Spirit, however, has shown itself to us to be neither merely the
withdrawal of self-consciousness into its pure inwardness, nor the mere
submergence of self-consciousness into substance, and the non-being of
its [moment of] difference; but Spirit is this movement
of the Self which empties itself of itself and sinks itself into its
substance, and also, as Subject, has gone out of that substance into
itself, making the substance into an object and a content at the same
time as it cancels tis difference between objectivity and content. That
first reflection out of immediacy is the Subject's differentiation of
itself from its substance, or the Notion's separation of itself from
itself, the withdrawal into itself and the becoming of the pure 'I'.
Since this difference is the pure act of 'I'='I', the Notion is the
necessity and the uprising of existence which
has substance for its essence and subsists on its own account. But this
subsistence of existence on its own account is the Notion posited
in determinateness and is thus also its immanent movement,
that of going down into the simple substance, which is Subject only as
this negativity and movement. The 'I' has neither to cling to itself in
the form of self-consciousness
as against the form of substantiality and objectivity, as if it were
afraid of the externalization of itself: the power of Spirit lies
rather in remaining the selfsame Spirit in its externalization and, as
that which is both in itself and for itself, in making its being-for-self no less merely a moment than its in-itself; nor is Spirit a tertium quid
that casts the differences back into the abyss of the Absolute and
declares that therein they are all the same; on the contrary, knowing
is this seeming inactivity which merely contemplates how what is
differentiated spontaneously moves into its own self and returns into
its unity.
§805. In this knowing, then, Spirit has concluded the movement in which
it has shaped itself, in so far as this shaping was burdened with the
difference of consciousness [i.e. of the latter from its object], a
difference now overcome. Spirit has won the pure element of its
existence, the Notion. The content, in accordance with the freedom of its being,
is the self-alienating Self, or the immediate unity of self-knowledge.
The pure movement of this alienation, considered in connection with the
content, constitutes the necessity of the content. The distinct content, as determinate, is in relation, is not 'in itself'; it is its own restless process of superseding itself, or negativity ; therefore, negativity or diversity, like free being, is also the Self; and in this self-like form in which existence is immediately thought, the content is the Notion. Spirit, therefore, having won the Notion, displays its existence and movement in this ether of its life and is Science. In this, the moments of its movement no longer exhibit themselves as specific shapes of consciousness, but—since consciousness's difference has returned into the Self—as specific Notions
and as their organic self-grounded movement. Whereas in the
phenomenology of Spirit each moment is the difference of knowledge and
Truth, and is the movement in which that difference is cancelled,
Science on the other hand does not contain this difference and the
cancelling of it. On the contrary, since the moment has the form of the
Notion, it unites the objective form of Truth and of the knowing Self
in an immediate unity. The moment does not appear as this movement of
passing back and forth, from consciousness or picture-thinking into
self-consciousness, and conversely: on the contrary, its pure shape,
freed from its appearance in consciousness, the pure Notion and its
onward movement, depends solely on its pure determinateness.
Conversely, to each abstract moment of Science corresponds a shape of
manifest Spirit as such. Just as Spirit in its existence is not richer
than Science, so too it is not poorer either in content. To know the
pure Notions of Science in this form of shapes of consciousness
constitutes this side of their reality, in accordance with which their
essence, the Notion, which is posited in them in its simple mediation as thinking, breaks asunder the moments of this mediation and exhibits itself in accordance with the inner antithesis.
§806. Science contains within itself this necessity of externalizing
the form of the Notion, and it contains the passage of the Notion into consciousness.
For the self-knowing Spirit, just because it grasps its Notion, is the
immediate identity with itself which, in its difference, is the certainty of immediacy, or sense-consciousness—the
beginning from which we started. This release of itself from the form
of its Self is the supreme freedom and assurance of its self-knowledge.
§807. Yet this externalization is still incomplete; it expresses the
connection of its self-certainty with the object which, just because it
is thus connected, has not yet won its complete freedom. The
self-knowing Spirit knows not only itself but also the negative of
itself, or its limit: to know one's limit is to know how to sacrifice
oneself. This sacrifice is the externalization in which Spirit displays
the process of its becoming Spirit in the form of free contingent happening, intuiting its pure Self as Time outside of it, and equally its Being as Space. This last becoming of Spirit, Nature,
is its living immediate Becoming; Nature, the externalized Spirit, is
in its existence nothing but this eternal externalization of its continuing existence and the movement which reinstates the Subject.
§808. But the othe side of its Becoming, History, is a consicous, self-mediating process—Spirit
emptied out into Time; but this externalization, this kenosis, is
equally an externalization of itself; the negative is the negative of
itself. This Becoming presents a slow-moving succession of Spirits, a
gallery of images, each of which, endowed with all the riches of
Spirit, moves thus slowly just because the Self has to penetrate and
digest this entire wealth of its substance. As its fulfilment consists
in perfectly knowing what it is, in knowing its substance, this knowing is its withdrawal into itself
in which it abandons its outer existence and gives its existential
shape over to recollection. Thus absorbed in itself, it is sunk in the
night of its self-consciousness; but in that night its vanished outer
existence is preserved, and this transformed existence—the former one,
but now reborn of the Spirit's knowledge—is the new existence, a new
world and a new shape of Spirit. In the immediacy of this new existnece
the Spirit has to start afresh to bring itself to maturity as if, for
it, all that preceded were lost and it had learned nothing from the
experience of the earlier Spirits. But recollection, the inwardizing,
of that experience, has preserved it and is the inner being, and in
fact the higher form of the substance. So although this Spirit starts
afresh and apparently from its own resources to bring itself to
maturity, it is nonetheless on a higher level that it starts[—a
hombros de gigantes, por así decirlo. Se observa en esta especie de
"nuevo cielo y nueva tierra" de Hegel, este mundo nuevo en el que el
Espíritu recomienza su aventura, una versión del mito cristiano del Más
Allá; el mundo físico y su transcurrir ha quedado superado y
transfigurado en una nueva dimension espiritual, en la que todo queda
salvado y alcanza su auténtico ser, viendo la realidad de las cosas
cara a cara, inmediatamente, y no a través del cristal oscuro de la
consciencia imperfecta. De ahí que algunos ven en Hegel a un filósofo
"cristiano". Yo diría más bien que parte de la tradición cristiana, y
la supera al modo que él describe. La imagen del cáliz y de la
divinidad que cierra el libro deja clara la inspiración cristiana de
Hegel, y su voluntad de atenerse a un simbolismo cristiano usado
deliberadamente (poéticamente) como uno de los lenguajes del Espíritu;
al igual que hoy podemos utilizar el lenguaje de Hegel para este
propósito. Pero el cristianismo como tal queda muy atrás como una fase
concreta de esta fenomenología del Espíritu, aunque pueda ser habitado
por el filósofo en el Más Allá de la reflexión, y comprendido como
nunca lo comprendieron ni Cristo ni Santo Tomás].
The realm of Spirits which is formed in this way in the outer world
constitutes a succession in Time in which one Spirit relieved another
of its charge and each took over the empire of the world from its
predecessor. Their goal is the revelation of the depth of Spirit, and
this is the absolute Notion. This revelation is, therefore, the raising-up of its depth, or its extension,
the negativity of this withdrawn 'I', a negativity which is its
externalization or its substance, and this revelation is also the
Notion's Time, in that this externalization is in its own self
externalized, and just as it is in its extension, so it is equally in
its depth, in the Self. The goal,
Absolute Knowing, or spirit that knows itself as Spirit, has for its
path the recollection of the Spirits as they are in themselves and as
they accomplish the organization of their realm. Their preservation,
regarded from the side of their free existence appearing in the form of
contingency, is History; but regarded from the side of their
[philosophically] comprehended organization, it is the Science of
Knowing in the sphere of appearance (1): the two together, comprehended
History, form alike the inwardizing and the Calvary of absolute Spirit,
the actuality, truth, and certainty of his throne, without which he
would be lifeless and alone. Only
from the chalice of this realm of spirits foams forth for Him his own infinitude. (2)
(1). Phenomenology
(2). Adaptation of Schiller's Die Freundschaft, ad fin.
[—Obsérvese cómo la imaginería cristiana de este finale casi sinfónico efectúa una síntesis conceptual entre dos Innombrables
en interacción dialéctica consigo mismos—el Dios del Génesis que crea
el cosmos para estar menos solo en el vacío de la eternidad, y el
propio sujeto pensante, el filósofo pensando a ese dios y pensándose a
sí mismo en la última atalaya del pensamiento.]
—oOo—
Si hay una idea central en la Fenomenología del Espíritu, está
en estas secciones autoexplicativas, el mapa conceptual de la obra visto desde su propia topsight, en donde se explica cómo el conocimiento se vuelve
reflexivamente sobre sí; cómo consiste en comprender y superar sus
fases previas y superadas; cómo la vía a la comprensión de la realidad
es el estudio de cómo la realidad se ha comprendido—cómo la humanidad
lleva dentro de sí la historia de la humanidad, y cómo la filosofía no
puede separarse de la historia de la filosofía.
—oOo—
Termino con una pequeña colección de comentarios que he ido haciendo al
hilo de algunos episodios de la Fenomenología
del Espíritu, releídos desde mi propia perspectiva, es decir, tirando un poco hacia la narratología, la semiótica y la teoría literaria.
—según la lectura que hace J. N. Findlay de la Fenomenología del Espíritu de
Hegel. Según Hegel, el primer paso más allá de la ética racionalista
hacia una ética espiritual se discierne en la tragedia griega. Su
análisis es de interés no sólo para una teoría del espíritu o del
conocimiento (en la que se inserta) sino de modo más local en tanto que
es un análisis profundo de la estructura ideológica del drama— sus
esquemas organizativos, o su estructura profunda, si así queremos
decirlo. Es por tanto una interpretación del drama basada en una teoría
cultural de la sociedad, y también una teoría narratológica. Anticipa
también de modo notable la oposición nietzscheana entre el lado
apolíneo y dionisíaco de la tragedia. También es toda una teoría del
género, y resulta ser así una narratología cultural de la diferencia
genérica. En fin, que es una perspectiva sobre la tragedia griega
enormemente sugerente. Así la sintetiza Findlay en su prólogo a la Fenomenología del Espíritu:
Hegel
finds the exemplary material for this first, rudimentary form of
spirituality in the ethical world of Greek tragedy, with which he had
come into vivid contact in his Gymnasium studies at Stuttgart.
Rudimentary spiritual life is not the life of an undivided community
with which the individual subject identifies himself whole-heartedly:
it is essentially bifocal, and centres as much in the family, with its
unwritten prescriptions dimly backed by dead ancestors, as in the overt
power of the State, with its openly proclaimed, 'daylight' laws. The
law of the family is a divine law, a law stemming from the underworld
of the unconscious, and interpreted by the intuitive females of the
family: the state law is on the contrary human, and is proclaimed and
enforced by mature males. Hegel makes plain that these laws must at
times clash—the theme of the Antigone
and other tragedies: in the case of such clashes, the individual incurs
guilt whatever he may do. Obviously Hegel has here seized on a very
profound source of disunity in ethical spiritual life: the clash
between a self-transcendence which is deep, but also tinged with
contingent immediacy, and a self-transcencence which can be extended
indefinitely, but in that very extensibility necessarily lacks depth.
The truly moral life to which we must advance will be as deep in its
care for individual problems and circumstances as it is wide in its
concern for anyone and everyone. For the time being, however, the rent
life of the primitive ethical community must yield place to a spiritual
life where all intimacy is dissolved. (Findlay xxi).
—que será ejemplificada por Hegel, en las fases fenomenológicas
atravesadas por el espíritu, por el mundo del imperio romano.
Los apartados en que trata Hegel la cuestión de las dos leyes y de los
conflictos éticos, con el ejemplo de Antígona, están en la scción VI,
"Spirit", de la Fenomenología del
Espíritu, especialmente
§438-476. Reproduciré aquí no el texto de Hegel, sino su síntesis en el
comentario o explicación de Findlay sobre las secciones más relevantes
para el drama.
Primero, establece Hegel cómo la vida espiritual de una comunidad se
divide en dos ámbitos regidos por dos leyes: el ámbito humano del
Estado, la ley y la vida "diurna" de la comunidad, y el ámbito
familiar, ámbito divino y más unido a la intuición y a la tradición. El
primero es masculino y el segundo femenino, y el primero descansa en
última instancia sobre el segundo.
VI. SPIRIT
(...)
§439. The essence of Spirit has already been recognized as the ethical
substance, the customs and laws of a society. Spirit, however, is the
ethical actuality which, when it confronts itself in objective social
form, has lost all sense of strangeness in what it has before it. The
ethical substance of custom and law is the foundation and source of
everyone's action and the aim towards which it tends: it is the common
work which men's co-operative efforts seek to bring about. The etical
substance is as it were the infinite self-dispending benevolence on
which every individual draws. It is of the essence of this substance to
come to life in distinct individuals and to act through and in them.
§440. Spirit is the absolutely real being of which all previous forms
of consciousness have represented falsely isolated abstractions, which
the diealectic development has shown them to be. In the previous stage
of observational and active Reason, Sirit has rather had Reason than been
Reason: it has imposed itself as a category on material not
intrinsically categorized. When Spirit sees itself and its world as
being Reason it becomes ethical substance actualized.
§441. Spirit in its immediacy is the ethical life of a people, of
individuality at once with a social world. But it must advance to the
full consciousness of what it immediately is through many complex
stages, stages realized in a total social world and not merely in a
separate individual consciousness.
§442-3. The living ethical world of spirit is its truth, its abstract
self-knowledge being the formal generality of law. But it dirempts
itself on the one hand into the hard reality of a world of culture, and
on the other hand into the inner reality of a world of faith and
insight. The conflict between these two modes of experience is resolved
in Spirit-sure-of-itself, i.e. in morality. Out of all these attitudes
the actual self-consciousness of absolute Spirit will make its
appearance.
THE TRUE SPIRIT. THE
ETHICAL ORDER. §444. Spirit
is a consciousness which intrinsically
separates its moments, whether in its substance or in its
consciousness.
In its consciousness the individual moral act and the accomplished work
are separated from the general moral substance or essence: the term
which serves as middle term between them is the individual conscious
agent.
§445. The ethical substance, i.e. the system of laws and customs, itself
reflects the distinction between the individual action or agent, on the
one hand, and the moral substance or essence, on the other. It splits
up into a human and a divine law. The individual harried by these
contradictory laws both knows and does not know the wrongness of his
acts, and is tragically destroyed in the conflict. Through such tragic
instances, individuals learn to advance beyond blind obedience to law
and custom. They achieve the ability to make conscious decisions to
obey or disobey.
THE ETHICAL WORLD
§446. Spirit is essentially self-diremptive. But just as bare being
dirempts itself into the Thing with its many properties, so the ethical
life dirempts itself into a web of ethical relations. Adn just as the
many properties of the Thing concentrate themselves into the contrast
between individuality and universality, so too do ethical laws resolve
themselves into individual and universal laws.
§447. The ethical substance, as individual reality, is the commonality
which realizes itself in a plurality of existent consciousnesses in all
of which it is consciously reflected, but which also underlies them as
substance and contains them in itself. As actual substance it is a
people, as actual consciousness the citizens of that people. Such a
people is not anything unreal: it exists and prevails.
§448. This Spirit can be called the human law since it is a completely
self-conscious actuality. It is present as the known law and the
prevailing custom. It shows itself in the assurance of individuals
generally, and of the government in particular. It has a daylight sway,
and lets individuals go freely about their business.
§449. The ethical substance reveals itself, however, in another law,
the Divine Law, which springs from the immediate, simple essence of the
ethical, and is opposed to the fully conscious dimension of action, and
extends down to the inner essence of individuals.
§450. The Divine Law has its own self-consciousness, the immediate
consciousness of self-in-other, in a natural ethical community, the
Family. The Family is that elementary, unconscious ethical being which
is opposed to, and yet is also presupposed by, the conscious ethical
being of the people and their devotion to common ends.
§451. In the Family natural relations carry universal ethical meaning.
The individual in the Family is primarily related to the Family as a
whole, and not by ties of love and sentiment to its particular members.
The Family, further, is not concerned to promote the well-being of its
particular members, nor to offer them protection. It is concerned with
individuality raised out of the unrest and change of life into the
universality of death, i.e. the Family exists to promote the cult of
the dead.
§452. The individuality by dying achieves peace and universality
through a merely natural process. As regards its timing it is only
accidentally connected with the services he performs to the community,
even though dying is in a sense the supreme service to the community
that a man can perform, in furnishing the Family with its ancestral
pantheon, its household Lares. In order, however, that the individual's
taking up into universality may be effective, it must be helped out by
a conscious act on the part of the Family members. This act may
indifferently be regarded as the saving of the deceased individual from
destruction, or as the conscious effecting of that destruction, so that
the individual becomes a thing of the past, a universal meaning. The
Family resists the corruption of worms and of chemical agencies by
substituting their own conscious work in its place, by consigning the
dead individual solemnly to the imperishable elementary individual, the
earth. It thereby also makes the dead person an imperishable presiding
part of the Family.
§454. There are in both laws differences and gradations. In discussing
these we shall see them in active operation, enjoying their own
self-consciousness and also interacting with one another.
§455. The human law has its living seat in the government in which it
also assumes individual form. The government is the actual Spirit which
reflects on itself, and is the self of the whole ethical substance. It
may accord a limited independence to the families under its sway, but
is always ready to subordinate them to the whole It may likewise accord
a limited independence to individuals promoting their own gain and
enjoyment, but it has to prevent such individual concerns from becoming
overriding. From tim to time it must foster wars to prevent individual
life from becoming a mere case of natural being, and ceasing to serve
the freedom and power of the social whole. The daylight, human law,
however, always bases its authority on the deeper authority of the
subterranean Divine Law.
§456. The Divine Law governs three different family-relationships, that
of husband to wife, of parents to children, and of siblings to
one another. The husband-wife relation is a case of immediate
self-recognition in another consciousness which has also a mainly
natural character: its reality lies outside of itself, in the children,
in which it passes away.
§457. A relationship unmiexed with transience or inequality of status
is that of brother and sister. In them identity of blood has come to
tranquillity and equilibrium. As sister, a woman has the highest
intimations of ethical essence, not yet brought out into actuality or
full consciousness: she manifests internal feeling and the divinity
that is raised above the actual. As daughter, a woman must see her
parents pass away with resigned tenderness, as mother and wife there is
something natural and replaceable about her, and her unequal relation
to her husband, in which she has dueties where he mainly has pleasures,
means that she cannot be fully aware of herself in another. In brother
and sister there are none of the inequalities due to desire nor any
possibility of replacement: the loss of a brother is irreparable to a
sister, and her duty to him is the highest.
§458. The brother represents the family-spirit at its most individual
and therefore turned outwards towards a wider universality. The brother
leaves the immediate, elemental, negative ethical life of the family to
achieve a self-conscious, actual ethical life.
§459. The brother passes from the suzerainty of the divine to that of
the human law: the sister or wife remains the guardian of the Divine
Law. They have each a different natural vocation, a sequel of the
vocation considered above in the 'task itself', a vocation which has
its outer expression in the distinction of sex.
§460. The human and ethical orders require one another. The human law
has its roots in the divine order, whereas the Divine law is only
actual in the daylight realm of existence and activity.
§461. The ethical system in its two branches fulfils all the perfect
categories that have led up to it. It is rational in that it unites
self-consciousness and objectivity. It observes itself in the customs
which surround it. It has pleasure in the family life and necessity in
the wider social order. It has the law of the heart at its root which
is also the law of all hearts. It exhibits virtue and the devotion to
the 'task itself'. It provides the criterion by which all detailed
projects and acts are tested.
§462. The ethical whole is a tranquil equilibrium of parts in which
each finds its stisfaction in this equilibrium with the whole. Justice
is the agency which restores this equilibrium whenever it is disturbed
by individuals or classes. The communal spirit avenges itself on wrongs
done to its members, wrongs which have the mechanical character of the
merely natural, by equally natural expedients of revenge.
§463. Universal self-conscious Spirit is chiefly manifest in the man,
unconscious individualized Spirit in the woman: both serve as middle
terms in what amounts to the same syllogism uniting the divine with the
human law.
A continuación ejemplifica Hegel, aludiendo al ejemplo de Antígona,
el surgimiento del acto moral (y trágico) como consecuencia del
conflicto entre las dos leyes, entre el ámbito del Estado y el ámbito
de la familia. Es un conflicto surgido de la acción individual:
§464.
In the opposition of the two laws we have not yet considered the role
of the individual and his deed. It is the individual's deed which
brings the two laws into conflict. A dreadful fate (Schicksal) here enters the scene
and makes action come out on one side or the other.
§465. The individual's self-alignment with one law does not, however,
involve internal debate and arbitrary choice, only immediate,
unhesitant, dutiful self-commitment. There is no quarrel of duty with
duty. It is one's sex, Hegel suggests, which decides which law one will
obey.
§466. In self-consciousness the two laws are explicit, not merely
implicit as in ordinary ethical life. The individual's character
commits him to one law. The other seems to him only an unrighteous
actuality (será el
punto de vista de Antígona sobre la orden de Creonte) or a case
of human obstinacy or perversity (es así como ve Creonte la obstinación de
Antígona).
§467. The ethical
consciousness cannot (like the consciousness that preceded it) draw any
distinction between an objective order and its own subjective order: it
cannot doubt that the law it obeys has absolute authority. Nor is there
any taint of individuality left over that can deflect it from the path
of duty. (Así pues, la
acción de Antígona no se debe a un impulso individualista o de aserción
de su propio yo). It
cannot conceive that the duty could be other than what it knows it to
be.
§468. None the less the ethical consciousness cannot divert itself of
allegiance to both laws, and so cannot escape guilt when it opts for
the one as opposed for the other. Only an inert, unconscious stone can
avoid incurring guilt. The guilt is, however, not individual, but
collective. It is the guilt of a whole class or sex.
§469. The law violated by an individual's act necessarily demands
vindication, even though its voice was not at the time heard by the
violator. Action brings the unconscious into the daylight, and forces
consciousness to bow to its offended majesty.
§470. The ethical consciousness is most truly guilty when it wittingly rejects
the behests of one law and holds them to be violent and wrong. Its
action denies the demand for real fulfilment which is part of the law,
and so involves real guilt.
§471. The individual cannot survive the tragic conflict in him of the
two laws, neither of which he can repudiate. He cannot merely have a
sentiment (Gesinnung) for the
one. His whole being is consumed in pathos, which is part of his
character as an ethical being.
§472. In the fateful conflict of two laws in different individuals both
individuals undergo destruction. Each is guilty in the face of the law
he has violated. It is in the ethical subordination of both sides that
absolute right is first carried out.
§473. A young man leaves the unconscious natural medium of ethical life
to become ruler of the community and administer the human law. But the
natural character of his origins may show itself in a duplicity of
existence, e.g. Eteocles and Polynices. The community is bound to
honour the one who actually possesses power, and to dishonour the mere
claimant to state power who takes up arms against the community. This
dishonour involves deprivation of burial rights. (Es la forma que toma el
conflicto en la Antígona de Sófocles).
§474. The family-spirit, backed by the Divine Law, and with its roots
in the underworld waters of forgetfulness, is affronted by these human
arrangements. The dead man finds instruments of vengeance by which the
representatives of the human law are in their turn destroyed.
§475. The battle of laws, with its inherent pathos, is carried on by
human agents, which gives it an air of contingency. The atomistic
family has to be liquidated in the continity of communal life, but the
latter continues to have its roots in the former. Womankind, that
eternal source of irony, reduces to ridicule the grave deliberations of
the state elders, and asserts the claims of youth. The communal spirit
then takes its revenge of feminine anarchy by impressing youth into
war. In war the ethical substance asserts its negativity, its freedom
from all existing arrangements. But since victory depends on fortune
and strength, this sort of ethical community breaks down, and is
superseded by a soulless, universal ethical community, based on
limitless individualism.
§476. The destruction of the ethical world of custom lies in its mere
naturalness, its immediacy. This immediacy breaks down because it tries
to combine the unconscious peace of nature with the self-conscious,
unresting peace of Spirit. An ethical system of this natural sort is
inevitably restricted, and gets superseded by another similar system.
Spiritual communal life necessarily detaches itself from such
tribalism, and erects itself into a formally universal 'open society'
(term not used by Hegel) dispersed among a vast horde of separate
individuals.
Sobre la lectura hegeliana de Antígona, puede verse también la
interpretación de Slavoj Zizek, que enfatiza la dimensión
retroactiva de las acciones morales de Antígona
La nuestra de Zaragoza no está para echar cohetes, pero lo que es la
Complutense... está—medio
arruinada, o más que medio, por la crisis general y por la mala
gestión particular. Berzosa ha sido como una plaga de langosta bíblica.
(From A History of English Literature, by
Émile Legouis and Louis Cazamian, Dent, 1937; "Literature of the
Restoration, 1660-1702" - vii, "The Theatre", viii, "The Transition")
The greatest literary activity during the Restoration is to be
found in the sphere of the theatre, and the authors of comedy form,
perhaps, the most brilliant group of writers in their epoch, and one
which best illustrates its moral features. On the other hand, they
outshine their immediate successors. Therefore histories of literature
usually take the Restoration dramatists as a centre for the study of
the English theatre at the end of the seventeenth and the beginning of
the eighteenth century, the classical age being, so to speak, in this
domain, a weaker continuation of that which precedes it.
If one looks at the subject from the point of view of the evolution of
kinds, there may be some advantage in not separating the successive
phases of a movement which extends over some fifty years, and which,
taken altogether, forms a natural whole. Comedy in particular—that of
Wycherley, Congreve, Vanbrugh, and Farquhar—would appear to represent
an unbroken series of connected works. But if the history of literature
is brought into close contact with that of thought, and looked upon as
an aspect of the total development of a society, this linked
succession must be broken up, leaving room for a division that is more
logical, and historically better founded. In reality a generation
separates Wycherley from Congreve.
The break, in the interval, is marked by the Revolution of 1688, with
the moral changes which accompany it. In every respect English
literature between 1688 and 1702 forms a period of transition; both in
inspiration and in style, it then bears the stamp of a special
character; and each literary kind reveals the influence of a spirit
akin, no doubt, to that of the Restoration itself, but still different
from it. In order to understand this period, it will be useful to view
it as a whole.
The dates 1660 and 1688 therefore, for the time being, limit the field
of this survey. No doubt the dramatic career of Dryden is not wholly
contained within those years, but the five plays with which his career
ends, between 1690 and 1694, may be connected quite naturally with the
twenty-three which have preceded them. The works of Dryden, Etherege,
Wycherley, Lee, Otway, together with those of their immediate
contemporaries, constitute properly speaking the theatre of the
Restoration.
2.
The Beginnings: D'Avenant. Foreign Influences and National Tradition The Puritan Revolution had closed the playhouses in 1642; for
fourteen years, no regular performance was given, save in private, or
under the menace of the law. In fact, the life of the theatre was
suspended. The silence of the stage most certainly was impatiently
borne by many; but the supporters of an austere code of morals had thus
satisfied an ancient grudge, and the severity they displayed in their
control of manners made any protest futile in advance. In 1656, the
secret lassitude of all wills was groing patent enough, or the
rule—however glorious—of the Protectorate was tending plainly enough to
a political and social relaxation, for a skilful man to turn the
obstacle which no one dared attack openly, Sir William D'Avenant, the
author of plays staged before the Civil War, Poet Laurate under Charles
I, closely associated with the royal cause, obtained permission to open
to the public an 'allegorical entertainment by declamation and music,
after the manner of the ancients' (The
First Day's Entertainment at Rutland House).
This first and discreet attempt—rather hazardous, however, if one stops
to ponder over certain remarks of Aristophanes, the advocate of
theatrical art—was followed the same year by a more ambitious show, The Siege of Rhodes.
One of the main influences that are preparing a new phase in dramatic
art is here clarly apparent. D'Avenant had resided in France; he had
come into contact there with an artistic and literary atmosphere rich
in suggestions: that of the confused but fertile period when classicism
was flowering into full bloom. To England he brought back many confused
ideas and preferences, the product of which is a hybrid work, of still
uncertain character. In The Siege of
Rhodes
are to be found suggestions furnished by Corneille, with his conception
of love and of noble sentiments; next, the rather similar inspiration
of the romances of Gomberville, La Calprenède, and the Scudérys, which
were already popular in England; lastly, a taste for the opera, which
was being implanted in France with the Italian performances under
Mazarin, and with the Andromède
of Corneille (1650). And mingling with these elements, we find memories
of the national theatre, under the form in which it was being kept
alive, about 1640, by the degenerate disciples of Fletcher.
The first part of The Siege of Rhodes
is divided into 'entries,' like the ballets of Benserade, which were
the rate at the court of the young Louis XIV. It is written in rhymed
verse, in a very free and variable measure, adapted, as the author
tells us, to the demands of the recitative, then a novelty in England.
As for the subject, it is 'heroic, and destined to recommend virtue
'under the forms of valour and conjugal love.' A naïve sincere ardour,
in which one feels a youthfulness of spirit, despirte its
self-consciousness, animates this romantic work, clumsy in places, but
at times raised by the lyricism of honour and passion. It can be
regarded as the germ both of English opera and of heroic tragedy. While
the scenic displays, the wealth of accessories, the striving after
great picturesque effects, the 'machines' on a narrow stage the town of
Rhodes, the port, the fleet and the camp of the Turks had to be
presented either together or successively) were not unknown in English
dramatic art before 1656, it is none the less true that through its
material figuration also the play caused a sensation, and marks a date.
Lastly, if it is not a fact that an actress, appeared in it for the
first time in England, it is certain that an English actress played one
of the leading parts, and that this daring and almost unprecedented
step became a common feature of the Restoration theatre.
Before 1660, D'Avenant wrote two other plays of the same kind, and
tried, by selecting national themes, to prevent the possible revival of
Puritan susceptibility. When the king's return brought with it the
liberty of the theatre, he with Thomas Killigrew was given charge of
one of the two troupes of actors, and one of the two playhouses, which
were authorised by letters patent.
In order to understand the development of dramatic art under the
Restoration, one must imagine these two companies, that of the king and
that of his brother the Duke of York, gathering together talented
actors, such as Betterton, and actresses, such as Nell Gwynn, whose
charm as much as their stage gifts make them the idols of the public.
Greedily attracted to long-forbidden pleasures, elegant society crowded
to the plays, which very often were honoured by the favour and the
presence of the king; the theatre now became, for the young noblemen,
both a fashionable amusement and a daily occasion for meetings and
intrigues. The brilliant house, frequented also by the wealthy and
cultured part of the middle class, and where Pepys, a citizen of
London, liked to rub shoulders with the upper world and to catch a
glimpse of the king's favourites, is one of the main social centres of
this age, just as it is morally its most complete symbol. The
passion for an art, rendered the more pleasing because it has in it the
value of a protest, expresses a political preference, triumphs over
despised enemies, and gains its freedom at the expense of a conquered
austerity; the attraction of unbridled modes of living which actors and
spectators encouraged one another to exemplify and to applaud; the
atmosphere of gallantry which reigns in the theatre—all these
influences explain the cynicism, and the success, of a literature that
is singularly free, crude in its boldness, insolent in its
self-assertion, and seeming always to pursue, over and above the direct
expression of itself, the confusion of an abolished régime of ideas and
sentiments that had long been tyrannical.
By this moral reaction, this psychological release, the Restoration
theatre is an outcome of the movement itself of national life; it is an
aspect of the new age. But in the dramatic form whith which it invests
the common spirit of the time, it shows itself wholly impregnated with
foreign influences. No other literary kind reveals to the same degree
the range and the variety of the suggestions which, coming from the
Continent, are spreading at this moment over intellectual England.
It is with France that these contacts are most numerous and easily
established. Exiles like D'Avenant, Waller, and Denham bring back with
them a taste which has been made more precise and strengthened along its
own spontaneous lines; in addition, models, images, and rhythms. The
king and the court have a more superficial but just as decided instinct
for the same refined, noble, correct art, for the same elegant and
luxurious existence; an all-powerful and universal magnetism makes the
Paris and the Versailles of Louis XIV the centre whence politeness and
culture radiate, and towards which the desire for a more perfect
civilization converges from every side. Classical tragedy in France
shines with a bright effulgence; translations have already revealed
Corneille to English readers, and soon the tragi-comedies of Thomas
Corneille, the heroic tragedies of Scudéry or Quinault, the comedies of
Molière, and even, though later and with less keenness, the purely
French art of Racine, are all eagerly welcomed and imitated. Their
presgtige is strengthened by that of kindred or similar forms, such as
the romance, the opera, and the ballet. If the influence of France on
the dramatic literature of the Restoration has been exaggerated, or
expressed in too simple terms, it is because other influences, and
notably that of national tradition, have been sometimes neglected, or
examined too cursorily. But the precise examples, the definite traces
of imitations and borrowings, are so numerous; so strong is the general
sense of a diffused suggestion, of an analogy of atmosphere, which the
relative parallelism of the contemporary developments of the two
peoples do not sufficiently account for, that one cannot hesitate in
locating at this point one of the most certain international transfers
of influence in European literature. With D'Avenant and The Siege of Rhodes,
there opens a phase in the history of English drama characterized by
the ascendancy of the French model; and this phase, despite some
interruptions, was to last for a whole century. In borrowing from Corneille something of his romantic pride, and
of his rhetoric of feeling—while not the serious, Cartesian doctrine
underlying all his drama, his theory of will, his notion of love
founded on esteem and reason—it is a little of the spirit of Spain that
D'Avenant found in the French writer; and Spanish influence whether
direct, or derived through the literature and genius of France, is an
element of the original character of the Restoration theatre. This
influence, like a recognizable viein, had run through the English drama
since the time of the Renascence; but it remained superficial, and
generally speaking, influenced scarcely anything save the plot or the
exterior delineation of the characters, not the deeper substance of the
works. After 1660, the tastes of the court and of the king tend to
favour plays which are full of movement, in the manner of those shows
where the 'comedia de capa y espada' had triumphed in Spain; and a
definite Spanish origin can be assigned to plays such as Sir Samuel
Tuke's Adventures of Five Hours,
or George Digby's Elvira.
Elsewhere, the derivation is only partial, and limited to some
episodes, as in Wycherley's Gentleman
Dancing-Master; but it is most often indirect, and still points
to the popularity of the French model.
Leaving out France, it is to national tradition that one must look for
the true sources of the new English theatre, and indeed for the main
sources. Restoration drama and comedy are the outcome of a state of
manners and of a state of mind; and these manners just as this mind,
however strong may be the stamp of foreign influence, are the issue of
an inner original rhythm of the English genius. It seems prefereable to
say only that this rhythm calls for and permits, after 1660, a
widespread and sometimes profound action of the literary or social
impulses that come from France: and therefore, that the affinities
which are thus revealed ought to enter into the very definition of this
phase, and be reckoned among its characteristics.
For the theatre in particular, it is possible to retrace the stages of
the development which leads from the last years of the Renascence to
the Restoration. Before the banning of plays, the life of Drama,
weakened by an inward exhaustion, had already sought refuge in the
complication of the incidents of the plot itself. The outcome of
Beaumont and Fletcher's art was tragi-comedy. At the same time, a kind
of romantic infection, a fashion of adventure, of high-sounding and
complacent heroism, had spread all over Western Europe. The spirit
animating the French Fronde, the romances of chivalry, the epic poems,
the plays of Hardy, Rotrou, and the young Corneille, is like a sort of
second youth, proud and somewhat quarrelsome, on the eve of classical
maturity and balance. Already the signs of this spirit had appeared
before 1640 at the court of Charles I: it comes with the exiled
Cavaliers to the Continent, in as large a measure as they receive it
there; even those who remain in England feel it rise from the
irresistible suggestions of their age, despite the austere sobriety of
the Puritan régime. King Charles II, on his accession to the throne,
installs it in favour; among the courtiers, the court ladies, the men
of fashion, the poets and authors, a chivalrous gallantry, the love of
great exploits, a language strewn with hyperboles, a lofty tone, and a
rather hollow pretension to heroism as to tender love, in their
contrast to the deep cynicism of this age form an organic group of
moral traits, and an essential part of the phyiognomy of the time. The
reason is that England, like France, then lives through a period of
disturbed intellectual exuberance, when the Romanticism of intellect,
of style and imagination replaces that of feelings, which is becoming
exhausted, and that of will, which is condemned by the century in its
progress towards reason and order. During this transition which goes
from Fletcher to Dryden, the daring refinements of the metaphysical
poets, and the lyricism of the Cavalier poets, well show in what
direction the inner trend of contemporary thought is setting.
Thus, heroic tragedy itself is not exclusively the result, in England,
of French examples; it has its true roots in the evolution of the
national mind. D'Avenant, before the triumph of the Puritan
Parliament, and before his stay in France, had written masques for
Charles I, and the English masque may be regarded as one of the origins
of the opera. He had written dramas in which the exalted inspiration of
honour and love made itself felt (Love
and Honour,
1642, etc.); he puts them on the stage again after the Restoration, and
their tone chimes with that of the new theatre. The first plays of
Killigrew (The Prisoners, The
Princess, etc.) performed before the ban upon the theatre,
appear as stages in the same transition.
The courtiers of Charles II, besides, do not only look with favour upon
the plays written to flatter their preferences, but extend a welcome to
the repertory of the English Renascence. No doubt, it is partly through
necessity that, from 1660 onwards, Fletcher and his predecessors are
again taken up: was not theirs a fund which could be drawn upon, while
waiting for the poets to bestir themselves? On the other hand, it is
only too certain that the taste of the epoch judges and classifies the
masterpieces of the great dramatists from a strange angle of vision.
Beaumont and Fletcher are favourites with the public: Ben Jonson, the
particular idol of scholars, and praised on every occasion by the
critics, follows them very closely. Shakespeare, whose greatness is
only felt by a few, pleases the crowd by the secondary aspects of his
genius; he is disconcerting to an average though educated mind, such as
that of Pepys, more often than he is a delight (1).
The limits of incomprehension seem to be reached when theatrical
managers and authors rival one another in adorning Macbeth with ballets, or
transforming The Tempest
into an opera. Dryden himself calmly shared in these profanations. The
successes won by the Elizabethan drama under the Restoration seem due,
very often, to the superficial resemblance of its Romanticism with the
cheaper fanciful instincts of the time; to the appetite of a public
eager for sensations, rather than to a sincere understanding of its
inherent qualities. But when all is said, this drama was there, revived
again and again, recalling itself to the eye and ear alike; the
soundest sensibilities were able to feel its incomparable radiance; and
the continuity of a national art forced itself upon all as a living
tradition. By the very fact of its assertion, it became, in large
measure, a reality.
3.
Heroic Tragedy: Dryden, etc.—
The main substance of heroic tragedy is contained in the
work of Dryden. If he is not the creator of it, he raises it higher
than anyone else, and leaves it at the moment when, after a very
brilliant vogue, it has ceased to please.
It is difficult exactly to determine the origin of this dramatic kind;
many threads go to compose its texture, and many hands have woven it.
In one sense, it represents the completion of a long development, and
unites the most diverse influences—those that have just been
enumerated. On the other hand, the writer who best knew how to manage
this form—Dryden—attributes its most direct parentage to Sir William
D'Avenant, in The Siege of Rhodes (2).
But D'Avenant, he says, has not had the ability or the courage as yet
to pursue his effort to its end; he has not given his play all the
wealth of incidents, the boldness of plot, the variety of characters,
which an heroic poem permits and demands; now, heroic tragedy is
nothing else than a poem which has been made manifest to the eye. Love
and valour will therefore be its mainsprings, just as with Ariosto; the
sentiments, and the style, will freely attain to a grandeur quite
beyond the actual mediocrity of human life. And the measure of the play
will be the rhymed couplet, which has won a place for itself on the
stage, and will henceforth rule over tragedy. It has been said that
rhyme is unnatural, and distant from actual conversation: it is
therefore all the more fitting, in order to raise actions and images
alike above the banality of everyday existence. No doubt it has its
difficulties, but no one is forced to express himself in rhyme; and
such as have been refused this gift will be wise if they abstain from
attempting its beauties or incurring its risks.
The Siege of Rhodes, revisted,
increased by a second part, and staged magnificently in 1662, better
merits in its more developed form the historic honour which Dryden
assigns to it. But other authors can advance their claims; for example,
Roger Boyle, Earl of Orrery, whose Henry
V, Mustapha, and Black
Prince,
written in rhymed couplets, were played at uncertain dates between 1662
and 1667; and Sir Robert Howard, Dryden's own brother-in-law, with whom
he collaborated in 1664 in a play which some regard as the first really
complete heroic drama (The Indian
Queen).
Already in 1664 Dryden himself had produced an example, though not of
the same kind, yet of the most closely related, tragi-comedy, in The Rival Ladies. He was to come
back to this on several occasions in the course of his career, and even
down to his last years (The Maiden
Queen, 1667; The Spanish Friar,
1681; Love Triumphant,
1694); but for a time, it is upon heroic tragedy, properly so called,
that his effort is almost exclusively concentrated; and in this we find
his most brilliant work: The Indian
Empres, 1667: Almanzor
and Almahide, or The Conquest of Granada, in two parts 1669 and 1670; Aureng-Zebe, 1675.
It is easy enough to judge these dramas, provided one examines them in
themselves, and avoids comparing them with the very different ideal of
French classical tragedy. They are, first and foremost, Romantic; in
this sense, they would approximate to the English theatre of the
Renascence; but their Romanticism is impoverished by the exclusive
preoccupation of producing a single kind of effect, just as it does not
escape being shackled, for all that, by a the new attention to rules (3). If one had to look for analogies in
Elizabeth's time, they would be found in the Tamburlaine
of Marlowe, rather than anywhere else. The aim of these plays is to
give to sensibility, imagination, and the senses strong impressions of
a surprising and superhuman grandeur. In France, Corneille also, it is
true, had based tragedy upon admiration; but he had put all the
intellectual quality of his Cartesianism into the emotion of a soul
overwhelmed by the beauty of noble sacrifices; esteem, with him, was
the fruit of a reason sublimated into moral passion, and in this way it
bound up the desires of the heart with the decisions of conscience. And
if the hero merited our entire sympathy, it was because his nobleness
was a conquest, the reward of a cruel struggle against himself. All
this subtlety and, it must be said, this idealism, are absent from
Dryden's notion of heroism; this, no doubt, does not resolve itself
completely into mere physical courage and great strokes of the sword;
but its spiritual value seems to depend chiefly upon the lack of any
struggle, and upon a victory immediately won over nature and the flesh.
Such a shifting of the centre of gravity gives back predominance to
imagination and sensibility; and even with an Aureng-Zebe, the most
inward of Dryden's heroes, the one in whom virtue is endued with the
most distinctly psychological quality, one can say that generosity is
the inborn and purely impulsive gift of temperament. It is not certain
but that this view may be after all the truet and the deepest: but here
it has scarcely any philosophic value, as it is not the outcome of any
deliberate choice; and above all, it has hardly any dramatic worth; its
repeated affirmation, at moments of supreme crisis, rouses our
adimiring wonder, rather than it touches us with a heartfelt admiration.
Other consequences are of a still more serious nature. If heroism has
its way without a struggle, it is always equal to itself, with the
result that there is a fatal resemblance between the heroes. This
dramatic kind was so soon exhausted, because it is afflicted with an
unconquerable monotony. Excluded from the core of the work, as from the
characters, the element of variety seeks refuge in the incidents; the
plot, and the material devices—exoticism, staging, machines,
etc.—assume the importance which the superficial forms of Romantic
drama have always given them. Finally, the style has to suffice for
effects of intensity, which the purely moral force of conflicting
sentiments cannot any longer supply; so that nobleness tends towards
bombast, and vigour towards frenzy. This inner degeneration of false
grandeur, on the stage, is so constant, and such a commonplace, that it
is unnecessary to dwell upon it. Nothing is easier than to underline
the defects of Dryden's heroic tragedies. Let it suffice to say that
they are great, and such as one would expect.
But their outer and, as it were, surface Romanticism has the qualities
of its defects. A certain imaginativa infection emanates from these
dramas; they transport the mind into a domain of superiority that is
somewhat unreal, but where it is not unpleasant to let one self be
persuaded that one actually penetrates; life there has splendour and
beauty; the suggestion of generosity which radiates from it may very
well be hollow: in its intention it is true, and while it is felt to be
illusory, one yields to it in a certain measure. A sincere Romanticism
is never entirely a question of words; the reader of these plays finds
himself moved at times, and moved in a manner that is inspiring.
Lastly, the diction is almost always sonorous, often firm and nervous,
with a dense, concentrated power which is evocative, just as much as it
is expressive; it has even at times those sudden flashes of poetry
which, lighting up the drama, reveal vast glimpses at one stroke. This
style is by no means pure; it still drags along many a trace of bad
taste—conceits, affected tricks of all kinds. But it is the style of a
great writer, who, if he has not yet mastered his best form, is already
himself.
The brilliant success of these dramatic ventures, in which he had no
rival, despite the account to whicvh his competitors turned some
ephemeral stage triumphs, seems to have inspired Dryden with a feeling
of confidence in his own powers, which at times got the better of the
sureness of his critical judgment. The dedication of The Rival Ladies
to Lord Orrery (1664) not only justified the use of rhyme in tragedy,
but even went to the length of recognizing in it a useful and necessary
check on the exuberance of the poet's imagination.
No doubt, the celebrated Essay of
Dramatic Poesy
(1668), in dialogue form, of never-flagging interest, brings to the
discussion of the problems of drama the breadth of view which Corneille
had exemplified in his Examens
and Discours.
Here Dryden shows the most original and permanent groundwork of his
thought; that realistic understanding of the special qualities and
claims of the English national art, in which his incertitudes were
finally to find rest. He explains here very skilfully the diverse
aspects of the truth; the advantages of the ancients, and those of the
moderns; the foundation of the unities and of the rules in nature, and
the eminent virtues of the French theatre. While he borrows something
from all those theses, including the last, he pays a warm tribute to
Shakespeare, Fletcher, and Jonson, and praises them, not only for their
substantial accord with the rules, but also for the free genius which
has permitted them to find these in themselves. Nor is his
justification of rhyme in any way dogmatic; it was not necessary, he
says, to our fathers, if we prefer it to-day; and its relative
constraint answers to the self-ruling emotion of a more conscious art;
the rhythmic scheme, besides, must be free, varied by enjambments and
half-lines.
But the epilogue to the second part of The Conquest of Granada
flatters the public at the expense of the just claims of the past: a
more polished age knows merits which were unknown to a rude epoch, and
to a yet unrefined language; a Dryden is a better poet than a Jonson,
since his audience demands more from him. . . . These remarks having
called forth some epigrams, Dryden repeated his argument in the Essay on the Dramatic Poets of the Last Age
(1672), in which the superior merits of the present are established by
means of a too facile enumeration of the faults which spoil, for
example, the 'vulgar' diction of Measure
for Measure or The Winter's
Tale. . . . Thus,
at the summit of his dramatic career, and championing a form of art
which, he affirms, is 'the most pleasing that the ancients or the
Moderns have known,' Dryden does not rise above the common thought of
his time.
Such a success, however, had in it something artificial. The taste for
the 'heroic' is still very strong at the beginning of the Restoration;
but it is contradicted by the cynicism and the critical spirit of a
rational age; while the first tendency, here rather superficial, is a
survival of the past, the second is in deep harmony with political and
moral realities, and has the future on its side. Great sentiments and
paraded virtues form a strange accompaniment to the mockery of Hudibras.
The frivolous, skeptical public which relished Butler, without always
understanding him, and which applauded the light comedy of the
Restoration, could not raise itself for long, even were it through a
complacent imagination, to the sublimity of Almanzor (Conquest of Granada).
Early enough, the dry irony of the period revolted against a dramatic
kind, which, stiffened in an attitude of affected pretentiousness,
offered itself as a broad and defenseless target for ridicule. Soon
after 1660 George Villiers, Duke of Buckingham (4),
formed the project of writing a satirical play in which the bragging
note of the new drama would be scoffed at; he had collaborators, among
whom, it is said without any solid proof, was Butler himself. D'Avenant
or Sir Robert Howard was, at first, to be parodied, but the repeated
triumphs of Dryden pointed him out as a fitter object for attack, and
it is he especially, under the name of Baye (5),
whom The Rehearsal (1671)
assails.
The hero, Drawcansir, is a replica of Almanzor: very obvious allusions
are aimed at the personages, situations, and themes of Dryden's
theatre, or of other writers. A work of rather mediocre fancy, devoid
of any moral bearing or deep artistic motives, the play is often witty
and amusing; some hints have the direct accuracy which results from a
sharp perception of exaggerations or incongruities; and the harmony of
the thesis with a certain average good sense lends it a force that it
does not owe fully to its merit. Hatefuld and ridiculous, the portrait
of Bayes is too scathing to harm Dryden, who was wise enough not to see
himself in it. But despite its scurrility, the comic vein in The Rehearsal sprang from the very
nature of things, and served its purpose.
It did not kill heroic drama. For ten years, said Buckingham, we have
listened to rhyme, and not to reason: 'Pray let this prove a year of
prose and sense.' The wish was perhaps granted; but after an interval
in which he had taken up in prose the defence of his Almanzor, Dryden
wrote Aureng-Zebe. This play,
it is true, already marks a transition towards another ideal. In it the
tragic element is purer, and one has been able to discover in it a
distant influence of the sober art of Racine. Despite its numerous
shortcomings, the style has often a classical restraint; the
versification shows more freedom, and blank verse even reappears in
places. The character of Aureng-Zebe, with its nobleness and gentleness
of a knight without reproach, is almost a fine thing. On the other
hand, the comic elements are developing, less, it seems, in the
direction of tragi-comedy, than towards the unconsciously imitated
model of Shakespearian drama; the happy ending decidedly takes us away
from heroic tragedy. Finally, in the prologue, Dryden says that he is
tired of rhyme, confesses that he is full of shame 'at Shakesepare's
sacred name,' and marks his own place between two periods of poetry,
'the first of this, and hindmost of the last.' The return for the
deeper inspirations of national temperament could not be more clearly
indicated.
The decisive proof was not long in coming (All for Love,
1678). But in a dramatic species akin to that which he abandoned from
now onwards, Dryden was still going to produce an interesting work. His
career, moreover, folows a sinuous line, full of such turns. The Spanish Friar
(1681) has all the characteristics of tragi-comedy; two plots are
combined in it, one principal and tragic, the other comic and secondary
(this latter, in fact, being here the better part of the play, as it is
the more developed); and Dryden justifies this mixture in principle
(Dedication of the work) by arguments in which is expressed the innate
preference of English genius for the mixed forms of dramatic art.
Besides, he upbraids the turgidness of a style that is falsely heroic,
and makes no exception in the case of his own Conquest of Granada.
Lastly, the piece is written in blank verse and in prose. Thus the
evolution of his taste is leading him to greater sobriety, as to a
deliberate independence of 'rules.' In spite of the momentary
variations of his thought, chiefly in the expression which he gives it,
he has henceforth found a fixed centre to revolve upon.
Heroic tragedy, meanwhile, was reaching the final stage of decay, dying
from an inner exhaustion which Buckingham's satire does not seem to
have much hastened. The Empress of
Morocco by Settle (1673) had been very successful; The Destruction of Jerusalem
by Crowne (1677) did not reawaken the languishing interest of the
public. While the influence of the heroic kind is still to be felt in
Otway and in Lee, it is with them permeated by a very different spirit,
which leads us back towards older and deeper elements of English
dramatic tradition.
4.
Comedy: Etherege, Wycherley, Shadwell, etc.—
Restoration comedy came into being just as early as heroic
tragedy. It was no less a natural issue of the general influences of
the time, and it was still better able to satisfy contemporary tastes.
The spirit of comedy is essentially a social thing; it develops through
the reciprocal observation of characters, the refining of the critical
sense, the fixing of conventional values. A court, a society that
prided themselves upon their intellectual elegance, would make mockery
fashionable: does it not call forth all the vivacity of with, the gift
of joking, the art of neat speech? All the circumstances which favoured
satire, also favoured the satirical notation of manners; and the stage
offered the easiest as well as the most pleasing field for the
collective exercise of ridicule. So that from 1660 onwards there is a
revival of Ben Jonson's 'humours,' as much as of Fletcher's dramas.
After several tentative efforts, Etherege and Wycherley create, in
different but analogous moulds, the new type of comedy.
Before them, some attempts had been made, where most often is still
felt the paramount influence of Ben Jonson, but where other traits are
discernible, called into being by the new circumstances.
During the first years which followed the Restoration, one satirical
theme dominates all others: the raillery aimed at the fallen Puritan
régime. Such was the trend of the deep reaction of the national spirit;
and the playwrigths, who had been silenced by their adversaries, were
even less incluned than others to pardon them. Therefore, a whole group
of plays, with or without the accompaniment of orthodox Royalist
sentiments, give vent to a sconrful condemnation of religious and moral
hypocrisy (6). Among them is to be noted
the work which reveals the vigorous talent of John Wilson (The Cheats, 1662). Here is a
full-flavoured, realistic commentary on the great Puritanic fraud,
which makes one think of Butler. As in Hudibras,
the pious pretence of the preacher, Scruple, is bound up with other
vices or other lies which group themselves naturally round it: the
usury and sneaking corruption of Alderman Whitebroth, the charlatanry
of the astrologer doctor Mopus; and the casuistry, implicit or open,
which had been the outcome of the great effort of the 'saints' to build
up life on the repression of instinct, is denounced by the very
arguments of Pascal (7).
Dryden, meanwhile, turns first of all his versatile talent to comedy (The Wild Gallant,
1663); the play is mediocre, and this first dramatic attempt does not
even hold much promise for the future. This was not the field in which
he was to win his triumphs; but one must not take him at his word when,
in his critical treatises, he declares that he is incapable of
achieving any success in it (A
Defence of an Essay of Dramatic Poesy, 1668); the comic scenes
of The Spanish Friar show
that he knew how to impue such work with racy verve and a quality of
genuine invention (8).
However the case may be, in the intervals of drama-writing, Dryden
managed to pen several comedies. Here he displays an even more marked
freedom of tone than in his tragedies; the more noticeable, as he
claims not to use the gross methods of farce; and as his diealogue
sometimes, for instance in Marriage-à-la-Mode,
has brilliance and drollery.
Immediately after Dryden's earliest attempts, the first play of Sir
George Etherege (9) was staged; and a truly
new note was struck this
time. Restoration society, with its cynical, frivolous elegance, bore
in itself the suggestion and at least the confused ideal of a light and
witty art, where comedy, freed from all moralizing realism as from all
doctrinal intention, was no longer anything else than the mocking image
of a carefree life. To catch these manners in their actual colouring,
to attribute to them only the character that is essentially theirs, and
to diversify their immorality with the lively variations of fancy, was
at the same time to give a picture of them, to extract their
philosophy, and to satirize them in the only way that was fit. In order
to have the intuitive sense of this attitude, and of the resources it
offered to art, a poet must possess a personal experience and the love
of fashionable life, the keen perception of finer shades, the gift of
expression. Etherege has all the sprightly ease, and intimate knowledge
of the elegant world, called for in this type of the comedy of manners.
A born writer, he sojourns in France, where he steadies and still
further sharpens his faculty for irony and epigram.
Is it possible that he there became acquainted with the work of
Molière, and owed something to his influence? This has not been proved.
But in the vivacity of turn, the easy dialogue, a certain sober
precision, his work bears the very evident mark of french influence.
The originality of Etherege comes, above all, from his temperament;
still, his temperament could but be encouraged, developed in a literary
atmosphere with which it offered such complete affinities.
The perfection of this type, however, is not reached at one stroke. The Comical Revenge
is an unequal play, still encumbered by an admixture of tragi-comedy;
the parts written in rhymed verse are feeble, but the prose moves with
a very pretty deftness. The work is already quite artificial, without
substance, but animated by a felicitous touch of gay cynicism and
lightheartedness; while the character of Sir Frederick Frollick is the
first sketch of the impertinent young fop who is destined to be the
favourite hero of Restoration comedy. She
Would if She Could marks
a decisive progress; the writer has
found himself, and is conscious of what he wants and of what he can do.
It is entirely and unreservedly the piquant mockery of fashionable
vices, the occasion for a satire that is evidently working hand in hand
with what it pretends to be engaged in condemning. The tone is still
more cynical, the liberty of language more light and witty. Although
the dissimulated coarseness only breaks out in sudden and brutal
sallies, the abdication of all moral exigencies will never be more
complete. The Man of Mode
is the example of an art that has reached the perfection of its form,
and in which the poverty of the matter, of observation, is revealed in
a somewhat dry precision of outline. In contrast with Sir Fopling, the
exquisite infatuated with French fashions, Dorimant represents a more
subdued and more national replica of the same type; for already the
reaction of patriotic instincts against the excess of foreign influence
is here perceptible, as in the theatre of Wycherley also. But the
coxcomb is buoyed up by a disdainful gaiety of ridiculous spirit, and
impudent liveliness, which blunt the edge of comedy; and the satire is
lost in the entertainment of a fastidious irony.
The resemblance to the brilliant, fine art of Congreve is striking; and
one would be tempted to over-emphasize the fact, if one did not notice
in Etherege a more forward note of disrespect, a more pronounced
debauchery in thought, something younger, and also a less sustained
brilliance. There is also a suggestion, in certain words, of a secret
sense of the validity of cynicism, and, as it were, of an ill-satified
longing of the heart. But this is only in a kind of farther background,
and scarcely perceptible.
Congreve was to take up the comedy of Etherege, and enrich it, raising
it still higher. The inspiration which animates the robust and biting
plays of Wycherley (10) is quite different.
With him, satire remains just as far from an austere ideal, and and
lets itself be carried away by the enthusiasm of a gay immorality; but
the game is no longer self-satisfying. The elements of an inner
protestation show themselves: the revolt of a strong personality, with
an inner bent to bitterness, against the madness which is sweeping it
along, and which it judges while giving itself up to it. In the realism
of Wycherley there is a violence in which can be seen, not an
exasperated cynicism, but the impetuosity of a scorn, all the more
frank in that it has no apperances to save, and does not except itself
from what it condemns. It is the elementary moral reaction of a nature
that is not wholly bereft of all sense of a moral life. To venture
farther would be hazardous; nothing in Wycherley reveals a romantic
sensibility; and his gaiety is not the ironical mask that would serve
to conceal a secret melancholy. But one has too often erred in the
opposite direction: one has only searched in his workd for a baseness
of soul and the cold desire of scandal. The coarseness of his plays is
at once due to the observation of manners, to the desire to please
public taste, and to the insulting mockery of that taste as of those
manners. And if finally, a play, the intention of which is not by any
means dishonourable, happens to be far from edifying, it is because the
author, like the society to whom he addresses himself, has lost the
very sense of delicacy and shame.
In this lies first the interest of Wycherley's work. He fulfilled all
the necessary conditions to give a true picture of a social reality
that was limited, particular, but intensely characteristic: he was a
man of the world, part and parcel of its life; and, on the other hand,
his temperament had sufficient solidity to ensure him his independence,
a personal angle of vision, distinct from that of the rake, similar
enought to that of the average man. Less indolent and less of a
dilettante than Etherege, he paints in stronger colours, and lends a
greater relief to everything; and what his art emphasizes is just the
original traits of his epoch, drawn with a touch both frank and
insolent.
His comedy thus shows us a state of manners, the field of which, narrow
in itself, requires defining—the court, the fashionable circles of the
capital—but the example of which radiates even to the farthermost parts
of the provinces, and there creates, as it were, superficial
contagions; attracts to it, on the other hand, moral elements of the
same nature; and so plays well the part of that typical form of
civilization in which an age can most often be summed up. Young
noblemen, dressed in the French style, beribonned and bewigged,
straining after wit and very susceptible about their honour; ladies for
whom face patches and rouge have no longer any secret, and provocative
beneath the enigma of their masks; burgesses, as greedy as they are
crafty, anxious, and not without reason, about the chastity of their
wives; plays, pleasure haunts, fashionable groves and gardens;
suggestive conversations, intrigues, billets-doux, and appointments—it
is like a fairly brilliant copy, but overcharged and carried to a
brutal licentiousness of gallant life such as the personal tastes of
Louis XIV encouraged. Wycherley has described all this in a lively,
animated, coloured picture, no doubt intensified by the optics of the
stage, but in no way exaggerated. There is skill and talent in the
portrait, despite the fact that it is simple and even rough in its
manner; and the painter has known how to bring in individual traits to
set off general effects; how to catch, as for example in The Gentleman Dancing-master, the
craze for foreign customs, French or Spanish; or, as in The Plain Dealer, the features of
lawyers and of their victims.
The art of Wycherley, robust as it is, is often rudimentary. His plays
have conspicuous faults. From the first to the last, no doubt, there is
evidence of a marked progress towards the emancipation and purification
of the form. The plot in Love in a
Wood
is of a quite superficial complexity, from which the succeeding
comedies tend to free themselves. But the action is still moved by
rather conventional springs, and develops according to rhythms that are
expected and monotonous; the tricks of construction are crude. There is
no very fine psychology in the delineation of character, and it is
rarely that the personges cannot be summed up in one single trait. The
best known, such as Widow Blackacre (Plain
Dealer),
are the puppets of too obvious automatisms. Finally, the author's
numerous borrowings, chiefly those he has taken from Molière, enable us
to make comparisons which are not usually to his advantage. Whatever
may be thought of The Plain Dealer, it
seems difficult to see in it, as certain critics have seen, an improved
replica of the Misanthrope.
But on the other hand, Wycherley has solid merits. The surest is the
truth, the life of the dialogue, its self-impelling force which, as
with Molière, makes one retort produce another, the verve of which
infuses an irresistible movement into many scenes, and draws new
effects from banal situations. The dryness of the moral atmosphere is
at times mitigated by a breath of freshness, all too fugitive, and at
certain moments, around the figure of Hippolita (The Gentleman Dancing-master).
And the pleasant, gay play of wit, in some episodes where the
pleasure-seekers vie with each other in conversation, comes upon us as
a kind of release, which somewhat softens the crudity of the rest. But
the most original quality in Wycherley, and the surest sign of the
secret idealism of his thought, is the philosophy which instils an
after-taste of healthy bitterness into the cynicism, and makes the
character of the Plain Dealer, despite everything, a strong and
personal creation; the symbol of a furious, incoherent, powerless anger
of the traditional English temperament against the treachery of a
refined corruption which captures it through the senses, dominates the
intellect, and leaves nothing free save the fituful straining of its
will. Popular instinct has not erred in the matter, much more than the
rather subdued character of Freeman, the Philinte of Wycherley, it is
Manly, a brutal and ferocious Alceste, who represents the confused,
violent depth of his experience of life.
Restoration comedy is a fruitful kind of literature. Society furnished
for the amusement of an idle public certain general oppositions, such
as that of the fashionable circles, to which the greater part of the
spectators belonged, and of the town middle class, which remained in
the majority faithful to the spirit of Puritanism, and which the
theatre shows us in the most palicious light. From those antitheses,
and from the situations they naturally lead to; from the spectacle of
elegant debauchery in its struggle with vulgar hypocrisy; from the
theme of conjugal misfortune, above all, treated endlessly under all
its aspects, are born the ordinary types of plot, to which the
imitation of the foreign theatre brings the chance of renewal, and
elements of particularity. Few of those plays are really of no value to
the historian, so naïvely faithful is the testimony they bring
concerning the manners or spirit of the epoch. A study of less limited
proportions than the present would distinguish in them, besides the
comedy of manners—the most interesting—that of 'humours' derived from
Jonson; that of plot for its own sake, imitated from Spain; that in
which farce is the dominant element; lastly, that in which we have a
foretaste of sentimental seriousness.
Several works, however, cannot be passed over in this rapid survey: The Mulberry Garden (1668) of the
poet Charles Sedley (11),
which, with its amusing figures of young coxcombs, its witty repartees,
continues the first efforts of Etherege, and seems to mark the
transition between them and the earlier works of Wycherley; Epsom Wells (1672), The Squire of Alsatia (1688), and Bury Fair (1689), of Shadwell (12),
plays heavily written, clumsily constructed, but curious on account of
the picture they give of realistic scenes—watering-places, the lower
life of London, popular festivals; The
Rover, or the Banished Cavaliers, a play in two parts (1677-80)
by Mrs. Behn (13),
who with her varied production, her coloured descriptions, her lively
dialogue, her adumbration of feminism, her relative decency of bearing,
is an original figure in the literature of the time; and The Country Wit (1676), Sir Courtly Nice (1685), of John
Crowne (14),
where the invention is rather droll, and the tone still very far from
delicate, but where the political themes, the moralizing intentions,
reveal in a way the secret working of minds.
Very diverse elements, for the most part borrowed, and associated
indifferently in a loose action; feebly conceived characters, who
almost always can be reduced to types so often repeated as to become
conventionsl; verve, movement, sometimes wit, a comic power, exterior
but undeniable; realism, scurrility, licentiousness; all of it
significant, artistically poor, but rich in documentary value; such is,
generally speaking, the comedy of the Restoration, as soon as the two
or three main personalities are left out of account.
5.
The National Reaction in Drama: Dryden, Lee, and Otway.—
Between 1675 and 1680 a marked renascence of the national spirit
reveals itself in English literature. The inevitable reaction of the
deeper instincts against the excess of worldly corruption, and the very
first signs of a moral awakening; the political opposition to the
government of Charles II, the Protestant unrest, the agitation which
precedes and accompanies the Popish Plot; the shame of the subjection,
suspected, if not fully known, of the English monarchy to France, and
the fear inspired by the ambition of Louis XIV; lastly, the fatigue
which was at length provoked by the dominating influence of French art
and fashions; all contribute to this secret movement towards the
re-possession and re-assertion of the national self, which will not
henceforth be checked, and of which the Revolution of 1688 will be the
decisive success. This reaction is clearly visible in the drama, and
more especially can be seen in the work of Dryden.
Some signs, at an early date, had pointed to it. Side by side with
heroic tragedy, so steeped in a foreign spirit, could be found the
survival of the Elizabethan tradition, very ill understood it is true;
an new authors had tried to revive it. Here again we come upon the name
of John Wilson. His Andronicus
Comnenius (1664) is a forcible drama, of a concentrated
intensity, of a firm style, which by striking analogies recalled
Shakespeare's Richard III,
and through its merits bears such a comparison without dishonour; in
order to be classed as worthy of Shakespearian lineage, it lacks only
the highest poetic imagination. Save for a very short passage, it is
written in blank verse, of fine quality.
The return to blank verse is the sign of the decisive evolution in the
dramatic career of Dryden. Scarcely three years after Aureng-Zebe, he
is treating a subject upon which Shakespeare has placed his mark; and
without plagiarizing, through the very force of his personality, he
extracts from it a tragedy, the merit of which may have been
exaggerated, but which wins our keen approval, if not our admiration (All for Love).
'In my style, I have professed to imitate the divine Shakespeare; which
that I might perform more freely, I have disencumbered myself from
rhyme' (Preface). The verse, indeed, if it has not yet all the
desirable ease, gains from this liberation a suppleness of movement, in
which English criticism seems rightly to see a necessary condition of
tragic style.
At the same time, Dryden's critical essays reveal the change that has
taken place in his thought. The preface he wrote for his adaptation of Troilus and Cressida (The
Grounds of Criticism in Tragedy,
1679), shows throughout a just, strong, and yet qualified appreciation
of all the greatness of Shakespeare. Between the classical doctrine,
derived from Aristotle, explained by Le Bossu and Rapin in France, and
by Rymer in England, to which Dryden wishes to remain faithful, and, on
the other hand, the technique of the Elizabethan Romanticists, he here
establishes a deliberate reconciliation. The irregularities of
Shakespeare are admitted, accounted for from the point of view of his
time; and the superiority of his genius is established in relation
whether to the moderns or to his contemporaries Fletcher and Jonson, or
even to the ancients. And in the eyes of Dryden, it is Shakespeare, no
doubt, who is thus reunited with the true classicism, of which he
appears as the supreme representative; but, in fact, classicism thus
broadened is no longer the ideal which English tragedy during the last
twenty years had seemed to follow; for Dryden places the deeper
vitality of the Shakespearian plays in the creation of characters, and
this creation is the work of intuition, not of analysis. Such an inner
difference betrays the essential divergence of the two arts, and is
reflected in other planes—that of action as that of form. To exalt
Shakespeare to the highest degree of dramatic genius, is to propose a
model other than that of the unities as understood in France; and of
these unities, Dryden now admits but a broad and free application. He
claims that the mind of the English requires the mixture of comedy and
tragedy (Preface to Don Seebastian).
Even to the close of his life his critical doctrine was subject to
fluctuation; and his practice was to be in no wise different. The last
twenty years of his career are very mixed: already Troilus and Cressida remodelled
Shakespeare rather irreverently; an opera, Albion and Albanius (1685), and a
dramatic opera, King Arthur
(1691), appear to be little less than sacrifices to contemporary taste.
A drama, Cleomenes
(1692) is conceived and written, with a certain nobility and purity of
line, in close imitation of French tragedy. But these various forms are
animated by a new spirit of freedom and artistic virility, to which the
use of blank verse, henceforward strictly adhered to (save in opera),
only gives a tangible expression. This spirit is to be found
concentrated in the tragic parts of The
Spanish Friar; and, above all, in a fine drama, Don Sebastian
(1690), where the action undoubtedly still recalls tragi-comedy, but
where serious scenes, of a sober pathos, alternate without clashing
with episodes of frank and crude gaiety. This play is, perhaps, the
model of what the dramatic art of Dryden could produce; it is a
Romantic work, but of a high Romanticism, and in it are to be felt
broad horizons of thought as of heart.
Other writers obey the same influences at the same time. Between 1675
and 1685 we witness a momentary revival of the English drama of the
national type, or rather, of a mixed type, in which the national
element becomes again more consciously essential. The tragedies of
Crowne (Thyestes, 1681, etc.)
are hardly to be connected with the Elizabethan tradition, save in the
rather clumsy search for effects of imaginative horror. With Lee and
Otway, the connection is more brilliantly patent.
Nathaniel Lee (15) is a singular and pitiable
figure. The stamp of an unbalanced nature is upon his talent and his
work. His short existence was darkened by mental troubles, his end
hastened by excesses. He seems to have led, like Wycherley in his
youth, a life of feverish excitement and pleasure; and like him, to
have reaped from it a sense of bitter disgust (Dedication to The Rival Queens). But this duality
of soul is here much more pronounced, and Lee is properly speaking a
Romanticist.
He is, above all, a belated Elizabethan. In him reawakens the
temperament of some among the decadent dramatists of the Renascence,
with their tendency to frenzy and morbidity. This revival is natural;
but one also feels it to be, in some measure, artificial or at least
voluntary, stimulated by a fashion of the day, by the success of heroic
tragedy. This is the kind in which Lee makes his first attempts; then,
at the same time as Dryden, he modifies his manner, and adopts blank
verse. We really have here the rejection of a discipline, and the
return to more instinctive habits. The
Rival Queens, Mithridates, Lucius Junius Brutus
may have found their subjects in ancient history (or in the
contemporary French novel), and make a naïve display of erudition: one
cannot conceive of plays less classical. The construction is weak, the
psychology almost always rudimentary; and the style, setting aside the
work of twenty years, is full of a bombast, a euphuism, a bad taste,
whicvh take us back to the eve of the Restoration.
This impulsive liberty spends itself in fiery flights of imagination.
The images of Lee are of an extravagant audacity, and animated by an
extraordinary sensual ardour. At intervals this frenzy becomes more
sober, or better inspired, and then we are surprised by effects of
energy, of suggestive power, of poetry, which recall the Elizabethans
in a striking way. Or at times the East is evoked with warmth and a
grace that are young and full of fancy, recalling the touch of Marlowe.
But these flashes of intuitive, spontaneous art are rare; the texture
of the plays is of an almost purely verbal intensity, the exaggeration
and monotony of which are extremely fatiguing. And in spite of all, the
literary consciousness of an already critical age, the atmosphere of
reason in which these furies resound, communicate to them something
indefinably paradoxical. It seems safe to suppose that Lee's sickly,
nervous exaltation is the genuine tone of his sensibility; but he lets
himself go without the least control and loses all idea of measure or
decency. The way in which he has transposed the Princesse de Clèves
is a scandal in art. His work remains interesting as a psychological
problem; aided by the playing of great actors, his violence found
favour on the stage; but if the renascence of national tradition had
not had any other expression, it is not certain that it would have been
fruitful. . . .
The still somewhat feverish, but more balanced talent of Otway (16) has
better justified this rebirth, and given it its masterpiece in drama.
His career, parallel with that of Lee, traverses fairly analogous
phases; if he adopts blank verse at a slightly later date, it is as the
result of a ripe decision, and in full possession of himself. Among his
heroic tragedies, Don Carlos has
some merit; but his other attempts are negligible, and everything is
eclipsed by the two dramas, The
Orphan and Venice Preserved,
the brilliant and the durable success of which still assures their
author a living fame. It is even permissible to think that the first of
these plays is, really, not on a par with the second. Venice Preserved
is a unique achievement, and must be looked upon as such; a solitary
work, unequalled in the half-century which preceded it, or the century
which came after. Its importance in literature is none the less for
this; because it remains exceptional by its quality, it is not so by
the inspiration that animates it. The tragic temperament of Otway is a
last emergence of the Elizabethan vein, on which the various influences
of the time have strongly left their mark. It is not of a different
nature from that of Lee; it unites scattered tendencies; one might say
that it eminently represents the short and late reawakening of the
dramatic genius of the Renascence. It is significant that the
Restoration, in its troubled and still ill-assured rationalism, should
have experienced such a survival of the Romantic past.
The most curious feature of the work is the intimate and coherent
fusion of this Romanticism with something at least of the classical
spirit. Despite the frenzied outbursts of Venice Preserved,
there is evidence of a certain disciplining of the intellect. The
intense pathos of the drama is carried on, managed, according to a
clever progression, though at times it goes beyond the limits of moral
sensibility, and has recourse to wholly physical means. Otway's
rhetoric is able to adapt itself to the jerks, the sudden breaks of a
passionate, breathless dialogue. His verse, more unequal and rough than
that of Lee, has solid merits. There is a sequence, as there is a
depth, in the characters. The play is really built upon a psychological
base: it is the tragedy of friendship, stronger and higher than love.
The action, rapid and concentrated, leads on to an inevitable
catastrophe; a bitter, sad emotion radiates from each stage in the
unfolding of the fate at work, even if the painting of tenderness and
of its sorrows appeals less to the heart than to the nerves.
Despite weak points, lengthy passages, some rant, the play as a whole
preserves a fine artistic bearing. The violent, cruel realism of the
comic parts, where, under the name of Antonio, the Earl of Shaftesbury
is put on the stage, does not destroy the somber atmosphere of the
drama; and the effect of harmony through contrast is faithful to the
very essence of Shakespearian aesthetics. The most penetrating note of
the work is a kind of bitter pessimism, whose personal, tormented
accent is explained by the life of Otway, by his unfortunate passion
for Mrs. Barry, and his approaching death.
VII. The Transition
1. Limits and Features of the Period.—
The reign of William III (1688-1702) forms a transition
in literature. The characteristics of the preceding period continue to
be dominant, but in part tend to weaken. Along with these, some new
traits appear. One feels that influences are at work, preparing deep
changes. They but slightly modify the moral physiognomy of the
Restoration, to begin with; they further the definitive advent of
classicism, in its completed form. But beyond this immediate action,
one already perceives the silent inner working of a force which will
progressively overthrow the order of literary values.
The closing years of the Restoration were restless with a feeling of
political instability. A hidden or open struggle was being waged
between the principle of absolute authority in State and Church, and
the idea of tolerance and constitutional liberty. The Revolution of
1688 puts an end to to this crisis. It decrees that henceforth there
shall be substituted for the will of one man that of the ruling
classes, as incarnated in Parliament, and that the privilege of the
Anglican worship shall not extend to the legal interdiction of other
cults. Behind this decree, which shapes the course of English history
for two centuries, there is to be seen a shifting of the centre of
social gravity. The upper middle class of business men and financiers
forces its alliance upon the hereditary nobility; it obtains the
division of power, and, as a new-comer, immediately makes its own
preferences felt. Society after 1688 remains aristocratic; but the
spirit of the middle classes begins to impregnate its tone and its
manners.
This moral contagion does not spread in a day; it is opposed by the
persistence of the former tone, which it limits or destroys. The
fashionable and cultured world, from which the literary public is
recruited, remains longer than the mass, from which the literary public
is recruited, remains longer than the mass of the nation under the sway
of the cynical habits of the preceding age. Artistic traditions will
survive for some time the needs which called them into being. Hence the
hesitant character of the 'transition' that is now defining itself; as
yet it is only a Restoration toned down, relaxed, in which one
perceives the germs of a a more complete transformation.
In the psychological order of thins, which is probably the most
profound and explicative, the tendencies of a rational phase are not
abolished ; but in certain directions intellectualism is being
sobered, if in others it remains the same; and in aprt of its domain,
modes of thought and feeling directly opposed to directly opposed
to it are revealing themselves. The empiricism of Locke replaces the
fearless logic of Hobbes; Congreve's comedies succeed those of
Wycherley; mediocre but worthy poets begin to pen edifying lines. The
moralizing taste of the middle class is there, growing conscious of
itself, not as yet daring, but preparing and waiting for its hour. The
first appearance of the sentimental play dates from these very years,
before the turn of the century; the attack of Collier on the immorality
of the stage coincides with it. In vain does Vanbrugh try to revive the
insolent laughter of a disrespectful generation, and Toland foreshadow
the offensive of deism against orthodoxy. A certain free, bold air,
brilliant and at the same time coarse, now vanished from literature as
from life; the careless, disreputable revel of the Restoration has come
to an end.
2. Locke and Philosophical Empiricism.—
In 1688, Locke (17) is fifty-six
years old; but as yet he
has scarcely published anything. The Revolution realizes his hopes, and
enables him to give full expression to his ideas. From every point of
view, he must be looked upon as the representative of the age when
constitutional liberty and tolerance take definite shape.
The system of Hobbes is an extreme, almost exceptional form of English
thought; that of Locke is an average form of it, broadly founded upon
the instincts and desires of practical men who are prepared to find
complexities in truth, and anxious to adapt themselves flexibly to what
exists. It is a preliminary motive of prudence and wisdom that is at
the source of his Essay on the Human
Understanding;
before dogmatically solving thorny problems, and pitting doctrine
against doctrine, we must assure ourselves as to what man is able to
know; the critical attitude of mind here springs from an experimental
good sense. It is a genuinely English tendency, also, which shows
itself in the negation of any innate idea, if not of any innate
activity of consciousness. The world is built up of the work of
reflection upon the simple data of perception; and all the adventurous
and often verbal wranglings of a scholastic philosophy vanish before
the cold, clear light of a notion of mental life which modern
psychology has singularly outdistanced, but the realism of which at
that epoch was fruitful. General concepts originate in the operation of
thought on the particular; and essential certitudes are founded; our
'ego,' by a direct intuitional feeling; the existence of God, by a
rational demonstration; that of nature, by the repeated perception of
its sensible characteristics.
In this, no doubt, we have only a relativist theory of knowledge; if
geometry, that ideal science, which is a product of the mind itself,
retains all its solidity, the science of nature is no longer anything
else than a probable linking-up of empirical observations. Such a
conclusion was a discomfort to traditional philosophy, and almost an
avowal of impotence. But Locke is not in the least perturbed by it. The
probability of natural sequences is sufficient for our intellectual
desires, since it suffices for our needs; the normal use of our
faculties is to employ them for the preservation and conduct of our
lives. If knowledge is necessary, it is with a view to action.
The rest of Locke's doctrines is a series of practical applications of
empiricism. His political theory, like that of Hobbes, admits a
primitive state of nature and a social contract; but instead of
simplifying these notions and developing their logical consequences to
the farthest possible limit, Locke turns to the observation of
facts—contemporary facts—and here he discovers another 'nature.'
Individuals are born free; they are subject to one law, that of moral
behaviour. As this law is not always respected, citizens of the same
state delegate the judicial powers to certain representatives; this
delegation, limited and revocable, implies reciprocal obligation; and
government is but a public service. Ths spirit of the English
constitution could not be more accurately defined. As for property, it
is fournded, at least originally, upon labour. The economic theory of
Locke is liberal, and sees the sources of English prosperity in
commerce.
In theology, there is the same tranquil respect shown to facts—to these
facts, the Scriptures and the moral needs of conscience. Questioned by
a reasoning mind, which wants to find rules and motives of action, the
Bible teaches a quite reasonable Christianity. In this atmosphere of
lucid, calm belief, how could tolerance not be born? Experience shows
us the varied nature of sects; religion is a purely personal matter; a
church is a free grouping of believers; let all the churches therefore
be given their liberty, with one reserve, the security of the State.
The law will only intervene to ensure the observation of the social
pact. The Roman Catholic and the atheist, according to Locke, thus find
themselves, throught their own fault, debarred from tolerance. . . .
Finally his pedagogy emphasized the practical virtues of education, as
a formative agent of character; prefers the tuition of life to that of
the universities; protests against the traditional exercised of the
schools; and finds the best instrument of culture in the child's
maternal language.
We have here no longer the intoxication of reason, the biting criticism
of a Butler, or the ardent logic of a Hobbes; but a rationalism
incorporated with the temperament itself, sobered, and interwoven with
the exigencies of life. It is the properly English form of rationalism;
and one feels that, by virtue of its calm, easy adaptability, it has no
longer any of that fixity of principle, of that impassioned
single-mindedness in the search for a systematic theory of the world,
without both of which, in fact, there can be no pure rationalism. What
Locke establishes is the original tradition of English philosophical
empiricism; much more plainly than Bacon, he expresses the intellectual
requirements of a people for whom the success of knowledge is the proof
and substance itself of truth. It is not only among the utilitarians
but among the pragmatists of to-day that one must look for the direct
posterity of Locke.
A thinker of this temperament does not bring any art into the
expression of his thought. The Essay
on the Human Understanding
is of a somewhat monotonous simplicity; in other parts of his work, the
style does not lack animation nor even vigour; ut on the whole, Locke
is not a writer. However, he has definitely brought within the reach of
the educated public problems which had till then been inaccessible. As
others with morality, he has popularized psychology, and some aspects,
at least, of metaphysics.
3. Halifax and Opportunism.—
The same wisdom, practical, concrete, and so remarkably
modern, constitutes the originality of Halifax (18)
among the moralists and political writers.
An aristocrat, statesman, and man of the world, he possesses a wide and
penetrating experience of life; he interprets it in a style of compact
brevity, rich in implicit meaning, which recalls La Rochefoucauld and
La Bruyère. But instead of a strained, brilliant style, whose aim is
effect, we find in his work more simplicity, a veiled irony, a calmer
and franker acceptance of the hundred and one petty human mediocrities.
His moral pessimism, as cruel at bottom as that of Swift, is restrained
and mitigated by the tolerance of resignation. His attitude is that of
a man who wants to live and let live, without illusions, but without
bitterness; and who instinctively seeks all that protects, sweetens,
and safeguards the frail life of the individual or of the
State—tranquil affections, reciprocal indulgence, a wise mean in
everything, the respect of order. This philosophy is not the most
noble, nor is it the most fruitful; but it is indeed the most natural
to the social genius of the English people; and Halifax is a writer of
a high representative value. His thought is too fine, his language too
reserved, to permit of his being really popular: but his Advice to a Daughter was read
throughout the eighteenth century; his Character of a Trimmer
defined for the general public the doctrine of compromise upon which
the Revolution of 1688 was about to take its stand. Reasonable, but not
dry, bold without cynicism, he judges the problems of religion, like
those of private conduct or of government, in a spirit of supple
realism which is decidedly the special character of the closing years
of the century.
4. Comedy: Congreve, Vanbrugh, Farquhar; Collier's
Criticism.—
This character Restoration comedy could easily make its own; had it not
established itself deliberately in the plane of realism? But the
atmosphere has changed; and the brilliant talents which reveal
themselves in the theatre after 1688 no longer ring with quite the same
note as those of Wycherley and Shadwell.
The difference is at times slight; it is not, either, equally
perceptible everywhere. Generally speaking, the plays of Congreve,
Vanbrugh, and Farquhar show the persistence of a literary tone, by the
force alone of an acquired habit, while the social realities that
justified it have begun to change. These plays none the less, and in
the strictest sense, belong to their time. Each author expresses in his
own way the spirit of the transitional period.
In the case of Congreve (19), the connection
to be established is rather subtle. His refined fancy starts with
realism, outgrows it, and gives itself full scope in a domain of pure
intellectual imagination. Irony, wit, an insolent verve, are all
elements with which the Restoration had been familiar. But here they
are combined, harmonized, through the virtue of a superior temperament
of a writer and artist; the product of their fusion has a purity of
matter, a delicacy of form, unknown to the Restoration. One feels that
elegant raillery has now been bred in; that a new generation has risen
which has this inborn gift, and carries it to perfection by means of
conscious culture. One also feels that certain themes are worn out, and
that comedy, from the pure and simple satire of manners, can now rise
to their satirical idealization.
However interesting the first plays of Congreve may be, they form, each
with its special traits, an artistic progression, leading up to one,
the failure of which abruptly checked the career of a fastidious
writer, but which is the masterpiece of his style, and of modern
English comedy: The Way of the World.
Here one must look, in a brief study such as this, for the features of
an original art, of which only Etherege had given a sketch worthy to be
compared with it.
A plot carefully contrived, but not too obviously artificial;
contrasted effects, a repressed vigour which bursts out in certain
realistic traits; moments of comic liveliness, and farcical scenes:
such are the elements of variety which save the play from too constant
a distinction, from too dry a preciosity. In this solid framework,
which ofers nothing exceptional, psychological raillery and dialogue
are displayed with incomparable brilliance. Congreve's heroes are
animated by a greatness which is above circumstance, which seems to be
its own end, to raise life higher than itself, and to carry the
painting of character on to the plane of a poetic and charming
creation. There is here, with a personal touch, with an accent of
cynical impertinence in which one catches the ring of the epoch, a
rapture of imagination recalling the early comedies of Shakespeare; at
the same time idealized and strikingly true to life, Millamant and
Mirabell are the decisive types of a passion which, welling up from the
heart, intoxicates the brain with its light vapours, and excites the
intellect without depriving it of its self-command. The exact and
restrained skill of a master tones down the radiance of these figures,
who come very near to the realm of romantic fancy, without actually
entering it. At times the sparkle of the dialogue reminds one not only
of Shakespeare, but of Marivaux, when in its finesse it sets about
analysing sentiment; still, it is of a less highly quintessential turn
than that of the French writer, and less uniformly busied with shades
of meaning; it revels rather in impertinent sallies and witty
diversions, aided by a wonderful gift for repartee and neat phrasing.
However intellectual, in fact, it may be at tis source, the art of
Congreve would not show its full power, were it not for the exceptional
felicity of a language in which, to tell the truth, nothing is left to
chance. Behind that elegant exactness, that perfect propriety, that
easy tone, that balanced and firm rhythm, very scrupulous care is
bestowed upon details. No English writer has better possessed the
natural art of making witty people speak, of lending to the most idle
of their remrks the piquant touch of the unexpected; but here nature is
enhanced by the most artistic desire to give each word its proper
value, by the sense of its connection with its fellows, and of the
general harmony in which it plays its part. Congreve's prose is the
finest and the most brilliant of the age of classicism.
Capable of imbuing characters with life, a master of dialogue of style,
has Congreve added to our knowledge of man? In this perhaps lies the
weak point of an author who by virtue of several merits is equal to the
greatest. But if the nonchalance of his temperament, and the lightness
of his art, do not allow his comedy to penetrate veery deeply into the
study of the human heart, it probes well below the surface. Without
having the value of revelations, the analyses he gives us of the
feminine soul, and of a certain conscious and seductive coquetry, are
of a very precious quality. And from all his art there emanates, like a
discreet suggestion, a softened and almost indulgent pessimism. With
much less brutality, Congreve is more of the true cynic than Wycherley;
in his more sober tints is depicted a deeper vice, which sinks to the
very conscience, and snaps the spring of moral indignation. The only
virtue which is held up to us—and it is perhaps in itself a sufficient
antidote—is sincerity.
Shocked by this indifference to orthodox rules, the taste of posterity
has been somewhat severe on Congreve; and Lamb, in order to save him
from the common jurisdiction, has had to plead that his fancy is
innocuous, because it creates in the realm of unreality.
The contemporaries of Congreve had not the intuition of this paradox,
which conceals a truth. In his last play, he had to struggle against a
revolt of the demands of morality—a reaction which in their entire
careers Vanbrugh and Farquhar had to reckon with.
Ten years after the Revolution, a cleric, Jeremy Collier (20),
published an indictment against the 'profaneness and immorality of the
English stage.' Already the uneasiness of middle-class feeling at the
cynicism in literature had allowed itself to be felt in various ways.
But here the attack was direct, full, and authorized; the Church was
rising in arms against the theatre, to defend not only morality, but
further, and especially, religion and the clergy, which comedy had
often placed in a compromising light. The work of Collier has nothing
of the nature of a popular argument, simple and naïve; it is a regular
denunciation, scholarly and pedantic, and based—only Aristophanes being
excepted—on the example of the ancients, as on that of the French.
Shakespeare, Dryden, Wycherley, D'Urfey, and most often Congreve and
Vanbrugh, are taken to task. The sermon has weight, and Collier knows
how to marshal his arguments; the intentional vehemence of his language
avoids, generally speaking, the faults with which he reproaches his
adversaries; but it is a sermon, and reveals a singular aesthetic
incomprehension. The fundamental identity of art and morality is
affirmed with a dogmatism that suppresses all problems, by forcing upon
art very explicit moral ends. The reasons for the favour with which the
painting of vice had been received among a large part of the public are
not sought out. The hidden link which connects this diatribe, justified
in many respects, but superficial and summary, with the feeling which
the middle classes had of their growing influence, is seen in the
satirical remarks which Collier passes upon the 'fine gentlemen'; in
his defence of the 'rich citizens' against the gibes of the writers of
comedy. . . .
The lists were now open. The authors involved did not refuse the
challenge. They defended themselves by direct replies, and allusions in
their prologues, epilogues, and prefaces; Dryden alone, confessed his
faults, without, however, renouncing his principles. The history of
this controversy cannot be summed up here. Its immediate influence has
been, upon the whole, exaggerated. The tone of the English theatre
shows no very appreciable change after the pamphlet of Collier; it will
alter by degrees, and not by a unanimous movement, but along several
lines; and the liberty of the stage will reassert itself more than
once. But apart from the immediate object in view, and when studied in
the light of the evolution of manners, these pages assume an historical
value. They encouraged the rallying of ordinary opinion to the
necessity of a reform; they were the centre of a veritable crusade
against licentiousness both in literature and in life, which did not
produce very deep effects, but reassured alarmed consciences, repressed
some outstanding excesses, and created the atmosphere of moral order
and balance indispensable to the advent of classicism. The transition
here studied owes to it one of its characteristics.
The first play of Vanbrugh (21) had done much
to call forth the ire of Collier. With The Relapse,
in fact, freedom of verve and boldness of situation reach their limit.
Here realism is again given full play, with a somewhat heavy touch,
that tempts one to liken it to the brushwork of the Flemish masters;
and one might also say that, setting aside the example of Congreve, it
is to Wycherley that comedy returns if the tone of the play were not so
different from that of The Plain
Dealer.
In place of a harsh, bitter vigour, we have here a force of invention
and a Rabelaisian humour which spreads itself out, lively, huge,
rollicking, sweeping off all the reserves of the spectator in an
irresistible mirth. At bottom, there is behind this verve a pessimism
of intelligence, a moral sincerity, a sanity of taste; and the work
would not be properly understood, if one did not see in it at once a
satire upon the new ideal of sentimentalism, already outlined by Cibber
(22), and the trace of the hold that this
ideal was exercising even then over rebellious temperaments, for some
touches are intorduced in The Relapse
with a view to sentimental effect. This, however, is only a secondary
aspect; Vanbrugh, above all, reveals his wit, his humour, his joy of a
builder who constructs his play of solid workmanship, and who in it—one
hardly knows how—joins two plots in one. This vigour, which tends to
mere brutality, develops frankly into such in The Provoked Wife,
and singularly contradicts the edifying intentions which the author
proclaims at times—perhaps under the influence of Collier, with whom he
was even then bandying argument.
Viewed as a whole, Vanbrugh's comedies are above all valuable as
studies in manners; not that they do not magnify reality, according to
a system of deliberate exaggeration; but because they give us the
deformation of the truth which the public accepted, and thus enlighten
us as to the tastes and special bents of that public; while permitting
us, when they are reviewed with other works, to form a probable opinion
as to what the truth really was. A Sir Tunbely Clumsey, a Sir John
Brute, a Miss Hoyden, are caricatures as much as types; but their
interest is not less in one capacity than in the other.
It is permissible to find in Farquhar (23),
despite his merits, a somewhat tame copy of the fine audacity of his
predecessors. He also was born with the temperament of a writer of
comedy, gifted with facility and talent; but he came under the full
influence of the wave of sentimentalism, which seems to have shaken the
inner conviction of his art. His first plays are very licentious; and
to the end, they show a natural indelicacy, in keeping with the tone of
the age. But although he thinks himself obliged, from time to time, to
show fight against the attacks of Collier, one feels that at bottom he
approves of the enemy's cause, and often he himself takes no trouble to
disguise the fact. His Irish nature led him to mingle laughter and
tears; but it would appear that the desire, perhaps unconscious, to
flatter the tastes of the middle-class public, who were more and more
asserting their own preferences, explains the deviation of his art
towards sentimentality.
In order to do justice to Farquhar, one must not judge him from the
same angle of vision as Congreve or Vanbrugh. The interest of his work
lies in the expression of an attractive and sincere personality,
despite the sacrifices which he chose to make to the fashion of the
day; and it is also to be found in the varied nature of his
inspiration, which has widened the field of the manners studied,
bringing into it new aspects of society and life: the army, the
highways and inns, the serious problems of the family, divorce, etc. A
taste for nature and truth reveals itself there. He has, on the other
hand, verve and wit, knows how to sketch a character, and build up a
plot; but none of these qualities is outstanding. A likable man and
writer, he lacks vigour, and his best moments do not attain to decisive
originality.
Tragedy, however, did not show a vitality equal to that of comedy. By
the side of Dryden in his old age, the period 1688 to 1702 saw no new
talent arise, except the mediocre one of Southerne (24).
The late revival of drama with Rowe is posterior by several years; and
the middle-class spirit has not as yet followed up its invasion of
cmedy by reaching the field of tragic art.
5. Poetry: Walsh, Garth, Blackmore, etc.—
The spirit of the transition is also represented in
poetry, by a group of writers who share in certain common tendencies.
None of them rises above an ordinary level of honourable talent; their
merit lies more in their conscientiousness than in their inspiration;
and this very mediocrity is a sign of the times.
Lustre is shed on the last years of the seventeenth century by one
eminent poet, Dryden; but he no longer belongs, properly speaking, to
this age. With Walsh, Pomfret, Garth, and Blackmore (25),
something exterior to poetry itself comes into the foreground. One must
not try to disvover too precise reasons in order to explain this
interval between the generation of Dryden and that of Pope; chance,
which did not bring Pope into the world some years earlier, is above
all responsible. But in some measure, it can be explained by the
atmosphere itself of a moment when the progress of technique and form
on the one hand, and the moralizing preocuppations of the middle class,
on the other, threaten to weigh down wnd damp the flight of poetic
imagination.
So that there scarcely remains anything worthy of praise in these
writers, save their intentions; the correct and polished regularity of
the verse of Walsh; the soberness, the amiable good sense of Pomfret;
the laboured imitation of the Lutrin,
not without wit and skill, which Garth effected in his poem; and with
Blackmore, a certain noble ambition, which is too frequently given over
to edifying nonsense, and loses itself in arid deserts, but which shows
itself capable upon occasion of vigour, of subtle and compact
argumentation, of enthusiasm even, and eloquence. Neither the beauties
of single passages, nor the occasional gleams of poetry, can
redeem—despite the interest of these secondary figures, who show so
well the passage from one epoch to antother, and who recompense an
attentive study—the essential mediocrity of authors who just apply
methods and formulae, or seek in the moral conscience alone the reasons
for writing in verse.
—oOo—
____________
Bibliography
(IV) Restoration theatre [to 1680s].
To be consulted: Beljame, Public et hommes de lettres en Angleterre,
etc., 1897; Cambridge History
of English Literature, vol. viii, chaps. V, VII; Canfield, Corneille and Racine in England,
1904; Charlanne, Influence française
en Angleterre au XVIIesiècle,
1906; L. N. Chase, The English
Heroic Play, 1903; Courthope, History
of English Poetry, vol. iv, 1903; B. Dobrée, Restoration Comedy, 1660-1720,
1924; idem, Restoration Tragedy,
1929; Eccles, Racine in England,
1922; Fitzmaurice-Kelly, Relations
between Spanish and English Literature, 1910; Genest, Some Account of the English Stage from the
Restoration . . . to 1830, 10 vols., 1832; Hazlitt, Lecturs on the English Comic Writers,
1819; Harvey-Jellie, Les Sources du
théâtre anglais de la Restauration, 1906; K. M. Lynch, The
Social Mode of Restoration Comedy,1926; Macaulay, 'Essay on Leigh
Hunt' (The Dramatic Works of
Wycherley, etc.), 1841; Miles, The
Influence of Molière on Restoration Comedy, 1910; Nettleton, English
Drama of the Restoration, etc.,1914; A. Nicoll, History of Restoration Drama, 1660-1700, 1923;
Palmer, The Comedy of Manners,
1913; Pendlebury, Dryden's Heroic
Plays, 1923; H. T. E. Perry, The
Comic Spirit in Restoration Drama, 1925; Restoration Plays,etc., introduced
by Gosse (Everyman's Library), 1912; H. E. Rollins, 'A Contribution to
the History of English Commonwealth Drama' (Studies in Philology, July 1921);
Schelling, English Drama,
1914; A. H. Thorndyke, Tragedy,
1928; Ward, History of English
Dramatic Literature, 1899. (VII). The
Transition. To be consulted: Ballein, Jeremy Collier's Angriff auf die englische
Bühne, 1910; Beljame, Public
et Hommes de Lettres, etc. 1897; Cambridge History of English Literature, vol.
viii, Chaps. VI, XIV, XVI; vol. ix, Chaps. VI and VII; Charlanne, Influence française, etc. 1906;
Gosse, From Shakespeare to Pope, 1885; W. Graham, The
Beginnings of English Literary Periodicals, 1665-1715, 1926; J.
W. Krutch, Comedy and Conscience
after the Restoration, 1924; Meredith, An Essay on Comedy, etc., 1897; A.
Nicoll, History of Restoration
Drama, 1660-1700, 1923.
_______
Notes
(1). A
Midsummer Night's Dream is 'the most insipid, ridiculous play
that ever I saw in my life' (29th Sept., 1662). Othello was only 'a mean thing'
after The Adventures of Five Hours,
by Tuke (20th Aug. 1666).–For Pepys and his diary, see below, Chap. V.
(2). An Essay
of Heroic Plays, prefixed to The
Conquest of Granada, 1672.
(3). In the preface to his Maiden Queen, Dryden presents the
play as regular according to the strictest laws of drama.
(4). 1628-87.
(5). i.e. 'laurels'; Dryden was poet laureate from
1670.
(6). For example: The Rump, or The Mirror of the Late Times,
by John Tatham, 1660; The Committee,
by Sir Robert Howard, 1665, etc.
(7). The Provincials
had been translated into English as early as 1657 and 1658. From the
same John Wilson, in 1665, we have a comedy, The Projectors, which is strangely
analogous to the Avare
of Molière (1668), a coincidence that cannot be explained by the common
imitation of Plautus. The problem requires investigation.
(8). Sir
Martin Mar-all, adapted from the Étourdi of Molière; The Assignation, 1672, Marriage-à-la-Mode, 1672; Limberham, 1678, Amphytrion, imitated from Plautus
and Molière, 1690.
(9). Born about 1634, he resided for a
considerable time in France;
wrote three comedies: The Comical
Revenge, or Love in a Tub, 1664; She Would if She Could, 1668; The Man of Mode, or Sir Fopling Flutter,
1676, and some light verse; sent as a diplomatic agent to Ratisbon, he
exchanged with his friends, among them Dryden, an amusing
correspondence, and died in Paris, it is believed, in 1690. Works, ed. by Verity, 1888; Dramatic Works, ed. by Brett-Smith,
1927; see B. Dobrée, Essays in
Biography, 1670-1726, 1925.
(10). Born in 1640, in Shropshire, came of an
old family, sojourned as a young man in France and frequented the salon
of the Duchess de Montausier, where he found an atmosphere impregnated
by the spirit of the Hôtel de Rambouillet. Returning to England at the
Restoration, he entered upon a life of pleasure in London. The success
of his first play, Love in a
Wood, staged in 1671, brought him into touch with the
court. The Gentleman Dancing-master (1671 or 1672), The
Country Wife (1673), The
Plain Dealer
(1674), followed in quick succession. Then Wycherley retired from the
stage, contracted a rich marriage, which proved disappointing, passed
through a period of financial embarrassment, and lived until 1715,
enjoying the pleasures of his literary friendships. In his last years
he was connected with Pope, to whom he submitted his poems for
correction. Plays, ed. by W.
C. Ward (Mermaid Series), 1888; Complete
Works, ed. by M. Summers, 1924. See Chas. Perromat, Wycherley, Paris, 1921; G. B.
Churchill, 'The Originality of William Wycherley' (Schelling Anniv. Papers), 1923.
(11). See above, Chap. II, sect. 6.
(12). Thomas Shadwell, 1642-92. Select Plays, ed. by Saintsbury,
Mermaid Series, 1903; Complete Works,
ed. by M. Summers, 1927. It seems difficult to find in him a writer of
the first order, or to pronounce him, despite certain analogies, a
predecessor of Congreve. (For the opposite argument see A. Nicoll, Restoration Drama, 1923.)—See A. S.
Borgman, Thomas Shadwell,
1929.
(13). 1640-89. See Chap. II, sect 6. Works, ed. by Summers, 6 vols.;
study by V. Sackville-West, 1927.
(14). 1640-1712. Dramatic
Works, ed. by Maidment and Logan, 1873-7. See A. H. White, Joh Crowne, his Life and Dramatic Works,
1922.
(15). Born about 1653, a graduate of Cambridge, he
essayed acting as a profession but without success; his first play was Nero (1675); he then wrote heroic
tragedies (Sophonisba, Gloriana,
1676); next came dramas in blank verse: The Rival Queens (1677); Mithridates (1678); Theodosius (1680); Caesar Borgia (1680); Lucius Junius Brutus (1681); The Princess of Cleve (1681); Constantine the Great (1682). He
was confined in a madhouse in 1684, was liberated in 1689, and died as
a result of his drinking excesses in 1692. Works, 2 vols., 1713; 3 vols.,
1734-6. See the study by Auer. Berlin, 1904; R. G. Ham, Otway and Lee, etc., 1930.
(16). Thomas Otway, born in 1652, took to acting
like Lee; despite
several brilliant successes, his life was one of struggle, and he died
in poverty in 1685. His career opened with heroic tragedies in rhymed
verse: Alcibiades, 1675; Don Carlos, 1676; he translated the
Bérénice of Racine and the Scapin of Molière; worter mediocre
comedies (The Soldier's Fortune,
1681, etc.); and two tragedies in blank verse: The Orphan, 1680; Venice Preserved, 1682. Select Plays, ed. by Roden Noel
(Mermaid Series), 1891; Complete
Works, ed. by M. Summers, 1926. See the studies by de Grisy,
Paris, 1868; Luick, Vienna, 1902.
(17). John Locke, born in 1623, in
Somersetshire, studied at
Oxford, and was attached to Christ Church 1659; he interested himself
in science (elected a member of the Royal Society in 1668), and in
medicine, which he practised occasionally. Political agent, medical
adviser, and confidential counsellor to Shaftesbury, he took part in
public affairs from 1660 to 1675. Then he travelled in France,
sojourned at Montpellier. On his return to England he was compromised
in the disgrace of Shaftesbury and followed his master's example by
seeking refuge in Holland, where he waited for the Revolution. William
III made him a commissioner of trade and plantations. From 1691 until
his death in 1704, he resided with Sir Francis Masham, whose wife was
the daughter of Cudworth, the philosopher. The three Letters on Toleration appeared, the
first in Latin, the others in English, from 1689 to 1692. He published
in succession: Two Treatises of
Government, 1690; An Essay
concerning Human Understanding, 1690; Some Considerations of the Consequences of
the Lowering of Interest, 1691; Some Thoughts Concerning Education,
1693; The Reasonableness of
Christianity, 1695; he left several posthumous works, among them
an examination of the theory of Malebranche on vision in God, and The Conduct of the Understanding.
His writings on moral and religious philosophy provoked lively attacks,
to which he replied (controversy with Stillingfleet, 1696-9, etc.). Philosophical Works, ed. by St.
John, 1854; Essay Concerning Human
Understanding, ed. by Fraser, 1894; Thoughts Concerning Education, ed.
by Quick, 1880. See T. Fowler, Locke
(English Men of Letters), 1907; studies by Fraser, 1890; Alexander,
1906; Hefelbower (Relation of John
Locke to English Deism), 1919; S. T. Lamprecht (Moral and Political Philosophy of John
Locke), 1921.
(18) George Savile, born in 1633, in
Yorkshire, entered Parliament on the Restoration, served the Royal
cause against Shaftesbury, and was created Viscount Halifax; he
afforded the example and outlined the theory of political opportunism
during the crises which succeeded one another from 1680 to 1688. He
took part in the first ministry of William III, and died in retirement
in 1695. An orator of great talent, he left behind several short
pamphlets, full of substance (Character
of a Trimmer, 1685, circulated in manuscript, and published in
1688; A Letter to a Dissenter,
1687; Advice to a Daughter,
1688; Character of King Charles the
Second, etc.), published either without the author's name or
posthumously. These were collected in a volume of Miscellanies; ed. by Walter
Raleigh, Oxford, 1912. See the study by Foxcroft, 1898, and by Gooch, Political Thought in England from Bacon to
Halifax, 1914.
(19) William Congreve, born in 1670, near
Leeds, came of an old-established family; prided himself on being at
all times a man of the world and not a writer by profession; passed a
part of his youth in Ireland, studied law in London, and at the age of
twenty-three obtained a very great success with his first comedy, The Old Bachelor (1693). The plays
which followed (The Double Dealer,
1693; Love for Love, 1695)
added to his reputation; a tragedy (The
Mourning Bride, 1697) did not lessen his fame. In 1700 his
comedy The Way of the World was
received coldly, and Congreve, at thirty, abandoned the theatre.
Henceforth, he only indulged his talent in verse, and until his death
in 1729, led a full and happy life, surrounded by his friends and
enjoying a Government pension. Dramatic
Works, ed. by A. C. Ewald (Mermaid Series); ed. by G. Street
(Henley's English Classics), 1895; Complete
Works, 4 vols., ed. by M. Summers, 1923; Comedies, ed. by B. Dobrée, 1925. Incognita, a short novel written in
the youth of Congreve, was republished by Breet-Smith, 1923. See E.
Gosse, William Congreve,
1888, new edition, 1924; G. Meredith, An
Essay on Comedy, etc., 1897; study by D. Protopopesco (Un Classique moderne, William Congreve),
1924; B. Dobrée, Restoration Comedy,
1924; D. Crane Taylor, William
Congreve, 1931.
(20) 1650-1726. A
Short View of the Profaneness and Immorality of the English Stage, 1698.
See study by Ballein, 1910.
(21). Sir John Vanbrugh, born in 1664, came of
a Flemish family, established for two generations in England. Very
little is known of his youth save that he was imprisoned in the
Bastille in 1691. His plays, The
Relapse, or Virtue in Danger (end of 1696), and The Provoked Wife (1697), were
performed with great success. With the exception of a posthumous
fragment (A Journey to London),
the rest of his work is composed of imitations or translations
(Boursault, Le Sage, Molière: Squire
Trelooby, 1704; Dancourt: The
Confederacy,
1705, etc.). His tasts, however, were in the province of architecture;
he built several country seats and important buildings, among which
were the Haymarket Theatre and Blenheim, the sumptuous mansion
presented to Marlborough. He died in 1726. Dramatic Works, ed. by A. E. H.
Swain (Mermaid Series), 1896; Complete
Works, ed by Dobrée and Webb, 1929. See the sstudy by Lovegrove (Life, Work and Influence of Sir John
Vanbrugh), 1902; B. Dobrée, Essays
in Biography, 1925.
(22). See below, Book II, Chap. V.
(23) George Farquhar, born in Ireland (1677),
studied in Dublin, tried the profession of actor and had his first
comedy, Love and a Bottle
(1698), successfully performed in London. Then followed The Constant Couple, 1699; Sir Harry Wildair, 170; The Twin Rivals, 1703; The Recruiting Officer, 1706; The Beaux' Stratagem, 1707. His
life had all the uncertainty and adventure attending a careless
character; he died in poverty in 1707. Dramatic Works, ed. by W. Archer
(Mermaid Series), 1908; Complete
Works, ed. by Stonehill, 1930. See study by Schmid, 1904.
(24). Thomas Southerne, 1660-1746, already known
by his comedies, enjoyed two great successes with his dramas, The Fatal Marriage, 1694, and Oroonoko,
1696, the latter a strange play, inspired by Mrs. Behn, not without a
certain brilliance, and at times revealing a little of the fire of Lee.
(25). William Walsh, 1663-1708, the friend of
Dryden and Pope, is in certain respects and intermediary between the
two poets; his best-known poems are Jealousy
and The Despairing Lover. Poems, in
Chalmers and Johnson, English Poets,
vol. viii. John Pomfret, 1667-1702, published in 1700 The Choice, which won a great and
lasting success. Poems, ibid.,
vol. viii. Sir Samuel Garth, 1661-1719, is remembered for his poem The Dispensary, 1699. Poems, ibid., vol. ix. Sir Richard
Blackmore (1650?-1729), a medical practitioner, wrote an epic poem (Prince Arthur, 1695), a
philosophical poem (Creation,
1712), a Satire on Wit
(1700), and heroic poem, Eliza
( 1705), etc.; essays in prose, a translation of the Psalms, etc.; was
praised by Addison, ranked highly in middle-class opinion, but later
fell into discredit. Poems,
ibid., vol. x.
Miércoles 17 de octubre de 2012 Adornos de Caminha
"Suprimido" el catalán obligatorio
El Tribunal Constitucional deroga,
con muchos años de retraso,
la normativa que obligaba a los comercios catalanes a usar el catalán
para rotular sus productos. También podrán hacerlo en español, como
venían haciendo cuatro arriesgados que recurrieron la norma. Se vuelve
a certificar que, como sucede en el caso de la educación, con la
inmersión lingüística obligatoria en catalán, la política de lenguas de
Cataluña es ilegal, abusiva y anticonstitucional. Claro que el gobierno
español y los tribunales normalmente no les paran los pies, o lo hacen
con la boquita tan pequeña... Y de todos modos da igual, porque
como si les cantan misa, cambian la norma por otra que dice lo mismo
pero no está recurrida, y a tirar palante. O, llegado el caso, ignoran
olímpicamente las sentencias de los tribunales "espanyoles". Y a nadie
se inhabilita, ni a nadie se multa por estár torciendo la ley y
abusando de su posición en las instituciones para mangonear y
prevaricar. Ahora que, prueben ustedes a no pagarle diez euros a
Hacienda. Allí van como flechas. Si es que cuando hay mucho abuso
institucional, y mucho delincuente, es porque se les deja hacer.
Pero aún hay un elemento más pasmoso que la dejadez de los políticos
españoles en este tema: el borreguismo atroz y seguidismo de la
práctica totalidad de los catalanes, que ven hacer, y callan, o ya
puestos sacan la banderita y la agitan. ¿Que ahora es con estrella la
banderita? ¿Aunque llevábamos treinta años agitando la otra tan
contentos de tan catalanes que éramos? Pues nada, con estrella ahora,
allá vamos a donde nos lleven, a estrellarse. Qué penica de país.
Every Man in His Humour / Every
Man out of His Humour
On two comedies by Ben
Jonson(from The Oxford Companion to English
Literature:)
Every Man in His Humour, a comedy by Jonson performed by
the
Lord Chamberlain's Men 1598, with Shakespeare in the cast, printed
1601. In his folio of 1616 Jonson published an extensively revised
version., with the setting changed from Florence to London and the
characters given English names.
In the latter version Kitely, a merchant, is the husband of a young
wife, and his 'humour' is irrational jealousy. His house is resorted to
by his brother in law Wellbred with a crowd of riotous but harmless
gallants, and these he suspects of designs both on his wife and on his
sister Bridget. One of these young men is Edward Knowell, whose
father's 'humour' is excessive concern for his son's morals. Bobadill,
one of Jonson's greatest creations, a 'Paul's man', is a boastful
cowardly soldier who associates with the young men and is admired by
Matthew, a 'town gull' and poetaster, and Edward's cousin Stephen, a
'country gull'. Out of these elements, by the aid of the devices and
disguises of the mischievous Brainworm, Knowell's servant, an imbroglio
is produced in which Kitely and his wife are brought face to face at
the house of a water bearer to which each thinks the other has gone for
an amorous assignation; Bobadill is exposed and beaten; Edward Knowell
is married to Bridget, and Matthew and Stephen are held up to ridicule.
The misunderstandings are cleared up by the shrewd and kindly Justice
Clement.
Every Man out of His Humour, a comedy by Jonson, acted by the
Lord Chamberlain's Men at the newly built Globe theatre 1599, printed
1600.
The play parades a variety of characters dominated by particular
'humours', or obsessive quirks of disposition: Macilente, a venomous
malcontent; Carlo Buffone, a cynical jester; the uxorious Deliro and
his domineering wife Fallace; Fastidious Brisk, an affected courtier
devoted to fashion; Sordido, a miserly farmer, and his son Fungoso, who
longs to be a courtier; Sogliardo, 'an essential clown, enamoured of
the name of a gentleman'; and Puntarvolo, a fantastic, vainglorious
knight, who wagers that he, his dog, and his cat can travel to
Constantinople and back. By means of various episodes, such as
Macilente's poisoning of Puntarvolo's dog and Brisk's imprisonment for
debt, each character is eventually driven 'out of his humour'. Two
judicious onlookers, Mitis and Cordatus, oversee the action throughout,
and provide a moral commentary. Their opening debate with their friend
Asper, who represents Jonson, contains an exposition of Jonson's theory
of humours.
ASP. I will not stir your patience, pardon me, I urged it for some reasons, and the rather To give these ignorant well-spoken days Some taste of their abuse of this word humour.
COR. O, do not let your purpose fall, good Asper; It cannot but arrive most acceptable, Chiefly to such as have the happiness Daily to see how the poor innocent word Is rack'd and tortured.
MIT. Ay, I pray you proceed.
ASP. Ha, what? what is't?
COR. For the abuse of humour.
ASP. O, I crave pardon, I had lost my thoughts. Why humour, as 'tis 'ens', we thus define it, To be a quality of air, or water, And in itself holds these two properties, Moisture and fluxure: as, for demonstration, Pour water on this floor, 'twill wet and run: Likewise the air, forced through a horn or trumpet, Flows instantly away, and leaves behind A kind of dew; and hence we do conclude, That whatsoe'er hath fluxure and humidity, As wanting power to contain itself, Is humour. So in every human body, The choler, melancholy, phlegm, and blood, By reason that they flow continually In some one part, and are not continent, Receive the name of humours. Now thus far It may, by metaphor, apply itself Unto the general disposition: As when some one peculiar quality Doth so possess a man, that it doth draw All his affects, his spirits, and his powers, In their confluctions, all to run one way, This may be truly said to be a humour But that a rook, by wearing a pyed feather, The cable hat-band, or the three-piled ruff, A yard of shoe-tye, or the Switzer's knot On his French garters, should affect a humour! O, it is more than most ridiculous.
COR. He speaks pure truth; now if an idiot Have but an apish or fantastic strain, It is his humour.
ASP. Well, I will scourge those apes, And to these courteous eyes oppose a mirror, As large as is the stage whereon we act; Where they shall see the time's deformity Anatomised in every nerve, and sinew, With constant courage, and contempt of fear.
Estos días mientras me pintan el piso y me charangan la calle, me he
subido a Biescas, y lo que no había visto es este minipuente o pasarela
de piedras que han hecho para cruzar el Gállego por el sur, que buena
falta hacía. Lo veo en un blog de
Biescas también nuevo para mí, El
Pecezarrio de Angelpito, que lo lleva Angel Molano. Bueno, pues en
esta entrada salen as pasaderas,
y también mi primo el alcalde, y Arturo que iba conmigo a la escuela y
que al parecer no se llama Arturo. Y luego Maxi con sus telares
tejiendo, que para eso había pelaires en Biescas y alguno queda. Bueno,
pues a mi colección de blogs, que va, sección blogs de Biescas.
Acordándome de que existe Google Scholar, y tanto que
existe, me asomo a
mi página de allí y veo que tengo a fecha de hoy 554 documentos
indexados por Google Scholar, entre artículos, capítulos, ensayos
misceláneos y (sobre todo) bibliografías.
For future reference, me apunto estos datos de índices de citas—aunque
como se verá no destaco en citas precisamente.
All
Since 2007
Citations
336
186
h-index
5
4
i10-index
2
2
El h-index es el número h de publicaciones es el mayor de los números
tales que h publicaciones tienen h citas. (O sea que tengo al menos 5
publicaciones con 5 citas). Y el i10 es el número de publicaciones que
pasan de 10 citas: en mi caso los libros Narratology y Acción, relato, discurso. Si es que
al final pasaré a la posteridad como el que escribía o editaba estas
cosas.
Así comparando con el vecindario no localizo a
casi nadie más que aparezca en la sección de autores de Google Scholar,
es curioso. Pero veo que Susana
Onega aparece también, que tiene un número de citas de 347, un
h-index de 8 y un i-10 index de 8 también. Eso con sólo 29 documentos
indexados—pero mejor aprovechados, no cabe duda.
European Narratology
Network CFP Call
for papers from the European Narratology Network's conference March 29 and 30th 2013 in
Paris. The deadline for submissions has been extended until November 6th.
Please contact John Pier directly for more information at j.pier@wanadoo.fr
Lo paso a la lista de distribución de
AEDEAN, y lo coloco en un par de redes sociales temáticas. Se me
menciona, por cierto, en el Call for
Papers, como uno de los conferenciantes invitados, con la conferencia
que se titulará "The Story behind any Story: Evolution, Historicity,
and Narrative Mapping"
El repositorio digital de la Universidad de
Zaragoza, alias Zaguán, no es muy usado todavía: contiene varias
colecciones por área
de conocimiento:
Petrología y Geoquímica (con 32 publicaciones); Filosofía del derecho
(80), Lenguajes y sistemas informáticos (14), Arquitectura y tecn.
Computadoras (6). La colección más numerosa es la colección de Filología
inglesa,
con 83 trabajos. La práctica totalidad son míos. Aún subiría más, pero
me dijeron que no enviase más, que está la cosa en replanteamiento o
moratoria. Quizá la gente prefiera subir sus publicaciones a otros
sitios como ResearchGate (que no está organizado por universidades, sin
embargo), o Academia, donde sí pueden verse las publicaciones y
miembros de la Universidad de
Zaragoza.
Allí también abunda especialmente la participación del área de
Filología Inglesa, y también allí soy yo el más abundante de mi
departamento y universidad.
La manifestación de ayer de Barcelona fue el punto de inflexión
en el que se vio que no se va a detener a los independentistas. Aquí los comentarios de Santiago
Abascal, y de Salvador
Sostres. Yo
auguré que sería un fracaso, y se veía venir: por cada manifestante a
favor de España, salen cuarenta a favor de la independencia. Una prueba
de músculo que falla es la prueba y demostración palmaria de lo
contrario de lo que se pretendía demostrar. El
gobierno, el PP, el PSOE, los llamados "partidos nacionales", no
estaban por supuesto en la manifestación de ayer. Ni estaban, ni se les
esperaba, tras treinta años de incomparecencia. ¿He dicho alguna vez que no
hay que votar al PP, ni al PSOE, ni a las IUs, ni a quien apoye o
tolere a los secesionistas?El
gobierno español seguirá jugando a que no pasa nada, metiendo la cabeza
en la arena, y confiando en que la independencia es una imposibilidad
legal, que lo es. Lo que parece que nadie les ha dicho es que las
declaraciones de independencia se han hecho normalmente, siempre y de
toda la vida, vulnerando la
legalidad, no ateniéndose a ella.
Cataluña se irá de España dejándonos la deuda puesta—que será de
España, no de la flamante Cataluña—y, si nos descuidamos, se irá con
una subvención suplementaria o diezmo anual que le pagarán nuestros
gobernantes—esos necios abismales, memos sin remedio, y traidores a su
país. Y agárrense, que aún estamos a tiempo de que esta historia acabe
mucho peor de lo que espera todo el mundo, que precedentes
y avisos y analogías no faltan.
From the Treacherous Entertainment to
the Noble Death. Further reflections on the "World
as a Stage" theme, or the self-conscious depiction of the
theatricality of self and social life in Renaissance drama:
From McAlindon, English Renaissance Tragedy (I.IV:
"The Treacherous Entertainment: The Symbolism of Rite and Play"):
Any account of the core elements of Renaissance tragedy
must necessarily inquire into the function and significance of its most
characteristic and conventionalised scene, the Treacherous
Entertainment (as I have called it). This scene may coincide with the
major point of change near the centre of the action, but as a rule it
forms the catastrophe. It may consist simply of a banquet or a game;
more often it is a play or masque performed in conjunction with a
marriage. But, whatever its position or form, it is always a ritual
affirmation of love and union which turns out to be a monstrous
negation of everything it affirms.
Fashioned by Thomas
Kyd with great originality out of elements drawn from Seneca's Thyestes and Medea,the
Treacherous Entertainment
is a dramatic device whose popularity must be ascribed to its symbolic
function as well as to its great theatrical potential. Every dramatist
who uses it seeks to give it some original twist, but all follow Kyd in
shaping it as an elaborate model of the play-world to which it belongs.
Thus, however much it may differ in detail from play to play, its
guiding principle is always a lightning confusion of opposites which
summarises the essential nature of life in its tragic perspective.
Hospitality and violence, love and hatred, marriage and mourning, play
and earnest, and comedy and tragedy are all likely to be involved here
in a sudden and 'huge eclipse'.
Although by far the most important, the Treacherous Entertainment is
seldom if ever the only action of its kind in a tragedy. Usually there
are two to three well-distributed ritual scenes, standing out clearly
from the rest of the action and related to each other by analogy and
contrast and sometimes cause and effect; indeed, it is difficult not to
see in this pattern a basic constructional formula on which the
dramatists are heavily dependent. Some ritual scenes exhibit an
achieved order, but they are the exception rather than the rule, and
even they are darkened by external threats or flawed by some subtle
internal discord. The general impression given by ritual scenes, an
impression which transfers to the tragedies built round them, is an
impression of rite gone wrong: the pun, facilitated by interchangeable
spelling in the seventeenth century, is ubiquitous.
it has been argued with great persuasiveness that the symbolic
strategies of Renaissance drama, ritual and pageant serve to express
two quite different conceptions of life. Whereas rite, cremony, and
pageant, it is said, stand for the traditional view of the world as a
stable and immutable order, play signifies the new and disturbing
notion of life—embraced in their different ways by Promethean heroes
and Machiavellian politicians—as a historical process in which nothing
is stable and the individual is free to assume ever new identities.(97)
I would suggest, however, that the operative distinction is not between
rite and play (drama) but between the proper and the improper use of
each. The Treacherous Entertainment in its most typical form
exemplifies this point. Ritual and play are both presented in it as
accepted signs and instruments of harmonious order, and both are either
violently truncated or wilfully perverted for destructive ends. As in
Renaissance tragedy generally, they function in this scene as symbolic
partners.
(...)
The radical discrepancy between self and role (or style) which the
villain cheerfully ignores becomes a source of painful
self-consciousness, of division within and alientation without, in
characters of tragic stature; and we may include in this category
introspective 'tool villains' such as Webster's
Bosola, specifically described as 'a good actor . . . playing a
villain's part'.(115)
Such characters come to adopt roles at variance with their true or
better selves not knowingly and eagerly, like the villain, but blindly
and in response to powerful compulsions. These compulsions may be
objectifies in the figure of the tyrant or usurper, who
characteristically redistributes roles at will, or the Machiavellian
tempter, who would make a change of role seem no change at all.
Because conceptions of the self and its relation to society have
changed enormously since the seventeenth century, and are much more
variable today they were then, the significance of role as a metaphor
in the characterisation of the Renaissance tragic hero and heroine
seems bound to give rise to doubtful interpretations and critical
dispute. I would draw attention here to two critical tendencies
which, although obviously distinguishable, share the common assumption
that the hero is presented as unable in the nature of things to find
his personal identity in any one socially defined role. One of these
approaches stems from romantic and existentialist positions suggesting
that the individual life in in a developed community is necessarily
inauthentic, and that social alienation is prerequisite for
self-realisation: it encourages us to see the hero of Renaissance
tragedy advancing towards self-discovery as a result of his refusal to
play out a given role. The other approach stems from
socioanthropological perceptions concerning the plasticity of human
nature; it suggests that the hero discovers or uncovers the truth about
his self—that it is multiple rather than single, artificial rather than
innate—in the very process of acting out many roles. (116)
There is much in the texts to justify these critical perspectives.
Moreover, they have the great virtue of highlighting the dramatists'
often profound sense of the elusive complexity of the human
personality, as well as their recognition of the multiple forces which
continually threaten the integrity of the individual. But it may be
that they help to conceal at least as much as they reveal. In the first
place, it is surely incorrect to speak of the protagonist as moving out
of role into character (or vice versa), since the dramatists and their
contemporaries took it as axiomatic that character without role, like
thought without language, is in practical terms non-existent. It is
true that role-playing usually begins to catch attention when it is
clear that the hero and his world are out of joint. But that is not
because playing a part is in itself considered to be unnatural; it is
because a part well played is felt to be a harmony of nature and art
and so does not call attention to itself. We begin to reflect on the
problems of 'acting' when characters have disqualified themselves from
playing the part which is properly theirs (Richard II arbitrating in a
dispute where he himself is the chief culprit, Beatrice-Joanna rebuking
the insolence of a servant whom she has hired to commit murder); or
when they assume an alien role in order to reassert themselves (Lear
kneeling in mock petition to Goneril, the usurped Duke Altofronto
disguised as a railing malcontent), or when their self-regard is
ominously tainted with self-ignorance or pride (Othello affirming that
Cupid's toys will not interfere with his martial duties, Bussy D'Ambois
indulging in 'bravery'); or when self-will and desperation have
compelled them along the path of deceit (Juliet playing the obedient
daughter to Capulet, the Duchess of Malfi going through the charade of
dismissing Antonio as a dishonest servant). Thus, instead of moving
from role to character (or character to role), the tragic protagonist
is more likely to be seen as exchanging of having to exchange a role
which harmonises with the conditions of his nature for another or
others which do not: so that in losing his original role he loses
himself.
Moreover, rather than uncovering a suppressed identity, or creating a
new one, the tragic character more probably acquires a new
understanding of his lost self and of those elements in his own and
other men's nature which separated him from it. This understanding is
often embodied in what is arguably the only pefect piece of theatre and
ritual in the Renaissance tragic world—the Noble Death, in which the
protagonist is sublimely constant and true to himself. Despite the
splendour of this final 'act', the new understanding which gives it
moral substance embraces a recognition that the individual is bound and
limited, not only self-made but shaped and help in being by a context
of relationships—interpersonal, social, and cosmic. Thus the famous
words uttered by Webster's heroine at death, 'I am Duchess of Malfi
still', are not simply the triumphant assertion of an indestructible
personal identity. They are also a reminder from the dramatist that,
despite her marriage to her steward, this great lady will always find
her identity in the name and duchy of her dead husband. And they are
but a prelude to the complete revelation, which comes when the Duchess
accepts—on bended knee— Bosola's suggestion that aristocratic pride
debars her from self-knowledge and lasting glory. She dies 'like' the
Duchess of Malfi indeed, but in a manner which shows what that means in
terms of nobilty, frailty, and dependence.
One cannot, however, ascribe to the dramatists of this period any firm
belief that the individual will be true to himself, or maintain a sense
of his own identity, for very long. Because the self is an unstable
synthesis of opposites, 'None can be always one' (117).
The psychic life seems here to be a kind of continuing Fall: a
banishment from the person one would and should be, and in some sense
was; a restless search for self-realisation in roles which too often
have the effect of making one feel 'cabin'd, cribb'd, confin'd, bound
in / To saucy doubts and fears' (Macbeth,
iii.iv.24-5). But however subtle and unremitting their sense of the
strange mutations in man's character the tragedians stop short of
abandoning the notion of psychic continuity and making metamorphosis a
positive. Like Montaigne, who explores with such acuteness the
mercuriality of the self, they 'Esteeme
it a great matter, to play but one man'(118).
In the closely related spheres of psychology and ethics, constancy
—which presupposes unity and harmony—remains their primary value.(119)
________
(97) Alvin Kernan, "The
Henriad: Shakespeare's Major History Plays", YR LIX (1969-70): 3-32, and in The Revels History of the Drama in English,
Vol. III: 1576-1613,
ed. J. Leeds Barroll, Alexander Leggatt, Richard Hosley and Alvin
Kernan (London: Methuen, 1975) pp. 241ff. As Kernan notes, he is
developing ideas suggested by C. L. Barber, Shakespeare's Festive Comedy
(115) The Duchess
of Malfi,
IV.ii.289-90. Cf. V.v.85-6., where the dying Bosola refers to himself
as 'an actor in the main of all / Much 'gainst mine own good nature'.
The Duchess, too, sees herself as an unwilling performer: 'I do account
this world a tedious theatre, / For I do play a part in't 'gainst my
will' (VI.i.84-5). (116) See, for instance, Kernan, in YR, LIX 3-32, and The Revels History of the Drama in English,
IIII 241ff.; John Holloway, (Princeton, NJ: Princeton
University Press, 1959) pp. 193-5.
The
Story of the Night: Studies in Shakespeare's Major Tragedies (London:
Routledge, 1961) pp. 26-87, 35-6, 57; Hugh P. Richmond, "Personal
Identity and Literary Personae: A Study in Historical Psychology", PMLA,
LXXXX (1975): 209-21. Disagreement with Kernan's interpretation of the
role metaphor in Shakespeare has been expressed by Philip Edwards in
'Person and Office in Shakespeare's Plays', PBA LVI (1970) 93-109; he does not
find in Shakespeare a 'necessary disjunction between the inner self and
the public self'. (117) Bussy
D'Ambois, IV.i.25. (118) Montaigne, Essays,
trs. Florio, II 15 (II.i) (Author's emphasis.) (119) In Role
Playing in Shakespeare
(Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1978), p. 180, Thomas Van Laan
notes that in Shakespeare's tragedies, by contrast with the comedies,
'losing oneself' is not a necessary and ultimately beneficial stage in
the progress towards final happiness. It is to lose all, to be torn
loose and cast adrift in a void without dimensions . . . an experience
that no one can survive.'
Y el Rey, protestando por la idea de españolizar a los catalanes. No es
de extrañar que el país esté vendido, si lo venden sus máximos
responsables. Qué vergüenza de rey. Qué bajeza.
Webster was much possessed
by death And
saw the skull beneath the skin (...) T.
S. Eliot
(From "Shakespeare's
contemporaries", in Legouis and Cazamian's History
of English Literature, 1926-1937):
John Webster (1575?-1624?).—
Of all the Elizabethans, it is John Webster who, after long oblivion,
was most belauded by the Romantics. About the man it has been possible
to discover hardly anything. He was born between 1570 and 1580 and
disappeared in 1624. He wrote for the stage from 1602 onwards, serving
for vive years as a sort of apprenticeship as collaborator with
Heywood, Middleton, Marston, and, especially, Dekker, but his part,
doubtless a subordinate one, in the works to which he contributed
cannot be distinguished. His two masterpieces were produced between
1611 and 1614. He relapsed after them to mediocrity, and of his later
work only his Roman play, Appius and
Virginia, which dates from about 1620, has some merit. His
authorship of it is to-day disputed, certain critics assigning it to
Heywood. He
survives as the author of The White
Devil, or Vittoria Corombona, played about 1611, and The Duchess of Malfi, about 1614.
These tragedies are enough to prove his talent.
The first is one of a series of studies of courtesans which appeared
one after another within a few years. It seems to have been Marston who
broke the ice with his Dutch
Courtesan,
which the feeling Dekker answered by appealing for pity for his
Bellafront. Shakespeare's Cleopatra was an entirely original variation
on the same theme. But Evadne, in The
Maid's Tragedy by Beaumont and Fletcher, Bianca, in Middleton's Women Beware Women,
and Webster's Vittoria are closely analogous and all appeared about
1611. Webster's and Middleton's plays are pendants to each other with
their atrocities, their Italian atmosphere, and the equally brilliant
and criminal careers of the historic courtesans they portray, Bianca
Cappello and Vittoria Accorombona.
From the beginning, the English dramatic muse was apt to sojourn in
Italy. Shakespeare early transferred himself thither in imagination in The Two Gentlement of Verona, The Merchant
of Venice,and Romeo and Juliet.
But not until the seventeenth century did Italy become the conventional
site of stage representations of unbridled passion and gloomy atrocity.
The novel, led by Nashe, was in this ahead of the stage. Marston with Antonio and Mellida, The Malcontent, and
The Fawn, Shakespeare with Othello, Jonson with Volpone, and Tourneur with The Revenger's Tragedy,
accustomed their public to see Italy as the natural home of voluptuous
pleasure, bloodshed, and death. None, however, Italianized their scenes
more exclusively and intensively than Webster. He specialized in Italy
at a time when Fletcher and his collaborators were beginning to turn
their attention to Spanish heroism.
Webster's genius is seen in The White Devil,
especially in his portrait of Vittoria, the courtesan, whose licence
scandalized Rome at the end of the sixteenth century. It is she who is
the white devil. he makes her guilt clear, but at the same time conveys
an impression of her fascination, which he seems himself to feel. He is
all admiration for this woman's beauty, the energy of her ambition, and
the presence of mind with which she faces desperate situations. As the
wife of a poor gentleman, she is courted by Brachiano, Duke of Padua,
and she convinces him that he must marry her, first ridding her her of
her husband and himself of his virtuous wife. The double murder is
accomplished, but suspicion rests on those who profit by it. Vittoria
is summoned before an imposing court, over which the Duke of Florence
and his brother, Cardinal Monticelso, afterwards Sixtus V, preside.
Accusations, precise and overwhelming, are heaped upon her, but she
meets her judges superbly, and with head held high turns their attack
against them, reducing their proofs to nothingness and causing more
than one of those present to waver. This scene on a large scale is
admirable. Vittoria is none the less condemned to seclusion in a house
of convertites, but escapes from it with her lover's help. They are
pursued by the vengeance of the Duke of Florence and killed one after
the other, Vittoria holding out until she has exhausted every resource
of invention, cunning, and courage. Even in her last hour she defends
herself haughtily and, counting on the effect of her beauty, bares her
bosom and walks to meet her assassins. She dies at last, confronting
Fate with her last words:
My soul, like to a ship in a black
storm, Is
driven, I know not whither.
Beside her is her brother Flamineo, her tool, who has debauched her to
advance her fortunes and whom she uses in her love-affairs. It is he
who causes her unwanted husband to disappear. He is vice incarnate, and
his moments of real valour make him, abject as he is, not altogether
mean.
These characters are placed among many others and meet with singularly
atrocious adventures. The melodramatic expedients, increasingly
employed in every succeeding scene, are endless: Brachiano's wife dies
because her husband's portrait, which she has the habit of kissing
every evening, is poisoned: a magician causes Brachiano to witness the
execution of the double crime he has ordered; the sister who has been
slain appears unmistakably to the brother who mourns her and will
avenge her; Brachiano's murder is accomplished by pouring poison into a
helmet afterwards riveted on to his head by an armourer, and he dies in
atrocious pain while his enemies, disguised as Capuchins, reveal
themselves to him in his last moments, telling the tale of his crimes
and promising him damnation. The play is, moreover, spectacularly
gorgeous: while the conclave is in session, servants are shown passing
backwards and forwards, carrying dishes for the imprisoned cardinals;
afterwards the election takes place, and the new pope appears in great
ceremony, uttering a Latin formula. never has there been a more perfect
fusion of pure drama, which is an effect of representing character and
passions, and melodrama, which is based on the horror of physical
impressions and on spectacular strangeness.
The Duchess of Malfi, a more
closely knit play, makes the same appeal. The theme is persecuted
virtue, a variant on the so popular one of revenge. There is again a
question of vengeance, accomplished, as in The
Spanish Tragedie,
by strange means. The avengers are, however, moved by blind,
unreasoning
considerations, as, for instance, fury at misalliance, or they have low
motives, like the desire to get possession of their victim's fortune.
The victim, the Duchess of Malfi (or Amalfi), is all goodness and
innocence, and is driven to madness and death by her brothers because
she has secretly married her steward, the virtuous Antonio.
The tragedy is full of Shakespearean reminiscences: the duchess recalls
Desdemona, and Cariola, her woman, Emilia in Othello.
Bosola, the monster, the tool of the two brothers, is modelled on Iago.
The anger of Ferdinand, the criminal brother, against Bosola, after the
murder he himself has ordered, is like that of King John against Hubert
when he believes him to have put Arthur do death. The remorse of the
other brother, the cardinal who can no longer pray, is a parallel to
that of Claudius in Hamlet.
Every such comparison would merely show up Webster's extreme
inferiority, were it not that the substitutes for the psychology, at
which Shakespeare principally aims, a search for the pathos inherent in
situations and even in material effects. It is this search which is
proper to melodrama. Webster has a strange power of evoking shudders.
His means are sometimes the more effective for their simplicity. The
duchess, compelled by fear of her brothers to keep her marriage secret,
is iscovered in her chamber conversing with her husband, Antonio, her
heart filled with joy and love. Antonio leaves her without her
knowledge; she continues to speak, thinking he hears her, but her
listener is now one of the brothers she fears, to whom she thus betrays
herself. Whoever watches the play feels a catch at his heart, as he
perceives her error while she is still unaware of it. The impulse is to
cry out to her to beware. Some of Webster's devices are, howver, much
less innocent than this one. The avenging brothers revel in macabre
inventions to torture their poor victim: one of them, feigning to give
her his hand, leaves a severed hand in her grasp; she is shown wax
figures which represent the murder of her husband and children; the
inmates of a madhouse are let loose in her palace.
These inferior artistic expedients are, however, relieved by the poetry
of melancholy and death which dominates the whole tragedy. Webster is a
true poet, the author of some of the most beautiful songs of the
Renascence, and throughout, in the very web of his style, are images,
funereal in mood, which have the breath of graveyards upon them, yet
strike and stir the heart. More than this, the play contains the
character of the duchess. At first, although her love endears
her, she is not original, but she is transfigured by persecution and
becomes in her despair a lofty and solemn figure. Throughout her cruel
trials she never fails to ennoble the tragedy by the somber poetry of
her speech. Her reason is proof against all the assaults upon her.
Cariola, her woman, struggles and cries out when she is faced with
death, but death cannot make the duchess tremble. So beautiful and so
noble does she remain in death that her brother, who has ordered her
murder, cannot bear to see her face:
Cover her face; mine eyes dazzle;
she died young.
Not until Edgar Poe was there another genius as completely morbid as
Webster. His highly special and restricted talent was active only in
one genre and accomplished
only two memorable plays. He was an artist, but an a painful and
laborious one. The effort to which productions compelled him recalls
Ben Jonson. His preface to The White
Devil shows that, like Jonson, he knew the limae labor et mora,
that, like him, he despised popular improvisations and the judgments of
the public. A contemporary satirist made fun of the trouble writing was
to him:
How he scrubs: wrings his wrists:
scratches his pate!
But Webster gloried in his own painstaking. He would have attempted the
most difficult form of art, for it was his desire to compose in despite
of the prevailing taste, a regular sententious tragedy, respectful of
the unities, lofty in style, having its chorus and messenger. The
aspiration was curious in one who stands for the triumph of melodrama
raised to the level of true poetry.
Una oración de Javier Krahe; de los años setenta, pero las
oraciones son para todo tiempo:
Testimony and Confession CFP
Exegesis, the
academic e-journal of the English Department at Royal Holloway, University of London
(www.exegesisjournal.org <http://www.exegesisjournal.org/>
), is now accepting submissions for the Spring 2013 edition on
'Testimonies and Confessions'. In this issue we seek to generate discussion about the
forms that testimonies and confessions have taken historically, theologically,
and literarily from an interdisciplinary, cross-period perspective. Authors
may choose to investigate this topic literally, metaphorically, or
theoretically, and in terms of specific texts, authors, times, or places.
Articles and creative pieces might address, but are not limited to, any of the
following subjects:
*Confessional/Testimonial
literature as autobiographical, fictional, or sensationalized for humour
*First person narratives, such as
diaries or letters
*Monologues (in Shakespeare, for
example)
*Literary and theological
confessions (e.g. Confessions of St. Augustine, Rousseau's Confessions)
*False confessions
*In a court of law, admitting
guilt of a crime, or testifying as witness
*Testifying on war, violence,
social oppression, etc.
*The meaning of 'truth', how we
find it, and what can be considered 'proof'
*The role of confession to
religion (sinning, absolution)
*Confession as an interpretation
of identity
*Philosophical testimony (Kant,
Hume, Ricoeur, and others)
Submission deadline is 10th
January 2013. Please submit via the following email addresses: to submit a
critical work, critical@exegesisjournal.org, to submit a creative work,
creative@exegesisjournal.org, to submit a book review reviews@exegesisjournal.org. After
peer review, refereed submissions will be selected and published in our
April 2013 issue. Please take note of the Guidelines on our website.
All submissions will be considered
for the [Exegesis Writing Awards] of £100 for one critical article and £100
for one creative piece, which will be granted on the basis of writing
excellence.
English theatre 1520-1578
By Émile Legouis
("The Theatre from 1520 to 1578",
from Legouis and Cazamian's History
of English Literature, 1926-1937)
I. Humanism in the
theatre.
English dramatic writing produced no masterpiece in this period,
yet felt its way along the most various paths, and acquired an
experience without which the Elizabethan drama would have been
impossible. It partook both of the past which had survived, and of the
future for which it was preparing.
The miracle plays were performed almost till the end, although, since
the Protestants looked askance at them, they gradually lost ground, and
the cycles of the different towns disappeared, one after another, as
the Reformation advanced. In any case, these plays did no more than
prolong their existence. They no longer changed: they merely persisted
in the form which they had assumed in the fifteenth century. The
interesting point is that they still had a large public, and that
dramatic innovations did not supplant them, but were introduced side by
side with them.
Moralities, on the other hand, did not only continue to be much
appreciated, but were also modified and renewed in accordance with
circumstances. Those produced until about 1520 were Christian and no
more. They may be said to have had neither place nor date. But the
moralities came to be impregnated with the spirit of the Renascence or
the Reformation. Two distinct groups of them appeared, which voiced
respectively humanist and Protestant tendencies.
Tedious though was the morality Magnificence,
written by John Skelton about 1516, it yet showed a new standpoint. It
did not merely, like its predecessors, represent the struggle between
Heaven and Hell. Skelton, who seems to have aimed at warning Henry VIII
against mad extravagance, does not deal wih the great problem of
Christianity, but enforces a particular moral lesson. His hero,
Magnificence, is brought to ruin by a succession of bad counsellors,
and would kill himself were he not saved by the intervention of Good
Hope, Circumspection, Perseverance, and others. This is the first
specimen of a laicized morality.
In its two successors the spirit of the Renascence is much more clearly
marked. They are inspired neither by the usual moral lesson nor by
religious faith, but by the love of knowledge. Manifestly they were
born in academic circles in which knowledge is the ideal goal and in
which the devil is named Ignorance.
The morality of The
Four Elements,
which was printed in 1519, and of which fragments are extant, is very
curious. It is contemporary with More's Utopia.
Like More, the author is under the influence of the tales of Amerigo
Vespucci. He teaches geography, cosmography, almost all the sciences
known to his time. The Messenger, who speaks the prologue, discourses
gravely on science and deplores the lack of learned books in England
and English. Only frivolous books, he says, are written in English, and
only the rich man is esteeemed wise in England. Yet true wisdom is in
knowledge, in knowledge of God who can be known only by His works, and
therefore in the study of nature. The play leaves theology on one side.
The subject is the instruction of the child Humanity, son of 'Natura
Naturata'. He is entrusted to Studious Desire, but his progress is
interrupted by the temptations of Sensual Appetite, who takes him to
the tavern. The child has interpreted ill the works of Nature, who bade
him use his senses. Only at the end of the play does he again show a
taste for knowledge.
Sensual Appetite here plays the part of clown, as does his friend
Ignorance, who detests philosophers and astronomers and boasts of his
own power, saying that he is mightier than the king of England or
France, that he is the greatest lord alive, and has more than five
hundred thousand servants in England. He addresses the audience
directly:
For all that they be now in this
hall, They be
the most part my servants all,
And love principally Disports,
as dancing, singing, Toys,
trifling, laughing, jesting; For
cunning they set not by.
A geography lesson produces a burst of patriotism. Studious Desire
instructs Humanity that the earth is round; Experience diplays a globe,
enumerates the countries she has visited, dwelling on America, and
deplores that Spaniards, Portuguese, and Frenchmen have gone farther
than Englishmen:
O, what a thing had be then, If that
they that be Englishmen Might
have been the first of all That
there should have taken possession.
She would have wished all these countries to have been civilized and
converted to religion by the English.
A like ardour to instruct fills John Redford's pedagogic morality, The Play of Wyt and Science,
which dates from the end of the reign of Henry VIII. Reason, after the
manner of a highborn father, wishes to marry his daughter Science to
Human Wit, the son of Nature. It matters not that Wit is neither well
born nor rich:
Wherefore, syns they both be so
meet matches To love
each other, strawe for the patches Of
worldly mucke! syence hath inowghe For
them both to lyve.
But Wit for long lacks wisdom. In his youthful eagerness to know he
imprudently attacks Tediousness and is saved only just in time by
Honest Recreation. She, unfortunately, does not satisfy him and he
leaves her and falls asleep in the lap of Idleness. Without knowing it
he has become a fiool, when, at last, he reaches the presence of
Science, who repels him for an ignorant suitor. But in a mirror he sees
himself as he is and is disgusted. After a term of chastisement and
hard labour, he again attacks Tediousness, this time with a good sword,
and slays him. Science, who has witnessed the encounter from the summit
of Mount Parnassus, now accepts her destined spouse, first warning him:
But if ye use me not well, then
dowt me, For,
sure, ye were better then wythout me!
This is an ingenious and well-arranged morality, which is pervaded by
strong rationalist conviction. It resumes the spirit of the Renascence
well, and bears witness to the appetite for knowledge which caused
schools and colleges to be born in the land. The comic element is
supplied by an episode in which Ignorance is heard blundering thorugh a
lesson in the alphabet given him by his mother, Idleness The mistress,
who represents the old somnolent methods of teaching, is no less
ridiculous than her idiot pupil.
2.
The Reformation on the Stage.
Lyndsay. John Bale.
Very early, the Reformation attempted to take possession of the
morality and use it for its own ends. Passion, inevitably unjust and
sometimes brutal, gave life to more than one Protestant morality play.
They appeared in the north and in the south. The first in date was
written by the Scot Sir David Lyndsay, whose reforming zeal we have
already seen.
His Satire of the Thrie Estaitis
was played in 1540 at Linlithgow before the King of Scotland, the
bishops, and the people. It is as political as it is religious. The
three estates are the nobles, the clergy, and the merchants, and all
three are pilloried together, censured for giving too much ear to
Sensuality, Wantonness, and Deceit. The grieevances which John the
Common Weal, the man of the people, has against them are just enough,
and it is pleasant to see him obtain the needed reforms with the help
of Good Counsel and Correction.
Lyndsay's special attack is against the Church. Dame Veritie, who
desires access to the king, finds her way barred by the lords
spiritual, scared at her advent. An abbot wishes to cast her into
prison, and a parson recommends that she be put to death, under cover
of the king's momentary subjection to Dame Sensuality. The same priest
summons Veritie to declare by what right she is addicted to preaching.
He threatens her with the stake, and when she refuses to retract,
Flattery, a monk, exclaims:
Quat buik is that, harlot, into
thy hand?
Out, walloway! This is the New Test'ment, In
Englisch toung and printit in England:
herisie, herisie! fire, fire! incontinent.
In a comic interlude the social satire is dominant. Pauper recounts his
misadventures. He used to keep his old father and mother by his labour
and owned a mare and three cows. When his partents died the landlord
took the mare as a heriot; the vicar seized the best cow at his
father's, and the second best at his mother's, death. The third cow
went the same way when his wife died of grief, when also the vicar's
clerk bore off the uppermost clothes of the family. There is nothing
left for Pauper to do but to beg. The parish priest has refused him
Easter communion because he no longer pays tithes. He has only one
farthing in his pocket with which to plead for justice. A Pardoner
arrives, boasting of his relics and insulting the New Testament, which
sells to the injury of his trade. With his last farthing Pauper buys a
thousand years' indulgence, but when he asks to see his purchase a
fight ensues and the relics fall into the gutter.
These passages give an idea of the violence of the attack and of the
life it imparted to the morality.
The Protestants of England were no less ferocious. Their most famous
dramatic champion was Bishop John Bale (1495-1563), who even attempted
to turn the fixed and traditional miracle plays to Protestant uses.
Under the name of tragedies, comedies, and interludes, he wrote
scenes in harmony with the reformed faith, taking them from sacred
history and principally from the life of Christ. But he gave the chief
of his efforts to morality plays, combined with history which was
sometimes contermporary, as in his Proditiones
Papistarum and Super utroque
Regis Coniugio. The most interesting of his dramatic essays is,
however, his allegory King
Johan,
in which he recasts history to his liking. He makes of the deplorable
John a great king, hated and calumniated by the clergy. For John had
been bold enough to rebel against Rome, and all his faults, crimes, and
cowardice are therefore wiped out. He is represented as a man
misunderstood, a noble victim, the first Protestant. This play merits a
particular place in the history of the theatre. It is the half-open
chrysalis, the morality play whence the historical drama is about to
emerge. Real and allegorical characters are mingled in it. John is
betrayed by Dissimulation and threatened by Sedition. Moreover,
abstractions are changed in the course of the play into living beings.
Sedition, for instance, becomes Cardinal Stephen Langton, Usurped Power
the Pope. This is a travesty of history and yet history, and, through
the medium of another and Elizabethan work on the same reign, it was to
leave its mark on Shakespeare's King
John.
3. Heywood's
Interludes. 'Calisto and
Meliboea'
John Heywood's (1497?-1580) interludes or farces, written under
Henry VIII, cannot be called Catholic answers to Protestant attacks
since they preceded the offensive of the Reformers. Two of them were
printed as early as 1533. Heywood, a good Catholic and the friend of
Thomas More, wrote in the medieval tradition, in the spirit of the
fabliaux which certainly did not spare churchmen. He was original in
avoiding morality plays and in having no purpose but to amuse. he has
no notion of ecclesiastical or theological controversy. His interludes
are mere comic dialogues, scenes from fabliaux sometimes modelled on
the French. But he is of his own nation almost the only representative
of this school of dramatic writing. The four interludes which he
certainly wroter are controversies in burlesque. In Witty and Witless, James and John
discuss whether it is better to be a fool or a wise man; they are
echoing the Dyalogue du fol et du
sage performed at the court of Louis XII. In Love, an unloved lover and his
unloving mistress seek, each of them, to prove himself the more
miserable, while another couple, a lover beloved and a man who is
neither loved nor a lover, dispute the right to be called the happier.
In The Play of the Weather,
ten characters demand of Jupiter that he sends them weather suited to
their needs or desires, and the god finally decides that each of them
shall be satisfied in turn. In The
Four P's, four characters, a Palmer, a Pardoner, a Potycary, and
a Pedlar, discuss which of them shall tell the biggest lie. The pilgrim
declares that in all his travels he has never seen a woman lose
patience, and the others themselves allow that he has won the prize.
These plays are, it is seen, without plot, but Heywood puts life into
his characters and expresses himself with a drollery which recalls
Chaucer. There is a grotesque description of hell equal to the
Sompnour's in the prologue to his Tale. Good humour reigns everywhere.
Yet these writings are hardly dramas. If, as is probable, Heywood also
wrote The Pardoner and the Friar
and Johan Johan, the story of
a husband deceived by his wife, Tyb, and Sir Johan, the parish priest,
he came much nearer to farce in them. Their characters and incidents
conform excellently to the old comic tradition, and their dramatization
could not be more vigorous. In these two pieces Heywood was inspired by
French originals, Farce nouvelle
d'un pardonneur, d'un triacleur et d'une tavernière and Farce de Pernet qui va au vin.
Although he wrote under Henry VIII he never even suggests the
Renascence.
Not, that is, unless the comic monologue Thersites, played about 1537, may
be ascribed to him on the evidence of style. Its subject and its
allusions are loaded with classical reminiscences. The play is a free
adaptation from the Latin of Ravisius Textor, or Jean Tixier de Ravisé,
professor of rhetoric in Navarre College in Paris. Antiquity supplied
the material for this farce, which had many analogies with the Franc Archer de Bagnolet, and which
brougth the braggart on to the English stage for the first time.
Another novelty isolated in the reign of Henry VIII was the adaptation
of the famous Spanish play Celestina
which was printed in 1530 as Calisto
and Meliboea. The English playwright has kept only the first
four of the sixteen acts of his original. He has changed the long
crowded drama with its tragic conclusion to a romantic comedy having a
moral and cheerful ending. The character of the procuress Celestina,
the descendant of Dame Siriz and the prototype of Macette, is indeed
the same in the English as in the original version, but before she
throws Meliboea into the arms of Calisto, the girl's father intervenes
to save her on the brink of the abyss. Thus the didactic instinct cuts
short a romantic drama.
4.
Progress of the theatre after 1550.
There was no further change in the first half of the century,
but from 1550 onwards innovations came thick and fast.
It is about the middle of the century that the formation of troops of
professional players, in addition to the amateurs who performed in the
miracle plays, can be clearly traced. In more than one school and more
than one college of the universities there were performances especially
of classical pieces, but usually they were written by the masters and
acted by the pupils. But the people of the provinces as well as those
of
the capital wished to be amused, and they were no longer satisfied with
the miracle plays and moralities. Interludes, otherwise farces, were in
great demand and were provided by professional actors. These were at
first poor wretches, always under suspicion, who were harried by the
authorities as rogues and vagabonds. Before they could be left in piece
they had to obtain the patronage of a magnate, a baron at the least.
There was no lack of such willing protectors who appreciated their
services. The first company to obtain letters patent was Leicester's,
in 1574, but it was not the first to stroll about the country. In
London the players were at the mercy of the civic authorities, who made
thir life hard, less perhaps from Puritan prejudice, than because the
highly popular darmatic performances constantly gave occasion for
disorder, and by attracting a great concourse of spectators might
spread the plague, during these years in which it was endemic.
Against the persecuting lord mayor the actors invoked the help of the
queen and the magnates. Their chief plea was that they contributed to
the queen's pleasure and had need of practice in order to be worthy to
play before her. The Privy Council supported them against the City.
They first played in London in the courtyards of certain inns. Then, to
escape constant annoyance and prohibitions, some of them built, in
1576, their
first theatre, outside the city but on its confines, on
waste land in Shoreditch.
London meanwhile enjoyed more select peformances. The Inns of Court
were a home for the drama of classical tendencies, and a connecting
link between the stage of the uniersities and that of the popular
theatres.
That the queen might be ensured a supply of worthy actors, the
choristers or children of the Chapel Royal were trained to perform
plays, both those specially written for them by the master of the
Chapel Royal, and others. These bos, both singers and actors, performed
for the public as well as for the court, and were for some fifty years
the dreaded competitors of adult and professional actors. Their example
was followed by other London schools—St. Paul's, Westminster, and
Merchant Taylors'—where the most gifted pupils were trained to act and
were proud to contribute to the royal diversions. Nothing, nor Puritan
disapproval nor civic alarms, could stem the growing passion for the
theatre which was felt by the whole nation—nobles, burghers, and people.
(a) THE CLASSICAL INFLUENCE. COMEDY. — The first
English comedy of the classical school was Ralph
Roister Doister,
written about 1533 by Nicholas Udall (1506-56), head master
successively of Eton and Westminster. Instead of making the Westminster
boys act Plautus, Udall wrote for them, according to the laws of the
classical drama, a comedy in five acts, inspired by Latin comic plays.
He borrowed some characters from the ancients, but took others straight
from English life. The hero Ralph recalls the Pyrgopolinices and
Therapontigone of Plautus, is swaggering, stupid, and fatuous as they.
Since the play is intended for schoolboys, Udall does not make him a
libertine as in the Latin original, but a man really in love, even
sentimentally and tearfully amorous. As he endows him also with
avarice, so that the keeps an eye on his lady's dowry, the character is
confused and lacks versimilitude. Side by side with Ralph appears
Merrygreek, a parasite from ancient comedy, but one who plays his part
for fun rather than self-interest. It is the parasite about to be
changed into Mascarille or Scapin.
Besides these imitated characters, ther is the heroine, Dame Constance,
who is courted by Ralph, a worthy and chaste matron annoyed by an
impudent fool. When she knows that she has been slandered to the
merchant Goodrich, whom she loves honourably, she sends up to heaven a
fine prayer for protection. About her are her maids, one young and the
other old, real English servans painted with merry realism. In fact,
Udall acccpts aid from Plautus, but has no superstitious veneration for
him. His aim, like that of his contemporary Rabelais, is to ause, 'for
mirth,' he says, 'prolongeth life and causes health'. The principal
scenes are that in which Merrygreek reads to Constance a love-letter
from Ralph and makes it insulting by revising the punctuation, and that
in which the roisterer besieges his mistress's house and, in spite of a
warlike disguise—Merrygreek has put a hencoop of his head for a
helmet—is routed by the dame and his maids.
Udall may have had a moral purpose—he may have desired to satirize
vainglory—but his chief aim was to cause innocent laughter. He has not
only produced a frace on the classical model, but has also constructed
a plot without expelling gaiety. His verse is stiff and stilted, but
his language has savour.
There is even more go in a farce performed about the same time in
Christ's College, Cambridge. This takes nothing from antiquity except
its distribution in acts and its regular consturction. Subject and
characters are completely English and completely rustic. Gammer
Gurton's Needle,
which was printed in 1575, was written by a Master of Arts of the
University, reputedly by a certain William Stevenson. Gammer Gurton
loses the needle with which she sews breeches for her servant Hodge.
The good-for-nothing Diccon persuades her that it has been stolen by
her neighbour, Mother Chatte, and quarrels and recriminations follow.
The whole village is turned upside down. The parson intervenes, and
Diccon takes advantage of the confusion to steal a ham. Finally Hodge
utters a scream and the needl is found sticking in his breeches, and
all is thereupon discovered. This story is not refined, but the
dialogue has go; the rhymed verse, nimbler than Udall's, lends itself
to comic effects; the realism is not adulterated by borrowings from
antiquity, and there is an unsurpassable drinking-song, 'Back and side
go bare.'
(b) THE CLASSICAL INFLUENCE. TRAGEDY.— But farces, even
when they were divided into acts in the ancient manner, could not lead
to dramatic progress. They had had a place in the miracle plays. The
novelty was all in the isolation of the comic element. It was in
tragedy that the national theatre and the theatre of angiquity came
together most significantly.
Like the Italians and the French, the English were far more inspired by
Seneca than by the Greek theatre. He was a somewhat dangerous model,
for his were oratorical tragedies, and it is a moot poin whether they
were written to be staged or to be declaimed. He used again the
mythological themes of the Greeks, but used them, like a romantic,
neither for their national sentiment nor because he believed in their
legends, but for their brilliancy. He knew nothing of dramatic
movement, and there is no action in his tragedies. His characters
rarely voice real sentiments: their speeches abound with maxims; thir
language is emphatic and lyrical, full of choice metaphors which show
great force of oratory and real subtlety in analysis. Long monologues
alternate with passages made up of short question and answers, each
crowded into a single line. Seneca's political allusions are frequent
and he often attacks tyrants. Most of these characteristics recur in
the work of his imitators, but what they have taken from him by
preference is certain of his expedients, sometimes his choruses and
more often his phantom who has the duty of explanation. Above all, they
have been impressed by the atrocity of his subjects, and have learnt
from him to associate the idea of tragedy with that of crime, nearly
always monstrous crime. Agamemnnon and the horrors of the Atrides, Oedipus, Medea, Phaedra, and, above
all, Thyestes and the horrible
banquet of Atreus, led to tragedies of atrocious vengeance like Titus Andronicus and The Duchess of Malfi.
Five of Seneca's plays were separately translated and perhaps performed
between 1559 and 1566, before the translation, published in 1581, of
his Ten Tragedies. As early
as 1562 Thomas Sackville and Thomas Norton produced the tragedy of Gorboduc,
or Ferrex and Porrex, which was imitated from him although
it had an independence. Sackville was the author of the Induction to the Mirror for Magistrates
and the best poet of his day, and both playwrights were lawyers and
politicians. Their tragedy was given in one of the Inns of Court.
Seneca's influence is apparent in the uninterrupted seriousness of the
play; in the sustained nobility of the style; in the almost abstract
character of the scenes, where all the action falls to messengers and
to confidants, male and female; in the abundant speechifying, and also
in the sanguinary plot. King Gorboduc abdicates in favour of his two
sons, Ferrex and Porrex, who, like another Eteocles and Polynices, at
once take up arms against each other. Ferrex is slain, and their
mother, whose favourite son he is, kills her other son, Porrex, the
slayer. The people are angered, rise in rebellion, and put father and
mother to death. Anarchy, usurpation, and the death of the usurper
ensue.
In spite of these piled-up crimes, the play is cold and lacks movement
and drama. Its authors were better fitted to express ideas than to put
life in characters. They had a didactic aim, for they wished to depict
the misfortunes of a kingdom to which the succession is uncertain—a
constant preoccupation of Elizabethan politicians—and the horrors which
accompany civil war and result from anarchy. Their tragedy would
assuredly have interested Corneille had he known it. It is Seneca after
the style of lawyers and members of Parliament. The authors have a
certain originality because of the didactic sense which, in spite of
everything, connects Gorboduc
with the moralities, and because of the patriotic feeling which made
these young humanists choose thir subject from the annals of Great
Britain, as the subject of King Lear,
with which it has analogies, was thence taken. They stand less apart
from the national tradition than at first appears from their
superficial resemblance to Seneca, that is, from their use of choruses,
and their cult of gloomy effects combined with their rejection of the
spectacular. But the symmetrical plan of their scenes—Ferrex and Porrex
consulting thir good and their bad adviser in turn, advisers who are
almost as much abstractions as vice and virtue—betrays an artless
simplification inspired by morality plays rather than Seneca.
That the moral of the play may be the more distinct, and perhaps also
that spectators unused to such heights of seriousness may be diverted,
each act opens with a pantomime in which the lesson it conveys is
illustrated.
This is therefore no mere academic tragedy. It is a work which stands
first in a line of succession, the first unrelieved English tragedy and
therefore the play which led to Kyd's Spanish
Tragedie.
It brought the idea of fatality on to the English stage. In spite of
its great defects it established a high artistic level. Finally, it was
the first play in which the blank verse formed under the influence of
antiquity was used. The metre which Surrey had invented for his
translation of Virgil served Sackville and Norton when they emulated
Seneca. They handled it forcibly and with dignity, but were incapable
of giving it the ductility necessary for the stage. Twenty-five years
were to pass before their inititative was followed triumphantly. Their
merit is that, though they did not reach success, they made the attempt.
(c) VARIOUS INFLUENCES.— Gorboduc
was insignificant, but appeared in isolation. Round this play there
were many tentative efforts and importations from abroad, all of them
pointing English drama along different paths. It has been possible to
group several plays under the title 'Prodigal Son Series'. This time
the prototype was a work by a Neo-Latinist, the Dutchman Gnaphaeus
whose Acolastus had been
translated by John Palsgrave in 1540. He was imitated with great talent
and with original additions in Misogonus,
performed about 1560. The author, uncertainly identified as Thomas
Richardes, wrote a strongly constructed and well-arranged play,
enlivened by frankly comic scenes. The morality Nice Wanton,
which appearedabout 1560, connects with the same series and is a
commentary on the adage 'Spare the rod and spoil the child'. In 1575
George Gascoigne produced his Glass
of Government, imitated both from Acolastus and from the Rebels of Macropedius.
Geroge Gascoigne, ever in quest of novelty, is the best witness to the
diversity of the influences operative at this time and of the sources
whence plays derived. Besides The
Glass of Government he wrote The
Supposes, a prose translation of a comedy by Ariosto, and Jocasta, a tragedy which purports
to be a translation from the Phoenissae
of Euripides, but is in truth a rearrangement of the Greek tragedy by
the Italian Lodovico Dolce.
Italian influence is yet more apparent in a free adaptation by an
unknown author of the Florentine Grazzini's La Spiritata, under the title The Bugbears (1561),
in which a son obtains three thousand crowns from a misely father by
frightening him at night with noises attributed to ghosts, and is thus
enabled to marry his mistress. Other plays inspired by Italian comedies
also appeared, but only their names have been preserved.
(d) FORMATION OF THE NATIONAL DRAMA.— Each of these
classical, neo-classical, and Italian influences had its part in
blazing the track to the English national drama, which absorbed the
most diverse elements. But there is a group of plays then acted which
were not adaptations but truly English, and although they have
weaknesses and an element of the ridiculous, they reveal the national
drama as already almost a reality. They conform to that broad type
which was finally adopted for drama and was followed by Shakespeare and
his contemporaries.
Dramas of this type still partook of the morality plays, at least in
right of certain characters, but they tended more and more to stage the
scenes of an episode of history or a romance, and they were wont to
relieve tragedy or romance by scenes of broad comedy, more or less
skilfully related to the principal plot, thus observing the great
tradition of the miracle plays.
The most striking of these plays are Appius
and Virginia (1551?), Damon
and Pytias (1564), Horestes
(1567), Gismond of Salerno
(1567), Cambyses (1569), and Promos and Cassandra (1578).
Three are obviously connected with the moralities. Like Bale's King John,
they mingle abstractions and real characters. Horestes is entitled 'A
Newe Enterlude of Vice Conteyninge the Historye of Horestes' (Orestes).
Appius and Virginia, of which
the ridiculously emphatic language remained dear to Shakespeare's
Pistol—'The furies fell of Limbo lake'—dramatizes the well-known story
of Virginius, who slew his daughter to save her from the wicked judge
Appius. Appius is impelled by the vice called Haphazard, and Conscience
and Justice appear to him. Homely and comic scenes alternate with
tragedy. There is a curious mingling of all the earlier dramatic
elements with a classic theme.
Preston's method is that of the authors of the miracle plays. He cuts
up the story from Herodotus into scenes as they did the Scriptures. Not
the whole fo the story is in his play, but nearly all of it. He makes
no attempt to weave a plot or by simplification to give unity to
characters. Cambyses is represented in all the diversity and
chronological incoherence of his actions. He begins well by ordering
the execution of a prevaricating delegate, then, impulsive undr the
influence of wine, commits a series of atrocious crimes, almost all of
them instantanously, and passes immediatly from the exaltation of love
at first sight to passionate and murderous fury against his new-made
bride. The playwritht, by refusing to make any selection among the
deeds of his hero, has rendered him lifelike and complex enough, has
shown his double physical and moral nature and given him a temperament.
There is here a character which ought already to be called
Shakespearian.
Cambyses is not always on the stage, but gives place to buffoons. We
can discern, in the raw, the expedients of a playwright who, chiefly by
varying his scenes, appeals to a heterogenous public, caters for coarse
as for other tastes in order to reach all his audience.
Allegorical mingle with historical characters, the better to bring out
the moral, the most important abstraction being the vice called
Ambidexter, whose part it is both to impel to evil and to ensure the
punishment of the guilty. Ambidexter is a cynic who takes pleasure in
discovering and encouraging human perversity, and revels in the sight
of foolishness. In his chuckle we seem already to hear Iago, even more
Gloucester (Richard III) winning Queen Anne's heart by false
protestations of love. This is the sardonic, diabolical, and
sharp-sighted sinner, bad all through, without a trace of conscience,
snapping his fingers at prejudices, his philosophy a fundamental
atheism.
The connection of the buffoonery with the tragedy is weak, yet exists
and is already a little Shakespearean. Thus, Cambyses has just decided
to make war on Egypt when three soldiers enter, rejoicing in the
prospective expedition, counting on slaughter and plunder. The truth,
as undoubted in the days of Cambyses as in the sixteenth century, is
illustrated that war is not the exclusive concern of princes and
generals, but is as much the common soldier's business as the king's.
Similarly Shakespeare, when he deals with Falstaff's enrolments, shows
the seamy side of the glorious profession of arms, adopting the point
of view he keeps in all his popular scenes, whether English or Roman.
It is the tradition of the miracle plays combined with that of the
morality plays.
In Cambyses all the education
of the plot is spectacular. The murders are not recounted, as in Gorboduc,
but the playwright carefully stages them in full. He reproduces the
execution of Sisamnes, who is beheaded and scalped—the artless stage
directions stipulate for a false skin—his scalp being afterwards pulled
down over his ears. On the stage, Cambyses, to prove that he is not
drunk, pierces the son of Praxaspe full in the heart with an arrow.
At the same time, this author carries pathos to the highest point. He
puts into the mouth of the dying child of Praxaspe touching complaints
which bring tears perforce. The scene recalls little Isaac ready to go
to the stake in the mystery of Abraham,
and anticipates the child Arthur in Shakespeare's King John
seeking to move Hubert who has been ordered to burn out his eyes. But
Preston reaches a yet higher degree of pathos. He sends a mother to
mourn over the body of her son, and causes Cambyses to have the child's
heart cut out that the father may know it was wounded in the very
centre. After this, how could an audience be satisfied with only
hearsay of butchery, messengers' tales?
To compensate for these episodes, Preston gives his public an open-air
scene, a garden in which a fair lady and a lord stroll along the paths
while the lord supplies the absence of scenery by describing the
landscape and the flowers. Thus a breath of fresh air blows through the
horrors of the melodrama.
This play reveals on examination all the characteristics of English
drama of the great period. It lacks only two things, genius and style,
or rather, perhaps, only one, genius made manifest in style.
The awkwardness of Preston's writing as so complete and his bombast so
ridiculous that his play, after a long term of popularity, became the
laughing-stock of succeeding dramatists. Shakespeare amused himself by
parodying it in Falstaff, who says, when he wishes to use fine
language, 'I will do it in King Cambyses' vein.' Preston's rhetoric is
in the highest degree both frantic and artless. Some of his
metaphorical epithets have the most ludicrous effet, as when a
character speaks of her 'christall eyes', or the mother of little
Prexaspe of her 'velvet paps.' Moreover, the playwright is so little at
his ease with the fourteen-syllabled rhymed lines which he uses for
tragic passages, that he mutlates grammar by the suppression of
articles or by most astonishing inversions in the very places in which
he aims at simple statements of fact.
Undoubtedly the great lack was of a metre fitted to drama, a ductile
line which would leave freedom of movement to the playwright. Failing
this, verse might have been relinquished for prose. in verse, the
attempt made in Gorboduc had
not yet been pursued, and prose had been tried only by Gascoigne in his
Supposes.
English drama made decided progress when a flexible metre had been
adopted, more or less generally, and when prose was used with
increasing frequency. As for the remaining and too prominent traces of
the morality play, it was not difficult to get rid of them. Even in Cambyses
they appeared only in the name of characters. To eliminate them from
that play it would have been necessary only to rebaptize a few
supernumeraries including Ambidexer, who were still called after
abstractions. Richard Edwards, the author of Damon and Pythias, a far better if
possibly less significant play than Cambyses,
contrived to do without abstractions altogether. He produced a
tragi-comedy which, save for its versification, would not have seemed
out of place had it appeared among a number of others of the great
period. The same praise could be given to Whetstone, who in 1578 wrote Promos and Cassandra, from
which Shakespeare derived Measure
for Measure, that gloomy comedy. Hitherto all had been
experiment, but the advent of the undeniably great works was very near.
Algunos artículos míos de los publicados en el SSRN se quedan en
mi sección, pero otros son seleccionados antes o después para aparecer
en alguna de las secciones temáticas o revistas electrónicas
especializadas publicadas por el repositorio.
Por ejemplo acaba de aparecer mi
artículo sobre "La Filología y la
Lingüística Inglesas en el
marco de los estudios universitarios en Zaragoza" en el
SSRN Philosophy of
Language eJournal:
Y otro artículo mío reciente, self-published hasta ahora,
acaba de
aparecer en otra revista temática, en dos incluso, una sobre
lingüística cognitiva y otra sobre filosofía de la mente. Y va de
teatro, de teatro mental:
"Somos teatreros: El sujeto, la interacción
dialéctica y la estrategia de la representación según Goffman (We
Playact: The
Subject, Dialectic Interaction and the Strategy of Representation
according to
Goffman).
Say, tyrant Custom, why must we obey
The impositions of thy haughty sway?
From the first dawn of life unto the grave,
Poor womankind's in every state a slave,
The nurse, the mistress, parent and the swain,
For love she must, there's none escape that pain.
Then comes the last, the fatal slavery:
The husband with insulting tyranny
Can have ill manners justified by law,
For men all join to keep the wife in awe.
Moses, who first our freedom did rebuke,
Was married when he writ the Pentateuch.
They're wise to keep us slaves, for well they know,
If we were loose, we should soon make them so.
We yield like vanquished kings whom fetters bind,
When chance of war is to usurpers kind;
Submit in form; but they'd our thoughts control,
And lay restraints on the impassive soul.
They fear we should excel their sluggish parts,
Should we attempt the sciences and arts;
Pretend they were designed for them alone,
So keep us fools to raise their own renown.
Thus priests of old, their grandeur to maintain,
Cried vulgar eyes would sacred laws profane;
So kept the mysteries behind a screen:
Their homage and the name were lost had they been seen.
But in this blessèd age such freedom's given,
That every man explains the will of heaven;
And shall we women now sit tamely by,
Make no excursions in philosophy,
Or grace our thoughts in tuneful poetry?
We will our rights in learning's world maintain;
Wit's empire now shall know a female reign.
Come, all ye fair, the great attempt improve,
Divinely imitate the realms above:
There's ten celestial females govern wit,
And but two gods that dare pretend to it.
And shall these finite males reverse their rules?
No, we'll be wits, and then men must be fools.
(1703)
Traduzco a continuación el poema de Sarah Egerton "The Emulation". Creo
que se refiere a emular a Eva
mordiendo el fruto del árbol de la ciencia,
idea expresada un tanto indirectamente por sus connotaciones satánicas.
Consuela pensar que en 1703 hubiese al menos una persona capaz de
escribir estas cosas sobre la opresión de las mujeres, aunque tenga un
bajo concepto de los hombres (seguro que era por algo...). Siguen
algunos datos sobre la autora, procedentes de Eighteenth-Century Women Poets (ed.
Roger Lonsdale, Oxford, 1989).
La emulación
Dime, Hábito tirano, ¿por qué hemos de obedecer
tu gobierno altanero y todas tus imposiciones?
Desde el alba de la vida hasta la tumba,
es siempre una esclava la pobre mujer:
de la niñera, de la institutriz, de los padres y del galán,
--pues se ha de enamorar, de ese mal ni una se libra.
Y luego viene la esclavitud última, la fatal:
el marido, con su insultante tiranía,
puede usar de malos modos, apoyado por la ley,
pues los hombres se conjuran para intimidar a las esposas.
Moisés, el primero en reprender nuestra libertad,
casado estaba cuando escribió el Pentateuco.
Prudentemente nos tienen de esclavas,
sabiendo que si nos soltásemos haríamos lo propio con ellos.
Nos rendimos como los reyes vencidos, presos,
cuando el azar de la guerra sonríe al usurpador
--de palabra únicamente; sin embargo en su ambición
querrían ellos controlar incluso los pensamientos,
y ponerle restricciones a un alma ya anestesiada.
Temen que sobrepasemos a sus torpes dotaciones,
si osásemos dedicarnos a las ciencias y a las artes;
arguyendo que se hicieron éstas sólo para ellos,
nos mantienen así necias para su enaltecimiento.
También antaño los sacerdotes clamaban, por mantener privilegios,
que ojos vulgares profanarían la ley divina,
y guardaban los misterios ocultos tras la cortina.
Pues misterios y respeto se habrían perdido, de verse.
Pero en esta era bendita tanta libertad tenemos
que no hay hombre que no explique lo que es la voluntad del cielo.
¿Y habremos de quedarnos las mujeres ahí sentadas mansamente,
sin hacer incursiones en la filosofía, ni adornado
veremos nuestro pensamiento con musical poesía?
Afirmaremos nuestros derechos en el mundo del saber; ha de ver
el país de la invención un reinado femenino.
emulando el gran asalto, vamos, hermosas, ahora hemos de superarlo;
imitad divinamente al reino de las alturas:
hay diez musas celestiales que gobiernan la invención,
y sólo dos dioses hombres que se atreven a intentarlo,
¿Y les pondrán reglas a ellas aquí estos machos finitos?
No; a nosotras el ingenio, y que sean los tontos ellos.
_____
Sarah Egerton (née Fyge, later
Field) (1670-1723)
Born in London, she was one of the six daughters of Thomas Fyge (d.
1706), a physician descended from a land-owning family at Winslow,
Buckinghamshire, and his wife Mary Beacham (d. 1704). In 1686 she
published The Female Advocate
(revised edition, 1687), a reply to Robert Gould's Love Given O're: Or, A Satyr Against the
Pride, Lust and Inconstancy, &c. of Woman
(1682). For this teenage indiscretion her father forced her to leave
London and live with relatives in the country, as she complains in some
of her early autobiographical poems. She eventually married an
attorney, Edward Field, who had died before 1700. She may have known
John Dryden, on whose death in 1700 she published an ode in Luctus Britannici and, as 'Mrs.
S.F.', contributed to The Nine Muses
(1700), a collection of verse by women on the late poet, edited by Mrs.
Manley. By 1703, the dedication to the Earl of Halifax of her Poems on Several Occasions. Together with
a Pastoral was signed 'S.F.E.' indicating that she had remarried
(The book was reissued as A
Collection of Poems on Several Occasions ... by Mrs. Sarah Fyge Egerton
(1706), The Female Advocate being
reprinted in the same year, but with the date 1707.)
Her second husband was the Revd Thomas Egerton, a second cousin, who
had been Rector of Adstock, Buckinghamshire, since 1671. A wealthy
widower with adult children, he was some twenty years older than she.
Before and after this marriage she was apparently in love with Henry
Pierce, an attorney's clerk and a friend of her first husband ('Alexis'
in her poems). Evidence has recently come to light that as early as
1703 the Egertons were involved in an acrimonious divorce suit, she
accusing him of cruelty, he accusing her of desertion, but the divorce
seems not to have been granted. She had been friendly, but later
quarrelled, with Delariviere Manley, who gave a remarkable and no doubt
heightened account of the Egerton marriage in her Secret Memoirs ... from the New Atlantis
(1709). Manley's limited sympathy is reserved for her husband, 'an old
thin raw-bon'd Priest', who is persecuted by his hysterical and violent
wife ('a She-Devil incarnate'). Such is his punishment for marrying a
younger wife, 'when I had Children grown up to keep my House, and
administer comfortably to my Necessities'. With a good estate and
income, he could keep a coach and four servants for her, but her
violence had driven away his children, and 'Then she's in love with all
the handsome Fellows she sees; but her Face, I believe, protects her
Chastity ... [it] is made in part like a Black-a-more, flat-nos'd,
blubber-lipp'd, there is no sign of life in her Complexion, it savours
all of Mortality; she looks as if she had been buried a Twelve-month'.
As for her incomprehensible verse, 'Deliver me from a poetical wife....
She rumbles in Verses of Atomes,
Artic and Antartic, of Gods,
and of strange things, foreign to all fashionable Understanding'. In
her Memoirs of Europe
(1710), the relentless Manley referred to her again as the 'shockingly
ugly' woman who had presented the literary patron Julius Sergius (the
Earl of Halifax) with 'the Labours of her Brain'. The unhappy marriage
was evidently notorious: it was ridiculed again, together with her
poetic ambitions, in The Butter'd
Apple-Pye (1711), a broadsheet verse satire.
She had no children and died in February 1723 (her husband having died
in 1720). She left £1 a year to the poor of Winslow, which failed to
reach them because of the 'abuse' of her executor, a local mercer. In
the course of some correspondence about her identity in the Gentleman's Magazine in 1780-1, one
'M.J.' claimed to own some 120 of her letters, but these have not come
to light.
Inventory of properties belonging to the Admiral’s company
(From Henslowe's papers.
I have added the line division to turn the catalogue into a
postmodernist poem, on the tiring-house of history and the props of
human experience long after the audience has left).
One rock, one cage, one tomb, one Hell mouth.
One tomb of Guido, one tomb of Dido, one bedstead.
Eight lances, one pair of stairs for Phaeton.
Two steeples, and one chime of bells, and one beacon.
One heifer for the play of Phaeton, the limbs dead.
One globe, and one golden sceptre; three clubs.
Two marzipans, and the City of Rome.
One golden fleece, two rackets, one bay tree.
One wooden hatchet, one leather hatchet.
One wooden canopy; old Mahomet’s head.
One lion skin; one bear’s skin, and Phaeton’s
Limbs and Phaeton’s chariot; and Argus’ head.
Neptune’s fork and garland.
One ‘croser’s’ staff; Kent’s wooden leg.
Iris head, and rainbow; one little altar.
Eight vizards; Tamberlain’s bridle; one wooden mattock.
Cupid’s bow, and quiver; the cloth of the Sun and Moon.
One boar’s head and Cerberus’ three heads.
One Caduceus; two moss banks,
And one snake.
Two fans of feather; Bellendon stable;
One tree of golden apples; Tantalus’ tree, nine iron targets.
One copper target, and seventeen foils.
Four wooden targets; one greeve armour.
One sign for Mother Redcap; one buckler.
Mercury’s wings; Tasso’s picture; one helmet
With a dragon, one shield, with three lions,
One elm bow. One chain of dragons; one gilt spear.
Two coffins; one bull’s head; and one vulture.
Three timbrels; one dragon in Faustus.
One lion; two lion’s heads;
One great horse with his legs;
One sackbut. One wheel and frame
In the Siege of London. One pair of wrought gloves.
One Pope’s mitre. Three imperial crowns; one plain crown.
One ghost’s crown; one crown with a sun.
One frame for the beheading in Black Joan.
Hegel brooding on the edge of
the abyss. En la penúltima sección de la Fenomenología del Espíritu, antes
de su conclusión sobre el Saber Absoluto, Hegel efectúa una
interesantísma desconstrucción de la teología cristiana. Podríamos
decir que es una asimilación de la misma a su sistema idealista—si se
quiere, una "idealización" de la misma, una manera de preservar el
dogma, aufgehoben, a la vez
que pasamos a más altos pensamientos. Una cosa de nadar y guardar la
ropa, vamos, y de asentar las creencias tradicionales en cimientos
filosóficos más sólidos, si el idealismo es sólido—justificándolas con
una artillería conceptual que deja chiquita a la escolástica.
Pero a la vez es una desconstrucción—o, como dirían Bultmann y Ebeling
150 años después, una desmitologización.
Me quedo con el lado crítico del análisis de Hegel—según el cual todo
lo que el cristianismo sostiene como dogmas es una especie de fábula
mitológica que viene a alegorizar
la fenomenología del espíritu. Alegorizar,
entiéndase bien, no en el sentido de dar una representación plástica o
figurativa de algo que se conoce de modo conceptual; aquí la alegoría
no es transparente a sí misma, y (tristemente quizá) se queda en una
interpretación literal y simplista de lo que para Hegel es una compleja
relación entre fases del espíritu puramente ideales, en ningún caso
trasladables a episodios de la historia humana. Aquí hay un problema:
si algún sentido tienen las fases de la fenomenología del espíritu, es
interpretándolas como desarrollos históricos de una espiritualidad en
complejidad creciente, y abundantes elementos de la Fenomenología señalan en esta
dirección, y la convierten en una obra sobre la emergencia gradual de
la complejidad. A su manera. El problema es que Hegel no va a admitir
que las fases espirituales del cristianismo puedan proyectarse sobre la
historia humana como un desarrollo histórico centrado en la venida de
Cristo; sería desautorizar la complejidad de su análisis precedente y
convertirlo en un absurdo. Por tanto tiene que declarar que toda la
narración cristiana es una especie de fábula inconsciente, una
expresión espontánea del espíritu que todavía no es totalmente
transparente a sí mismo ni al significado de su autoconocimiento. Esto,
claro, desautoriza totalmente la interpretación cristiana del
cristianismo, para la cual sus verdades han de ser literales, no una
bella narración alegórica. Aunque habría mucho que decir sobre esta
cuestión, y cada cual interpreta el cristianismo a su manera, o las
palabras literales del Papa, incluyendo seguramente al Papa. El
cristianismo es una ficción colosal en más de un sentido, incluyendo
sus versiones supuestamente más literales como es el catolicismo entre
otras.
La crítica de Hegel es, por tanto, una desconstrucción, no al modo
de
Derrida o de los pensadores materialistas, sino por supuesto desde sus
presupuestos idealistas—pero una desconstrucción en toda regla, en la
que la literalidad del pensamiento religioso dogmático e ingenuo es
sometida a una crítica intelectualmente devastadora. Tras semejante
desmitologización, no es preciso otra más que sea menos radical, dentro
de este paradigma idealista. No se puede a la
vez tener honestidad intelectual, comprender la crítica de Hegel, y
seguir sosteniendo que se es cristiano, lo que se venía entendiendo por
ser cristiano. Aunque quizá Hegel fuese aquí
el primer pecador, no sé.
Transcribo un pasaje sobre "La Religión Revelada" en su traducción
inglesa, y el comentario de J. N. Findlay; la verdad es que quien lea
la traducción española que tengo yo se va a enterar de muy poco. En
este pasaje Hegel interpreta en clave fenomenológica la divinidad como
espíritu o pensamiento puro, el Hijo como logos
o encarnación, y el Espíritu
Santo como comunidad o comunicación (algo que tiene una herencia
teológica larga)—comunicación que es en primer lugar, para Hegel,
autoconciencia. Ya el propio pensamiento puro no puede captarse más que
como externalización de sí o metapensamiento. Es especialmente
brillante la manera en que Hegel describe la alteridad en el seno mismo
del pensamiento puro, si lo hemos de captar como una abstracción. La
Trinidad queda así subsumida, por así decirlo,
a su tríada de tesis, antítesis y síntesis. Y sigue adelante Hegel para
explicar la
Creación, el demonio, el mal, los ángeles, etc., como fases del
pensamiento puro enfrentado a sí mismo, explicando cómo su traducción a
mitos o lo que aquí llama "picture-thought" es una versión ingenua de
su auténtico sentido espiritual. El español emplea el término
"representación", que no acaba de quedar claro. Para Hegel, la historia
del Hijo es un mito, una excursión del pensamiento a la alteridad del
mundo, y la conciencia debe seguir su camino hacia el autoanálisis
reflexivo, o el espíritu absolutamente transparente a sí mismo en su
autoanálisis, llámesele espíritu santo o filosofía. Quedarse con la
historia del Padre, el Hijo, y el Espíritu Santo en su sentido literal
sería confundir la representación con el espíritu puro.... en suma, una
forma de idolatría. Una posible lección a extraer, pues, del análisis
de Hegel: Que toda religión es
idolatría en cuanto se apega al sentido literal de sus representaciones.
Pongo en rojo, primero, mi traducción del comentario de Findlay, y a
continuación en verde la traducción de Hegel que uso:
767. El espíritu es esencialmente
un proceso que comienza con el pensamiento puro (lógica), pasa a la
alteridad y a la representación figurativa (la Naturaleza) y vuelve de
la Naturaleza para completar la autoconsciencia (el Espíritu
propiamente dicho). Es también esencialmente la conexión sintética de
estas tres fases.
767. Spirit is the content of its
consciousness at first in the form of
pure
substance, or is the
content of its pure consciousness. This element of Thought is the
movement of descending into existence or into individuality. The middle
term between these two is their synthetic connection, the consciousness
of passing into otherness, or picture-thinking as such. The third
movement is the return from picture-thinking and otherness, or the
element of self-consciousness itself. These three moments constitute
Spirit; its dissociation in picture-thinking consists in its existing
in a specific or determinate
mode; but this determinateness is nothing else than one of its moments.
Its complete movement is therefore this, to diffuse its nature
throughout each of its moments as in its native element; since each of
these spheres completes itself within itself, this reflection of one
sphere into itself is at the same time the transition into another.
Picture-thinking consitutes the middle term between pure thought and
self-consciousness as such, and is only one of the specific or determinate
forms; at the same time, however, as we have seen, its character–that
of being a synthetic connection—is diffused throughout all these
elements and is their common determinateness.
768. En la conciencia desdichada y
en la creyente, había una autonconciencia parcial del Espíritu. El
Espíritu, sin embargo, se refería a sí mismo a una esfera más allá del
sujeto consciente.
768. The content itself which we
have to consider has partly been met
with already as the idea of the 'unhappy' and the 'believing'
consciousness; but in the former, it has the character of a content
produced from consciousness for which Spirit yearns, and in which
Spirit cannot be satiated or find rest, because it is not yet in itself its own content, or is
not the Substance of it. In the 'believing' consciousness, on the other
hand, the content was regarded as the self-less Being of the world, or as
essentially an objective
content of picture-thinking, of a picture-thinking that simply flees
from reality and consequently is without the certainty of
self-consciousness, which is separated from it partly by the conceit of
knowing and partly by pure insight. The consciousness of the community,
on the other hand, possesses the content for its substance, just as the content is
the certainty of the
community's own Spirit.
769. El Espíritu concebido en el
elemento del pensamiento puro carece de sentido a menos que se haga
además manifiesto en algo diferente que su puro ser, y vuelva a sí
mismo a partir de dicha alteridad.
769. When Spirit is at first
conceived of as substance in the element
of pure thought, it is immediately simple and self-identical, eternal
essence, which does not, however, have this abstract meaning of essence, but the meaning
of absolute Spirit. Only Spirit is not a 'meaning', it is not what is
inner, but what is actual. Therefore simple, eternal essence would be
Spirit only as a form of empty words, if it went no further than the
idea expressed in the phrase 'simple, eternal essence'. But simple
essence, because it is an abstraction, is, in fact, the negative in its
own self and, moreover, the negativity of thought, or negativity as it
is in itself in essence: i.e. simple essence is absolute difference from itself, or its pure
othering of itself. As essence it is only in itself or for us; but since this
purity is just abstraction or negativity, it is for itself, or is the Self, the
Notion. It is thus objective; and since picture-thinking interprets and
expresses as a happening what
has just been expressed as the necessity
of the Notion, it is said
that the eternal Being begets for itself and 'other'. But
in this otherness it has at the same time immediately returned into
itself; for the difference is the difference in itself, i.e. it is immediately
distinguished only from itself and is thus the unity that has returned
into itself.
770. Dios se manifiesta allí
primero como la Esencia (el Padre), en segundo lugar como el
Ser-para-sí para quien la esencia es (el Logos o Verbo que hizo el
ámbito de la naturaleza), y en tercer lugar como el Ser-para-sí que se
conoce a sí mismo en el otro (el Espíritu o principio de
autoconsciencia).
770. There are thus three distinct
moments: essence, being-for-self
which is the otherness of essence and for which essence is, and
being-for-self, or the knowledge of itself in the 'other'.
Essence beholds only its own self in its being-for-self; in this
externalization of itself it stays only with itself: the being-for-self
that shuts itself out from essence is essence's knowledge
of its own self.
It is the word which, when uttered, leaves behind, externalized and
emptied, him who uttered it, but which is as immediately heard, and
only this hearing of its own self is the existence of the Word. Thus
the distinctions made are immediately resolved as soon as they are made
and are made as soon as they are resolved, and what is true and actual
is precisely this immanent circular movement.
771. La religión figurativa
convierte las relaciones necesarias entre momentos esenciales en el
seno del absoluto, en relaciones externas generativas de paternidad y
filiación.
771. This immanent movement
proclaims the absolute Being as Spirit.
Absolute Being that is not grasped as Spirit is merely the abstract
void, just as Spirit that is not grasped as this movement is only an
empty word. When its moments are grasped in their purity, they are
the restless Notions which only are,
in being themselves their own opposite, and in finding their rest in
the whole. But the picture-thinking of the religious community is not
this speculative thinking; it has the content, but without its
necessity, and instead of the form of the Notion it brings into the
realm of pure consciousness the natural relationships of father and
son. Since this consciousness, even in its thinking, remains at the
level of picture-thinking, absolute Being is indeed revealed to it, but
the moments of this Being, on account of this [empirically] synthetic
presentation, partly themselves fall asunder so that they are not
related to one another through their own Notion, and partly this
consciousness retreats from this its pure object, relating itself to it
only in an external manner. The object is revealed to it only in an
external manner. The object is revealied to it by something alien, and
it does not recognize itself in this thought of Spirit, does not
recognize the nature of pure self-consciousness. In so far as the form
of picture-thinking and of those relationships derived from Nature must
be transcended, and especially also the standpoint which takes the
moments of the movement which Spirit is, as isolated immovable
Substances or Subjects, instead of transient moments—the transcending
of this standpoint is to be regarded as a compulsion on the part of the
Notion, as we pointed out earlier in connection with another aspect.
But since this compulstion is instinctive, self-consciousness
misunderstands its own nature, rejects the content as well as the form
and, what amounts to the same thing, degrades the content into a
historical pictorial idea and to a heirloom handed down by tradition.
In this way, it is only the purely external element in belief that is
retained and as something therefore that is dead and cannot be known;
but the inner element in faith has vanished, because
this would be the Notion that knows itself as a Notion.
772. La relación de los momentos
del Absoluto en el puro pensamiento de lo Absolugo es una relación de
puro amor en el cual los lados que distinguimos no están realmente
diferenciados. Pero es propio de la esencia del espíritu no ser una
mera cosa del espíritu, sino ser concreto y en acto.
772. Absolute Spirit as pictured
in pure essence is not indeed abstract pure essence; for abstract essence has
sunk to the level of being merely an element,
just because it is only a moment in [the life of] Spirit. But the
representation of Spirit in this element is charged with the same
defect of form which essence
as such has. Essence is an abstraction and is therefore the negation of
its simple, unitary nature, is an 'other'; similarly, Spirit in the
element of essence is the form of simple oneness,
which therefore is essentially an othering of itself. O, what is the
same thing, the relation of the eternal Being to its being-for-self is
the immediately simple one of pure thought. In this simple
beholding of itself in the 'other', the otherness is therefore not
posited as such; it is the difference which, in pure thought, is
immediately no difference ; a loving
recognition in which the two sides, as regards their essence, do not
stand in an antithetical relation to each other. Spirit that is
expresssed in the element of pure thought is itself esentially this, to
be not merely in this element, but to be actual Spirit, for in its Notion lies otherness itself, i.e. the suppression of the
pure Notion that is only thought.
773. Puesto que el elemento de
pensamiento puro es abstracto, necesariamente ha de pasar al ámbito del
pensamiento figurativo intuitivo, es decir, al ámbito de la Naturaleza.
Allí se halla una pluralidad de cosas sustanciales y una pluralidad de
sujetos pensantes.
773. The element of pure thought,
because it is an abstract element, is itself rather the 'other'
of its simple, unitary nature, and therefore passes over into the
element proper to picture-thinking—the element in which the moments of
the pure Notion obtain a substantial
existence relatively to one another, and also are Subjects which do not
possess for a third the indifference towards each other of [mere] being
but, being reflected into themselves, spontaneously part asunder and
also place themselves over against each other.
774. Este pasar al mundo del
pensamiento figurativo intuitivo es lo que figurativamente se denomina
"creación". La universalidad absoluta requiere volverse efectiva para
ser lo que es, y este requisito lógico es lo que se representa
engañosamente como una necesidad temporal.
774. Thus the merely eternal or
abstract Spirit becomes an 'other' to itself, or enters into existence,
and directly into immediate existence.
Accordingly, it creates a
world. This 'creating' is
picture-thinking's word for the Notion itself
in its absolute movement; or to express the fact that the simple which
has been asserted as absolute, or pure thought, just because it is
abstract, is rather the negative, and hence the self-opposed or 'other'
of itself: or because, to put the same thing into another form, that
which is posited as essence is simple immediacy or being, but qua immediacy or being lacks Self, and,
therefore, lacking inwardness is passive, or a being-for-another. This being-for-another is at the same time a world;
Spirit, in the determination of being-for-another, is the inert
subsistence of the moments formerly enclosed within pure thought, is
therefore the dissolution of these simple universality and the parting
asunder of them into their own particularity.
775. El Espíritu no sólo se hace
efectivo en los objetos sino también en los sujetos. Al principio éstos
n oson conscientes de sí mismos como espirituales, y por tanto son
inocentes más bien que buenos. Su primera autoconsciencia es capaz
tanto del mal como del bien. Esta autoconsciencia inicial se representa
figurativamente como una "Caída" histórica.
775. But the world is not merely
this Spirit cast out and dispersed into the fulness [of natural
existence] and its external ordering; for since Spirit is essentially
the simple Self, the Self is equally present in the world: it is the existent Spirit, which is the individual Self
which has consciousness and distinguishes itself as an 'other', or as
world, from itself. (Obsérvese
la audacia intelectual de esta noción de Hegel que roza el
solipsismo—el mundo como parte de la actividad espiritual, sujeto
proyectado fuera de sí para diferenciarlo de un yo que es también una
construcción por tanto). This individual Self as at first thus
immediately posited, is not yet Spirit for itself: it does not exist as Spirit; it can be called
'innocent' but hardly 'good'. (Esta
es la fase edénica del Espíritu, o adánica). Before
it can in fact be Self and Spirit it must first become an 'other' to
its own self, just as the eternal Being exhibits itself as the movement
of being self-identical in its otherness. Since this Spirit is
determined as at first an immediate existence, or as dispersed into the
multifariousness of its consciousness, its othering of itself is the
withdrawal into itself,
or self-centredness, of knowing as such. Immediate existence suddenly
turns into thought, or mere sense-consciousness into consciousness of
thought; and, moreover, because the thought stems from immediacy or is conditioned
thought, it is not pure knowledge, but thought that is charged with
otherness and is, therefore, the self-opposed thought of Good and Evil.(El
Pecado Original, o el origen del mal en la rebelión de Satán, mitos
creados para simbolizar esta negatividad contenida en el propio
pensamiento). Man is pictorially though of in this
way: that it once happened,
withoug any necessity, that he lost the form of being at one with
himself thoufh plucking the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of Good
and Evil, and was expelled from the state of innocence, from Nature
which yielded its fruits without toil, and from Paradise, from the
garden with its creatures.
776. El mal es la primera
expresión efectiva de la autoconsciencia escindida, pero es la que la
autoconsciencia, al hacerse más profunda, ha de repudiar cada vez más.
Figurativamente, por tanto, se remite a una fecha infinitamente remota,
a la caída del cielo de Lucifer, hijo de la mañana. Las huestes
celestiales entran en la escena como una pluralización valiosa del
ser-para-sí del Verbo. Si las añadimos a la Trinidad, tenemos una
cuaterna, y si añadimos los ángeles caídos tenemos un quinteto. El
contar en teología es, no obstante, una mala práctica. (Obsérvese que
Hegel incorpora el Mal a lo Absoluto).
776. Since this withdrawal into
itself or self-centredness of the existent consciousness immediately
makes it self-discordant, Evil appears as the primary existence of the
inwardly-turned consciousness; and because the thoughts of Good and
Evil are utterly opposed and this antithesis is not yet resolved, this
consciousness is essentially only evil. But at the same time, on
account of just this antithesis, there is also present the good consciousness opposing it, and their
relation to each other. In ofar as immediate existence suddenly changes
into Thought, and the being-within-self is on the one hand itself a thinking,
while on the other hand the moment of the othering
of essence is more precisely determined by it—[because of this double
aspect] the becoming of Evil can be shifted further back out of the
existent world even into the primary realm of Thought. It can therefore
be said that it is the very first-born Son of Light [Lucifer] himself
who fell because he withdrew into himself or became self-centred, but
that in his place another one was at once created. Such a form of
expression as 'fallen' which, like the expression 'Son', belongs,
moreover to picture-thinking and not to the Notion, degrades the
moments of the Notion to the level of picture-thinking or carries
picture-thinking over into the realm of thought. Likewise it makes no
difference if we co-ordinate a multiplicity of other shapes with the
simple thought of otherness in the eternal Being and transfer the self-centredness into them. In fact, this co-ordination
must be approved, since by means of it this moment of otherness
also expresses diversity, as it should, and, moreover, not as plurality
in general, but also as a specific diversity, so that one part, the
Son, is that which is simple and knows itself to be essential Being,
while the other part is the alienation, the externalization of
being-for-self which lives only to praise that Being; to this part,
then, can be assigned the taking back again of the externalized
being-for-self and the withdrawal into self of the evil principle. In
so far as the otherness falls into two parts, Spirit might, as regards
its moments—if these are to be counted—be more exactly expressed as a
quaternity in unity or, because the quantity itself again falls into
two parts, viz. one part which has remained good and the other which
has become evil, might even be expressed as a five-in-one. But to count the moments can be reckoned as
altogether useless, since in the first place what is differentiated is
itself just as much only one thing—viz. the thought of the difference which is only one thought—as it [the differentiated] is this
differentiated element, the second relatively to the first. And,
secondly, it is useless to count because the thought which grasps the
Many in a One must be dissolved out of its universality and
differentiated into more than three or four distinct components; and
this universality appears, in contrast to the absolute determinateness
of the abstract unit, the principle of number, as indeterminateness
with respect to number as such, so that we could speak only of numbers
in general, i.e. not of a specific number of differences. Here,
therefore, it is quite superfluous to think of numbers and counting at
all, just as in other respects the mere difference of quantity and
amount has no notional significance and makes no difference.
777-778. El pensamiento religioso
figurativo tiende a eliminar el mal de Dios excepto en la medida en
que, con gran dificultad, atribuye a Dios un lado iracundo. La
actividad de Dios no puede ser otra cosa que el acto de unir el mundo
escindido con su esencia simple, al ser cada uno de estos aspectos
unilateral sin el otro.
777. Good and Evil were the
specific differnces yielded by the thought of Spirit as immediately
existent. Since their antithesis has not yet been resolved and they are
conceived of as the essence of thought, each of them having an
independent existence of its own, man is a self lacking any essential
being and is the synthetic ground of their existence and their
conflict. But these universal powers just as much belong to the self,
or the self is their actuality. In accordance with this moment, it
therefore comes to pass that, just as Evil is nothing other than the
self-centredness of the natural existence of Spirit, so, conversely,
Good enters into actuality and appears as an existent
self-consciousness. That which in the pure thought of Spirit is in
general merely hinted at as the othering
of the divine Being, here comes nearer to tis realization for
picture-thinking: this realization consists for picture-thinking in the
self-abasement of the divine Being who renounces his abstract and
non-actual nature. (La
Encarnación, Jesucristo, entre el Verbo neoplatónico y el mito
evangélico).Picture-thinking
takes the other aspect, evil, to be a happening alien to the divine
Being; to grasp it in the divine Being itself as the wrath of God,
this demands from picture-thinking, struggling against its limitations,
its supreme and most strenuous effort, an effort which, since it lacks
the notion, remains fruitless (—Y
de ahí el confuso pensamiento de las diversas teodiceas).
778. The alienation of the divine
Being is thus made explicit in its twofold form: the Self of Spirit and
its simple thought are the two moments whose absolute unity is Spirit
itself. Its alientation consists in the moments going apart from one
another and in one of them having an unequal value compared with the
other. This disparity is therefore twofold, and two relationships arise
whose common moments are those just given. In one of them, the divine
Being counts as essence, while natural existence and the Self count as
the unessential aspect which is superseded. In the other, on the
contrary, being-for-self counts as the essential and the simple, divine
Being as unessential. Their still empty middle term is existence in general, the bare
community of their two moments.
Somewhere Over the Rainbow / What a Wonderful World
—sung by Aselin Debison:
The Tragic Law
From McAlindon's English Renaissance Tragedy (38-39):
In Doctor Faustus,
Marlowe shows all the sensitivity to the theological and symbolic
implications of this legend that one would expect from a former student
of divinity. Having denied God's love and grace, Faustus becomes
enchanted with stellar gods and mythological fables and commits himself
to a demon whose name, Lucifer, is that of a Babylonian tyrant in
'Jerome's Bible' (Isa.14:12; Doctor Faustus,
I.i.38); he is easily persuaded that 'Marriage is but a ceremonial toy'
(II.i.147), and finally seals his damnation by embracing the succubine
Helen. But Marlowe's great achievement was to have seized on the
legend's core of universal truth and tragic irony. What his play
communicates with terrible force is that there can be no such thing as
autonomy of action in the real world: every act either confirms an
existing bond or creates a new one; it has binding consequences and is
a deed in two senses of the world. Thus the tragic design of Doctor Faustus
turns on the appalling peripeteia whereby the rejection of a bond whose
grant of limited freedom (the freedom of the sons of God) has begun to
seem intolerably constricting and servile leeds not to liberty and
power but to a condition of claustrophobic and degrading servitude: the
hero becomes the deed's creature, a prisoner of what he himself has
willed.
This tragic law is operative in
plays as diverse as Macbeth, Othello,
The White Devil, and The Changeling,
its presence signalled by the symbolism of the demonic pact or
marriage, or by the Marlovian pun on 'deed' and 'will'. Even in the
pagan context of King Lear
its presence is keenly felt at the outset. The 'hideous rashness'
(I.i.150) which thrusts Lear into 'the tyrannous night' (III.iv.147)
involves a ritual abjuring of love, grace, and benison (I.i.265), a
brutal attempt to prevent a marriage of true minds, and an act of fatal
submission to the will of two women who seem to fetch their nature from
'the mysteries of Hecat and the night' (l. 109).
Nevertheless the paradigm of
ordered and disordered relationships that deeply affects Renaissance
tragedy as a whole is the cosmological and not the theological one. The
bonds undone in Lear are not—or not primarily—those between
men and gods. As in The Spanish Tragedy,
they are familial, matrimonial, and national bonds, as well as the
bonds of service and hospitality; and, as in Kyd's play, their
universal model is the union of contrary elements in a just and
fruitful relationship where individuality and mutuality are
simultaneously acknowledged. here the sign of catastrophe is the sudden
eruption of a fiery, primordial hatred which would consume its opposite
or consign it to the void: 'No contraries hold more antipathy / Than I
and such a knave'; 'as a stranger to my heart and me / Hold thee from
this for ever' (II.ii.82-3; I.i.114-15). Here too the experience of
Hell is the discovery that a human bond of incomparable value has been
violently and irrevocably broken: 'Thou'lt come no more, / Never,
never, never, never, never' (V.iii.306-7).
KYD,
or Kid,
Thomas (1558-94), dramatist, born in London. He was educated at
Merchant Taylors' School, London, whose headmaster was Mulcaster; he
may have worked for a time as a scrivener. He wrote (now lost) plays
for the Queen's Men c. 1583-5, and was in the service of an
unknown lord 1587-93. He seems to have been associated with
Marlowe, with whom he shared lodgings in 1591, and whose 'atheistical'
writings led to Kyd's suffering a period of
torture and imprisonment in 1593. His Spanish Tragedy (c.
1587) was published anonymously in 1592. The play proved exceptionally
popular on the Elizabethan stage and passed through eleven printed
editions by 1633. The only work published under his name was a
translation of Robert Garnier's neo-Senecan Cornelia (1594), re-issued in 1595 as Pompey the Great,
his faire Corneliaes Tragedie. The First part of Jeronimo (printed 1605) is probably a burlesque
adaptation of a fore-piece to The Spanish Tragedy
[but
probably not the work of Kyd]. Other works Kyd is likely to have
written are a lost pre-Shakespearean play on the subject of Hamlet, The
Householders Philosophie (a prose translation from Tasso) and The Tragedye of
Solyman and Perseda
(printed 1592).
Spanish Tragedy,The, a tragedy mostly in blank verse by
Kyd, written c. 1587, printed 11 times between 1592 and 1633.
The political background of the
play is loosely related to the victory of Spain over Portugal in 1580.
Lorenzo and
Bel-imperia are the children of don Cyprian, duke of Castile (brother
of the king of Spain); Hieronimo is marshal of Spain and Horatio his
son. Balthazar, son of the viceroy of Portugal, has been captured in
the war. He courts Bel-imperia, and Lorenzo and the king of Spain
favour his suit for political reasons. Lorenzo and Balthazar discover
that Bel-imperia loves Horatio; they surprise the couple by night in
Hieronimo's garden and hang Horatio on a tree. Hieronimo discovers his
son's body and runs mad with grief. He discovers the identity of the
murderers, and carries out revenge by means of a play, Solyman and Perseda,
in which Lorenzo and Balthazar are killed, and Bel-imperia stabs
herself. Hieronimo bites out his tongue before killing himself. The
whole action is watched over by Revenge and the Ghost of Andrea who was
previously killed in battle by Balthazar.
The
play was the prototype of the English revenge tragedy genre. It
returned to the stage of decades and was seen by Pepys as late as 1668.
Jonson is known to have been paid
for additions to the play, but the additional passages in the 1602
edition are probably not his. The play was one of Shakespeare's
sources for Hamlet and the alternative title given to it
in 1615, Hieronimo is Mad
Againe, provided T. S.
Eliot with the penultimate line of The Waste Land.
From Émile Legouis, A History of English Literature (The
Middle Ages and the Renascence, 650-1660):
The Elizabethan
drama, generally romantic, could be unromantic also. There was a
section of its public whose preference was for modern and topical
subjects, and there were playwrights to satisfy these tastes.
7. Thomas Kyd.—The
majority, however, expected and desired romantic melodrama, and the
first writer who supplied this demand was Thomas Kyd (1558-94) with his
Spanish
Tragedie.
Nothing is known of Kyd save that he was the son of a London scrivener
and studied law, and that Seneca's tragedies were his habitual reading.
He bled Seneca white, and he translated Garnier's Cornélie wheich was modelled on Seneca.
So much can, at least, be deduced
from a diatribe of Nashe's written in 1589. Seneca's influence on Kyd
cannot be questioned, yet it did not cause his masterpiece to confine
to the rules, as Thomas Hughes's Misfortunes of
Arthur
which was played at Gray's Inn at the same time, did conform, a play as
tragic and grave as could be desired and full of sententious dialogue.
What Kyd learnt from Seneca was how to produce terror—by the ghost of
his prologue who relates past events, by atrocious circumstance, and by
speeches heightened with striking lyrical expressions. He makes no
attempt to simplify the construction of the popular drama, and he cares
nothing for the unities. He takes from the Latin poet only what he
thinks an English audience will assimilate, and leaves the loose,
facile construction of the national drama intact. He owes to Seneca's Thyestes
his theme of vengeance, one capable of producing the most pathetic and
most fearful effects. He learns from him to envelop his whole work with
an atmosphere of gloom, and adds the use of the most powerful stage
expedients known to his own experience.
Young Horatio, son of the marshal
Hieronimo and valiant as the Cid, is trecherously slain by Prince
Balthazar and the perfidious Lorenzo at the very moment of exchanging
love-vows with Bel-Imperia, daughter of the Duke of Castile.
Bel-Imperia and Hieronimo swear to discover the murderers and avenge
the deed. When the old father, who feigns madness in order to reach his
ends and is indeed half-mad with grief, feels certain that he knows the
murderers, he conceives the idea of having a play acted at the wedding
of Bel-Imperia, who is obliged to marry her lover's murderer. This
tragedy becomes a real one: every one at the wedding kills himself or
is killed.
Another story of revenge is a
frame for this one. Before the action of the play begins, Don Andrea,
Bel-Imperia's first lover, has been treacherously slain in the war with
Portugal. His ghost opens the play, calling for vengeance on Prince
Balthazar, who has put him to death.
A synopsis can give, however, only
a poor idea of the horrors of this melodrama and of the skill which
made it triumph. The fearfulness of crime is intorduced into ardent,
passionate scenes, making a contrast as violent as that between light
and darkness. Horatio and Bel-Imperia are suddenly struck by love as
he, the young warrior, is about to tell her of the death of Don Andrea,
her betrothed. At once she gives him her heart. The lovers make a
nocturnal assignation in the gardens of old Hieronimo, and there is a
scene passionate as that between Hernani and Dona Sol, which is
interrupted by the arrival of masked assassins who stab Horatio and
hang his body in an arbour.
The sequel is even more horrible.
Old Hieronimo, who has been awakened by Bel-Imperia's cries, comes
through the shadows clad only in his shirt. He gropes his way,
strumbles upon the corpse, and at this moment is joined by his wife,
old Isabella. They mingle their tears and their vows for revenge.
Hieronimo's final oath is in thirteen Latin hexameters and it must have
sounded like and incantation and have been as terrifying as it was
incomprehensible.
Old Hieronimo's madness, whether
true or feigned, overtakes him in strange accesses. He goes to demand
justice of the king, and before all the court plunges his poniard in
the ground. Since he is a judge, citizens petition him for justice,
among them an old man who desires that his son's murder may be avenged.
The judge is thereupon beside himself, draws from his breast a napkin
stained with Horatio's blood, tears the plaintiff's petitions to
pieces, and finally rushes from the room, crying 'Run after, catch me,
if you can'. Almost at once he returns and mistakes the old father for
his Horatio. Persuaded from this error, he believes the old man is a
Fury exciting him to avenge, then recognizes the old father's true
identity and goes out with him, arm in arm. Certainly no one could be
madder.
In the last scene, in which every
one is killed, Hieronimo confesses to the king what he has done. When
the king threatens him with extreme torture, he bites out his tongue in
order not to speak again. Then he beckons for a knife with which to
mend
his pen, and therewith adds to the bloodshed by stabbing the father of
one of his son's murderers and killing himself. Don Andrea's ghost,
which appears several times over to demand revenge, may well declare
itself well satisfied.
It was difficult to go much
farther in melodrama. This one was so good that, in spite of all
ironies and parodies, there was still a demand for it fifteen years
after its first performance. Ben Jonson, the classicist, made additions
to it, possibly those which have come down to us and which are
certainly remarkable. They consist of new touches added to Hieronimo's
madness and give the play the benefit of the improvement in dramatic
psychology that had been made in the interval.
The play in its original form is
emphatic, declamatory, and often ridiculous, yet such as to grip a
simple public. The motives for action are not made clear; the
characters are alive yet hardly have character. It is the element of
the pathetic which veils all defects. Of all the parts in Renascence
drama, that of Hieronimo was the most grateful to actors and the most
popular with the public. Morover, the play supplies the poetry of place
and scenery. It respects neither the unity of place nor that of time,
yet preserves, on the whole, unity of action, and it also has unity of
motive, for it all centres round revenge.
This excellent and most popular
motive recurs in several of the great plays. The Spanish Tragedie foreshadows Hamlet.
If the principal object of literary history were to determine
starting-points, more space would be given to Kyd's play than to any of
the great Shakespearian tragedies. Critics admit to-day that Kyd, whose
other works is less interesting and is not certainly his, may have
written an early and lost version of Hamlet. Such a play unquestionably existed in
1589, and it is likely that its author was the creator of old Hieronimo.
From McAlindon, English Renaissance Tragedy:
"When Kyd tied love and justice, marriage and law, into a firm thematic
knot, and linked them to the universal principle of harmonious
contariety, he showed his contemporaries and successors how to combine
in a richly significant pattern the elements of romance and intrigue
attractive to a popular audience with those matters of state
traditionally thought proper to tragedy. As a result of his design, the
interaction of socio-political and sexual disorder is a constant
feature of Renaissance tragedy" (39).
In Kyd's play we have the original and archetypal model for an
important episode in many Renaissance tragedies, the Treacherous
Entertainment, the most characteristic scene of renaissance tragedy:
"This scene may coincide with the major point of change near the centre
of the action, but as a rule it forms the catastrophe. It may consist
simply of a banquet or a game; more often it is a play or masque
performed in conjunction with a marriage. But, whatever its position or
form, it is always a ritual affirmation of love and union which
turns out to be a monstrous negation of everything it affirms" (41).
Confusion of opposites is its guiding principle. Set in contrast or
analogy to other ritual scenes, "a basic constructional formula on
which the dramatists are heavily dependent" (41): "rite gone wrong" pun
is ubiquitious. Rite posited as as stable image of society, vs. play as
the new and disturbing notion of the nature of life.
____
"VII. The Spanish Tragedy
then,
as Shakespeare perceived, is all of a piece, but complex and richly
suggestive. In construction, characterisation, symbolism and style, it
figures what happens to a peninsula (a binary geopolitical unit), to a
nation, and to a noble individual when the untrustworthy 'second self'
breaks free from the bond that controls 'difference'. One kind of
difference (conflict) multiplies and prevails, the other (distinction,
identity) is obliterated. A society publicly committed to love, peace,
and celebration is secretly at war with itself, racked with private
griefs and hatreds. Civility and cruelty, justice and barbarism,
patience and revenge, reason and madness, ripeness and sterility, play
and deadly earnest all become undistinguishable. Orphic man inflames
the Furies and demons, domesticates Babel and finally destroys language
altogether. The dramatic poet who is the tragic hero's alter ego
recognised that a play which adequately presents this process must risk
being 'hardly understood' by some and deemed 'a mere confusion' by
others. Audaciously, he took the risk, leaving it to the judicious to
ask, like Theseus confronted with the artisans' comical tragedy, and no
doubt like the first courtly audience of A Midsummer Night's Dream,
'How shall we find the concord of this discord?' Neither in prologue
nor in epilogue, however, does he help us to find what we are looking
for; all his clues—'Ariadne's twines'—are in the artifact itself."
(McAlindon80-81).
The
blood turns in my veins; I stand on change,
And shall dissolve in changing: 'tis so full
Of pleasure not to be contain'd in flesh:
To fear a violent good, abuseth goodness,
'Tis immortality to die aspiring,
As if a man were taken quick to heaven;
What will not hold perfection, let it burst;
What force hath any cannon, not being charg'd,
Or being discharg'd?
Wretched
world Consisting most of parts that fly at each
other, A firmness breeding all inconstancy, A bond of all disjunction.
(Chapman, Byron's Tragedy V.iv.62-5).
Strife in Nature, and Strife in Man—from T. McAlindon, English Renaissance Tragedy:
In historically oriented
studies of Renaissance drama, it has been customary to assume that the
essential feature of pre-modern cosmology as understood by the
Elizabethans was the principle of hierarchical correspondence (or
analogy). Viewed in the light of this principle, however, the universe
presents itself to the imagination as a straightforward model of order
and stability, inducing a mood of philosophic confidence and optimism
in any consideration of the human condition. There has, therefore, been
a strong reaction against those critics who have assumed that the
so-called 'Elizabethan world picture' exerted a substantial influence
on the tragic dramatists' delineation of man, society, and universe; it
is commonly held now that the tragedians' vision of a terrifyingly
unstable world where good and evil and right and wrong are confusingly
entwined could only have evolved in spite of or in reaction to the
conditioning effects of traditional cosmology. I would suggest,
however, that the full implications of pre-modern cosmology were never
taken into account in the interpretation of Renaissance tragedy (and
tragical history) in the first place. For in the 'theoria of the
world'—to borrow Marlowe's phrase—which the Elizabethans inherited from
the Middle Ages and the Greeks, polarity was a principle of at least
equal importance with that of hierarchy (analogy, correspondence,
degree). To put the matter in elemental terms, the disposition of
earth, water, air, and fire in a stratified order throughout the
universe does not alter the fact that they are opposites whose nature
always inclines them to strife and mutual domination. Without the
strife of the elements there would, in fact, be no accounting for
change and death; moreover, given their instinct for strife, there can
be no knowing which convulsions lie ahead in the order of nature. At
the end of the sixteenth and the beginning of the seventeenth century,
the pessimistically inclined, looking at the evidence of contemporary
history (Christianity at war with itself) and of scientific discovery
(changes in the changeless heavens of the 'fixed stars'), decided that
man's moral character, human institutions, and external nature were all
in a state of incipient disintegration, that the promised end was at
hand. Automatically, they explained this cosmic disaster in terms of an
uncontrolled acceleration in the strife of the contraries. The
explanation suggests that, while their cosmology conditioned them to
admire and cherish harmonious stability, it also conditioned them to
dread and expect violent change, 'Chaos come again'.
The effects which the
cosmological principle of analogy and contrariety had on Renaissance
drama are incalculable. Of the two, however, the principle of
contrariety etched itself more deeply on the art of the tragedian, and
for reasons which are not hard to perceive. The idea of the universe as
a dynamic system of opposites speaks to the imagination not only of
order but also of the fragile and impermanent nature of life's
harmonious patterns. And, since subject and object are held to be
duplex and always liable to change, it speaks too of a radical
uncertainty in every attempt to interpret and evaluate man's nature and
experience. Viewed in the light of this cosmic model, unity—and all
that it entails in terms of order and intelligibility—may seem no more
than the effect of a truce in a war that can have no end. It was
perhaps inevitable, then, that Renaissance tragedians should exploit
the contrarious model of man and universe. Beginning as they did with
the medieval tragic idea of man as the victim of an inherently
treacherous world (the world of Fortune), and adjusting it to their own
conviction that he is betrayed also by the conditions of his nature,
they crated a complex and comprehensive view of the tragic to which the
notion of universal contrariety contributed both as stimulus and
validation.
An evolutionist lecture by Daniel Dennett, author of Darwin's Dangerous Idea.
Dr. Seuss vs. William Shakespeare
No es el último libro de
Brian Boyd, sino un vídeo de la serie EPIC RAP BATTLES OF
HISTORY, muy recomendable. Mirad Stephen Hawking vs. Albert
Einstein, Steve Jobs vs. Bill Gates, Hitler vs. Darth Vader, Abraham
Lincoln vs. Chuck Norris, etc.:
Bodegón con Duffy
Viernes 5 de octubre de 2012
Riders Storytelling Workshop
EPSRC - RIDERS
NETWORK - STORYTELLING WORKSHOP Queen Mary, University of London -
School of Electronic Engineering and Computer Science November 8th 2012 ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ FREE ATTENDANCE, TRAVEL SUBSIDISED ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
The 3rd RIDERS workshop will take
place at Queen Mary, University of London on November 8th 2012.
RIDERS stands for Research in
Interactive Drama Environments, Role-play
and Storytelling - Towards a multi-disciplinary community of
researchers with expertise in enhancing technological, social or
entertaining aspects of Digital Storytelling research.
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ ERNEST ADAMS - Making MMOGs More
Storylike ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Persistent worlds are great places
to play but poor places to be a
hero, because in most of them the player cannot permanently change the
world. In this lecture I show how the design of current games harms the
story-like feel of the experience, and what we can to do to allow all
the players to play a more meaningful role in the plot. I also describe
a high concept for one such game, The Blitz Online.
Ernest Adams is a freelance game
designer, writer, and teacher. He has
served in the game industry since 1989, and is the author of five
books, including the university-level textbook "Fundamentals of Game
Design, Second Edition." Ernest was most recently employed as a lead
designer at Bullfrog Productions on the Dungeon Keeper series, and for
several years before that was the audio/video producer on the Madden
NFL Football line for Electronic Arts. Ernest is also the founder and
first chairman of the International Game Developers' Association. His
website is at http://www.designersnotebook.com.
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ SANDY LOUCHART- Distributing Drama
Management via AI ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ In this talk, we describe an
implementation of Distributed Drama
Management (DDM). DDM is a concept which involves synthetic actor
agents in an Emergent Narrative scenario acting on both an in-character
level, which reflects the concerns of the characters, and an
out-of-character level, which reflects the concerns of a storyteller.
By selecting the most “dramatically appropriate” action from a set of
autonomously proposed actions, Distributed Drama Management aims to
retain the benefits of Emergent Narrative such as believability and
agility of response to user actions, but attempts to provide a
structurally and emotionally consistent experience.
Sandy Louchart is a lecturer in
Human Computer Interaction at the
School of Mathematical and Computer Sciences at Heriot-Watt University.
His research has investigated the domain of Interactive Storytelling
(IS) via the development of the Emergent Narrative concept.http://www.macs.hw.ac.uk/~sandy/Home.html
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Zlatka Stankova - Emotion, the
Writer's Perspective ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Zlatka Stankova is a Cinema and
Theatre Director, a Script Writer, and
a Lecturer in Drama Theory and Practice. She specialises in Media
studies, Literary and Drama Theory and European Culture and Languages.
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ GERAINT WIGGINS- Emotion and
Computational creativity ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Geraint Wiggins Geraint is
Professor of Computational Creativity in the
Department of Computing in Goldsmiths' College, University of London.
He leads the Intelligent Sound and Music Systems (ISMS) group in the
Department of Computing, which forms part of the Centre for Cognition,
Computation and Culture, a new venture involving staff from several
departments around the College.
Christopher Marlowe
(from The Oxford Companion to
English Literature)
Marlowe, Christopher (1564-93),
son of a Canterbury shoemaker, educated at the King's School,
Canterbury, and Corpus Christi College, Cambridge. He became a BA in
1584, and MA, after some difficulty in 1587. Though of excellent
classical attainments, as his writings make clear, he seems to have
been of a violent and at times criminal temperament. It is not
clear whether visits he made to the Continent related to espionage. In
1589 he was involved in a street fight in which the poet T. Watson
killed a man; an injunction was brought against him by the constable of
Shoreditch three years later. Early in 1592 he was deported from the
Netherlands for attempting to issue forged gold coins. On 30 May 1593
he was killed by one Ingram Frizer (as Hotson discovered) in a Deptford
tavern after a quarrell over the bill; Marlowe was at the time under
warrant to appear before the Privy Council on unknown charges. Kyd and
another friend, Richard Baines, testified after his death to his
blasphemy and outrageous beliefs.
The Tragedie of Dido,
Queen of Carthage, published in 1594, may have been written
while Marlowe was still at Cambridge, and in collaboration with Nashe.
Part I of Tamburlaine
was written not later than 1587, and Part II in the following year; it
was published in 1590. The next plays may have been The Jew of Malta, not published
until 1633, and Edward
II, published in 1594. The highly topical Massacre at Paris,which survives only in a fragmentary and undated text, and Dr Faustus,
published 1604, may both belong to the last year of Marlowe's life. At
various times he translated Ovid's
Amores, published without date as All Ovids Elegies, together with
some of Sir John Davies's 'Epigrammes'; wrote two books of an erotic
narrative poem Hero
and Leander, wich was completed by G. Chapman and published
in 1598; made a fine blank verse rendering of Lucans First Booke, Book 1 of
Lucan's Pharsalia; and wrote
the song 'Come live with me and be my love', published in The Passionate
Pilgrim (1599) and England's Helicon(1600),
with a reply by Ralegh. In spite of his violent life Marlowe as an
admired and highly influential figure: within weeks of his death Peele
paid tribute to him as 'Marley, the Muses darling for thy verse'.
Shakespeare's early histories are strongly influenced by Marlowe, and
he paid tribute to him in As You
Like It
as the 'dead shepherd'. Jonson referred to 'Marlowes mighty line', and
among others who praised him were Nashe, Chapman, G. Harvey, and
Drayton. There are many modern editions of his plays and poems: the
Revels Plays editions of the plays are to be recommended, and in the
same series, Millar Maclure's edition of the Poems (1968).
(from Legouis:)
Marlowe
added nothing to dramatic technique except that he determined the
victory of blank verse. His merit is that in his short career he set
the stage on fire with the flame of his passion. Less versatile than
the other prominent playwrights of his day, less able than they to
conceive of multitudinous feelings distinct from his own emotions, less
quick than some to catch the scenic side of things, surpassed not only
by the masters, but also by mediocre playwrights, as an architect of
drama and constructor of supple and nimble dialogue, without any sense
of the comic or sense of humour or aptitude to draw a woman, Marlowe
yet possessed a supreme quality which enabled him at once to lift drama
to the sphere of high literature. He was a great poet, a lyrical,
personal, violently egoistical poet, who carried with him his own
unique conception of man and life. In spite of his atheism, he
foreshadowed Milton from afar; a little of him was in the Byron who
wrote Cain,
a little in Shelley. His exclusiveness produced intensity, and the
English stage was in great need of intensity. Grace, wit, and fancy had
been scattered on it, mingled indeed with faults of every kind, but
never hitherto had it known this dash, this vehemence, animating a
whole play, this rapid march, as to victory, by which drama inspires
the conviction hat thus to move is to be alive.
It is, after all, a mistake to suppose that every work written for the
stage must have specially dramatic qualities. To give an audience an
impression of greatness, to cause them to tremble with enthusiasm and
feel the rush towards an end—any end: this does as well. The fact is
proved by Marlowe's work as by part of Corneille's. His immediate
success and his powerful influence are unquestionable. Even when his
plays had come to seem extravagant they remained popular. They first
made the English public feel the pride of strength, and persuaded or
deluded English drama into the belief that it equalled the sublimity of
the ancients. As did the Cid,
Marlowe's plays, for all their lack of patriotism, made hearts swell
with a new national pride. His characters, out of scale and unnatural
as they are, can dispense with probability because they have the breath
of life. Their passionate declaiming co-operated with the triumph over
the Armada, one year after Marlowe's first play, and the pride in
distant conquests , to make English hearts drunk and giddy with
triumphant strength. Together with the discoveries of the great
seafarers, these figures on the stage enlarged, in men's minds, the
bounds of the possible. These plays were a paean to the infinity of
military power, of knowledge and of wealth. The subjects Marlowe
borrowed, the heroes he moulded, were no more than his mouthpieces,
voicing his exorbitant dreams. Like him they sought the infinite and
like him were never sated.
__________
Dido Queene of Carthage, The Tragedie of,
written by Marlowe and Nashe, possibly while they were at Cambridge
together. It was performed at unknown dates by the Children of the
Queen's Chapel, and published in 1594. It is closely based on Virgil's Aeneid (Bks 1, 2, and 4),
depicting Dido's failure to persuade Aeneas to stay with her in
Carthage and her subsequent suicide.
(from Legouis:)
Marlowe ... wrote a Dido,
which was finished by Nashe and in which he dramatized the fourth book
of the Aeneid. This play is
less sombre in colour than his earlier work, but is marred in
places by the worst lapses of taste.
Tamburlaine the Great,
a drama in blank verse by Marlowe, written not later than 1587,
published 1590. It showed an immense advance on the blank verse of Gorboduc and was received with much
popular approval. The material for it was taken by the author from
Pedro Mexia's Spanish Life of Timur,
of which an English translation had appeared in 1571.
Pt I of the drama deals with the first rise to power of the Scythian
shepherd robber Tamburlaine; he allies himself with Cosroe in the
latter's rebellion against his brother, the king of Persia, and then
challenges him for the crown and defeats him. Tamburlaine's unbounded
ambition and ruthless cruelty carry all before him. He conquers the
Turkish emperor Bajazet and leads him about, a prisoner in a cage,
goading him and his empress Zabina with cruel taunts till they dash out
their brains against the bars of the cage. His ferocity is softened
only by his love for his captive Zenocrate, the daughter of the soldan
of Egypt whose life he speares in deference to the pleadings of
Zenocrate when he captures Damascus.
Pt II deals with the continuation of his conquests, which extend to
Babylon, whither he is drawn in a charion dragged by the kings of
Trebizond and Soria, with the kings of Anatolia and Jerusalem as relay,
'pampered Jades of Asia' (a phrase quoted by Pistol in Shakespeare, 2
Henry IV, II.iv); it ends with the death of Tamburlaine himself.
____
From Legouis and Cazamian's History of English Literature:
Tamburlaine, in
its two parts, of which the first appeared in 1587 and the second in
1588, astonished the public with quite other reasons than The
Spanish Tragedie.
Its author was Christopher Marlowe (1564-93), a young man of
twenty-three, who had just left Cambridge. He was entirely without
experience of the stage, but he compensated for this lack by the
extraordinary spirit of defiance and revolt which animated his dramatic
work. Novel though Arden of Feversham
and The Spanish Tragedie
were, they were plays which bore the imprint of the traditional
morality. From beginning to end they denounced and condemned crime;
their murders cried out for vengeance. But the new playwright dared to
claim admiration for the most bloodthirsty of men, to make of him a
sort of demigod.
Nothing is more characteristic of Marlowe than his choice of his first
hero. He had read a translation of Tamerlane's life by the Spaniard
Pedro Mexia and another life of him by Perondinus of Florence. His
imagination was inflamed by the story of the career of this unmatched
adventurer who from a mere shepherd became the most powerful man in all
the world. There was no need to invent: to follow hisory was enough.
What were Alexander and Caesar beside this fourteenth-century Tartar,
the conqueror of Persia and Muscovy who laid Hindustan and Syria waste,
vanquished the Ottomans, and died at last as he was fllinging himself
upon China at the head of two hundred thousand warriors? What cruelty
did not seem mildness beside his, who strangled a hundred thousand
captives before the walls of Delhi, and set up before Baghdad an
obelisk built of ninety thousand severed heads? What symbol could
strike more terror than the white tents and banners which stood, in
sign of friendship, before a town on the first day of one of
Tamerlane's sieges, the red tents and the second flags which were there
on the second day, in sign of pillage, and the banners and tents, all
black, which beset it on the third dey, in sign of extermination?
All this was so grandiose that Marlowe was dazzled. The man capable of
so prodigious a destiny, of such unbridgled contempt for human life,
seemed to him a superior being, a superman to whom the petty rules of
morality did not apply. His Tamburlaine massacres wholesale, women and
children as well as men, laughs at the blood he sheds, imprisons the
vanquished Emperor Bajazet in a cage, has his chariot drawn by kings
whom he insults, burns a town in honor of the funeral of his wife,
Zenocrate, and all the while remains entirely admirable, outside and
above human judgment. He is the despiser of men and gods. Marlowe
endows him with the boundless arrogance of an emancipated virtuoso and
philosopher of the Renascence. Tamburlaine is the great victor, the
conqueror of the world. Therefore he is in the right.
Marlowe
transfigures him, not by omitting or weakening any of his atrocities,
but by exalting them. He sees in him the triumph of the will to power
and thinks that nothing could be finer. To glorify his Tamburlaine he
goes to the romances of chivalry in search of heroes moved by an
unbridled appetite for glory, and there finds the poetry a mere
exterminator would lack. Like those extravagant knights, Tamburlaine is
capable of extraordinary love. He lays the earth at the feet of his
Zenocrate and when death takes her from him he threatens heaven with
his rage.
This play, which is simply Tamburlaine's life divided into scenes,
expresses the strange ardours of a young scholar who had cut himself
irrevocably adrift from all restraint. A libertine in both senses of
the word, Marlowe prided himself on his paganism, his rebellion, not
against the dogma of the Trinity only, but against the very spirit of
Christianity. His ideal was the man freed from all morality who seeks
the maximum of strength and enjoyment by way of impiety, sensuality and
crime. What he could not declare to the public directly, he makes his
Tamburlaine proclaim upon the stage. It was to the quest of the
impossible that he himself aspired, and Tamburlaine is vowed to it at
his first meeting with Zenocrate. She has come to him, all dishevelled
and disconsolate, to ask him to pardon her father, the Sultan of Egypt.
At this moment the man who had, an instant before, slaughtered the
suppliant virgins of Damascus and had their corpses hoisted on pikes,
utters the most lyrical of all appeals to absolute beauty, a cry of
grief because he knows and declares that what he calls upon is beyond
his reach.
The like exaltation had already been felt by Tamburlaine at the thought
of being king. on the precedent of Jupiter, who ousted his father
Saturn from the throne in order to reign himself, Tamburlaine regards
ambition as the spontaneous act of human nature:
Still climbing after knowledge
infinite, And
always moving as the restless spheres.
The same wild rapture is sustained through ten acts, for two dramas are
consecrated to this one hero Tamburlaine, who is almost always on the
stage and by himself is nearly the whole of either play. It is
appalling to reflect on the task of Alleyn, the actor who created the
part and ho had to utter all this character's declamatory violence and
repeated lyrical tirades. Nothing could be less dramatic or more
monotonous: the same theme and same tone of passionate emphasis recur
endlessly. It is true that, to captivate the sight, there are some
scenes which haunted men's memories: Bajazet dying of hunger in his
cage while a banquet is served to Tamburlaine, who tenders him a
mouthful or two on the pint of his swor; Bajazet, at the end of his
endurance, braining himself against the iron bars which imprison him;
his wife, Zabina, seized by madness when she sees him dead and taking
her own life; above all that famous spectacle of Tamburlaine, whip in
hand, drawn by two kings harnessed to his chariot to whom he cries:
Holla, ye pamper'd jades of Asia! What,
can ye draw but twenty miles a day?
It was never necessary to parody Tamburlaine:
to mention it was enough. On the whole, its spectacular extravagances
are dispersed, but the declamation is continuous. That men listened to
this play from end to end can be exclaimed only by suppposing that the
fire in the heart of the young poet caught his audience. They too must
have been in a state of half-delirious exalatation. The distraught
rhetoric is sustained by verse of which the unfailing sonority was as
new as the subject. Marlowe began his career with a superb contempt for
the popular rhymesters. He makes blank verse, hitherto without
brightness or ring, thunder and echo through his play like a drum that
never ceases. Other heroes, from the Herod of the mysteries downwards,
had already uttered fearful blasphemies and unending rodomontade, but
they had had to express them in slight stanzas or frail couplets. The
verse for which men had been waiting, completely formed verse, now
sounded on the stage for the first time. It was a thing too enchanting
to be withstood. The wits might mock at this 'spacious volubilitie of a
drumming decasyllabon,' at this 'bragging blank verse,' but, whether
they would or no, they had soon, in deference to the public, themselves
to beat the drum as well as they could.
Jew
of Malta, The, a drama
in blank verse by Marlowe, performed about 1592, not published until
1633.
The grand seignior of Turkey having demanded the tribute of Malta, the
governor of Malta decides that it shall be paid by the Jews of the
island. Barabas, a rich Jew who resists the edict, has all his wealth
impounded and his house turned into a nunnery. In revenge he indulges
in an orgy of slaughter, procuring the death of his daughter Abigail's
lover among others, and poisoning Abigail herself. Malta being besieged
by the Turks, he betrays the fortress to them, and, as a reward, is
made its governor. He now plots the destruction of the Turkish
commander and his force at a banquet by means of a collapsible floor;
but is himself betrayed and hurled through this same floor into a
cauldron, where he dies. The prologue to the play is spoken by
'Machevil', and Barabas is one of the prototypes for unscrupulous
Machiavellian villains in later Elizabethan and Jacobean drama. His
praise of gold and precious stones as 'Infinite riches in a little
roome' is often quoted.
(from Legouis:)
Marlowe never again found a plot which gave him so much scope [as Dr. Faustus], but even
in The Jew of Malta (1589) he
sometimes reveals his lyrical power. He was doubtless led to write this
melodrama by the success of The
Spanish Tragedie
and other tragedies of atrocious vengeance. His Jew, Barabas, is
unjustly deprived of his goods by Christians, and by an extraordinary
series of crimes avenges himself on them, and also, becoming a
monomaniac, on mankind in general. Obliged to use cunning to attain his
object, he is Machiavellism incarnate. His crimes must have made the
hair of audiences stand on end. They accumulate until, having first
delivered Malta to the Turks and then the Turks to the Christians, he
falls into a
cauldron of boiling water into which he had schemed to
throw his last enemies.
There is only one other character who counts in this play, and he is
yet more terrible, the Moorish slave Ithamore who is Barabas's tool and
and incarantion of the lust of extreme cruelty.
This melodrama opens grandly, and before the Jew becomes a criminal
maniac he has, like Tamburlaine, dignity and greatness. Enormously
rich, we see him first in his counding-house, with heaps of gold before
him, a poet intoxicated by the immensity of his own wealth and the
immense power which is its consequence. As he enumerates the countries
whence his treasures come, his exaltation has a mystical greatness.
Something of this remains to him when he hears the governor's order
that half his estate and that of the other Jews shall be confiscated to
pay the tribute to the Turks, and when only he of all his
co-religionists keep his pride, remaining indignant and inflexible. It
has often been said that Shakespeare dared to defy contemporary
prejudice by attracting sympathy intermittently to Shylock. Yet
Shakespeare's Shylock is as avaricious as he is cruel, and ridiculous
through his avarice. The only true rehabilitation of the Jew is that
which Marlowe attempted in his first act, where the haughty, intrepid
Barabas, facing the hypocritical governor, is really a splendid figure.
That he subsequently appears as a frenzied wretch is of little
consequence. For a time the poet identified himself with the Jew, who
may even, by the very enormity of his later crimes, have retained the
strange sympathy of his creator.
Edward II,a tragedy in blank verse
by Marlowe probably first performed 1592, published 1594.
It deals with the recall by Edward II, on his accession, of his
favourite, Piers Gaveston; the revolt of the barons and the capture and
execution of Gaveston; the period during which Spenser (Hugh le
Despenser) succeeded Gaveston as the king's favorite; the estrangement
of Queen Isabella from her husband; her rebellion, supported by her
paramour Mortimer, against the king; the caputure of the latter, his
abdication of the crown, and his murder in Berkeley Castle. The play
was an important influence on Shakespeare's Richard II.
(from
Legouis:)
Marlowe was also able, before he died at the age of twenty-nine, to
write the best of the tragedies on national history which preceded
Shakespeare, his Edward the Second,
first acted in 1592.
Whether because Marlowe's genius had developed, or because the
exigencies of historical drama obliged him to self-effacement, this
play has qualities which are properly dramatic and are found in none of
its predecessors. The lyrical declamation is under a new restraint. The
tirades are shorter and the dialogue is better distributed in speeches.
The blank verse is less strained and more pliable, nearer to the tones
of human voice. Progress in character-study is also evinced, over a
numerous and diversified cast.
The subject is the veracious history of a king who is dominated by his
favourites, first Gaveston and then young Mortimer. Mortimer reaches an
understanding with Queen Isabella, who becomes his mistress. The
betrayed king is cast into prison and put to death by the order of the
two accomplices, who are in their turn executed by their victim's son.
Edward II stands for sentimental weakness, the royal baseness which
cowardice can make bloodthirsty. In Mortimer, with his unbridled
ambition, Marlowe returned to one of his favourite types, and it is
Mortimer who connects the play with its predecessors.
Except the death of Faustus, nothing in Marlowe's plays is more
poignantly pathetic than the scene of the murder of Edward II in
Killingworth Castle by two ruffians. The end of the bad king is so
miserable that he becomes an object of pity.
Edward the Second is better
constructed than Marlowe's other plays, free from his habitual
extravagance, less inhuman and less removed from hte normal drama of
the time. But it shows the author's dramatic weakness the more clearly
because of its very merits. This tragedy has not the lucidity necessary
to character-drawing, to the weaving of a plot, and to the distribution
of sympathy. it also lacks variety and dramatic progression. Of the
plays developed to natinal history, it was, until Shakespeare, the most
artistic, but a long distance separates it fromm the least of
Shakespeare's historical dramas. The spirit of patriotism necessary to
work of the kind does not breathe in it, possibly because Marlowe, a
rebel against the religion and morality of his fellow-countrymen, did
not share their political passions either. Again in this play, he shows
himself in revolt against the common morality, when, with lyrical
exaltation, he paints the unnatural love of Edward II for his favourite
Piers Gaveston.
Massacre
at Paris, The, a
play by Marlowe written c. 1592. The undated first edition (c. 1593/4)
describes it as having been acted by the Admiral's Men. It is a short
and poor text, probably representing a mangled version of what Marlowe
wrote. A single leaf surviving in manuscript used to be thought to be a
forgery by J. P. Collier, but is nowe considered to be a genuine
contemporary copy of part of a scene.
The play deals with the massacre of Protestants in Paris on St.
Bartholomew's day, 24 Aug. 1572 (an event witnessed by P. Sidney, who
was staying in Paris at the time). Its most memorable character is the
Machiavellian Duke of Guise, whose high aspiring language seems to have
influenced Shakespeare in his early history plays. The massacre is
depicted in a series of short episodes, a notable one being that in
which the rhetorician Ramus is killed after a verbal onslaught by the
Guise on his emendations of Aristotle. The Guise himself is eventually
murdered at the behest of Henry III, dying on the lines:
Vive la messe! Perish Hugenots! Thus
Caesar did go forth, and thus he died.
whose relationship to Shakespeare's Julius
Caesar
(II.ii. 10, 28, 48) has not been satisfactorily explained. Leaping over
17 years, the play concludes with the murder of Henry III and the
succession of the (then) Protestant Henry of Navarre. It is difficult
to tell whether the frequent comic effect of the play is authorially
intended or is the result of the incompleteness of the text. Ed. H. J.
Oliver (1968).
(from Legouis:)
...an unfinished play, The Massacre
at Paris, on
the massacre of St. Bartholomew, a subject which gave Marlowe his fill
of horrors and attracted him by the boundless ambition of the Duke of
Guise whom he made his hero...
Dr
Faustus,The Tragical History
of,
a drama in blank verse and prose by Marlowe, published 1604 and , in a
radically different version known as the B-text', 1616. The earliest
known performance waas by the Lord Admiral's Men in 1594. It is perhaps
the first dramatization of the medieval legend of a man who sold his
soul to the devil, and who became identified with a Dr. Faustus, a
necromancer of the 16th cent. The legend appeared in the Faustbuch, first published at
Frankfurt in 1587, and was translated into English as The Historie of the Damnable Life, and
Deserved Death of Doctor John Faustus.
Marlowe's play follows this translation in the general outline of the
story, though not in the conception of the principal character, who
from a mere magician becomes, under the poet's hand, a man athirst for
infinite power, ambitions to be 'great Emperor of the world'.
Faustus, weary of the sciences, turns to magic and calls up
Mephistopheles, with whom he makes a compact to surrender his soul to
the devil in return for 24 years of life; during these Mephistopheles
shall attend on him and give him whatsoever he demands. Then follow an
number of scenes in which the compact is executed, notable among them
the calling up of Helen of Troy, where Faustus addresses Helen in the
well-known line: 'Was this the face that launched a thousand ships . .
. ' The anguish of mind of Faustus as the hour for the surrender of his
soul draws near is poignantly depicted. Both in its end and in the
general conception of the character of Faustus, the play thus differs
greatly from the Faust of
Goethe.
____
(Legouis:)
The madcap was in truth a great poet whose very extravagance was
justified because it expressed his nature. He produced play after play,
all continuations of his first. They were perhaps less purely the
expression of his temperament, but they gained by his increasing
knowledge of the stage, which did not prevent them from being stil
mainly lyrical and oratorical. He was, however, leading a life of
intense dissipation which hardly ever left him time to produce a
complete work like Tamburlaine.
He became the improviser who flings a couple of powerful scenes
into a botched play.
Such was the composition of The Tragical History of Doctor Faustus
(1588), for which he drew on one of the most fruitful of legends, but
merely built an admirable framework about scenes hardly written, and
clowning which reads as though the actors had been invited to fill it
in as they chose.
Once more faithful to the custom of his country's stage, Marlowe
divided the German legend of Faust, as he had read it, into scenes. His
forceful egoism is projected into the character of the necromancer who
vows himself to the devil in return for sovereign knowledge and
sovereign power, and who is thus able for twenty-four years to satisfy
his appetites. They are poor and coarse enough in the legend, leading
him mainly to play practical jokes on the great ones of his day, the
pope and the cardinals, and to make poor wretches the butt of his
magic. Marlowe takes little interest in these distractions, which he
barely outlines. But when Faustus evokes the spirits of the past and
obtains a vision of the Greek Helen, the poet, imagining her supreme
beauty, is rapt to incomparable lyricism.
Retribution follows: Faustus has to keep his bargain with Lucifer, and
tremblingly awaits death and hell. Marlowe, the atheist, alone in a
Christian world, must also, at times, have felt to the full the horror
of his denials and his blasphemies. He was too near faith to be
indifferent. The very vehemence of his professions of impiety was a
sign that his emancipation was incomplete. He shook his fist at heaven
and feared at the same moment that heaven might fall and crush him. The
last scenes of Faustus are
among the most pathetic and most grandiose in Renaissance drama. They
stand by themselves, distinct from all the rest of the drama. They are
insurpassable, even by Shakespeare. Marlowe, incapable of a complete
masterpiece, yet had genius to reach, here and there, the sublime
beauty which had no degrees. When Goethe took the same legend for the
basis of one of the chief accomplishments of modern poetry, he could
not eclipse the poignant greatness of his forerunner's scenes. He, who
deid not know how the impious tremble, could not recapture that anguish
of horror.
John D. Jump:
A classical precedent in the story of Theophilus, who renounced Christ
and acknowledged Satan as his lord, but repented, burned the contract
and became a penitent. (Under Justinian). George or John Faustus, an
itinerant scholar and fortune-teller in the early 16th c. German
documents relating to him 1507-1540s, denounced by Protestant
theologian as being associated with the Devil (1548). Story translated
into English in 1572. German Faust-Book, Historia von D. Iohañ Fausten,
anonymous Protestant work, in 1587. Translated into English by
one P.F., "gentleman", as The
History of the Damnable Life and Deserved Death of Doctor John Faustus.
1592. Numerous details and verbal parallels show that this version was
the one used my Marlowe, so he must have written his play, probably in
collaboration, in 1592-93, before his murder on May 30. Only the
clowning scenes seem to owe nothing to this source. The play is for
some more primitive in dramatic contruction than The Jew of Malta and Edward II, so
it was traditionally given an earlier date. But according to Jump, the
late date for Dr. Faustus seems to show in Marlowe "an increasingly
defiant assertion of individualism, followed by the eventual
recognition of its necessary limitations". Faustus is admirable because
of his aspiring mind but Marlowe sadly recognizes that this must come
to terms with natural and supernatural realities so as not to bring
about its own downfall. This moralizing is attached to the legend in
Marlowe's sources which are didactic in purpose.
"Marlowe,
however, takes a much more complex attitude towards his material. His
Faustus has the restless curiosity, the riotous imagination, and the
audacious desires of a man responding fully and delightedly to the new
trends in his age and the possibilities they seem to open up. Marlowe
evidently feels a fervent sympathy with him. But his sympathy is far
from unqualified. He makes it clear that Faustus is arrogant and
headstrong and that the catastropheis one that hfe wilfully brings
about. The Marlowe who shows us this is no longer the simple rebel who
wrote Tamburlaine the Great. Admittedly, rebellious impulses remain
strong in him; but they are now opposed by the orthodox conviction that
a sin of presumtion or pride such as Faustus commits can only lead to
destruction. Embodying the tension between these forces, Doctor
Faustus, despite the unevenness of its execution, is indubitably
Marlowe's greatest play; and this Renaissance play embodies the tension
the more successfully because it is cast in a largely mediaeval mold."
(Jump 41-42)
Scene viii, B-text:
Fau.
Nay, stay, my gentle Mephostophilis, And
grant me my request, and then I go. Thou
know'st within the compass of eight days We
view'd the face of heaven, and earth, and hell. So high
our dragons soar'd into the air That
looking down the earth appear'd to me No
bigger than my hand in quantity. There
did we view the kingdoms of the world, And
what might please mine eye I there beheld. Then in
this show let me an actor be, That
this proud Pope may Faustus' cunning see.
Note this as an early view of the Earth from space, as "made small" by
the enterprising achievements of men and their thirst for knowledge.
Faustus' tour of the earth's wonders is like a play shown to him (the
theatre associated to the spirit of worldwide enquiry and universal
communication)—and then he asks, metadramatically and reflexively, to
be "an actor in this show".
Hero
and Leander,
the tragic history of Leander's love for Hero, the priestess of
Aphrodite: he is drowned while swimming to her at night across the
Hellespont, and she then in despair throws herself into the sea. This
story has been made the subject of poems by Marlowe and T. Hood, and of
a burlesque by T. Nashe in his Lenten Stuffe.
Passionate
Pilgrim,The,an
unauthorized anthology of poems by various authors, published by
Jaggard in 1599, and attributed on the title-page to Shakespeare, but
containing only a few authentic poems by him.
England's
Helicon,
a miscellany of Elizabethan verse, published in 1600, with additions in
1613, edited by H. E. Rollins (1935). It is the best collection of
lyrical and pastoral poetry of the Elizabethan age, and includes pieces
by Sidney, Spenser, Drayton, R. Greene, T. Lodge, Ralegh, Marlowe, and
others.
Containing some early prefatory poems to
Shakespeare's works. The so-called First Folio (Mr
William Shakespeares Comedies, Histories, & Tragedies. Published
according to the True Originall Copies),
edited by John Heminges and Henry Condell in 1623, opens with a
frontispice with the best-known portrait of Shakespeare, an engraving
by Martin Droeshout:
—a portrait presented by "B.
I." (Ben Jonson) in the following poem:
To the Reader.
This Figure, that thou here
seest put, It was for
gentle Shakesepare cut ; Wherein the Grauer had a strife with Nature,
to out-doo the life : O, could he but haue drawne his
wit As well in
brasse, as he hath hit His face ; the Print would then
surpasse All, that
was ever writ in brasse, But, since he cannot, Reader,
looke Not on his
Picture, but his booke.
B. I.
There
follows the editors' dedication to the Earls of Pembroke and of
Montgomery, and the foreword they address "To the great Variety of
Readers". Ben Jonson's poem prefixed to Mr William Shakespeares Comedies,
Histories, & Tragedies (1623):
To the memory of my beloued,
The AVTHOR
MR. WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE : And
what he hath left vs.
To draw no envy, Shakespeare, on thy name,
Am I thus ample to thy Booke, and Fame:
While I confesse thy writings to be such
As neither Man, nor Muse, can praise too much:
‘Tis true, and all mens suffrage. But these wayes
Were not the paths I meant vnto thy praise:
For seeliest ignorance on these may light,
Which, when it sounds at best, but eccho's right ;
Or blinde Affection, which doth ne’er advance
The truth, but gropes, and vrgeth all by
chance ;
10
Or crafty Malice, might pretend this praise,
And thinke to ruine where it seem'd to raise.
These are, as some infamous Baud, or whore,
Should praise a Matron: what could hurt her more ?
But thou art proofe against them, and indeed
Aboue th'ill fortune of them, or the need.
I, therefore will begin. Soule of the Age !
The applause ! delight ! the wonder of our Stage !
My Shakespeare, rise ; I will not
lodge thee by Chaucer, or Spenser, or bid Beaumont lye
20
A little further, to make thee a roome :
Thou art a Moniment, without a tombe,
And art aliue still, while thy Booke doth liue,
And we have wits to read, and praise to giue.
That I not mixe thee so, my braine excuses ;
I meane with great, but disproportion'd Muses ;
For if I thought my iudgement were of yeeres,
I should commit thee surely with thy peeres:
And tell, how far thou did'stst our Lily out-shine,
Or sporting Kid, or Marlowes mighty
line.
30
And though thou hadst small Latine, and less Greeke,
From thence to honour thee I would not seeke
For names, but call forth thundering AEschilus, Euripides, and Sophocles to vs,
Pacuuius, Accius, him of Cordoua dead,
To life againe, to heare thy Buskin tread,
And shake a Stage; Or, when thy Sockes were on,
Leaue thee alone, for the comparison
Of all, that insolent Greece, or haughtie Rome
sent forth, or since did from their ashes
come.
40
Triumph, my Britaine, thou hast one to
showe,
To whom all scenes of Europe homage owe.
He was not of an age, but for all time !
And all the Muses still were in their
prime
When like Apollo he came forth to
warm
Our eares, or like a Mercury to charme !
Nature her selfe was proud of his designes,
And ioy'd to weare the dressing of his lines !
Which were so richly spun and wouen so fit
As, since, she will vouchsafe no other
Wit.
50
The merry Greeke, tart Aristophanes,
Neat Terence, witty Plautus, now not please,
But antiquated, and deserted lye
As they were not of nature’s family.
Yet must I not giue nature all: Thy Art,
My gentle Shakespeare, must enioy a part.
For though the Poets matter nature be,
His art doth give the fashion. And, that he,
Who casts to write a living line, must sweat
(Such as thine are) and strike the second
heat
60
Vpon the Muses anuile : turn the
same,
(And himselfe with it) that he thinkes to frame ;
Or for the lavrell, he may gain a scorne,
For a good Poet’s made, as well as borne;
And such wert thou. Looke how the fathers face
Liues in his issue, euen so, the race
Of Shakespeares minde, and manners
brightly shines
In his well torned and true filed lines :
In each of which, he seemes to shake a Lance,
As brandish't at the eyes of Ignorance.
70
Sweet Swan of Auon! What a sight it were
To see thee in our waters yet appeare,
And make those flights vpon the bankes of Thames
That so did take Eliza, and our Iames !
But stay, I see thee in the Hemisphere
Advanc'd, and made a Constellation there !
Shine forth, thou Starre of Poets, and with rage
Or influence, chide, or cheere the drooping Stage ;
Which, since thy flight from hence, hath mourn'd like night,
And despaires day, but for thy Volumes
light.
80
Ben: Ionson.
Jonson's poem alludes to a well-known elegy for
Shakespeare, not included in the First Folio, by William Basse, which
would appear in the 1633 edition of John Donne's poems and in
Shakespeare's 1640 Poems:
On Mr. Wm. Shakespeare
he dyed in Aprill 1616
Renowned Spencer, lye a thought more nye
To learned Chaucer, and rare Beaumont lye
A little neerer Spenser to make roome
For Shakespeare in your threefold fowerfold Tombe.
To lodge all fowre in one bed make a shift
Untill Doomesdaye, for hardly will a fift
Betwixt this day and that by Fate be slayne
For whom your Curtaines may be drawn againe.
If your precedency in death doth barre
A fourth place in your sacred sepulcher,
Under this carved marble of thine owne
Sleep rare Tragoedian Shakespeare, sleep alone,
Thy unmolested peace, unshared Cave,
Possesse as Lord not Tenant of thy Grave
That unto us and others it may be
Honor hereafter to be layde by thee.
Wm. Basse
After Ben Jonson's poem, the First Folio includes another sonnet by
Hugh Holland. Notice the continuous allusion to the notion of life as
drama in this and the other memorial poems.
Vpon the Lines and Life of the Famous
Scenicke Poet, Master WILLIAM
SHAKESPEARE
THose hands, which you so
clapt, go now, and wring
You Britaines brawe, for done
are Shakespeares dayes :
His dayes are done, that made the dainty Playes,
Which made the Globe of heau'n and earth to ring.
Dry'de is that veine, dry'd is the Thespian
Spring,
Turn'd all to teares, and Phoebus
clouds his rayes :
That corp's, that coffin now besticke those bayes,
Which crown'd him Poet first,
then Poets King.
If Tragedies might any Prologue haue,
All those he made, would scarse make one to this :
Where Fame, now that he gone
is to the graue
(Deaths publique tyring-house) the Nuncius
is.
For though his line on life went soone about,
The life yet of his lines shall neuer out.
HVGH HOLLAND.
The prefatory matter to the First Folio also includes a table of
contents or "Catalogve" of the plays, and a variant of the title, The
Workes of William Shakespeare, containing all his Comedies, Histories,
and Tragedies: Truely set forth, according to their first Originall",
which precedes the list of "The Names of the Principall Actors in all
these Playes", a list headed by Shakespeare himself. There follows The Tempest, the
first play in the book. But there are two additional memorial poems
between the Catalogue and the list of actors. The first is by Leonard
Digges, and the second by "I. M."(John Marston?).
TO THE MEMORIE
of the deceased Authour Maister
W. Shakespeare
SHake-speare, at length thy pious fellowes
giue The world thy Workes : thy Workes, by
which out-liue Thy Tombe, thy name must .
when that stone is rent, And Time dissoluies thy
Stratford Moniment,
Here we aliue shall view thee still. This Booke,
When Brasse and Marble fade, shall make thee looke
Fresh to all Ages : when Posteritie
Shall loath what's new, thinke all is prodegie
That is not Shakes-speares;
eu'ry Line, each Verse
Here shall reuiue, redeeme thee from thy Herse.
Nor fire, nor cankring Age, as Naso said,
Of his, thy wit-fraught Booke shall once inuade.
Nor shall I e're beleeue, or thinke thee dead
(Though mist) vntill our bankrout Stage be sped (Impossible) with some new
straine t'out-do
Passions of Iuliet, and her Romeo
: Or till I heare a Scene more nobly
take,
Then when thy half-sword parlying Romans spake.
Till these, till any of thy Volumes rest
Shall with more fire, more feeling be exprest,
Be sure, our Shake-speare,
thou canst neuer dye,
But crown'd with Lawrell, liue eternally.
L. Digges
________
To the memorie of M. W. Shake-speare.
VVEE wondred (Shake-speare)
that thou went'st so soone From the Worlds-Stage, to the
Graues-Tyring-roome. Wee thought thee dead, but this thy
printed worth, Tels thy Spectators, that thou
went'st but forth To enter with applause. An Actors Art, Can dye, and liue, to acte a second
part. That's but an Exit of Mortalitie ; This, a Re-entrance to a Plaudite.
I. M. Digges, an Oxford scholar, would also write a longer poem,
posthumousy published as a preface to the 1640 edition
of Shakespeare's own Poems
(which are not included in the First Folio).
Upon Master William Shakespeare, the
Decesaed Authour, and his Poems
Poets are borne not made, when I would prove
This truth, the glad rememberance I must love
Of never dying Shakespeare,
who alone
Is argument enough to make that one.
First, that he was a Poet none would doubt,
That heared th'applause of what he sees set out
Imprinted; where thou hast (I will not say
Reader his Workes for to contrive a Play:
To him twas none) the patterne of all wit,
Art without Art unparaleld as yet.
Next Nature onely helpt him, for looke thorow
This whole Booke, thou shalt find he doth not borrow,
One phrase from Greekes, nor Latines imitate,
Not once from vulgar languages Translate,
Nor Plagiari-like from others gleane,
Nor begges he from from each witty friend a Scene
To peece his Acts with, all that he doth writer,
Is pure his owne, plot, language exquisite,
But oh! what praise more powerfull can we give
The dead, then that by him the Kings men live,
All else expir'd within the short Termes date;
How could the Globe have prospered, since through want
Of change, the Plaies and Poems had growne Scant.
but happy Verse thou shall be sung and heard,
When hungry quills shall be such honour bard
Then vanish upstart Writers to each Stage,
You needy Poetasters of this Age,
Where Shakespeare liv'd or
spake, Vermine forbeare,
Least with your froth you spot them, come not neere;
But if you needs must write, if poverty
So pinch, that otherwise you starve and die,
On Gods name may the Bull or Cockpit have
Your lame blancke Verse, to keepe you from the grave
Or let new Fortunes younger brethren see,
What they can picke from your leane industry.
I doe not wonder when you offer at
Blacke-Friers, that you suffer; tis the fate
Of richer veines, primer judgements that have far'd
The worse, with this deceased man compar'd.
So have I seene, when Caesar would appeare,
And on the Stage at halfe-sword parley were, Brutus and Cassius: oh how the Audience,
Were ravish'd, with what wonder they went thence,
When some new day they would not brooke a line,
Of tedious (though well laboured) Catalines; Sejanus too was irkesome, they
priz'de more
Honest Iago, or the jealous
Moore.
And though the Fox and subtill alchimist,
Long intermitted could not quite be mist,
Though these have sham'd all the Ancients, and might raise,
Thie Authours merit with a crown of Bayes,
Yet these sometimes, even at a friends desire
Acted, have scarce defrai'd the Seacole fire
And doore-keepers: when let but Falstaffe
come, Hall, Poines, the rest you
scarce shall have a roome
All is so pester'd: let but Beatrice
And Benedicke be scene, loe
in a trice
The Cockpit Galleries, Boxes, all are full
To heare Malvoglio that
crosse garter'd Gull.
Briefe, there is nothing in his wit fraught Booke,
Whose sound we would not heare, on whose worth looke
Like old coynd gold, whose lines, in every page,
Shall passe true currant to succeeding age.
But why do I dread Shakespeares
praise recite,
Some second Shakespeare must
of Shakespeare write;
For me tis needlesse, since an host of men,
Will pay to clap his praise, to free my Pen.
And those 1640 Poems also
include another famous tribute, a sonnet by John Milton which had
already appeared in the Second Folio of Shakespeare's works, 1632;
written in 1630:
An Epitaph on the admirable
Dramaticke Poet, W. Shakespeare
What needs my Shakespeare for his honoured bones
The labour of an age in pilèd stones,
Or that his hallowed relics should be hid
Under a star-ypointing pyramid?
Dear son of memory, great heir of fame,
What need’st thou such weak witness of thy name?
Thou in our wonder and astonishment
Hast built thyself a lifelong monument.
For whilst to th’shame of slow-endeavoring art
Thy easy numbers flow, and that each heart
Hath from the leaves of thy unvalued book
Those Delphic lines with deep impression took,
Then thou, our fancy of itself bereaving,
Dost make us marble with too much conceiving;
And so sepulchred in such pomp dost lie,
That kings for such a tomb would wish to die.
En un auto feo En España, colócate en un tribunal, que luego ahí sigues
aunque acredites no saber hacer la O con un canuto, o atentes contra
los principios más elementales del Derecho. Ahora emite un auto el juez
Pedraz de la Audiencia Nacional diciendo que los de "Okupa el Kongreso"
no querían en realidad okupar el kongreso; supongo que los policías
estaban allí de adorno porque si no llega a haberlos nadie hubiera
okupado nada. Buena parte de la culpa la tiene la delegación del
Gobierno, por autorizar una manifestación cuya intención declarada era
ocupar el congreso, habiendo una ley explícita contra eso. Y aún que
hubo bastantes policías para pararlos, que si no podía haber acabado la
cosa peor, y volvemos a hacer portada en el New York Times. Siguiendo
el criterio del juez Pedraz, supongo que deberían soltar al
Unabomber
éste que quería volar la Universidad de las Baleares, puesto que no
está acreditado en absoluto que haya cometido efectivamente el delito
que anunció que iba a cometer. Sólo anunciarlo, y hacer lo posible por
cometerlo, no tiene consecuencia jurídica alguna para este pájaro.
Supongo que diría Pedraz que "visto el descrédito general de la
Universidad", se entiende que haya gente que quiera volarla por los
aires—pero que no lo llegaron a hacer, así que no hay delito. Y
mientras, los protestantes de Valencia, a anunciar que su próxima
visita a la universidad será con dinamita. Vamos, que igual luego vemos
convertido en héroe popular de la Spanish Revolution al terrorista
espontáneo éste de las Baleares, cosas así de estúpidas y criminales se
ven por este país, aun en las más altas instancias.
Artur Mas es un gobernante inepto y delincuente,
culpable de desestabilizar al país en un momento delicadísimo de su
situación económica y de sus relaciones internacionales. Se pregunta
uno por qué cuando alguien aparca el coche en un lugar prohibido no
pasan cinco minutos sin que te llegue la multa, y en cambio ante los
flagrantes y gravísimos delitos de perjurio, traición, desvío de poder
y prevaricación del presidente catalán, las autoridades no están
tomando ninguna medida para inhabilitarlo y castigarlo de modo absolutamente
ejemplar.
Esto da la medida del país en que vivimos. Pero no se le puede dar leña
al mono indefinidamente, ni mirar al aire y fumarse un puro, porque al
final acaban sucediendo cosas. Aquí hay un
artículo de "Voto en blanco"
alertando del peligro de que la deriva secesionista de Mas provoque una
ola de anticatalanismo que hundiría la economía de Cataluña, antes que
nada.
Miren también en la columna de la derecha de ese blog las cifras de la
deuda externa de España. El contador sube hacia arriba, pero el tiempo
que tenemos para enfrentarnos al problema va en cuenta atrás. Y una de
las cosas que hay que hacer urgentemente es enderezar la economía de
las autonomías y estas derivas secesionistas. Quien tiene
responsabilidad de hacerlo, ante avisos clamorosos, y no lo hace, también es un gobernante inepto y
delincuente.
Lo decía Oscar Wilde: "Hay algo más injusto que la injusticia—la justicia sin su espada".
_______
Bing coloca a mi bibliografía como
resultado número uno de la búsqueda "Literary theory bibliography"—
primera posición entre 67.200.000 resultados, según dicen. No
está mal, ¿eh? —para no ser la Universidad de Chicago. Una foto merece:
Y aquí mi canción favorita sobre un soneto de Shakespeare:
Miércoles 3 de octubre de 2012
La luna fotografío
Sabemos que no sabemos lo que
decidimos
Martes 2 de Octubre de 2012
Un barco, otro barco
Jonson, Ben
(From Margaret Drabble's Oxford
Companion to English Literature):
Ben[jamin] Jonson (1572-1637).
Dramatist, poet, scholar, and writer of court masques. He was of Border
descent, but was born in or near London, the posthumous son of a
clergyman. He was educated at Westminster School under Camden. During
the early 1590s he worked as a bricklayer in his stepfather's employ,
saw military service in Flanders, where he killed an enemy champion in
single combat, and joined a strolling company of players for whom he
acted the part of Hieronimo in The
Spanish Tragedy,
a play for which he wrote additional scenes in 1601-2. In 1597 he began
to work for Henslowe's companies as a player and playwright, and was
imprisoned for his share in The Isle
of Dogs, a satire now lost 'containing very seditious and
slandrous matter' (See Swan Theatre).
In 1598 he killed a fellow actor in a duel, but escaped hanging by
pleading benefit of clergy, being branded instead as a felon. He became
a Roman Catholic during his imprisonment, but returned to Anglicanism
15 years later. His first important play, Every Man in His Humour, with
Shakespeare in the cast, was performed by the Lord Chamberlain's
Company at the Curtain in 1598, and Every
Man Out of His Humour at the Globe in 1599. Cynthia's Revels (1600) and Poetaster (1600-1, attacking Dekker
and Marston) were performed by the Children of the Queen's Chapel. His
first extant tragedy, Sejanus,
was given at the Globe by Shakespeare's company, 1603; his first court
masque, The Masque of Blackness,
written to accomodate Queen Anne's desire to appear a a Negress, was
given on Twelfth Night, 1605. In that year he was imprisoned and in
danger of having his nose and ears slit, for his share in Eastward Hoe,
and gave evidence to the Privy Council concerning the Gunpowder Plot.
Then followed the period of his major plays: Volpone, acted at both the
Globe and the two universities, 1605-6, Epicene, or The Silent Woman,
1609-10; The Alchemist, 1610;
and Bartholomew Fair
(1614). In 1612-13 he was in France as tutor to Ralegh's son, and in
1618-19 journeyed on foot to Scotland, where he stayed with Drummond of
Hawthornden, who recorded their conversation.
Though not formally appointed the first poet laureate, the essentials
of the position were conferred on Jonson in 1616, when a pension was
granted to him by James I. In the same year he published a folio
edition of his Works, which
raised the drama to a new level of literary respectability, received an
honorary MA from the Oxford University, and about this date became
lecturer in rhetoric at Gresham College in London. He was elected
chronologer of London in 1628. After The
Devil Is an Ass (1616), he abandoned the public stage for ten
years, and his later plays, The
Magnetic Lady (1631) and A
Tale of a Tub
(1633), show a relatively unsuccessful reliance on allegory and
symbolism. Dryden called them his 'dotages'. From 1605 onwards Jonson
was constantly producing masques for the court, with scenery by Inigo
Jones. This form of entertainment reached its highest elaboration in
Jonson's hands. He introduced into it the 'antimasque', an
antithetical, usuallly disorderly, prelude to the main action which
served to highlight by contrast the central theme of political and
social harmony. There are examples of this in The Masque of Queens
(1609), Love Restored (1612), Mercury Vindicated from the Alchemists at
Court (1616), Pleasure Reconciled to Virtue (1618, which gave Milton
his idea for Comus), and
Neptune's Triumph for the Return of
Albion (1624). After Chloridia
(1631), his collaboration with Jones ended in a famous quarrel, which
Jonson treated in several vituperative poems, concerning the relative
priority of verbal and thematic content and spectacle. His last masques
were produced in 1633-4. His non-dramatic verse includes Epigrammes and The Forest,
printed in the Folio of 1616: notable among his epigrams are two tender
and moving epitaphs, Nos. xxii and xlv, 'On My First Daughter' (c.
1595) and 'On His First Sonne' (1603) ('Farewell, thou child of my
right hand, and joy'). The Underwood
and a translation of Horace's Ars
Poetica were printed in 1640. His chief prose works are The
English Grammar and Timber, or Discoveries, printed in 1640.
During the reign of James I Jonson's literary prestige and influence
were unrivalled. He presided over a literary circle which met at the
Mermaid Tavern, and later in the Apollo Room of the Devil and St
Dunstan Tavern, where his leges
conviviales
or 'social rules' were inscribed over the mantlepiece. His friends
included Shakespeare, whom he loved 'on this side idolatry', Donne, F.
Bacon, George Chapman, Beaumont, Fletcher, Cotton, and Selden, and
among the younger writers (who styled themselves the 'sons' or 'tribe
of Ben' R. Brome, Carew, Cartwright, Sir K. Digby, Lord Falkland,
Herrick, Nabbes, Randolph, and Suckling. His chief patrons were the
Sidney family, the earl of Pembroke, the countess of Bedford, and the
duke and duchess of Newcastle. Jonson suffered a stroke in 1628, after
which he was perhaps permanently bedridden until his death in August
1637. He was buried in Westminster Abbey under a tombstone bearing the
inscription 'O rare Ben Jonson', and celebrated in a collection of
elegies entitled Jonsonus Virbius (1638).
As a man Jonson was arrogant and quarrelsome, but fearless,
warm-hearted, and intellectually honest. His reputation declined
sharply from about 1700, as Shakespeare's, with whom he was inevitably
compared, increased, but in this century it has revived, thanks partly
to the comprehensive edition of C. H. Herford and P. and E. Simpson (11
vols, 1925-52), vols. i and ii of which contain the standard biography.
Hoy nada de playa, al contrario. Día acelerado: clases,
comisión de contratación, y más clases, y luego corriendo a recoger al
nene del cole y rápidamente en moto a una reunión familiar que llevaba
pendiente... desde los años 30 lo menos, con el ala vasca de los
Carrera. Mientras, también en el país vasco, ha sido hoy el funeral de
la tía Luisa, pero no he podido estar en ambas partes; Bea estaba allí,
y allí sigue. Siempre quedamos mal con los muertos, no hay manera de
acertar con ellos. Y con los vivos, escasamente. Mamá estaba hoy de
paso, desde Valencia, lo justo para venir a la reunión, y seguir camino
para Biescas. Yo no sé si iré próximamente; en la reunión del cole por
la tarde (que he tenido dos reuniones de padres en centros distintos)
me dicen que parece que nos quedaremos aquí el puente del Pilar—si
puente puede llamársele.
JoseAngel: Enviado a Murcia el
artículo "Hierarchically Minded", para el volumen de homenaje a
Francisco Gutiérrez Díez—un colega que murió con las botas puestas.
JoseAngel: Oímos los fuegos
artificiales like a distant thunder, y se cierra la fiesta.
13 oct 12, 23:43
JoseAngel: Ojalá. Palabra aguda. Úsase
también como esdrújula, al menos en mi caso.
13 oct 12, 22:43
JoseAngel: También hay menos
independentistas, creo.
13 oct 12, 21:24
JoseAngel: Sólo me refería a que en
Valencia hay menos españoles que en Cataluña.
13 oct 12, 18:09
ANONIMO: Y es que quien siembra
vientos, ...
13 oct 12, 15:54
ANONIMO: Sobre los valencianos: SÍ,
será que estamos HARTOS de dar a España y recibir sólo palos. Muchos de
Aragón, por cierto. ¿ INDEPENDENCIA? SI, no dejes para mañana lo que
puedas hacer hoy.
JoseAngel: ¿Cuántos abortos de fetos
de seis meses equivalen al infanticidio de un niño de nueve meses?
¿Dos? ¿Diez? http://www.20minutos.es/noticia/160741
nd looked upon as
an aspect of the total development of a society, this linked
succession must be broken up, leaving room for a division that is more
logical, and historically better founded. In reality a generation
separates Wycherley from Congreve. 
