Family Dramas

Intimacy, Power and Systems in Shakespeare's Tragedies

Gwyn Daniel

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2018
• eBook ISBN: 9780429812392
• Topic: Psychology
• Subtopic: Mental Health in Psychology
• Index: Psychology

Most of Shakespeare's tragedies have a family drama at their heart. This book brings these relationships to life, offering a radical new perspective on the tragic heroes and their dilemmas. Family Dramas: Intimacy, Power and Systems in Shakespeare's Tragedies focusses on the interactions and dialogues between people on stage, linking their intimate emotional worlds to wider social and political contexts.

Since family relationships absorb and enact social ideologies, their conflicts often expose the conflicts that all ideologies contain. The complexities, contradictions and ambiguities of Shakespeare's portrayals of individuals and their relationships are brought to life, while wider power structures and social discourses are shown to reach into the heart of intimate relationships and personal identity. Surveying relevant literature from Shakespeare studies, the book introduces the ideas behind the family systems approach to literary criticism. Explorations of gender relationships feature particularly strongly in the analysis since it is within gender that intimacy and power most compellingly intersect and frequently collide.

For Shakespeare lovers and psychotherapists alike, this application of systemic theory opens a new perspective on familiar literary territory.

Chapter 1

A family systems approach

The lights dim in the auditorium and the performance begins. It might be any one of Shakespeare’s tragedies. The stage set, the costumes, the actors, their postures, expressions and accents, their locations on stage all give us clues about what sort of production this will be. But in this opening scene, we are highly unlikely to meet the individual or couple for whom the play is named. In virtually all of Shakespeare’s tragedies, the scene is set by other characters well before the main protagonists appear on stage. The significance of this delay is that the wider canvas of the drama can be laid out before we engage with the leading individuals. It also means that our first encounters with them are in the eyes and through the voices of others. This immediately invites us, the audience, into a relational world. We learn what the Roman soldiers think about Anthony’s relationship with Cleopatra before we meet the lovers themselves. Macbeth’s soldierly prowess and brutality is reported to King Duncan before Macbeth himself appears on stage.

We also learn about the key themes and leitmotifs that will recur throughout each play. In Hamlet, the watchmen and Horatio first grapple with the question of whether to give credence to the supernatural; they implant the narrative of another son avenging his father and we are introduced to Claudius’ skills as a political operator. In Coriolanus, the citizens and Menenius lay out the key debates about political power that will permeate the plot. In Romeo and Juliet, we witness the workings of the feud with its all-pervasive effects on family relationships. We meet the parents of Romeo and Juliet, each with their particular concerns about their offspring, before our first encounter with either of the teenage lovers.

These openings can certainly be said to heighten dramatic anticipation for the appearance of the ‘hero/s.’ At the same time, however, they have the effect of ‘decentring’ the hero by reminding us that we can never focus on just one person or one couple without taking into account the contexts that give meaning to their words and actions. The key actors in the tragedies are most likely to capture our attention and engage our emotions but the relationships that surround them are what bring their dilemmas and struggles into relief and give the production its texture.

Family therapists frequently meet families in which one individual – the equivalent of drama’s hero or villain – is presented as the person upon whom we should all be focussed. Without discounting their individual troubles or suffering, understanding them in the context of their surrounding relationships is usually the most creative and helpful approach. John Donne’s line “No man is an island” has acquired the status of cliché, but it is striking to what extent in Western cultural practice, especially in psychotherapy, but also in some Shakespearean criticism, individuals are still viewed in isolation from their context.

In family therapy, by contrast, we highlight the idea of interdependence – the ways in which others act to maintain the behaviour of the ‘problem person’ even when that behaviour is unwelcome. In drama, the more dominant or domineering the protagonist, the more important it is to explore the actions of others that might be maintaining or sustaining it. For example, Iago, the master manipulator, actually depends to a large extent on Rodrigo, his ‘gull’, for his success. Rodrigo’s frequent and unexpected appearances, just when Iago appears most confident that everything is under control, highlights his disruptive potential and his capacity to undermine a conspiracy that depends on his participation.

The practice of family therapy involves understanding individuals and their communications through the relationships that surround them. In this process, I have come to rely on some key conceptual frameworks as I immerse myself in the complex and often conflictual world of the individuals, couples and families who seek help. Most of the ideas I find useful as a therapist also lend themselves to understanding the relationships we see on stage.

Lives and relationships are complex, diverse and multi-levelled. When we communicate with each other, our speech is likewise heard and responded to in a diversity of ways. In families and other intimate relationships, as with protagonists on stage, people will, whatever their inward emotions, perform their relationships in myriad ways. They may cling to rigid positions, contest the positions taken by others, or acquiesce in or reject the account of them provided by others; they will do all of these things overtly or covertly. However persuasively families may seek to convince us that there is one single truth about the problem or about the person brought to therapy, looking at their interactions in the present, exploring influences from past family relationships and from all the other contexts surrounding them creates a more fertile context within which to offer help. Many therapists of course do this but the family systems approach has especially useful conceptual tools for analysing relationships and the contexts in which they are embedded.

One analogy for what we do in systemic therapy is that of a photographer who uses both a zoom and wide-angled lens. We engage closely with people and their intimate relationships, immerse ourselves in their emotional worlds and respond to their language and narratives. However, we also widen the frame to keep the context of extended family, community and social environment within our field of vision. This wider lens is especially important when working with people whose worlds are different from that of the therapist but it is also important for all therapists to step back from their close engagement, to take a broader view and reflect on the assumptions we might be making about families or they will be making about us. This challenges us to entertain alternative viewpoints and think about other contexts that might render more intelligible the complex dynamics we see in front of us.

The concepts I use in exploring the tragedies encompass this key idea of close range and wider context. The former emerge from direct observation of families and their interactions and the latter are more concerned with how individuals and families construct their worlds within the social and cultural discourses that surround them. In the latter, there is more attention to the workings of power, the effects of ideologies and the way language operates in the construction of identities. In understanding Shakespeare, it is likewise important to move between a close ‘reading’ of the interactions we see on stage and a wider appreciation of all the contexts that surround them and give them meaning.

Shakespeare’s tragedies are suffused with double meanings, contradictory perspectives and examples of how intimate relationships can be a site in which wider political or social questions are contested. A multi-level approach greatly adds to an appreciation of the processes involved in creating the ‘reality’ that we see on stage. Our emotions are engaged by the protagonists and their narratives; we respond to them at some level as if they are ‘real,’ but at the same time, we hold a parallel appreciation of the constructed nature of the play and its dramatis personae, of the production and the acting. In therapy, we are likewise moved by the story narrated to us, we believe in its emotional ‘truth’ but are simultaneously aware that this is only one of a range of possible stories and are mindful of the rhetorical devices employed to persuade us of a favoured story-line. A family who all agree that one particular member is ‘the problem’ will inevitably have a powerful narrative about that person and will produce evidence to support their view. Therapists obviously need to engage with this perspective but at the same time stand back from it and hold other narratives in mind.

The early family therapists drew upon systems theory to guide their work because interventions based on the study of internal states of mind had so often proved inadequate when working with long-term and intractable psychiatric problems. They were equally ineffective in working with families suffering the effects of poverty, marginalisation and other social disadvantages. One of the most enduring ideas in family therapy has been that of the ‘pattern that connects.’¹ This is a way of determining that, within the complexity, confusion and often chaos of family life, patterned sequences and apparently rule-governed behaviour can be elicited. The process of observing and identifying patterns is a way of keeping relationships in focus because we are alert to how people influence each other. They participate in sequences of interaction in which each person’s speech or action creates feedback for others and is in turn affected by this feedback. This level of analysis is particularly relevant to drama, opening up as it does a close view of the interactions on stage; it also avoids making simplistic assumptions about the internal states or motivations of any of the participants.

Theatre directors are inevitably alert to pattern and sequence because these are part of the spatial dimension within which Shakespeare’s words are conveyed to the audience. This choreography is a key part of meaning-making. On first encountering a family, I will be aware of spatial relationships: who sits where, who is closer to whom, who looks at whom etc. This highlights patterns within relationships that family members may be unaware of or experiencing as a constraint. Inviting people to change their positions in the room can have a powerful effect on their ways of experiencing each other, just as a theatre director will experiment with actors’ positions on the stage.

The opening scene of Romeo and Juliet is a beautifully choreographed sequence in which we immediately see patterns in operation. The audience, primed by the chorus, already know that they are witnessing a scenario that has been repeated in much the same way over a long period of time. The serving men from the Montague and Capulet households pick a fight in which each responds quite predictably to the provocations of the other. Their fracas brings in others, and then, as if on cue, the Capulet and Montague parents. Finally, Prince Escalus appears and brings the warring factions to heel. The pattern up to this point can be described as a ‘symmetrical escalation’ in which there is an exchange of similar types of behaviour.² In this particular case, it is a trading of threats and insults but the pattern can be maintained by any type of interchange. The content is less important than the process, which is mainly a competitive one. Identifying these symmetrical patterns is a useful way to highlight the quasi-ritualistic nature of the feud, which appears to have taken on a life of its own, affecting the behaviour of all the protagonists. It also serves to dramatise the moment when the feud reaches a tipping point with the deaths of Mercutio and Tybalt.

In this first scene, the prince does not participate in the fight but takes a position above the fray, on the basis of his authority. The symmetrical pattern is thus temporarily replaced by a complementary one in which different interactions can be observed. In this case, it is a ruler and his subjects who cannot directly challenge him, but are expected to obey. Complementary (unlike symmetrical) patterns are essentially exchanges of different behaviour, usually from different positions within a system. They can again be maintained by any type of interaction; teacher and student, doctor and patient or abuser and victim will all be complementary relationships.

This type of analysis can also illuminate interactions within couple relationships in which it can seem as if the pattern has the power to organise a couple, almost despite their volition. For Desdemona and Othello, their first interactions on stage are marked by symmetry, with each boldly and publicly claiming their right to love the other in the face of social disapproval. As the play progresses, however, the symmetry of their relationship is eroded and in its place emerges the complementarity of victim and abuser. This is not before each makes attempts to change the pattern – Desdemona engages in a competitive exchange over the handkerchief in which symmetry is temporarily restored and Othello makes an ambiguous and short-lived attempt to evoke Desdemona’s compassion by citing the power she has over his life: “But there, where I have garnered up my heart/ Where either I must live or bear no life.” This evokes the complementary at the outset of their relationship when her love was equated by Othello with her pity for him.

For Antony and Cleopatra, shifts between symmetry and complementarity are embedded in the very fabric of the relationship and observable at virtually every exchange. Although the overall framework of their relationship is complementary, i.e. coloniser/colonised, their first meeting involves a symmetrical exchange – competing over who should host the other to dinner. Their exchanges are so choreographed that, if a symmetrical exchange escalates too far, one of them will take a complementary position to temporarily restore equilibrium. The changes in position that each of the lovers makes also serve to maintain some distance in the relationship, meaning that the romantic narrative they tell about themselves is not exposed as fiction.

Distance regulation is another idea from the early period of family therapy, which explores the way many couples, however volatile they appear to be, can also be seen as collaborating to keep a fixed distance in their relationship.³ When one attempts to get closer, the other will find a means of distancing. When they get too distant, one will find a way of getting closer again. For example, Cleopatra reserves her most adulatory comments about Anthony for when they are apart; when they are together, she is more disparaging of him. This pattern, however frustrating, means that each member of a couple protects themselves from the feared consequences of too much intimacy and, at the same time, it keeps them from separating.

We can also identify patterns in the language people use, especially in the way that different modes of talk can be amplified within interactions. In Hamlet, for example, we notice the difference between Hamlet’s speech when he performs his ‘antic disposition’ and that of the people at the receiving end of it. Hamlet does ‘crazy talk’ in a variety of ways, including flights of the imagination, verbal tricks, puns, non-sequiturs and plain nonsense. He is mostly responded to in language that is prosaic, rational, concrete and condescending. The more elusively and crazily he acts, the more stolid and im...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Series
• Title
• Copyright
• Dedication
• Contents
• Acknowledgements
• Series editor’s foreword
• Preface
• Introduction
• Chapter 1 A family systems approach
• Chapter 2 Interpretations of the tragedies
• Chapter 3 “O cursѐd spite, that ever I was born to set it right!”: Legacies and alternative identities in Hamlet
• Chapter 4 “Being weak, seem so”: Power, status and identity loss in King Lear
• Chapter 5 “And yet how nature, erring from itself”: Racism, gender and intimate violence in Othello
• Chapter 6 “Wrenched with an unlineal hand”: The dynamics of violence in Macbeth
• Chapter 7 “Let me have war, say I”: Man as a fighting machine in Coriolanus
• Chapter 8 “Let Rome in Tiber melt”: Subverting Roman identity in Anthony and Cleopatra
• Chapter 9 “The noblest-hateful love”: Contradiction and irreverence in Troilus and Cressida
• Chapter 10 “Tis but thy name that is my enemy”: Freedom and constraint in Romeo and Juliet
• Chapter 11 Endings
• Appendix–Plot summaries
• Bibliography
• Index