Claxton Mahaley

More thoughts on Lear

Is there any early modern play that more self-consciously engages the power of the platform stage than King Lear? All we have to do is look at how the space was transformed from scene to scene by the power of the fiction. For the most part, Shakespeare leaves out language that highlights the mimetic nature of the stage and yet the incredible scope of the action, its displacements, it wanderings, it political subplot, guarantees and inscribes the stage’s potential as a theatrical device, a device that can be used to question the theater’s art. In some instances we find that the stage moves beyond convention—insofar as we can define an early modern theatrical convention—to become the subject of direct, formal inquiry. What seems to be finally asked, and this has been examined by both A.C. Bradley and Henry Turner to some extent, is this: how does the stage allow for explorations in conceptual space that allow us to move beyond print, beyond words?

Revisiting 4.6

Granted, I’ve already talked about this at length else wear, but these exercises help me to better come to terms with areas of the text that confound or interest me. I’d like to spend some more time going over the events of Act 4 Scene 6 of King Lear. 

See Better Lear

KING LEAR

Kent, on thy life, no more.

KENT

My life I never held but as a pawn

To wage against thy enemies; nor fear to lose it,

Thy safety being the motive.

KING LEAR

Out of my sight!

KENT

See better, Lear; and let me still remain

The true blank of thine eye. (1.1.155-160)

See better Lear. I cannot stop thinking about that. See better. I hear it yelled in quite tones, enunciated slowly, eyes ablaze. See better. But isn’t it all about site? What we hear in the play cannot be trusted. See better.

Mapping Lear

King Lear contains one of the most memorable scenes of on-stage map-reading in all English Renaissance drama. In this dark tragedy, Shakespeare begins with a display of the cartographic theme that will run throughout: "Meantime we shall express our darker purpose. / Give me the map there" (1.1.38-9). This foregrounded map image should never stray far from our mind; in fact, it is this map that we are to superimpose upon the bodies of all the players as we probe the question of the King’s relationship to the land.

Incomplete Thoughts on The Winter’s Tale

My resent research suggests that early modern dramatists regarded painting as a rival art, an art that shares a fundamental element with theater—its visual nature. Conflicting attitudes toward images and image makers in early modern England produced some highly ambivalent representations of painters and paintings in the theater. Shakespeare’s ambivalence created its most negative portrayal of painting in Timon of Athens, but it was only about five years later that Shakespeare presented the painted work of art in a more complicated, positive light. 

In the Winter’s Tale, Paulina unveils a painted statue in a scene that rivals a religious ceremony; yet as a “miracle” of art rather than religion, the theatrical image and what it represents can be understood as natural. In one character’s words, “This is an art / Which does mend Nature—change it rather; but / The art itself is Nature” (4.4.95-97). Art is nature in the most literal sense, for the statue of Hermione is in fact not a statue, but rather the living Queen herself. Her devoted friend, Paulina, seeks to “mend Nature” by bringing the statue to life. Paulina’s art does, however, have a dark element to it, as is theatrically obvious by its very deceptiveness, but Paulina’s art is a response to Leonte’s even darker art, for she betrays and undermines the destructive power of Leonte’s jealous, Medusa-like gaze. The very unnaturalness of Leontes’ gaze is figured metaphorically in the petrified image of his wife. By literalizing and reversing the metaphor through the theatrical art, Paulina does indeed “mend” the worst of human nature. Through her stone she offers one more lasting rebuke of Leontes, softening his heart as his “evils [are] conjur’d to remembrance” (5.3.37, 40). 

Thoughts on Othello

In 1693 Thomas Rhymer remarked in his Short View of Tragedy that Othello’s narrative seemed do improbable as to only be able to “delude our senses, disorder our thoughts, addle our brain, pervert our affections, hair our imaginations, corrupt our appetite and fill our head with vanity, confusion, Tintamarre, and Jingle-jangle” (Rymer 2:254-5). What Rhymer finds so unbelievable is that Othello puts so much weight on the handkerchief. He goes on to say that the “handkerchief is so remote a trifle, no Booby . . . cou’d make any consequence from it” (Rymer 2:251). In using the word “trifle,” however, Rhymer is appropriating the language of Iago in an effort to rationalize and estrange the magical elements within the play. Though this instance may be extreme, it does point to a tendency among critics disregard the veracity and believability of Othello’s magical elements, elements clearly believed within the fiction of the play. Brabantio believes that Othello has used “charms,” “spells,” “medicines,” and “witchcraft” on his daughter. And Desdemona treats the handkerchief as if were a sacred object or talisman, kissing and talking to it. According to Emilia, she:

so loves the token—

for he conjured her she should ever keep it—

That she reserves it evermore about her

To kiss and talk to. (3.3 293-6)

After she misplaces it, she concludes that “sure, there’s some wonder in this handkerchief” (3.4 101). Like Othello, she asserts her belief in its magical power. The point is not that we should simply accept the napkin as potentially magic within the play, but that we understand that magic played a very different role in early modern England. 

Some Moments From Paradise Lost

Nay curs'd be thou; since against his thy will
Chose freely what it now so justly rues.
Me miserable! which way shall I flie
Infinite wrauth, and infinite despaire?
Which way I flie is Hell; my self am Hell;
And in the lowest deep a lower deep
Still threatning to devour me opens wide,
To which the Hell I suffer seems a Heav'n.
O then at last relent: is there no place
Left for Repentance, none for Pardon left? (Paradise Lost 4.71-80)

A Note on Verse

This is the note on verse that MIlton added in 1668 to Paradise Lost, it is in original spelling.

“The Measure is English Heroic Verse without Rime, as that of Homer in Greek, and Virgil in Latin; Rhime being no necessary Adjunct or true Ornament of Poem or good Verse, in longer Works especially, but the Invention of a barbarous Age, to set off wretched matter and lame Meeter; grac’t indeed since by the use of some famous modern Poets, carried away by Custom, but much to thir own vexation, hindrance, and constraint to express many things otherwise, and for the most part worse then else they would have exprest them. Not without cause therefore some both Italian, and Spanish Poets of prime note have rejected Rime both in longer and shorter Works, as have also long since our best English Tragedies, as a thing of itself, to all judicious ears, triveal, and of no true musical delight; which consists onely in apt Numbers, fit quantity of Syllables, and the sense variously drawn out from one Verse into another, not in the jingling sound of like endings, a fault avoyded by the learned Ancients both in Poetry and all good Oratory. This neglect then of Rhime so little is to be taken for a defect, though it may seem so perhaps to vulgar Readers, that it rather is to be esteem’d an example set, the first in English, of ancient liberty recover’d to heroic Poem from the troublesom and modern bondage of Rimeing.”

Well, I simply love that.

Absalom, Absalom!

I am just finishing up rereading William Faulkner’s Absalom, Absalom! and, as always, it is pleasurable work. Though the title makes us think of David’s rebellious son, the plot leads us somewhere else entirely -- Aeschylus’ Orestia.

Both are about war and revenge. Aeschelus’ war is the Trojan, Faulkner’s is the Civil. Faulkner’s murder at the gates is of an illegitimate son by his brother, not of the returning husband by his cheating wife. But Faulkner does keep Agamemnon’s murderous wife alive in his tale in the form of the mulatto slave -- Clytie (Clytemnestra). Orestes, the avenging son, is represented as Henry Sutpen in Faulkner’s tale and Electra becomes Judith.

Accident? I cannot imagine. The obvious clue is the name Clytie. It is a plot structure that works.

notes from said

We ought to remember that all cultures impose corrections upon raw reality, changing it from free flowing objects into units of knowledge. The problem is not that the conversion takes place. It is perfectly natural for the human mind to resist the assault in it of untreated strangeness; therefore cultures have always been inclined to impose complete transformations on other cultures, receiving these other cultures not as they are but as, for the benefit of the receiver, they ought to be. To the westerner, however, the oriental was always like some aspect of the west. The Orientalist makes it always his work to be converting the orient from something into something else.

said, orientalism, 67