The Shakespearean Ethic

John Vyvyan

• Publisher: Shepheard Walwyn Publishers
• Year: 2021
• eBook ISBN: 9780856832840
• Topic: Literature
• Subtopic: Literary Biographies
• Index: Literature

Originally published by Chatto & Windus in 1959, this book has long been out of print and largely neglected by Shakespearean scholars. It offers a viewpoint seldom considered: an unusual and exceptionally clear insight into Shakespeare's philosophy. It does so with freshness, modesty and conviction.
Appreciating the danger Shakespeare faced in writing at a time of major religious intolerance, Vyvyan shows how subtly the plays explore aspects of the perennial philosophy allegorically. In doing so, Shakespeare raises the fundamental question of ethics: What ought we to do?
'Shakespeare, ' says the author, 'is never ethically neutral. He is never in doubt as to whether the souls of his characters are rising or falling.' There is a constant pattern in the tragedies: 'first the hero is untrue to his own self, then he casts out love, then conscience is gone – or rather inverted – and the devil enters into him.' Vyvyan shows us this pattern of damnation, or its counterpart – a pattern of regeneration – working out in certain plays, contrasting Hamlet with Measure for Measure and Othello with The Winter's Tale, where a similar dilemma and choice confront the hero. His intuitive insights also illumine Macbeth, Julius Caesar and Titus Andronicus which focus on the fall, whereas The Tempest explores most fully the pattern of regeneration and creative mercy.
Here is a book, both thought-provoking and persuasive, which will send many readers back to Shakespeare's plays with fresh vision and clearer understanding. To assist such readers, this edition cross-references the quotations in the text to the relevant place in the play. The text has been completely reset and the index expanded.

John Vyvyan, born in 1908 in Sussex, was educated mainly in Switzerland. His first profession was archaeology, and he worked with Sir Flinders Petrie in the Middle East. Illness, which dogged him all his life, ended this kind of arduous field work, and he retired from archaeology to become a Shakespearean scholar and to write. Studies such as The Shakespearean Ethic, Shakespeare and The Rose of Love (1960) and Shakespeare and Platonic Beauty (1961), led to the offer of a visiting lectureship at the State University of New York. He died in Exmouth in 1975.

1

Principles of Construction in the Tragedies

IT IS STRIKING that Shakespeare’s tragic characters are continually asking themselves questions. In their soliloquies, they weigh up alternative courses of action, and the question is implicit, What ought I to do?

In the opinion of some critics, however, for us to ask such a question is illegitimate. The critical argument is, that since what Hamlet or Brutus actually did was dramatically excellent, it was therefore, within our terms of reference, right. That is true, from its own standpoint; but it has this flaw: by limiting the problem to aesthetics and the theatre, it leaves out Shakespeare. From the evidence of the sonnets alone, which were probably not intended for publication, we see that Shakespeare was himself a ‘perturbed spirit’. He was not satisfied with conventional answers; yet he needed answers, for his own peace, in terms of life. And his plays are part of his quest for them.

Why do we enjoy tragedy? Partly, as Aristotle suggests, because it helps us to ‘gather the meaning of things’. A modern audience seeing, let us say, Macbeth, is unlikely to be much stirred by pity or terror. But we may feel that something from the deeps has been revealed; and it is not only Macbeth’s soul that we then know better, but our own; because the figures of the drama are not unlike transformation symbols between the conscious mind and the unconscious. But if seeing a tragedy has helped us to understand ourselves better, that is because it has brought over to consciousness things that our unconscious already knew. It is like Plato’s doctrine of reminiscence: what seems like new knowledge has, in fact, been brought out of ourselves.

If an audience has this experience, it is far more intense for an author; and it is the curious fascination of bringing forth wisdom from himself that chiefly impels him to write. A poet does not write to set down things he clearly knows, but to open the lips of his own oracle. Rhythm helps him to establish communication with the unconscious; and it is more for purposes of discovery than presentation that poetry is rhythmical.

In their uninspired moments, poets may long for fame and wealth; but these incentives have nothing to do with the production of poetry; not even their opposites, derision and poverty, can keep a poet from his task when the forms of the unconscious are demanding expression. Fiat tragoedia, ruat caelum.^* There is also, of course, a resistance to expression; so that to write tragedy is like wrestling with a dark angel and compelling him to reveal himself. In the throes of this struggle, mundane motives cease to count. It is true that Shakespeare was capable of mercenary as well as sublime thoughts; but from the critical point of view this is an unproductive vein. It is irrelevant to criticism that Shakespeare was successful; if his work had led him to misery, like poor Greene, he would have done it, or died.

We must, however, distinguish between inspiration and intention. They stand in contrast, as the unconscious to the conscious mind. It is possible to have too much of either; too much adherence to intention tends to artificiality, and too much inspiration to mediumship. It is not the least of Shakespeare’s qualities that he is able to balance these opposites so finely. But what we must consider first is intention.

What ought Hamlet or Brutus to do – something that will make a good play, or something that will lead to a good life? I am sure that both these questions are important. It is obvious that Shakespeare aimed at dramatic excellence; but it is equally clear – unless we prefer to be blind to it – that he was deeply concerned with the meaning and enhancement of life. What the tragic hero did may have been theatrically right; but if it was ethically wrong, that also was Shakespeare’s preoccupation. And a study of this second point may lead us to a better understanding of himself. Our need for this is brought home by Bradley’s astonishing remark: ‘We cannot be sure, as with those other poets we can, that in his works he expressed his deepest and most cherished convictions on ultimate questions, or even that he had any. And in his dramatic conceptions there is enough to occupy us.’^* This statement is a challenge in itself. And I hope to show that Shakespeare had convictions, that he expressed them, and that they are so related to his dramatic conceptions as to be mutually revealing. In fact, the ethical problem seems to have exercised an increasing fascination over him; and in his later plays, when he knew all the tricks of the theatre and could probably have gone from strength to strength in the production of theatrical success, he wittingly sacrificed stage effect in order to pursue the ethical as distinct from the dramatic problem. These later plays are more seldom staged, but Shakespeare was not in his dotage; it is simply that in them he was less concerned with the art of the theatre than with the science of life. The ethical interest had always been with him, and it is from this standpoint that we shall proceed.

Shakespeare allows his characters, nearly always, to express their own philosophy, and we cannot identify him personally with any one of them. Occasionally, however, he slips in a few lines which we may feel come straight from him to us; but we can only be sure of this if they express ideas that are consistently developed in successive plays. To trace a few of these continuing themes is one of the aims of this book.

It may sound platitudinous to say that only a careful study of the context can tell us what Shakespeare intends a word to mean; but a surprising amount of confusion has been caused by failing to distinguish between Shakespeare’s values and those of his characters. Words like honour, nobility, justice, traitor and harlot are often, perhaps more often than not, to be suspected in this connection. Sometimes, but comparatively seldom, this is obvious. Ophelia, Desdemona and Hermione are all called harlots by the hero, and it is clear that he is self-deceived. But when we notice how frequently justice, as the speaker terms it, is to Shakespeare tyranny or worse, how often honour, in its conventional sense, is deliberately shown by Shakespeare as preventing conciliation and conducing to superfluous death, we come to mistrust the face value of many other words and to consider them in a wider context of ideas. Gradually this leads us to a persisting standard of value, for Shakespeare was no chameleon in his principles; and it is not unreasonable to hope that, although we may never know much about his life, it will be possible some day to establish his philosophy. But we must begin by being sure, as Bradley was not, that he had one.

Any characteristics that recur in play after play are important to this enquiry. I should like to consider, first of all, Shakespeare’s method of presenting tragedy. In all presentation there is an element of showmanship, but a great deal more is here involved. Any attempt to fit Shakespeare’s tragedies to the Aristotelean pattern is to lay them on a Procrustean bed, for Shakespeare worked out a pattern of his own. Much of this has been thoroughly mapped^* and it would be supererogatory to go over well-trodden ground. But there are some other principles of construction in the tragedies which, so far as I know, have not been isolated and to which Shakespeare is remarkably faithful. I will summarise what I conceive these to be, and attempt to justify the statement later.

FIRST: We are shown a soul, in many respects noble, but with a fatal flaw, which lays it open to a special temptation.

SECOND: The ‘voices’ of the coming temptation are characterised for us, so that we may have no doubt that they will persuade to evil.

THIRD: There is a temptation scene, in which the weak spot of the hero’s soul is probed, and the temptation is yielded to.

FOURTH: We are shown an inner conflict, usually in the form of a soliloquy, in which the native nobility of the hero’s soul opposes the temptation, but fails.

FIFTH and SIXTH: There is a second temptation and a second inner conflict, of mounting intensity, with the result that the hero loses the kingship of his own soul.

SEVENTH: The tragic act, or act of darkness.

EIGHTH: The realisation of horror.

NINTH: Death.

This is Shakespeare’s own way of conceiving tragedy, and it has little to do with Aristotle. I will illustrate this briefly from Macbeth. I do not mean to discuss the play, but merely to show that it contains the pattern.

Macbeth, before he enters, has cast his shadow on the scene. The full measure of it can only be taken after we have established Shakespeare’s standard from several plays, and I must ask the reader’s patience if some statements seem arbitrary here. Support for them has yet to be built; and this cannot be done from a single tragedy. The opening scene is as short as it well could be, and yet there is much more in it than atmosphere. There is an under-meaning in the words of the witches that they will meet Macbeth on the heath when the battle – his great victory – has been ‘lost and won’. The battle is then in progress, and the witches know that Macbeth, although winning in one sense, has already begun to lose in another; that is the reason why the hour has come to tempt him. Shakespeare doubtless had in mind a text he has illustrated several times – that it is possible to gain the world and to lose one’s soul. We are about to witness the tragedy of a man who will lose to win; and in order to do so, he must invert his values, ‘Fair is foul and foul is fair.’ This is one of the constants of Shakespearean tragedy. The inversion of values is shown taking place in every tragic hero, but he is generally unconscious of it.

The witches, who are themselves psychic phenomena, alert us to the fact that two battles are really taking place; and the more important, philosophically, is that within Macbeth. His state of soul is shown to us, symbolically, before he comes on stage. ‘What bloody man is that?’ Then we are told of his recent exploits; of ‘his brandish’d steel which smoked with bloody execution’; of how, when he met the rebel, ‘he unseam’d him from the nave to the chaps’, and fixed his head on the battlements. And the savagery is summed up, as if it were ‘to bathe in reeking wounds, or memorise another Golgotha’. To the hearers, all this is heroic; but, as may be shown from other plays, it is a form of madness to Shakespeare:

I have made you mad;

And even with such-like valour men hang and drown
Their proper selves.

‘Proper selves’ represents another Shakespearean constant of which we shall have more to say. Temptation is resisted when the ‘proper self’ is in command; but when it is not, which is a kind of madness, the temptation is yielded to. Macbeth, by giving rein to a blood-lust that is linked with Golgotha, has become a man who ‘is not with himself’ and therefore he is predisposed to fall.

The voices of temptation – the witches first, and Lady Macbeth later – are obviously persuading to evil.

The first temptation is by the witches. We must remember that Macbeth, written in 1606, comes late in Shakespeare’s tragedies, and he was able to handle such scenes with great economy. What the witches say is brief and equivocal; but it is temptation beyond doubt. Banquo says, ‘Good sir, why do you start, and seem to fear?’ Macbeth starts because the witches have touched the flaw in his soul. They did not sow the evil seed, but watered it. It is the guilt of an idea already present that he fears. And then we are told his fault – ‘the royal hope, that he seems rapt withal’.

With great concision, the fruit of long experience in temptation scenes, Shakespeare has presented the essential points: the background weakness of the hero’s soul, the nature of the temptation, and the implication that, if he follows his fate, he will yield. But it must be stresse...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• Publishers’ Note
• 1 Principles of Construction in the Tragedies
• 2 Macbeth, Julius Caesar: The Temptation
• 3 Hamlet: Choosing
• 4 Hamlet: Stepping into Darkness
• 5 Hamlet: Tragic Climax
• 6 Measure for Measure: Resolving Tragedy
• 7 Measure for Measure: Creative Mercy
• 8 The Plays as Allegory
• 9 Othello: How Tragedy Progresses
• 10 Winter’s Tale: Driving Out Good Counsel
• 11 Winter’s Tale: Resolution of the Tragedy
• 12 There is Always a Choice
• 13 Passion Plays and other Parallels
• 14 The Soul as a Kingdom
• 15 The Tempest: Tragic Pattern Reversed
• 16 The Pattern for Regeneration
• Appendix – Titus Andronicus
• Author’s Shakespearean References
• Author’s Other References
• Index