Shakespeare's Style

by Maurice Charney

  It is at this point that Lear begins to tear off his clothes: “Off, off, you lendings: come, unbutton here” (3.4.106–7). He wants to follow the example of Poor Tom as “unaccomodated man.” Later, Lear insists on speaking with him as a natural “philosopher,” a “learned Theban” (3.4.150, 153). This is probably a reference to the Cynic philosopher Diogenes. So Edgar, playing to the hilt the role of Poor Tom, provides Lear with a mirror image of his own perturbations.

  To Gloucester, too, Edgar offers a silent example for his own incipient madness:

  Thou sayest the King grows mad; I’ll tell thee, friend,

  I am almost mad myself. I had a son,

  Now outlawed from my blood; he sought my life,

  But lately, very late. I loved him, friend,

  No father his son dearer. True to tell thee,

  The grief hath crazed my wits. (3.4.161–66)

  Of course, Gloucester doesn’t recognize Poor Tom as his son Edgar, but Edgar will play a very significant role in restoring Gloucester from his bitter despair and his wish for suicide. This is similar to the role Cordelia plays in recovering her father from his madness.

  Chapter 25

  The Macbeths’s Insomnia

  The murders committed by Macbeth and Lady Macbeth produce the anxiety that denies them sleep, so that there is a sense in the play that they must continue murdering their enemies to try to sleep soundly. They need security in its literal sense of freedom from troubling care. But, of course, this security is illusory because they are deeply troubled by all of the murders, beginning with King Duncan.

  The issue is raised most strongly right after the murder of the king. Macbeth is shaken by the fact that when one of the drunken grooms says “God bless us!” and the other “Amen,” he, the murderer, “could not say ‘Amen,’/ When they did say ‘God bless us!’” (2.2.26, 28–29). He anxiously questions his wife: “But wherefore could not I pronounce ‘Amen’? / I had most need of blessing, and “’Amen’ / Stuck in my throat” (2.2.30–32). Macbeth cannot accept the fact that he is a murderer. Lady Macbeth’s answers are totally unhelpful in this context: “Consider it not so deeply” (2.2.29) and “These deeds must not be thought / After these ways; so, it will make us mad” (2.2.32–33).

  Macbeth cannot be comforted. He keeps repeating images of the sleep he and his wife will be forever denied:

  Methought I heard a voice cry, “Sleep no more!

  Macbeth does murder sleep”—the innocent sleep,

  Sleep that knits up the raveled [tangled] sleave of care,

  The death of each day’s life, sore labor’s bath,

  Balm of hurt minds, great nature’s second course,

  Chief nourisher in life’s feast— (2.2.34–39)

  Lady Macbeth cuts off her husband’s anguished apostrophes to a personified sleep and care with total incomprehension: “What do you mean?” (2.2.39). But Macbeth cannot stop his lamentations: “Still it cried ‘Sleep no more!’ to all the house: / ‘Glamis hath murdered sleep, and therefore Cawdor / Shall sleep no more: Macbeth shall sleep no more’” (2.2.40–42).

  At this point in the play, there seems to be no way of reaching Lady Macbeth and convincing her that she is complicit in the murder of the king. She speaks in trivialities:

  Who was it that thus cried? Why, worthy thane,

  You do unbend your noble strength, to think

  So brainsickly of things. Go get some water,

  And wash this filthy witness from your hand. (2.2.43–46)

  Macbeth is deeply troubled by the murder, and he cannot, of course, respond to his wife’s impersonal remarks:

  Will all great Neptune’s ocean wash this blood

  Clean from my hand? No; this my hand will rather

  The multitudinous seas incarnadine,

  Making the green one red. (2.2.59–62)

  But Macbeth’s cosmic images do not penetrate his wife’s matter of factness. She still insists: “A little water clears us of this deed: / How easy is it then!” (2.2.66–67). It is interesting that Lady Macbeth is the one who, at the end of the play, goes mad with her unspoken grief.

  Act 3, scene 2 is another crucial exposition of the sleep theme. Lady Macbeth seems to be requesting additional murders when she says:

  Nought’s had, all’s spent,

  Where our desire is got without content:

  ’Tis safer to be that which we destroy

  Than by destruction dwell in doubtful joy. (3.2.4–7)

  Her mood has changed, but Macbeth is still in anguish. They can only sleep

  In the affliction of these terrible dreams

  That shake us nightly: better be with the dead,

  Whom we, to gain our peace, have sent to peace,

  Than on the torture of the mind to lie

  In restless ecstasy. (3.2.18–22)

  “Ecstasy,” a word describing the soul going out of the body, is often used by Shakespeare as a synonym for “madness,” as in the four examples from Hamlet.

  The scene ends with Macbeth’s plan to kill Banquo and his son, Fleance, a dastardly act done, it seems, to put his wife in a better mood: “There’s comfort yet; they are assailable. / Then be thou jocund” (3.2.39–40). Macbeth identifies himself with the powers of darkness in his final images:

  Light thickens, and the crow

  Makes wing to th’ rooky wood

  Good things of day begin to droop and drowse,

  Whiles night’s black agents to their preys do rouse. (3.2.50–53)

  Macbeth is beginning to lose the sensitivity and anguish he had at the beginning of the play. He is now, without apology, one of night’s black agents, proceeding to further murders.

  The effects of the murders on Lady Macbeth are not felt until her sleepwalking scene in act 5, scene 1. Her insensitivity at the beginning of the play and her brooding sleeplessness finally culminate in her pitiful madness. A doctor and a gentlewoman are the observers in this scene. It is important to remember that Lady Macbeth is asleep throughout. Her mind is harrowed with guilt at the murder of the king, and she is continuously washing her hands to remove the blood stains: “Here’s the smell of the blood still. All the perfumes of Arabia will not sweeten this little hand. Oh, oh, oh!” (5.1.52–54). This is very different from “A little water clears us of this deed” (2.2.66). In her madness, she mixes up details from earlier scenes. She assures her husband that the Ghost of Banquo will not reappear: “Wash your hands; put on your nightgown; look not so pale! I tell you yet again, Banquo’s buried. He cannot come out on’s grave” (5.1.64–66). Notice how preoccupied she is with going to bed and sleeping. Again, she seems to be speaking to an absent husband: “To bed, to bed! There’s knocking at the gate. Come, come, come, come, give me your hand! What’s done cannot be undone. To bed, to bed, to bed!” (5.1.68–71). The doctor says wisely: “More needs she the divine than the physician” (5.1.77). Presumably, Lady Macbeth dies at the frightening stage direction: “A cry within of women” (5.5.7 s.d.). In the final speech of the play, Malcolm reports that Macbeth’s “fiendlike queen, / Who, as ’tis thought, by self and violent hands / Took off her life” (5.8.69–71).

  It is interesting that the many speeches about sleeplessness in Macbeth seem to owe a debt to King Henry IV’s long soliloquy in 2 Henry IV. At the beginning of act 3, scene 1, the king enters “in his nightgown, alone” (3.1.1 s.d.) and speaks his formal apostrophe to sleep personified:

  O sleep, O gentle sleep,

  Nature’s soft nurse, how have I frighted thee,

  That thou no more wilt weigh my eyelids down

  And steep my senses in forgetfulness? (3.1.5–8)

  Henry muses on the fact that ordinary people sleep well: “O thou dull god, why li’st thou with the vile / In loathsome beds, and leavest the kindly couch / A watchcase [sentry box] or a common ’larum-bell?” (3.1.15–17). The king expatiates on the difference in the ability to sleep between nobles and commoners:

  Canst thou, O partial sleep, give thy re
pose

  To the wet sea-son in an hour so rude,

  And in the calmest and most stillest night,

  With all appliances and means to boot,

  Deny it to a king? (3.1.26–30)

  The obvious answer lies in the king’s conclusion: “Uneasy lies the head that wears a crown” (3.1.31). We remember that the king’s conscience bothers him for the way he came to the throne: by deposing Richard II and having him murdered in the Tower. Macbeth and Lady Macbeth cannot forget about the deliberate murders that brought them to the throne of Scotland and the additional murders that were done to secure their kingship. Insomnia is a product of guilt, which nothing can assuage.

  Chapter 26

  Roman Values in

  Antony and Cleopatra

  Critics are generally agreed about the symbolic contrast in Antony and Cleopatra between the values of Egypt and Rome, but, since Antony winds up in Egypt with Cleopatra, there is generally much stronger emphasis on the representation of Egypt than of Rome. This tends to skew the tragic conflict, especially in Antony. He is sure that he “must from this enchanting queen break off” (1.2.129) and “These strong Egyptian fetters I must break / Or lose myself in dotage” (1.2.117–18). “Dotage” is a strong word, signifying a foolish overfondness. Antony, the Roman triumvir and successful general, is never under any illusion that he will achieve a rhapsodic climax to his career by going back to Cleopatra. He knows that he is fated for a tragic end in Egypt, that he will lose his positive identity as a Roman. To be a Roman was popularly understood in terms of Stoic values: self-control, a strong sense of duty, seriousness of purpose, and an ability to rise above the petty misfortunes of daily life. Shakespeare’s Romans generally seem to disregard the Stoic prohibition against suicide. It is nobler to die by one’s own hand than to be led by one’s captor in his triumphal procession. Cleopatra certainly seeks to avoid an ignoble end by dying “after the high Roman fashion” (4.15.90).

  We should take these issues about Antony’s tragedy more seriously than critics generally do. The matter is clearly laid out in the first speeches of the play. Philo, an officer in Antony’s army, states the problem baldly:

  Nay, but this dotage of our general’s

  O’erflows the measure. Those his goodly eyes

  That o’er the files and musters of the war

  Have glowed like plated Mars, now bend, now turn

  The office and devotion of their view

  Upon a tawny front. (1.1.1–6)

  “Dotage” is a strongly negative word for foolishness and excessive fondness, especially in love. To dote is a characteristic activity of older men. Antony’s “captain’s heart” has “become the bellows and the fan / To cool a gypsy’s lust” (1.1.6, 9–10). Afterward, we see this speech enacted in the stage direction for the entrance of Antony, Cleopatra, her ladies, and her train “with Eunuchs fanning her” (1.1.10 s.d.). We are meant to understand that what Philo is speaking about is right there for everyone to see: that the great general Antony, the Triumvir of the Roman Empire, has lost his manhood in Egypt. The scene ends with Philo and his companion, Demetrius, speaking disparagingly about Antony’s decline.

  In the next scene, we see Antony preparing to return to Rome. Cleopatra puts the conflict succinctly: “He was disposed to mirth; but on the sudden / A Roman thought hath struck him” (1.2.83–84). A Roman thought is a serious thought, a manly thought as opposed to the time-dishonoring mirth of Egypt. The messenger from Rome delivers his bad news about how military affairs stand, and Antony is convinced that “These strong Egyptian fetters I must break / Or lose myself in dotage” (1.2.117–18). Antony is never in doubt about how things stand with him. His clarity is important for establishing a moral center in the play: “I must from this enchanting queen break off: / Ten thousand harms, more than the ills I know, / My idleness doth hatch” (1.2.129–31). “Enchanting” is a word associated with magic, as is the word “charm.” Antony calls Cleopatra his “charm,” or witch, twice in act 4, scene 12. He has no illusions about her: “She is cunning past man’s thought” and “Would I had never seen her!” (1.2.146, 153). The “business” (1.2.172–73) of the Roman Empire cannot endure Antony’s absence.

  Act 1, scene 4 is the first scene set in Rome. Caesar disparages the present Antony, who “is not more manlike / Than Cleopatra” (1.4.5–6). To be manly is essential for a Roman soldier; it is the essence of what it means to be Roman. Remember how Lady Macbeth faults her husband for his lack of manliness when he sees the Ghost of Banquo. But Caesar also reminds us of Antony as he once was, the brave and heroic Roman soldier. It is interesting how deeply Caesar’s account is steeped in the appetitive imagery of food and eating:

  When thou once

  Was beaten from Modena, where thou slew’st

  Hirtius and Pansa, consuls, at thy heel

  Did famine follow, whom thou fought’st against

  (Though daintily brought up) with patience more

  Than savages could suffer. Thou didst drink

  The stale [urine] of horses and the gilded puddle

  Which beasts would cough at. (1.4.56–63)

  Caesar’s admiration for Antony as he once was is unbounded:

  Thy palate then did deign

  The roughest berry on the rudest hedge.

  Yea, like the stag when snow the pasture sheets,

  The barks of trees thou browsed. On the Alps

  It is reported thou didst eat strange flesh,

  Which some did die to look on. (1.4.63–68)

  All this detail about eating is necessary to show Antony’s former fortitude. For Caesar, the images he evokes should be sufficient to persuade Antony to “Leave thy lascivious wassails” (1.4.56).

  Antony’s marriage to Octavia, Caesar’s sister, marks his return to Rome and his attempted reconciliation with Caesar. But Enobarbus’s description of Cleopatra’s first meeting with Antony in her magnificent barge on the river Cydnus assures us that Octavia can never hope to restrain Antony from returning to Egypt. Maecenas says naively: “Now Antony must leave her utterly” (2.2.235), but Enobarbus is sure that “Never; he will not: / Age cannot wither her, nor custom stale / Her infinite variety” (2.2.236–38). Octavia’s “beauty, wisdom, modesty” (2.2.243) may be a “blessèd lottery” (2.2.245), or prize won by lot, to Antony, but she cannot keep him.

  Enobarbus’s description of Octavia is conclusive: she is “of a holy, cold, and still conversation” (2.6.122–23), the very opposite of Cleopatra. The images that Caesar uses for his sister also make it certain that Antony will leave her:

  Most noble Antony,

  Let not the piece of virtue which is set

  Betwixt us as the cement of our love

  To keep it builded, be the ram to batter

  The fortress of it. (3.2.27–31)

  These are all hard, material, Roman objects: cement, the battering ram, the fortress, not likely to capture Antony’s heart.

  The sequence is concluded by the messenger Cleopatra sends to describe her rival, who is “Dull of tongue, and dwarfish” (3.3.19). Of her gait, the report is that

  She creeps:

  Her motion and her station are as one.

  She shows a body rather than a life.

  A statue than a breather. (3.3.21–24)

  In other words, Octavia is not at all lively or animated the way Cleopatra is. She is a lifeless statue rather than a living, breathing woman, which is the way that Caesar might have described his sister, as a perfectly passive but stately Roman matron. Late in the play, before her suicide, Cleopatra declares that she will not be taken captive to be “chastised with the sober eye / Of dull Octavia” (5.2.54–55).

  Once Antony has returned to Egypt, his fortunes as a Roman soldier steadily decline. He loses the first sea battle with Caesar because he follows Cleopatra’s ships in fleeing. He is “The noble ruin of her magic” (3.10.18): “Experience, manhood, honor, ne’er before / Did violate so itself” (3.10.22–23). Experience, manhood, hon
or are at the heart of what it means to be a Roman. Antony is aware that he has “lost command” (3.11.23). Like Cassio in Othello, he has “offended reputation, / A most unnoble swerving” (3.11.49–50). In a much repeated image, Antony speaks of his “sword, made weak by my affection” (3.11.67). He is self-condemned and he has lost any way of returning to Roman virtues.

  Antony has not yet given up. He prepares for the second battle—which he wins—and resolves to “have one other gaudy [celebratory] night” (3.13.183). In act 4, scene 4 we see him putting on his armor with the help of his servant Eros. But Cleopatra wants to help too, and, in her tentative attempts, we see the conflict of Egypt and Rome enacted on stage:

  Cleopatra. Nay, I’ll help too.

  What’s this for?

  Antony. Ah, let be, let be! Thou art

  The armorer of my heart. False, false; this, this.

  Cleopatra. Sooth, la, I’ll help: thus it must be. (4.4.5–8)

  This is all wonderfully colloquial and demonstrative. Antony appreciates what Cleopatra is doing: “Thou fumblest, Eros, and my queen’s a squire / More tight at this than thou” (3.13.14–15). Antony has a moment of elation in which he seeks to demonstrate to Cleopatra his “royal occupation” (3.13.17).

  But it is only a temporary illusion. After the loss of the crucial sea battle of Actium, Antony as a Roman soldier seems to dissolve. In a lyrical speech that is echoed in Prospero’s revels speech in The Tempest (4.1), Antony loses his identity: “That which is now a horse, even with a thought / The rack dislimns, and makes it indistinct / As water is in water” (4.14.9–11). “Dislimns” is a coinage of Shakespeare, the opposite of “limns” meaning “paints.” Antony cannot “hold this visible shape” (4.14.14) because Cleopatra has robbed him of his “sword” (4.14.23), an important symbol of his Roman self. He now, with the help of Eros, disarms: