Shakespeare's Style

by Maurice Charney

  These kinds of bold statements don’t do much to advance a humanistic view of Coriolanus, but we have to acknowledge that the play is rabidly anti-democratic, praising the virtues of war with a kind of fierce energy. This doesn’t, of course, mean that Shakespeare identifies with the values of Coriolanus.

  There is abundant irony in act 3, scene 2, when Volumnia schools her son on how to be politic and to gain the consulship by deceit. Because she is herself in her support of patrician values, it is odd to hear her tell her son that he is “too absolute” (3.2.39). She instructs him in the false role he has to play to the Roman citizens—as if he were an actor in the theater:

  Go to them with this bonnet in thy hand;

  And thus far having stretched it (here be with them),

  Thy knee bussing the stones (for in such business

  Action is eloquence, and the eyes of th’ ignorant

  More learnèd than the ears), waving thy head,

  Which often thus correcting thy stout heart,

  Now humble as the ripest mulberry

  That will not hold the handling. (3.2.73–80)

  This is an extraordinary speech, since Volumnia is expounding a doctrine that she doesn’t believe in. We applaud Coriolanus’s honest repulsion against the dishonesty of playing politic: “Would you have me / False to my nature? Rather say I play / The man I am” (3.2.14–16). This is an important part of Coriolanus’s manliness: to be true to himself.

  Chapter 29

  The Saintly Marina in Pericles

  Although Pericles is probably a collaboration, the scenes with Marina, Pericles’s daughter, from acts 4 and 5 are generally thought to be by Shakespeare. Marina is a super-romantic heroine, like Perdita, Imogen, and Miranda in her innocence, but going beyond them in a feeling that she is also saintly. There is a good deal of religious vocabulary used for her. For example, in act 4, scene 5, two gentlemen coming from the brothel in Mytilene comment on her ability to convert the lewd patrons to an unlooked-for chastity. The First Gentleman says: “But to have divinity preached there! Did you ever dream of such a thing?” (4.5.4–5). And at the end of the scene, the First Gentleman says again: “I’ll do anything now that is virtuous; but I am out of the road of rutting [copulating] forever” (4.5.8–9).

  In act 4, scene 6, Marina converts Lysimachus, governor of Mytilene, to chastity. As the Bawd says at the beginning of the scene, “She’s able to freeze the god Priapus” and “she would make a puritan of the devil, if he should cheapen [buy] a kiss of her” (4.5.3–4, 9–10). Lysimachus cannot resist her preaching: “Persever in that clear way thou goest, / And the gods strengthen thee!” (4.5.111–12). Marina is constantly invoking the gods, and even Boult cannot refuse her “holy words” (4.5.138). She is a liability in the brothel, as the Pander and his wife recognize. It is an interesting aspect of Pericles that this is Shakespeare’s most sexually explicit play, going beyond the deeds of Mistress Overdone and Pompey in Measure for Measure, yet the actions of its heroine in the brothel seem like a saint’s life, especially in her easy converting of all of the patrons—and Boult, too.

  Much about Marina is presented as miraculous. For example, just as Leonine is about to murder her, she is suddenly rescued by pirates (4.1), which recalls Hamlet’s being rescued by pirates as he is being sent to his death in England (4.6). In act 5, scene 1, Pericles describes her attraction in relation to his wife, Thaisa, whom he believes has perished at sea:

  My dearest wife was like this maid, and such

  My daughter might have been: my queen’s square brows;

  Her stature to an inch; as wandlike straight;

  As silver-voiced; her eyes as jewel-like

  And cased [enclosed] as richly; in pace another Juno;

  Who starves the ears she feeds, and makes them hungry

  The more she gives them speech. (5.1.110–16)

  This echoes a line in Antony and Cleopatra in which Enobarbus says that Cleopatra “makes hungry / Where most she satisfies” (2.2.239–40).

  We first see Marina in act 3, scene 3, as Lychorida, her nurse, enters with the baby in her arms. In act 4, scene 1, Marina, like Perdita in The Winter’s Tale, enters with a basket of flowers to strew on Lychorida’s grave:

  the yellows, blues,

  The purple violets, and marigolds,

  Shall as a carpet hang upon thy grave,

  While summer days doth last. (4.1.14–17)

  Marina already seems a pitiable creature just as Dionyza and Cleon are plotting to kill her:

  Ay me, poor maid,

  Born in a tempest, when my mother died,

  This world to me is as a lasting storm,

  Whirring me from my friends. (4.1.17–20)

  In the style of contemporary romances, she is rescued by pirates from Leonine, only to be sold into slavery.

  In the brothel, Marina doesn’t accuse anyone of injustice but bears her plight resignedly. Boult boasts that “thunder shall not so awake the beds of eels as my giving out her beauty stirs up the lewdly inclined” (4.2.144–46). But this sexual talk has no effect on Marina, who seems to have no doubt of preserving her virginity: “If fires be hot, knives sharp, or waters deep, / Untied I still my virgin knot will keep” (4.2.149–50). She appeals to the goddess Diana to aid her in her purpose, and Diana does appear to Pericles in a dream (at 5.l.242). It is interesting how many echoes there are in Pericles of other plays of Shakespeare. In this context we anticipate Prospero’s concern with Miranda’s “virgin-knot” in The Tempest (4.1.15).

  In act 5, scene 1, Gower as Chorus (like the Choruses in Henry V) predicts the miraculous effect Marina will have on her grieving father by describing her goddess-like work in Mytilene outside the brothel:

  She sings like one immortal, and she dances

  As goddesslike to her admired lays;

  Deep clerks she dumbs, and with her neele [needle] composes

  Nature’s own shape of bud, bird, branch, or berry,

  That even her art sisters [is like] the natural roses;

  Her inkle [linen thread], silk, twin with the rubied cherry. (5.0.3–8)

  So we are sure that her mourning father, “unkempt and clad in sackcloth” (5.1.1 s.d.), will be recovered from his deep depression.

  This moving scene (5.1) resembles the end of The Winter’s Tale, where the supposed statue of Hermione, carved by Julio Romano, is brought back to life. All of Shakespeare’s late romances, especially Pericles, emphasize effects of wonder and the marvelous. In this play (and in the statue scene of The Winter’s Tale), music plays an important role. Marina begins by singing to her disconsolate father, but the recognition proceeds slowly. Pericles seems to feel that Marina resembles his supposedly dead wife, Thaisa: “thou lookest / Like one I loved indeed” (5.1.128–29). Echoing a line from Twelfth Night, the grieving father says: “yet thou dost look / Like Patience gazing on kings’ graves, and smiling / Extremity out of act” (5.1.141–43). In Twelfth Night, Viola, in love with Duke Orsino, speaks of her imaginary sister sitting “like Patience on a monument, / Smiling at grief” (2.4.114–15). Patience is, presumably, a figure carved on a tomb.

  Bit by bit, the recognition scene proceeds, until Pericles is about to burst with “this great sea of joys rushing upon me,” which may “drown me with their sweetness” (5.1.196, 198). He finally realizes a triumphant rebirth: “O, come hither, / Thou that beget’st him that did thee beget” (5.1.198–99). The high point of this scene is when Pericles hears the “music of the spheres” (5.1.232) that no else can hear: “I hear most heavenly music. / It nips me unto list’ning, and thick slumber / Hangs upon mine eyes” (5.1.236–38). It is at this moment that the goddess Diana appears to him in a dream and counsels him to do sacrifice “upon my altar” (5.1.244) and recount all his story. The romance of Pericles in itself is supposed to have a miraculous and revivifying effect.

  Chapter 30

  Imogen

  Romance Heroine

  of Cymbeline

  Imogen is ve
ry different from the earlier heroines of Shakespeare’s comedies, who were witty and satirical, like Beatrice in Much Ado About Nothing and Rosalind in As You Like It. Imogen is almost an ideal image of a pure and innocent young woman, without any discernible faults, like Perdita in The Winter’s Tale, Miranda in The Tempest, and Marina in Pericles. They are all characters in Shakespeare’s late romances. They are distinguished by their unlimited and often breathless devotion to their spouses, their lovers, or their fathers (as is the case with Marina). Adversity or rejection only increases the degree of their commitment.

  Imogen’s love of her new husband, Posthumus Leonatus, who is quickly exiled, is unbounded, as is her contempt for the suit of Cloten, the foolish son of the queen. Posthumus’s ill-conceived wager with Iachimo in Rome on his wife’s fidelity has unfortunate consequences, since it unleashes a flood of anti-feminist vituperation. Posthumus is too trusting because the villainous Iachimo intends to win his wager by whatever means it takes. With italianate cunning, he arranges to hide in a trunk in Imogen’s bedchamber, where he can freely note the details of the scene, steal her bracelet (a gift from her husband—this echoes the motif of the handkerchief in Othello), and make lewd observations about her body. What infuriates Posthumus and convinces him of his wife’s adultery is Iachimo’s crowning detail:

  On her left breast

  A mole cinque-spotted [with five spots], like the crimson drops

  I’ th’ bottom of a cowslip. Here’s a voucher

  Stronger than ever law could make. This secret

  Will force him think I have picked the lock and ta’en

  The treasure of her honor. (2.2.38–42)

  What complicates Iachimo’s role is that he seems to have fallen in love with Imogen at first sight, as he exclaims in an aside:

  All of her that is out of door [visible] most rich!

  If she be furnished with a mind so rare,

  She is alone th’ Arabian bird [the phoenix], and I

  Have lost the wager. Boldness be my friend!

  Arm me, audacity. (1.6.15–19)

  We get the impression that Imogen is so beautiful that even a dastardly schemer like Iachimo cannot help falling in love with her.

  Imogen is related to Desdemona in Othello and Hermione in The Winter’s Tale. All three are wives falsely accused by jealous husbands. Othello kills Desdemona, but Hermione and Imogen manage to survive and live happily ever after. But the jealousy and the erroneous assumption of infidelity create a strong current of antifeminine vituperation, especially in Cymbeline. Posthumus is so shocked by Iachimo’s report that he has a soliloquy in act 2, scene 5, in which he adds his own disgusting sexual details to Iachimo’s account:

  This yellow Iachimo in an hour, was’t not?

  Or less? At first? Perchance he spoke not, but,

  Like a full-acorned boar, a German one,

  Cried “O!” and mounted. (2.5.14–17)

  This leads directly to Posthumus’s diatribe against women:

  Could I find out

  The woman’s part in me! For there’s no motion

  That tends to vice in man but I affirm

  It is the woman’s part. Be it lying, note it,

  The woman’s; flattering, hers; deceiving, hers;

  Lust and rank thoughts, hers, hers; revenges, hers;

  Ambitions, covetings, change of prides [excesses], disdain,

  Nice longing, slanders, mutability,

  All faults that have a name, nay, that hell knows,

  Why, hers, in part or all, but rather all. (2.5.19–28)

  So Imogen, in the earlier part of the play, suffers slander through no fault of her own. Her dear and loyal husband is set against her; her father, King Cymbeline, disdains her marriage to Posthumus; and the queen wants to see her married to her foolish son Cloten.

  Imogen recovers in our esteem in the third act, after Pisanio, Posthumus’s servant, receives a letter from his master asking him to murder his faithless wife. But he doesn’t reveal his letter at this point. Imogen is ecstatic that she too has received a letter from Posthumus, and she seems beside herself with joy even before she opens it:

  Let what is here contained relish of love,

  Of my lord’s health, of his content—yet not

  That we two are asunder; let that grieve him . . .

  Good wax, thy leave. Blest be

  You bees that make these locks of counsel. (3.2.30–32, 35–36)

  She is already blessing the bees that make the sealing wax that encloses the letter.

  Once she learns from the letter that her husband is at Milford Haven, she anticipates seeing him with a breathlessness that is typical of the heroines of Shakespeare’s late romances:

  Then, true Pisanio,

  Who long’st like me to see thy lord, who long’st—

  O, let me bate—but not like me, yet long’st,

  But in a fainter kind—O, not like me!

  For mine’s beyond beyond: say, and speak thick—

  Love’s counselor should fill the bores of hearing,

  To th’ smothering of the sense—how far it is

  To this same blessèd Milford. (3.2.52–59)

  Longing “beyond beyond”—if this is even imaginable, it takes Imogen an awfully long time to ask Pisanio how far it is to Milford Haven, but her absolute love overwhelms her ability to ask a direct question.

  In act 3, scene 4, Pisanio finally lets her see the dire letter from her husband asking him to kill her. Imogen is devastated by this strange, slanderous letter, to which Pisanio says in pity: “What shall I need to draw my sword? The paper / Hath cut her throat already” (3.4.32–33). Her reaction is like that of Desdemona to Othello’s accusations. She accepts the present reality, but her mournfulness is moving. She cannot imagine what is involved in being false to her husband:

  False to his bed? What is it to be false?

  To lie in watch [wakefulness] there and to think of him?

  To weep ’twixt clock and clock? If sleep charge [load] nature,

  To break it with a fearful dream of him

  And cry myself awake? That’s false to’s bed, is it? (3.4.40–44)

  We commiserate with Imogen in her grief, as does Pisanio.

  She longs for death and offers her own sword to Pisanio:

  Look,

  I draw the sword myself. Take it, and hit

  The innocent mansion of my love, my heart.

  Fear not, ‘tis empty of all things but grief.

  Thy master is not there, who was indeed

  The riches of it. Do his bidding, strike! (3.4.66–71)

  But Pisanio has only pity for the falsely accused Imogen, and he rescues her by an ingenious plot device: disguising her as a boy, Fidele, and reporting to his master that he has killed her.

  The labyrinthine plot has Fidele meeting her real brothers, Guiderius and Arviragus (though not revealed at this point); supposedly dying from a potion prepared by Cornelius, the queen’s physician (like that concocted by Friar Lawrence for Juliet in Romeo and Juliet); being buried with lyrical ceremony; mistaking Cloten’s headless body for that of Posthumus; but, eventually, as a servant of Lucius, the Roman general, being restored, in the final scene of the play (5.5), to her father, King Cymbeline, and to her husband, Posthumus Leonatus. The mysterious oracle is fulfilled and the play ends happily.

  Chapter 31

  Speech Rhythms in

  The Winter’s Tale

  The blank verse in The Winter’s Tale is different from the blank verse in Shakespeare’s earlier comedies. It is much less regular in conforming to the five-beat, iambic pentameter line, which, according to the rules of scansion, consists of five iambs; in other words, five iambic feet (a sequence of five unstressed and stressed syllables). In Shakespeare’s later comic romances like The Winter’s Tale, dramatic speech rhythms override the iambic pattern (a regular succession of unstressed and stressed syllables), as if the characters urgently need to break out of it. The context demands
many substitutions for the iambic foot. There is also a good deal of variation in the pauses, or caesuras, within the line. In a regular blank verse line, we expect only one pause in the middle, after the second or third foot. One other prosodic device we need to take account of is enjambment, or the continuation of a line beyond the five-beat limit onto the next line, which creates a feeling of extending the blank verse beyond the expected five beats, or five feet. The opposite of an enjambed line is an end-stopped line, which has a distinct pause after every five-feet line. In poetry (especially of the eighteenth century), end-stopped lines were in vogue, particularly end-stopped rhymed lines, which were called heroic couplets. In The Winter’s Tale, we are interested in the way that dramatic speech plays against the regular five-beat, iambic pentameter pattern.

  A good example of a characteristic speech of The Winter’s Tale is Florizel’s confession of his love for Perdita in the sheep-shearing scene:

  What you do

  Still betters what is done. When you speak, sweet,

  I’d have you do it ever; when you sing,

  I’d have you buy and sell so; so give alms,

  Pray so; and for the ord’ring your affairs,

  To sing them too. When you do dance, I wish you

  A wave o’ th’ sea, that you might ever do

  Nothing but that—move still, still so,

  And own no other function. Each your doing,

  So singular in each particular,