Shakespeare's Alternative Tales

Leah Scragg

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2017
• Print ISBN:
  9781138466937
• eBook ISBN:
  9781315505039
• Topic: Letteratura
• Subtopic: Teatro shakespeariano

A knowledge of the history and evolution of the tales on which Shakespeare drew in the composition of his plays is essential for the understanding of his work. In re-telling a particular story, a Renaissance writer was not simply reshaping the structure of the narrative but participating in a species of debate with earlier writers and the meanings their tales had accrued. The stories upon which Shakespeare's plays are constructed did not descend to him as innocent collections of incidents, but brought with them considerable cultural baggage, substantially lost to the modern spectator but an essential component, for a contemporary audience, of the meaning of the work.

Shakespeare's Alternative Tales explores this literary dialogue, focusing on those plays in which the expectations generated by an inherited story are in some way overthrown, setting up a tension for a Renaissance spectator between 'received' and 'alternative' readings of the text. Each chapter opens with a familiar story, supplying a context for the subsequent discussion, and exhibits the way in which the dramatist's reworking of a traditional motif interrogates the assumptions implicit in his source.

While offering the twentieth-century reader a fresh perspective from which to view the plays, the approach also supplies an introduction to contemporary readings of the Shakespearean canon. The tales Leah Scragg considers may be seen as 'alternative' in more than one sense: they radically rework conventional situations, while lending themselves to analysis in terms of new critical methodologies.

The text will be of interest to both students of Shakespeare and the general reader. In conjunction with the author's companion volume, Shakespeare's Mouldy Tales, it provides an ideal introduction to contemporary developments in source studies.

Chapter 1

1 Henry IV and the Tale of the Prodigal Son

A certain man had two sons.

And the younger of them said to his father, Father,

give me the portion of the goods that falleth to me.

So he divided unto them his substance.

So not long after when the younger son had gathered all

together, he took his journey into a far country,

and there he wasted his goods with riotous living.

Now when he had spent all, there arose a great dearth

throughout that land, and he began to be in necessity.

Then he went and clave to a citizen of that country

and he sent him to his farm to feed swine.

And he would fain have filled his belly with the husks

that the swine ate: but no man gave them him.

Then he came to himself, and said, How many hired

servants at my fathers have bread enough, and I

die for hunger.

I will rise and go to my father, and say unto him,

Father, I have sinned against heaven, and before thee,

And am no more worthy to be called thy son: make me

as one of thy hired servants.

So he arose, and came to his father, and when he was

yet a great way off, his father saw him, and had

compassion, and ran and fell on his neck, and kissed him.

And the son said unto him, Father, I have sinned

against heaven, and before thee, and am no more worthy

to be called thy son.

Then the father said to his servants, Bring forth the

best robe, and put it on him, and put a ring on his

hand, and shoes on his feet,

And bring the fat calf, and kill him, and let us

eat and be merry.

For this my son was dead, and is alive again: and he

was lost, but he is found. And they began to be merry.

Now the elder brother was in the field, and when he

came and drew near to the house, he heard melody and dancing,

And called one of his servants, and asked what these

things meant.

And he said unto him, Thy brother is come and thy father

hath killed the fatted calf, because he hath received

him safe and sound.

Then he was angry, and would not go in: therefore came

his father out and entreated him.

But he answered and said to his father, Lo, these many

years have I done thee service, and neither brake I at

any time thy commandment, yet thou never gavest me a kid,

that I might make merry with my friends.

But when this thy son was come, which hath devoured

thy goods with harlots, thou hast for his sake killed

the fatted calf.

And he said unto him, Son, thou art ever with me, and

all that I have is thine. It is meet that we should

make merry, and be glad: for this thy brother was dead,

and is alive again: and he was lost, but he is found.

(St. Luke, 15:11–31)

The tale of the prodigal son, quoted here from the Geneva Bible with which Shakespeare would have been familiar,¹ was among the parables most popular with Renaissance schoolmasters, and most frequently performed on the Tudor stage. The story, as the marginal commentary in sixteenth-century editions of the Bible explained, taught that man should not separate himself from his heavenly father, that God is ever ready to accept the repentant sinner, and that no-one should begrudge the mercy shown to the penitent soul. Nevertheless, though essentially concerned with the relationship between the Christian deity and the human race, the parable acquired in the course of its history a somewhat different application. Since the central character is a young man whose misguided actions bring about his undoing, the tale naturally lent itself to the instruction of the young and thus to the educational aims of humanist scholars. Prodigal Son plays devised by English and continental schoolmasters date from early in the century, and the lessons that they inculcate do not always coincide with those of the story told by Christ. Some plays, like the neo-Latin Acolastus, a highly influential play by Willem de Voider translated into English by John Palsgrave in 1540, merely elaborate upon the Biblical parable, developing the theme of man’s profligacy and stressing the availability of grace. Others enforce much harsher lessons – the need to enforce parental discipline, the danger of spoiling children, and the misery of mind and body that attends the sinful life. The surviving fragment of an interlude (Pater, Filius et Uxor) printed in England c.1530 is indicative of this development. The son is already in a state of poverty when the play opens, and is engaged in selling faggots at the behest of a shrewish wife. In this instance, though the father is grieved at his son’s condition, he is unable to come to his aid, and the younger man’s repentance is therefore unavailing. The growing secularization of the story implicit in the moral of this episode is seen even more plainly in Thomas Ingelend’s The Disobedient Child (c.1559–70). Here the father attempts to persuade the son of the value of study, but his advice to apply himself to work is spurned by the younger man who insists upon taking a wife, and then in living beyond his means. The couple are reduced to penury and the son seeks the father’s help, only to be told that as a married man he is beyond his father’s assistance. In this case, not only does the emphasis fall upon the worldly punishment of the sinner, but the figure who once represented the heavenly father has himself become a target for criticism in that he over-indulges his son in his formative years.

1. See Naseeb Shaheen (1989) Biblical References in Shakespeare’s Plays, Associated University Presses, pp. 20–5 and 149–50. All subsequent biblical quotations are from the Geneva edition, but spelling and punctuation (as in the passage quoted above) have been modernized.

The distance travelled during the century by the Biblical story (which is bound up with the religious developments that take place in the course of this period, notably the spread of Protestantism) is indicated by the Prologue to the anonymous anti-Catholic moral interlude Nice Wanton (1547–53). Though the play follows the inherited pattern of indulgent parent, virtuous and corrupt offspring, repentance (in the case of the daughter), and the hope of eternal life, the erring parent is now a mother, while the lesson that the play teaches is not God’s readiness to extend his forgiveness but the importance of education, and the need to exert proper authority in the home, cf:

The prudent Prince Solomon doth say,

He that spareth the rod, the child doth hate,

He would youth should be kept in awe alway

By correction in time at reasonable rate:

To be taught to fear God, and their parents obey,

To get learning and qualities, thereby to maintain

An honest quiet life, correspondent alway

To God’s law and the king’s, for it is certain,

If children be noseled in idleness and ill,

And brought up therein, it is hard to restrain,

And draw them from natural wont evil,

As here in this interlude ye shall see plain.²

2. Quoted from W. Carew Hazlitt (ed.) (1874) A Select Collection of Old English Plays, Originally published by Robert Dodsley, vol. ii, 4th edn, Reeves and Turner, p. 163.

The sequence of events enacted by the Prodigal Son dramas had much in common with the structure of the Morality plays produced during the same period, and in time a considerable overlap took place between the two. The Morality play enacts an allegorical battle between good and evil for the soul of man, with a representative human figure initially dedicating himself to virtue, corrupted by a group of vices, brought to penury and thence to repentance. Like the Prodigal Son play, the form was appropriated during the first half of the sixteenth century by those concerned with the education of the young, with a number of plays (e.g. Wever’s Lusty Juventus, 1547–53) specifically directed towards a youthful audience. Since the vices – wenching, dicing, drinking – to which youth falls subject are common to both kinds of play, figures found their way from one genre to the other, producing a blend between literal and allegorical modes. In Nice Wanton, for example, the fall of the misguided daughter, Dalilah, is signalled by her acquaintance with a character named Iniquity, while the central figure of Palsgrave’s version of Acolastus is given the alternative, explanatory, name of ‘Stroygood’.

The dominant dramatic form of the sixteenth century, the History play, exhibits in turn the influence of the hybrid Prodigal Son/Morality type. Until very late in the century the majority of Histories followed a common pattern, beginning with a monarch (often a young man) in a position of security, showing his descent into depravity through corrupt advice, and tracing the consequent dereliction of his kingdom, until a return to wise government restores both king and realm to their former state. The rich man’s son of the Prodigal Son plays, or Rex Humanitas of the Moralities thus acquires a specific name, while the kingdom that he loses is not a heavenly one but an earthly place. Robert Greene’s James IV (c.1590–1) is typical of the genre. The play opens with the marriage between the young James IV of Scotland and the daughter of the English king, and thus at a moment of both personal fulfilment and political stability. The young king falls prey, however, to the vicious counsels of the evil Ateukin who encourages him to yield to his lust for another woman, and to seek the life of his virtuous queen. The corruption at the heart of public life feeds down into the lower social orders, and the weakened kingdom is unable to resist an English invasion. James repents, however, of his errors, is forgiven by the queen and her avenging father, and the corrupt counsellor is punished. The anonymous Thomas of Woodstock (1591–5), tracing the career of the young Richard II, follows a similar pattern. The young king again gives ear to the advice of flatterers, squanders his substance on youthful follies, and seeks the lives of the uncles who endeavour to restrain him by their counsels. The conclusion of the drama is no longer extant, but the flatterers are killed in the civil war that occurs before the play breaks off, and the young king sees their deaths as a punishment for his sins.

The similarities between the Histories and the hybrid Prodigal Son/Moralities led, not unnaturally, to the transfer of characters and devices from plays overtly concerned with man’s spiritual condition to dramas ostensibly dealing with worldly affairs. In Bale’s King Johan (1538–60), for example, many of the characters have both literal and allegorical names. Stephen Langton, thus appears as Sedition, the Pope is Usurped Power, and Simon of Swinsett is Dissimulation. King Johan (John), a historical figure, engages in conversation with a character representing England, while Veritas explains the significance of the play’s events to the audience. Similarly, Greene’s James IV includes a debate between representative figures, a lawyer, a merchant and a divine, while the extraordinarily corrupt actions of the monarch are brushed aside nonnaturalistically as the understandable failings of youth (cf. V.vi.160) in order to complete the familiar process of fall, repentance and reclamation.

The career of Prince Hal (1387–1422), who succeeded to the throne as Henry V, particularly lent itself to treatment in accordance with this didactic pattern in that art and life, in his case, were thought to coincide. Tales of the wildness of the Prince’s youth and of his abrupt conversion to the ideal monarch on his accession to the throne date from early in the fifteenth century, and were current in his own lifetime. As early as c.1421, at least a year before the King’s death, Thomas Walsingham noted that the Prince became a changed man on succeeding his father,³ while Tito Livio in his semi-official Vita Henrici Quinti (c.1437), records the licence of Hal’s early years.⁴ The tradition continued, moreover, into the sixteenth century. Robert Fabyan’s Chronicle (pub. 1516) describes the young Prince as being given to ‘all vyce and insolency’ prior to his accession, and as a ‘newe man’ after his father’s death,⁵ while later chroniclers stress the wildness of his early career. Sir Thomas Elyot, for example, records in The Boke Named the Governour (1531) that he was imprisoned for resisting the power of the Lord Chief Justice;⁶ John Stowe notes in his Chronicles...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Series Page
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• Acknowledgements
• Introduction
• Chapter 1 1 Henry IV and the Tale of the Prodigal Son
• Chapter 2 King John and the Tale of the Bastard Son
• Chapter 3 A Midsummer Night’s Dream and the Tale of the Faithful Friends
• Chapter 4 Measure for Measure and the Tale of the Heroic Sacrifice
• Chapter 5 All’s Well That Ends Well and the Tale of the Chivalric Quest
• Chapter 6 Cymbeline and the Tale of the Substitute Bedmate
• Further Reading
• Index