SHAKESPEARE AND THE AGE OF ELIZABETH
By Don Finkel, Winter 1991
WORKSHOP III: "Through Release to Clarification"
Divide into groups of six, no fewer and preferably no more. (No more than two students new to the program this quarter should be in any one group. When given a choice which comedy to work on below, you will probably want to choose Twelfth Night.)
Introduction: On page 4 of Shakespeare's Festive Comedy Barber says that in exploring these comedies, "...'festive' can also be a term for structure. I shall be trying to describe structure to get at the way this comedy, organizes experience." (my emphasis) Barber summarizes this structure with the verbal slogan "through release to clarification." But this slogan is extremely dense and compact. The goal of this workshop is to make some steps toward unpacking that slogan and getting at the structure Barber is describing, i.e., getting a grasp on the way these festive comedies organize experience for those who "have gone on holiday in going to a comedy." (p. 9) We shall do this by focusing on four comedies in parallel. The work sheet will use A Midsummer Night's Dream as a starting point, and ask you to work on Merchant of Venice, As You Like It, and Twelfth Night. We will not be able to go very far in 90 minutes, but we should be able to make a usefu l start. Seminar discussions tomorrow will be almost indispensable in order to fully realize the work begun this morning.
Please make one person in your group responsible for keeping an eye on the time and for making sure the group moves through the sequence of questions in a timely fashion.
1. (10 minutes) Turn to page 139 of Barber and have one person read aloud the paragraph that begins on the bottom of the page, and finishes on the top of page 140. Discuss and get clear on the meaning of this fairly difficult paragraph. Just what is i t that Barber claims is being exorcised by the symbolic action of A Midsummer Night's Dream?
2. (15 mins.) Now split into three pairs, each pair to work on one of the three comedies listed in the above introduction. Spend 15 minutes answering the following question by means of the two steps below. Question: What is it that is being exorcised in the play you have chosen?
step 1: (10 mins.) Discuss this question without referring to Barber, but just in terms of your impression of the mood of the play. Come up with a passage or two from the play to support and express your answer.
step 2: (5 mins.) Now refer to Barber's chapter on your play, and specify what he claims is the "thing" being exorcised. How well does this square with your own response in step 1?
3. (10 mins.) Reconvene as six, and discuss with each other the answers you came up with to question 2. The other four should press each pair to be clear in their response. Make sure you grasp what they are saying.
4. In addition to something's being exorcised, in each festive comedy there is, according to Barber, something that is released. That something is a form of folly. The reason that each play shows a form of folly being released is that each of th ese festive comedies places some characters in the role of festive holiday celebrant (in one way or another, to one degree or another). The folly--or passion--that is released inevitably has the power to destroy social order. In A Midsummer Night's Dream, the form of folly that is released is the power of the human imagination. To be more precise, the passion is that of imagination and the folly is the notion that imagination can work magic. This, of course, is the power that the lunatic, the l over, and the poet share in common (in Theseus' famous speech).
(15 minutes) Split again into the same pairs to work on the same comedy you worked on above and follow the same two steps as in question 2 above to answer this question: What is the passion and the folly inherent in it that is being release in the play you have chosen?
5. (10 minutes) Repeat the procedure in question 3 above with respect to the question you have just explored in 4.
Continue to work as a group of six for the remaining questions.
6. (10 mins.) Each of the following pairs is a way of talking about the same fundamental experiential opposition. Examine the passage cited from Barber for each and discuss what he is getting at.
a. everyday vs. holiday - "[In the Falstaff comedies] Shakespeare dramatizes not only holiday but also the need for holiday and the need to limit holiday." (p. 192) "The relation of the Prince to Falstaff can be summarized fairly adequately in terms o f the relation of holiday to everyday." (p. 195)
b. giving license vs. setting limits - "Talboys Dimoke and his friends had a similar sense of times and places when they let holiday lead them to making merry with the Earl of Lincoln; by contrast, the Puritan and/or time-serving partisans of Lincoln co uld not or would not recognize that holiday gave a license and also set a limit." (p. 238)
c. feeling vs. judgment - "... the reality we feel about the experience of love in [As You Like It] ... comes from presenting what was [in Shakespeare's source material] sentimental extremity as impulsive extravagance, and so leaving judgment free to mock what the heart embraces." (p. 223 - my emphasis)
7. (10 minutes) Now, using both sentences and a diagram, express the relationship between the passionate folly released in a festive comedy and the limiting force which is exorcised by the action of the play. In doing this, you will be making a first approximation at expressing the structure of experience embodied in festive comedy; grasping this structure, you will recall, was the goal of this workshop.
8. (5 minutes) What, in the festive comedy, accounts for the clarification that Barber claims by means of his slogan is part of the way these comedies organize experience. (This is a hard question. One way to begin to explore it is to look at what Barber says about humor and about "mastery." In five minutes, you will only be able to make a start; continue in seminar.)
9. (5 minutes) The structure of experience Barber is describing in his book is a structure which organized first, the social form of holiday (as lived out, for example, in May games or Lord-of-Misrule ritual antics--see Chapter 2), and second, the socia l-artistic form of comedy as presented in Elizabethan theatre when actual holiday customs were waning. What then is the difference in experience between "going on holiday" and "going to the theatre" (to see a comedy)? (This, too, is a hard question. In five minutes, you will only be able to make a start; continue in seminar.)
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A challenge for another day: Barber says, "What I would have to say about Much Ado About Nothing can largely be inferred from the discussion of the other festive plays." (p. 222) Try to make this inference. That is, see if you can use th e structure you have elaborated here by applying it to the one festive comedy Barber skips over, employing the central concepts of "passion with inherent folly which is released" in the play and "limiting force which is exorcised," as well as the structur e relating these which you have diagrammed.