We are introduced to Puck, Oberon’s factotum, in act 2, scene 1. He is Robin Goodfellow or Hobgoblin, a mischievous spirit who delights in country tricks (but does no real evil). He is a “shrewd and knavish sprite” (2.1.33)
That frights the maidens of the villagery,
Skim milk, and sometimes labor in the quern [hand-mill for grain],
And bootless make the breathless housewife churn,
And sometimes make the drink to bear no barm [yeast, froth],
Mislead night wanderers, laughing at their harm? (2.1.35–39)
He is Oberon’s jester: he makes “him smile” (2.1.44) and performs tricks to entertain the Fairy King and his court.
Further in the play, it is obvious that Puck delights in petty knavery. He has put the love juice in the wrong lover’s eyes. In his conversation with Oberon, he states his credo: “Lord, what fools these mortals be!” (3.2.115). Mortals are inherently inferior to spirits like Puck and the fairy world, who are not foolish in love. Puck sees his function as a way to amuse himself:
Then will two at once [Lysander and Demetrius] woo one [Helena];
That must needs be sport alone;
And those things do best please me
That befall prepost’rously. (3.2.118–21)
Oberon is aware that Puck cannot be trusted, that thou “committ’st thy knaveries willfully” (3.2.346), and Puck seems to agree: “And so far am I glad it so did sort [fell out], / As this their jangling I esteem a sport” (3.2.352–53). Here again is Puck’s word “sport” (which Iago also uses in Othello).
The quarrel between Oberon and Titania has important consequences for the material world, and especially for the weather and the seasons. As Titania informs us:
Therefore the winds, piping to us in vain,
As in revenge, have sucked up from the sea
Contagious fogs; which, falling in the land,
Hath every pelting [paltry] river made so proud,
That they have overborne their continents.
The ox hath therefore stretched his yoke in vain,
The plowman lost his sweat, and the green corn
Hath rotted ere his youth attained a beard. (2.1.88–95)
So the fairies can influence the processes of nature, so that everything is now topsy-turvy:
The spring, the summer,
The childing [fruitful] autumn, angry winter, change
Their wonted liveries; and the mazèd [bewildered] world,
By their increase, now knows not which is which. (2.1.111–14)
This testifies to the enormous power of the fairies over their natural domain.
When Puck puts an ass’s head on Bottom, he is immediately transformed into an appropriate love object for Titania, which satisfies Oberon’s revenge. As we expect, Titania’s love is immediate and absolute, not depending on any physical or psychological factors. On waking, she declares at once: “What angel wakes me from my flow’ry bed?” (3.1.29–30). She is aware that Bottom is a mortal, but she promises to “purge thy mortal grossness so, / That thou shalt like an airy spirit go” (3.1.159–60). Bottom is unperturbed by this sudden passion: “reason and love keep little company together nowadays” (3.1.142–43). He accommodates himself to his new appearance as an ass with remarkable resilience. He only asks the fairies who attend on him for practical favors; for example, Mustardseed should help Cobweb to scratch him: “I must to the barber’s, mounsieur; for methinks I am marvail’s hairy about the face; and I am such a tender ass, if my hair do but tickle me, I must scratch” (4.1.24–27). There is no sense that Bottom expects Titania to keep her promise to make him an airy spirit. Even though he is disguised as an ass, Bottom has not changed at all from the old Bottom the weaver. He cannot return Titania’s overwhelming passion, but he is always scrupulously polite and solicitous of her welfare.
At the end of the play, at midnight, the now married lovers all go to bed. Then, enter Puck with a broom, who speaks in rhyming tetrameters. The night is just the time for the fairies to emerge to bless the house and to bless the marriages. Puck speaks with solemnity:
Not a mouse
Shall disturb this hallowed house:
I am sent, with broom, before,
To sweep the dust behind the door. (5.1.386–89)
Then Oberon and Titania enter with all their train to continue the blessing of the house and the marriages. It all has a faintly religious tone. Oberon blesses the children that will be born from these marriages and promises that they shall be free of physical deformities:
And the blots of nature’s hand
Shall not in their issue stand.
Never mole, harelip, nor scar,
Nor mark prodigious, such as are
Despisèd in nativity,
Shall upon their children be. (5.1.408–13)
Oberon speaks with authority, as if he can control nature.
The play ends with an epilogue by Puck, which is an interesting assertion of his importance. It is in his characteristic tetrameter couplets. He emphasizes the fact that it was all a dream:
If we shadows have offended,
Think but this, and all is mended:
That you have but slumb’red here,
While these visions did appear.
And this weak and idle theme,
No more yielding but a dream. (5.1.422–27)
In a gesture typical of epilogue speakers, he appeals to the audience for their applause.
Chapter 10
Shylock’s Monomaniacal Style in
The Merchant of Venice
The way Shylock speaks is unusual among Shakespeare’s characters. He is perfectly fluent in his big speeches—for example, in the trial scene (4.1)—yet elsewhere he speaks with a monosyllabic, repetitive, broken syntax as if he were merely thinking about what to say. This is apparent in his first speeches in the play. In act 1, scene 3, his first five speeches merely echo Bassanio:
Three thousand ducats—well. (1.3.1)
For three months—well. (1.3.3)
Antonio shall become bound—well. (1.3.6)
Three thousand ducats for three months, and Antonio bound. (1.3.9–10)
Antonio is a good man. (1.3.12)
So we are convinced that Shylock in his first five speeches has said nothing. The repetition of “well” suggests that he is merely thinking it over.
Suddenly, in his sixth speech, in his answer to Bassanio’s question whether he has heard any imputation that Antonio is not a good man, Shylock launches into a formal, if not actually garrulous, reply: “Ho no, no, no, no! My meaning in saying he is a good man, is to have you understand me that he is sufficient” (1.3.15–17). This seems legalistic in its wordiness. Shylock even ventures a bad pun: “there be land rats and water rats, water thieves and land thieves—I mean pirates” (1.3.22–23). Now Shylock has become voluble. When Antonio enters, Shylock’s aside is a perfectly fluent expression of his feelings: “I hate him for he is a Christian” (1.3.39) and “He lends out money gratis” (1.3.42). In justifying his taking of interest, Shylock goes to some length to cite the Old Testament story of Jacob and Laban and Jacob’s trick to produce his share of parti-colored lambs.
Shylock seems to delight in the irony that his Christian enemy, Antonio, now comes to him to borrow three thousand ducats. With heavy sarcasm, he reminds Antonio of their previous relationship: “You call me misbeliever, cutthroat dog, / And spet upon my Jewish gaberdine, / And all for use of that which is mine own” (1.3.108–10). Shylock seems to be in his element in this long speech, which also seems to be colloquial in its easy mastery of speech rhythms:
Well then, it now appears you need my help.
Go to, then. You come to me and you say,
“Shylock, we would have moneys”—you say so,
You that did void your rheum upon my beard
And foot me as you spurn a stranger cur
Over your threshold! Moneys is your suit. (1.3.111–16)
Shylock is skillful in h
is mock quotations from Antonio, and he is conscious of his own act of speaking: “What should I say to you? Should I not say, / ‘Hath a dog money? Is it possible / A cur can lend three thousand ducats?’” (1.3.116–19). Shylock also imagines other bitterly ironic roles for himself:
Shall I bend low, and in a bondman’s key,
With bated breath, and whisp’ring humbleness,
Say this:
“Fair sir, you spet on me on Wednesday last,
You spurned me such a day, another time
You called me dog; and for these courtesies
I’ll lend you thus much moneys”? (1.3.120–26)
These speeches are histrionic. Perhaps that is what defines Shylock’s mixed styles in this scene. He seems to be enjoying the confrontational roles he is playing.
Out of these speeches comes Shylock’s seemingly sportive proposal of a merry bond without interest but only with the unlikely penalty of a pound of flesh on nonpayment. Shylock exults over his Christian enemies by emphasizing how harmless his merry bond is:
If he should break his day, what should I gain
By the exaction of the forfeiture?
A pound of man’s flesh taken from a man
Is not so estimable, profitable neither,
As flesh of muttons, beefs, or goats. (1.3.160–64)
Shylock wants to sound rational and practical: “To buy his favor I extend this friendship” (1.3.165). But we know that he imagines that it offers the promise of a bloody revenge on Antonio.
In act 2, scene 5, there is a peculiar disharmony in Shylock’s speech. He begins by conversing with his servant Lancelot, who is leaving him and going to serve Bassanio, but his negative comments are interrupted by his calling for Jessica:
Well, thou shalt see, thy eyes shall be thy judge,
The difference of old Shylock and Bassanio.—
What, Jessica!—Thou shalt not gormandize
As thou hast done with me.—What, Jessica!—
And sleep, and snore, and rend apparel out.—
Why, Jessica, I say! (2.5.1–6)
Shylock’s impatience with Jessica’s delay in appearing is mixed with his contempt for Lancelot. His “conversation” with his daughter (she says practically nothing) is irritating because it is so broken. He is invited to supper, but he questions whether he should go: “I am not bid for love—they flatter me. / But yet I’ll go in hate, to feed upon / The prodigal Christian” (2.5.13–15). In his cannibalistic image, he seems already to have acquired his pound of flesh.
Shylock is puritanical, and it seems to confirm that Shakespeare modeled his Jew on the many Puritans he knew in London. He frantically wants to protect his daughter, and his house too, from the music of the masques she might hear in the street:
Lock up my doors; and when you hear the drum
And the vile squealing of the wry-necked fife,
Clamber not you up to the casements then,
Nor thrust your head into the public street
To gaze on Christian fools with varnished faces;
But stop my house’s ears—I mean my casements;
Let not the sound of shallow fopp’ry enter
My sober house. (2.5.29–36)
It is curious how strongly the “sober house” is personified.
This passage is more or less inverted in Lorenzo’s magnificent speech on “the sweet power of music” in act 5, scene 1. Lorenzo could be speaking of Shylock when he says: “The man that hath no music in himself, / Nor is not moved with concord of sweet sounds, / Is fit for treasons, stratagems, and spoils” (5.1.83–85). This is an important and repeated idea in Shakespeare: villains are never lovers of music.
The flight of Jessica serves to accentuate Shylock’s monomaniacal preoccupation with revenge. In act 3, scene 1, Shylock’s reaction to Antonio’s losses at sea is dire: “Let him look to his bond. He was wont to call me usurer. Let him look to his bond. He was wont to lend money for a Christian cursy. Let him look to his bond” (3.1.45–47). Shylock’s repetitions are like those of the jealous Leontes in The Winter’s Tale (especially in act 1, scene 2). They are a sign of an uncontrollable passion. His highly emotional oration, “Hath not a Jew eyes?” (3.1.56–57), is peculiarly mixed with the trivial and the portentous: “If you tickle us, do we not laugh? If you poison us, do we not die? And if you wrong us, shall we not revenge?” (3.1.62–64). It is hard to imagine anyone tickling Shylock or making him laugh.
In the trial scene (4.1), Shylock gives “humorous” answers to the Duke’s request for mercy, but this is “humor” in the medieval, physiological sense of the four “humors” of the body, which are meant to be kept in the proper proportions for good health. Thus, when Shylock tells the Duke “it is my humor” (4.1.43), he means it is his whim, caprice, or fancy—not anything rational or normal. We remember that Ben Jonson wrote two plays based on the humors: Everyman in His Humor and Everyman out of His Humor. The examples Shylock gives for his deadly hate for Antonio are absurd and ridiculous in themselves: “What if my house be troubled with a rat, / And I be pleased to give ten thousand ducats / To have it baned? What, are you answered yet?” (4.1.44–46). Ten thousand ducats is an impossibly large sum to pay an exterminator—more than three times the value of the bond. Once begun, Shylock provides the Duke with even more extreme examples:
Some men there are love not a gaping pig,
Some that are mad if they behold a cat,
And others, when the bagpipe sings i’ th’ nose,
Cannot contain their urine; for affection,
Master of passion, sways it to the mood
Of what it likes or loathes. (4.1.47–52)
This is as close as Shylock ever comes to justifying his irrational impulses. The absurd examples culminate in his root principle: “Hates any man the thing he would not kill?” (4.1.67). The malice, previously concealed under various ironic changes of style, is now out in the open and plainly expressed.
Chapter 11
Commodity and the Bastard
in King John
“Commodity” is a key word and key concept in King John, an early history play written after the Henry VI plays and Richard III. Its protagonist is not King John but Philip Faulconbridge, the bastard son of Richard, Coeur de lion, the brother of King John. In act 1, scene 1, the Bastard (as he is called in the play) readily accepts his illegitimacy rather than a rich inheritance from his supposed father, Robert Faulconbridge. King John calls the Bastard “A good blunt fellow” (1.1.71), like Kent in King Lear. He is a witty, straightforward, and aggressive speaker, and he bears a certain stylistic resemblance to Shakespeare’s villains, especially to Edmund in King Lear, who also vaunts his bastardy. The king calls him a “madcap” (1.1.84), and he accepts his new status as knighted bastard with monosyllabic bravado:
Something about, a little from the right,
In at the window, or else o’er the hatch:
Who dares not stir by day must walk by night,
And have is have, however men do catch.
Near or far off, well won is still well shot,
And I am I, howe’er I was begot. (1.1.170–75)
These are all proverbial expressions about illegitimacy, but the Bastard glorifies in his status, which frees him from conventional morality.
His long soliloquy in the first scene establishes the important role he will play in the political action. He is a “mounting spirit”:
For he is but a bastard to the time
That doth not smack of observation.
And so am I, whether I smack or no:
And not alone in habit and device,
Exterior form, outward accoutrement,
But from the inward motion to deliver
Sweet, sweet, sweet poison for the age’s tooth,
Which, though I will not practice to deceive,
Yet, to avoid deceit, I mean to learn;
For it shall strew the footsteps of my rising. (1.1.207–16)
This soliloquy set
s forth the Bastard’s determination to be a perfect courtier for the turbulent times in which he lives. He will be a cunning observer of everything about him, and he will not hesitate to flatter (“Sweet, sweet, sweet poison”) when it is necessary.
His first triumph is to resolve the dilemma about the city of Angiers, which refuses to open its gates to either the English or the French. The Bastard has only contempt for Hubert and his followers:
By heaven, these scroyles of Angiers flout you, kings,
And stand securely on their battlements
As in a theater, whence they gape and point
At your industrious scenes and acts of death. (2.1.373–76)
“Scroyles” is a strong, slangy word used only this once by Shakespeare. The Bastard advises the French and English kings to join together to destroy “this contemptuous city” (2.1.384), then fight each other afterward. The Bastard is self-congratulatory about his ingenious plan: “How like you this wild counsel, mighty states? / Smacks it not something of the policy?” (2.1.395–96). “Policy” is a much used word of Polonius in Hamlet (and by many of Shakespeare’s villains), referring to cunning statecraft in the style of Machiavelli.
The plain-speaking Bastard is clearly irritated by Hubert’s high-flown, hyperbolical style:
He speaks plain cannon fire, and smoke, and bounce;
He gives the bastinado [cudgeling] with his tongue:
Our ears are cudgeled; not a word of his
But buffets better than a fist of France.
Zounds! I was never so bethumped with words
Since I first called my brother’s father dad. (2.1.462–67)
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