Shakespeare's Style

by Maurice Charney

  These mock-quotations reach their apex when Feste is preparing to play Sir Topas, the curate, who is ministering to the mad Malvolio. He demonstrates his histrionic skill for the admiring Sir Toby: “Bonos dies, Sir Toby; for, as the old hermit of Prague, that never saw pen and ink, very wittily said to a niece of King Gorboduc, ‘That that is is’; so, I, being Master Parson, am Master Parson; for what is ‘that’ but that, and ‘is’ but is?” (4.2.13–17). Feste has bits and pieces of learning, like Pistol in 2 Henry IV. He also parodies scholastic debates about the meaning of relatively meaningless words. Sir Toby is duly impressed with Feste’s performance: “The knave counterfeits well; a good knave” (4.2.20).

  Feste is nothing short of brilliant in the role of Sir Topas. Malvolio is convinced that he is dealing with a learned clergyman who will help him prove that he is not mad. Sir Topas speaks in mock-theological style, imitating the close analytic reasoning of scholastic texts. Feste disputes Malvolio’s assertion that “They have laid me here in hideous darkness” (4.2.30–31): no, the house “hath bay windows transparent as barricadoes, and the clerestories toward the north south are as lustrous as ebony; and yet complainest thou of obstruction?” (4.2.37–40). Of course, there is no such direction as “south north”; ebony is a type image of intense blackness; and barricadoes are impenetrably dark. Malvolio, however, is duly impressed with the quality of Sir Topas’s reasoning.

  Feste caps his examination of Malvolio’s madness with a mock-catechism that draws on Pythagorean metempsychosis:

  Clown. What is the opinion of Pythagoras concerning wild fowl?

  Malvolio. That the soul of our grandam might happily inhabit a bird.

  Clown. What think’st thou of his opinion?

  Malvolio. I think nobly of the soul and no way approve his opinion.

  Clown. Fare thee well. Remain thou still in darkness. Thou shalt hold th’ opinion of Pythagoras ere I will allow of thy wits, and fear to kill a woodcock, lest thou dispossess the soul of thy grandam. (4.2.50–60)

  Feste’s joke is lost on Malvolio, who plays the straight man and answers as if Pythagoras were indeed an important Christian theologian. The Clown continues his jesting about Malvolio when he reads his letter to Olivia in an exceptionally loud voice. Olivia is startled: “How now? Art thou mad?” (5.1.294), but Feste justifies himself literally: “No, madam, I do but read madness. And your ladyship will have it as it ought to be, you must allow vox” (5.1.295–97). “Vox” signifies the appropriate voice of a madman.

  Thus Feste entertains us throughout the play. He attacks foolishness of all sorts, especially verbal, and he parodies pretentious learning as often as he can. He indulges in wordplay and language games, so that no one can anticipate what he will actually say. For example, in act 1, scene 5, Maria upbraids him: “Yet you will be hanged for being so long absent, or be turned away. Is not that as good as a hanging to you?” (1.5.16–18). But the Clown has a ready answer: “Many a good hanging prevents a bad marriage, and for turning away, let summer bear it out” (1.5.19–21). This is either a proverb or a mock-proverb, and the Arden editor sees a sexual connotation in being well hung. For turning away, summer is good weather for being without an occupation.

  At the end of the play, the clown’s song about the seven ages of man is bitter-sweet and functions as a kind of epilogue:

  When that I was and a little tiny boy,

  With hey, ho, the wind and the rain,

  A foolish thing was but a toy [trifle],

  For the rain it raineth every day. (5.1.390–93)

  The Fool in King Lear sings a stanza of what seems like an adaptation of Feste’s song (3.2.74–77). Feste’s last stanza functions like an epilogue to the play:

  A great while ago the world begun,

  Hey, ho, the wind and the rain;

  But that’s all one, our play is done,

  And we’ll strive to please you every day. (5.1.406–9)

  It is some clue to Feste’s significance as a character in Twelfth Night that he sings the last words of the play. He is very important for establishing the tone of the play.

  Chapter 19

  Hamlet as Actor

  It’s surprising how strong an emphasis there is in Hamlet on the protagonist as an actor who is closely connected with the theater. This is one of the dominant imageries in the play. In Hamlet’s first scene in the court of Denmark, the prince answers his mother’s facile attempt to cure him of his melancholy: “Why seems it so particular with thee?” (1.2.75). Hamlet speaks of his mourning dress as if it were an actor’s costume in which he can play the appropriate role of grieving son:

  Seems, madam? Nay, it is. I know not “seems.”

  ‘Tis not alone my inky cloak, good mother,

  Nor customary suits of solemn black,

  Nor windy suspiration of forced breath,

  No, nor the fruitful river in the eye,

  Nor the dejected havior of the visage,

  Together with all forms, moods, shapes of grief,

  That can denote me truly. (1.2.76–83)

  Hamlet makes an important contrast between his inner and real grief at the death of his father and its external signs:

  These indeed seem,

  For they are actions that a man might play,

  But I have that within which passes show;

  These but the trappings and the suits of woe. (1.2.83–86)

  Hamlet the actor is insisting that he is not merely acting the part of mourning son, but that he feels it deeply within. This sets up a contrast between inner and outer realities that continues throughout the play.

  Hamlet is acutely conscious of his own style, which we can see very well in the soliloquy at the end of act 2, after he has met with the players. He is impressed with the fact that the Player, in speaking of Hecuba, can get so personally involved “But in a fiction, in a dream of passion” (2.2.562). The basic paradox is: “What’s Hecuba to him, or he to Hecuba, / That he should weep for her?” (2.2.564–65). This gets to the heart of what acting means. Hamlet’s question is all about the contrast of the inner and the outer reality: “What would he do / Had he the motive and the cue for passion / That I have?” (2.2.565–67). Hamlet then proceeds, like an actor, to work himself up to a grand passion:

  Who calls me villain? Breaks my pate across?

  Plucks off my beard and blows it in my face?

  Tweaks me by the nose? Gives me the lie i’ th’ throat

  As deep as to the lungs? Who does me this?

  Ha, ‘swounds, I should take it, for it cannot be

  But I am pigeon-livered and lack gall

  To make oppression bitter, or ere this

  I should ha’ fatted all the region kites

  With this slave’s offal. Bloody, bawdy villain!

  Remorseless, treacherous, lecherous, kindless villain!

  O, vengeance! (2.2.583–93)

  This is like Bottom the weaver in A Midsummer Night’s Dream preparing to play the role of Pyramus, which he imagines as “a part to tear a cat in, to make all split” (1.2.30–31).

  Hamlet is conscious of the fact that he is ranting like a bad actor, and he suddenly breaks off:

  Why, what an ass am I! This is most brave,

  That I, the son of a dear father murdered,

  Prompted to my revenge by heaven and hell,

  Must, like a whore, unpack my heart with words

  And fall a-cursing like a very drab,

  A stallion! Fie upon’t, foh! (2.2.594–99)

  “Brave” is used as a negative word, implying bravado and showing off. Hamlet is aware of doing exactly what he warned the players against at the beginning of act 3, scene 2, of tearing “a passion to tatters, to very rags, to split the ears of the groundlings” (3.2.10–11). This is the kind of acting that “out-herods Herod” (3.2.14).

  There is another scene, at Ophelia’s grave, that echoes the style of Hamlet’s soliloquy at the end of act 2, scene 2. Hamlet parodies the aggrieved Laertes’s overblown
speech when he has leaped into Ophelia’s newly made grave:

  What is he whose grief

  Bears such an emphasis, whose phrase of sorrow

  Conjures the wand’ring stars, and makes them stand

  Like wonder-wounded hearers? (5.1.254–57)

  After Hamlet and Laertes “grapple,” Hamlet goes even further in parodying Laertes’s exaggerated rhetoric:

  Dost thou come here to whine?

  To outface me with leaping in her grave?

  Be buried quick with her, and so will I.

  And if thou prate of mountains, let them throw

  Millions of acres on us, till our ground,

  Singeing his pate against the burning zone,

  Make Ossa like a wart! (5.1.277–83)

  Remember how contemptuously Hamlet spoke about the dead Polonius: “Indeed, this counselor / Is now most still, most secret, and most grave, / Who was in life a foolish prating knave” (3.4.214–16). To prate is to talk foolishly, as Hamlet is painfully conscious that that is what he is now doing, even if only to outmatch Laertes: “Nay, an thou’lt mouth, / I’ll rant as well as thou” (5.1.283–84). He later apologizes to Horatio “That to Laertes I forgot myself, . . . But sure the bravery of his grief did put me / Into a tow’ring passion” (5.2.76, 79–80). “Bravery” (bravado) is the same word that Hamlet used to scoff at his own ranting soliloquy: “Why, what an ass am I! This is most brave” (2.2.589).

  So Hamlet’s advice to the players at the beginning of act 3, scene 2 is rooted in stylistic issues of the entire play. The basic point is that we expect Hamlet as actor to follow his own precepts. There is also an interesting self-referential point because the advice is also to Burbage who is playing Hamlet. It seems from what he says that Hamlet has been coaching the Player: “Speak the speech, I pray you, as I pronounced it to you, trippingly on the tongue” (3.2.1–2). Hamlet seems to be speaking of “a speech of some dozen or sixteen lines which I would set down and insert in’t” (2.2.547–48) into The Murder of Gonzago. This is the most extensive discussion of acting in all of Shakespeare, and the repeated message is that the acting should be natural, that “you o’erstep not the modesty of nature” (3.2.19). Hamlet defines the purpose of playing as “to hold, as ‘twere, the mirror up to nature; to show virtue her own feature, scorn her own image, and the very age and body of the time his form and pressure” (3.2.21–24). Also, there is a strong prohibition against ad-libbing, especially for the clowns (or fools): “And let those that play your clowns speak no more than is set down for them” (3.2.38–40). The advice to the players sets up standards for acting that are obviously contradicted by the prating Polonius, by the ranting Laertes and Hamlet himself, and by the absurdly precious Osric. So Hamlet contains within itself a set of criteria by which we can make stylistic judgments.

  Hamlet shows himself extremely knowledgeable about what is happening in the theater of Shakespeare’s own time. He seems to have a joking relation with the actors as he remembers items from the past: “Welcome, good friends. O, old friend, why, thy face is valanced [fringed with a beard] since I saw thee last. Com’st thou to beard me in Denmark?” (2.2.429–31). And to the boy actor who played female roles: “By’r Lady, your ladyship is nearer to heaven than when I saw you last by the altitude of a chopine [shoe with a thick sole, probably of cork]. Pray God your voice, like a piece of uncurrent gold, be not cracked within the ring” (2.2.432–35). Hamlet says all the right things to indicate that he is comfortable with the players.

  He asks the principal actor (usually called the First Player) to give him a sample, “a taste of your quality. Come, a passionate speech” (2.2.438–39). He specifies exactly what he has in mind: “I heard thee speak me a speech once, but it was never acted, or if it was, not above once, for the play, I remember, pleased not the million; ‘twas caviary to the general” (2.2.441–44). Hamlet speaks like an insider—how does he happen to know about a play that was never acted or acted only once? The speech is Aeneas’s tale to Dido, which may refer back to Marlowe’s Dido play. And Hamlet, although he wanted the Player to give him “a taste of your quality,” now proceeds to speak thirteen lines of a speech about “the rugged Pyrrhus” (2.2.459), which is then continued by the First Player. Polonius, who holds himself to be a connoisseur of theater, praises Hamlet’s histrionic abilities: “Fore God, my lord, well spoken, with good accent and good discretion” (2.2.473–74). Presumably, the audience is meant to agree with Polonius about Hamlet’s skill as an actor. This interlude about Aeneas’s tale to Dido leads directly to Hamlet’s passionate and ranting soliloquy, “O, what a rogue and peasant slave am I!” (2.2.555ff).

  Once The Mousetrap play has been performed, Hamlet is ecstatic about how successful the play has been in revealing the guilty conscience of the king. This is a high point for Hamlet in the play. In his high spirits, he imagines that he could turn professional as an actor. As he asks Horatio so extravagantly: “Would not this, sir, and a forest of feathers—if the rest of my fortunes turn Turk with me—with two Provincial roses on my razed shoes, get me a fellowship in a cry [company] of players?” (3.2.279–82). Horatio, to curb his ardor, says: “Half a share,” but Hamlet is confident about his great success: “A whole one, I” (3.2.283–84).

  To continue with the acting imagery, Hamlet prepares for his meeting with his mother in act 3, scene 4 in a soliloquy at the end of act 3, scene 2. The point of this soliloquy is that Hamlet is thinking of himself as an actor preparing a role. After the success of The Mousetrap, Hamlet is steeling himself to take revenge for his father’s murder. At this moment, he still thinks that his mother is complicit. He speaks in a towering passion like the First Player’s version of Pyrrhus in Aeneas’s tale to Dido (2.2.461f): “Now could I drink hot blood / And do such bitter business as the day / Would quake to look on” (3.2.398–400). This is like the ranting style of Hamlet’s soliloquy at the end of act 2. The essential part of Hamlet’s resolve before he meets with his mother is to prevent himself from murdering her:

  O heart, lose not thy nature; let not ever

  The soul of Nero [who actually murdered his mother] enter this firm bosom.

  Let me be cruel, not unnatural;

  I will speak daggers to her, but use none. (3.2.401–4)

  Hamlet is certainly cruel to his mother in the closet scene (3.4), and she thinks he is intent on murdering her. This is what leads to the death of Polonius, stabbed by Hamlet while he is behind the arras.

  Finally, in this survey of Hamlet as actor, we mustn’t forget his most extensive role in the play: that of playing mad. It begins after he has spoken with the Ghost of his father. He resolves “To put an antic disposition on” (1.5.172). “Antic” means grotesque, fantastic, as in Romeo and Juliet, when Tybalt describes the masked Romeo as coming to the ball “covered with an antic face” (1.5.58). Hamlet is determined to play the madman as a way of protecting himself, of having, as it were, poetic license. He convinces the otherwise astute Polonius that he suffering “the very ecstasy of love” (2.1.102) for Ophelia. In his interchange with Polonius in act 2, scene 2, Hamlet wittily pursues his mad role without much changing the old counselor’s opinion that “Though this be madness, yet there is method in’t” (2.1.206–7) and further: “How pregnant sometimes his replies are! A happiness that often madness hits on, which reason and sanity could not so prosperously be delivered of” (2.1.210–13). After Hamlet’s scene with Ophelia, the king is not persuaded that Hamlet is mad: “Love? His affections do not that way tend, / Nor what he spake, though it lacked form a little, / Was not like madness” (3.1.163–65). The king is convinced that Hamlet’s melancholy is dangerous, that he must suspect Claudius of the murder of his brother, and that he must be sent at once to England to be executed. His final, menacing line in this scene is: “Madness in great ones must not unwatched go” (3.1.190).

  Hamlet continues to alternate between his normal style and his mad role for the rest of the play. During The Murder of Gonzago, he is particularly activ
e in displaying his antic disposition. As he says when the king and queen and their court enter: “They are coming to the play: I must be idle” (3.2.90). “Idle” is often a word used specifically for the fool or clown, indicating silly or mad behavior. Hamlet uses his “idle” manner to insult Ophelia with grossly sexual and vulgar remarks. He asks: “Lady, shall I lie in your lap?”, “I mean, my head upon your lap?,” “Do you think I meant country matters?” (3.2.112, 115, 117). “Country” may be an imagined adjectival form of “cunt,” as in Iago’s explicitly sexual pun in Othello: “I know our country disposition well: / In Venice they do let heaven see the pranks / They dare not show their husbands” (3.3.201–3).

  Hamlet assumes the role of commentator on the play. When Ophelia asks “What means this, my lord?” he replies “Marry, this is miching mallecho; it means mischief” (3.2.139–41). This is an odd and extravagant phrase, used only once in Shakespeare and much disputed about its exact meaning and origin. Hamlet continues to make remarks—personal remarks—throughout the play, as if he were its author. When the king asks naively “Have you heard the argument? Is there no offense in’t?” (3.2.236–37), Hamlet answers with ironic jubilation: “No, no, they do but jest, poison in jest; no offense i’ th’ world” (3.2.238–39). It seems as if, in his idle fit, Hamlet is taking charge of the performance. He is impatient with the slowness of Lucianus: “Begin, murderer. Leave thy damnable faces and begin. Come, the croaking raven doth bellow for revenge” (3.2.256–58). Hamlet seems to be writing the line itself about the raven, which is not spoken by any of the actors.

  We could go on with Hamlet’s scene with Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, who take him to certain death in England. As Hamlet reports it to Horatio, it all seems histrionic: “Being thus benetted round with villains, / Or [ere] I could make a prologue to my brains, / They had begun the play” (5.2.29–31). The language is theatrical. The incident is also phrased in providential language: